Lessons Learned From Destiny 2’s Technically Miraculous First Live Event, Rasputin V. Almighty

Destiny 2
Bungie
Yesterday, Destiny tried something that it’s never done before, and all things considered, it went off swimmingly.
While most players figured that the end of the storyline that had the Almighty targeting the earth and Rasputin blowing it up to stop it would culminate in a simple cutscene, Bungie decided it was time to try something that I have been recommending for ages now, a Fortnite-style live event.
I had heard ahead of time that it would not be a cutscene, though that left me confused. How on earth was Destiny, a game with a notoriously hard to modify engine and toolset, going to do something on par with Fortnite using Unreal, its own, hyper-flexible engine where practically anything is possible?
And yet…
What unfolded was indeed “live.” And despite early indications, it also was more than just simple skybox tomfoolery. Yes, that was 90% of the event, but eventually, once the Almighty was destroyed, we saw it crash to earth, destroy a (tiny) part of the Tower and blast us back with a shockwave. This was a truly transformative live event with no cutscenes, no loading screens, none of that. And Bungie did this is its “spaghetti” engine while everyone was working from home.
If that doesn’t give you some measure of faith in the future of what’s still possible in Destiny 2, I don’t know what will.
So, what takeaways can we have here for future events, given that I think most of us would agree that stuff like this is cool, albeit with some changes.

Destiny 2
Bungie
1. Length
Obviously, the length. I think Bungie was trying to play it ultra-safe to make sure that no one missed this, and yet it started a half hour late (that’s when the first Rasputin missiles appeared and lasted an hour (of which about 40 minutes was the “sparkly” Almighty just sitting there getting peppered by missiles). If we’re using Fortnite as a model here, those events never last longer than 10-15 minutes, and if this started maybe…5 minutes late instead of 30 and lasted 20 minutes instead of 60, I think 95% of the issues people had with this event would have evaporated, and they’d be more focused purely on how cool it was.
2. Advance Notice
I think Bungie needed to give players more of a heads up that this one-time event was happening, as it wasn’t announced until something like 24 hours beforehand, when people already have weekend plans set in place. Fortnite usually gives people a week of advance notice for an event, and lately they even have literal in-game countdowns. The other issue of course was not letting people know how much time they needed to budget, as most figured they’d be logging in at reset for a cutscene, not 90 minutes of watching the skybox, which resulted in some family/partner drama as everyone was delaying their plans that day.

Destiny 2
Bungie
3. Aftermath
I am…a little disappointed in the fact that the only aftermath of the Almighty destruction and meteor shower was a tiny part of the Tower being destroyed. And something so insignificant, just a 20 foot square by Zavala and Tess. If you’re going to have an event this big, spread out the damage, make it more significant. I wanted to see Eververse destroyed and Tess forced go to share a stall with Rahool or something. There’s a lot that could have been done here, and I think it’s a bit of a missed opportunity. The new skybox looks sick though.
4. Immediate Triggers
What I mean by this is giving players something to do immediately after events like this, rather than just walking around looking at stuff. For instance, not saying that this should have or could have been done for this event specifically, but say this was a future event. The Almighty crashing to earth could have not just transformed the Skybox, but say, an actual part of the EDZ as a piece of the ship lands there and spills out. We instantly get a mission telling us to go “clean up” that area and so we go and kill surviving Cabal, find some hidden treasure cache in the wreckage and voila, we have an Heir Apparent catalyst. You get the idea. Make these more participatory in the aftermath. Again, I did not expect this for this first one, it’s just an idea for the future.
All in all, I absolutely want Destiny to keep doing live events now that I know it’s physically possible for them to do so. Out of every game out there, I simply did not believe Destiny could have the technical capability to pull something like this off, but they did, and the technical side of this went off without a hitch. The only real problem was the length, which isn’t a tech issue and can easily be fixed for future events that I would not expect to last this long again. Great work to the team, and I hope they hear that feedback.
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels Herokiller and Herokiller 2, and read my first series, The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also on audiobook.

Read More