Destiny 2: Season of Dawn is finally winding down. It feels like it has lasted forever, but starting next week a new season focused on Rasputin and Trials of Osiris will kick off.
Season of Dawn may mark the beginning of the end of Destiny 2’s experiment of creating seasons with the philosophy of “you had to be there” or in other words, intentionally causing some FOMO (feeling of missing out).
The original idea behind the Year 3 seasonal model of Destiny 2 was to create temporary story beats and activities that begin and ended within that season. Partly out of necessity because of steadily increasing amount of storage space that Destiny 2 has built up over the years, but also part as a design choice too.
Destiny 2 director Luke Smith said in a Destiny 2 director’s cut post last year that he believed that the best Destiny moments were the ones that you had to be there for. They would end, and eventually become a legend within the community. An example would be the notoriously difficult Skolas fight which was only really relevant during the House of Wolves era of Destiny 1.
Rather than wait for those moments to organically happen, with this new seasonal model, the development team tried to see if they could regularly create these moments every few months, and keep players invested out of fear of missing out on them. Using the House of Wolves example, if Skolas was only going to be around for one season, you might be more inclined to make sure you hopped on Destiny before you missed your chance to ever fight him.
In some areas it is a step forward, and in other areas it’s problematic. Smith noted as much in his most recent director’s cut. He, like many Destiny 2 fans, enjoys that the narrative is finally interconnected and going somewhere for the first time pretty much ever, but he isn’t a fan of the seasonal activities that are already getting stale after just two iterations.
While Bungie might be ready to axe the current model, before Season of Dawn wraps up let’s break down a few of the key features and see if it succeeded in creating a little bit of FOMO, for better or worse.
