Destiny 2: The Witch Queen Review In Progress

Since leaving Activision behind, Bungie has been steadily reworking Destiny 2 into the story they want it to be, rather than a game with story expansions for the sake of selling DLC. The Witch Queen sees them really hitting their stride with a compelling antagonist who has been teasing Guardians with her plans for a good many months.

Savathûn, sister of Oryx, has the Light, the mysterious magical force that up until now has only blessed Guardians with immortality. But all is not as it seems and big questions are raised; How did Savathûn get the Light, and perhaps more importantly, why? As with the last few years of storytelling, the lines between good and bad are being blurred, the Pyramid ships and Darkness that were once were feared turning into a blessing for the Guardians, while Savathûn may not be the evil Queen we all thought she may be.

If you are not a Destiny fan, then now is not the time to jump in – you are going to be totally lost. The ongoing mythology for the eight year old franchise is now incredibly dense with a large cast of characters all with their own motives and allegiances, so even returning players that sat out the last year will struggle to know what’s going on.

Because of the complexity there’s quite a few corners cut during the latest story. The Tangled Shore play areas has been removed from the map without mention and a certain character who appeared to be at deaths door is back in action, even though it was suggested that he may never recover just two short weeks ago. Mars is also back, having mysteriously vanished during Beyond Light, though you can only explore one tiny section. I would have thought the Bray sisters would have at least be wanting to get back down there to explore but nope, no one seems bothered.

The new play area, Savathûn’s Throne World, plays to Bungie’s strengths with some beautiful art design. Half of it is Georgia O’Keefe crossed with The Queen Of Hearts hedge maze, while the other half is a dank, moody swamp. There’s a lot to take in with some surprisingly yonic imagery enforcing the idea that this is the world of a Queen. As usual there are patrols, missions, and events to be found, and there is a rather fun new public event in which you ferry a massive bomb across the world. While most of the quests are things we’ve seen before they have been tweaked. A Patrol that requires you to scan an object might now send you somewhere close by, rather than forcing you to get on your sparrow and zip half way across the world.

The story missions for The Witch Queen expansion are much longer than in previous expansions and now come with two difficulty levels, with the rewards increasing appropriately. There’s also a lot more puzzling – something that Bungie usually keep for Raids – and an awful lot of jumping around on platforms. Coming to its end leaves the player with more questions than answers and continues to reinforce the nagging feeling that boundaries between light and dark are not absolute.

There is an overwhelming amount of content in the new expansion and to be honest I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing. It’s not Assassin’s Creed levels of things to do, but there’s just so much to juggle and it feels a little bloated. The new Throneworld has a renegade Ghost dishing out missions, there’s a detective board in which our Guardian pieces together clues about Savathûn’s ghost, there’s Void 3.0 to configure, and then there’s the new weapons.

The Glaive is the first new weapon type to be introduced in Destiny for many years. It’s essentially a large pole that can fire long range attacks, be used as a shield, and has a big pointy end for stabbing at nearby enemies. It’s a lot of fun, but needs grinding to level up and to unlock features, as does the arduous new weapons crafting system.

Are you sitting comfortably? To craft a weapon you need to find a Pattern, which will drop randomly during activities, including Gambit and Strikes. Once you have a Pattern you can craft that weapon, but to add new perks you need to grind Deepsight Resonance which can only be found by using another weapon to get a bunch of kills. Then you can extract the Resonance and use it for crafting. On top of that you can also get Mementos, another form of customisation which adds a perk for a specific activity. For example, ‘One Quiet Moment’ gives you increased reload speed when out of combat in the Crucible.

If you’re someone who spent hundreds of hours chasing “God Roll” weapons then you will be in heaven. For those of us happy with a few sets or armour and a trusty Telesto by our side, there is very little incentive to grind for the new gear. The fact that I can kill an enemy 0.2 seconds quicker if I grind for forty hours holds very little appeal to me. It’s now extremely rare that you need a specific weapon to get past any section of the game.

While all of this is going on, the Season of the Risen has also started with a new three player event, more story, more currencies and a load of weekly tasks to complete. Oh and the new Raid goes live on Saturday 5th March (after which a score will be added to this review).

It’s what’s missing that is dragging the game down. The Throneworld is populated by a new design of Hive, but they are just reskins of the enemies we have been facing for the last 7 years. The only new enemies, the Light imbued Hive, use supers that Guardians have also been using since day one. There’s nothing particularly new to battle. A couple of new Hive variants would have spiced things up, or perhaps Bungie could have given the Hive their own Supers?

There’s also very little change to core game mode. Gambit has been tweaked slightly but there are no new maps, and Crucible, Trials and Iron Banner remain completely unchanged and will have players running about the same maps they have done since 2017. A huge part of the game still involves grinding through through increasingly stale playlists. Bungie really need to spice these up, and quickly.

I hate to say it, but supporting the older consoles is now starting to become annoying, the PsiOps Battlegrounds missions for this Season have lengthy tunnel sections between each stage of the battle which are just there to hide the next section of the game loading in. They are dreadfully dull and unrequired if playing on a PS5, Xbox Series X or a decent PC. The weapons vault is also still the same which is ridiculous given the amount of weapons in the game, though Bungie can’t really allow next-gen Guardians access to more weapons because it gives them an unfair advantage over the older consoles.

There’s no denying that the main story missions for The Witch Queen are great, Void 3.0 is very welcome, and if you do like chasing God Rolls you will be very happy. The Witch Queen is a solid expansion and I suspect many more secrets will be uncovered over the coming months, but I do hope the next year’s Lightfall brings us something totally brand new rather than reworking existing enemies and mechanics.

Many thanks to Cheaper for his assistance ploughing through the story missions. 

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• Source: https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2022/03/04/destiny-witch-queen-review-ps5-xbox-series-xs/