‘Destiny 2’ Offers Reassurances About Episodic Model, Frontiers Hints

In these first few weeks there has been a good amount of skepticism about Destiny 2 switching to an Act-based Episodic model, replacing seasons. There are three instead of four in a year, though presently they…feel quite a lot like seasons, but with more added timegate roadblocks throw in.

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

• Act 3 of Episode 1 will produce one of the biggest exotic missions Destiny has ever done, and Stevens said this would not have been a possibility without the new Episodic format. This would be not that long after one of the best exotic missions Destiny has done, Dual Destiny.
• Act 2 of Episode 1 will bring a “new set” of activities, implying something will join Breach Executable and Enigma Protocol, rather than just be new maps for them. This stands to reason, given that both are a single map (Breach has three boss rooms), which is significantly less that we usually see from seasonal activities. So, adding more full activities seems like a good call. I would not expect, however, the more activity thing to continue through Act 3 given that by that point, it would be getting pretty late in the season for a whole new activity to farm.
• There are some interesting lines about “expanding and changing” Nessus through time, though this has confused some players as in some missions we see transformed versions of old spaces in Nessus, but in the larger patrol space nothing has actually changed. Will that happen in the future? Will we see new, permanent areas accessible in Nessus if it’s truly “expanding”?

• There is a general sense from Stevens that the current slate of episodes are meant to tie up loose ends for storylines that were not able to be addressed in The Final Shape itself. I’ve previously said that last year’s seasons were mainly about setting up these Episodes rather than The Final Shape itself (this makes more sense when you allow for the idea that Lightfall and the ensuing year may not have been originally planned at all).

In that case, it feels like major plotlines that are being addressed and/or resolved are:

• Maya Sundaresh and her apparent control of the Vex (and exos?).
• Crow facing his past in a different way by hunting down the seemingly immortal Fikrul with the help of the Fallen.
• Likely Savathun and Xivu Arath facing off at last “shaking up” the Hive pantheon as they say, perhaps ending that sisterly conflict once and for all.

Though Stevens also says these endings will set up new futures for the races in question, leading to the infamous, cryptic year 11, Destiny 2: Frontiers, which he also addresses.

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

This jives with the theory that at the end of the year Destiny 2 will leave its current solar system and expand to new horizons, albeit we still do not 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 reassurance, though I am probably going to wait until Act 2 before I declare Episodes a fully good change from seasons. More to come.

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