Destiny 2’s Dreaming City is the Next Step for Service-Game Narrative
Bungie finally gives players a reason to keep fighting
Since Destiny’s first public alpha test in the summer of 2014, the game has struggled to tell a coherent and meaningful story. Many updates to the game and the 2017 sequel have attempted to remedy this criticism to varying levels of success. While the story presented across several campaigns has improved, most notably in recent expansion Forsaken, the overarching narrative was seemingly forgotten. Each expansion resolved itself nicely at the end with little lasting impact on the world and the players’ experience. Enter the Dreaming City, one of Forsaken’s greatest triumphs.
The Dreaming City doesn’t open up until the Forsaken campaign has been completed. Upon entering, the player takes in the series’ most striking and pure fantasy environment yet. The white towers, vibrant colors, and glowing minerals wouldn’t look out of place in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. It is the home of The Awoken, Destiny’s mysterious blue-skinned race. While there is plenty of lore about their current society, there was precious little about their origins. This is where one of the first changes really struck me. My Warlock is an Awoken and as I took my first steps into this mysterious city and took in the sights, the voice of Petra Venj came over the radio. “I’m glad you can finally see your true home, cousin.” Nowhere in the series has there been any acknowledgement of the race the player has chosen for their character before this. As I continued to explore, more and more lines were customized to reflect the heritage of my created character. I instantly felt the urge to learn more to see how it would be reflected on my personal character I have carried with me through the four years of this series. Touches like this are relatively common among RPGs but Destiny has always been a shooter first and foremost. This simple change to dialogue immediately showed what Bungie was planning for the Dreaming City was more ambitious than previous characterization attempts.
As I continued to explore, there were a number of ties to the core Forsaken story as well as some of the series’ extended lore. There are some hardcore lore fans like myself, but, but until now it had been cordoned off from the rest of the game content. In the first game the only way to access it was through an app on your phone and for the first year of the sequel’s life it was nowhere to be found. Forsaken finally added an in-game lore tab and the Dreaming City had a number of hints and links between them, connecting seemingly disparate elements of the universe in a way that has gotten the lore community into a stir. Despite these intriguing touches, the Dreaming City quickly fell into the usual pattern of play as other destinations. I enjoyed the look and feel of the area but was concerned that it would fall into banality like so many of the other areas. Then the new Forsaken raid, Last Wish, was completed.
Destiny raids are the pinnacle activity of the game, designed for a six-person fireteam to head into the most dangerous areas in the universe and encounter puzzles, traps, and bosses while earning the most prestigious gear in the game. The raids never go live the first day of a new expansion; Bungie keeps them locked for a week or so until people can gear up to be able to attempt them. The raid’s release date is announced ahead of time and teams compete to achieve the title of “World’s First”. Last Wish, Forsaken’s raid, took the longest of any of the raids so far with the first completion taking 16 hours. Usually the completion of the raid marks the end of the unique content for a given expansion but Last Wish had one more challenge. A curse upon the Dreaming City.
This curse immediately started shifting the look of the Dreaming City, more enemies appeared, new missions, new quests, new lore, and new gear. The raid wasn’t the end this time, it was the beginning of another story arc. Each week following, the curse on the city progressed and the corruption of its idyllic scenery continued with more unique questlines and challenges entering the world. For once there wasn’t a reset to zero at the completion of the expansion content and changes to the world were triggered by player actions. While the curse runs on a three-week cycle so that players who missed the core missions the first time around can still experience them, ancillary elements of the world continue to progress. NPCs in the region are aware that time has passed and new challenges and lore continue to appear.
“I am eager to log-in every week to see how the world evolves, what new connections my character makes, and to fight the evil that is encroaching on this beautiful land.”
The Dreaming City represents the next step in long-term player engagement in service-based titles. Service games live and die by player engagement and Destiny 2’s biggest problem was player retention. Just having events that catered exclusively to high level player-versus-player users wasn’t driving the investment that a game with the ambition of Destiny needs to remain successful. The Dreaming City serves a different type of player, a type of player that is often overlooked by service titles. It focuses on providing players with lore, game-world history, and mysteries to solve to create a more immersive experience. It delivers on what I hoped Destiny would be from the very beginning and is executed with a confidence that we have not seen from Bungie in a very long time. I am eager to log-in every week to see how the world evolves, what new connections my character makes, and to fight the evil that is encroaching on this beautiful land.
For the first time I am truly invested in what it means to be a Guardian in the world of Destiny and am driven by something other than my desire for cool loot. I want to break the Dreaming City’s curse and see what comes next. I want to see the destiny of the land I am protecting.
