Highlights

  • Act 3 of Destiny 2's Episode: Echoes features a massive Exotic Mission.
  • Bungie's new content cadence allows for larger, more frequent updates.
  • This massive mission coming in Act 3 would not have been possible without Episodes according to Bungie.

Destiny 2 game director Robbie Stevens has revealed that Episode: Echoes, Act 3 will bring an Exotic Mission that is "one of the biggest Exotic missions" ever. Exotic Missions in Destiny 2 consist of quests that offer Exotic Weapons or cosmetics upon their completion.

Earlier in June, Destiny 2 received its third major expansion, The Final Shape, which acts as the culmination of The Light and Darkness Saga. The Final Shape brings multiple new missions and weaponry, among other things, adding hours of new content to the MMO game. Act 1 of its first episode, Echoes, launched on June 11, and its follow-up is set to go live soon on July 16. Meanwhile, Bungie has already started making big claims about what's coming in Act 3 of Episode: Echoes.

Destiny 2 Titan emoting at Tower 2
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In an interview with GamesRadar, Robbie Stevens outlined the different acts in Episode: Echoes and stated that an Exotic Mission in Act 3 is "one of the biggest Exotic Missions" developer Bungie has ever built. Moreover, he highlighted that Act 1 represents the kind of new stuff the dev team has in mind, whereas Act 2 will bring a fresh "set of activities" and take the players "much deeper" into Nessus. Talking about the significance of shifting approach from Seasons to Episodes for Destiny 2 content drops, he said that building such a big Exotic Mission was only possible due to the "new content cadence" (basically, the frequency of new incoming content) and that pulling this off wouldn't have been possible earlier.

Stevens Backs Destiny 2: The Final Shape's Episodic Nature

Stevens opined that the scale of this particular mission is an example of the devs adapting to the new cadence and capturing the opportunity to "expand" Nessus. He likened Nessus to a world "expanding and changing through time" and said that its expansion wouldn't have been feasible without the new Episode format. The director explained how the episodic content style allows players to "better understand" when "new and awesome things" are coming to Destiny 2. He added that Episodes allowed the team to put more focus on the story as well as maintain speedy content delivery. However, Stevens' feeling is something not every Destiny 2 player resonates with as of now, as Episodes are somewhat divisive.

As fans await the next act of Episode: Echoes, Bungie is hard at work smoothening the rough edges with patches. Recently, the devs shipped an update that resolved certain issues and brought Grandmaster Nightfalls in Destiny 2 once again. The returning feature gives players a chance to face off against strong enemies and win high-quality loot ahead of the rollout of Act 2.