Building Evolving Worlds in Destiny 2

This story was published concurrently in video form by Subpixel.

Before the launch of Destiny 2’s Shadowkeep DLC in September of 2019 we posted a video about how the ever evolving story and environment of Destiny 2’s Dreaming City was the current pinnacle of Destiny’s narrative content. And as I predicted in the end of that article (and implied by Destiny’s own Game Director Luke Smith) the whole game has been slowly turning into a massive version of what Bungie introduced in the Dreaming City — with spring 2020’s “Season of the Worthy” turning Destiny’s narrative and environmental development up to 11.

The world of Destiny has experienced major and minor changes before, often at times preceding the inclusion of new content important to the ever expanding lore of Destiny. Original-flavor Destiny’s Rise of Iron expansion did this in two ways: firstly, my implementing a tiny, curated version of World of Warcraft’s “Corrupted Blood” plague, which inflected players with various in-universe viruses and unlocked new lore leading up to the launch of Rise of Iron; and secondly by trading out the traditionally arid Russian countryside of the Cosmodrome with new techno-corrupted arctic peaks and plains. The difference between the patrol zone changes in Rise of Ironand the changes occurring in Destiny 2, is that while Rise of Iron introduced a snowy Cosmodrome, the arid version was still accessible as a completely separate patrol zone. Destiny 2 has been making these kinds of changes more permanent.

Since Destiny 2 launched various regions have undergone small aesthetic changes here and there, as the events of Destiny 2 have propelled the narrative forward — starting all the way back in September of 2017 with the re-awakening of the Traveller. Upon completing the original Destiny 2campaign players were treated to a cutscene showing the Traveller’s defeat of a light-infused Dominus Ghaul. The familiar sphere we’d seen hovering over Earth’s Last City for the past three years was now cracked and torn — as its energy exploded outward to smite the usurper Ghaul. This new Traveller replaced the old one in the Tower skybox, and has remained there ever since.

The biggest world change player’s experienced in Year 1 of Destiny 2actually occurred in the first week of the launch, when the Leviathan raid was released. Until the launch of the raid the skybox above Nessus was much like any other planet: big, beautiful, and full of stars. But when the Leviathan arrived, things changed. Now something else was in orbit around the centaur, and players could see it from the surface.

The first two expansions brought new patrol zones but nothing super big in terms of narrative implications and Year 2’s Forsaken expansion brought with it The Dreaming City, which as I’ve stated both here and in a whole different Subpixel video, was Destiny’s magnus opus in terms of narrative content and dynamic worldbuilding.

But since that release Destiny’s primary form of dynamic narrative development has been in week-to-week Lore book releases and quests. This was how much of Destiny’s narrative functioned in Year 3 when players returned to the Moon for the Shadowkeep expansion.

But then came Season 10, or as it was dubbed by Bungie, “Season of the Worthy”.

Season of the Worthy revolved around one of Destiny’s enemy factions scuttling their monstrous star-eating ship directly towards Earth’s Last City. Mysterious bunkers opened up across the galaxy, expanding well-known patrol zones with new vendor and combat environments. In these bunkers players would come face to face with an old-world AI called Rasputin, and their main task during Season 10 was to help power up Rasputin’s defense network to allow the ancient AI to intercept and destroy the incoming, city-ending spacecraft. Skyboxes around the galaxy were suddenly filled with the twinkling towers of this dormant network, heralding the beginning of some major world shifts.

As the Season went on the skybox in the Tower underwent another change too — subtle at first, and then more dramatic. Mid-way through the Season Guardians began to notice the incoming ship looming in the sky, drawing nearer and nearer as the week’s progressed. All this culminated in Destiny’sfirst “live” event, in which players were able to witness the fruits of their labor, as Rasputin shot the incoming behemoth out of the sky.

But one of the most notable and dynamic aspects of the Season was back in Rasputin’s bunkers, which players would visit every week of the season if they sought its most potent rewards. On a wall-long monitor players could observe week by week a slowly oncoming enemy — an enemy Destinyplayers were well familiar with by now regardless of having only seen it in person one other time. The ominously and ambiguously titled Darkness was coming — until now only seen in the aforementioned Destiny 2 main campaign end cinematic and as the final location of the Shadowkeepcampaign. But now players could see the advance of the coming enemy in real time — or really, as much progress as the fleet was making week to week.

And that brings up to now with Season 11. This season has brought about a galaxy wide version of the kind of narrative development previously only seen in the Dreaming City. Dubbed the “Season of Arrivals”, this chapter of Destiny 2 finally saw the arrival of The Darkness, and with it a whole mess of narrative implications. Similarly to how the Almighty occupied the Tower Skybox for a time, the first week of Season 11 saw one of the Darkness’ Pythagorean vessels settle on Io, kicking off the narrative of Season 11. This is Destiny’s Cataclysm.

Io is important to the events of Destiny in that it was the last place visited by the Traveller before it reached Earth. Echoes of its presence there can still be felt, making it a common pilgrimage destination amongst Destiny’s Guardians — and apparently the Traveller’s enemies as well. The ship settled over a place known as The Cradle — a location as close to a holy site in Destiny’s lore as anything else. Your first mission of the Season sends you there, to an encounter below a beautiful tree. The Darkness’ ship is doing something to the tree, the manner and location of which leads me to believe we’ll be Randy Quaid’ing our way onboard before the Season’s end. This locale would become familiar to players, as the Season’s weekly “Interference” mission takes place there.

Players hoping to observe the continued advance of the rest of the fleet would be disappointed, as the opening cinematic of the Season revealed the supposed “death” of Rasputin — powering down his towers and shutting closed the doors to his bunkers, reflected in both skybox and patrol zone changes.

So for three weeks this ship loomed above Io, doing whatever nefarious business it needed to before it’s brethren arrived. And arrive they did. Week four saw ships landing on Mars, Mercury, and Titan as activity on Io became more active. The Darkness’ landing ships, which players had for three weeks encountered as part of the Season’s “Contact” public events, began to sweep across the skies over the Pyramidion. But this was not the only change to the Jovian moon.

Upon returning to The Cradle for the weekly “Interference” mission players noticed the Tree was different — much like how the Awoken watchtower in The Dreaming City changed from week to week. The Darkness’ were still advancing, both cosmically and locally; and we’re still weeks from the end of the Season.

And the world of Destiny is changing even more in the fall of 2020, though for more practical reasons than narrative ones — but that’s not to say the changes won’t have narrative implications, which we’ll touch on in just a second.

Bungie announced on June 9, 2020 their plans for the next three years of Destiny, including the removal of certain worlds and activities into what they’re calling the Destiny Content Vault. Destiny is a big game, and as such Bungie has decided to vault parts of the game that are underplayed by the community at large. This was met with mixed responses from players, as it feels like something of an unprecedented move for an MMO to just take whole swaths of content away. Sure, games like World of Warcraft and EVE: Online change their worlds from time to time, but it would be very unexpected for Blizzard to one day say, “Hey, people aren’t playing in Kalimdor enough so we’re removing it for the time being”. Now, to act as armchair gamedev for a second and without really knowing what’s going on under the hood, I’d imagine that because Destiny — though now available on PC — was first built to play on the last generation of console hardware Bungie’s engine is subject to certain limitations that games like WoW or EVEaren’t. Again, I have no idea if that is the case, but that’s what makes sense in my head when I try to think about why the current physical file size of Destiny would require Bungie to remove chunks of the game to make it run and play better.

But the why or how things are getting removed is not important for this story — we’re here talking about organic and evolving narrative development. So how do these removals tie into the developing world of Destiny? Concurrent to the arrival of pyramid ships on Titan, Mars, and Mercury (each of which are headed to the Destiny Content Vault this fall), players were sent to check in with the vendors at each of those locations as prep for an evacuation. Packed crates and other goods sit ready for transport nearby each contact, further implying that these vendors will soon reside somewhere else — perhaps in the currently underutilized hangar bay back in the Tower.

I’m very interested to see what the rest of the Season holds, especially as Destiny continues down the path laid out by Game Director Luke Smith in his 2019 Director’s notes: “We believe that Destiny will grow even better when the world state can change, and that the best Destiny stories are the ones where ‘you had to be there when….’”

Forsaken brought permanent change to Destiny with the death of Cayde-6. Shadowkeep brought permanent change to Destiny with the destruction of the Almighty and the arrival of the Darkness. What change will Beyond Light bring? I can’t wait to find out.