Bungie changes its Destiny

Hello everyone, and welcome to the latest issue of the Destructoid Changelog. This week, we’re talking Destiny 2’s ambitious new roadmap and that trailer drop for GTA 6.

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Guardians Make Their Own Fate

If you’re a longtime fan of Destiny, you’ll know there’s nothing quite like it. It’s obtuse, frequently frustrating, and damn near impossible to get friends into, but Bungie is at least taking steps to rectify some of that.

If you’ve been playing since pre-launch Destiny 1 back in 2014, you’ll know Bungie tends to do its best work when the chips are down. Following last year’s layoffs, a Sony acquisition which has reportedly been filled with friction for both parties, and the reveal of Marathon, we felt Destiny might be set to walk into the sunset.

Imagine our surprise, then, when Bungie used its Edge of Fate reveal stream this week to confirm a quartet of new expansions spanning a fresh saga and kicking off an exciting new era for the loot-shooter/MMO hybrid.

While the first expansion launches in July, we’ll get another in Winter, with a sizeable free update in between, before the studio repeats the trick in 2026. It’s a far cry from the current release cadence, where one large expansion launches each calendar year, buttressed by seasons that see activities added and disposed of within a few months.

Bungie’s struggle now is convincing players that the new structure will yield real benefits for a community that’s started to feel ‘nickel and dimed’ by season passes, Dungeon keys, and in-game cosmetics in recent years.

The community seems relatively positive at this point, and willing to give Bungie the benefit of the doubt, but it wouldn’t be a Destiny event without needing some sizeable degree of ambiguity.

Alongside the free updates, one of this year’s paid expansions, Renegades, was revealed with a teaser trailer that seemed to suggest it’ll lean more heavily into Star Wars than Bungie’s own universe.

“Rest assured, Guardians - everything in Renegades is in-canon for the Destiny universe, but we're leaning into the aesthetic, tone and vibe of Star Wars to tell a Destiny story with Destiny characters,” Assistant Game Director Robbie Stevens said in a blog post.

It’s a weird spot to be in where Guardians can ditch their weapons for a Lightsaber, and many of us still need to be convinced that aping such a well-worn franchise is the right path forward.

A set of cosmetics is one thing, but Bungie’s whole teaser for the expansion was basically centred around “look how Star Wars this looks”, complete with the announcement of Sith-inspired armor for each class that looks like Darth Vader, General Grievous, or Kylo Ren.

Destiny 2 has dabbled in crossovers before. We’ve seen Fortnite armor, PlayStation items inspired by God of War and others, Street Fighter finishing moves, and much more. But it’s never been something a whole chunk of game has been themed around.

Still, there is a path forward, and that’s something many of us had feared for in recent months.

It’s been 84 years…

After more than 500 days, Rockstar finally reared its head last week (just after we’d scheduled last week’s issue, naturally) to tell the world that Grand Theft Auto 6 finally has a release date.

Sadly, that release date is May 26, 2026, meaning the delay we’d all been expecting came to pass.

Still, when the company said we’d get news soon, we weren’t quite expecting Trailer 2 to drop out of nowhere on Tuesday afternoon.

Not only did it give us more story context and a better look at our two protagonists, but we finally know the muscular male we’ll be playing as is, as leaks suggested, Jason–we can stop the asterisk next to his name in screenshots now, finally.

On top of that, Rockstar Games dropped a whole host of screenshots, character information, and even a slim plot synopsis. After such a long drought, it felt like a downpour, and if nothing else, we’re happy we no longer have to rely on the same screenshots when we write about what could well be the biggest game in history.

In fact, we were ready to call shenanigans on the trailer being an accurate representation of the final product, until Rockstar explicitly confirmed it’s captured from a base PS5.

Truly staggering stuff, and we can’t wait to see more in the next year until launch (sob).

That’s all for today, but we’ll be back next week. Thanks for subscribing!

Destructoid team