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Destiny 2’s Revenant Episode Has a Huge Weight on Its Shoulders

By 5 Mins Read

Highlights

  • Destiny 2’s Final Shape expansion praised for its campaign, but Echoes episode disappoints.
  • Revenant episode must improve on Echoes’ shortcomings; time-gated content may be replaced.
  • Bungie faces challenges in balancing new content and maintaining the game’s overall quality.



Destiny 2‘s Final Shape expansion has what is arguably the best campaign in the history of Destiny. Full of emotional moments, plenty of exciting battles, and another rewarding Legendary experience, The Final Shape’s campaign has certainly lived up to its claim as the epic conclusion to 10 years of storytelling in Destiny. Unfortunately, despite an exciting campaign — and even a thoroughly satisfying raid — The Final Shape hit a roadblock with its Echoes episode, which began just a week after the expansion’s release. This, in addition to the need for several updates and quality-of-life improvements, has already put its next episode in a very tough spot.


Destiny 2‘s second episode, Revenant, is scheduled to begin on October 8, 2024, which means its first episode, Echoes, still seemingly has plenty of time to improve. By and large, Echoes has been a significant disappointment, as it has all but crushed what were arguably unhinged expectations. In light of that, Destiny 2‘s new episodic format puts tremendous weight on Revenant to make up for Echoes’ shortcomings.

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Destiny 2’s Revenant Episode Needs to Atone for the Sins of the First

Destiny 2’s Echoes Episode Has Been a Disappointing Follow-Up to The Final Shape

When Bungie announced that it would be exchanging Desitny 2‘s seasonal format for what it referred to as “episodes,” its path forward was paved with skepticism. It seemed almost impossible for these episodes to be anything different from Destiny 2‘s tired seasonal model, but there was nonetheless hope that they would be. Unfortunately, this skepticism proved true, as just three weeks into the Echoes episode, Destiny 2 hit pause on new content for a three-week intermission between the episode’s first two acts. To make matters worse, the first three weeks of Echoes were time-gated, in the same fashion that seasons once were.


Despite prevalent skepticism about Destiny 2‘s episodes, there was still a sense of hope that they wouldn’t be anything like seasons. In fact, expectations centered around episodes being released all at once to allow players complete liberality in choosing how quickly or how slowly they wanted to play through the content. So, when Echoes proved to be nothing more than one of Destiny 2‘s seasons with a new name, it simultaneously put a huge weight on Revenant’s shoulders.

Revenant Needs to Be Everything Echoes Isn’t and More

The clearest way Destiny 2‘s Revenant episode can make up for Echoes’ blunder is by adopting a different model. There are obvious business benefits to content being time-gated, but with the episodic model being so similar to the seasonal model, there’s not much justifiable about it considering Destiny 2‘s seasons were worn out a long time ago. As such, Revenant may have no choice but to be released in full without any time-gated interruptions between each act.


Revenant is currently slated for an October 8, 2024 release, so there is presumably plenty of time between now and then for things to improve. However, judging by how things are currently, that may be a tall order for Bungie. As is the case with every expansion, the developer has to focus on ensuring everything new that was introduced in The Final Shape remains balanced with the rest of the game, all while keeping the whole of Destiny 2 in a respectable state with regular patches.

The new Prismatic subclass
is a great example of this, as there are currently massively low drop rates for the new Exotic class items that are meant to pair with Prismatic, along with no duplicate protection on the random perks that the items drop with.

This all means that, while there is a decent amount of time between now and the release of Revenant, it may still not be enough for Destiny 2‘s second episode to atone for the sins of the first. Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem to have a choice unless things change for Echoes in the coming months.


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