By Dexerto | Created at 2025-03-12 15:52:53 | Updated at 2025-03-12 20:15:28
4 hours ago
More than any other year before it, 2024 was a tale of two halves for Destiny 2. Just as humanity celebrated victory over The Witness at the climax of The Final Shape, so too, did players rejoice that Bungie stuck the landing by providing a worthy conclusion to the series’ overarching Light vs. Dark saga.
Fair or no, however, one success can’t carry a franchise forever. As often happens, Bungie struggled to maintain momentum following The Final Shape’s release. Despite a rebrand to eschew the negative connotations of Destiny 2’s seasonal model, Episodes Echoes and Revenant collectively oversaw the lowest player numbers on record.
The mass exodus can be attributed, in part, to The Final Shape being considered by many as a natural stopping point; the MCU effect, if you will. With Thanos dead and the original Avengers disbanded, what was left?
BungieDestiny 2’s player count suffered a sharp decline during Episode Revenant.
In Destiny 2’s case, a trio of standalone epilogue Episodes were the answer. Unfortunately, the first two of these, to be blunt, weren’t good. Fraught with disjointed story beats, questionable design decisions and bugs aplenty, Echoes and Revenant painted a picture of a game headed for life support.
You know what they say, though. Third time’s the charm.
Along came Heresy
Episode Heresy feels like premium Destiny 2 content. Expansion-level quality? Not quite, but it comes oh-so-close. Bungie had more time to cook for Heresy and it shows in every regard.
Build something people want and they’ll flock to it – player numbers on Steam have recovered to levels not seen since shortly after The Final Shape release as a result. A coherent story? Check. Loot grinds that respect and reward players’ time? You bet. Events with meat on the bone that aren’t copy-and-paste jobs from previous years? That’s affirmative.
If Heresy is an indication of what’s to come in summer 2025’s full-fat Apollo expansion, the road to Destiny 2’s future is embossed with gold.
Frustratingly, though, more content means more opportunities for the biggest threats to Destiny 2’s longevity to worm their way into its world.
BungieHeresy has been a step up in quality over previous Episodes.
Squashing Bugs
The Final Shape, despite its critical success, didn’t perform as well financially as Bungie had hoped, which ultimately resulted in mass company layoffs. As is so often the case in the industry, QA was hit particularly hard, as evidenced by an uptick in, to put it lightly, technical oddities.
Heresy Act 2 arrived with Destiny 2’s weekly reset on March 12. In addition to everything advertised, early birds soon discovered Rite of the Nine, an event not scheduled to drop until Act 3 on April 1, had hitched a ride in an unfinished state. Bungie took the servers offline for emergency maintenance shortly thereafter.
Bugs have become commonplace in Destiny 2.
Isolated incidents are fair game, but frequent instability is an altogether different kettle of fish. To make no mention of dissatisfaction with bugs among the existing player base, Destiny 2’s abstract new player experience is already in desperate need of a revamp.
Throwing inexplicable error codes and creaking infrastructure into the mix is a sure-fire way of turning more prospects away before they discover the magic of Destiny 2, still unmatched by its competitors after almost a decade of service.
A second golden age for the sequel is within arm’s reach – if lingering issues can be ironed out before Heresy gives way to Codename Frontiers, Destiny 2 can soar.
