Why is Destiny 2 still using time-gates for seasonal content?

I’m more than happy to admit that Destiny 2: The Final Shape ended up being a wonderful surprise in most ways that matter. From its vibes to its new raid, Final Shape is great stuff, yes, but it also set far too high a baseline for the new seasonal content.

For one, Bungie announced the Echoes/Episodes – a replacement for the previous years’ Season – just around the time people were figuring out that the Season of the Wish wasn’t all that good in the grand scheme of things. The obvious expectation, then, was that things would be changing a fair bit, and, to be perfectly honest, it did seem like this would be the case all the way up to the first Episode’s release:

• Bungie was moving away from four seasonal releases down to three
• Each of the three new Episodes would come with more content to compensate
• Players would have more time to parse and play through each Episode
• The new Act-based progression structure would allow players to progress at their own pace instead of waiting for Bungie to move things along on a weekly basis

Sounds good, right? Combine this with Bungie’s Episode stream, where the team members showed off some pretty darn stellar artwork, plans, and scheduling for the whole of Year 11, and everything was poised to deliver the second part of the Destiny 2‘s new one-two punch. Then Echo 1 came out, and it became clear what was up.

Destiny 2’s new Episodes are Seasons, almost to a T

No, really, that’s the crux of it: Episodes are Seasons, there are no two ways about it. So little has changed about Destiny 2‘s newfangled seasonal model that the straightforwardness of it all gave me whiplash on week 1.

To be perfectly clear right off the bat, I personally don’t even mind this: it’s not like Seasons were so bad that the whole concept should’ve been done away with for something wholly new. Not at all! Instead, one of the biggest, most annoying problems with Destiny 2‘s seasonal content has been transferred over into Episodes with such bravado that it’s almost ridiculous.

Specifically, here’s the problem: Bungie made it clear early on that Episodes would be act-based. Each Episode would consist of three Acts, with every new Act bringing in an assortment of new loot, new objectives, and – but of course – fresh narrative progression. The obvious expectation, I feel, was that this would turn Episodes into three mini-campaigns released at select intervals. Players would just need to wait for new Acts to launch, and they’d have free reign to progress however and whenever they want between these three releases. Note that this is decidedly not the case.

Naturally, Bungie didn’t specify whether this would be the case anywhere. It just feels like it was the obvious conclusion, given the wording on show and the promises of change, right? And look, I’m hardly the only person who’s annoyed with this.

Bungie insists on drip-feeding content, always

Bungie doesn’t want us playing Destiny 2‘s seasonal content the wrong way, I think. After all, dropping Destiny for weeks at a time messes with engagement, and we can’t have that in a live-service game. So, what we’ve got instead is arguably the worst aspect of the Seasons making a triumphant return in the new-and-improved Episodic content: incremental narrative progression on a weekly basis.

Oh, and it gets better, if you can believe it: Episode 1’s Act 1 wrapped up after three weeks of drip-fed narrative progression. We’re not getting Act 2 next week, though. You see, Act 2 is coming on July 16, instead, which gives us not just one but two layers of drip-feeding to keep players returning to Destiny 2 every single week, maxing out engagement (in theory).

It’s not all bad, I reckon. If you want a few weeks after each new Act “launches” you technically can complete it in full well in advance of the next Act. This just doesn’t feel like the intended way to engage with the game, though, right?

On a tangential and potentially more worrying note, we don’t know whether Episodes will be every bit as FOMO-laden as Seasons were in the long run. Remember: Seasons kept being sunset at the end of a given “year” of content, which effectively meant carving out huge chunks of narrative progression to keep things somewhat neat and streamlined in the long run. Will the same happen with Episodes, too? We don’t know yet, but given that they’re effectively just a spruced-up rebranding of Seasons, I think we all know what the most likely answer is.