The Destiny experience is one that has continued to evolve and for many players, improve over the numerous years that the franchise has been active. This includes the game's narrative, something which most felt was one of the weaker elements when the original Destiny first launched back in 2014. Much of it was hidden either in flavor text for weapons and armor, or locked away on the Bungie website inside of unlockable cards.
As fans now know, much of that was due to a complete rework of Destiny's story late in development. Thankfully, Destiny 2 corrected those mistakes and for most current players, the narrative has gotten exteremely strong through its past few seasons. Players have seen the return of characters once thought to be dead like Uldren "Crow" Sov and his sister Mara, while the Savathun story has continued to become more and more compelling leading to the Hive Queen's actual reveal in last month's Witch Queen expansion event.
As part of that evolution in story, Bungie is planning some major new design philosphies for the Witch Queen. In fact, Destiny 2 fans got a small taste of that in the reveal trailer as new Hive Guardians were introduced, showcasing light based abilities of Void, Solar, and Arc. Destiny general manager Justin Truman revealed that the addition of these new enemies is meant to instill a sense of fear and terror into players similar to how the Fallen Captains in the Cosmodrome have felt all of these years. Bungie wanted to turn the tables on players with these Hive Guardians.
We've had, I feel like, years in the lore and in the storytelling of just the idea of the Fallen, the Cabal, even in their own way, the Hive, just being kind of terrified of the idea of one of these immortal Guardians dropping in and wrecking house.
According to game director Joe Blackburn, The Witch Queen is intended to be a definitive Destiny campaign, one that blurs the lines between campaign and aspirational content for both veteran and new players. Blackburn goes on to say that part of the way the studio has attempted to do that is with activities like Expunge and more recently, the Shattered Realm weekly missions. Instead of traditional linear levels, these specialized content is more like a dungeon, or in the case for the Shattered Realm, a metroidvania style game where there are secrets to find only once certain unlocks from the seasonal artifact are unlocked.
The stuff this season is like a metroidvania game, which is pretty cool to be in mainline Destiny. We want to keep blurring that line so that eventually, when you're playing through the campaigns, it feels like we're stepping you into this content. And even in the early stuff, in the Witch Queen campaign and these missions we talked about, we said, 'Hey, this is going to be the definitive Destiny campaign.'
The switch in scope is to help newer players find the good content right off the bat, rather than work through more straightforward missions first in order to unlock the bigger and better stuff later. While there's still a lot left to learn about the Witch Queen expansion, one way the team is offering players a new way to experience the Destiny 2: Witch Queen campaign is through a Legendary Mode option. Taking inspiration from titles like DOOM, Halo, and even Titanfall, Legendary difficulty will offer players the ultimate challenge, scaling based on the number of players in the fireteam and offering plenty of rewards for those willing to dive in.
Destiny 2 is now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: GameSpot