Bungie does not like talking about the Destiny Content Vault (DCV), and who could blame it. After two solid weeks of hype trailers and extensive deep dive blog posts, this week’s TWAB finally addressed the elephant in the room: how much of the content we paid for is going away at the end of the month?
The update is buried down in the Player Support Report - a segment of the weekly blog reserved for bugs and other known issues, and the specific places and activities being removed aren’t even listed there - you have to follow a link out to a separate DCV guide. Now we finally know how much of Destiny 2 is getting deleted when Lightfall starts, and while it’s nowhere near as bad as past years, it still feels like a punch to the gut. Here’s the full list of content getting vaulted on February 28:
- All four seasonal wings of the H.E.L.M. and their individual vendors
- The Derelict Leviathan and Nightmare Containment
- The Last City: Eliksni Quarter
- Ketchcrash, Expeditions, and all eight Hideouts
- All 6 Sever missions
- Vox Obscura
- Operation: Seraph's Shield and the four Operation Missions
Credit where credit’s due, Bungie kept its word about maintaining the integrity of Destiny 2’s story going forward, starting from Shadowkeep. Unlike the previous two expansions, this year’s roll over isn’t going to take away any previous expansions or major patrol zones. These locations, vendors, and activities being removed are considered seasonal content, which has always been temporary, even before Bungie officially created the Destiny Content Vault. Two seasonal activities, Psiops Battlegrounds and Heist Battlegrounds, will be preserved and transferred to the Vanguard Playlist. We even got extended access to the seasonal content, which was available the entire year instead of expiring at the end of each season like it has in the past. The darkest days of the DCV seem to be behind us.
Still, it will never get easy to see so much of Destiny 2 get stripped away every year. These activities took an incredible amount of time and talent to create, and players have invested countless hours into them, too. It will never feel right to see such high quality content vanish, possibly for good.
This is the first year where we’re seeing a second sunset. The Leviathan Raid was vaulted at the start of Beyond Light two years ago, but it returned in the form of the Derelict Leviathan during Season of the Haunted this year. Now, it’s going away again, and with it one of the best seasonal storylines Destiny 2 has ever had.
I appreciate Bungie’s commitment to preserving the storyline by keeping each expansion intact, but recent years have brought greater relevance to seasonal storylines and activities, and losing them takes essential parts of the story away. The vaulting of Presage last year removed important context about Emperor Calus’ communion with the darkness and how he became the Witness’ disciple. That storyline continues in Vox Obscura, Nightmare Containment, and the Sever Missions, which are all going away this month.
Calus clearly has an important role to play in the battles to come, but his entire history, all the way back to the original Leviathan raid, has been erased. It’s hard to say Bungie is really preserving the Saga of Light and Darkness when it continues to fracture key points of story development.
It’s also just hard to lose great content. Vox Obscura is an incredible mission that reintroduced the kind of open battlefield, vehicle-centric combat we hadn’t seen since the Red War campaign. It reminds me of Halo every time I play it, and it feels like a great nod to Bungie’s history. Operation: Seraph Shield is also fantastic, and the only way to experience a space station outside of the Deep Stone Crypt raid. The mission has only been in the game for a few months, and now it’s going away forever. I know there’s plenty of new things to look forward to in Lightfall, but it just doesn’t seem right for so many great activities and stories to disappear.