What Is Bungie Hiding About ‘Destiny 2’ Season 17?

Games What Is Bungie Hiding About ‘Destiny 2’ Season 17? Paul Tassi Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet. May 21, 2022, 08:57am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Rasputin Destiny 2 At this point, Bungie has made their plans about Destiny 2 season 17 clear . They want everything, all story components, and even the new elemental update, hidden until the day of launch. We’ve had day-of Destiny 2 seasonal trailers before, but it was usually under special circumstances, and so I have to wonder, what’s so special about season 17? I want to address a sentiment I’ve started to see that Bungie is somehow hiding something bad , like what they have to show is not impressive, or no 3.0 element is actually coming. All of that has been shot down. Nothing is wrong, and yes, an element update is for sure coming. But past that, it’s actually the opposite, Bungie has been unusually hyped about this season. I have seen many, many team members talking about how their colleagues have knocked it out of the park or some other manner of high praise. Kevin Yanes from the sandbox team actually wants to see people’s reaction videos. Reactions…to what? So, what’s going on? A few theories: The Elemental Update Is Part of the Plot – One of the only reasons I could see it making sense to hide the new elemental subclass is if maybe it’s integrated into the storyline somehow. There was a huge story component to stasis, but not to the void 3.0 update. But if this is say, solar, I do wonder if that could be tied to some sort of actual plot point in the story of the season itself, which is why they may not want to detail it now, as perhaps unlike void 3.0, we do not log in and just get every aspect and fragment, and those are dolled out as we go, allowing us to discover the new abilities over time rather than reading them in a TWAB line list. MORE FOR YOU ‘Demon Slayer’ Season 2 Finally Has An Actual 2021 Release Date Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Not A Sure Thing, Says Director ‘Genshin Impact’ Still Refuses To Increase Anniversary Rewards, Despite Fan Outcry The Name Would Give It Away – Right now we have zero indication what the plot is or what characters will be the focus of season 17. Zero, other than general hints about a myriad of Year 5 storylines that could come any time. It’s possible, and these are just examples, that something like Season of the Emperor would give away Calus’ return immediately, or Season of the Archangel would paint a clear picture this is about the resurgence of Rasputin. Yes, I have heard the allegedly leaked name with minimal sourcing that does not really say anything explicit, but I dunno, it’s just part of the mystery package I guess. Forsaken Bungie Someone Dies – Famously, Bungie promoted Cayde-6’s death as the main crux of the entire Forsaken marketing campaign, “spoiling” what would have been a huge plot twist in the intro mission. Now, I wonder if they might be planning a similarly big moment (no NPCs died in Witch Queen other than Savathun, and she’s almost certainly not permanently dead) but without giving it away this time. Not that I have any concrete guesses as to who could die, or how, but this does seem like the type of thing you might want to leave as a shocking opener to a season. Someone Or Something Big Shows Up – I don’t want to go into mega-high expectation mode here, but with his much secrecy on top of this much hype from Bungie internally, my mind keeps leaping to something really big happening. The scenario I have in my head is suddenly the Leviathan shows up again with a lot of its content returned, or one of the other planets fully reappears with a new role to play. The Witness himself arrives and has devastated an existing zone we know. Something just…very large that is a major change to the game when we log in. Again, one of the only times this day-of reveal happened was Season of Arrivals when suddenly the Pyramids all showed up, so that’s the kind of thing I have in mind. So yeah, that’s what I’ve been turning over in my head. It’s hard not to picture something pretty above and beyond a fully standard season given the secrecy and Bungie’s comments. Whether or not that pans out or not remains to be seen, but we’ll know everything Tuesday, it seems, or sooner if we start seeing leaks roll in. Follow me on Twitter , YouTube , Facebook and Instagram . Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls . Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy . Paul Tassi Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions