Destiny 2 Episode Echo Act II ends on a cliffhanger, but it’s one that drew me in. While the ending of the first act was lackluster, this one pulls the character out of the dead and out of the darkness at the same time to make him relevant in today’s times.
Below are spoilers for the ending. Rising Chorus: Act II IN Destiny 2.
In three weeks the story that unfolded, The episode reflects Act IIWe finally met The Conductor. This force that controlled the Vex and turned them into a colossal army of Radiolaria had been hanging over our heads ever since we defeated The Witness.
Part of the Witness, Echo, fell to Nessus. It didn’t just land there and create an enemy, though something much more fascinating happened. The Conductor began to pull as many Radiolaria as it could into Nessus. This is the stuff the Vex are made of. It’s millions upon millions of small particles that contain individual consciousnesses that come together to form a whole. A truly amazing sci-fi race that I’m always eager to learn more about.
To find The Conductor, we had to fight the Vex for 9 weeks in the various Echoes activities that this episode brought. In between episodes, we also had to collect specimens from Nessus that tell us more about the planet and its evolution with the Vex, which kept me very busy, but also helped us all learn how life could evolve in tandem with a race of time-traveling machines.
Bungie didn’t just focus on what you can do with fresh Vex, however. He looked back. We re-entered The Infinite Forest and experienced a key moment in Community: the discovery of Saint-14’s corpse. The reveal that followed is a callback to the first Destiny AND key moments in Destiny 2History before Final shape.
The face we met was instantly recognizable: Lakshmi-2. Of course, it wasn’t really the Lakshmi-2 we met. It was her creator. You see, that’s when we were bombarded with a ton of lore. To me, Lakshmi-2 is the leader of the Future War Cult, an NPC in The Tower who I’ve interacted with hundreds of times and seen turn into a villain in Destiny 2.
WA Rising Chorus: Act II sees Lakshmi-2’s body taken over by the brain of her creator, Maya Sundaresh. Maya disappeared into The Infinite Forest after Lakshmi-2’s creation and was never heard from again. Like Osiris, she had radical views and wanted to study Vex technology to see how she could adapt it.
While playing the cutscene I felt nostalgic because I recognized the character and knew his face and voice so well. However, he has been updated to feel fresh and fresh in a context that makes complete sense Destiny 2‘s legend.
Echo The Witness fell into Radiolaria and was found by Maya Sundaresh. Her consciousness sought out the power she could feel and now she uses it to finally realize her vision. It serves fans like me who loved the character, but it doesn’t make her inaccessible since she’s technically someone completely fresh.
When A Rising Chorus: Act I ended, we were no closer to meeting the Conductor than we were at the end Final shapeThe ending of Act II really raised the bar for storytelling beyond Destiny 2 DLC. Actually, it looks like a piece of DLC Warming.
It’s a shame that just days after this pivotal and incredibly engaging moment in the game, 220 Bungie employees lost their jobs and over 100 others were absorbed by Sony for other projects.
I played Destiny AND Destiny 2 from the first Alpha build of the first game, and this story moment seemed to hit that high note again. Like we were back in The Taken King, House of WolvesAND The Rise of Iron days. The history and quality of content that we could return to every day was on par with what we had in Echoes of episodes.
Destiny 2The seasonal formula has its place, and while it has felt stretched at times, Bungie has really picked up steam again with Episodes. I have no idea what the future holds for the game, but it would be a huge shame if the Episodes we’re playing now were the fresh climax before the game slowly stagnates and leaves those incredibly fascinating story threads forever unresolved.
