Bungie talks about the challenges of removing time-gating in Destiny 2’s Episode Revenant: “Going forward, we’re going to be investing in as many areas of the game as we can.”
We are in the final days of Episode Revenant. This Destiny 2 episode has brought plenty of surprises for fans, including the return of the D1-inspired fan-favorite activity, Tomb of Elders. Act 3 of Revenant launched earlier this month, adding a brand-new exotic mission to the game, Kell’s Fall.
Alongside all this new content, Bungie has made a major gameplay shift: releasing all of an Act’s content on day one, responding to long-standing player frustrations with time-gated progression. The decision marks a significant departure from Destiny 2’s usual content rollout.
Historically, players have been required to log in on a weekly basis to experience the seasonal story content and quests. While this approach was designed to sustain engagement over time, it often left players feeling restricted. Now, Bungie is testing the waters with this all-at-once model, letting players tackle the Act at their own pace. It’s a change that feels freeing, but it’s not without its own set of challenges.
“If Your Cake is Trash, Nobody Wants to Eat It”
In a new interview with GamesRadar+, the Destiny 2 team opened up about the shift away from time-gating and its ripple effects on player engagement. Senior design lead Tom Farnsworth explained how this new approach aligns with their goal to give players more agency.
“The challenging thing with the new model,” Farnsworth shared, “is that players have clear expectations about what things were in the past in terms of how they interact with the vendors, or what the pacing of the story is, or the amount of content.
“And with the Episodic model, there’s Act 1 and it’s all focused around Onslaught. Act 2 is all focused around [Tomb of Elders], and Act 3 is focused around the Exotic. And I think some players are going to appreciate that, and others are going to feel like they have smaller chunks to focus on initially, versus having them all to play with later.
Bungie’s goal is to strike a delicate balance: offering content that feels substantial without overwhelming players or burning through the gameplay calendar too quickly. Farnsworth noted the broader difficulty of live-service games, saying, “Live-service gameplay models are literally one of the hardest challenges. What’s the right way to give players what they want and let them have agency of experience, while also finding what you were saying about the sustainable path forward?”
One key concern is that players might exhaust all the new content too quickly and lose interest until the next update. Farnsworth stressed the importance of diversifying gameplay options to avoid this pitfall.
“You can’t have any one part of the game bear all the weight of someone’s engagement,” he said. “If everyone’s time is only focused on the Episode and not on playing the core game or other aspects of the release, they’re going to feel like they’re going to eat everything and be done.
“So I know going forward, we’re going to be investing in as many areas of the game as we can to make sure that players have something to do for each mood that they’re in, whether they want to engage with the story, or they want to engage with an Exotic mission, or they want to play the core game, or they want to play PvP. And I think that’s the challenge, making sure that if players feel like they’ve gobbled up everything somewhere they’ve got something else they can hop over to.”
Destiny 2’s narrative lead Jerome Virnich added: “This is in some ways a good problem to have. Because this is only a problem if your cake tastes good, right? If your cake is trash, nobody wants to eat it and it’s not a discussion at all.”
Looking ahead, Bungie has already outlined its plans for Heresy, the next Episode launching February 4, 2025. The team is sticking with its no-time-gating approach but tweaking the rollout schedule to minimize downtime. Bungie promises that “the vast majority of the activities content will be available on the first day of an Act and subsequent weeks will add or evolve the content based on the story.”
What are your thoughts on the current episodic model in Destiny 2? Let us know in the comments below!
