Destiny 2: Shadowkeep and New Light have been delayed into October

Destiny 2's gearing up for a big year. A huge year, really. Maybe the biggest one it's had to date. But that year of bigness will now start a little later, because Bungie are delaying Destiny 2's free-to-play relaunch, New Light, and its next expansion, Shadowkeep. Previously due on September 17th, they're now both lined up for October 1st. Bungie say they wanted a touch more development time and hey, they can give themselves that time now that they're out from under Activision.

Shadowkeep will send players back to the Moon (it remains haunted, you see) to catch up with Eris Morn and bash in some familiar faces. It's arriving alongside New Light, which will make the base game, its first two expansion, and the PvEvP mode Gambit free for everyone to play without dropping a penny. All this comes with a move from the Battle.net client to Steam too. Altogether, that's a lot of things on the company calendar.

Bungie big men Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy explained in today's announcement that "it has become increasingly clear to us that [Shadowkeep and New Light] would benefit from a bit more time in the oven." Rather than working themselves to the bone, they've decided to push the launch back.

"Being independent means that the future of Destiny 2 is entirely on our team," the pair said. "It also means that we're agile enough to choose to do what's best for the game and our players, even if it's the hard choice."

I'm not too keen on the prospect of reinstalling all of Destiny 2's hundred gigs on another client. But if it's a side-effect of the team getting to exercise more control of their health and schedules, that's a concession I'll accept. Shadowkeep seems pretty neat and all, too. Big fan of moon magic.