After years of drip-feeding Destiny 2 content to players, Bungie indicated it’s willing to listen to fans and at least test rolling out content in a more complete, Netflix-style fashion. The studio is using Episode 2, Revenant, as an experiment, making all of the weapons and story content available for each Act as they launch.
Time gating has been a long gripe within the Destiny 2 community. And though Episodes were to be a break from the norms built over 23 Seasons, Act 1 of Episode: Echoes seemed to be the same tune to a new dance, featuring three weeks of sequential content and then three weeks without. In a July 9 livestream previewing Episode: Echoes Act 2, Bungie revealed a change in course.
How is Destiny 2’s Episodic content delivery changing?
Bungie’s Narrative Director, Alison Lurhs, said, “We’ve been listening to the fans and listening to feedback, and we agree, it’s time for a change. So, we’re going to do a trial of something new in [Episode] 2. We’re going to be dropping all three beats of the Acts at once.”
This diversion from the norm means that as each Act of Episode 2 launches, all of the story missions and new content that make up that Act will be available, not unlike how Bungie releases expansion content. Though this may be exactly the kind of change some players were hoping for with the switch to Episodes, it is important to note that this doesn’t mean that each Act will have more content; all of it will just be available at launch. And it doesn’t indicate a shift away from the downtime between Acts.
Time will tell how players react to Bungie’s Episode experiment, but it feels like it’s more of an appeasement than a solution. The real problem is that it seems Bungie is trying to stretch out a Season’s worth of content over a longer period — and Seasons already felt sparse in their dwindling weeks. With the new system, the most invested players will blow through the story content and earn the new weapons in a couple of days and then complain that there’s nothing to do until the next Act.
Of course, Destiny 2‘s long-term engagement is not an easy problem to fix. At least with this latest move, Bungie is showing a continued responsiveness to the Destiny 2 community. The players who want to gobble all the new content up immediately can, and those who wish to take their time probably won’t notice any difference.
