All Destiny 2 DLC May Be Destined to Fail
Destiny 2 is here and has enjoyed a successful launch as one of 2017’s top-selling games, but it seems praise was limited to the first week or so. Post-launch has been a different story, with fan backlash after fan backlash over just about every single content drop. Despite Bungie’s promises that they’ve learned from their mistakes, they just seem to keep making them. Why is that? It seems like Kotaku’s Jason Schreier may have the answer.
In the latest DTR podcast, Schreier brought to light some insider knowledge on Destiny 2’s development. According to him, Bungie switched game directors at some point during Spring 2016, which led to a reboot of development. Thus, the team had approximately sixteen months between rebooting and shipping the game. The end result was what we saw at launch and less time for DLC. Here’s what he had to say, as discovered first on Reddit:
“I think that it (Destiny 2) was made in a relatively short period of time. There was a big reboot of Destiny 2 at some point of early 2016. There had been a previous director who was directing the game before Luke Smith (who’s the current director) took over. So that guy was kind of put aside and Luke Smith took over. I believe that was in April of 2016 but I might be misremembering. Don’t hold me to that exact line. So if you think about it that way then they didn’t really have a ton of time. It had been a 16 months period between the reboot and when the game finally shipped.”
We must, however, take into account that a switch of directors is just one shift—almost no game hinges on one person. But this is the director we’re talking about. If a game director is outed then it’s because the entire team is switching gears, usually. With sixteen months left, Bungie had two fewer months to make Destiny 2 than BioWare had to develop the majority of Mass Effect: Andromeda, which—despite its drawbacks—is incredibly robust.
Then Schreier talked about how the Eververse came to be so prominent in Destiny 2, and it has to do with the developer’s inability to deliver content-rich DLC.
“What Bungie decided was we can’t do this any more this is too hard for us to do (referring to releasing a DLC every few months) the tools that we’re working with are really hard to deal with. it’s hard for us to make this much content. it’s just hard to make content in general. And they said we’re going to do a smaller or drip feed of smaller stuff and we’re going to put up the Eververse and make money that way, and Activision said okay. it was a part of their renegotiated deal and they got to a point where they didn’t have to be cranking up so much content.”
So, if what Schreier said is true (we must take everything with a grain of salt), then the Eververse practically exists as a money-making substitute for Destiny 2 DLC. It would explain why the in-game Dawning event made new items available via Eververse instead of in-game, and it would explain why players are calling Curse of Osiris a lackluster DLC. But we want to know your thoughts.
Have you played Destiny 2? Do you think the experience is reflective of the info shared by Schreier? Comment down below.