‘Destiny 2’ Offers Reassurances on Episodic Model and Hints at Boundaries

In these early weeks, there has been a lot of skepticism about Destiny 2’s move to an episodic, act-based model, replacing seasons. There are three instead of four per year, although right now they… feel a lot like seasons, but with more added time obstacles.

Now, Destiny 2 deputy game director Robbie Stevens has spoken to GamesRadar in an interesting interview that seems to provide some reassurance about what’s coming and what the plan is from here. Read the whole thing here, but here are some highlights and takeaways:

• Episode 1, Act 3 will deliver one of the biggest Exotic missions Destiny has ever done, and Stevens said it wouldn’t have been possible without the new episodic format. It wouldn’t be long after one of the best Exotic missions Destiny has ever done, Dual Destiny.
• Act 2 of Episode 1 will bring a “new set” of activities, implying that something will join Breach Executable and Enigma Protocol, rather than just being new cards for them. This stands to reason, given that the two make up a single map (Breach has three boss rooms), which is significantly less than we usually see in seasonal activities. So, adding more comprehensive activities seems like a good decision. However, I wouldn’t expect more activity to continue during Act 3, given that at that point it would be quite late in the season for a whole new farming activity.
• There are some interesting lines about Nessus “expanding and changing” over time, although this has confused some players because in some missions we see transformed versions of old Nessus spaces, but in the larger patrol space nothing has really changed. Will this happen in the future? Will we see new permanent areas accessible to Nessus if it truly is “expanding”?

• Stevens has a general feeling that the current slate of episodes is meant to tie up loose ends on plot lines that weren’t able to be addressed in The Final Shape itself. I’ve said before that last year’s seasons were mostly about setting up those episodes rather than The Final Shape itself (which makes more sense when you consider that Lightfall and the year that followed may not have been the original plan at all).

In this case, it seems that the main storylines that are addressed and/or resolved are:

• Maya Sundaresh and her apparent control of the Vex (and exos?).
• Crow faces his past in a different way by tracking down the seemingly immortal Fikrul with the help of the Fallen.
• It is likely that Savathun and Xivu Arath will finally face off to “upset” the Hive pantheon as they say, perhaps ending this brotherly conflict once and for all.

Although Stevens also claims that these endings will establish new futures for the races in question, leading up to the infamous and cryptic Year 11, Destiny 2: Frontiers, which he also touches on.

“We want to get back to expanding our worlds and world building, expanding the Destiny universe in general… And I think that’s probably all I should say about that.”

This fits with the theory that, at the end of the year, Destiny 2 will leave its current solar system and expand to new horizons, although we still don’t know what format that will take. New expansions with three episodes indefinitely, or something else? It just hasn’t been confirmed yet.

I appreciate the comfort, though I’ll probably wait until Act 2 before declaring the episodes a wholly nice change from the seasons. More to come.

Follow me on Twitter, Youtube, And Instagram.

Get my science fiction novels Herokiller Series And The Earthlings Trilogy.