Destiny 2’s The Witch Queen is one of the most successful releases the franchise has ever gotten, with over one million copies sold before launch and plenty of positive feedback regarding its campaign and new mechanics. The Witch Queen takes many themes from Destiny’s The Taken King, with the expansions being comparable in scope and story. The Taken King allowed players to face Oryx, a Hive God with the power to Take after slaying the Worm God Akka, whereas The Witch Queen is about players having a showdown against Savathun after she is granted the power of the Light, sacred to Guardians.
With The Witch Queen being such a successful expansion that caters to all sorts of players, from newcomers enticed by the promotional material to veterans who have been playing since the dawn of the franchise, Bungie had a lot of planning to do. This is because Destiny 2 is not a game where players can replay the entire story as they please, with seasonal content and even past campaigns now in the Destiny Content Vault to make room for more. Game Rant spoke to Bungie in a roundtable interview session about what it means to tell a story that has to be meaningful to new and old players alike.
Bungie’s Approach to Storytelling in Destiny 2 Over the Years
The story of Destiny 2 is a very complex one, because the universe Bungie created has multiple facets and an endless number of relevant characters across alien species. This makes for layered storytelling, where there have to be in-the-moment activities, plans for future events, and a general idea of what matters to the story and what doesn’t for its main themes and protagonists. An example is the identity of the Guardians: protectors of mankind with the powers of the Light, which derive from their Ghosts and, by extension, The Traveler.
That’s what the Red War campaign from vanilla Destiny 2 tried to explore. Players were meant to discover what it means to be a Guardian, what it means to have the Light, and what can happen if the Light is taken away. The game has many concepts like this, where players can learn more about a specific key event in the timeline of the universe, a given power, an entire race, or even a single character.
However, building that sort of world is not easy because it requires a mix of careful planning and spur-of-the-moment inspiration, which can be difficult to achieve in a live-service game like Destiny 2 where content doesn’t stay forever. In fact, while vanilla Destiny 2 was far from the series’ best, the introduction to the story provided by the Red War campaign for new players was strong, as it provided a lot more context to the story than the New Light experience ever will - unless it undergoes major changes.
Striking a perfect balance between providing new and exciting plot and making sure everything is perfectly understandable in the present, while also planting clues for the future, can be difficult. Bungie’s narrative director Adam Grantham spoke about what this means for Destiny 2 as a story-driven game, and how the company deals with future releases in terms of planning.
“There’s this quote from George R. R. Martin, who said that there are two types of storytellers: architects and gardeners. The gardeners go out, and they plant these ideas, and they till them as they grow, and they see where things go. The architects go in there with a blueprint, they know what they’re doing, and they plan all. With Destiny, I think we’re at a spot right now where I think we’re able to do both pretty well at the same time. We’re still gardening, but as we drive to The Final Shape we have some architecture coming up.”
Why New Destiny 2 Players Are in The Same Spot as Game of Thrones Fans
The Witch Queen’s campaign is one of the expansion’s major selling points, as it combines a compelling story with a gameplay flow that’s both challenging and rewarding. The expansion is a perfect culmination of the Savathun buildup Bungie has done over the years, which means veterans are able to appreciate it, but there has to be something to hook new players in as well. Bungie’s Senior Narrative Lead Guillaume Colomb spoke about the process of making information accessible to new players without sacrificing pacing and delivery for veterans, especially with an expansion the size of The Witch Queen.
Because there are so many events, characters, and lore books to discover and understand in the world of Destiny 2, having a clear, linear timeline is a great thing. To this end, Bungie even introduced it as an in-game feature with The Witch Queen, as players being able to go as far back as the Red War campaign to discover main elements of the story. However, the timeline is not strictly essential to understanding the basics of a new expansion or seasonal release, because characters in the game tend to mention what is key
“It’s a lot of filtering the main information that everybody needs to know, what are the things about the lore that are not critical, or give hints to things from Destiny that veterans will recognize. If we find something from deep lore that needs explaining, we do that as if it’s for new players. We use many characters in the game to offer that point of view, to explain things. With Destiny being a live game it’s very difficult to start from the beginning, but we want Destiny 2 to be a game where anyone can jump in at any time.”
In this approach, Bungie is not too dissimilar from George R. R. Martin with Game of Thrones, a series of books divided into chapters that are the point of view of one character. Grantham said this is exactly what Destiny 2 does, and why it’s important to have a similar structure for the narrative.
The Witch Queen tells a story that’s easily digestible for new players, and that’s because it immediately explores the themes of Hive Lightbearers being a mirror of the Guardians. What matters is that the story makes the Guardians’ actions look morally ambiguous, with no apparent right or wrong side, especially considering the Lucent Hive is more similar to mankind than one would think. This approach is likely to return for future releases because it allows Bungie to add or cut what is needed in order to make the story clearer for all Destiny 2 players, regardless of their level of experience.
“Destiny is a mysterious universe in which you never have this eagle-eye view of how things work. You’re always looking at it through your own individual perspective, what you hear from other characters, if you can trust that. When you enter the world of Game of Thrones, you don’t know what happened during Robert’s Rebellion, you just hear other characters talking about it. You look at it through the lens of, “oh, I need to have read about Robert’s Rebellion to understand Game of Thrones,” but you don’t really. What matters is what’s happening at the moment, and how it’s affecting those characters and the choices that they’re making. That’s one of the things we strive for.”
Destiny 2 is now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
