Destiny 2's The Witch Queen expansion is just a few days away, and while it marks plenty of new and exciting beginnings, it is also the end of Year 4 and all the content that came with it. This means that every story bit from all the recent Seasons will be gone for those who didn't experience them, much like what happened to most of the Year 1 content through the Destiny Content Vault at the beginning of Beyond Light. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does have a branching impact on what players can achieve in the game and what sort of triumphs they can get before The Witch Queen launches.
Destiny 2 is a live service game at its core, with plenty of new content coming in the form of yearly releases and several Seasons every year, and The Witch Queen is no different, with Season of the Risen launching alongside the expansion. Season of the Lost was the closing Season of Year 4, and it lasted a total of six months, which is a lot by the standards of Destiny 2. With so much time in a single season, and with Season of the Lost's storyline being pretty much over within the first two months, it's a weird choice for Bungie to have the epilogue mission play out only for the very last week before The Witch Queen - and it proved to be a problem, too.
Season of the Lost's Problematic Launch of the Exorcism Mission
Season of the Lost's epilogue going live only in the last week of the Season is not something new to Destiny 2 fans who've been around for a while. It's customary that seasonal narratives get their epilogues near the end of the season itself, which makes sense, especially if players are given more time to play through those missions and really get a grasp of what the story meant. For example, Season of the Splicer did a great job at conveying the meaning of its overarching narrative very early on in the season, which is something that lasted up until the very last cutscene.
Season of the Splicer also gave players more time to play through the epilogue than just a single week, unlike Season of the Lost. This can be problematic if players can't play on a given week because they end up missing out on the end of a storyline they may or may not have been involved with for a while, which can be perceived as a disservice to the playerbase itself. And yet, Destiny 2 is no stranger to FOMO - the fear of missing out, which often dictates how involved one must be with the game to unlock every item, every cosmetic piece of armor, and witness every plot development.
Season of the Lost's Exorcism mission, however, went live with bugs that remain unresolved and may prevent players from actually completing the steps of the associated Severing the Worm quest and seeing where the story goes from there. With only a week to complete the mission, and with multiple completions being the requirement to actually finish it due to bugs, Destiny 2 players have a very limited time frame to see what the epilogue is all about.
Problems and technical difficulties may arise at any given time in a game as large as Destiny 2, and having a new mission go live for just a week before it's gone forever is not what should happen for a Season finale. In fact, Season of the Lost's Exorcism mission proves that seasonal content and epilogue mission should come sooner in the Season and not at the tail end of it all before a big expansion, giving players more time to experience everything and giving Bungie some leeway in case things go wrong. Ultimately, this is not something that's likely to change soon, if at all, but the events surrounding the release of Exorcism and player feedback should be a warning sign that this is not the right approach.
Destiny 2 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
