While I myself may be deeply disappointed with Destiny 2‘s new Episodes as far as their time-gated nature goes, that’s not to say the whole concept should be thrown out. Quite the opposite, actually, and Bungie claims there’s oh-so-much-more yet to come. What form might it materialize in, though?
We don’t know the specifics just yet, of course, but an Edge magazine interview via GamesRadar with Bungie’s Destiny 2 game director Robbie Stevens, expansion lead Catarina Macedo, combat area lead Ben Wommack, and a few other staffers, talks shop with the MMO team. Predictably, some information Macedo shared is important in the grander scheme of things and in the context of two upcoming Episodes. For example, we now know the Pyramid faction, the Dread, isn’t going anywhere soon, even though the Witness is dead:
“The Dread are definitely in the Destiny universe to stay,” said Wommack. “That’s another reason it’s kind of hard to make them sometimes, because we don’t want to make a new unit and then have you never see it again.”
Destiny 2’s Episodes are just the start of it
The full Edge report is loaded with interesting information, to be sure, but the new insight into what Bungie thinks about Episodes is particularly curious.
“The Echoes are really our way to kind of break some of the rules that have been pretty static for a while now as we’ve established what Light and Darkness are, and it allows the wielders of the Echoes to do things that wouldn’t be possible otherwise,” Stevens told Edge. “We really wanted to make sure that The Final Shape and the culmination of the ten-year journey have a lasting impact. So year 10 is really all about the consequence of that conflict.”
As Stevens explains, Bungie wasn’t keen on immediately dropping the crux of The Final Shape and moving on to greener pastures. Episodes, then, are supposed to be the much-needed transition into “the next era of Destiny.” According to Stevens, “Episode One: Echoes is meant to send a clear signal to players, to everyone who loves Destiny, that this isn’t the end. It’s a new beginning.”
The introduction to the first Episode, Echoes, was certainly plenty powerful compared to what we had before, but I myself haven’t yet been convinced that these releases are meaningfully different from the Seasons. In a practical sense, Bungie is still heavily relying on time-gated content to keep the engagement high over a longer period of time, and the mechanics of how a season evolves aren’t fully crystallized for us just yet.
Stevens, however, is convinced of the Episodes’ value: “Part of year 10 is making sure we give a lot of focus to these individual Acts so you know exactly where to go, exactly what to do when you’re chasing this loot. We have a lot of ways that we’re considering doing this. We have a lot of ways we’ve done it in the past, and we’re going to be blending those over the next year or so, but honestly a lot of it is just coming down to a lot of stuff coming in year 10 first. A lot of it is building on the Coils and the Onslaughts.”
Aside from the time-gates, then, Bungie is apparently taking the right cues from the right community feedback. Though, again, we do need to wait and see how all of this pans out: remember that we’ve been here before, and it wouldn’t be the first time that Destiny 2‘s post-launch content fails to deliver on the incredible heights of its respective annual release.
“All of the content coming in year 10 is the catalyst for what happens next in Destiny 2,” Stevens said. “And some of those threads will carry forward into the future. But the thing I really want to reinforce here is that we’re moving outside of the linear storytelling – internally we call it ‘TV-show storytelling’ – of Destiny 2 to these more standalone experiences and Episodes that are easier to jump into, easier to engage in. So you don’t have to have knowledge of everything that happened right beforehand in order to enjoy that story and enjoy that experience.”
According to Stevens, Bungie is now keen on stepping outside of this kind of linear storytelling to expand “the universe of Destiny in general.” It’s a good sign, I’d say, that Stevens was particularly careful not to spoil too much.
So, there’s stuff to be looking forward to, even if the current iteration of Act-based Episodes isn’t everything Bungie had promised it to be.
