- Destiny 2 hosted its first live event in-game on Saturday, blowing up the Almighty superweapon.
- The destruction of the Almighty had been a season in the making, and after a 90-minute wait, everyone who was online in Destiny 2 got to see the ship come crashing down.
- The pacing of the event was far too slow, but the crash landing was exciting.
Perhaps against my better judgment, I decided to attend the first Destiny 2 live event on Saturday. Much like the live events that Fortnite has popularized in recent years, Destiny 2 developer Bungie wanted to wrap the latest season of its online game with a bang by giving players a reason to all log in at once and see something that would only happen once. If you missed it, you’re out of luck. But that’s what makes it so impactful, and Fortnite has shown time and time again just how invested players are in unique occurrences like these.
In the days leading up to the event, Bungie revealed that the Almighty — a superweapon built by the self-proclaimed leader of the Cabal Empire, Dominus Ghaul — would finally come down. In a last ditch effort, after Ghaul and the Red Legion had been defeated, a surviving Psion Flayer set the Almighty on a collision course with Earth.
With just a few days left before the crash, Rasputin, the Warmind built to defend Earth, bombarded the Almighty with enough firepower to blow it up, saving the Last City and the Tower. Which brings us to the live event, as we watched it all happen in real time — excruciating, agonizing, painfully slow real time.
Here is my timeline of the Almighty live event that was scheduled to begin at 1:00 pm ET on Saturday:
- 12:45 pm ET: I can’t access Destiny 2 because I forgot to check for updates earlier. Here’s hoping this download finishes more quickly than my PS4 is saying it will.
- 12:50 pm ET: I load up Twitch and watch DrLupo’s stream while I wait for the update to install. He’s looking at the Almighty on his stream, but nothing is happening other than the occasional musical cue kicking in.
- 1:00 pm ET: I continue to watch the stream as nothing continues to happen.
- 1:15 pm ET: My PS4 finally finishes updating Destiny 2. I log on and head to the Tower.
- 1:20 pm ET: I find a spot to post up near the Annex, but still nothing has happened yet.
- 1:30 pm ET: What appear to be lasers can now be seen to the northeast of the Almighty. (Yeah, I know that’s not how space works, but relative to my view, they were coming in from the northeast).
- 1:40 pm ET: Lasers have now been spotted to the southwest of the Almighty.
- 1:50 pm ET: The lasers have hit the ship. I can tell because there are some blurry dots shimmering all around the Almighty. And we all know that this is what happens when space ships explode.
- 2:13 pm ET: I’ve been staring at a sparkly space ship with lasers hitting it for close to thirty minutes.
- 2:20 pm ET: These lasers are really going to town on this ship! So many sparkly dots!
- 2:23 pm ET: Someone joined me over by the Annex and promptly killed themselves by jumping into the abyss. I feel you, friend.
- 2:24 pm ET: Based on just how sparkly the Almighty is looking, I have to assume it’s about to come down. (Cut to me sitting here four hours later looking at the same semi-static image).
- 2:29 pm ET: Finally! There was a massive explosion at the core of the Almighty and now the ship — or at least a very large chunk of it — appears to be hurtling toward us.
- 2:33 pm ET: The ship barely missed the Tower, but sent an epic shockwave when it touched down in the nearby mountains. Smoke is now billowing out of the crater it created.
- 2:35 pm ET: Meteors are streaking across the sky. Almost nothing remains of the Almighty.
- 2:40 pm ET: The event appears to have concluded, but the Tower’s Courtyard did sustain some damage, though it appears to be cosmetic in nature.
- 2:45 pm ET: Ah! When I inspected the crash site, I was awarded a new emblem called Seraph’s Wings.
As a showcase of what Destiny 2 is capable of, the event was impressive. But with that said, the pacing of the event was egregiously slow. To be fair, had it occurred on time, I would’ve missed it, because I didn’t have enough foresight to make sure my game was up to date (and as often as people drop in and out of Destiny 2 for weeks or months at a time, I doubt I was the only one). It also would have been nice to see more interactivity.
Bungie has already confirmed that Destiny 2 will be playable on the PS5 and Xbox Series X. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Destiny 3 is years away, but if Bungie expects people to keep coming back and buying season passes, the scope and scale of these live events need to grow, and the seasons need more varied content.
