With Destiny 2 players complaining about its raid date being so close to campaign launch, Bungie has come out to clarify what exactly is going on, and it’s what I figured, it has to do with the story finale of the Light and Darkness saga.
Destiny 2 expansion Project Lead Catarina Macedo took to Twitter to explain why this is happening:
“Hey everyone! Want to talk about why The Final Shape raid is going live shortly after release on June 7. We know this is a tight turnaround and wanted to share some context on why we made this decision. Back in August, we said that finishing the campaign would not be the grand finale of the Light and Darkness saga. You will be facing off against the Witness in the raid, and for non-raiders there will be an opportunity for everyone to experience the conclusion sometime after the raid.”
“The Final Shape expansion is different: the additional content in the Pale Heart post-campaign and unlocking the raid for everyone is important for getting a cohesive and satisfying story experience. We’re looking at you raiders to be the tip of the spear. When raid day arrives, no matter if you choose to go in for Contest mode in the first 48 hours or wait for Normal mode to unlock, in order to experience the story linearly and as intended, you need to have the campaign completed and finish the quest ‘Wild Card’. Prioritize those!”
In short, the reason the raid is so close is that the finale of the expansion explaining the final fate of the Witness and Traveler cannot be delayed until reset or ten days from launch or anything that would kill the momentum of the expansion.
Later, an actual timeline was confirmed by Bungie as to how The Final Shape will launch, in terms of its mission raid structure:
1) Start with seven campaign missions
2) Players complete the quest “Wild Card” (unclear what this is)
3) The raid launches on Friday, three days after launch (Macedo says players will start making artifact progress from day one of release).
4) The eighth and final campaign story mission takes place after the raid and is likely the actual final showdown against the Witness, rather than the raid itself ending its story. I have to believe this is because Bungie doesn’t want just a tiny percent of the population, day one raiders, to finish the story through a world’s first race, which makes sense.
5) The following week at reset, the first episode launches, Echoes, the Vex-focused storyline that will be broken into three parts over the course of four months. It’s unclear if there might be lingering, unknown quests from Final Shape itself besides this.
So, I do think that clears things up, and I understand the need to have the raid that close to launch so the story can be finished by the end of the weekend rather than dragging itself out. And it wouldn’t make a ton of sense to have the entire campaign before the raid, and have the raid itself end the story.
Prepare accordingly, you have a month and a half-ish left to strategize.
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