Guardians are used to tough fights. From tackling overwhelming obstacles on a battlefield to carefully strategizing with fireteam members to take on a Grandmaster Nightfall, Destiny 2 players need a mix precisely orchestrated skill and experience, complemented by the right loadout, to ensure victory. With the upcoming expansion for Destiny 2 – The Witch Queen – the Bungie team has worked hard to create an unforgettable experience for players. This means new abilities and gear for Guardians (like a revamped Void subclass) to bring into battle. It also means an all-new campaign, unlike any Destiny campaign that came before it.
After spending the last year unraveling Savathûn’s webs of lies, the Guardians will now directly battle the Witch Queen on her own turf – her enigmatic Throne World, an all-new destination in Destiny 2. There they will encounter a labyrinth twisted with challenges as they uncover the mysteries of Savathûn and his Lucent Brood – Hive enemies now powered by the same Light that protects the Guardians.
Today, we’re going to dive into The Witch Queen’s campaign and tell you why this adventure is the most “definitely Destiny” campaign Bungie has ever made. Don’t worry lore buffs, we won’t spoil the story here. Instead, we’ll focus on the challenge and excitement that lies ahead and how the team at Bungie dove deep to make this campaign one you won’t soon forget.
More is more
“One of the things I think we did really well in this campaign is to make every mission memorable,” said Destiny Designer Andrew Hopps. “That was one of our principles. We wanted each mission to feel like individual TV episodes from a season of ‘Star Trek’ or ‘The Mandalorian’ rather than a sliced movie. Each mission should be immediately memorable for its distinct themes, player journey, and unforgettable moments while delivering the campaign’s major story arc.
When talking to the team about the direction they took for the campaign missions, the same adjectives kept coming up. Terms like “epic” and “unforgettable” and even “bombastic”. As development took shape, the team also looked to the non-campaign aspects of Destiny for inspiration, especially dungeons.
For those unaware, Destiny Dungeons are longer adventures that feature unique and often complex game mechanics, storylines, as well as challenging opponents. They also offer bigger rewards at the end.
“We wanted the campaign missions to feel a bit more like a dungeon,” said Destiny Designer Alex Pfeiffer. “Dungeons and exotic missions like Presage are very ambitious and very sophisticated, but not everyone can experience them. They are very difficult, they require you to build a team, and so we wanted to extract what makes these things special and bring them to a wider audience.
In the new campaign, that sense of sophistication and challenge comes in many forms. Pfeiffer points to the epic new traversal sections of the campaign as a good example, where Guardians will stretch their legs and explore massive locations that push movement possibilities.
Reflecting on the development of the campaign, Pfeiffer recalls an internal build review over the summer, where campaign feedback was simple: add more of everything. “We got a bunch of feedback from management, and it was like, ‘More that up. That’s good, but let’s keep pushing it up.'” This ‘push’ came through many ways – from those epic traversal sequences to bigger and better bosses, plus new mechanics that borrow from more complex rules-based gameplay. found in dungeons and raids.
“There’s a lot of cool exploratory bits in our game, and that’s one of the best parts,” said Destiny producer Katherine Walker. “Just being able to learn and explore. The discovery aspect of understanding a new game mechanic is a really cool part of [the new campaign].”
Destiny designer Matt McConnell agrees. “That’s where the dungeon comparison really shines,” he said. “You look at a dungeon like Pit of Heresy and you remember, ‘Oh yeah, I used that sword [and] it was a very memorable aspect. It’s something I did in a fight that was very different from any other dungeon.
“The most of [The Witch Queen campaign] missions have an equivalent to that,” McConnell said. “They have something that sets them apart mechanically, and sets them apart from each other.”
During development, the team spent a lot of time focusing on different difficulty levels. After all, while dungeon-inspired mechanics and challenging encounters are fun for some players, the point of a game’s campaign is, you know, to finish it. This careful tightrope walk was a constant source of discussion for the team.
“I think the change players will notice is the emphasis on action, exploration and creating more tense encounters. There are more times when it gets a little sweaty, but it’s accessible,” said Nathan Thorell, Destiny’s head of testing. “The campaign is designed so that whether you’re soloing or in a squad, there’s an appropriate level of challenge for you.”
“We thought of this as a holistic experience,” McConnell said. “As a story where you need quiet moments and peaks of interest and intrigue – and also difficulty – we wanted these to line up in a way that creates a lot of variation in the experience.”
Become Legendary
Then there are those Guardians who are looking for something a little spicier. The kind of players who wake up and pour nails into their bowls of cereal every morning. Beyond the epic scope and variety of the campaign missions themselves, the Bungie team wanted to make sure veteran Guardians looking for a fight found a level of challenge that suited their skills. Thus, the introduction of the legendary mode in The Witch Queen campaign.
Legendary Mode will be available from the start of The Witch Queen’s campaign – no need to complete the game first to access this higher level of challenge. What can players expect? As Alex Pfeiffer says, the team was meticulous in their dedication to making Legendary just the right amount of sweat, but also well worth the effort it took to get through it.
“We went in and very surgically altered the variations of each encounter to match the highest difficulty,” Pfeiffer said, pointing to the phases of darkness in big encounters, when a team wipe forces players to go back to the beginning of the meeting, for example. Not only did the team spend more time working on a framework for these high-impact missions – including major encounter counts, enemy strength, etc. – but she worked hard to strike a balance so that the player doesn’t feel overwhelmed.
“For the first time in a campaign you will have campaign banners which will give you a full Super, ability energy, full ammo and when you complete that truly epic encounter we will give you double the reward chests [compared to Normal Mode] during the first part. All of this really increases the intensity level of the experience.
“We wanted the rewards to be more satisfying than ever, regardless of the difficulty you choose. [Bungie’s] Joe Sifferman worked closely with the awards team to make this happen,” Hopps said. “At the same time, we also wanted to make sure that players felt incentivized and rewarded for their time and effort if they were up to a bigger challenge in Legendary Mode. Players who conquer this higher difficulty will complete campaign closer to Raid-ready and earn additional unique rewards.
“I actually had the chance to play the entire campaign on Legendary towards the end of production,” McConnell said. “What Legendary mode meant to me was that I finally got to sweat through the campaign. Even though I’ve been on this team for so long and played this content to death on every outing, I felt like it was the first time I wanted to put the controller down and breathe heavily for a second…and then come right back in. It was really a real challenge and it was new and exciting. rightfully pushed as a longtime player.
As Hopps said, “We want players to feel like they’re bringing the ring to Mordor, not like they’re just leaving the Shire. Thus, each mission should feel like a great adventure full of discoveries. To do this, you need to drive the player off the beaten path and take him to interesting and unexpected places.
Destiny 2: The Witch Queen releases today.
