Bungie Showcases Destiny 2 Renegades Expansion Ahead of Next Week’s Launch

Destiny 2 is only one week away from releasing its major new expansion Renegades, which carries a strong visual and thematic resemblance to classic Star Wars. Many players even believe it looks more Star Wars inspired than Destiny’s official crossover event from February, which can be revisited here through the previous Destiny collaboration trailer.

Ahead of launch, Bungie hosted a dedicated live stream that offered an in depth look at the content arriving next week. The presentation covered new weapons, activities, systems and closed with a new launch trailer for the expansion.

Renegades introduces a significant lineup of new weapons, including the Praxic Blade, which essentially serves as the Destiny universe’s version of a lightsaber. The expansion also debuts Blasters, a completely new weapon archetype that uses a heat driven firing system. Instead of traditional magazine reloads, Blasters can overheat if fired aggressively, requiring players to manage heat levels during combat.

The expansion also brings the Lawless Frontier, a new repeatable activity built around the Syndicate Notoriety progression system. Players can rise through three distinct factions by completing activities, missions and challenges designed for both solo play and fireteams of three.

The three Syndicate groups are the Pikers, Tharsis Reformation and Totality Division. All three provide unique mission types including bounty hunts, smuggling assignments, sabotage operations and the new Invasion mode. Invasion is an optional feature that allows a rival Guardian to enter your mission space and interfere with your objectives, adding an unpredictable risk and reward layer to the activity.

Bungie also showcased the upcoming dungeon named Equilibrium. This new end game challenge will arrive shortly after the expansion launches on December 13, 2025. In addition, the studio published a behind the scenes documentary exploring the development process for Renegades.

Renegades appears to offer a substantial package for long time Destiny 2 players. However, the real question is whether the expansion can reverse the significant decline in player count that the game has experienced during the past year.

Just last month, Destiny 2 reached its lowest concurrent player numbers ever recorded on Steam. The title has not surpassed the one hundred thousand concurrent mark since July. Since early September, its concurrent player count has remained well below fifty thousand, and those numbers have not shown signs of recovery.

While Steam data only reflects a portion of the overall Destiny 2 population, it still presents a concerning trend for the franchise. Combined with Bungie’s ongoing internal challenges, a poor launch for Renegades could create a far more difficult period for the studio.

The expansion’s success will depend on whether it can energize the existing community and convince lapsed players to return to the game. The next week will be pivotal for both Destiny 2 and Bungie.

Do you think Renegades has enough fresh content and innovation to bring back the Destiny 2 community