Season 17 in Destiny 2 exudes a sense of nostalgia. Alongside the Leviathan, a former raid location, the nightmares from the Shadowkeep expansion have also returned in their manifestation. But is all this just pure recycling, as many players think? MeinMMO investigated this and directly asked Bungie.
What do players think about Season 17 and Bungie? Many players think that the “Season of the Haunted” only contains “the absolute minimum” of content. Already at the start of the “Season of the Haunted,” there were some things that seemed old and worn out, especially for long-term players.
- The Leviathan, the former raid ship from 2017, is back and has brought Calus with it.
- The Moon Pyramid has again awakened the nightmares from the Shadowkeep DLC from 2019.
- The public event “Nightmare Containment” resembles an Escalation Protocol 2.0.
- Moreover, several old Menagerie weapons from Season 7 have also returned.
There are always statements citing that Bungie carries over a lot of leftover content from Destiny 1, that nothing has really changed in the game for years.
Thus, the opinion of player Phyromancer here stands as a representative for what many other Guardians repeatedly criticize in the community, clans, and in the MeinMMO comments.
[Bungie] cannot produce enough meaningful content. So they keep us running on the hamster wheel with recycled content to prolong our progress. […] Activision exited long ago, and since then things have gone downhill. The progression system has been revised so many times since D1 that it really shows that they don’t know how this type of game is supposed to work.
MeinMMO wanted to get to the bottom of it: We simply asked Bungie, the developer and creator of Destiny 2, how the game has changed in the meantime since Destiny 1. Also in regards to the reintroduction of content that is no longer in the game. Is this all really just recycling, or are the players perhaps overlooking something?
Tom Farnsworth, Bungie’s Senior Design Lead, clarifies:
There have been huge changes in the sandbox and huge changes in how we deliver content. […] When you look at things like the abandoned Leviathan, we don’t just take it out of the content vault, but we remix it or contextualize it to connect a moment in time with a story and support the development of the world.
One thing that games can do is take the world and other things that players have experienced before to evolve it with crazy fungi and full of nightmares. Content and stuff that we remix, and the things we develop as part of the larger world.
explains Tom Farnsworth, Bungie’s Senior Design Lead
There have been significant changes in the sandbox and significant changes in how Bungie now delivers content. For Tom Farnsworth as a developer and player, that is the most exciting part about Destiny, that “we are always trying to build on what we have done and make the game better.”
And Nicholas Stevens, Bungie’s Senior Narrative Designer, talks about the most striking changes on the Leviathan:
The [Egregor] fungus that you see growing all over the ship, that is if you read the [seasonal] artifact, the Nightmare Harvester and some of the armor, it somehow ties in, this stuff is like an impure manifestation of darkness. It’s like a forced manifestation. So it’s almost as if the Leviathan performed some sort of profane ritual.
adds Nicholas Stevens, Bungie’s Senior Narrative Designer
It sounds to him almost as if Calus, the former emperor of the Cabal, tried to force communication with the voice in the Dark and the Power, leading to an “impure” manifestation with the Egregor spores. The spores thus also seem like something unnatural that has emerged and not something that comes from the darkness itself.
The Leviathan is not the first infected ship: Bungie has indeed directly linked this impure infection to Season 13 and continued the content of the exotic mission “Omen” on the Cabal ship “Glykon Volatus.” The rather dark content in the “Season of the Chosen” was very well received by players back then and thus they wanted to create a similarly dark and creepy experience.
Tom Farnsworth says that this was actually one of the things Bungie knew would be a good idea to build on in Season 17.
When players said, “Oh, what if […] we could see more of these things?” it became clear to us that we wanted to bring something back and we had the Leviathan as a space we could bring back. It was not free. Of course, we had to do a lot of work to push it forward. It took a lot of time for narratives, arts, activities, designers, all disciplines working together to really push it forward.
states Tom Farnsworth, Bungie’s Senior Design Lead
In addition to these obvious changes on the Leviathan, attentive players might have also noticed other details in the current Season campaign mission “Separation.”
- The Leviathan apparently did not just return “infected” but also upside down from the Content Vault, has been rebuilt, and new areas have been added.
- Spooky sound effects underline the dark atmosphere of the infected Leviathan.
- Bungie has given the old location continuing story beats in many radio messages, which expand the universe of the major story that Bungie tells in Season 17.
The “Separation” missions therefore stand out from the already known gameplay content of the former Leviathan raid. Although they are also set in an old, but now overgrown location by Egregor spores of darkness.
And players might soon notice dark changes in Season 17 in other places as well.
The story should captivate players like a good TV series
Yes, Destiny 2 has changed over the years. Rob Adams explains that they want to “captivate players season after season with the Destiny narrative.” Bungie knows that one becomes addicted to the Destiny story. Like in a soap opera or a good TV series. You want to know what will happen next?
He also says, “this is just a significant improvement of our live game that I have personally seen in the last 18 months.”
Bungie wants to tell captivating stories and showcase human fates: Robert Brookes, Bungie’s Senior Narrative Designer, agrees. He sees “the success of this seasonal narrative largely on the shoulders of the type of architecture that Senior Narrative Lead Julia Nardin has put together for it.”
The current season contains “some of the most captivating stories that have a deep human connection and deep, relatable personal stories.”
The reason they are successful is that they are often very human and very relatable. [Players] can see themselves in it and be able to find the relatable and the human aspect within themselves. It’s a very huge science-fantasy setting, which allows you to observe a character.
says Robert Brookes, Bungie’s Senior Narrative Designer
In the last campaign mission of Commander Zavala, this new emotional side of the game, which some players still cannot embrace, became very clear:
Bungie began this concept of “personal dynamics” in Season 11 when Eris Morn called players to the Tree of Silver Wings every week during the Season of Arrival. Since then, Bungie has been working to improve these story beats.
This is the point where we started to build the dynamics we needed, and players began to feel that connection to the characters, the kind of weekly through line and the way through line between all seasons that is tied from one major release through all seasons to the next, is really great. We’re getting better at planning and better at building these through lines. I’m really looking forward to the future as we evolve. When you look at where we were and where we are now, it’s as if it will be crazy where we can get to.
Tom Farnsworth further explains to us.
All the teams are constantly making these tiny changes in the game that, when you’re ready to take a step back, reveal a lot to the players and continue the story of Destiny 2. He sees this as “the real strength of live-service games. You’re always building towards something better.”
Is Bungie planning to bring back more locations? Quite possible. Tom Farnsworth revealed to us that Bungie will continue to experiment with old locations in the future, “but if so, it will only be something that also aligns with the narrative.”
This means players can expect that not just any content will be brought back, but only those that can also fit into the current story with a compelling narrative reason.
We don’t talk too much about it, but it’s definitely a lot of work and I really appreciate what our team has done and how adding the entire layer of dirt and fungi and making the place [the Leviathan] feel new and different.
Tom Farnsworth, Bungie’s Senior Design Lead
What was once gilded and opulent now goes in the opposite direction.
In addition to these visual changes, there are also other incentives that invite players to explore the transformed Leviathan, “the new story is just the cherry on top,” according to Tom Farnsworth. “Destiny is also a live-service game, so we can have this ever-evolving world wherever we want. There were places you knew before, and now they have come back in a wrong way.”
And Rob Adams adds, “It truly gives players a feeling that the universe [in a live-service game like Destiny 2] is changing. As things evolve, it’s not the same as it was six months or three months ago.”
Therefore, Nikko Stevens, Senior Narrative Designer at Bungie, finds it unfortunate that players do not recognize this as much when they play through the seasons.
What do you think of the current Season 17? Could it capture you after all with its dark setting that continues the current story? Or was it still all too little for you, and do you wish for fewer story beats, for more pure, playable content? Feel free to leave us a comment.
