It was always going to be a monumental task for Destiny 2 developer Bungie to simply continue living up to expectations of the game once the Light and Darkness Saga came to a close with The Final Shape expansion. A decade's worth of storytelling concluded and then a year later Bungie asked fans to simply get back on the horse and continue like little had changed with The Edge of Fate expansion (the first chapter in the Fate Saga).
But it never really worked and if anything fans disliked the experience it offered, for a multitude of reasons, some down to the narrative direction and some down to the gameplay and design choices that simply were not very fun.
To this end, in an interview with IGN, game director Tyson Green has commented that The Edge of Fate didn't deliver what Bungie was hoping it would and that it taught them a lot of tough lessons.
"We looked at the problem that we had [after The Final Shape], and we said, 'We think there's a route here,' which is leaning into more systems of pursuit, getting new tiers of gear, armor sets, and power progression, and things like challenge customization. These things that can allow a core audience of players to really say, like, 'I'm really gonna take this game and put it through its paces, and get good rewards for it.'
"It sounds great on paper, but it didn't work. I think we've been taught a bunch of hard lessons about what our players want, and there are really two kinds of live games: those that listen to the players and respond, and those that don't. And we don't want to be a dead live game, we want to keep building Destiny. So we're listening to our players, and what our players are telling us is that they don't want to chase a simple number that goes up, they want real rewards."
The next big Destiny 2 expansion arrives on December 2 and brings a Star Wars-themed chapter that we recently had the opportunity to tell you tons more about. Will this be enough to get Destiny 2 back on track? We'll know for a fact in a few days.