In most meaningful respects, I'm delighted to report that Destiny 2: The Final Shape turned out to be an amazing surprise. While Final Shape is fantastic stuff, it also set a much too high bar for the new seasonal content, from its vibes to its new raid.
For starters, right about the time that many were realizing that the Season of the Wish wasn't all that great overall, Bungie revealed the Echoes/Episodes, a substitute for the previous year's Season. Thus, it was reasonable to assume that a significant amount of change would occur, and, to be completely honest, it did .seem similar to how things would have been till the first episode was released:
- 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
It sounds wonderful, doesn't it? When you combine this with the Bungie Episode broadcast, where the team members showcased some very amazing artwork, plans, and scheduling for the whole Year 11, everything was set up to give the second half of the new one-two punch for Destiny 2. After then, Echo 1 was released, and it was evident what was wrong.
The latest episodes of Destiny 2 are almost exactly like seasons
.No, that's really the main point: The episodes are There are no two ways about the seasons. The newfangled seasonal concept of Destiny 2 hasn't altered much, so much so that the simplicity of it all caused me whiplash in week 1.
Just to be clear, I don't even mind. Seasons wasn't that horrible, therefore the idea shouldn't have been abandoned in favor of something completely different. Not at all! Instead, a major and vexing issue with the seasonal content of Destiny 2 has been boldly, almost ridiculously, carried over into Episodes.
In particular, the issue is as follows: Early on, Bungie said unequivocally that Episodes will be act-based. Every episode would have three acts, each of which would include a different set of goals, new items, and - of course - new story developments. I believe it was a given that this would make Episodes into three separate mini-campaigns that were launched at different times. Between these three releases, players would have complete freedom to advance whenever and whenever they like, just having to wait for new Acts to begin. Keep in mind that this is definitely not the case.
Naturally, Bungie made no mention of whether or not this would be the case. With the language on display and the promises of change, it simply seems like the appropriate course of action, doesn't it? Look, I'm not the only one who finds this annoying.
Bungie insists on drip-feeding material, always.
I believe Bungie doesn't want us misusing the seasonal material in Destiny 2. We can't have that in a live-service game, so dropping Destiny for weeks at a time screws with engagement. Instead, we have what is maybe the worst part of the Seasons making a victorious comeback in the updated Episodic content: weekly story advancement.And, believe it or not, it gets better: Act 1 of Episode 1 concluded after three weeks of gradually revealing more and more of the story. Act 2, however, is not coming next week. Act 2 is scheduled to launch on July 16 instead, providing us with two levels of drip-feeding to ensure that players return to Destiny 2 every week and maximize engagement (theoretically).I think it's not all horrible. You may potentially finish it entirely well in advance of the following Act if you'd like, starting a few weeks after each new Act "launches." But this doesn't seem like the intended method of playing the game, does it?In addition, and perhaps more concerningly, we are unsure whether Episodes will ultimately cause as much FOMO as Seasons did. Recall that seasons were supposed to terminate at the conclusion of a certain "year" of material, therefore in order to maintain some degree of order and efficiency over time, significant portions of the narrative development had to be cut out. Will Episodes too have this same outcome? We don't know yet, but because they're essentially simply Seasons with a nicer makeover, I believe we can all guess what the most probable explanation is.