Destiny 2‘s narrative director, Alison Lührs, explains what Destiny 2 players can expect between The Edge of Fate and Renegades in terms of story, and why the seasonal drip-feed model is no longer part of the plan.
The Edge of Fate has officially been out for over two weeks, and players are still getting used to all the new core system changes it brought to the game. Apart from the in-game changes, Edge of Fate also started a new content delivery structure for Destiny 2. Instead of one big expansion a year, we’re now getting two expansions each year, more in line with the size of Rise of Iron. But that’s not the only major change that came with this new era.
Alongside the switch to two expansions, Bungie has also moved away from a storytelling style that’s been part of Destiny 2 for nearly three years: the weekly seasonal drip. How it worked was: you log in every Tuesday, play a quick mission or dialogue scene, and come back next week for the next piece.
That system is now being left behind, and in a new interview, Destiny 2’s narrative director Alison Lührs gave some extra clarity on what’s replacing it, and what players can expect between The Edge of Fate and the next big expansion, Renegades.
Bungie Talks Destiny 2’s New Narrative Structure and What’s Next Before Renegades
In a sit-down conversation with content creator MrRoflWaffles, Lührs explained the reasoning behind Bungie’s decision to step away from weekly seasonal beats. “We wanted to get away from the drip feed,” she said, “and we know that players wanted to too.”
Instead of spreading out small narrative drops across 6-8 weeks like in past seasons, Bungie is now focusing on more self-contained missions and events released between expansions. These won’t be constant, but they’ll be more meaningful and better tied to the overall story.
“There’s still going to be some bespoke missions that you’ll get to play through,” Luhrs said, referring to the time between now (The Edge of Fate) and Renegades, which releases on December 2. “There is some story content that’s going to be coming out between now and then, but we are focusing the majority of our narrative team’s attention on making Renegades the best it can be.”
“We see all of the content that we’re releasing in between our expansions as still part of the same story. So we are telling a continuous story. We wanted to make sure that all this material in between was [both] appropriate, like we wanted to make sure that we weren’t hiding any big important things inside of content that maybe not everyone’s going to be looking at at the same time. But we also didn’t want it to feel totally irrelevant.”
Notably, Renegades will also mark a first for Destiny 2, it’s the franchise’s first expansion to fully license another major IP, with strong inspiration drawn from Star Wars.
So while there won’t be a weekly reason to log in for cutscenes or lore progress, there will still be narrative development, just not in the same steady trickle fans were used to. Bungie’s goal now is to keep players in the loop with important characters and worldbuilding, but without asking them to check in constantly for tiny updates.
Bungie wants Renegades to feel like a “definitively Destiny story”
As for what the story itself looks like during this quiet period before Renegades, Lührs offered a few teases about the direction things are headed. She said: “Let’s consider our fridge, and all the ingredients that we just put inside of it. We just put a prophecy in the fridge, a prophecy of extinction.
“We put in a dead Nine. What does it mean if one of the Nine dies? How does that change the planet that it’s attached to? What plans and machinations might the outer Nines be having in response to one of the Inner’s deaths?” she added.
Lührs made it clear that Renegades won’t be isolated. “We want The Edge of Fate to be the thing that blows the story outwards and connects to lots of different things in brand new ways,” she said. “So we’ll be meeting some new characters. We’re going to be exploring some familiar places in unfamiliar ways. We wanted to make sure that Renegades feels like a definitively Destiny story.”
We already have some in-game lore hints about where Renegades might be taking us, and what characters we might be meeting in this new Star Wars-inspired expansion. You can learn more about it here. On top of that, new behind-the-scenes images have confirmed that legendary former Bungie composer Michael Salvatori is working on Destiny 2’s future soundtrack, seemingly for Renegades.
What do you think about Bungie dropping the weekly seasonal format? Are you happy to see the end of the drip-feed, or did you enjoy that steady rhythm? Let us know in the comments.
