UPDATE: It has been confirmed that this was in a dev environment and is not a feature currently planned for release in the live game.

The original story follows...

Today was a big day for Destiny 2 players, as Bungie released the 2.0 Update for the game, and then later in the day unveiled its content roadmap and a new ViDOC. It was a lot of content to pore over, but the fans have diligently examined every frame and uncovered some cool hints at new features. One that stood out to us was what appears to be an 8-player fireteam.

During the ViDOC, Bungie’s developers show off the new Title system that is coming to Destiny 2 with Forsaken. After completing certain objectives, players will be able to earn Titles that they can then showcase under their username. The example given was the Chronicler Title, which appears to be unlocked by collecting all of the lore in the game.

But once Bungie showed a player brandishing the Chronicler title in the wild, we couldn’t help but notice there were 7 green names surrounding them. Currently, players can only load into a social space like the Tower with 5 fireteam members but that could be changing with the launch of Forsaken.

destiny 2 fireteam 8 players

The hope is that the 8-player fireteam (or larger?) will then lead to situations where players can load into destinations with large groups to complete Flashpoints, Public Events, Escalation Protocol and more, but Bungie has yet to confirm anything. It could be that this was merely a test environment and larger fireteams are not in the works, but most would like to believe this was a purposeful tease. After all, Bungie chose this footage for the ViDOC, so they must have known it would lead to speculation.

It was only after the launch of the Warmind DLC and the Escalation Protocol mode that the demand for larger fireteams began to heat up. Sure, players have always wondered why they can take 5 teammates into a raid or PvP and only 2 into a destination, but Escalation Protocol felt built for that large team atmosphere. However, instead of making that dream into a reality, Bungie just nerfed the difficulty of Escalation Protocol.

Perhaps it is time to finally deliver that dream, though, and give players the chance to explore an environment like the Dreaming City with a larger group. Maybe the Blind Well activity, which looks similar to Escalation Protocol, is where we will test larger fireteams.

Destiny 2: Forsaken releases September 4, 2018 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.