Season of the Wish feels just about over, despite lingering on until June. It’s on track to go out as one of the most tepid seasonal experiences in recent Destiny 2 memory, sidestepping any pomp and circumstance surrounding the last official season. And that’s a bummer, considering Bungie previously promised some significant changes for Season 23.
Following the upcoming The Final Shape expansion in June, the game will switch to a new format called Episodes. While Season of the Wish should have been a swan song of the seasonal model, showcasing years of implemented improvement and teeing up what players might be excited about with the new episodic format, it’s just been pretty forgettable.
This is despite Bungie formerly addressing some pain points in an August post-Lightfall State of the Game communication. Notably, there was an acknowledgment that the game’s tried-and-true seasonal structure had grown stale. Bungie vowed that changes were in motion and that Season 23 would reap the reward of previous gameplay, narrative, and seasonal structure experiments. It would be a vast understatement to say Bungie overpromised.
Promises are easy to make
Seasonal delivery has been a conversation in the Destiny 2 community for a while now. After honing the concept up through the first half of Lightfall, players were ready for some change. Seemingly, Bungie heard this feedback and addressed it a few months following Lightfall‘s release.
In the State of the Game’s short segment about seasonal structure, Bungie explained, “we’ve been working behind the scenes to shake up the Seasonal paradigm this year to subvert player expectations and make each Season feel unique.” The studio added that Seasons 22 and 23 would allow more content and story flexibility to break the mold.
Following up on this sentiment, in a passage titled “Reinforcing Our Goals for the Year,” the very first point paints additional hype for Season 23 specifically. “While there’s always room for us to revise and improve, the community’s response has reinforced that we’re on the right track with norm-breaking efforts like [Deep Dives], and we’ll be rolling out something very new and different in Season 23.”
Deep Dives, of course, were Destiny 2‘s first serious experiment with rogue-lite elements. After each round, the activity allowed players to choose from a set of buffs and complete optional objectives to increase difficulty and rewards. This experiment seems the apparent inspiration for Season 23’s The Coil activity.
But Bungie didn’t just promise different seasonal activities; it also vowed that the final two seasons would immerse players with a newfound purpose and make it feel like the franchise was evolving each week. “We’re taking the feedback to heart and loading this year up with important moments designed to capture players’ imaginations and move the saga forward with each beat.”
Promises are hard to keep
So, where did all these lofty promises lead? Well, not to all that much. Season of the Wish did add The Coil as an activity, which is very good, but that feels like the price of admission. I expect each season to have a fun, gimmicky activity. When that doesn’t happen, it sucks, but when Destiny 2 delivers on what I’ve already been trained to anticipate, it doesn’t feel revolutionary.
Outside of The Coil, Season 23 also added Riven’s Lair, which is just a super-short version of The Coil. Aside from those relatively unique entries, Season 23 offers a Dungeon, an Exotic mission, and a seasonal story that largely involves busy work or getting talked at — you know, the same stuff as most other Destiny 2 seasons. And it’s not just that this feels like it could have been any old season in the game; there were some stumbles in Season of the Wish.
The biggest offender is likely when Bungie accidentally spoiled the end of Season 23. In a conversation with an NPC, a chunk of text clearly intended for another destination unceremoniously ruined a forthcoming twist still weeks away. As unfulfilling as that was, it felt par for the course in a season that repackaged old Forsaken expansion missions as seasonal story and demanded players re-engage with boring, dated activities like The Blind Well.
Season 23 feels like a missed opportunity. The backdrop concerns Mara Sov, wish dragons, and the enigmatic 15th wish. The scenario is brimming with potential, to the point where Bungie could have feasibly done anything it wanted and explained it away with wish magic. Players already know we’ll be heading inside the Traveler for The Final Shape; this was a chance to set the stage for that confrontation. Instead, we got the same old song and dance.
Season 23’s story is wholly consumed with showing us that we will indeed follow the Witness into the Traveler, as we already know. Bungie sidesteps any intrigue it could’ve built with a gaunt, laser-focused narrative. In a nutshell, the 15th wish is the only way we can follow the Witness. Conveniently, Riven can help us make good on the wish, but she won’t help until we recover her lost eggs that reappear on a weekly basis. It all plays out via a visit to the H.E.L.M., some throwaway reused activity or mission, and then a return to the H.E.L.M. for a lore dump. Sound familiar?
Perhaps all of that could be forgiven if it felt like Season of the Wish, the final Destiny 2 season, was going out with a bang. If it felt more like players were engaging in a cohesive plan to chase down the Witness instead of just doing inconsequential chores so someone would magic us to the bad guy, Season 23 might have left me excited for what comes next. At its best, it could have been a proper sendoff to the seasonal model and a kick off into a new era of the game. As it stands, it just feels like promises left unfulfilled.
Published: Feb 2, 2024 01:46 pm