It’s an odd time for Future 2 in the intervening time. The sport is coming off of a stunning victory lap with The Remaining Form. The most recent growth culminated the sport’s ten-year story and set our beloved solid of Guardians on new journeys, which might be explored in “episodes” moderately than the seasons that Future 2 gamers are used to. Besides, Bungie appears to have promised extra important modifications than have really been delivered, and followers are rapidly taking discover.
Final yr, Bungie introduced that it will be shifting away from Future 2’s seasonal mannequin. Because it stood, each three months, Bungie would launch a brand new season of content material, together with new storylines, actions, and new gear. Narrative moments can be delivered piecemeal through weekly missions, radio chatter, and the sometimes rousing conclusion, however for essentially the most half, seasons boiled right down to the identical repetition of occasions with totally different dialogue. Typically there wouldn’t even be new story content material for weeks on finish, leaving gamers to surprise when the narrative would decide again up.
By comparability, Future 2’s first episode, Echoes, concluded its first of three acts this week, and followers aren’t precisely thrilled with what they received. The majority of Echoes content material proper now could be a repeatable few actions, some new gear themed after the Vex enemy faction (who appear to be the main focus proper now), and the occasional cutscene or little bit of dialogue. Now that the act has concluded, there’s nothing to essentially do however wait until the following one unlocks in a matter of weeks, that means there’s mainly a built-in down interval now attributable to timegating. Sound acquainted?
Suffice to say, seasons in Future 2 had been typically tiring, mind-numbing, and infrequently complicated to must sustain with, and to make issues worse, each characteristic or mechanic launched inside them has been ripped out of the sport as soon as a brand new growth launched. This method has wanted a change for a very long time, and the brand new episodes ought to’ve been that. We’re off to a poor begin if that’s the case, although, as a result of issues appear essentially the identical as ever, if not just a little worse.
Future gamers have spent the previous few weeks voicing these actual sentiments and hoping that the perfect continues to be to return. One publish on the official Future subreddit known as the construction of the primary episode “a let down to this point,” suggesting that “Echoes to this point has simply been an prolonged seasonal mannequin with extra time gating.” One other known as episodes “worse dripfed content material than seasons.” The belief that some are working with is that since Echoes is wrapped up within the launch of a brand new growth, it’s additionally beginning gradual to not overwhelm gamers. If that simply so occurs to be the case, there’s now a variety of stress on the remainder of the episode to drum up some pleasure.
A part of the issue is that Bungie by no means explicitly detailed what the distinction right here was going to be. Whereas the studio touted episodes as a serious shift that’d change the best way it delivered content material, it by no means broke down the mannequin exterior of a tough roadmap. Gamers perceive that the three episodes following The Remaining Form are going to be extra standalone tales, moderately than the connective seasonal narratives followers are used to, however what they actually needed to know was what to anticipate and when to count on it.
As an alternative, Bungie waited eternally to comply with up, and even once they did element the themes of the episodes, they nonetheless supplied little in the best way of a breakdown as to what gamers ought to count on to be doing. By providing little in the best way of communication—an issue Bungie retains working into after which amending for—expectations had been allowed to construct, and now many are disenchanted to see that they’re seemingly getting even shorter bursts of content material of their favourite ongoing recreation. And now, moderately than having fun with their time with Future 2, there’s a entire group questioning what’s happening in its quick future.