In 2020, Bungie announced that it was vaulting a large portion of old Destiny 2 content, and it would no longer be playable. This content included important story missions and other stuff people had paid for. While the decision was deemed necessary for technical reasons, the vaulting of content left a sour taste in the community’s mouth, and the MMO shooter’s reputation never fully recovered from the decision. But now, someone is going into the vault and making old areas playable again, though with some caveats.
As spotted by PC Gamer and many others on Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube, there has been an influx of gameplay videos being uploaded online that seem to show someone playing old, vaulted Destiny 2 content. This isn’t AI or trickery, but instead something made possible thanks to a currently-in-development fan tool that will eventually be released to the public and offer players a chance to run around currently inaccessible areas, like the Leviathan raid map.
The Destiny 2 Shadowkeep Singleplayer Exploration Mode is the tool being used to explore these vaulted areas. It’s being developed by Stanuwu, who has seemingly made good progress on the mod over the last few weeks. The tool is built on the last version of Destiny 2 that shipped before Bungie began vaulting and removing content from the MMO FPS.
While the tool is very cool, don’t expect to be able to replay all of Destiny 2‘s original campaign or past DLC expansions. Stanuwu explained on the mod’s GitHub page that no mechanics or enemies will be included in the unvaulted locations and maps. The modder also confirmed that they have no plans to implement mechanics, quests, enemies, and so forth. Instead, think of this mod as a way to walk around the old places of Destiny 2 and remember what you did before. And considering the fact that Sony put Destiny 2 on life support earlier this year and it won’t be getting big new updates anymore, this is likely the only way fans of the shooter will ever be able to hang out in some of these inaccessible maps.
One of the top comments on a video showing off Leviathan’s beloved map was simply: “I’m going to cry bro.”