Destiny 2 is a multiplayer looting shooter that has been in development by Bungie for almost 5 years. There were both successful additions and frank failures. The previous addition, Beyond Light, although it was not bad at the start, after the release, it quickly died out. Seasons of last year had a good local story, developed the world of Destiny 2, but did not bring anything new and interesting to the game mechanics. Postponing the Witch Queen release date and extending seasonal events for another 3 months seemed like another nail in the coffin. And it’s good that we were wrong!

Five years after the release of Destiny 2, the developers seem to have done everything to make it difficult to get to know her – due to the constant removal of content, the newcomer today finds herself at the center of an epic story, not knowing what he is fighting for and why. The new addition, according to Bungie, was supposed to change the situation: the creators promised a single-player adventure in the spirit of Halo. The campaign of the Witch Queen turned out like this – but only partly.

Campaign

In fairness, even going through the add-ons themselves will not be enough to understand The Witch Queen: the plot of the add-on is very closely intertwined with last season, which had to be bought separately.

The Witch Queen is essentially the same MMO from Bungie with excellent shooting and forced grinding. Several times during the campaign, you have to be distracted by pumping side activities, because otherwise, even the simplest parts of the story missions will seem impassable.

And if earlier Destiny 2 stories took 3-4 hours, here we spent about 11-12. The local campaign completely lacks the boring fillers “Complete 10 contracts on the Moon” and “Open region chests”. The plot moves smoothly, consistently and does not distract from any extraneous nonsense.

The first and most important thing for which I would like to praise the new addon is an interesting, large and real story campaign lasting 12-15 hours on the Legend difficulty level. And only on it I recommend getting acquainted with the history of the Witch Queen! The combat balance, mechanics, and staging are reminiscent of the old Halo games that Bungie once made. Each battle requires patience, skill, and strength to overcome, and each boss seems like an overwhelming challenge until you find a way to defeat it. This has been sorely lacking in Destiny 2’s story campaigns throughout its life cycle. But an important tip – go through a maximum of two.

I also liked the story told by the writers. Savathoon is the main enemy in the Destiny series, the same queen of deceit and deceit who invaded Mars on her ship. Exploring it, the Guardians find the Throneworld – the place where the soul of the Hive Queen goes after the death of the physical form. However, he looks different because he has Light in him, and the Knights of the Hive have… Ghosts! Just like our Guardians!

The Stranger sided with the invaders and betrayed us? Savathun deceived him? Maybe captured? These and many other questions are readily answered by the add-on, and it finally talks in detail about the Hive and its kings and queens.

Finally, Bungie has stopped creating an aura of mystery in each addition and showing local troubles as the most important conflict in the universe. Finally, a real war with the Hive and its queen, a lot of references, and teasers of upcoming changes in the game!

What makes the Witch Queen company and story great is how they break preconceived notions. Since 2014, Destiny has consistently assumed that the Guardians, the Light, and the Wanderer are the good guys and everyone else is the bad guys.

Beyond Light began to break this trend by giving the Guardians the power of Darkness. This continued in seasonal content as players formed alliances with the Cabal and the Fallen. The climax is The Witch Queen with the most radical paradigm shift. What started out as a black and white franchise has evolved into a much more interesting story where not everything is as it seems.

If we consider exclusively story missions, then The Witch Queen campaign is definitely the best thing that has happened to the history of Destiny 2 since the Red War, which is inaccessible today. First of all thanks to the bosses: the awkward enemies from previous expansions, which rarely caused at least any difficulties, have been replaced by multi-phase enemies with a lot of health. At the same time, battles with them are not just hidden and seek with short bursts from behind cover, but sometimes simple puzzles under the pressure of crowds of enemies.

Changes and what’s new bought this addition

These are the two main gameplay innovations that will affect the entire game and will remain in it after The Witch Queen. Glaives are the first hybrid weapon in Destiny that can be used both at long range and in close combat. And the creation of the weapon allows you to create weapons, provided that before that the player opened his “image”, destroying opponents and completing tasks.

Combining melee combat, ranged combat, and defense in one weapon is exciting, and they can be powerful. It’s a nifty system that gives players the ability to craft weapons with the perks they want, but it’s tedious at the moment.

Perhaps the most questioned we have caused the vaunted system of creating weapons. Everyone hoped that this would reduce the amount of grinding when players performed certain actions dozens of times in the hope of getting the right perks. In fact, it turned out exactly the opposite: in order to get a gun with the desired “roll”, you need to grind even more. The fact is that a forge that creates weapons will require three things from you at once.
First, you will need to knock out a certain weapon, and then kill enemies with it – this will allow you to extract a special weapon matrix.
Also, this mining will give new materials, which again will be used for crafting. By the way, especially valuable resources for the forge can be bought from special merchants only once a week, which clearly does not speed up the process.

Along with the plot, a new location was added – the Throne World of Savathun. It is small, but the abundance of activities there is pleasantly pleasing. Is that the constant neighborhood of pale gray and bright crimson shades frankly puts pressure on the eyes. In general, it turned out still beautiful and atmospheric.

But a large-scale “rework” of the void – one of the elements of the Guardians – affected the gameplay much more strongly. As with Stasis, you can now select the type of Void Grenades and Aspects that modify other abilities in a separate menu. You can customize your favorite class even more finely, and this year Bungie promises to rework the remaining two elements.

There is nothing unusual in the “Psychic Battlefield” seasonal activity – we get to the boss through crowds of enemies, kill him in a large arena with the help of several mechanics and get loot. But much more I liked the “Source” from the “Queen of the Witches” add-on – every day the rules of this activity change from attack to defense. In the first case, you need to break into the room with the boss, and in the second, you need to protect this very room and catch up with the next boss.

The culmination of all these high-level activities is an exciting new raid. Vow of the Disciple is a deep dive into one of the mysterious pyramid ships, and it’s one of the newest locations filled with relics from arcane experiments and forgotten cultures. The reliance on visual icons and symbols goes well beyond what players have experienced before – it’s the equivalent of learning a whole new runic alphabet – and encounters evoke a genuine sense of accomplishment as you learn vocabulary. I appreciate the technical complexity of the raid, it’s challenging and interesting.

Raid “VOW OF THE DISCIPLE”

On March 5, Destiny 2 became available as a new, sometimes quite a difficult raid “Vow of the Acolyte (Oath of the Acolyte)”. Less than two weeks after the official release of The Witch Queen, the Bungie studio team announced the launch of the Vow of the Disciple raid.

He brought with him a set of new purple weapons and armor, an exotic pulse rifle, a ghost bike, a set of mods, a set of achievements, and several emblems. In this article, you will find a guide for passing all the main stages.

The raid consists of 4 main stages and 2 intermediate ones. There are 2 additional hidden chests in the raid, and the first one can be picked up without a group since it is located almost at the very beginning.

According to the story, a team of six Guardians must visit the swamps of the world-Throne of Savathun, where the Pyramid rests, and, having penetrated inside, find out the secrets of this place. At the same time, along with the launch of the activity, an international race for the title of “World’s First” was launched, which will last a day and allow the strongest combat group to earn a unique award.

Announcement of the next antagonist

Attention possible spoilers!

Destiny 2: The Witch Queen has revealed a lot of new knowledge about the future of the MMO, including information about the story’s new main villain, the Witness. The Witness hopes to become one of the worst enemies the Guardians will have to face. with his army of darkness, a new type of enemy is likely to emerge. The name dropped several times in The Witch Queen expansion and in the Vow of the Disciple raid. The Witness may appear in the game’s next expansion, Lightfall.

Destiny 2 has been preparing for the arrival of its main villains up until the Red War campaign with the awakening of the Traveler, alerting the Darkness to his whereabouts. Now that the Guardians have dealt with a few pyramid ships and even fought one of the Vov of disciple in the latest raid, the Witness could be arriving pretty soon.

During the years of his long existence, the Witness has been known by many names. As a creepy-looking humanoid creature, he certainly fits the role of “Child of Darkness”. His long black cloak, shown in the final scene of The Witch Queen, appears to be made from the same material as other Darkness artifacts that Guardians have seen in many different Destiny 2 storylines. His abnormally large dark eyes and skull clouds coming from his head. can indeed strike fear into the heart of anyone who looks at it. The Witness also has a collection of the corpses of various enemies found throughout the Destiny universe.

Regarding its origin, Sawatun makes two opposing claims. One of these claims is that the Witness created Darkness, which doesn’t really make sense given that one of his names is “Child of Darkness”. Another explanation, which may be the most likely, is that the Witness was a mortal whose race was imbued with the power of Darkness, similar to the Guardian and Traveler relationship in Destiny 2.

The Witness is responsible for turning the Destiny 2 Hive race into enemies of the light. 

The Witness, introduced in the Witch Queen DLC, is responsible for manipulating Savatún into working for the darkness. Savatún was holding a Worm Familiar, which was a larva of the Worm Gods, the darkspawn that were freed by Rhulke, the main boss of the Apprentice’s Pledge raid, from being imprisoned by Leviathan, the apprentice of the Wanderer.

One of the larvae of the Worm washed up on the shore of the Osmian Court, the home of the Osmian King, Savathun’s father, and her two sisters. After his murder, the young Savatún continued to use her dead father’s dead worm in search of revenge.

The Witness used Savathun’s desperation to his advantage, making the proto-Hive the servants of the Darkness before the Traveler could reach them first. It also shows that Savatune was never the villain in this story, she was just manipulated by the Darkness. This may explain why the Traveler chose to resurrect her with light.

A raid was recently released revealing a ton of new knowledge about the Witness. Rhulke came into the spotlight and received from the captive Witnesses who had close ties to the Child of Darkness. Originally from Lubre, Rhulk was the chosen Witness among his many. Rhulke was responsible for discovering the worm gods that manipulated Savathun the Witness billions of years before the current events of Destiny 2.

Destiny 2, Throneworld of Savatuna. Rhulke resorted to viewing Contempt to make a surprise escape, which was thwarted by the Guardians in the Acolyte’s raid.