One Destiny 2 player, an apparent game developer, has made their own raid to throw one last tomato at former Bungie CEO Pete Parsons, who departed the struggling company amid controversy over the small fortune he'd seemingly recently spent on exotic cars.
Satire Twitter account Pete Carsons, whose operator is currently unclear, proudly revealed "The Vault of Cars" this week – a fully playable, in-browser Destiny raid which parodies the Vault of Glass and features Parsons, reborn as a Taniks-like machine hybrid with a South Park-style bucket mouth, as the final boss.
Spite absolutely drips off of this joke raid. A simulated orbit popup asks, "Do you have what it takes to face Pete Carsons in the Vault of Cars and stop him from purchasing all of the remaining cars in The Last City?"
A Twitter post adds: "Note: This experience is not affiliated with or endorsed by Bungie. It is satire only." You know, in case you weren't sure.
Once you log in to "The Final Car," you're thrown into a conversation with "Pete Carsons, Destroyer of Guardians" in a blurry Vault of Glass. Like every freaking Destiny boss, "Pete Carsons" throws up an invincible shield and starts chucking MacGuffins at you – in this case, a procession of cars with labels like "team reduction, crunch enforcer, layoff candidate, micro management, bad taste," and more.
This is a multilayered fight and a fairly impressive lo-fi recreation of the Vault of Glass final boss, Atheon. If you survive the cars – obviously, by throwing tomatoes at them – you'll be whisked to another realm beset by blinking oracles. If you fail the mechanics, you'll see a wipe screen which confirms that the Guardian in this scenario is named "The Entire Playerbase."
Clearing the raid seems to pull up a "We Want Destiny 3" page, which links to the petition calling for a sequel. The parody's creator, "a random developer," writes, "Building video games is hard. It is very hard.
"This industry is neither forgiving nor secure, and yet – we build these worlds because we know millions of people will be invited to experienced the combined efforts of tens of millions of hours it takes to build those worlds."
This sentiment hits hard as the games industry bloodbath continues amidst, most recently, thousands of layoffs and multiple studio divestments at Xbox.
Skewering "very bad and sometimes obvious decisions" made at the expense of game devs, the creator of Pete Carsons continues: "For me, Destiny was special, and although I never got to work on it, a lot of my friends did, friends who can no longer continue to build their world. This is the devastating reality of those bad decisions. The conditions that presented themselves to make Destiny a reality might not be conditions we see for a very, very long time again, if ever."
This parody comes as Bungie reels from massive layoffs, struggles to even hotfix Destiny 2 now that it's in permanent maintenance mode, and watches Marathon lose players. In May, as players prayed for a Destiny 3, a former Destiny 2 writer said, "It turns out the real Destiny killer was Pete Parsons."
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