In a roundtable interview with Destiny 2 developers this week, lead narrative designer Jonathan To made a very off-handed comment about a Destiny 2 dating sim, and now it’s the only thing I can think about. Per , when a Destiny dating sim was mentioned as a joke, To said something like that “has been made in game devও jams within Bungie.” Bungie, buddy, you gotta make thaﷺt game. You don’t know how badly I need to smooch Lord Shaxx.
I want to be clear that To isn’t saying that a dating sim was ever, or will ever be, in development. At a b✅ig studio like Bungie, a game jam is essentially a team building activity. Some devs prototyped a Destiny dating sim for an internal competition, as a joke, or just for fun, but that doesn’t mean it was ever something that was in the studio’s development pipeline. I’m just saying it should be.
For many of us, the characters and relationships in Destiny 2 are as important as god rolls and raid ༺races. The joy of being a part of an ongoing story like this is watching how the characters grow and change over time, and many of Destiny’s strongest story moments have centered around relationships. Watching Osiris and Saint-14 reunite in Season of the Dawn, seeing Zavala find closure with the memory of his wife in Season of the Haunted, watching Crow and Amanda’s relationship develop throughout The Witch Queen, these are the narrative high points of Destiny. Few games approach love and relationships with as much candor and sincerity as Destiny 2, and a dating sim would give Bungie’s excellent writers an opportunity to explore new aspects of our favorite characters.
The Last Ofꦫ Us Part 2 Remastered Has Skins Referencing Destiny And Mortꩵal Kombat
The Last of Us P🐬art 2 R🐲emastered has a ton of unlockable skins that reference other big gaming series.
It would be a great opportunity for players to feel more engaged with Destiny’s storytelling, too. As great as the narrative is at times, we’re completely removed from it as the player. Scenes play out in cutscenes or like live theater in front of us, but we’re never invited to be part of the story being told. A dating sim would offer a t൩otally different kind of st𝐆orytelling for Destiny, one in which the player gets to make decisions about the shape that story takes.
There’s a lot of obvious candidates for the subject of a Destiny dating sim. It could follow Crow’s journey to cope with the loss of Amanda and find new love somewhere unexpಞected. It could be about Ikora deciding to find a life for herself that means something outside of the eternal war against the darkness. It could even be about a totally new guardian we’ve neve🦂r met before or a mission to make a love connection in the tower, with only brief cameos from our favorite characters. Dead by Daylight, Valorant, and Overwatch have done the dating-sim spin-off bit as a goof, but Destiny has an opportunity to approach that kind of game both earnestly and playfully, in a way that expands the lore of the universe without betraying its tone for the sake of a joke.
I know deep down we'll never get this game, because the Crucible players would go nuclear.
Bungie introduced a new weapon for 2020’s Crimson Days event called The Vow. The Valentine’s themed Crucible reward has a lore tab I’ll always remember, and I’ve never had a chance to write about it until now. The appropriately named The Vow tells the story of Lord Shaxx welcoming us to the Crimson Days event and introducing the bow as a prize to be earned in combat. He vows to offer his hand in marriage to those who win the bow, so if you played during Crimson Days in 2020 and acquired The Vow, you’re canonically married to Lord Shaxx. We may have been defending the timeline from a Vex invasion at the tim♏e, but we still found time for a special, silly little moment in all that chaos. Bungie has always managed to find the per🐷fect balance between drama and comedy in Destiny 2, and while it could be played for a gag, I can easily envision a Destiny dating sim that delivers some real gut punches and tender, grounded character moments.
Or it could just ♏be about smooching my husband Shax🃏x. I’d be cool with that too.
