Bungie finally revealed Destiny 2‘s Witch Queen expansion today and it looks like it’s exactly what the game needs, even if it won’t be launching until February 22, 2022.
Witch Queen will focus on Savathûn, 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. Savathûn is very real though, very tall, and absolutely looks to be shaping up to be one of the game’s most climactic foes in years, complete with the ability to weird the Traveller’s 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. If it wasn’t a fully-fledge MMORPG before, it will definitely be one now. Witch Queen’s story campaign will also feature a new difficulty system that will scale to the size of your fireteam.
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 2’s upcoming expansions as part of a cohesive mini-trilogy. The rumour-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 they were accurate. Savathûn’s brood won’t just be deadly in its own right, her Hive will also be wielding their own Ghosts, artifacts previously thought to only be available to Destiny’s heroes. Based on the trailer, it also looks like these new Hive enemies will follow a class system similar to the Warlock, Titan, Hunter one players are filtered into.
Normally, Destiny 2‘s 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 game’s over-arching calendar. Last year’s Beyond Light didn’t 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 manage the steady flow of updates follow today’s launch of Season 15.
Seasons that arrive during the traditional annual expansion have tended to be a bit lacklustre 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.
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