[spoiler]*A Wild Gringo has appeared*[/spoiler] Hello all, I have an important question I have been nulling over about Destiny 2 that I am surprised nobody has really asked. If you haven't guessed by the title; is the story linear? Allow me to explain why I feel this is so important to be answered prior to D2. Bungie has been all out talking about their new cinematic story that they are introducing. We understand the basic mission structure and that sort of thing, but we don't know how Bungie will put this story into the game. Linear stories, like Halo or Titanfall 2 consist of a story that is removed from the rest of the game (save for pvp maps taking you back to some story locations) that take you on a linear path through their scripted locations taking you from one to the next as you progress until the end. An open world story takes place within an open world (who would have guessed?) in which players are allowed to do something at their own leisure. These are games like Assassin's Creed, GTA, and Skyrim. Usually players are given a directive by an npc who tells them to do a specific thing in a specific location. How scripted these quests are dictated by the developer's choice to reign it in. In something like Assassin's creed you will be killed if you don't follow the path set for you, in Breath of The Wild you can tell everyone to just -blam!- off and hop over to the end boss right from the start.[spoiler]I know it is kind of confusing. Tl;dr Linear- The story happens one mission after the other automatically and can be accessed in non sequential order after the first play through. Open World- You have to actively start a mission by your choice. Once a mission is completed, you have to start a new play through to play it again. Sometimes there are in betweens. [/spoiler] Most games with an open world will have the main story more reigned in where it pushes you to actually do the objective and continue the story while having side quests be fully optional. Destiny 1, while having open worlds, had primarily linear missions. Go to this location, start the mission, do the thing, finish the mission. While taking place in the open worlds (save for a select few missions), Destiny's main story was a weird mix where the missions required you to leave the open world to do them, and they brought you to the open world. Initially this seemed like a good idea, making missions much more easily repayable and allowing a more scripted story while still having it take place in the open worlds, this choice turned out to hurt Destiny. This decision limited Destiny to a relatively small amount of locations, and the smaller natures of Destiny's worlds meant that by the time you were done with the story, there were few locations you could explore for the first time. In the end it lowered the enjoyment of both the open worlds and the story. You can't have a mission outside the City Walls because there is not an open world there, and when you go into the Buried City for the first time after the story is over, you have already been there 3 or 4 times. It seems that Destiny 2 is leaning towards a more linear main story. The opening mission takes place in the Last City, a location that is not a part of an open world. It also appears that there are at least 2 other missions outside of open worlds (on the starkiller ship thing and in the mountains outside of the city. I have pictures of both if you need proof). What I expect happening is it having a linear story that just happens to take place in locations at times that are the open worlds. Imagine Halo 2's exact story but also within the game Delta Halo, High Charity, and New Mombasa were all open worlds. Of course the new Adventures and Lost Sectors seem to be a lot more like Open World style missions where you see an npc who directs you to a location etc. I do think it is important for us to know how linear the story of Destiny 2 is for us to understand what experience to expect from Destiny 2.