During the climax of The Witch Queen campaign, I said something I’ve never said in all my years of playing Destiny. “I don’t think we can stop her.” The final siege on the evil Queen Savathun’s Throne World is a harrowing, high-stress mission. It’s humanity’s last chance to stop her wicked plan and prevent a catastrophe that would almost certainly spell the end of all human life. As I desperately swung my glaive back and forth tearing a path through Savathun’s army of demonic Hive soldiers, I looked across the battlefield at my fireteam, both of whom were barely holding back the horde, and I saw no way out. For a fleeting moment I forgot that I was playing a video game - a medium where good overcomes evil almost as a rule - and nearly gave up all hope in the fight against the Queen of Lies and her Lucent Brood. A moment later I popped my Super ability, unleashed the holy light on my enemies, and went on to save the day - at least, I think we did. I can still hear Savathun in my head, creating doubt and confusion like she always has.
The Witch Queen is a new peak for Destiny. For years I’ve found myself cheering Bungie on at every expansion release and seasonal update for slowly improving Destiny and taking steps in the right direction, never exactly nailing it but always making things a little bit better with each iteration. The Witch Queen is what Destiny 2 has been working towards all these years. This is the Destiny vision, fully realized. Bungie has finally managed to design an incredible story that fits naturally in an expansive, ever-changing, and endlessly replayable sandbox. The Witch Queen is what I’ve always hoped Destiny could be, and it exceeded my expectations in almost every way.
It’s not hyperbole when I say The Witch Queen campaign changes everything we know about the world of Destiny. It’s nearly impossible to even talk about the story without divulging major spoilers. I don’t mean spoilers in the sense that there’s a story and things happen in it, I’m talking about beats fundamentally change the relationships between characters, factions, and the cosmic forces that control the Destiny universe. This is a big story - which is fitting for one of our greatest enemies, Savathun - but it’s also a significant improvement to the form and structure of Destiny’s ongoing story.
Destiny has always been held back by its episodic format. Each expansion and season feels like a self-contained storyline disconnected from any kind of larger arc or direction. We started to see more cohesion between seasonal storylines over the last year, but even Beyond Light’s Big Bad, Eramis, was just another Villain of the Week to defeat. The Witch Queen is a major turning point, however. Savathun is not just another rando to beat up on and forget about. The story has been seeded since the very start of Destiny 2 and the fallout of the campaign will lead us directly into the next expansions, Lightfall and The Final Shape, as one continuous narrative. Crucially, Season of the Risen launched alongside The Witch Queen, and its storyline branches off and continues the campaign as well. For the first time, Destiny is telling one big story, and its so much better for it.
Plot aside, the structure of the campaign is a stroke of genius. Bungie has landed on something special with its recent dungeon content and wisely designed each campaign mission in a similar way. Each mission is unique and memorable in a way that campaign missions never have been before. They have puzzle mechanics and mini-bosses like dungeons, while each one is broken up into small sections with checkpoints and rewards at the end of each one. There’s never been a good reason to replay Destiny campaigns before, but Bungie built the eight campaign mission from The Witch Queen into the weekly progression loop. Now we have the incentive to replay each mission on higher and higher difficulties just as we do with Nightfall Strikes. It’s a great way to recycle that content and make it feel relevant and challenging, and I can’t wait to master the campaign missions and earn valuable crafting materials.
Speaking of crafting, The Witch Queen expansion takes a massive swing by introducing weapon crafting to Destiny. There was a lot of hesitation in the community ahead of launch around these new systems, and unfortunately, I’m finding that quite a few of those concerns were warranted. Crafting (or Shaping) was positioned as a deterministic way to pursue weapon rolls, experiment with builds, and develop stronger connections to our aromories, but it falls short in a few ways.
The currency for crafting weapons can only be earned by finding new Deepsight weapons and leveling them up until you can extract their materials, so there’s still a layer of random chance blocking you from pursuing the weapons you’re after. Even the blueprints for crafting weapons have to be unlocked from Deepsight weapons first - sometimes three or even five copies of the same Deepsight weapon - so the process is still subject to an extraordinary amount of randomness. I suspect the drop rates of Deepsight and the economy of crafting materials will need a lot of attention in the coming months, as experimentation just isn’t feasible right now due to the high cost of materials. I’m finding a lot of friction in a system that requires you to use certain weapons to earn materials in order to improve other weapons that themselves must be improved through constant use. It’s creating moments of frustration where I have a lot of guns I need to use that aren’t necessarily the guns I want to use.
Fortunately, there’s a lot of guns in The Witch Queen I want to use. The new glaive archetype didn’t impress me at first, but as I’ve improved it through crafting and unlocked some of the new Artifact mods, I’m discoverings its potential and loving it. I also found a replacement for my Chroma Rush in the new auto rifle, Krait, and if you’d have asked me last season if I was ever going to give up Chroma Rush, I’d have told you to pry it from my cold dead hands. The balance changes and new gear has opened up the meta significantly and it feels like there are more viable builds right now than ever before. The Destiny sandbox is in a very good place.
The Witch Queen is nowhere near over. We still have the raid next weekend and, if Beyond Light is any indication, a lot more to discover once the first team crosses the finish line. It’s difficult to judge a Destiny expansion this early on, but based on the campaign alone, I feel confident in saying this is the best piece of Destiny content Bungie has ever put out. If this is the new standard for expansions, the future of Destiny 2 is extraordinarily bright… and dark.
Destiny 2: The Witch Queen
Destiny 2 continues to grow with its sixth major expansion, The Witch Queen. Two new dungeons, a new raid, more gear, and PvP maps come with a plot that sees Guardians take on Savathûn and her Lucent Hive.
