Serra

In 2015, Destiny’s first true expansion, The Taken King, introduced players to the pantheon of Hive dieties: Oryx, the titular Taken King, and his two sisters, Savathûn, the Hive god of deception and Witch Queen, and Xivu Arath, the Hive God of War. Although players slew Oryx, Savathûn and Xivu Arath remained as looming presences in the shadows of the franchise’s narrative. Last year, Savathûn took on a more significant role, manipulating and driving much of the ongoing story. Destiny 2: The Witch Queen picks up shortly after the culmination of year 4, bringing players into direct conflict with Savathûn in her own realm.

This will largely be a review of Destiny 2’s latest expansion, but it will also be a reflection on the previous year and a long-term evaluation of this game and franchise.

And as usual, this is going to be a long one, so grab a snack and buckle in~

The narrative problem with characters built around tricks and manipulation is that they become easy crutches for writers to turn to whenever an unexpected twist or shocking outcome needs explanation. Loki always has another card to play; Every step is according to Aizen’s plan; and Savathûn has a hand in every plot. Savathûn, Oryx’s conniving sister, has been orchestrating events in the Destiny universe for ages time and has been one of the driving forces in the Destiny 2's story since its second year, albeit often in a secretive role. She played a role in shaping the events of Forsaken, laid out traps to launch the Season of Opulence, manipulated guardians to do her work in Shadowkeep, directly interfered with the plans of the Black Fleet during the Season of Arrivals, and then ensnared and took on the guise of Osiris to manipulate players and the Vanguard over the course of the ongoing storyline of year 4. Savathûn has always been lurking, ready to manipulate a situation or spring a trap, and any time there has been anything suspicious, the community has been quick to look for hints of Savathûn. All that is to say, Savathûn was not a minor villain and there has been a lot of build-up around her.

The final season of year 4 saw Savathûn enter into a bargain with Mara Sov, the Awoken Queen of the Reef, to free her of her worm, the parasitic lifeform that gave her tremendous power and immortality, but at the cost of becoming a slave to its immutable need to consume. In the climactic moments of the season finale, Savathûn’s connection to the Darkness was broken and her immortality ended, but she escaped before a killing blow could be struck. The Witch Queen opens with the sudden appearance of Savathûn’s massive throne world over the recently restored Mars, a planet that narratively disappeared because of the return of the Black Fleet in last year’s Beyond Light, but actually disappeared due to game and development constraints. Upon exploring her throne world, a Gothic castle surrounded by a dreary and forlorn swamp, players soon encounter Hive opponents unshackled from the Darkness and wielding the Light. The narrative unfolds from there, as players try to uncover how Savathûn and her Lucent Brood gained access to the Traveler’s blessings and the Light and what her greater plans entail.

I have not shied away from criticizing Bungie’s narrative decisions and writing in the past, and I would be lying if I said that I was not apprehensive of their ability to actually deliver a satisfying story after years of building-up Savathûn. Destiny has had some good narrative expansions (Forsaken and The Taken King), and it has had some that failed to reach that bar (pretty much everything else). And then there is The Witch Queen. From a narrative perspective, this is, by a long shot, the best Destiny expansion we have ever seen. I also do not think it is a stretch to argue that this is the best story Bungie has ever told, across all their franchises. For years, Bungie has set pieces on the board with little resolution, but with The Witch Queen, they have finally delivered on mysteries and story threads that have been in place for years. Savathûn is handled brilliantly and the expansion about the queen of deceptions and lies is filled with enormous twists and revelations for the Destiny franchise, some that undermine elements we have believed since Destiny 1, but in a completely believable and organic manner.

It is not just the narrative, but also from a gameplay perspective, The Witch Queen campaign ranks among the best campaigns Bungie has produced. The Witch Queen campaign is comprised of long missions with challenging fights, a welcome break from the brief campaigns that could easily be completed in an afternoon which have been a hallmark of too many Destiny 2 expansions. The Witch Queen also abandons the campaign formula of the past three years. Forsaken was structured around a hit list, which made sense given the revenge narrative of that expansion, but ever since the success of Forsaken, Bungie has over-relied on that sudo-open-world approach for the subsequent campaigns. With The Witch Queen, gone are the days of chasing after the main boss’s lieutenants, running around to complete patrol objectives, or hunting for chests. Instead, the campaign offers spectacular story missions that help the narrative flow from one story beat to the next with little downtime. My favorite mission puts players against a fearsome sniper that will not hesitate to one-shot players (reminiscent of the experience I wanted from the Rifleman in Forsaken), follows that with an encounter that hearkens back to one of my favorite fights in Destiny history, and then culminates in a vehicle escape that would feel at place aboard an exploding Halo. I would go so far as to rank that mission on the same level as The Covenant from Halo 3 or Halo’s Silent Cartographer, this expansion is that good.

There was a point in Destiny 2’s history where Bungie made a shift and stopped rewarding the game’s higher-skilled players. The most challenging content offered no meaningful rewards or, at best, meager cosmetics. That trend has reversed course in recent seasons and Bungie has been taking steps to embrace the more serious players again. In that vein, The Witch Queen finally brings back a higher difficulty option for the campaign. While the difficulty is not on the same level as Master level content or day one raiding, it was still a challenge and I died more during this campaign than I ever have in any Destiny campaign. Now, on one hand, numerous players and reviewers have praised Bungie for this difficulty setting, and I was certainly happy to not breeze through the campaign in a single afternoon, but at the same time, I do not think the amount of praise is justified given the original Destiny shipped with a difficulty selector and it is a feature that exists in numerous other games. There are certainly aspects of the higher campaign difficulty that deserve praise: The way the challenge scales when playing in a group; The way rewards have been balanced so players can progress from one mission to the next without needing to level; The copious supply of upgrade materials so players do not need to hinder the experience by using a bunch of random gear; these are all things for which Bungie deserve praise. But the reintroduction of the difficulty setting is a low bar to heap on accolades.

As spectacular as the release and initial wave of content around The Witch Queen has been, that is not to say the complete package has been flawless. As has become the norm, Bungie also launched the latest season in the game’s ongoing storyline. During Shadowkeep and the start of year 3, Bungie started using the seasonal release model to focus and craft an ongoing story. Although it started out rocky and has had its low points, I think most players would agree that, narratively, it has drastically improved and the story that was told across year 4 is widely seen as a high point for storytelling in Destiny. However, there is also no doubt that this seasonal cadence has led to some stagnation

The central pillars of the Destiny gameplay experience, the movement and shooting, have always been exceptional. Bungie has spent over twenty years perfecting that experience. Their problem is that gameplay experience has been positioned into what amounts to different iterations of the same activity for years. Whether it is the latest match-made activity packaged with a new expansion or the newest seasonal activity, for several years now, it has felt like Bungie is going for a passing grade when we know they can deliver so much more. This is certainly an unfair comparison, but looking at the diversity of experiences featured throughout the franchise’s raids and even in The Witch Queen campaign highlight the excellent variation in content Bungie can produce. While, yes, content should be accessible to players at all skill levels and Bungie intentionally limits the complexity of activities that feature matchmaking, I do not think those factors mean these activities cannot be more creative. There are only so many times players want to shoot crystals, dunk orbs, deposit motes, or stand on plates, and we are long past that point.

As often as I have felt a nagging tinge to give it a try, I have never played Final Fantasy XIV, but on several occasions, I have had conversations regarding Yoshida’s perspective on player retention. Instead of building a game around the expectation that players will log in every day or week, they have instead focused more on delivering compelling story beats and engaging content that draws people in. If a player leaves or takes a break, the Final Fantasy XIV team has faith that they can continue producing high-quality releases that will draw those players back. The Witch Queen was exceptional, the seasonal stories have been getting better and better, and Destiny’s core gameplay experience is second to none, so I wish the game did not place so much pressure on players to log in consistently. I am not complaining about things like loot lock-outs, those are fairly standard. One of my biggest issues is that, as good as the seasonal stories have been, it has felt like a chore to log in each week to run the largely similar seasonal activities for a couple minutes of plot progression. Having said that, this most recent season concluded after around a month, so maybe Bungie has responded to the discontent from the community (or the season was not as fleshed out due to their focus on Witch Queen, it is too early to say for sure..).

Last year, Beyond Light introduced the first element and subclasses associated with the Darkness, Stasis. As a whole, the Stasis kits were regarded as far superior to the Light subclasses and offered greater flexibility and options for customization. Over the past year, speculation ran rampant regarding the presumed element Bungie would introduce with The Witch Queen. However, when they officially revealed the expansion last summer, they announced that this year would be devoted to updating the existing Light subclasses rather than introducing a new element. The Void subclasses were updated with The Witch Queen, with Arc and Solar scheduled for later this year. Prior to this update, the Light subclasses were self-contained trees. Players would choose one of three tree, and that would define their kit. These kits were built around specific identities and the perks were intended to synergize together. For instance, if I chose top-tree Dawnblade, I would have access to a set of perks that promoted in-air mobility and combat, whereas choosing bottom-tree Dawnblade would offer perks intended to encourage a more powerful playstyle built around explosions and burn damage.

With Void 3.0, the trees have been removed and switched to the fragment and aspect system introduced with Stasis, and while this has, in some cases, resulted in the removal of perks, it is an overall positive shift that allows for far greater customization and build-crafting. Players choose from a selection of fragments, unique to each class, and then equip aspects which are shared across all Void classes and allow for modifying individual facets and playstyles. Coupled with a selection of seasonal mods meant to highlight the Void subclasses, this change has already allowed players to develop some powerful and unique builds. And while it has further heightened the weaknesses of the Arc and Solar subclasses, I am eager to see how Bungie updates those in the subsequent seasons.

Chasing random rolls on weapons and gear has always been a central tenet of the Destiny gameplay loop. And while Bungie has experimented with different forms of targeted weapon acquisition in the past, for the first time in the franchise’s history, players have complete agency over their gear thanks to the newly implemented crafting system (with some caveats). Specific weapons have blueprints which, when unlocked, allow players to craft a weapon that can be leveled up with use, permanently unlocking perks that can be selected for each of the weapon’s slots. Not every weapon can be crafted currently, but Bungie has stated that they will be looking to expand the pool of options as time goes on. There is still some randomness to the system, as players need to acquire each weapon and there is an added element of randomness to whether it the weapon can become a blueprint (and most weapons require multiple copies of the same weapon), but the system makes acquiring perfectly rolled weapons more tenable.

Unfortunately, as encouraging as the crafting system sounds, Bungie shackled the system with limitations that prevent it from delivering the flexibility players were initially promised. When it was announced, the system was touted as a way for players to experiment and customize their weapons based on their needs or changing circumstances and a solution to reduce hoarding and storage clutter. The system initially released with (and still currently suffers from) limited resource caps, but Bungie has acknowledged and will be adjusting (read: removing) some of the resource issues that have hindered crafting. Still, weapon crafting requires a significant time investment to fully unlock a weapon which means players are chastened to dismantle their crafted weapons. Even with the changes Bungie has already implemented, there is still a substantial cost to reforging a weapon, so I do not imagine many players will actually be modifying their weapons to experiment with different perks or builds.

Given Bungie’s pedigree and the well-deserved accolades for their recent triumphs with the PvE side of the game, the PvP sides of the game, Crucible and Gambit, have been in a neglected place for several years and, unfortunately, it look to continue to be a point of consternation. While the seasonal model has helped Bungie achieve a steady cadence of patches to address pain points and balance, the core PvP experience is in desperate need of attention. It is mind-boggling that, as of this writing, not only has it been over nine-hundred days since the game had a new, original PvP map, there are fewer maps in the game now than there was back then (eleven maps were removed with Beyond Light). While The Witch Queen brought back two maps, Bungie claims there will be a new map coming next season (with a Destiny 1 map remastered during the subsequent season), and the team is reportedly working to bring Rift, a game-mode originally introduced in 2015, to Destiny 2, none of these feel like major causes for celebration. I am not asking for drastic overhauls of PvP, but I do not think it is unrealistic to expect new maps with major annual releases.

Still, credit where credit is due, Bungie reworked Trials of Osiris last year and the community has largely praised them for turning what was once a game-mode that previously catered to smaller and smaller pools of the most high-skill PvP players into something that even the average player can engage with and get rewarded from playing. And while the playlist is more accessible than it has ever been, I would have preferred to see them invest the resources into reworking the ranked playlist, a playlist that has been largely abandoned since the end of year 2 (Bungie recently announced a rework of the ranked playlist is in the works, but no details have been provided). A large portion of the playerbase has always undervalued PvP, saying that Destiny is a PvE game first with PvP on the side. And while Bungie’s actions over the past few years have certainly given credibly to this stance, the developers have repeatedly asserted that PvP is a core element of the game and is not going anywhere. Bungie has taken steps to tweak the overall gameplay to bring better balance to PvP, such as tweaking abilities and balance to bring a greater focus on gunfights over abilities, but there is still so much more that could and should be done.

At the same time, I suppose I should be happy that I spend more time in the Crucible and barely touch Gambit as that game-mode is in far worse shape. Although the game-mode underwent a significant rework with Beyond Light, it also lost two of its six maps and continued to suffer from core issues. With The Witch Queen, Bungie has again tweaked Gambit, but many of those changes did not have the expected effect and have exasperated many of its core problems. Since its inception, Gambit has suffered from the ammo economy. The randomness of heavy ammo drops could completely swing a match, especially in the hands of a competent invader (or an invader using a low-skill weapon). In an effort to combat this issue, Bungie has adjust the game-mode’s ammo drops, so all players receive the same ammo. This sounds great on paper, except it essentially guarantees invaders always have heavy ammo. Coupled with the continued rise in low-skill weapons, this has only amplified the invader problem. For years, I have said that Gambit suffers from being a hybrid PvE and PvP game-mode. I do not know the solution to fix the core issues that plague this game-mode, but I cannot see a world where Gambit thrives without a broad and drastic rework.

Over the past year, one of the common discussions around the Destiny community is whether Bungie should have released Destiny 3 instead of transitioning Destiny 2 into an ongoing, ever-changing game. Ignoring the time it would take to develop Destiny 3 and the lack of support Destiny 2 would receive during the interim.. the question has merit. Destiny 2 was never meant to be a game that lasted this long. It was originally intended to last for two, maybe three years, but after ending their partnership with Activision, Bungie was able to start making Destiny 2 the game they envisioned. A huge part of that was shifting away from installments and instead focusing on producing an on-going game, but there is no denying that building the game’s long-term future on what was intended to be a temporary foundation has come with noticeable issues. At the same time, while this will probably continue to be an issue for the foreseeable future, this will also most likely only be temporary. Destiny 2 is moving towards the final act of what is being called the Light versus Dark saga. This is speculation on my part, but I believe that the end of this arc will also coincide with the end of Destiny 2. But, that’s admittedly speculation, and I could be completely wrong and these are fundamental issues that Bungie will need to address.

For all the good I have to say about The Witch Queen, my biggest two reservations are how unfriendly the game is to new players and stagnation. One of the solutions Bungie introduced to combat the game’s increasing size (in terms of space on systems, but more the time it took to develop and update) was the Destiny Content Vault, or DCV, which essentially came down to removing older, less played content. This has had tepid reception, at best. As someone who has been playing the game for years, I do not mind that content that I no longer engage with is removed, but it has also made the game much less accessible to newer players. As a result, Bungie has shaped the story to be from the moment your character wakes up in the universe and the events that transpire from there, primarily focusing on the arrival of the Darkness and Black Fleet. Which in theory sounds fine, except players only get the expansion stories, not the ongoing seasonal stories. These ongoing, year-long stories have been a great improvement, so it would be nice if new or returning players could view the cutscenes or even if Bungie created story recaps whenever content was removed, so these players are not just thrown in and only given an incomplete picture of the story. At the same time, even when all the story content was available in game, new players were not starting with Destiny 1, so that criticism admittedly loses some steam.

Destiny 2 is not the first ongoing game that I have spent years playing, but it is the one that I have felt suffers the most from stagnation. Part of this sentiment undoubtedly stems from the six month season that capped the end of Year 4 and preceded The Witch Queen, and to Bungie’s credit, I have truly enjoyed the past month. But I am also definitely not engaging with the game nearly as much as I have in the past. It does not help that it feels like Bungie is unlearning some of the lessons they previously learned. Things like forcing players to level and invest in a gun before getting to enjoy it, something that Bungie has repeatedly said did not feel good in Destiny 1, is now a core part of the crafting system. There are other examples, and while none are enormous issues, but seeing Bungie revisit some of these mistakes can make one question the progress that has been made over these eight years.

For all the praise I have for The Witch Queen, my final thoughts are a bit more tepid and divided. If The Witch Queen was a standalone game, the latest entry in a long running series, I would be effusing endlessly about it and heartily recommending it. But The Witch Queen is not a standalone game. Destiny 2 is a live service game, and so my praise is more reserved and that recommendation gets a little trickier. I still think Destiny 2 is a great game and The Witch Queen is an exceptional release that is worth picking up. I think most would agree that it is the best Destiny expansion Bungie has produced and they have finally started to deliver on some of the mysteries and story elements that have been building for years. However, I cannot overlook that Destiny 2 is not a friendly experience for new players and starting out can often feel like attempting to scale a mountain without the proper gear or a guide. When I reviewed Beyond Light last year, I said the Destiny franchise was going into its seventh year and the game knew what it was. I still stand by that sentiment and, at this point, it is hard to imagine a drastic change in the Destiny experience. While the game has its flaws, as a long-time player, none of those flaws significantly hamper the game for me. But I also acknowledge that my experience is very different from the experience of someone who never played Destiny 2 before or someone who is looking to return to the game. As much as I would love to recommend The Witch Queen to everyone, to get more people playing it, to build out our group to play with, there is no denying that Destiny 2 does not offer a complete experience for new players. Still, if you have ever been interested in giving Destiny 2 a shot, I still believe The Witch Queen is the best expansion the franchise has ever seen. Just know that my evaluation is colored by seven years playing Destiny and the new player experience is through very different lenses.

I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you ~ Nietzche

All images owned by Bungie.