The Episode model that Bungie is employing for this year's Destiny 2 content calendar has been a bit of a struggle. Player numbers are at historic lows but the Final Shape was a conclusion on a ten year saga that was always going to see large numbers check out afterwards. The conclusion was immensely satisfying, but keeping players around after admitting your story has been told is a tough job. Unfortunately, Bungie has largely failed to rise to that challenge, consistently rolling back previous quality of life changes (like reintroducing power caps or rolling back the availability of weapon crafting) to artificially inflate playing time and numbers.
The plan was always to bide time with three Episodes and the last of those are upon us tomorrow. Heresy brings players back to a fan-favorite location, the Deadnaught. This is the Taken King's giant ship and base of operations that was introduced in the Destiny 1 expansion of the same name that really elevated the first game into the success it would become after a rocky start. Can the Dreadnaught similarly raise the level of Destiny 2 as it finds itself now in a tough spot? Who knows? What Destiny really needs is a solid announcement with a clear message of a plan for the game going forward that is going to listen to what fans actually want and open a new story with Codename Frontiers, coming this summer. But until then we have Heresy, it does have promise, and there is a pretty cool trailer to get hyped for the release. Even if the game is in a sorry state, it retains some of the best gunplay in the business, does still have a passionate following, and Bungie still knows how to make a kick-ass trailer.
