In the Destiny 2 community, a popular meme has players respond to big, scary villains and deadly space gods with a simple message: I’m going to turn you into a gun. There are many variants of this meme, but the general idea remains a popular joke among players. Now, in the new Witch Queen expansion, Bungie leans into the jokes and lets folks literally turn one of the franchise’s most important enemies into a wickedly powerful grenade launcher.
Over the last few years, Bungie has gotten much better at telling stories in Destiny 2. Gone are the days of having to read about all the lore on a website or app. Destiny 2 now features complex and captivating villains and heroes within the game itself. And the most recent expansion, Witch Queen, is one of the best bits of Destiny that Bungie has ever created, matching the highs of stuff like Taken King or Forsaken.
However, no matter how great a villain or storyline is, the community is always quick to pull out the ol’ turn-you-into-a-gun meme. It’s never fun to explain a joke, but here I go. Most big finale quests and boss fights in Destiny end with some loot dropping, and some of this loot is directly connected to the big bad monster or villain you and your fireteam have just defeated. So, when completing new expansions or questlines, it feels like you are turning unkillable gods into fun new guns.
SPOILERS FOR DESTINY 2: WITCH QUEEN BELOW!
As is often the case in Destiny DLC, after you beat the main storyline of the expansion, you unlock a plethora of new activities and missions. One of these new exotic quests, Of Queen And Worms, has you travel around the new Throne World zone, exploring lost sectors and killing enemies. All the while, you carry with you the former Hive worm of Savathun. The ancient worm, who once provided the Witch Queen with her power via a connection to the god worms on the queen’s home planet, was removed from Savathun by Queen Mara and now requests a host before it spills useful secrets regarding future threats facing the galaxy. Mara makes a deal with the worm to provide it with a powerful host. The worm and others in the game assume Mara means herself.
But, it’s all a big trick.
After completing some tricky missions where you collect energy for the pesky worm, you bring the nasty little bugger to an alter where Mara reveals the ruse. Rather than putting the worm into her, she uses space magic and crams it into a cool looking exotic grenade launcher. After threatening to rip it out of the gun and kill it, Mara and the rest of us get some important lore about Savanthun and the Witness. I would explain that here, but if you care about Destiny 2 lore, you already know. And if you don’t care, you won’t understand a damn thing about what the worm actually said.
(Odds are you don’t really understand a lot of what I’ve written so far. Sorry about that. Anyway, thanks for reading!)
Oh, and the exotic grenade launcher! It’s quite good! I’m enjoying it. The weapon, known as Parasite, fires explosive worms, dealing a large amount of solar damage, which is very useful against large crowds of enemies. I’ve been using it a lot, though I rarely enjoy using heavy exotics.
It’s funny that after all these years of fans talking about turning monsters into guns, Bungie went and crafted a whole questline that culminates in letting players do just that. It’s just one more reason why I’m enjoying Witch Queen and this latest season of Destiny. To be clear, though — I still think Bungie removing old content and story missions is terrible and makes it hard for new players to jump in.
But…I also got a new, powerful weapon that shoots worm bombs and was created by squishing an evil ancient bug into a gun with space magic. It’s hard not to have a good time when I get to do stuff like that.
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