Fate 2
In these first few weeks there has been a lot of skepticism about Destiny 2 moving to an Act-based Episodic model, replacing the seasons. There are three instead of four in a year, although currently they…feel a lot like the seasons, but with more added roadblocks.
Now, Destiny 2 assistant game director Robbie Stevens has spoken to GamesRadar in an interesting interview that seems to offer some reassurance about what’s to come and what the plan is from here. Read them all here, but some highlights and tips:
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- Act 3 of Episode 1 will produce one of the biggest exotic missions Destiny has ever done, and Stevens said that wouldn’t have been possible without the new Episodic format. It wouldn’t be long after one of the best exotic missions Destiny has done, Double Destiny.
- Act 2 of Episode 1 will bring a “new batch” of activities, meaning that something will join the Breach Executable and Enigma Protocol, rather than just being new maps for them. This is reasonable, given that both are a single map (Breach has three boss rooms), which is significantly less than we usually see from seasonal activities. So adding more complete activities seems like a good call. However, I wouldn’t expect the bulk of the activity to continue through Act 3, given that by that point, it would be pretty late in the season for all-new farm activity.
- There are some interesting lines about Nessus “expanding and changing” over time, although 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 changed Actually. Will this happen in the future? Will we see new, permanently accessible areas in Nessus if it is truly “expanded”?
Fate 2
- There’s a general feeling from Stevens that the current run of episodes are meant to tie up loose ends for storylines 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 these Episodes and not The Final Shape itself (this makes more sense when you allow for the idea that Lightfall and the following year may not have been planned at all in the first place).
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In that case, it seems like the main lines being addressed and/or resolved are:
- Maya Sundaresh and her apparent Vex (and exos?) control.
- Crow confronts his past in a different way by hunting down the seemingly immortal Fikrul with the help of the Fallen.
- It’s likely that Savathun and Xivu Arath will finally face off “shaking up” the Hive pantheon as they say, perhaps ending that sister conflict once and for all.
Although Stevens also says that these endings will create new futures for the races in question, leading up to the infamous, secret year 11, Destiny 2: Frontiers, which he also addresses.
“We want to get back to expanding our worlds and world building, expanding the Destiny universe in general…And I think that’s probably about as much as I have to say about it.”
This ties into the theory that at the end of the year Destiny 2 will leave its current solar system and expand into new horizons, although we still don’t know what format it will take. New endless three-episode expansions, or something? It’s just not confirmed yet.
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I appreciate the reassurance, though I’ll probably wait until Act 2 before declaring Episodes a thoroughly good change from the seasons. More to come.
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