Destiny 2's first live in-game event finally fires: Rasputin destroys The Almighty

Rasputin has finally taken aim at the approaching Almighty and has reduced the Cabal superweapon into a smoking wreck far beyond the reaches of The Last City.

This display of frightening power was Destiny 2’s first ever Fortnite-esque live event that happened in real-time over The Last City as Guardians watched on in awe from the Tower. However, this event did not go quite as expected.

A little over a day ago the official Destiny Twitter account tweeted out: “Rasputin is at full power. Tomorrow at 10AM PT we take aim at the Almighty.”

From this tweet players simply assumed that at this time a new cutscene would become available when loading into the game that would show Rasputin firing at The Almighty to bring it down before it could crash into The Last City.

Bungie creative lead Lars Bakken clarified the above official Destiny tweet by saying ‘You will want to be in the Tower at daily reset.” which confirmed to the community that this would indeed be a live event.

An hour before the daily reset players began to pour into the Tower to secure their spot for the event. An interesting little addition to the Tower is many civilians were present in the courtyard, looking up at The Almighty as it dominated the skybox.

The daily reset time soon rolled around and players were poised to see the event unfold but... nothing happened. Thirty seconds soon passed, then five minutes, then ten without seemingly anything happening.

Players assumed some kind of bug or server overload but Bungie community manager Dylan ‘Dmg04’ Gaffner was quick to ease fears via a tweet that reads: “Taking down a ship that size will take more than an instant. Pull up a chair, grab some popcorn, and enjoy.”

So players waited, and waited, and waited until eventually some faint red streaks were seen heading towards The Almighty from the top right of the skybox.

It is still unclear what these red streaks were although they had obviously come from Rasputin. Were they simply some kind of high tech laser weaponry or had Rasputin launched thousands of Warsats at the Almighty?

As time passed these red streaks began to inch their way closer and closer to the Almighty, another group of red streaks even appeared from the lower left. After about 45 minutes from reset time these streaks began to make contact with The Almighty’s shields leading to small explosions across the skybox.

These impacts soon intensified and became more concentrated towards the main section of The Almighty.

Eventually the big moment had arrived and The Almighty erupted in a blinding flash.

The destroyed Cabal superweapon would then go on to slowly descend to the right and behind the Tower to crash harmlessly beyond The Last City. With the help of the Guardians, Rasputin had indeed saved the last of humanity.

Unfortunately the Tower, and potentially The Last City, did not come out of this unscathed. Near where Zavala stands a chunk of The Almighty made contact with part of The Tower causing a large amount of what only appears to be superficial damage. Players are able to inspect this crash site to be rewarded with the ‘Seraph’s Wings’ emblem.

From the daily reset time until the completion of the event took 90 minutes, far longer than anyone was expecting, which obviously left people a bit peeved.

Many community members took to Twitter to voice their thoughts. Datto had the following to say: “The event seems like it was a technical achievement for Bungie, seems like things worked exactly how they wanted it to, which is great. Final 5 minutes were cool. Definitely needed to be much shorter. Hopefully we can see some cooler stuff in the future with this new tech.”

One of Destiny’s biggest streamers Gladd also voiced his opinion: “Say what you want but...I would really like to see more of this stuff in the future. Those last 20 minutes were super f*cking hype, man! Hopefully the team takes some feedback [about length] and blows our minds more in the future”

So it seems the biggest takeaway Bungie can use from this event is to do with the length. Over an hour and a half is simply too long for people to sit there and stare at their screens waiting for something to happen.

As Bungie’s first true live event though it was extremely successful with almost 200k people tuning in on Twitch to view the event.

It's very exciting to think about what Bungie can do with this new approach, especially considering where we are heading in the future in regards to The Darkness and the Pyramid Ships.

Be sure to tune in to the Bungie Twitch channel at 9AM PT June 9 to get a taste as to what’s in store for the future of Destiny 2.