Destiny 2‘s Season of the Wish is the last time Bungie will use its seasonal content system, switching instead to a new episodic story format between its major expansions. Part of that change is a response to feedback from players that, after four years, the seasonal approach of weekly short story missions had become stale. Each season’s story followed a model that Destiny fans started to expect and anticipate, and while Destiny 2’s seasonal stories have largely been thoughtful and engaging, they were also getting repetitive in their structure.
“Speaking for the narrative team, we hear our audience loud and clear that the structure of our story may have become predictable, even if the story quality is still high,” said lead narrative designer Jonathan To during a roundtable discussion of the Season of the Wish. “We’re working on a number of things right now that we can’t explicitly share, but that involves changing up the structure so that we can pleasantly surprise you guys more frequently in the future.”
Instead of four seasons per year, each covering about 10 weeks (although sometimes more when expansions are delayed), the year after Destiny 2’s next expansion, The Final Shape, will see the periodic release of three episodes. Each episode will be broken into three acts, with larger chunks of story to go with new weapons and armor, activities, and the other content that seasons have included.