Destiny 2 game director Tyson Green says Edge of Fate’s progression systems “didn’t work” and admits Bungie “did not gracefully manage” the transition from The Final Shape, as it prepares to fix progression with the Renegades expansion.
Destiny 2 has been in a weird spot ever since The Edge of Fate came out earlier this year. The expansion tried to reset how power, gear, and difficulty work across the whole game, and the result was a tedious grind, frustrated players, and one of the most unstable years Destiny 2 has seen. Now, Bungie is gearing up for Renegades‘ release on December 2, 2025, as the next big update to win people back.
Renegades is the Star Wars-inspired “space western” expansion that brings in Blaster weapons, the lightsaber, which is called Praxic Blade in Destiny’s universe, a more generous power climb, and a return to a proper faction system. After how much friction Edge of Fate caused, Bungie is clearly trying to show they listened.
It also sits inside Bungie’s new two-expansion-per-year model and layers on fresh systems like Orders and Vanguard Alerts that are meant to give clear reward tracks instead of endless power level chasing. On paper, it is very much a response to what went wrong with Edge of Fate.
Over the last couple of months, Destiny 2 went through some major rewiring. Edge of Fate introduced the new progression system with the Portal, a new armor stat rework, set bonuses, and tier systems for gear. Players were pretty open about how rough it felt.
Bungie has already said in broad terms that it took the game down the wrong path with some of those changes. Now, Destiny 2’s game director, Tyson Green clearly stating that the progression experiment in Edge of Fate “didn’t work” and “was not gracefully managed.”
Tyson Green: “It didn’t work” and Destiny 2 needs “real rewards,” not just numbers
In a new interview with IGN, Green talks about what Bungie tried to do after The Final Shape and why it backfired. He explains that the team thought doubling down on deep systems for hardcore players was the right way forward after ending the Light and Darkness saga. On paper, that sounded reasonable. But the way it landed in the live game didn’t do what they hoped.
“We looked at the problem that we had [after The Final Shape], and we said, ‘We think there’s a route here,’ which is leaning into more systems of pursuit, getting new tiers of gear, armor sets, and power progression, and things like challenge customization,” Green said. “These things that can allow a core audience of players to really say, like, ‘I’m really gonna take this game and put it through its paces, and get good rewards for it.’
“It sounds great on paper, but it didn’t work. I think we’ve been taught a bunch of hard lessons about what our players want, and there are really two kinds of live games: those that listen to the players and respond, and those that don’t. And we don’t want to be a dead live game, we want to keep building Destiny. So we’re listening to our players, and what our players are telling us is that they don’t want to chase a simple number that goes up, they want real rewards.”
He also connects this back to the sharp population drop after The Final Shape, calling that finale “a fantastic ending” but admitting the follow-up was rough. “Unfortunately, it was not gracefully managed, but we had to try something,” Green says, making it clear that Bungie knows the handoff from saga finale to Fate saga was handled poorly.
“People were pleased and satisfied with what they played [in The Final Shape], and then the big [downwards] spike in population [came after]. That happened because we ended the saga. So you get what you pay for, right?,” Green said.
“That wasn’t the plan from the business perspective. We still want to keep making Destiny; we still have many stories to tell in this universe. There are still lots of things to do, and we have to keep building the game. Unfortunately, it was not gracefully managed, but we had to try something.”
In another interview, assistant game director Robie Stevens said that the team “went too far” and “changed too much too quickly” with Edge of Fate and Year of Prophecy. He framed 2025 as one of Destiny 2’s buggiest years and described Bungie now paying a “tax” to fix systems that shipped in a messy state.
There is also the bigger question of where Destiny goes from here. Bungie recently delayed its promised roadmap for Destiny 2 to next year. Amid all of this, there have been new rumors that Destiny 3 has entered “extremely early development” at Bungie.
For now, though, Bungie’s leads are clearly trying to convince players that Destiny 2 can still course correct, with Renegades as proof that they heard the complaints about grind and rewards.
How do you feel about Green’s comments? Are you excited about Renegades? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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