Destiny 2 Still Has A Major Story Clarity Problem In Season Of The Witch

Warning: Spoilers for the conclusion of the Season of the Witch’s story to comply with.

The conclusion of the most recent Destiny 2 story arc, Season of the Witch, had some fairly excessive stakes getting in.

After channeling Hive magic for weeks, Eris Morn resisted succumbing to temptation and completely turning into the Hive God of Vengeance. Instead, Eris severed the immortality of Xivu Arath, the Hive God of War, and stopped herself from turning into humanity’s new worst enemy, regardless of prophecies of that darkish future from Elsie Bray. Meanwhile, the Ghost Immaru resurrected Savathun, the Hive God of Cunning, who’s now again and extra menacing than ever. But as a present of fine religion and in an try and foster at the least some sort of alliance with the Guardians, Savathun gave up Immaru as a hostage to Eris, pledging to satisfy her finish of the cut price she struck with the Vanguard to assist Guardians traverse the portal into the Traveler and tackle the universe’s best menace, the Witness. Oh, and Xivu Arath has disappeared because of Eris’s efforts, which seemingly takes the Witness’s best lieutenant off the board till after The Final Shape growth.

If you missed any of that within the remaining cutscene, although, you are not alone. Some of the perfect elements of this newest Destiny 2 story, and each Destiny 2 story earlier than it, did not occur on-screen. Of those who did, a number of would not make sense until you learn the lore books and merchandise taste textual content that present a considerable amount of further context.

This is an issue Destiny has all the time confronted, nevertheless it’s one which Bungie actually wants to unravel because it shortly approaches the tip of the sport’s 10-year story arc, the “Light and Darkness Saga.” The Season of the Witch had lots of actually cool stuff happen inside it, and it was particularly good at offering character conflicts and struggles, in addition to and attention-grabbing moments in cutscenes, mid-mission dialogue, and monologues. The hassle is that Bungie does not all the time appear to know what to indicate to gamers or how one can present it in a method that is simple to grasp and comply with.

The remaining cutscene of the Season of the Witch is a chief instance. In it, we watch as Eris Morn makes use of Hive magic she’s been storing up all season to make a play towards Xivu Arath. After some dialogue from varied characters that gamers’ efforts to energy up Eris all season have not been sufficient to face towards the God of War, Eris executes a shock plan with the assistance of Ikora Rey. The pair enable Immaru to resurrect Savathun after which Eris shortly kills her, and that act of vengeance, together with all the facility Savathun represents as a Hive god herself, offers Eris the juice she must strike a serious blow towards Xivu Arath.

Given what we have seen all through the season, the most important beats of the scene are pretty simple to grasp, and there is sufficient dialogue surrounding the scenario to comply with Eris’s assault on Savathun and her transfer with Xivu Arath’s Throne World. But the scene ends abruptly instantly afterward. Our subsequent little bit of story is a message from Ikora operating down all of the vital issues that occurred instantly after the cutscene.

Most importantly, Immaru once more resurrected Savathun–Destiny’s scariest, most attention-grabbing and best-developed villain. But Savathun continues to be interested by being trusted by and dealing with the Vanguard, so she left her Ghost, Immaru, with Eris Morn as a hostage.

The revelation that Savathun is again, totally alive and now totally in a position to affect occasions within the Destiny universe, is introduced as little greater than a post-mission abstract from Ikora. In truth, the cutscene leaves a lot uncovered that there is an entry on this season’s lore guide, Rites of Passage, that picks up on the finish of what we see on-screen and fills within the particulars of what occurs within the subsequent 5 minutes. You can discover all that story–and it is fairly good–but it isn’t a part of the core Destiny 2 expertise.

It’s an method that regularly undercuts what has turn into a extremely deep and attention-grabbing story in Destiny 2–one that spends lots of time every season fleshing out the sport’s myriad characters and exploring the hardships they face as they stare down their potential extinction. This is exemplified with Eris Morn herself this season, who has been channeling the Hive’s darkish, corrupting vitality for weeks and has repeatedly mentioned how tempting that energy, the facility of a literal god, has been to wield. A key piece of lore from method again within the Beyond Light growth particulars how, in an alternate timeline visited by Destiny 1’s Exo Stranger Elsie Bray, Eris was fully corrupted by simply such an influence. In that timeline, she went totally evil, took over the Hive, and mainly helped wipe out humanity.

What’s extra, one other lore entry this season options Savathun discussing Eris taking up the facility of the Hive and noting that, sooner or later throughout this season, Eris would notice the one option to collect sufficient energy to kill Xivu Arath could be to kill us, the gamers, together with the remainder of her buddies. So the stakes with Eris taking up the Hive’s energy had been actually excessive, and her alternative to make use of that energy the way in which she did at within the remaining cutscene–giving up her godhood to strike a strategic blow towards Xivu Arath fairly than retain all that energy and take her full vengeance regardless of who it harms–was a extremely main character second. Just how vital all of that was does not come by way of within the story we see on-screen.

There’s no larger instance of Destiny 2’s wrestle to convey its story as we play it than the tip of the Lightfall marketing campaign, nonetheless. In the ultimate moments of the story, the Witness makes use of the Veil, an object no participant understands, to make a connection to the Traveler, a menace that’s by no means defined, by taking up the participant’s Ghost, a capability that’s fully opaque. The Witness then creates a portal and seemingly goes inside the Traveler, and the story kind of ends.

It’s true that a part of the post-Lightfall story is characters determining precisely what occurred throughout the Lightfall marketing campaign. But the growth’s story was panned by followers and critics because of its full lack of readability. We weren’t positive what the Witness was as much as in Lightfall, so we did not know why we needs to be apprehensive about it.

To be truthful to Bungie, it is clear that enhancements have been occurring over time and builders have clearly taken this word, particularly post-Lightfall. While some vital components of the Season of the Witch story occurred off-screen, Bungie mitigated the difficulty considerably with a ton of additional dialogue between characters, a lot of which now exhibits up within the seasonal actions gamers can proceed to fiddle with till Season 23 drops in two months. And Destiny has all the time been a recreation through which you get as a lot story as you need, with heaps extra out there in case you’re interested by studying lore books and taste textual content. The context is there for gamers to hunt out.

And one final good thing about the doubt to bestow is that Destiny 2’s story might be actually, actually dense. It’s stuffed with its personal inside logic, options all types of bizarre house magic forces which can be solely partially understood by the sport’s personal characters, and trades in esoteric ideas that blend actual science, theoretical science, science fiction, fantasy, and occultism. So it is comprehensible that “Eris Morn just used Hive power tithed through the Sword Logic to sever Xivu Arath’s connection to her Throne World, robbing her of her immortality, while Immaru resurrected Savathun” might be powerful to get throughout in a cutscene. Throw in finances issues for cutscene creation and size, and also you get the sense that that is no simple downside to unravel.

All that mentioned, an actual resolution to the difficulty is going to be essential for The Final Shape. Destiny 2 is nearing its climax, with 10 years of tales and gameplay experiences funneling down to at least one final marketing campaign and one large showdown, and it must be instantly clear to each participant what’s occurring and why it issues, not simply the lore-pilled ones. Lightfall is an effective instance of how a lot Destiny 2 can wrestle when its large concepts do not come by way of in its storytelling, and no quantity of well-written and engaging textual content dumps will save the ultimate chapter of the Light and Darkness Saga if the on-screen storytelling is not as much as the duty.