With the latest weekly reset inDestiny 2, Episode: Echoes’ final story beats have become available. However, players are calling the finale, and the Episode at large, one of the worst “seasonal” narratives Bungie has ever produced. While the Episode only just recently released its conclusion on September 9, early commenters were quick to point out their disdain for what felt like a colossal time waste.
Destiny 2‘s Episodes were pitched as self-contained narratives set to replace the previous seasonal model. With three longer Episodes making up a year’s content rather than four Seasons, Bungie positioned the change as a way to shake things up. In practice, the first Episode felt almost identical to a Season, except withmore time-gating. Bungie has since announced the remaining two Episodes will befree from time-gatingand that after those, the game willreturn to a seasonal model.
No horse in this race
After three straight weeks of running the same Exotic mission over and over again, the finale proved the final straw for some players. Echoes’ confrontation with the newly established Vex villain, The Conductor, plays out in a single cutscene where players sit idly by, paralyzed, while Ikora Rey and Saint-14 launch a single attack each, toppling The Conductor into a Radiolaria river. To say it was underwhelming would be a gross understatement.
Forbes’ Paul Tassicommented on the finale, saying: “The finale of the season, sorry Episode, arrived yesterday, capping off nine weeks of story with six weeks of breaks inserted. The end was…lacking, and I would apply that to the rest of the Episode as well, now that we can see its entire (Final) shape.”
OnReddit, one user made their own post about the finale, complaining that the Episode felt like a waste of time. “The final week of the episode, the story of which was already spread out across four months resulted in: essentially nothing,” the post read. “[W]e are no better off than when we started other than maya/the conductor being declared MIA vs being an active threat.”
Further into the post, the author noted, “[I] dont think destiny has had a more egregious ending than the confrontation with the final boss happening in a cutscene where your character is little more than a spectator, doesn’t contribute to the fight or say a single word and then watches the big bad disappear.”
Tassi and the community participating in the Reddit post aren’t the only ones who have objections about the Episode: Echoes finale. Even a cursory glance on X, formerly Twitter, revealsrandom usersalso coming tothe same conclusions. Criticisms point out that the Episode had little effect on the greaterDestinynarrative.
In 15 weeks, Echoes’ major narrative accomplishment is that it introduces a new villain, before promptly removing it from the board. Not only that, but Episode: Echoes fails to add context to what the titular Echoes actually are or how they work. With two more Episodes to go, hopefully the next outing, Episode: Revenant, packs more of a punch.
