Destiny 2 Unvaulting Will Take About a Year of Production

Bungie has shared a rough timeline for the Destiny 2 unvaulting effort it announced in September, and the porting work alone is expected to take about a year once full production starts in early 2027. The details come from a new Bungie Community Update blog, which the studio says won’t be a weekly series like the old This Week in Destiny posts, but rather an occasional space for Destiny, Marathon, and general studio news. For the first entry, Bungie’s dmg04 ran a Q&A with head of product Josh Deane covering what’s coming back, what isn’t, and where the studio stands since June’s Monument of Triumph update ended live-service development on Destiny 2.

The first pass, which will be available to all players, focuses on getting the campaign slate whole again with the Red War, Curse of Osiris, Warmind, and Forsaken campaigns, along with the strikes, raids, and raid lairs from those releases. Menagerie is part of that first pass as well, with reprised rewards, since Deane says it has been one of the most requested returns for years. Beyond that, Bungie is treating free-roam destinations (public events, lost sectors, and Escalation Protocol), seasonal activities from the Sundial through The Coil, raid and raid lair weapon updates, and PvP maps as stretch goals that could arrive at the unvaulting launch or afterward.

Bungie also identified content it currently has no path to bring back or update, either for technical or strategic reasons. That includes an updated New Light experience, seasonal story missions, the Kell’s Grave Gambit map, and seasonal hubs like the Eliksni Quarter. Deane says pursuing those would come at a cost to what the studio wants to build next. As for the timeline, Bungie secured an initial greenlight in June to scope the work and find a partner to help with the port, validated its assumptions and fully greenlit the project in September, and is now in a pre-production, proof-of-work stage that’s expected to run until roughly January or February 2027. Full production is estimated at about 12 months from there, which Deane attributes to the amount of content involved. Bungie has not announced a release date for the returning content.

Beyond unvaulting, Deane laid out what he’s calling anchors for Destiny’s future, with the first two expected to receive progress bars when Bungie checks back in February 2027. The first is a Destiny 2 “Celebration,” described as something beyond Monument of Triumph that gives the existing community new updates to enjoy. The second is Destiny “Legacy,” which Deane says is about serving the entire Destiny experience “where you play today,” with more information coming early next year. A third project is listed only as redacted, with no timeline attached. Deane was also clear that nobody should expect a Destiny announcement at The Game Awards this year or a surprise logo reveal, and that the studio will have earned the right to make bigger announcements only after its incubation and validation process plays out.

Marathon still factors into all of this, since Deane notes the majority of Bungie’s remaining team is made up of longtime Destiny developers, and he says nothing would do more to bridge the studio to its future than Marathon becoming sustainable. Symbiosis is still set for December 8 ahead of the March 2027 update, Bungie is currently filming its next Dev Insight for early December, and the team is playtesting the experimental Team Deathmatch mode that ships with Symbiosis. When Bungie announced layoffs across both games in June, we noted that how much of the studio would remain to build its future was up in the air, and Deane’s own read is that the Destiny and Marathon communities need to heal. The next major Destiny communication is targeted for February 2027, with unvaulting progress updates along the way.