What Happened to Storytelling This Week In Destiny 2?

Bungie seems to have dropped the ball a bit with this week’s reset in Destiny 2. If you load into the Tower now, the entire place is covered in Taken Blight. There’s goop all over the place, you can even stand in it and get some nice new screenshots of your surroundings. That’s all well and good. We’re fearless Guardians, and we don’t care about standing in this stuff. Nobody in the Tower is batting an eyelid at it all though. In fact, they seem just as chilled as ever, from actual vendors to the lowliest Exo sweeping in a corner somewhere. This isn’t how Bungie normally does storytelling, and it feels weird.

Usually, when a big cosmetic change hits somewhere like the Tower, we get a few new lines of dialogue from the main vendors. We don’t all need to hear every NPC chatting about what’s going on, but there is at least some sort of recognition that strange things are afoot from the vendors. Zavala is generally the first to say something, even if it is just flavor text that pops up as you visit him. This has been done in the past, and it adds to the feel of the world.

Right now though, there’s nothing. While it could be a bug, it might also be an unfortunate result of the pandemic. With so many people unable or unwilling to travel due to understandable health concerns, certain things might not have made it into this week’s reset. However, Bungie has been consistent with Destiny 2’s world building throughout the entire pandemic. The company didn’t do anything for E3 2021, so there was no stress about getting ready for that. In fact, the company has had plenty of time to work on Destiny 2, so what’s happened here?

I reckon that Bungie is trying out new ways to keep files out of the game until the last second with weekly resets. It would avoid issues like dataminers selling Emblems and spoiling secrets in the future. Dialogue is one of the first things that gets picked up when a game update comes in, and the spoilers are pretty horrific. I think that Bungie is now testing the waters with something new to avoid those spoilers, and it’s backfired.

These things happen, and it’s all part of the game development process. Sure, we didn’t get something cool from Zavala this week, but who knows what the future holds?

Jamie Moorcroft-Sharp

I'm an avid Destiny 2 fan and player. I fell in love with Destiny 1 during the early alpha and have been hooked by the universe ever since. I really enjoy playing with other Guardians, speculating about the lore, and writing about as much of the Destiny universe as I can.