Destiny 2
Bungie
I have been praising Destiny 2’s Season of the Witch since launch. A pair of solid activities, a neat new card deck system, a storyline that involves powering up Eris to become a Hive god to kill a different Hive god. All of that is great.
The end…was not.
The final mission and cutscene of the seasonal storyline went live at reset yesterday, and I have to say, I did not love it. Not at all.
The mission itself was fine. The boss fight against the Very Large Hive Guy was cool enough, and no, I did not expect to be fighting Xivu Arath here, despite the storyline of this season. But after that? Just…strangeness.
Eris allows Savathun to be resurrected, then immediately slitting her throat with a sword, which was admittedly very badass. She takes her power as a tithe and also all our old tithes. Eris consumes it all while screaming, seemingly about to become the monster we feared she’d be but…she doesn’t. Instead, she conjures the symbol of Xivu Arath in her hand and crushes it. She is “banished” she says.
What? What does that mean? It takes until an Ikora radio message to learn the following:
What Eris did, expending all her insane Hive god power, was not killing Xivu, but cutting her off from her Throne World, so she has no “backup plan” and is now mortal. No more of that “killing anything strengthens Xivu” problem, it seems (sorry we didn’t figure this out in time Rasputin).
But we also learn that Savathun resurrected herself a second time. And then just…left, leaving Immaru behind as collateral so we can crush him if she betrays us. This seems uh, suspect, to say the least.
Destiny 2
Bungie
So, all of this happens offscreen, and we’re told about it in a radio message, but then you have to read a lore book to actually hear how this all played out. Savathun, upon her second resurrection, delights in what Eris has done, tells Ikora she’s “already given us” what we need to get through the Traveler portal, and makes the whole “keep Immaru hostage” deal while she goes and wanders around and schemes some more.
It’s pretty unbelievable that the entire storyline pumping Eris up lead to her…crushing a symbol in her hand. Past that, the fact that Savathun is now resurrected and wandering around in the world again is a massive deal, and I cannot believe that was not shown.
I have no idea how many people will go and read this lore page to figure out exactly what happened here. 1 in 50 players who beat this quest? 1 in 100? Even I had to be told to go read this, and when I did, I first looked at a different, incorrect lore book from the season before I found the right one. So a huge amount of people are going to be missing enormous context of a finale that should have been played out onscreen.
This is, of course, mainly due to budget limitations. To act out that entire lore scene with voicework and animation was probably not in the cards. But hence, the problem with live service seasonal stuff, and the limits it imposes. I’m trying to imagine Savathun’s death and resurrection by the Traveler in The Witch Queen rendered to a lore page, and how awful that would have been.
Lore pages and radio messages are good for additional context and side-stories and historical lore, but as main plot drivers the way we saw here? Absolutely not. This did not work at all.
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