What's bothering me the most is the "Nessus is being changed" line. Ok, where is this change? It looks exactly the same as it has always looked. The only changes we see are during seasonal activity and story missions. It feels like we're gonna end up with another cosmodrome situation, but this time even more outrageous.
Same same, it’s being changed and we see that in the activity and missions but why isn’t it happening in the patrol. caiatl’s land tank doesn’t magically vanish outside of the strike so why does the echo terfroming do that? Huge missed opportunity for the reprised version of the exodus crash strike too
Right!? And the changes made would make Nessus fresh again for casual patrolling and exploration, if it is not reflected this way in later acts as a permanent change. You'd see more players on Nessus than it ever saw in the Red War!
personally my biggest disappointment with this season is that we are not actually seeing nessus change. Sure in Breach Executable and the last mission of Act 1 show us what nessus is turning into, but then if we go to the tangle/cistern on patrol, its still the same old nessus. 0 changes. When Caiatl destroyed part of Watcher's Grave with her land tank in season 13, that was one of the coolest worldbuilding things bungie has ever done. Why couldnt they do that again with nessus? Such a letdown
@@theSixPathsOfTrainswe could have it change those areas with vex trees and maybe like a new vex + shadow legion public event featuring story mission mechanics
1. There needs to be more puzzles, exploration, and mystery. Not just: here's the story, week after week. 2. Bungie, show me, don't just tell me. They bring up many story beats, but don't show you in game. 3. We need less repetition. It gets boring doing the same thing every week. (We need more data for Failsafe, every week.)
I really wish the destinations would actually change. Rather than them only changing in the missions, what a great way to suck the immersion of the "worlds changing and transforming" out of it. Like nessus has no story to it besides the seasonal stuff, there is no quests there stopping them from doing it!
Really. They added a couple earthquakes, but I was expecting to actually see the map changes. We've had the same Nessus for half a decade, no one is gonna miss major areas getting a facelift. Especially cause this is supposed to be something big and impactful. It feels like seasons again, where the seasonal story has no weight outside of its missions
I mean, they can implement them after the end of the season since the quests are about the progression change, they cant just change until the end of the season when people either already did it, or won't ever again.
i love how ikora said “saint lets go” and after having a crisis he’s just like “oke” and walks off. like you’re not even going to need convincing at all? just thinking about that osirussy is enough?
And the part where Osiris calls you back from Nessus to the Helm, just to tell you something is wrong with Saint, and then promptly sends you right back to Nessus? Like you couldn’t have just told me this over the call?
@@tysonkrunek4132 Stockholm Syndrome does not "exist", it's a theoretical explanation with dubious origins and that has been criticized to hell and back for being a hack theory.
I adore failsafe and I have since D2 vanilla. But I have to say that echoes has really made me like her more. Because she’s not supposed to be like dual personalities. She has one personality and a conversation filter that’s broken. And you really see that in her character now as a person who is incredibly lonely, not just physically but socially. She’s awkward and shy and tries to be as helpful as she can so that people keep her around and the conversational filter is supposed to hide that for her but it’s broken so the real person bleeds through it and I think her dialogue shows that a lot more now than it did before.
I never played the era of d2 where Failsafe was a big character (joined in Beyond Light), but when she was like "can't reconnect without a little awkwardness... right, Captain?" I immediately came onboard the Failsafe train
@@reggielacey2235 If you go through the lore tabs it makes it clear that the cheery "personality" is really just her customer service voice. She may have been different during the red war campaign, but then again, so was Cayde
"Ikora will contact you when Act 2 begins" has to be the goofiest quest description. Gives the impression she'll show up like: "Hello Guardian, Act 2 is beginning, and we are now ready to continue the story. There is a new mission for you to go on. Contact Failsafe, she'll fill you in."
And meanwhile that the season Rank progress is actually throttled post-100 season rank. You can't even play the game right because 1lvl XP is taking 5x as much, and we don't even know if THAT carries over. So they are literally artificially delaying the artificial delay, at the same time throttling rewards for the experienced players.
@@Boomerangofjustice But each engram counts as 1 level now rather than 5. So by farming bright engrams, especially if you're claiming seasonal challenges, those seasonals are counting as 1/5th of what they could count for if you waited 20 more days to claim them.
My cope of the day is that maybe, just MAYBE, this episode was starting its development before they decided to switch from seasons to episodes so maybe future episodes won’t follow this same formula. It’s possible that this episode was not so far that they couldn’t adjust the pacing a bit, but too far developed to completely alter the style of the delivery
It definitely feels like that we do know any changes we want to happen tend to go into at later season maybe echos was a season at first but the change to episodes probably meant echoes couldn’t be altered to what was proposed if that’s the case revenant and heresy might be what episodes should be
I have the feeling like they just pushed developers away from seasonal development and into frontiers. Episodes are just a way for them to cover up the lack of content for a much longer period. That being said I have no idea how dungeons or raids are going to be made for the following episodes if at all. It might make or break the content for each episode, because as it is, the content is lacking.
@@cameronsalmon1314 I do believe we will get dungeons but how their spaced out is the question as it’s been raid-dungeon-raid-dungeon since witch queen we got a raid with final shape so a dungeon is next question is when and after that the normally reprised raid given we now have 3 episodes compared to the 4 seasons who knows when we will get the next dungeon
I think that Bungie should try what Square Enix does with FFXIV. When a new patch releases after the main expansion (5.1, 5.2, etc.) It gives you all of the story while still progressing the overall story of the expansion/game story (Hydaelyn and Zodiark 10 year storyline). Within each of these patches, you get the new content and can play it at your own cadence. Rarely any time gating, except waiting for the next patch. I think that could work for Destiny, especially now that we are heading into a new story
I dont like FF14 pacing. EW was so empty. I had stuff to do in patch day. Then i was back at farming the same stuff 8 farmed for the last 10 years. I hope NO GAME follows ff14.. Btw i pre ordered dawntrail and i like the game. Lets not pretend ff14 has a lot of content. Almoat all of it is unecessary fluff. Over complicated crafting, so much side quests. Stuff that dont progress the story. If you took all that time and effort AND FOCUSED 9N THE STORY AND ACTUAL CONTENT, we would not lack things to do. I usually have to wait 3-4 month to grt something new. I get 1 day of content and then what? Wait 3 months. I basically waited a whole year in dawntrail necause i was bored and wanted to get content i unsubbed. 1 year later, i subbed...i had 1 week end of content. Thats all. In 1 year. 2 new bosses. 2 new dungeon. All the rest was stuff for people who dont want to play ff14. Stupid jumping puzzle. Feel good side quest. I hope Destiny dont follow ff14. Its already boring enough as it is. But at least i have a couple weeks of content to do every season. Which is a lot more than i ever got with ff14. Be objective.
@@celuiquipeut6527well this is certainly a strange take lol. What exactly is “content” in your eyes? And how does drip feeding a fraction of it in D2 per week make that somehow better?🤔. Is it busywork? Something to grind outside of endgame raiding? If so I guess I see your point given EW skipped adding that this time around with the relics. Otherwise i genuinely have no idea what you mean lol.
@@celuiquipeut6527 ignoring the parts of the game that are designed to *enrich* the story and world build are not problems of the game. Most of the sidequests are fantastic and fun, and are meant to keep you occupied during the 3-4 months between patches. Doing only 1 segment of the 15 the game has and saying the game has no content is not the fault of the game.
That’s what they did with season of the warmind. Didn’t work at all, they locked content behind 1 billion items collected. It took longer than waiting a full week bc the item they needed to deposit dropped very rarely
@@Spawnofgolden ah I didn’t realise but it requires testing obvs and it may be worth it to try again just drop the number and increase the drops, the hardcore players have Smth to grind for and the casuals have Smth to help towards and get involved with
@@metaltomcat3614yeah, it’s kind of a broken record at this point but they need to drop the seasonal model and REALLY revamp it with episodes 2 bc I doubt we’re really getting any new stuff with act 2 other than 1 more 3 man activity who knows though bungie cooked, they still maybe
@@Spawnofgolden I get what ya mean but if there not gonna make a new model (let’s be realistic here) we may aswell try and improve the current to hope that snowballs into Smth
I was genuinely flabbergasted by how threadbare Echoes has felt and how abruptly the act ended. In a typical three act story structure, by the time you've reached the end of act 1, you at least know what's at stake, there's something that escalates tension and conflict into act 2, and there's... kind of none of that. I just feel like we've been floundering around on Nessus picking up samples and doing busy work without any revelations or cliffhanger to lead into the next act. Idk, I guess we'll see.
That's my biggest issue, it feels bare bones and it was absolutely just too damn short. We got a road map that showed each Act as 6 weeks, but we're only getting 3 weeks of content? It's not a good look for how Episodes will work moving forward.
I think the obvious cliffhanger is Saint being controlled and not yet knowing (or at least no confirmation) who/what the Conducter is. I agree with the overall point of this act being pretty bare, though.
We should have lost Saint at the end of it and not get him back until at least act 2, it seemed pointless him getting controlled as we solved it so easily. It didn't add tension to the story
What concerns me is that there wasn't enough seasonal story to milk over the time period of act 1. We've got 2 weeks of no new story before Act 2 releases July 16th.
Exactly. When Bungie said that they were structuring that you could "drop in anytime & catch up" on the story to mean everything was dropped in 1-2 weeks, & if you ground the whole thing out immediately then you'd either go back to Pale Heart or end game stuff. If they really wanted to make it friendly to someone who doesn't have a lot of time to game, they can knock out in a few sessions.
It would be cool if you had the vendor moving around the world week to week when you have to meet up with them. Like meeting crow in different places around the dreaming city when trying to find fikrul.
They do that with the Dreaming City already, Petra moves around depending on the 3-week cycle. It's great, but the landing zone needs to be by the vendor if they move around, thats my only gripe
Ironically Final Shape did this pretty well. Between each campaign mission, Cayde and Crow's campsite moves to wherever the last mission ended, and the next mission picks up from there, giving you this feeling like it's one continuous journey on foot. They even blacked out the orbit screen of your ship loading in to make it clear you're not flying into the Pale heart from Orbit every time, you've been there all along.
This is how it was before they made the HELM. Imho ,ever since they introduced the Helm, the seasons have felt boring and mundane. I would always prefer to find the seasonal vendors out in the Galaxy..
also to all the people saying “let’s just give them the benefit of the doubt and wait till episode two” 1. Bungie does not and rarely has ever deserved the benifit of the doubt in regards to “is this content well put together?” 2. You’re gonna be saying that till frontiers
Here to say: Many of the seasons I've experienced through being drip fed content were boring and stale. I started in Season of Defiance but I, now, wait until the majority of the seasonal story is out to participate in it. It's made a large majority of them feel incredible(save for if I can stay spoiler free).
I haven't bought TFS yet because as a veteran, I'm just tired of the same old format. No offense to anyone who still enjoys it but the repetitiveness of the activities and the vendor stuff definitely got to me personally, after all that time doing it.
My hope is that Act 1 was much more seasonal because 1) it was initially built when the seasonal model was still the main focus 2) they dont want to put everything into Act 1 while theres still many people doing the main expansion stuff. Its the same logic as the first season of an expansion is generally weaker. Regardless though these criticisms can be helpful for Episodes 2 and 3 to have more oomph as those are still in development.
I'm starting to think maybe my missing out on all of the seasons since Forsaken is actually a good thing. I left the game for roughly six years because, well I don't know why. When I returned to the game this past Christmas I essentially got all those seasons, or whatever ones were left, in one big gulp that I could take at my own pace. I never got the weekly drip feed. That's why I enjoyed what I got. So TLDR is that Byf and Myelin are exactly right. I'm still disappointed that I missed some of those seasons but Byf's recap video caught me up and now all is good again.
Same, I have never bought any season even tho some good ones I wish I played, but in the end I just realized even if story and seasonal content are good, I'm still hugely against buying gaming content that expires in a few months, especially with these prices
The one thing that saddens me is the lack of environmental changes or visual changes in gereral. Like the newest mission has beautiful work done to an old area, but then when you finish the mission it just goes back to exactly how it was. Also in the lore book you get from listening to the radio it explains how vex have been doing weird things. Like how a guardian spots a hobgoblin waving at them and gets giddy when the guardian waves back. It would be so cool to see friendly vex sometimes that you can interact with by emoting at them. (I know they'll never do that but i can dream)
Is it weird that I want to see the stuff said in "Isolated Incidents" to be shown in game as a form of progression? We have heard and read that the Vex have been acting strange, human, on nessus, and yet not out in the wild ourselves. It would, and still be cool to have vex in wild having spacial emotes, being more frequent every week. Just a thought that I hope happens.
I think the answer with what to do with the Seasonal model is pretty obvious: Have the ENTIRE First Act accessible DAY 1! Bungie obviously just needs some time to get things ready and make sure the Story moments perform properly. The 3 week break will give Bungie time to prepare and once it’s ready, they could even release it early! Day 1 of Act 2, you have access to ALL ‘week’ portions of the Acts. If you give players so little on Day 1 they may not care enough to play the rest! Honestly I never expected to see the Deafult Vex and the Choral Vex actually fighting. Hell, the Choral Vex don’t act any more “lively” than normal vex (because they are basic reskins) and this isn’t the first time we have had a Vex Civil War and never seen it: The Deafult Vex and the Sol Divisive. So I wasn’t really going in with the expectation of the new Vex actually behaving differently or fighting normal Vex. Do I still want that anyways? Hell Yes!!
@@Awfully_goodbullshit you say? It's literally been a staple of the community since D2 came out... they grind like mad for the first week, get all the weapons and armor and all the secrets available... and then by week 4 they cry and complain that the game is boring and there is nothing to do... all completely ignoring the 90hrs they spent grinding during week 1... If Bungie released EVERYTHING day one of a season, now an act/episode, then those same people would grind out the ENTIRE SEASON in a couple days and then complain they have to wait 2 months for more stuff to do and would blame bungie for not giving them enough content, even though they literally just gave you EVERYTHING day 1...
@@Awfully_good Lmao it's not unique to the Destiny community. Do you genuinely think the destiny community, one of the whiniest communities in gaming, wouldn't complain about not having content after doing an entire seasons worth in a week? You're lying to yourself, this community will complain about ANYTHING.
One of my big issues with the way the weekly story line goes is the come back next week stuff. It feels like Bungie are saying “yeah you can log off now, literally nothing of importance will happen for a week”. Really just gut punch’s my enthusiasm to play
The example of finding the Enigma Protocol mission was exactly how I uncovered it as well. It was such a refreshing delight stumbling across this mission as someone that's been with the Destiny franchise from the beginning.
My Guardian after seeing what the Conducter did to Saint: Banshee, I need you to make this exotic so I can defeat the Conducter Banshee while looking at my notes: This is just a baseball bat with nails pushed through it
31:00 Part of me suspects there's a mechanical issue behind this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we've ever seen two enemy factions of the same race fighting each other in-game (as in while you're actually fighting). We'll see, like, enemy Fallen fighting enemy Hive, but to my memory, we don't see a member of a faction fight against or be able to damage their own kind unless they're allied with us, like Mithrax in the Lost in the Light adventures, or it's something scripted, like that one Cabal boss in one of the Infinite Forest strikes. I don't think we've even seen Lucent Hive fight regular Hive. So there might be some technical limitation preventing them from being able to show the aberrant Vex fighting normal Vex. But like Byf talked about, there's other ways they could've gone about it.
One thing I appriciated with the final mission for the Act was having to fight the Vex in lines of defense in the drained out Cistern. It felt like I was actually fighting a different kind of Vex.
When I saw the (Failsafe will contact you when the next step is available) I genuinely thought "Oh, so that act structure was a fucking lie now." Worst part is that its going to take longer to get story now because we have these stupid intermissions between acts where nothing happens for a week or two.
@@likwid_smoke I swear they mentioned that episodes would be a bigger drop of content and that it would be all at once before we'd have to wait for the next act.
They just made it seem like each act would have 6 weeks of content. Not that they would LAST 6 weeks, but RUN 6 weeks. If you look at the episode roadmap, you can see the picture saying Act 01: 6 weeks. ACT 02: 6 weeks. Act 03: 6 weeks. I would have assumed (as I'm sure many did) that it was 6 weeks of content per act, with maybe a hiatus of 2 or so weeks in between each, where a seasonal event or simply just a realistic void in content would be. That would total 18 weeks of content in an Episode versus a total of 8 weeks in a Season (excluding epilogue quests, etc). But what were looking at is a 4mo season with 9 weeks of content, versus the old 3mo season with 8 weeks of content. We only get one additional week, and longer waits total. I don't care about the seasonal model. Similar to Byf, it didn't really bother me either, and it would probably take me (personally) up to two more years of this format to finally make me complain about it. But I just thought it would just be... more. I was hoping, and expecting per the marketed material, that the story would be more substantial and long-winded in the end, with something like a 20% improvement in quality, considering the season lasts a whole month longer. But unrelated, it's a shame that they didn't change the patrol zone. It reminds me of the Mars Battleground mission in Season of the Seraph where we are supposed to be in a time rift to Golden Age Braytech Futurescape, but we still have modern-day mars with a freaking pyramid ship there. It's such a disconnect. Adding the change to Nessus' patrol zone, at least in the Cistern, was something I was hoping that 20% would go towards at least.
@@Devmode_Nunchaku no offense but it'd be silly to expect bungie to actually have consistent content week to week for 6 weeks straight. I always viewed the episodes annoucnement as them having longer gaps in between seasons as they wind down post final-shape to prepare for...something (whatever something is). There was no world where we would get more from an episode vs. a season (as you said, it's only 1 week more of content with a longer wait). I do agree, they missed a big oppourtunity not updating the base patrol zone at all, and that could go a long way in helping the episode feel more different.
@@Devmode_Nunchaku i mean, they would never do that. Remember they upped the price for seasons yet the quality stayed the same. Why would they even consider giving you more while they charged the same? Bungie will be bungie and after saving them selves for annihilation by lightfall and finally delivering a decent expansion (mid if compared to any other good games dlc) they will slide right back to delivering minimum viable products that are seasons.
Replace: “fail safe is compiling data, wait a week” With: “Failsafe needs to process data. Guardians can gather more to help her get a better picture.” 0/5,000,000 data collectively gathered or wait until Tuesday It makes us actually able to progress the story in a way that sorta feels organic. Like we’re still doing something by gathering data in the seasonal missions, letting us progress early if we do the thing. Idk something that we have control over would be cool. If we can’t have the weekly pauses make sense story-wise, then we need to eliminate the pauses through action.
What is sticking out to me most is the lack of actual game mechanic updates on Nessus. Where is the enemy power level update to bring it up to speed with newer destinations? Where is the new Nessus reward track? The datalattiuce doesn’t even give Echos rank like the Baron Bough in Season of the Wish.
Lets think of a better a way to improve the model. My idea would be each week you have the main quest. But after that you now have mini quests tied to the characters. Like you can go to osiris for research (bounties). Go to saint-14 and get more of his story. Ikora for more. Then it all pieces together for the next episode. That way the next week a moment happens you can go "oh thats why Ikora needed that" or what ever. TLDR: The Episode is the outcome, the characters are the story Thoughts? Expantion of concept?
I agree, this would also make you feel more tied in with the story rather than "Go kill/stop/rescue so and so" and that's it. Like being active in the character's lives, not watching from the sidelines as they go through their issues alone in front of you like you're not there. It's been 10 years, Ikora. I get you wished for your emotions to resemble that of a goldfish, but give me SOMETHING.
I'd be curious how viable it would be from a dev perspective to create campaign-style story missions within the episode model. Re-use existing environments, or augment / expand them. The planetary environments are all quite large and full of space to be repurposed in interesting ways. Each story mission cut from a similar cloth as the last three expansion's campaigns, with a series of encounters and interesting mechanics that build to a crescendo. I feel like they're kind of close to doing this (like with the Saint 14 mission this week), but it's not quite there because there's still kind of an easy mode / busy work feel to these quests, and we wind up getting most of our narrative developments from the vendor conversations rather than the missions themselves. Not sure if I'm making sense.
@@ghoulywood this would be a lot of work. Nessus is changing because the team had a long timw to plan it. I would like to see maybe do something more or improved with patrol beacons. Or hell use story beats to tie in things like lost sectors, collectables. As i said above. Episode should be the outcome, the characters should be the story
Personally, I think the 1st season/episode following each expansion should be directly tied to the story of said DLC. There'd be a more cohesive narrative, more relevance, and it'd get more people to buy both the DLC and season. The way to do it, though, would be to have the episode act as a sort of optional post finale to the DLC story. Take Forsaken: the DLC is the campaign and Tangled Shore stuff, and the following episode would be our activities in the Dreaming City.
That’s basically what the first seasons have been. Risen and Defiance in particular. Unfortunately they need those first seasons to stick around post expansion cycle for that model to work better. Like Risen and Witch Queen should be together when you buy Witch Queen nowadays since it helps expand the Lucent Hive, Savathun’s influence and everything. (I know you can play the PsiOps battlegrounds in vanguard ops but they should just be apart of Witch Queen’s content as the post-campaign)
Best thing I unintentionally was wait for all of act 1 to be available before playing the episodic story. I just got so busy with final shape stuff I forgot to do the seasonal stuff. Having everything just be back to back to back was really nice. Still not perfect but a lot better than the drip feed
What about adding more story missions or side missions in the episodes? Which would be telling and exploring what’s happening around the episode and what of the state of the story it in. (we can definitely have a long and interesting conversation about this, just keep it civil & kind. Plus, it’d be fun to talk about.)
It's a massive company they are worth billions, so it's fair to expect more from them. They keep assuring us that they'll improve every year, but we end up going through the same cycle repeatedly. I don't care if they just completed an expansion, that doesn't justify the poor quality of work. They've made commitments to address this issue many times, yet here we are, still making excuses for them. Remember when they announced they where dramatically increasing the company's size two years ago? When will we actually see that reflected in their final products? As a devoted fan who owns all expansions and DLCs, my criticism is valid. It's disheartening to see no real change occurring each time. Let's call it what it is, it's low effort content, they are capable of doing more, but they don't.
Okay, not to be too spinfoil: the Ishtar angle is a mis-direct. The Conductor is Vance. Vance's entire thing is sound based. His departure in rivals was....weird.... and I can't get over the fact it seemed like people were having him deleted from their memory.
While this is a good theory I think it's more likely that it's Sundaresh. If you go back to Veil Containment lore, she is literally tied to the title of Conductor and is likely the reason why Vance was able to perceive the pattern in the form of sounds. Now, it's also possible that Vance usurped the title from her but I don't think our boy Vance would do something that drastic. And Asher Mir is also technically part of the Vex Network, but again, I think it's likely that the Nessus branch is being influenced in isolation, whereas Asher was not part of that particular offshoot, and neither was Vance.
I am happy to see Byf on the same page with other creators and lore masters. All that discussion aside I hope this turns into us defending these vex instead of ded ded deding everything
9:05 I can tell you as a returning player that this is DEFINITELY the case. I came back towards the middle of the last season, so I had Deep, Wish, and the Eris becoming a god season to play through all at once. It was AMAZING to be able to play it all at my own pace, and I always knew that I had more story whenever I wanted it. I then get to this current season, excited to finally receive some lore and story from the seasonal content only to be met with "The Vex are acting weird guys" followed by "Failsafe will get back to you in 7 days."
I was always under the assumption that they would probably play it safe with the new model representing seasons near the beginning as it’s a safe bet that despite how predictable it is for veterans it does work. It’s just been used as a crutch for too long so it’s not the most engaging because I’ve seen all this play out (I like the saint stuff at the end, I’m glad they are kinda acknowledging the corridors of time stuff because I was always curious if we actually traveled back in time) That being said I do hope there’s a clearer sign of evolution out of it as the episode progresses, like having the changes to the world seem in missions become permanent in the patrol space in act 2. I also think despite the disappointment of seeing essentially the seasonal model at the beginning it doesn’t feel out of place for what’s currently going on. We don’t know what the hell is happening so we’re collecting samples and despite the weirdness the choral vex aren’t an immediate threat. With the conductor making their move stuff has room to escalate and pick up the pace from here and potentially show that departure from the seasonal structure more clearly
I do think the act structure works, but its just this current story thats not fitting it enough, in most if not all seasonal stories we have always moved towards something we know will happen, ending in us moving forwards towards tfs and the witness, i just dont feel like I have that one point to look towards as of right now. If the conductor was used/mentioned alot more during act 1 as a setup it would feel better, but as of right now im just confused as to what exactly this episode is all about, I know the major characters, and who the conductor most likely is, but what am i supposed to be waiting for, is nessus in danger or is it just changing, i know its bad that its changing but why exactly, would nessus blow up? Witch had eris killing savathun and finding a way to go through the portal, wish was all about us working with riven to grant us the wish to enter, echoes is a setup, but i just dont see what the setup is for, i think with act 2-3 putting more of a focus on the conductor and most likely the echo itself the story will find a more solid ground ,and i think once we get into the stories of say the next episode, with characters and themes we know alot more of (the echoes) its going to flow alot better.
You make me think about things in a different way. I knew Episodes was like Seasons, but I also didn't realize how much of a story we're not getting. Great stuff!
I actually have enjoyed the episode. It's not different from seasons, but it doesn't force FOMO as much as the seasons did. I will say that waiting until the last week to do it all is still viable and I like that it's possible for players that can't play regularly.
I guess you meant "am enjoying". The episode didn't ended yet, just the first act. We're in for the ad break, in two/three weeks we'll be going back to it.
I know it's not so much to do with the story, but I do really hope (and really wanted) these choral vex to BEHAVE differently. We hear all this stuff about the new strain of Vex acting weird - especially in the lore - but fighting them feels the exact same. If Vex were ducking behind cover, or just mad rushing me, or... something different, I feel like that would have made a huge difference. Right now, it just feels like the same empty-husk Vex faction
Failsafe not being up-to-date on the events in the solar system doesn't make sense. Guardians with Darkness power have been to Nessus in the lore, Failsafe was already connected to the VanNet in Vanilla to share information, there was a fishing spot on Nessus. She's on the comms for the Nessus strikes, Patrols, Haunted Sectors, etc. She's clearly not oblivious to what happens outside of the Exodus Black
1. Nessus strikes takes place in the past The reason I say this is because in one of the missions has cayde talking despite him now being dead 2. It's Canon that nobody goes to nessus now Unless it's the dawning and we are bringing her cookies
@@RADLight677yeah, now. Cause writers and their metahumour cant cook up anything better. Sure, Failsafe only hasnt been around because Guardians abandoned her, not because shes a permanently grounded ship AI who can only help with nearby Vex a little bit. Jfc
Bungie has said that they want us to have zero expectations for them and as such I have only had near unreachable expectations since that was said. TFS, surprisingly, met those expectations. But I was expecting episodes to be on the level of Warmind or House of Wolves and instead we got a less than subpar season.
Allowing us to play past season passes would would help boost new player engagement so while waiting for new season content you can rank up old season passes you might have missed out on
The format is definitely the same. However the amount of care is going up. I haven't felt this way since Seraph. I'm actually enjoying the plot. The format isn't as great as it could be but, Final Shape is what I came here for. This is just a cherry on top. However we still need continued development on the format or a new format entirely. It will do the main narrative and community a lot of good. Also I love Failsafe so I am very biased. She's getting some deserved development.
I'm sorry but you are in the minority here. The timegating is worse than it's ever been. We had 3 story beats so far, one was had us doing bounties. Now we have to wait 3 weeks for more. Doesn't matter how good the story is if the way you're going to tell it is lazy and uninspiring.
@@Razgar_Voxel If you're one of the long-time players I don't blame you. It's been a decade and only now there's occasionally successful attempts to improve things.
31:05 I think one of the final bosses (the one with the two shielded vex) is an incident, where the precursor-Vex try to capture the rebel-Vex, but we interrupt. Personally, right now my biggest grip with the story is that Nessus is looks still the same. I don`t know, if they want to make a transition and make the changes in the location later, but I really want Nessus to become permanently different and the new Vex villain to stay. They seem very interesting and really unique. They could become the Savathun of the Vex in there own way. I really like the story right now. It feels somehow really refreshing (I don`t mean the delivery of the story). This time we have a real focus on discovery and research. There are no clear goals, beside understanding what is happening with Nessus and understanding the new Vex. The storyline with Saint is also very interesting and I`m looking forward to Act 2.
I don't fully get why the first episode launched a week into Final Shape. Final Shape had so much content that I didn't really want to jump into a new thing yet. I'd have been fine with a few months gap before the first episode. Not saying that has always worked to improve first seasons/mini-expansions after a big release but it still makes sense to stagger the content a bit. First Echo landed on Nessus before I even finished the campaign.
Something I think would have helped this episode (and hear me out before you crucify me) would be to take a page from Lightfall. Specifically Neomuna itself. Have 1 zone every day be reformed the the choral vex like we saw in the last mission of act 1. Instead of a matchmade activity like a playlist, give that zone special public events revolving around the rebellion of the choral minds. You could even keep the idea of gathering the new radiolaria as a core requirement of the zone but man that would be so much cooler.
Concerned LITERALLY THREE WEEKS after Bungie drops the best DLC of all time as far as narrative and new content. All I'm saying is the last time we constantly complained devs loss their jobs not the higher ups instead of letting them cook. It's a slippery slope but you'd think they earned grace
Hey byf, so just one small thing about the vex, you actually DO get to see them fighting each other, spazzing out on themselves or going crazy. If you take a stroll through Nessus you actually get to SEE it happening in real time. I just thought that was something small I’d add. It might not be completely shown out front but if you really just take a stroll you get to see and hear a lot of stuff implicated from the lore
Echo's being a bit lackluster is honestly a small thing for me at this point. So many broken activities/rewards in the Final Shape. Literally 4 updates since launch, and the only thing they've managed to fix is a wrong shader being rewarded.
So thinking about it instead of a waiting step why not do a community event step. Destroy X amount of Vex system wide or destination wide. The reward either being a powerful, prime, or red boarder choice. Consequences could be if you don't meet the required X a burn is removed or the following week is a -5 to the next week power level.
I stopped playing destiny sometime after lightfall but came back for into the light. I only played de current season at the time because bungie made it free and it was legit the best seasonal experience ever. Playing from start to finish without the wait was so much better and is what i plan on doing for every seasonal drop.
The "Show don't Tell" method is something that really needs more emphasis. I understand how difficult it is to implement changes and deciding which to implement or not. Half the supposed changes to the Vex Byf mentioned I had no idea about because it was simply dialog or lore tabs that were missed or drowned out. Its a shame to only hear about these groundbreaking events and never experience them for myself
First thing, MNiB, you're nailing the radiolarian nail on the head about the Civil War and I cant agree more. Second thing. My favorite and most memorable fight sequences are when there's a ton of enemies and they aren't just focused on you. Playing the end of Lightfall where Caitil jumps down and it feels like you're holding multiple points almost felt like a PvE domination mission or a real time strategy level with Caitil as a hero unit. I'm a Hunter main, I love being invisible and sniping elite targets or dodging between enemies that are looking at something else besides my fireteam and delivering punches. This story has SO MUCH POTENTIAL to do exactly that. Combine the "let's start by taking out their commanders one by one" with limited time "assassinate this Choral mind to weaken ___". And its timed so you hopefully can't just end everything in sight and call it a day. Great insight mate. Thanks for your continued uploads and thoughts
Another issue is bungie not learning from final shape . Ghosts are so valuable for story telling , Saints ghost Jepeto could participate or be written . But no. It’s just guardians yapping in “Destinese” final shape is the only time they don’t do that
truthfully what I would love (an i know this is asking a lot) three missions a week, with a few cutscenes, in each mission is a major change that affects the world around us in some visible way and stays that way and is referenced in future missions that tells a plot thats more linked and run on, than the start stop stuff we have right now
I think besides the episodic model being disappointing and concerning as a result, I'm also concerned that Bungie will not implement the visual changes seen in Echoes missions/activities made to Nessus. Nessus is an old location, it's from the Red War and has remained the same for the most part aside from Caiatl's tank being a permanent part of the Watcher's Grave region. I was willing to let it go when Calus's barge disappeared from it's crashed state in the same area, but the verdant and beautiful landscapes seen in the missions/activities for Echoes on Nessus is too good to just let it be temporary. These changes should be in patrol, they should be permanent to show that Nessus is in fact changing, it doesn't exactly lend to the story being told when the changes you see are only seen for a temporary amount of time and then you're told to go into patrol to find radiolaria on a reverted Nessus. Again, Nessus is an old location and has been the same since it was first introduced (again, aside from Caiatl's tank). Making the changes seen in the activities permanent for patrols, new world bosses, and (as Byf said) seeing the Vex civil war would really sell the idea that Nessus is changing in appearance as the Choral Vex continue to win over their predecessors, and also just make Nessus feel fresh again. You can't tell me for a second Guardians wouldn't be scrambling to traverse the green, verdant new Nessus we've been seeing in Echoes just to explore it, especially with what we've seen from the mission involving Saint-14's rescue.
I dont have a problem with this due to the fact i work. I dont have the time i use to like i did when i was in college. At least between these breaks i get to farm and do other stuff in the game. Also i get to follow the story and farm for my red borders. Then also so much is in the exspantion that need to be done. The duality mission, geting the rest for the fragments for prismatic, other exotic missions, not to mention the raid, and the 3 man event in the game. Hell i wish i had time for the raid. But i have a child cant sit there 3 hours are more doing so. So i do like the breaks inbetween the story.
Ima be straight, being "over it" doesn't make it bad. It just makes you bored which is fine. The actual issue is the communication from the devs on the idea of changing that delivery and cadence. Everyone assumes they understand what was meant by that, and obviously either the community misunderstood, or that dev was misleading. All we need is clarification on what we should be expecting. Beyond that, there's not really any real significance to one's burnout or boredom.
Bungie keeps repeating the same stories and hitting the same beats. They intertwine moments of great lore and story telling with the same romance novel level repeats. The last missions of the expansion were amazing and the first 75% were just repeating a season with zero sense of thought. Bungie just keeps making people weak and vulnerable as they explore there feelings, multiple times. It worked for some, and for others we got a Hunter Vanguard that was a meme Bungie saw and said Hold my Beer. 1. Crow is vulnerable and written for sympathy instead of character development. He finally resolves this in a good season and immediately forgets it all and becomes vulernable; rehashing the season for multiple expansion missions. 2. Zavala has a moment of vulernability and we see into his past and his family. The story is amazingly done in the same season. We spend multiple expansion missions rehashing the same shit. We are supposed to believe he wasn't ready and didn't expect the Witness to show his family again. Terrible and out of character. 3. Saint-14 is now vulernable and no longer the walking stalwart, I.E. Himself.
kotor lore is wild. Also, this judgment is a little premature. It'd be like judging interstellar by the first 45 minutes yes, the pacing is slow but the world building phase of any story is slow. Let's see what bungie does with the next few acts before we make judgements.
As iffy as SWTOR is to play there's nothing better than bringing friends in who only know KOTOR and then getting hit with questions like "who the fuck is Valkorion"
So my biggest issue with Echos was the structure of the Act 1 finale. I complete a quest step on Nessus and get an urgent call from Osiris to talk to him at the Helm. Where he tells me Saint has gone missing...on Nessus... I WAS JUST THERE!!! This is the very definition of "this could have been an email". How much more sense would it have made to just have that conversation over comms and have it lead directly into the mission?
3 weeks worth of story, one of them felt like literal filler and then we have to wait 3 more weeks of nothing until act 2... How do we have 3 weeks of story in an act, and STILL we're getting filler weeks? This is literally just the seasonal model, with less story and more timegating. They said they "heard the feedback" and just took all the negative feedback and made it 50x worse.
The "coming to do everything including the finale and not at any other time" part is a conclusion I sadly got to years ago, it's sad but it's true and will also lead to burnout because "ok I can't be bothered to run this activity 15 times" 16:51 I think haunted could have worked with the weekly model, but not with the way it's paced, if instead of misses -> fix -> misses -> fix -> misses -> fix, we had something where characters actually interact with each other like let's say you have crow failing then caiatl's attempt, you can make caiatl say to Crow "sometimes you just need to tackle problems head on" or something along those lines who makes the story feel more alive but also allows more buildup and is less (ofc I'm not saying not at all).
I actually think one thing that would help out a lot is instead of dropping the weekly quest every single Tuesday on reset, Just have it drop random times throughout the week. Maybe Monday at reset. Maybe a Thursday night, Maybe even a Saturday morning surprise. Who knows maybe 2 quest during the same week on different days. Anything to shake-up the idea of just wait until Tuesday. It wouldn't really require a lot of effort on the devs end, but would still give a bit of mystery to the story of what's going to happen next and when. What do you think?
I'm not at all surprised this is the result of Echoes Act 1. Not even close. This is literally every single "expansion season" ever. For me the real interesting stuff is likely gonna be happening in the next 2 episodes.
Another interesting note is the possibility that Saint is a simulation. If this were to be true, that means the Vex can simulate the light. There’s so much that can be done with that too
9:10 This has been my experience with Destiny. My friend and I got into Destiny after he bounced off of Elden Ring, and we bought The Witch Queen expansion when it was on sale. Ploughin through it - a few chapters every week - was a delightful experience, held back mostly by our lack of knowledge and skill (He grasped Hunter jumping mechanics like nothing. My warlock ass...not so much). It was great! And then the Season of the Wish became free, so we got it...and it became obvious that we were being STRONGLY incentivized to Keep Playing, and Keep Grinding, and Keep Trying For Riven's Eggs. It was fun, and we were loving the story! But the padding felt like it wanted to make you Grind More or Spend Silver For Cosmtics rather than let you enjoy the (clearly lovingly crafted) tale of an Undead Wish-Dragon playing mind-games with Queen-of-the-Space-Elves and her Sadboy Brother. My buddy dropped Destiny, citing a lack of respect for his time, and I'm on the fence. I still think I'd like to play (I wanna unlock Strand and beat up Emperor Calus, if only for the bragging rights), but it does feel more like a soap opera you play, rather than a coherent game. We were both musing that , were it like Halo, and we could just buy a complete version of the game, we'd do that - but IDK the economics of game design at Bungie, or even if their current model is sustainable. I just know that running through the same few levels of the Dreaming City to get unlock more Enneagrams to buy more weapons IDK if I even want seemed a bit much, when what I was really here for was to hear the Mara Sov and Riven I-hate-you-but-also-I-ship-it dialogue (which was awesome!)
28:46 Unfortunately, if you read the Enigmal Protocol dialogue from the Conductor, and read the seasonal Sparrow and Ship unlocked in acts 2 and 3 of the seasonal pass (they are not classified), and do Veil Containment, it becomes pretty clear this is in fact just another "something paracausal hijacked the Vex" storyline. The Nessus Vex are not rebelling. They're just being hacked. Again. Also, like, even if that wasn't the case, the whole choral idea fundamentally misunderstands what the Vex are. The Vex aren't a species; they're a pattern. That pattern was so durable, so rugged, so consistent, that it outlasted the end of countless universes and made it into this one. That pattern is, fundamentally, so ingrained in reality that when it refers to itself in words that we can understand, it calls us Light and Dark, but *it calls itself Truth,* and it associates itself indelibly with reality. As a simulation of Maya Sundaresh put it, Vex is not something you *are*, it is something you *do.* If the Choral Vex were not being hijacked by the Conductor (who appears to also be Maya Sundaresh), they would not be Vex. Can you tell that I hate this? That the response to the Vex allegedly "not having a face" (which is a deeply ridiculous thing to say when there are multiple Vex 'faces' in the lore that they could have brought in at any time, not counting the ones they brought in in order to have them job for other characters, but whatever) has been to either slap some other character on top of them, or to fundamentally change what they are in a way that flies directly in the face of their whole core concept? This is the first piece of non-Garden Vex content we've had since Splicer, if you don't count the Vex being, y'know, basically just sort of inexplicably present for Lightfall. It *should* have been the first major in-game story about the Vex themselves since fucking... I don't know, I think Undying? As of now, basically the only reason they bring the Vex in is because they want a story where you're shooting enemies who don't have faces. That's a fucking shame. EDIT: I do really like the Saint stuff, though. I've been feeling like the existential crisis of Saint being 'resurrected' in the Infinite Forest was a missed opportunity for a while. And the fact that it deals with one of the core themes of the Vex gives me hope that they might not be entirely absent from the main story. But y'know. Like. I'm not hopeful, given every other time they've done Vex stuff for the last fucking. Half-decade.
Because it still feels like a season but with even more timegating. Also we're being charged the same amount for what seems to be the same stuff we'd get during seasons, but less of it. Basically it feels like nothing changed, both on our end and bungies end
High expectations will unfortunately do that to people, this is why I keep my expectations low and see what turns out. So far, I'm not disappointed with the story.
The subtle ways that KOTOR outright told you what the twist was all throughout the game and yet never betrayed that was what was going to happen was a big factor in the reveal. It was right in front of you the whole time and yet no one saw it coming. They even do a flashback mashup showing you all the ways they already told you what the twist was and the fact that you’re only now figuring it out is.. breathtaking
I think it's because of formatting the last loose ends of the story, in that there is only three chapters and all of them focusing on a loose end of what is to come, of course out of all the returning characters like Sloan, Asher mir, and deverim, failsafe also had to come back as well but she couldn't really be part of the lead up to the final shape because there wasn't really a place in the story for her, at least that's my theory so they put her in echoes as the "guide" role, also if you look on the season reward thingy as you rank up it goes higher than 100 which never happened in any of the other seasons, of course that isn't to say that you could go over 100 but you wouldn't get any designated reward, you might just get a bright engram and that's it, but I have a feeling it's going to be the same with revenant with the lead up of fikrul vs crow, and The lead-up of what else happened to xivu after Eris banished her and her reaction to the death of the witness, That's my theory though
Crazy how you brought up KOTOR because I was talking to a friend sometime around the Pirate Season (Arc 3.0) and was telling him imagine if we randomly got invaded when we were in orbit or in transit to the tower/helm and had to fight our way out of a ketch to free our ship (obviously with other rewards). It would've been sick and frankly something completely new.
One thing I thought about was that the Vex are a perfect enemy to incorporate Helldivers 2-type mechanic between some steps, i.e. as a community we have to liberate a zone (or two) on Nessus and whether we complete these or not determines something for the next step. Perhaps it’s something as simple as the environment change for the next week (and any advantages/disadvantages that might entail). Maybe particular vendors with special gear or consumables become available when a zone is liberated. It could determine the angle of the following weeks objective. ‘You didn’t liberate so encounters/enemies are set to legendary campaign level difficulty’ - perhaps you have to safe a certain character. Just a thought anyway, there have been tons of quest type games, instead of trying to come up with one way for things to progress, pull from multiple mechanics to bring variety to you story telling, essentially what you were saying @Byf about changing things up.
Literally how do you get that, nobody is counseling anything about being gay, hes literally being attacked by a vex thing telling him he aint real and his friends gotta help him?? Why did you add gay at all????
The thing you said about pacing is an interesting counter to the idea of giving us everything right up front. I think you could find something of a balance there, giving us entire sections of an episode at once to tell a complete story - but leaving a cliffhanger at the end, drawing us into the next section. All of Act 1 could be a day 1 release, with a pause between it and Act 2 to give narrative tension.
Soo my guardian is an exo... i was thinking that there could be a debuff in the activities base on our race in game ... like exos being susceptible to being compelled my the conductor or something
The fact that KotOR is still heralded this many years after its release for its story telling quality among many other things, by so many people, speaks volumes about how amazing it was. Hands down my favorite game growing up and easily one of my favorite games of all time. I long ago lost track of how many play throughs I’ve done on it. Still go back to it today and love every minute of it. Props for the call back to solid gold Byf.
What's bothering me the most is the "Nessus is being changed" line. Ok, where is this change? It looks exactly the same as it has always looked. The only changes we see are during seasonal activity and story missions. It feels like we're gonna end up with another cosmodrome situation, but this time even more outrageous.
Same same, it’s being changed and we see that in the activity and missions but why isn’t it happening in the patrol. caiatl’s land tank doesn’t magically vanish outside of the strike so why does the echo terfroming do that? Huge missed opportunity for the reprised version of the exodus crash strike too
I just said that too...
Doesn't do any sense...
Right!? And the changes made would make Nessus fresh again for casual patrolling and exploration, if it is not reflected this way in later acts as a permanent change. You'd see more players on Nessus than it ever saw in the Red War!
Hopefully the change in that story mission will role out to the planet in act 2 🙏
I feel like that might change over the 3 acts
personally my biggest disappointment with this season is that we are not actually seeing nessus change. Sure in Breach Executable and the last mission of Act 1 show us what nessus is turning into, but then if we go to the tangle/cistern on patrol, its still the same old nessus. 0 changes. When Caiatl destroyed part of Watcher's Grave with her land tank in season 13, that was one of the coolest worldbuilding things bungie has ever done. Why couldnt they do that again with nessus? Such a letdown
Yeah I was shocked to see the change in nesses the n go back to the planet and go "oh...well...thats disappointing.."
@@theSixPathsOfTrainswe could have it change those areas with vex trees and maybe like a new vex + shadow legion public event featuring story mission mechanics
Hey whats up man
@@dissapionted4610 GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD
@@paladindoesd2 whats up man
1. There needs to be more puzzles, exploration, and mystery. Not just: here's the story, week after week.
2. Bungie, show me, don't just tell me. They bring up many story beats, but don't show you in game.
3. We need less repetition. It gets boring doing the same thing every week. (We need more data for Failsafe, every week.)
They need to detach the grind from the story and have it be the thing you do after the story
1. Exploration yes. Puzzles no
2. I agree
3. Agreed 100%
Gotta love being a background character in any Convo i
@@externalboss9404100% agree. I suck at the puzzles and have no wish to get better at them, lol. It’s why I barely raid. BORING!
Yup. I am not really interested in the story if it's just text logs being voiceovered to me in the helm.
I really wish the destinations would actually change. Rather than them only changing in the missions, what a great way to suck the immersion of the "worlds changing and transforming" out of it.
Like nessus has no story to it besides the seasonal stuff, there is no quests there stopping them from doing it!
This might not be the best comparison, but something vaguely like how World of Warcraft cataclysm changed locations fundamentally could be nice
Really. They added a couple earthquakes, but I was expecting to actually see the map changes. We've had the same Nessus for half a decade, no one is gonna miss major areas getting a facelift. Especially cause this is supposed to be something big and impactful. It feels like seasons again, where the seasonal story has no weight outside of its missions
Yep and people actually believe the patrol zone is coming back with the dreadnaught. They will have a big wake up call.
I mean, they can implement them after the end of the season since the quests are about the progression change, they cant just change until the end of the season when people either already did it, or won't ever again.
Yeah I rushed back to nesses and seen it was changed back and I'm like...ohhh well...that sucks
i love how ikora said “saint lets go” and after having a crisis he’s just like “oke” and walks off. like you’re not even going to need convincing at all? just thinking about that osirussy is enough?
Cause she said Osiris is waiting for him
And the part where Osiris calls you back from Nessus to the Helm, just to tell you something is wrong with Saint, and then promptly sends you right back to Nessus? Like you couldn’t have just told me this over the call?
Also if you have been through trauma you should know that you become compliant after severe traumatic events. That’s why Stockholm syndrome exists….
@@tysonkrunek4132 Stockholm Syndrome does not "exist", it's a theoretical explanation with dubious origins and that has been criticized to hell and back for being a hack theory.
He only went because of Osiris
I adore failsafe and I have since D2 vanilla. But I have to say that echoes has really made me like her more. Because she’s not supposed to be like dual personalities. She has one personality and a conversation filter that’s broken. And you really see that in her character now as a person who is incredibly lonely, not just physically but socially. She’s awkward and shy and tries to be as helpful as she can so that people keep her around and the conversational filter is supposed to hide that for her but it’s broken so the real person bleeds through it and I think her dialogue shows that a lot more now than it did before.
She has too personalities
I never played the era of d2 where Failsafe was a big character (joined in Beyond Light), but when she was like "can't reconnect without a little awkwardness... right, Captain?" I immediately came onboard the Failsafe train
The excitement from Failsafe when Saint told them that they can be projected into the HELM was *adorable*!
We need her as Rasputin 2.0
@@reggielacey2235 If you go through the lore tabs it makes it clear that the cheery "personality" is really just her customer service voice. She may have been different during the red war campaign, but then again, so was Cayde
"Ikora will contact you when Act 2 begins" has to be the goofiest quest description.
Gives the impression she'll show up like: "Hello Guardian, Act 2 is beginning, and we are now ready to continue the story. There is a new mission for you to go on. Contact Failsafe, she'll fill you in."
"Done touching grass? It's time for the 5-week content trickle!"
-Failsafe
My biggest problem with this season so far is that Nessus has only changed within the new missions, not the patrol zone
The most they've done to the patrol zone is add the crystalized vex, those beacons and the weird holograms that disappear when you get close
@oxsila some of the plants look dead or dying, the lake seems lower maybe act 2 will show that
@@johngancarcik5682 imagine how good it would be if it changed as much as leviathan
@oxsila omg yes I wish we could checkout more of that leviathan
"To be Continued"...
In Act 2 of Echos.
In about 2 or 3 weeks.
Weiste bescheid
And meanwhile that the season Rank progress is actually throttled post-100 season rank. You can't even play the game right because 1lvl XP is taking 5x as much, and we don't even know if THAT carries over.
So they are literally artificially delaying the artificial delay, at the same time throttling rewards for the experienced players.
@@turkiznoI think that’s a lateral move from seasons. Before you’d need 5 levels to get a Brighton Engram and now it’s just one bigger level
@@Boomerangofjustice Each of those 5 levels is 100k XP, so that tracks.
@@Boomerangofjustice But each engram counts as 1 level now rather than 5. So by farming bright engrams, especially if you're claiming seasonal challenges, those seasonals are counting as 1/5th of what they could count for if you waited 20 more days to claim them.
I don’t like how Bungie creates the these awesome changes to the environment in the missions, but then in patrol nothing is there.
My cope of the day is that maybe, just MAYBE, this episode was starting its development before they decided to switch from seasons to episodes so maybe future episodes won’t follow this same formula. It’s possible that this episode was not so far that they couldn’t adjust the pacing a bit, but too far developed to completely alter the style of the delivery
It definitely feels like that we do know any changes we want to happen tend to go into at later season maybe echos was a season at first but the change to episodes probably meant echoes couldn’t be altered to what was proposed if that’s the case revenant and heresy might be what episodes should be
@@pugwash1 and because the latter episodes are still in development criticisms now can help those future episodes be much more worthwhile.
Press ‘X’ to doubt….
I have the feeling like they just pushed developers away from seasonal development and into frontiers. Episodes are just a way for them to cover up the lack of content for a much longer period.
That being said I have no idea how dungeons or raids are going to be made for the following episodes if at all. It might make or break the content for each episode, because as it is, the content is lacking.
@@cameronsalmon1314 I do believe we will get dungeons but how their spaced out is the question as it’s been raid-dungeon-raid-dungeon since witch queen we got a raid with final shape so a dungeon is next question is when and after that the normally reprised raid given we now have 3 episodes compared to the 4 seasons who knows when we will get the next dungeon
I think that Bungie should try what Square Enix does with FFXIV. When a new patch releases after the main expansion (5.1, 5.2, etc.) It gives you all of the story while still progressing the overall story of the expansion/game story (Hydaelyn and Zodiark 10 year storyline). Within each of these patches, you get the new content and can play it at your own cadence. Rarely any time gating, except waiting for the next patch. I think that could work for Destiny, especially now that we are heading into a new story
A game with a paid subscription values their players time than D2 😢
Yeppers, but The management is too jaded to step away from their ways.
I dont like FF14 pacing. EW was so empty. I had stuff to do in patch day. Then i was back at farming the same stuff 8 farmed for the last 10 years.
I hope NO GAME follows ff14..
Btw i pre ordered dawntrail and i like the game.
Lets not pretend ff14 has a lot of content.
Almoat all of it is unecessary fluff.
Over complicated crafting, so much side quests. Stuff that dont progress the story.
If you took all that time and effort AND FOCUSED 9N THE STORY AND ACTUAL CONTENT, we would not lack things to do. I usually have to wait 3-4 month to grt something new. I get 1 day of content and then what? Wait 3 months. I basically waited a whole year in dawntrail necause i was bored and wanted to get content i unsubbed. 1 year later, i subbed...i had 1 week end of content. Thats all. In 1 year. 2 new bosses. 2 new dungeon.
All the rest was stuff for people who dont want to play ff14. Stupid jumping puzzle.
Feel good side quest.
I hope Destiny dont follow ff14. Its already boring enough as it is. But at least i have a couple weeks of content to do every season. Which is a lot more than i ever got with ff14.
Be objective.
@@celuiquipeut6527well this is certainly a strange take lol. What exactly is “content” in your eyes? And how does drip feeding a fraction of it in D2 per week make that somehow better?🤔.
Is it busywork? Something to grind outside of endgame raiding? If so I guess I see your point given EW skipped adding that this time around with the relics. Otherwise i genuinely have no idea what you mean lol.
@@celuiquipeut6527 ignoring the parts of the game that are designed to *enrich* the story and world build are not problems of the game. Most of the sidequests are fantastic and fun, and are meant to keep you occupied during the 3-4 months between patches. Doing only 1 segment of the 15 the game has and saying the game has no content is not the fault of the game.
Failsafe is a treasure and I want to be able to take her with me everywhere
_Swap Ghost out for her._
Give me back Dinklebot or failsafe, as my ghost
@@triggws7789 You like bored, monotone, voice acting I see. Face it, Dinklage put little to no effort into that roll.
Like Skippy from Cyberpunk, turn her into a Linear Fusion or something
@@triggws7789failsafe, yeah... Dinklebot? His effortless job should never be mentioned.
5:40 I think they should put like community challenges like the weekly fishing to unlock the next step, so it seems more in lore than just wait.
That’s what they did with season of the warmind. Didn’t work at all, they locked content behind 1 billion items collected. It took longer than waiting a full week bc the item they needed to deposit dropped very rarely
@@Spawnofgolden ah I didn’t realise but it requires testing obvs and it may be worth it to try again just drop the number and increase the drops, the hardcore players have Smth to grind for and the casuals have Smth to help towards and get involved with
@@metaltomcat3614yeah, it’s kind of a broken record at this point but they need to drop the seasonal model and REALLY revamp it with episodes 2 bc I doubt we’re really getting any new stuff with act 2 other than 1 more 3 man activity who knows though bungie cooked, they still maybe
@@Spawnofgolden I get what ya mean but if there not gonna make a new model (let’s be realistic here) we may aswell try and improve the current to hope that snowballs into Smth
I was genuinely flabbergasted by how threadbare Echoes has felt and how abruptly the act ended. In a typical three act story structure, by the time you've reached the end of act 1, you at least know what's at stake, there's something that escalates tension and conflict into act 2, and there's... kind of none of that. I just feel like we've been floundering around on Nessus picking up samples and doing busy work without any revelations or cliffhanger to lead into the next act. Idk, I guess we'll see.
That's my biggest issue, it feels bare bones and it was absolutely just too damn short. We got a road map that showed each Act as 6 weeks, but we're only getting 3 weeks of content? It's not a good look for how Episodes will work moving forward.
I think the obvious cliffhanger is Saint being controlled and not yet knowing (or at least no confirmation) who/what the Conducter is. I agree with the overall point of this act being pretty bare, though.
We should have lost Saint at the end of it and not get him back until at least act 2, it seemed pointless him getting controlled as we solved it so easily. It didn't add tension to the story
What concerns me is that there wasn't enough seasonal story to milk over the time period of act 1. We've got 2 weeks of no new story before Act 2 releases July 16th.
Exactly.
When Bungie said that they were structuring that you could "drop in anytime & catch up" on the story to mean everything was dropped in 1-2 weeks, & if you ground the whole thing out immediately then you'd either go back to Pale Heart or end game stuff.
If they really wanted to make it friendly to someone who doesn't have a lot of time to game, they can knock out in a few sessions.
It would be cool if you had the vendor moving around the world week to week when you have to meet up with them. Like meeting crow in different places around the dreaming city when trying to find fikrul.
They do that with the Dreaming City already, Petra moves around depending on the 3-week cycle. It's great, but the landing zone needs to be by the vendor if they move around, thats my only gripe
@@moxie6132 yeah, xur worked fine because he was literally right beside a LZ on every destination (except the tower hangar… where you park ships…)
Ironically Final Shape did this pretty well. Between each campaign mission, Cayde and Crow's campsite moves to wherever the last mission ended, and the next mission picks up from there, giving you this feeling like it's one continuous journey on foot. They even blacked out the orbit screen of your ship loading in to make it clear you're not flying into the Pale heart from Orbit every time, you've been there all along.
This is how it was before they made the HELM. Imho ,ever since they introduced the Helm, the seasons have felt boring and mundane. I would always prefer to find the seasonal vendors out in the Galaxy..
also to all the people saying “let’s just give them the benefit of the doubt and wait till episode two”
1. Bungie does not and rarely has ever deserved the benifit of the doubt in regards to “is this content well put together?”
2. You’re gonna be saying that till frontiers
Here to say: Many of the seasons I've experienced through being drip fed content were boring and stale. I started in Season of Defiance but I, now, wait until the majority of the seasonal story is out to participate in it. It's made a large majority of them feel incredible(save for if I can stay spoiler free).
I haven't bought TFS yet because as a veteran, I'm just tired of the same old format. No offense to anyone who still enjoys it but the repetitiveness of the activities and the vendor stuff definitely got to me personally, after all that time doing it.
@@turkizno I mean, everything related to TFS (the pale heart, the story, etc.) are pretty awesome.
Echoes on the other hand... Not so much
My hope is that Act 1 was much more seasonal because 1) it was initially built when the seasonal model was still the main focus 2) they dont want to put everything into Act 1 while theres still many people doing the main expansion stuff. Its the same logic as the first season of an expansion is generally weaker. Regardless though these criticisms can be helpful for Episodes 2 and 3 to have more oomph as those are still in development.
I think I heard that act 2 is just gonna have battlegrounds
@@themadwarden6603 I’m talking story wise
I'm starting to think maybe my missing out on all of the seasons since Forsaken is actually a good thing. I left the game for roughly six years because, well I don't know why.
When I returned to the game this past Christmas I essentially got all those seasons, or whatever ones were left, in one big gulp that I could take at my own pace. I never got the weekly drip feed. That's why I enjoyed what I got.
So TLDR is that Byf and Myelin are exactly right.
I'm still disappointed that I missed some of those seasons but Byf's recap video caught me up and now all is good again.
Stop lying we can see your post history my guy
@@PopularNobody I don't know what you're talking about but whatever.
I would say that the three seasons post season of defiance / lightfall were absolute bangers
@@seraphsin1058 Maybe they'll bring them back someday🤞
Same, I have never bought any season even tho some good ones I wish I played, but in the end I just realized even if story and seasonal content are good, I'm still hugely against buying gaming content that expires in a few months, especially with these prices
The one thing that saddens me is the lack of environmental changes or visual changes in gereral. Like the newest mission has beautiful work done to an old area, but then when you finish the mission it just goes back to exactly how it was.
Also in the lore book you get from listening to the radio it explains how vex have been doing weird things. Like how a guardian spots a hobgoblin waving at them and gets giddy when the guardian waves back.
It would be so cool to see friendly vex sometimes that you can interact with by emoting at them.
(I know they'll never do that but i can dream)
Is it weird that I want to see the stuff said in "Isolated Incidents" to be shown in game as a form of progression?
We have heard and read that the Vex have been acting strange, human, on nessus, and yet not out in the wild ourselves.
It would, and still be cool to have vex in wild having spacial emotes, being more frequent every week.
Just a thought that I hope happens.
Idk man. If I saw a goblin climbing a tree and giggling I'd be creeped out and leave
@@alext9550 two vex simulating a game of chess for no reason.
@@callmeriggylike they're running the simulation in their head so we can't see anything. We just hear a robotic "knight, E5"
I think the answer with what to do with the Seasonal model is pretty obvious: Have the ENTIRE First Act accessible DAY 1! Bungie obviously just needs some time to get things ready and make sure the Story moments perform properly. The 3 week break will give Bungie time to prepare and once it’s ready, they could even release it early! Day 1 of Act 2, you have access to ALL ‘week’ portions of the Acts. If you give players so little on Day 1 they may not care enough to play the rest!
Honestly I never expected to see the Deafult Vex and the Choral Vex actually fighting. Hell, the Choral Vex don’t act any more “lively” than normal vex (because they are basic reskins) and this isn’t the first time we have had a Vex Civil War and never seen it: The Deafult Vex and the Sol Divisive. So I wasn’t really going in with the expectation of the new Vex actually behaving differently or fighting normal Vex. Do I still want that anyways? Hell Yes!!
If they did that, I guarantee 95% of the community would complain that there's nothing to do.
@@Mesomorphikbullshit
@@Awfully_goodbullshit you say? It's literally been a staple of the community since D2 came out... they grind like mad for the first week, get all the weapons and armor and all the secrets available... and then by week 4 they cry and complain that the game is boring and there is nothing to do... all completely ignoring the 90hrs they spent grinding during week 1...
If Bungie released EVERYTHING day one of a season, now an act/episode, then those same people would grind out the ENTIRE SEASON in a couple days and then complain they have to wait 2 months for more stuff to do and would blame bungie for not giving them enough content, even though they literally just gave you EVERYTHING day 1...
@@SnyperMK2000JclL He's coping with his coming to grips with knowing we're right
@@Awfully_good Lmao it's not unique to the Destiny community. Do you genuinely think the destiny community, one of the whiniest communities in gaming, wouldn't complain about not having content after doing an entire seasons worth in a week?
You're lying to yourself, this community will complain about ANYTHING.
One of my big issues with the way the weekly story line goes is the come back next week stuff. It feels like Bungie are saying “yeah you can log off now, literally nothing of importance will happen for a week”. Really just gut punch’s my enthusiasm to play
The example of finding the Enigma Protocol mission was exactly how I uncovered it as well. It was such a refreshing delight stumbling across this mission as someone that's been with the Destiny franchise from the beginning.
My Guardian after seeing what the Conducter did to Saint: Banshee, I need you to make this exotic so I can defeat the Conducter
Banshee while looking at my notes: This is just a baseball bat with nails pushed through it
I read that in Banshee's voice
I will never understand why people have such morning wood for Saint-14, let alone any of the other cardboard characters!
@@eugeneoisten9409 then you're in the wrong place lol
31:00 Part of me suspects there's a mechanical issue behind this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we've ever seen two enemy factions of the same race fighting each other in-game (as in while you're actually fighting). We'll see, like, enemy Fallen fighting enemy Hive, but to my memory, we don't see a member of a faction fight against or be able to damage their own kind unless they're allied with us, like Mithrax in the Lost in the Light adventures, or it's something scripted, like that one Cabal boss in one of the Infinite Forest strikes. I don't think we've even seen Lucent Hive fight regular Hive. So there might be some technical limitation preventing them from being able to show the aberrant Vex fighting normal Vex. But like Byf talked about, there's other ways they could've gone about it.
One thing I appriciated with the final mission for the Act was having to fight the Vex in lines of defense in the drained out Cistern. It felt like I was actually fighting a different kind of Vex.
When I saw the (Failsafe will contact you when the next step is available) I genuinely thought "Oh, so that act structure was a fucking lie now."
Worst part is that its going to take longer to get story now because we have these stupid intermissions between acts where nothing happens for a week or two.
Wasn't a lie. Idk why anyone thought the episodes would be different than seasons. Not saying it isn't annoying.
@@likwid_smoke I swear they mentioned that episodes would be a bigger drop of content and that it would be all at once before we'd have to wait for the next act.
Three weeks actually
They did 😂@@TheKusa5
@TheKusa5 oh no they did but they switched it around instead of 4 months with 3 seasons it's now 3 seasons with 4 months.
I've been saying since day 1, episodes were just gonna be seasons 2.0. Idk why people were thinking otherwise
They just made it seem like each act would have 6 weeks of content. Not that they would LAST 6 weeks, but RUN 6 weeks. If you look at the episode roadmap, you can see the picture saying Act 01: 6 weeks. ACT 02: 6 weeks. Act 03: 6 weeks. I would have assumed (as I'm sure many did) that it was 6 weeks of content per act, with maybe a hiatus of 2 or so weeks in between each, where a seasonal event or simply just a realistic void in content would be. That would total 18 weeks of content in an Episode versus a total of 8 weeks in a Season (excluding epilogue quests, etc). But what were looking at is a 4mo season with 9 weeks of content, versus the old 3mo season with 8 weeks of content. We only get one additional week, and longer waits total.
I don't care about the seasonal model. Similar to Byf, it didn't really bother me either, and it would probably take me (personally) up to two more years of this format to finally make me complain about it. But I just thought it would just be... more. I was hoping, and expecting per the marketed material, that the story would be more substantial and long-winded in the end, with something like a 20% improvement in quality, considering the season lasts a whole month longer.
But unrelated, it's a shame that they didn't change the patrol zone. It reminds me of the Mars Battleground mission in Season of the Seraph where we are supposed to be in a time rift to Golden Age Braytech Futurescape, but we still have modern-day mars with a freaking pyramid ship there. It's such a disconnect. Adding the change to Nessus' patrol zone, at least in the Cistern, was something I was hoping that 20% would go towards at least.
@@Devmode_Nunchaku no offense but it'd be silly to expect bungie to actually have consistent content week to week for 6 weeks straight. I always viewed the episodes annoucnement as them having longer gaps in between seasons as they wind down post final-shape to prepare for...something (whatever something is). There was no world where we would get more from an episode vs. a season (as you said, it's only 1 week more of content with a longer wait).
I do agree, they missed a big oppourtunity not updating the base patrol zone at all, and that could go a long way in helping the episode feel more different.
@@Devmode_Nunchaku I understand expecting more, but those assumptions were definitely wildly out of step with reality.
@@Devmode_Nunchaku i mean, they would never do that. Remember they upped the price for seasons yet the quality stayed the same. Why would they even consider giving you more while they charged the same? Bungie will be bungie and after saving them selves for annihilation by lightfall and finally delivering a decent expansion (mid if compared to any other good games dlc) they will slide right back to delivering minimum viable products that are seasons.
Replace:
“fail safe is compiling data, wait a week”
With:
“Failsafe needs to process data. Guardians can gather more to help her get a better picture.”
0/5,000,000 data collectively gathered
or wait until Tuesday
It makes us actually able to progress the story in a way that sorta feels organic. Like we’re still doing something by gathering data in the seasonal missions, letting us progress early if we do the thing.
Idk something that we have control over would be cool. If we can’t have the weekly pauses make sense story-wise, then we need to eliminate the pauses through action.
Reading the first page in polyphony genuinely made me feel bad for never going to see fail-safe
What is sticking out to me most is the lack of actual game mechanic updates on Nessus. Where is the enemy power level update to bring it up to speed with newer destinations? Where is the new Nessus reward track? The datalattiuce doesn’t even give Echos rank like the Baron Bough in Season of the Wish.
Lets think of a better a way to improve the model.
My idea would be each week you have the main quest. But after that you now have mini quests tied to the characters. Like you can go to osiris for research (bounties). Go to saint-14 and get more of his story. Ikora for more. Then it all pieces together for the next episode. That way the next week a moment happens you can go "oh thats why Ikora needed that" or what ever.
TLDR: The Episode is the outcome, the characters are the story
Thoughts? Expantion of concept?
I agree, this would also make you feel more tied in with the story rather than "Go kill/stop/rescue so and so" and that's it. Like being active in the character's lives, not watching from the sidelines as they go through their issues alone in front of you like you're not there. It's been 10 years, Ikora. I get you wished for your emotions to resemble that of a goldfish, but give me SOMETHING.
I'd be curious how viable it would be from a dev perspective to create campaign-style story missions within the episode model. Re-use existing environments, or augment / expand them. The planetary environments are all quite large and full of space to be repurposed in interesting ways. Each story mission cut from a similar cloth as the last three expansion's campaigns, with a series of encounters and interesting mechanics that build to a crescendo. I feel like they're kind of close to doing this (like with the Saint 14 mission this week), but it's not quite there because there's still kind of an easy mode / busy work feel to these quests, and we wind up getting most of our narrative developments from the vendor conversations rather than the missions themselves. Not sure if I'm making sense.
@@ghoulywood this would be a lot of work. Nessus is changing because the team had a long timw to plan it. I would like to see maybe do something more or improved with patrol beacons. Or hell use story beats to tie in things like lost sectors, collectables. As i said above. Episode should be the outcome, the characters should be the story
@YourPalRowan true, however you still have bounties with the story (aka: fail safe)
I love how much respect you have for myelin. It’s so refreshing to hear some of my favorite creators propping each other up.
Personally, I think the 1st season/episode following each expansion should be directly tied to the story of said DLC. There'd be a more cohesive narrative, more relevance, and it'd get more people to buy both the DLC and season. The way to do it, though, would be to have the episode act as a sort of optional post finale to the DLC story. Take Forsaken: the DLC is the campaign and Tangled Shore stuff, and the following episode would be our activities in the Dreaming City.
That’s basically what the first seasons have been. Risen and Defiance in particular. Unfortunately they need those first seasons to stick around post expansion cycle for that model to work better. Like Risen and Witch Queen should be together when you buy Witch Queen nowadays since it helps expand the Lucent Hive, Savathun’s influence and everything. (I know you can play the PsiOps battlegrounds in vanguard ops but they should just be apart of Witch Queen’s content as the post-campaign)
If they did this people would still complain about not having enough content. That doesn't fix the underlying issue
I really loved that part about the politeness filter from Osiris and that Saint admitted that he is a Titan and needs a simpler explanation XD
Best thing I unintentionally was wait for all of act 1 to be available before playing the episodic story. I just got so busy with final shape stuff I forgot to do the seasonal stuff. Having everything just be back to back to back was really nice. Still not perfect but a lot better than the drip feed
“Ada-1’s Little Studmuffin” is wild bro
What about adding more story missions or side missions in the episodes?
Which would be telling and exploring what’s happening around the episode and what of the state of the story it in.
(we can definitely have a long and interesting conversation about this, just keep it civil & kind. Plus, it’d be fun to talk about.)
It's a massive company they are worth billions, so it's fair to expect more from them. They keep assuring us that they'll improve every year, but we end up going through the same cycle repeatedly. I don't care if they just completed an expansion, that doesn't justify the poor quality of work. They've made commitments to address this issue many times, yet here we are, still making excuses for them.
Remember when they announced they where dramatically increasing the company's size two years ago? When will we actually see that reflected in their final products? As a devoted fan who owns all expansions and DLCs, my criticism is valid. It's disheartening to see no real change occurring each time.
Let's call it what it is, it's low effort content, they are capable of doing more, but they don't.
Okay, not to be too spinfoil: the Ishtar angle is a mis-direct. The Conductor is Vance. Vance's entire thing is sound based. His departure in rivals was....weird.... and I can't get over the fact it seemed like people were having him deleted from their memory.
While this is a good theory I think it's more likely that it's Sundaresh. If you go back to Veil Containment lore, she is literally tied to the title of Conductor and is likely the reason why Vance was able to perceive the pattern in the form of sounds. Now, it's also possible that Vance usurped the title from her but I don't think our boy Vance would do something that drastic. And Asher Mir is also technically part of the Vex Network, but again, I think it's likely that the Nessus branch is being influenced in isolation, whereas Asher was not part of that particular offshoot, and neither was Vance.
@leonalchamendris4036 oh yeah it's most likely Sundaresh, but the idea that Vance has gone full villain is hilarious to me for some reason.
I am happy to see Byf on the same page with other creators and lore masters.
All that discussion aside I hope this turns into us defending these vex instead of ded ded deding everything
9:05
I can tell you as a returning player that this is DEFINITELY the case.
I came back towards the middle of the last season, so I had Deep, Wish, and the Eris becoming a god season to play through all at once.
It was AMAZING to be able to play it all at my own pace, and I always knew that I had more story whenever I wanted it. I then get to this current season, excited to finally receive some lore and story from the seasonal content only to be met with "The Vex are acting weird guys" followed by "Failsafe will get back to you in 7 days."
I was always under the assumption that they would probably play it safe with the new model representing seasons near the beginning as it’s a safe bet that despite how predictable it is for veterans it does work. It’s just been used as a crutch for too long so it’s not the most engaging because I’ve seen all this play out (I like the saint stuff at the end, I’m glad they are kinda acknowledging the corridors of time stuff because I was always curious if we actually traveled back in time)
That being said I do hope there’s a clearer sign of evolution out of it as the episode progresses, like having the changes to the world seem in missions become permanent in the patrol space in act 2.
I also think despite the disappointment of seeing essentially the seasonal model at the beginning it doesn’t feel out of place for what’s currently going on. We don’t know what the hell is happening so we’re collecting samples and despite the weirdness the choral vex aren’t an immediate threat. With the conductor making their move stuff has room to escalate and pick up the pace from here and potentially show that departure from the seasonal structure more clearly
I do think the act structure works, but its just this current story thats not fitting it enough, in most if not all seasonal stories we have always moved towards something we know will happen, ending in us moving forwards towards tfs and the witness, i just dont feel like I have that one point to look towards as of right now. If the conductor was used/mentioned alot more during act 1 as a setup it would feel better, but as of right now im just confused as to what exactly this episode is all about, I know the major characters, and who the conductor most likely is, but what am i supposed to be waiting for, is nessus in danger or is it just changing, i know its bad that its changing but why exactly, would nessus blow up? Witch had eris killing savathun and finding a way to go through the portal, wish was all about us working with riven to grant us the wish to enter, echoes is a setup, but i just dont see what the setup is for, i think with act 2-3 putting more of a focus on the conductor and most likely the echo itself the story will find a more solid ground ,and i think once we get into the stories of say the next episode, with characters and themes we know alot more of (the echoes) its going to flow alot better.
You make me think about things in a different way. I knew Episodes was like Seasons, but I also didn't realize how much of a story we're not getting. Great stuff!
I actually have enjoyed the episode. It's not different from seasons, but it doesn't force FOMO as much as the seasons did. I will say that waiting until the last week to do it all is still viable and I like that it's possible for players that can't play regularly.
I guess you meant "am enjoying".
The episode didn't ended yet, just the first act. We're in for the ad break, in two/three weeks we'll be going back to it.
I know it's not so much to do with the story, but I do really hope (and really wanted) these choral vex to BEHAVE differently. We hear all this stuff about the new strain of Vex acting weird - especially in the lore - but fighting them feels the exact same.
If Vex were ducking behind cover, or just mad rushing me, or... something different, I feel like that would have made a huge difference. Right now, it just feels like the same empty-husk Vex faction
Failsafe not being up-to-date on the events in the solar system doesn't make sense. Guardians with Darkness power have been to Nessus in the lore, Failsafe was already connected to the VanNet in Vanilla to share information, there was a fishing spot on Nessus. She's on the comms for the Nessus strikes, Patrols, Haunted Sectors, etc. She's clearly not oblivious to what happens outside of the Exodus Black
1. Nessus strikes takes place in the past The reason I say this is because in one of the missions has cayde talking despite him now being dead
2. It's Canon that nobody goes to nessus now Unless it's the dawning and we are bringing her cookies
@@RADLight677yeah, now. Cause writers and their metahumour cant cook up anything better. Sure, Failsafe only hasnt been around because Guardians abandoned her, not because shes a permanently grounded ship AI who can only help with nearby Vex a little bit. Jfc
32:32 he threw a glacial grenade, consecrated it, and nothing happened. I felt it in my soul.
Bungie has said that they want us to have zero expectations for them and as such I have only had near unreachable expectations since that was said. TFS, surprisingly, met those expectations. But I was expecting episodes to be on the level of Warmind or House of Wolves and instead we got a less than subpar season.
Allowing us to play past season passes would would help boost new player engagement so while waiting for new season content you can rank up old season passes you might have missed out on
The format is definitely the same. However the amount of care is going up. I haven't felt this way since Seraph. I'm actually enjoying the plot. The format isn't as great as it could be but, Final Shape is what I came here for. This is just a cherry on top. However we still need continued development on the format or a new format entirely. It will do the main narrative and community a lot of good.
Also I love Failsafe so I am very biased. She's getting some deserved development.
If anything it’s worse lol. If this new model is to be expected in “frontiers” I’ll pass! I am already planning on ditching D2 after episode 3 anyhow.
I'm sorry but you are in the minority here.
The timegating is worse than it's ever been. We had 3 story beats so far, one was had us doing bounties.
Now we have to wait 3 weeks for more.
Doesn't matter how good the story is if the way you're going to tell it is lazy and uninspiring.
@@MrWiggz69 I wasn't satisfied with the wait either tbh. I'm mainly looking at what was within the content and not its scheduling.
@@Razgar_Voxel If you're one of the long-time players I don't blame you. It's been a decade and only now there's occasionally successful attempts to improve things.
@@Razgar_VoxelWhy not now? Did some preorder the deluxe edition?
31:05 I think one of the final bosses (the one with the two shielded vex) is an incident, where the precursor-Vex try to capture the rebel-Vex, but we interrupt.
Personally, right now my biggest grip with the story is that Nessus is looks still the same. I don`t know, if they want to make a transition and make the changes in the location later, but I really want Nessus to become permanently different and the new Vex villain to stay. They seem very interesting and really unique. They could become the Savathun of the Vex in there own way.
I really like the story right now. It feels somehow really refreshing (I don`t mean the delivery of the story). This time we have a real focus on discovery and research. There are no clear goals, beside understanding what is happening with Nessus and understanding the new Vex. The storyline with Saint is also very interesting and I`m looking forward to Act 2.
I don't fully get why the first episode launched a week into Final Shape. Final Shape had so much content that I didn't really want to jump into a new thing yet. I'd have been fine with a few months gap before the first episode. Not saying that has always worked to improve first seasons/mini-expansions after a big release but it still makes sense to stagger the content a bit. First Echo landed on Nessus before I even finished the campaign.
Something I think would have helped this episode (and hear me out before you crucify me) would be to take a page from Lightfall. Specifically Neomuna itself. Have 1 zone every day be reformed the the choral vex like we saw in the last mission of act 1. Instead of a matchmade activity like a playlist, give that zone special public events revolving around the rebellion of the choral minds. You could even keep the idea of gathering the new radiolaria as a core requirement of the zone but man that would be so much cooler.
Concerned LITERALLY THREE WEEKS after Bungie drops the best DLC of all time as far as narrative and new content. All I'm saying is the last time we constantly complained devs loss their jobs not the higher ups instead of letting them cook. It's a slippery slope but you'd think they earned grace
Hey byf, so just one small thing about the vex, you actually DO get to see them fighting each other, spazzing out on themselves or going crazy. If you take a stroll through Nessus you actually get to SEE it happening in real time. I just thought that was something small I’d add. It might not be completely shown out front but if you really just take a stroll you get to see and hear a lot of stuff implicated from the lore
Echo's being a bit lackluster is honestly a small thing for me at this point.
So many broken activities/rewards in the Final Shape. Literally 4 updates since launch, and the only thing they've managed to fix is a wrong shader being rewarded.
So thinking about it instead of a waiting step why not do a community event step. Destroy X amount of Vex system wide or destination wide. The reward either being a powerful, prime, or red boarder choice. Consequences could be if you don't meet the required X a burn is removed or the following week is a -5 to the next week power level.
I stopped playing destiny sometime after lightfall but came back for into the light. I only played de current season at the time because bungie made it free and it was legit the best seasonal experience ever. Playing from start to finish without the wait was so much better and is what i plan on doing for every seasonal drop.
Yups it's whay I usally do
If I play week by week I forget it all.
The "Show don't Tell" method is something that really needs more emphasis. I understand how difficult it is to implement changes and deciding which to implement or not. Half the supposed changes to the Vex Byf mentioned I had no idea about because it was simply dialog or lore tabs that were missed or drowned out. Its a shame to only hear about these groundbreaking events and never experience them for myself
Honestly surprised anyone believed them that episodes wouldn't just be a stretched out longer season.
First thing, MNiB, you're nailing the radiolarian nail on the head about the Civil War and I cant agree more.
Second thing. My favorite and most memorable fight sequences are when there's a ton of enemies and they aren't just focused on you. Playing the end of Lightfall where Caitil jumps down and it feels like you're holding multiple points almost felt like a PvE domination mission or a real time strategy level with Caitil as a hero unit. I'm a Hunter main, I love being invisible and sniping elite targets or dodging between enemies that are looking at something else besides my fireteam and delivering punches. This story has SO MUCH POTENTIAL to do exactly that. Combine the "let's start by taking out their commanders one by one" with limited time "assassinate this Choral mind to weaken ___". And its timed so you hopefully can't just end everything in sight and call it a day.
Great insight mate. Thanks for your continued uploads and thoughts
Another issue is bungie not learning from final shape . Ghosts are so valuable for story telling , Saints ghost Jepeto could participate or be written . But no. It’s just guardians yapping in “Destinese” final shape is the only time they don’t do that
truthfully what I would love (an i know this is asking a lot) three missions a week, with a few cutscenes, in each mission is a major change that affects the world around us in some visible way and stays that way and is referenced in future missions that tells a plot thats more linked and run on, than the start stop stuff we have right now
I think besides the episodic model being disappointing and concerning as a result, I'm also concerned that Bungie will not implement the visual changes seen in Echoes missions/activities made to Nessus. Nessus is an old location, it's from the Red War and has remained the same for the most part aside from Caiatl's tank being a permanent part of the Watcher's Grave region. I was willing to let it go when Calus's barge disappeared from it's crashed state in the same area, but the verdant and beautiful landscapes seen in the missions/activities for Echoes on Nessus is too good to just let it be temporary.
These changes should be in patrol, they should be permanent to show that Nessus is in fact changing, it doesn't exactly lend to the story being told when the changes you see are only seen for a temporary amount of time and then you're told to go into patrol to find radiolaria on a reverted Nessus.
Again, Nessus is an old location and has been the same since it was first introduced (again, aside from Caiatl's tank). Making the changes seen in the activities permanent for patrols, new world bosses, and (as Byf said) seeing the Vex civil war would really sell the idea that Nessus is changing in appearance as the Choral Vex continue to win over their predecessors, and also just make Nessus feel fresh again. You can't tell me for a second Guardians wouldn't be scrambling to traverse the green, verdant new Nessus we've been seeing in Echoes just to explore it, especially with what we've seen from the mission involving Saint-14's rescue.
I dont have a problem with this due to the fact i work. I dont have the time i use to like i did when i was in college. At least between these breaks i get to farm and do other stuff in the game. Also i get to follow the story and farm for my red borders. Then also so much is in the exspantion that need to be done. The duality mission, geting the rest for the fragments for prismatic, other exotic missions, not to mention the raid, and the 3 man event in the game. Hell i wish i had time for the raid. But i have a child cant sit there 3 hours are more doing so. So i do like the breaks inbetween the story.
Ima be straight, being "over it" doesn't make it bad. It just makes you bored which is fine. The actual issue is the communication from the devs on the idea of changing that delivery and cadence. Everyone assumes they understand what was meant by that, and obviously either the community misunderstood, or that dev was misleading. All we need is clarification on what we should be expecting. Beyond that, there's not really any real significance to one's burnout or boredom.
wise words mr. horse head profile picture
@@jet6283 I do what I can
Bungie keeps repeating the same stories and hitting the same beats. They intertwine moments of great lore and story telling with the same romance novel level repeats. The last missions of the expansion were amazing and the first 75% were just repeating a season with zero sense of thought. Bungie just keeps making people weak and vulnerable as they explore there feelings, multiple times. It worked for some, and for others we got a Hunter Vanguard that was a meme Bungie saw and said Hold my Beer.
1. Crow is vulnerable and written for sympathy instead of character development. He finally resolves this in a good season and immediately forgets it all and becomes vulernable; rehashing the season for multiple expansion missions.
2. Zavala has a moment of vulernability and we see into his past and his family. The story is amazingly done in the same season. We spend multiple expansion missions rehashing the same shit. We are supposed to believe he wasn't ready and didn't expect the Witness to show his family again. Terrible and out of character.
3. Saint-14 is now vulernable and no longer the walking stalwart, I.E. Himself.
Well put.
kotor lore is wild. Also, this judgment is a little premature. It'd be like judging interstellar by the first 45 minutes yes, the pacing is slow but the world building phase of any story is slow. Let's see what bungie does with the next few acts before we make judgements.
As iffy as SWTOR is to play there's nothing better than bringing friends in who only know KOTOR and then getting hit with questions like "who the fuck is Valkorion"
So my biggest issue with Echos was the structure of the Act 1 finale. I complete a quest step on Nessus and get an urgent call from Osiris to talk to him at the Helm. Where he tells me Saint has gone missing...on Nessus...
I WAS JUST THERE!!! This is the very definition of "this could have been an email". How much more sense would it have made to just have that conversation over comms and have it lead directly into the mission?
3 weeks worth of story, one of them felt like literal filler and then we have to wait 3 more weeks of nothing until act 2... How do we have 3 weeks of story in an act, and STILL we're getting filler weeks? This is literally just the seasonal model, with less story and more timegating. They said they "heard the feedback" and just took all the negative feedback and made it 50x worse.
So far it’s has the same depth as a season except we get 3 seasons instead of 4.
The "coming to do everything including the finale and not at any other time" part is a conclusion I sadly got to years ago, it's sad but it's true and will also lead to burnout because "ok I can't be bothered to run this activity 15 times"
16:51 I think haunted could have worked with the weekly model, but not with the way it's paced, if instead of misses -> fix -> misses -> fix -> misses -> fix, we had something where characters actually interact with each other like let's say you have crow failing then caiatl's attempt, you can make caiatl say to Crow "sometimes you just need to tackle problems head on" or something along those lines who makes the story feel more alive but also allows more buildup and is less (ofc I'm not saying not at all).
Hahahaha, im so glad you listed out the "wait till next week" step. That shits been old for over a yr now!!!
I actually think one thing that would help out a lot is instead of dropping the weekly quest every single Tuesday on reset, Just have it drop random times throughout the week. Maybe Monday at reset. Maybe a Thursday night, Maybe even a Saturday morning surprise. Who knows maybe 2 quest during the same week on different days. Anything to shake-up the idea of just wait until Tuesday. It wouldn't really require a lot of effort on the devs end, but would still give a bit of mystery to the story of what's going to happen next and when. What do you think?
I'm not at all surprised this is the result of Echoes Act 1. Not even close. This is literally every single "expansion season" ever. For me the real interesting stuff is likely gonna be happening in the next 2 episodes.
Another interesting note is the possibility that Saint is a simulation. If this were to be true, that means the Vex can simulate the light. There’s so much that can be done with that too
The set up was there , but my god Act 1 felt like fan fiction the way it was written
9:10 This has been my experience with Destiny. My friend and I got into Destiny after he bounced off of Elden Ring, and we bought The Witch Queen expansion when it was on sale. Ploughin through it - a few chapters every week - was a delightful experience, held back mostly by our lack of knowledge and skill (He grasped Hunter jumping mechanics like nothing. My warlock ass...not so much). It was great! And then the Season of the Wish became free, so we got it...and it became obvious that we were being STRONGLY incentivized to Keep Playing, and Keep Grinding, and Keep Trying For Riven's Eggs. It was fun, and we were loving the story! But the padding felt like it wanted to make you Grind More or Spend Silver For Cosmtics rather than let you enjoy the (clearly lovingly crafted) tale of an Undead Wish-Dragon playing mind-games with Queen-of-the-Space-Elves and her Sadboy Brother.
My buddy dropped Destiny, citing a lack of respect for his time, and I'm on the fence. I still think I'd like to play (I wanna unlock Strand and beat up Emperor Calus, if only for the bragging rights), but it does feel more like a soap opera you play, rather than a coherent game. We were both musing that , were it like Halo, and we could just buy a complete version of the game, we'd do that - but IDK the economics of game design at Bungie, or even if their current model is sustainable.
I just know that running through the same few levels of the Dreaming City to get unlock more Enneagrams to buy more weapons IDK if I even want seemed a bit much, when what I was really here for was to hear the Mara Sov and Riven I-hate-you-but-also-I-ship-it dialogue (which was awesome!)
So far the episode structure just looks like a way for bungie to provide less content in a longer time frame with more time gating.
28:46 Unfortunately, if you read the Enigmal Protocol dialogue from the Conductor, and read the seasonal Sparrow and Ship unlocked in acts 2 and 3 of the seasonal pass (they are not classified), and do Veil Containment, it becomes pretty clear this is in fact just another "something paracausal hijacked the Vex" storyline. The Nessus Vex are not rebelling. They're just being hacked. Again.
Also, like, even if that wasn't the case, the whole choral idea fundamentally misunderstands what the Vex are. The Vex aren't a species; they're a pattern. That pattern was so durable, so rugged, so consistent, that it outlasted the end of countless universes and made it into this one. That pattern is, fundamentally, so ingrained in reality that when it refers to itself in words that we can understand, it calls us Light and Dark, but *it calls itself Truth,* and it associates itself indelibly with reality. As a simulation of Maya Sundaresh put it, Vex is not something you *are*, it is something you *do.* If the Choral Vex were not being hijacked by the Conductor (who appears to also be Maya Sundaresh), they would not be Vex.
Can you tell that I hate this? That the response to the Vex allegedly "not having a face" (which is a deeply ridiculous thing to say when there are multiple Vex 'faces' in the lore that they could have brought in at any time, not counting the ones they brought in in order to have them job for other characters, but whatever) has been to either slap some other character on top of them, or to fundamentally change what they are in a way that flies directly in the face of their whole core concept? This is the first piece of non-Garden Vex content we've had since Splicer, if you don't count the Vex being, y'know, basically just sort of inexplicably present for Lightfall. It *should* have been the first major in-game story about the Vex themselves since fucking... I don't know, I think Undying? As of now, basically the only reason they bring the Vex in is because they want a story where you're shooting enemies who don't have faces. That's a fucking shame.
EDIT: I do really like the Saint stuff, though. I've been feeling like the existential crisis of Saint being 'resurrected' in the Infinite Forest was a missed opportunity for a while. And the fact that it deals with one of the core themes of the Vex gives me hope that they might not be entirely absent from the main story. But y'know. Like. I'm not hopeful, given every other time they've done Vex stuff for the last fucking. Half-decade.
I like it so far, I'm enjoying the build up idk why it's being instantly judged lol.
The community for this game is full of complete crybabies
Because it still feels like a season but with even more timegating. Also we're being charged the same amount for what seems to be the same stuff we'd get during seasons, but less of it.
Basically it feels like nothing changed, both on our end and bungies end
@@RyanAlters we’re getting more stuff than a regular season.
High expectations will unfortunately do that to people, this is why I keep my expectations low and see what turns out. So far, I'm not disappointed with the story.
@@A_Cool_Tunafish ....WHERE??!!
The subtle ways that KOTOR outright told you what the twist was all throughout the game and yet never betrayed that was what was going to happen was a big factor in the reveal. It was right in front of you the whole time and yet no one saw it coming. They even do a flashback mashup showing you all the ways they already told you what the twist was and the fact that you’re only now figuring it out is.. breathtaking
it feels like normal seasons so I don't get the change to call them chapters
I think it's because of formatting the last loose ends of the story, in that there is only three chapters and all of them focusing on a loose end of what is to come, of course out of all the returning characters like Sloan, Asher mir, and deverim, failsafe also had to come back as well but she couldn't really be part of the lead up to the final shape because there wasn't really a place in the story for her, at least that's my theory so they put her in echoes as the "guide" role, also if you look on the season reward thingy as you rank up it goes higher than 100 which never happened in any of the other seasons, of course that isn't to say that you could go over 100 but you wouldn't get any designated reward, you might just get a bright engram and that's it, but I have a feeling it's going to be the same with revenant with the lead up of fikrul vs crow, and The lead-up of what else happened to xivu after Eris banished her and her reaction to the death of the witness, That's my theory though
It would be great if we weren’t lied to about episodes being different from seasons when they’re arguably worse than seasons and the exact same
I was really hoping they would make Failsafe an exo.
R34 artists are SALIVATING at just the mere thought
Crazy how you brought up KOTOR because I was talking to a friend sometime around the Pirate Season (Arc 3.0) and was telling him imagine if we randomly got invaded when we were in orbit or in transit to the tower/helm and had to fight our way out of a ketch to free our ship (obviously with other rewards). It would've been sick and frankly something completely new.
I think all of yall need to chill. Act 1s are usually boring… because its act 1 🤨
One thing I thought about was that the Vex are a perfect enemy to incorporate Helldivers 2-type mechanic between some steps, i.e. as a community we have to liberate a zone (or two) on Nessus and whether we complete these or not determines something for the next step. Perhaps it’s something as simple as the environment change for the next week (and any advantages/disadvantages that might entail). Maybe particular vendors with special gear or consumables become available when a zone is liberated.
It could determine the angle of the following weeks objective. ‘You didn’t liberate so encounters/enemies are set to legendary campaign level difficulty’ - perhaps you have to safe a certain character.
Just a thought anyway, there have been tons of quest type games, instead of trying to come up with one way for things to progress, pull from multiple mechanics to bring variety to you story telling, essentially what you were saying @Byf about changing things up.
Echoes act 1. Aka gay marriage the counseling
Literally how do you get that, nobody is counseling anything about being gay, hes literally being attacked by a vex thing telling him he aint real and his friends gotta help him?? Why did you add gay at all????
The thing you said about pacing is an interesting counter to the idea of giving us everything right up front. I think you could find something of a balance there, giving us entire sections of an episode at once to tell a complete story - but leaving a cliffhanger at the end, drawing us into the next section. All of Act 1 could be a day 1 release, with a pause between it and Act 2 to give narrative tension.
It’s garbage and I don’t understand how anyone likes failsafe.
Soo my guardian is an exo... i was thinking that there could be a debuff in the activities base on our race in game
... like exos being susceptible to being compelled my the conductor or something
Honeymoon phase about to be over. Final Shape is mid.
You hit the nail on the head - I wait until 7 days are left, and blast through the seasonal story since Shadowkeep
The plot is all about 🌈🌈🌈
Nobody literally is thinking this but u .
@@GazingTrandoshanname one straight white couple
@@InfernoPhilM Shaxx and the crucible
The fact that KotOR is still heralded this many years after its release for its story telling quality among many other things, by so many people, speaks volumes about how amazing it was. Hands down my favorite game growing up and easily one of my favorite games of all time. I long ago lost track of how many play throughs I’ve done on it. Still go back to it today and love every minute of it. Props for the call back to solid gold Byf.