Looks like Destiny 2 is getting an engine overhaul, just in time for Destiny 2: Beyond Light’s release.
In Bungie’s recent TWAB (This Week At Bungie), the studio announced that they’ll be retooling the Destiny 2 engine and will be making the game less bloated. While they already announced that several planets will be going away; Io, Titan, Mercury, and Mars, as well as existing content, being locked away in the Destiny 2 Content Vault. All of which will decrease the install size of the game. Now Bungie is kicking it up a notch and has been at work tweaking the engine and reportedly has been able to shrink the install size down by 30-40%. This has been accomplished by removing unneeded assets, install size optimizations, in addition to moving stuff to the content vault (which will return at a later unannounced date).
The downside to this is Bungie has noticed that when Destiny 2: Beyond Light is released, everyone will need to re-download the entire game. This is when the changes to the engine will be pushed to the owners of the game. It wasn’t mentioned if this will be for everyone, even those who aren’t upgrading, but given the scope of the changes, this is likely being pushed to everyone. To both of those who upgrade to the expansion and those don’t.
Interesting changes, but definitely welcome ones as well. As it stands right now, Destiny 2 on PC at least, weighs in at nearly 100GB. With Beyond Light just over the horizon, without these updates and content being removed, the install base could easily surpass 100GB. And while that may not be an issue for some on PC, it’s a cause for concern on consoles.
Destiny 2: Beyond Light releases for PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Stadia on November 10th, 2020. An Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 version will be released shortly afterward.
Source: Bungie
