Bungie is finally ending one of their most criticized practices in Destiny 2 starting with Episode 2, as the developers confirmed all story content will be available from day one rather than launching weekly story beats.
Confirmed during the Echoes Act 2 official livestream, narrative director Alison Luhrs explained that with the start of Episode 2, all story content planned for Acts 1, 2, and 3 will be released right from the get-go, allowing players to experience this content at their own leisure.
Destiny 2 previously operated with a seasonal model, which ended with Season of the Wish (Season 23) right before The Final Shape introduced Episodes. Fans had initially hoped the new format would allow Bungie to keep the game constantly updated in more meaningful ways, as the latter parts of a season ended up dragging with no weekly content available. Sadly, the opposite happened.
As Episodes are now divided into Acts, each one has a set amount of story content. In Episode Echoes, each story beat is released weekly, however, for the past couple of weeks players have had to dilly-dally around as there's no more story content until Act 2 kicks off on July 16.
Episode 2 will start around late September or early October
Luhrs did reiterate that dropping all story beats on day one of a new Episode is an experimental way for Bungie to test the waters and gather player feedback regarding how the developers release content in the future.
This means that Bungie likely has no extra content to fill in the gaps during subsequent weeks and players will have to decide if going hard on the grind early on is worth it or whether they'll take their time to take advantage of each Episode duration.
As a reminder, Episode 2: Revenant does not have a confirmed start date, but we can infer it will kick off somewhere around late September or early October considering Act 3 of Episode Echoes starts on August 27.
For more Destiny 2 content, check out our Zero Hour exotic mission walkthrough.