Destiny 2’s Beyond Light expansion will shrink the game’s massive install size

Destiny 2’s upcoming Beyond Light expansion will make the game take up significantly less space on your console’s or computer’s hard drive — depending on the platform, the updates will result in a 30-40% reduction in the game’s installation size, developer Bungie announced Thursday in its weekly blog post.

Bungie said it took the expansion as an opportunity to do some fine-tuning of Destiny 2’s back end. Other factors are the previously announced retirement of many pieces of the game into the Destiny Content Vault, and the removal of “accreted ‘dead’ content,” assets that were later replaced in patches. All of this is allowing Bungie to shrink Destiny 2’s file size down to somewhere between 59 GB and 71 GB, depending on platform. (With the latest expansion, Shadowkeep, the game currently takes up 120 GB on PlayStation 4, 95 GB on Windows PC, and 111 GB on Xbox One.)

There’s a catch to this, though: All Destiny 2 players will have to re-download the entire game in order to play the new expansion when it launches Nov. 10. Bungie did say that it intends to allow players to preload Beyond Light at least 10 hours before the expansion goes live — “sometime in the evening of November 9, Pacific Time.” The studio hopes that this way, even players with less-than-optimal internet speeds can be ready to go from minute one.

Other notable quality-of-life improvements coming to Destiny 2 alongside Beyond Light include a new scripting environment for missions. In addition, players will now be able to join face-to-face fireteams directly from within social spaces, like the Tower, without having to wait for a long load. And finally, Bungie rebuilt the face system that allows players to customize the look of their Guardian.

“We’ve upgraded to a significantly more capable system [...] which we hope to leverage for more player customization options in the future,” said Bungie. The studio also said that it reviewed Destiny’s current player models with its Diversity Committee and its Employee Resource Groups, a process that resulted in “small tweaks to existing player heads.” Bungie is planning to “increase Guardian diversity in Destiny, with the long-term goal of enabling everyone to imagine themselves as their Guardian.” In the meantime, players should not be surprised if their Guardian’s face looks a bit different after Beyond Light arrives.