Last week news broke that June’s update would be the video game Destiny 2’s final update. After nine years of Destiny 2 (in addition to three years of the first Destiny), the game’s wrapping up.
On the one hand, a game ‘ending’ shouldn’t be anything new. Game’s end all the time — usually on release. Clair Obscur got a couple post-game updates, but the story was done on release. Before every video game console was connected to the internet the very idea of sustained support would have been unthinkable outside of expansions for something like The Sims; I never expected Mega Man X5 or Pokémon Gold to have anything beyond what was on the disc or cartridge. But Destiny1 kept getting annual expansions and quarterly ‘seasons’ with new stories and quests and ways to play. Like the new episode of a tv show, you could regularly log in to find out what was new and go on the next step of an adventure.
And so Destiny is ending after twelve years of strikes, dungeons, and posts on this blog. On the one hand, it’s inevitable: games, and stories, end, that’s what they do. A book has its last page, a TV showhas its finale. Perhaps one reason that Destiny’s ending feels so abrupt is that, well, it is abrupt. Until last week’s news, June’s release was going to be the next big expansion in the continuing saga. 2024’s expansion was the story’s big finale, in last year’s something new was beginning and now… it’s just over.
A big part of me can’t help but wonder about what happened behind the scenes. When was this decision made? How much of the new expansion was finished, how much wasn’t finished? What will become of the studio Bungie now? Are we watching another celebrated video game studio fade away? Has the video game industry become so unforgiving and expensive that a game that’s doing just alright isn’t doing good enough?
I’ve also been reflecting on this game that’s been a part of my life for over a decade. Destiny has always been a messy game with an inconsistent story and frequent patches trying to smooth out the game’s rough edges. It’s incredibly unfriendly to new players and has a ridiculous steep onboarding curve, making it a game I’m loathe to recommend to anyone.
And yet.
Destiny’s core gameplay loop of running, jumping, and shooting remains one of my favorites of all time.2 It feels so much fun to play in a way that few other games could rival. It’s also a game I play semi-regularly with my brother. We’d check out new story quests together or tackle dungeons and raids while catching up about our lives. At the end of it all, I do really, really like Destiny.
The game’s not going away — the servers will still be online and I’ll still be able to log in and play. It’s just transitioning from being a live-service game to, well, just another game like any other. I suppose I got used to these updates and having a regular reason to dive back in to a game I liked so much. To see that period come to end (and so suddenly) definitely does feel momentous. It’s like watching the last episode of a tv show. You can go back to it, but there is a tinge of sadness in knowing that there won’t be any more.
- For simplicity’s sake, Destiny refers to both the first game and its sequel. There wasn’t a Destiny 3 because the developers moved to constantly updating and expanding on the second game rather than regular ‘new’ games — like a proper MMO. ↩︎
- And no wonder, Destiny was developed by the folks who made Halo, the game that set the bar for first-person-shooters on consoles. ↩︎
Essays, Not Rants! 