You should check out this latest Destiny 2 update because it shows one thing about game design that I can never get over: sometimes you just have to stop resisting what players want. For ten years Bungie pushed against death counters — they even retracted a plan for them in 2014 after community backlash, and then quietly added some later, always walking on eggshells around the "we shouldn't cheapen boss fights" line of thinking. Now it has come full circle: every raid champion finally gets a dedicated death animation when you win — Oryx getting his final defeat cutscene (you can almost hear him scream), Mirrah with hers at Shadrina, and even more expressive finishers for each Raid Champion in the new Arena mode where they fight you head-on.
But it's not just individual animations; there's a death counter that tracks total kills across all raids, dungeons, and strikes this season, plus raid-specific counters for every raid champion — so your triumph is quantified at the end of each run. They even added a "final defeat" montage for Destiny Season Champions in the Raid Champion Arena mode where you fight them directly as an alternative boss encounter on top of the standard raids. The contrast between 2014's resistance and today's embrace of death counters, victory screens, and win-celebration is probably one of the funniest developmental retcons I've seen in gaming over a decade.
What makes this special is that Bungie finally stopped trying to protect its bosses from being appreciated as conquered — every raid champion now has multiple death animations depending on how you beat them (mirrors of Malphas, Shatterer champions get their own versions), and the entire gameplay loop now includes a "victory lap" where players can actually screenshot win screens without any developer looking over their shoulder. It's the kind of story that makes me think about what games will look like in another ten years — less gatekeeping, more celebration, and developers finally trusting their community to be honest about what they want from winning. The final irony is that Bungie once publicly opposed death counters for nearly a decade, yet here we are with an elegant solution everyone loves instead of the "don't celebrate your victory" stance they held on high ground until it no longer served them.
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/destiny-2-comes-full-circle-as-players-honour-the-tradition-of-pushing-bosses-to-their-deaths-this-time-by-becoming-a-porcupine-and-smacking-them-with-a-void-football/
But it's not just individual animations; there's a death counter that tracks total kills across all raids, dungeons, and strikes this season, plus raid-specific counters for every raid champion — so your triumph is quantified at the end of each run. They even added a "final defeat" montage for Destiny Season Champions in the Raid Champion Arena mode where you fight them directly as an alternative boss encounter on top of the standard raids. The contrast between 2014's resistance and today's embrace of death counters, victory screens, and win-celebration is probably one of the funniest developmental retcons I've seen in gaming over a decade.
What makes this special is that Bungie finally stopped trying to protect its bosses from being appreciated as conquered — every raid champion now has multiple death animations depending on how you beat them (mirrors of Malphas, Shatterer champions get their own versions), and the entire gameplay loop now includes a "victory lap" where players can actually screenshot win screens without any developer looking over their shoulder. It's the kind of story that makes me think about what games will look like in another ten years — less gatekeeping, more celebration, and developers finally trusting their community to be honest about what they want from winning. The final irony is that Bungie once publicly opposed death counters for nearly a decade, yet here we are with an elegant solution everyone loves instead of the "don't celebrate your victory" stance they held on high ground until it no longer served them.
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/destiny-2-comes-full-circle-as-players-honour-the-tradition-of-pushing-bosses-to-their-deaths-this-time-by-becoming-a-porcupine-and-smacking-them-with-a-void-football/