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As Destiny 2 tries its hand at longer Episodes in place of shorter Seasons, Bungie has apparently decided “it’s time for a change” and will be experimenting with the way it dishes out content week over week – namely by not doing that and instead dropping six weeks worth of content all at once in Episode 2: Revenant.
Bungie discussed its plans for the future of the MMO during a developer livestream which aired earlier today. Right at the start, ahead of a deep dive on some activities and promising balance changes coming in Act 2 of Episode 1: Echoes, narrative director Alison Lührs says “we’ve been listening to fans and listening to feedback, and we agree it’s time for a change.” To that end, Episode 2 is going to be something of a “trial” for Destiny 2, with all three Acts dropping as lump sums rather than metered-out experiences.
“For our next Episode, Revenant, each Act’s entire story will be available to play as it launches instead of week to week,” the Destiny 2 Team Twitter account clarified. “Our goal is to give players an opportunity to play at their own pace. We’ll be monitoring feedback when these changes go live.”
“We’d also like to note specifically that Episode: Echoes will continue to have weekly story beats for Act 2 and Act 3,” a follow-up tweet reads.
“We’re gonna give it a shot in Episode 2 and see how it goes,” Lührs concluded.
You can fairly argue that the Episode itself will still be time-gated in the form of three disparate Acts, but those individual story beats, and presumably whatever activity-facing changes are tied to them, will be available all at once. This lines up with Bungie’s comments to Edge magazine, with assistant game director Robbie Stevens describing plans to make Destiny 2 easier to follow and fit into your life. If Bungie sticks to this lump-sum Act model, you’ll know for sure that you have three big content drops per Episode, rather than little updates here and there.
This will inevitably lead to hardcore players devouring six weeks worth of content in about two days and then talking about content droughts on Reddit in record time, but this change can only free people up to play how they like and even – gasp – play other games, so I’m putting it down as a win for now. Personally, while more content is always welcome, until developers find a way to produce games as fast as people play them (hint: it’s impossible and will never happen) I’m happy to take the same amount of content at my own pace, thanks.