Warning: This article consists of spoilers for this week’s Season of the Want story occasions in Destiny 2. You may wish to end it earlier than studying additional.
With what’s ostensibly the conclusion of the story of the Season of the Want, Destiny 2 is now continuing to the conclusion of its 10-year story with The Final Shape. Although the following massive growth has been delayed all the way in which from February to June, the stage is about for gamers to pursue and confront the Witness, the collection’ greatest villain.
Here is the factor, although: We ought to be barreling towards this concluding chapter. As a substitute, we’re crawling.
That is not a perform of the delay, although, though it definitely would not assist that Destiny 2 followers are caught twiddling their thumbs for an additional 5 months. It is an issue with the Season of the Want, and actually all of the story Destiny 2 has instructed for the reason that launch of final 12 months’s penultimate growth, Lightfall. Destiny 2’s story is not gearing us up for a throw-down with a godlike alien creature. It is not displaying us the terrifying or horrifying penalties of letting the Witness go unchecked. It hasn’t even actually made clear what the Witness’s objectives are or what it will really do.
Bungie completely wants one thing higher than what we have seen so far–better than the Season of the Witch and completely higher than the Season of the Want–to convey up the tenor of Destiny 2 earlier than The Final Shape. The sport merely can not head into its last chapter this downbeat, or downright boring, and anticipate gamers to tune in.
It isn’t a sizzling take to say that the final 12 months of Destiny 2 has been disappointing in some massive methods. The Lightfall marketing campaign was imagined to arrange the previous few massive moments of Destiny 2’s Mild and Darkish saga however left even these devoted lore students amongst us confused as to what the sport’s villains had been really attempting to attain, or what we had really seen occur. The Season of Defiance at the very least centered on an ongoing invasion of powered-up Cabal forces on Neptune and Earth, however that battle has grown stale within the months because it was launched, and no matter risk it posed concluded and became background noise.
And with the 2 seasons that adopted, occasions have been anticlimactic. Within the Season of the Witch, Destiny 2’s good guys struck again in opposition to the Hive god Xivu Arath, a risk that has been looming for years now, with incomprehensible magic–and the villain apparently ran away with out ever showing on display. Although the season alluded to some potential conflicts among the many ranks of the Guardians and even the potential of Eris Morn, a serious character, going darkish and turning into a risk herself, in the long run, the whole lot labored out as deliberate and with little inconvenience.
On the obvious finish of the Season of the Want (there’s seemingly another story beat, a cutscene or one thing, that can lead instantly into The Final Shape), issues are even much less thrilling. After taking pictures enemies that stored displaying up in an alternate dimensional area that does not actually matter or have an effect on anybody, the spirit of the raid boss Riven used area magic to open a portal and Crow was capable of chase after the Witness. The season’s massive second was a heartfelt goodbye between Crow and his sister, Awoken Queen Mara Sov, after which him disappearing by way of a glowy circle. And now we’re ready for Crow to open the way in which for the remainder of us, and we’re left mopping up within the meantime.
For a narrative that is about to hit its finale–let alone one which’s been going for a decade–it’s simply uninteresting.
This is not a grievance in regards to the content material of the seasonal tales this 12 months. I discovered Defiance, Witch, and Want to be compelling, with shut character moments that proceed to construct the world of Destiny 2 in a approach that makes me care about it. There have been years when Destiny 2’s story was fully centered on some new alien monster that we needed to shoot with little or no time spent on the characters, and it was nice watching Eris battle with dropping herself to the corruption of energy, or discovering frequent floor with the Ahamkara Riven, a creature whose very nature calls for it inflict destruction on everybody it encounters (I ponder if Guardians can relate). The extra meditative nature of the seasonal tales has been an essential ingredient in driving me to spend money on Destiny 2’s story general, as a result of in the previous few years, it has lastly felt like all these sci-fi occasions are affecting individuals.
However ready for Crow and Osiris to open a door, an endeavor we all know they are going to achieve as a result of we have already seen the trailers, doesn’t encourage the joys or dread that the conclusion of a narrative in regards to the finish of the universe ought to entail. It is simply that easy.
What’s extra, Destiny 2 has actually did not promote the gravity of what we’re going through within the finale. Simply lay it out for a second: The Witness used the Veil to create a hyperlink to the Traveler and enter its Pale Coronary heart with a purpose to enact the Final Shape. We do not know what the Veil is (besides that it’s apparently an equal and reverse counterpart to the Traveler). We do not know what the Pale Coronary heart is (besides that it is contained in the Traveler). We do not actually know what the Final Shape is, at the very least in any kind of sensible, easy phrases (besides that it will mainly finish the universe). We do not know what the Witness is doing proper now or what it has been doing for a full 12 months. And we’re undoubtedly not in any severe rush, regardless.
Again out right here within the common universe, issues proceed as regular. There are a bunch of aliens hanging round and we shoot them. They don’t seem to be significantly harmful. Everyone who was any type of risk has been summarily handled or has disappeared. We simply paraded by way of the Dreaming Metropolis once more however didn’t handle to advance or resolve the story of the time-looping curse that it has been battling for nearly six years. The Final Protected Metropolis just isn’t beneath siege and no darkish forces are arrayed to dam us pursuing the Witness in any significant or credible approach. Hell, we simply received completed with the Destiny 2 vacation particular and we’ll have one other seasonal celebration occasion earlier than we lastly leap by way of that Crow Portal to see how the Witness has been redecorating contained in the Traveler for 18 months.
This is to not say that Destiny 2 wants to clarify the whole lot to ensure that this story to perform. Consider me after I say that I’ve learn numerous lore tabs, and extra lore tabs are usually not the answer right here. What does must be made clear are the stakes–what’s in danger, what the risk is, how individuals are coping with it, and what they stand to lose. That may be conveyed in issues blowing up, positive, however it may simply as simply be proven by way of characters succumbing to dread and anxiousness. Is the alliance with the Cabal straining beneath all this standing round? Are the individuals of the Final Metropolis freaking out about being made to “wait and see” if the universe will finish? Is anyone else on the market planning to attempt to do one thing that might mess up ours, are the aliens retreating from their beachheads or redoubling their efforts, is the universe beginning to slowly crystallize round us so we will see the doom on our doorstep earlier than it reaches us? In a phrase: no. Probably not. It is enterprise as normal.
Coming off Lightfall, an growth that ended with a weak conclusion for a long-running and engaging villain in Calus and a complicated setup for the climax of the story, Destiny 2 is already on the again foot in conserving gamers engaged with the delay of The Final Shape. Ten years of storytelling has been constructing towards the conflict of the Darkness and the Mild, however proper now, we barely even know what we ought to be anxious about. As somebody who’s been fairly invested within the Destiny 2 story for a very long time, that story ought to be making me care extra about its conclusion, and I am struggling to muster the curiosity.
Destiny 2 cannot push into the ultimate hours of this story, when everybody in Destiny 2 struggles in opposition to its strongest power to both win or lose the whole lot, with all of the characters standing round ready. It may well’t attempt to make everybody anxious in regards to the coming finish of the world if that finish is occurring someplace off-screen. It may well’t anticipate anybody to care in regards to the fruits of this story if there aren’t any clear stakes and no current hazard.
The Final Shape will probably be an unprecedented second for Destiny 2. The sport must make us really feel it, now greater than ever.