Bungie finally revealed Destiny 2âs Witch Queen expansion today and it looks like itâs exactly what the game needs, even if it wonât be launching until February 22, 2022.
Witch Queen will focus on SavathĂ»n, the Hive god of cunning and trickery, and see players explore her Throne World as they attempt to finally confront the longstanding Destiny villain who had hitherto been confined to the shadows. SavathĂ»n is very real though, very tall, and absolutely looks to be shaping up to be one of the gameâs most climactic foes in years, complete with the ability to weird the Travelerâs Light herself.
The new annual expansion will bring with it a new Glaive weapon type featuring melee combos and projectile attacks, as well as two new dungeons arriving throughout Year 5. Even bigger: Destiny 2 is finally getting a crafting system. We donât know much about how it will work, but players will be able to make their own weapons and improve them over time. If it wasnât a fully-fledge MMORPG before, it will definitely be one now. Witch Queenâs story campaign will also feature a new difficulty system that will scale to the size of your fireteam and begin the shift over to the new, more customizable Stasis subclass system starting with Void.
There has been a ton of speculation about Witch Queen ever since Bungie made the unprecedented move of announcing it over a year early last summer when it teased Destiny 2âs upcoming expansions as part of a cohesive mini-trilogy. The rumor-mill went into overdrive this summer following the arrival of some big purported leaks which, if true, would turn the Destiny universe on its head, and today Bungie confirmed some more of them were accurate.
SavathĂ»nâs brood wonât just be deadly in its own right, her Hive will also be wielding their own Ghosts, artifacts previously thought to only be available to Destinyâs heroes. Based on the trailer, it looks like these new Hive enemies will follow a class system as well similar to the Warlock, Titan, Hunter one players are filtered into.
Normally, Destiny 2âs next annual expansion would be only a couple weeks away, but repeated delays over the course of the covid-19 pandemic have dramatically shifted back the live service gameâs over-arching calendar. Last yearâs Beyond Light didnât arrive until November, stretching out Season of Arrivals for a couple of extra months. And with Witch Queen not coming until next year, it will be interesting to see how Bungie manages the steady flow of updates follow todayâs launch of Season 15. The studio did say Trials of Osiris will be getting a new anti-cheat update on September 10 and solo-queues, while a special Bungie 30th Anniversary content pack goes live for the game in December.
Seasons that arrive during the traditional annual expansion have tended to be a bit lackluster compared to some of their mid-year counterparts. Hopefully Season of the Lost makes the wait for and continued build up to Witch Queen worth it.
