The upcoming Season of Equal Rights in Depot 2 will bring together a host of amazing events and memorable moments for players, including the return of our PVP experience, Trials of Osiris, which will be a permanent addition to the game held every weekend. Destiny fans have been asking for the restoration of the Trials for a long time, which is why it's so cool for us to watch as the Guardians themselves launch the Trials return with the Empyrean Foundation.
As the lead designer of the Empyrean Foundation in Season of Dawn, I worked with an amazing team of artists, producers, and developers, and today I wanted to give you an insight into how the Empyrean Foundation was started and how it came together during development.
In the Qualifying Series, players will explore Warmind Bunkers in their quest for Rasputin power.
One of the coolest aspects of working on Destiny 2 has been the team's commitment to building a larger, ever-changing world; a place where guards can make a lasting impact on the game. In Dawn Season, we knew we wanted to give players a chance to have this kind of changing world influence, but it took a lot of discussion to figure out how it would work.
From the beginning, mysterious obelisks were the key to Season of Dawn. Originally they were exclusively located on the Earth's surface (EDZ, Nessus, Mars, and the Tangled Shore) and were heavily tied to the restoration of Santa-14, which we know will be the main focus of the Season's story. At that point in development, the tower's central obelisk was gone and we were thinking about things like how characters like Zavala and Shaxx gave the player the gifts they would use to decorate a hangar to celebrate Santa's return.
After much deliberation and play, we decided to create a Tower obelisk, which simplified the players' activities. Now, instead of going to each location to collect weapons, they can connect the obelisks away from the Tower obelisk and find everything there.
During this time, other parts of the development team were working on bringing back the Trials of Osiris, which we knew would be good news for fans. For me, the biggest "bell ringing" moment was when we realized it had to be the players themselves that return Temptations. That's when we came up with the idea for the redevelopment of the Lightouse with donations to the Empyrean Foundation. This was an opportunity for us to not only entertain other players to play and talk about, but also allow players to come up with meaningful changes. There was a lot of work to do, but we were all excited about the above.
In the Trials of Osiris, Saint-14 will oversee the matches as strikers struggle to reach the Lightouse.
Once we understood the formal structure, we entertained the Empyrean Foundation elements such as the "donate investment" strategies that became a major part of the public discussion at the end of the Season. While anyone can donate their Fractaline money to help advance the Lightouse rebuild, players can also invest their money by upgrading the Tower obelisk and also receiving a huge even temporary payment for Fractaline.
We created the first investment strategy to give players who didn't have much time to play a chance to "catch up" when they returned from the game in the middle of the Season. The players watching discussing the disadvantages and disadvantages of investing have been great fun for the team, especially as we are nearing the end.
We have removed a lot of great lessons from the Empyrean Foundation, lessons that I think will help us as we continue to create opportunities for our players to show their impact on the world of Destiny. Now that the Lightouse is on, Osiris is waiting!
Thanks for being here and see you on March 10 for the inaugural Season of the Right Season, and March 13 for the first weekend of the Trials.
