i think the biggest narrative failure was the overwhelming Scorn presence - the Hive Lightbearers were such a new and exciting enemy, and it felt like we barely saw any of them during the story
I really hate that they do this soo often. In forsaken, we got Scorn as the brand new enemy, and we had really good fights with them don't get me wrong, but the endgame just ended up being taken. I think forsaken was the least annoying though, Beyond Light set up that both we have Stasis AND the fallen have stasis, yet the only stasis users are campaign, a high value target, and there is ZERO stasis presence in the raid at all. Now it kinda feels like they're repeating this, by making lucent hive lightbearers, but we're probably not going to see them again in 6 months.
I would have loved a final week “epilogue” like we had with the Vex attack on the City in season of the splicer, or the exorcism activity in season of the lost
I do agree Bungie should have a type of “epilogue” for the last week of the season. In Risen’s case, there was probably just so much going on the past few months, that Bungie’s writers had to go with an early, open ended ending. On the topic of the writing, I’d say at this point, the captivating thing about the seasons and story isn’t just our Guardian, it’s how we react and how the characters around us react to certain events and motives.
I personally like the way it was done this season, previously we got a 2 months long wait between the story peaking and the story ending, with XYZ seasonal event cutting in it, that has also nothing to add to it, and kind of dislodges the narration imo. Imagine being the person who left when Guardian Games arrived and you are just left waiting for an additional 3 weeks until that crap is finished, at least it's how it kept feeling like last year for me. Bungie has done a godawful job at Lost though, that is a definite outlier of how NOT to end a season, not giving enough time to even get a satisfaction out of the epilogue.
@@turkizno I don’t really agree with you at all. I agree that I don’t like having that gap in between of basically nothing, but I’d much prefer the weekly story to persist all season, with one big one week event at the end to cap it off. Yeah, Lost’s story was lacking, and the epilogue was a little weak, but I like it better than Risen’s ending. I think Splicer was like the ideal season to me
@@owenrobinson5031 That is fair! Honestly, Splicer was chuck-full of display screen dialogue too, even the seasonal event started off with Misraaks and Ikora wishing us well and that was heckin awesome.
@@turkizno fully agree. I loved Saint’s development over the season, with him changing his mind about the Eliksni. Him saying “you are my people!” To Misraaks during the vex invasion of the city was such an amazing moment
For me the biggest miss on WQ’s narrative was the post campaign story. The Worm and the Queen quest was great for story and lore. However, I really did miss the way the stasis subclass quest post-BL told its story, leading to the Lament Quest and it’s resolution with Ana, Elsie, and Clovis. Hopefully we’ll get something more like that in Lightfall. My only big complaint about the campaign was the ambiguous nature of savathun receiving her ghost and the formation of Immaru (and how the hive ghosts got… hive-y). While that I’m certain will be revealed in time, I do believe that an explanation would’ve gone a long way to wrapping our mind around parts of story and bringing closure to that aspect of it.
@@davidmaldonadov But in the cut scene immaru looks like an evil ghost before even finding savathuns body. I was really irritated with the lack of an explanation but like the op said I am confident bungie will come up with a satisfying explanation
WQ didn’t need a post-campaign story, because the campaign story was good enough. BL campaign story was far inferior, that’s why they needed a post-campaign story
Ada-1's treatment is heartbreaking. The Black Armoury Papers is one of, if not the best lore books. The emotional journey it takes you on and the way the way it shows guardians as antagonists and fleshes out Ada so much to explain why she's cold and almost combative towards the guardians. The feelings go from the introduction to "what's this lady's problem, chill out I don't even know you." to "oh wow, no wonder she doesn't trust guardians and doesn't want to give us the obsidian accelerator." Now she's relegated to tower grandma who sews us new sweaters. She used to be living weapon who grants access to some of the most powerful weaponry in our arsenal. It's a massive and unwarranted demotion.
Yup. Honestly, I didn’t even touch wellspring. I was so turned off by the grind that was presented to us for that, especially knowing the glaives at the end weren’t even worth it.
At least none of them are that great so other than quests not really necessary to grind for the patterns. Same can't be said for the seasonal weapons though, the sniper and pulse are A+.
Wellspring was trash. Also.... They need to stsrt adding matchmaking for higher tier content. Accept in a GM that would be awful but outside of that it should be fine.
@@bigmol1633 also Legend PsiOps. I cannot finish upgrading the War Table with Insights as the last 3 are bound to a non- matchmade activity, hence not able to get the seasonal reward ship (fully upgrade the War Table to get it). I REALLY hope the Guardian Games' matchmade 1550 was a precursor to that.
My biggest complaint about WQ was the lack of post campaign content the missions that were put post campaign were fantastic but I found myself done with everything after like 3 weeks which normally wouldn’t be a bad thing but I found myself not wanting to keep doing preservation, or wellspring, or the replay able missions. Coming from a player who does everything and gets all the triumphs I feel like there just isn’t a need for me to want to keep doing psiops or go for the crafted weapons after the first ones Ive done but all around this campaign was absolutely fantastic
I don’t disagree with that. I usually guild a handful of titles but the only one I have already and probably will is Conquerer. I have a bunch of RL friends that this was the most they’ve been excited for an expansion/season and this was quickest that they’ve ended up losing interest and for the most part falling off from playing. Their lives haven’t changed at all either. So something is up…
@@amorfati4927 why is it a bad thing to enjoy the game for 3-4 weeks and put it down until the new season. It gives those who can only play a few hours a week a chance to experience everything without an abnormally long season
I've talked to my friends about this, and we all agree, the story is great and something we keep coming back to is that, The Witch Queen is RIGHT. The Traveler GAVE her the light, the Traveler seems to have chosen to be bound to her throne world. The Traveler WOULD be safer in her Throne World. She's right. It's completely plausible that the Traveler tried to abandon us, or maybe even if the Traveler went into the Throne World, we wouldn't lose our light. We don't know. We were scared, so we stopped it. We Are no longer loyal to the Traveler, but The City. We might have just betrayed the Travelers interests.
Fair, and after Savathûn was killed by us the Traveler probably thought "Guess I need to go back to the City then." Because with Savathûn gone we're pretty much all that's left to fight the Darkness. We forced the Traveler's hand by jumping to conclusions and not negotiating after we found out Savathûn was chosen and not a thief
The Traveller didn’t choose to enter the throne world, Sav was forcing it there using the full extent of the power to take (the ability to move worlds between realities). I guess you could argue that the Traveller didn’t fight back (if it even could) but that’s not really the same thing
You and your friends are wrong, if the Traveler chose to be there, it would have, if the Traveler could leave or wanted to abandon us, it could leave even now, Bungie has to come up with really clever way to tell us, why the Traveler still chose to stay silently floating above our last city. If it is capable and has its own will, it would just leave unless it did side with humanity, it did choose us or plot twist it is waiting for the right time to make its move (either siphon what it needs from us or just leave for some other reason). Until we get a proper explanation it is pure speculation at best and the writers can just make anything up i.e. it is fiction at the end of the day.
Regarding content cadence: I for one personally prefer seasons to be front loaded. No one likes a content drought (I remember the the Taken Spring...), but after having be subjected to drip feed, I find that front loading just feels better. If we were able to rewind time to the gap between the Taken King and the Taken Spring (the massive April update that was the only content after TTK launched) and just add Bungie communicating with us rather than being silent for so long, I think that gap would have been MUCH easier to deal with. Drip fed content just feels like getting blueballed every week. At least with front loading, you can get it all it all done, wrap up whatever farming/raiding/etc. you want to do, then move on to another game for awhile. The drip just makes it seem like they are trying to shackle me to the game like WoW does, and I hate that feeling.
FINALLY someone gets it. Like, I get how people like drip-fed content if Destiny is their life (or job for content creators), but for normal people, I think front-loading is better. I can take it all at my own pace, experience when I have time, and not feel pressed to get on every week, multiple times a week due to FOMO. Nothing wrong with having things to do outside of destiny
My big critique is, as much as we saw plenty of the Witness and their Disciples, we haven't gotten much more about the Veiled Woman. I'm pretty much convinced that the Darkness saw our interaction with the Witness in Shadowkeep and set us on a path to learn to use the Darkness to fight the Witness. Still would love to see more of the other side of the Dark.
@@waterlight0243 I thought that was a given. Savathun herself says the witness is not darkness but wears it as a cloak... Or something like that. Am paraphrasing.
@@waterlight0243 also just to add, and I know we have to preface this with things in the books of sorrow are not necessarily accurate, if you listen to how the witness talks and compare it to how the darkness talks to oryx, it is completely different. Could be a retcon, but basically my view is the witness is not the final big bad.
I agree, they are not the same. The Winnower is a name for the paracausal force that is the Darkness. The Darkness has no physical form. The Witness pretty much acts as a body, mouth, hand and eyes for the the force that has no form: the Winnower/Darkness. The Witness is essentially an avatar for what the Darkness would look like if it had a physical form, it is a stand in the represents the radical ideology of the Winnower. The darkness as a form of power, a tool, nature, however, is as neutral as gravity or magnetism. The Darkness is not evil, it is a paracausal force of nature. The Witness however, is an evil force that wishes to destroy us. Through, given Destiny’s themes of symmetry, as Ulan-Tan once mentioned (he was more of a precursor to the “dark vanguard” trio), I speculate that the Traveler has an entity inside it that may be more passive, and sees Guardians as its blindly loyal, childish army. If there is an entity inside the Traveler, that’s just my guess of how she/he/it would behave personality-wise.
@@garrettviewegh677 That sounds a lot like the Mistborn books, funnily enough. The difference between the power and the person wielding it, essentially "like a cloak".
I feel like this season has made a clear indication that Bungie sees, or at least has seen, the Hive as the main antagonistic faction of the Destiny storyline. Even with Destiny 2 opening with the Red War, the strongest updates and story revelations of the Destiny story so far have involved the Hive/Taken.
And that’s my overall criticism of Destiny’s story. None of the other enemy races got the same level of thought and gravitas to their stories as the Hive. Doesn’t help that D2 vanilla wasn’t great but it really should’ve been a bigger deal that the Cabal emperor was in our system. Would’ve been interesting if the Midnight Coupe happened in Sol, like we’re just collateral in a grander political game.
Only if you look at the season completely separately from Witch Queen itself. The Seasons in d2 are not the primary thing driving the narrative forward, they are things to tide us over until the next big DLC. This is one of the very first DLCs/seasons where there is any (reasonable) possibility of us at least having a larger ceasefire with the hive (in this case, only the lucent brood) if Savathun is revived by her ghost, and remembers what we showed her (namely the witness tricking the Krill of the osmium dynasty so they could not be chosen by the traveler). It was also the first dlc that introduced literally the main boss of the overall game series in The Witness, at least until after Lightfall. Also I would assume that if bungie wanted to shift the focus to the hive for the overall game they would have made a hive raid boss, rather than someone who is explicitly a powerful servant of the witness. Also the fact that Rhulk, who is again only a SERVANT of The Witness, literally subjugated the hives’ gods (namely the worm gods) kind of puts the power of the hive themselves into perspective. Even just looking at the seasonal narrative this season was more about the improving relations between the Cabal and the Tower, with the hive serving as a common enemy between ONLY TWO FACTIONS. It does not indicate any increase in animosity between, for example, the Eliksni, another major faction that we may develop further alliances with to fight the black fleet. There is also the fact that when Oryx was still the taken king the Witness is the one who granted him control over the taken, and also the taken seem to be making up the bulwark of the Witness’ forces in the throne world in conjunction with the Scorn. I also imagine that the fact that there have been seasons for each and every faction kind of mitigates your point, as each season has been focused on them entirely. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that the Cabal were the main enemy faction after they literally tried to nuke the tower with the Almighty, yet here we are. Edit: grammar
@UCitT_soGTEMw1u4jyndamcA Right, that is why I said "or at least HAS seen". If you look at Destiny 1 and 2 you can see clearly that bungie put the most amount of effort into Hive and Taken DLC. Forsaken was the only other DLC with comparative success across the community and even in the end it was Riven, who was corrupted and Taken by the darkness as well. Clearly it is the "darkness" that is the main antagonist of the story of Destiny as a whole. The revelation that the Hive were betrayed and manipulated into working for the Darkness is big but that doesn't change the fact that up until this newest dlc and season the Hive were definitely the closest relation to the Darkness we have ever had seen, therefore being the main antagonistic faction we as Guardians have face so far.
I feel the only thing is how the Vex fit in this coming war between light and dark. Savathun and her brood have the light removing themselves from the Witness and Sivu Arath is trying to figure out how and why she did. Calus is gathering forces of his own while our alligence with Caital is getting tense. The House of Light is in the City as another ally and Eramis is still frozen on Europa to become maybe a future villain again. While the vex are just...there. While yes they are somehow tied to the darkness given that the black heart was in the Black Garden, Clovis bray and the exos, even the "we are your salvation" cutscene but that is it. There are even hints of so called friendly vex that have blue eyes but that is all. Who are the vex, genuinely? Besides just time traveling robots who are afraid of the paracausal nature of the light. It's hinted they have a weird kinship with ghosts revealed in one Nessus adventure. Why? Not only that but the robot shells of the Past, Present, and Future vex hint that they are deteriorating. Why? And again how do they fit in the coming conflict with the Witness?
I loved the format. AND THE DROUGHT! Finally it felt like I could keep up with Destiny And have a life outside of it. I played other games, did more with hobbies, and generally had more time free while also enjoying destiny thoroughly. I think that should be the norm
FINALLY someone gets it. Like, I get how people like drip-fed content if Destiny is their life (or job for content creators), but for normal people, I think front-loading is better. I can take it all at my own pace, experience when I have time, and not feel pressed to get on every week, multiple times a week due to FOMO. Nothing wrong with having things to do outside of destiny
Before I really get into the video, I wanted to let you know that the audio balance is SO GOOD. In previous videos I'd have to crank you way up and blow out my ear drums when the ads popped in because I'm poor. Thank you and your team for fixing the audio balance! Keep up the great work!
Seasons that are released at the same time as expansions should be drip fed imo. After that the rest should be available to finish day 1. There was an absolute overwhelming amount of content to do with the first month of witch queen and I'm hoping the rest of the seasons are as solid as the last year.
Wouldn't it be cool if there were Deepsite sites on other locations. Revealing more of how Savathun had been playing her game a very long time. Even one in the tower somewhere
I do think Witch Queen deserves the praise it has received in regards to the main campaign, the phenomenal raid, and where they are taking the story, especially considering the circumstances of the last 2ish years.... yet I really do feel it was lacking in most other regards. As stated by other comments, the post-campaign is near nonexistent and the patrol zone of the Throne World to me is easily one of Bungie's most uneventful. Crafting feels like a barebones red-border/level up slog that has you sitting in a Shuro Chi checkpoint mindlessly trying to unlock a slightly better version of a perk, and raid weapons being craftable makes the adept versions feel absolutely null of importance. The complete lack of any new PVP or Gambit maps seems kinda insane for two modes that are supposed to be cornerstones of the entire game. Honestly as much as I liked Season of The Risen I feel like the content it added made it just enough for Witch Queen to feel like a full expansion. I may be being a bit harsh but when people call this the best expansion ever period then its going to be held to such a high standard. To me the Taken War from The Taken King was a great way to get players to go explore old locations and see how the events of the DLC affected the solar system as a whole, and while the Psi Ops battlegrounds sort of reflect this, they ultimately are just three missions. Anyways to make a long story short I am incredibly biased because I'm tired of The Hive and deeply despise whoever decided to continue involving The Scorn.
Having the main story and Vox Obscura drop alongside everything was very weird to me , since we had 3 storylines going on at once I would’ve thought it would be better if Vox came after the finale of the seasonal story , and have that weekly run to see the story develop on Calus would’ve been better
I’ve been hoping that Destiny’s story, and the slowly revealing motivations of the Light and Dark could inject some more science into the story. The whole “Final Shape” theme gives me big E8 lattice and Emergence theory vibes from Quantum Physics. One thing I love about sci-fi are the hints of real world science sprinkled in. It seems we’ve gone full fantasy here in D2. With the main storylines here, I feel like too many things are left unmentioned. What’s up with Osiris and Eris? I wanted to learn more about the hidden, and also give some personality to Savathun’s Risen. This would make our fight with them a morale dilemma if they had personal feelings and motivations, and give more weight to Crow’s decision.
Perfect? For me the "Trust goes both ways" mission brought the story to a screeching halt even when I was going through the story on my over-leveled 3rd character. Also, the cabal stuff took too long and delivered no intel by the end, despite that being their ONE JOB. Most people would've already killed savathun and gotten her to explain just about everything through the memory missions before the cabal stuff was even halfway done.
I really wish there was a channel for your streams so I could see your reaction to those moments in the story like the moment crow did what he did like you said, or other moments in the story.
My biggest gripe with Witch Queen, and my biggest complaint about Savathun generally is that I don't really feel like the gifting of the Light was well done. Yes, we've spent a lot of the time from here going back to Beyond Light driving home the point that Light isn't good and Dark isn't evil. But the big hype leading up to WQ was, "oh man, this is Savathun's biggest trick yet. How'd she manage to swindle the Traveler out of the Light?" And the answer to that... is literally that some random Ghost came along and said, "hey, that looks like a good one!" It's entirely, randomly, the result of chance. If Immaru had been on Europa, or Pluto, or Venus, or anywhere else really, none of this would have happened. I find that extremely unsatisfying. It's deus ex villiana of the highest measure, and that kills a lot of what I think Bungie did really well in the other writing for the expansion. The Seasonal story - with Crow and Caital and Saladin - was much more of a high point for me.
I know this is three weeks late but hi, new player here (started when WQ dropped), it's exceptionally refreshing to play a game where the two main supernatural elements are named Light and Dark and AREN'T just bywords for "good magic" and "evil magic". I genuinely couldn't be happier that the story is like this.
The biggest problems I have with the story is ending which was basically an "until next time" type ending. Then there some of the writing which reminded me of children's detective shows like Dora the explorer, etc: "there are too many UNKNOWNS. wink wink, get it we're detectives". It was kinda annoying to listen to at times
Regarding the "famine or feast" argument, put me firmly in the feast camp. The narrative for Risen being done, capped off and concluded was immensely gratifying. Because the thing I remember the most about Splicer and Lost was the weekly "will it be this week?" cycle of rising hopes for the next part, and then nothing. Spreading it out didn't fix the 'famine' problem, it just shunted the ending of the season a few weeks away. (Or in the case of Lost, MONTHS.) Especially pronounced in Season of the Lost, where the conclusion mission launched in a buggy state that disrupted the experience for many, and thanks to leaving it to the very last minute, a lot of people didn't have the option to 'wait for it to be patched' because there was no time to wait. You're seeing the same thing with the "where trailer??" backlash now. When something's coming on the horizon, every day or week that it doesn't show up can feel aggrivating. It's like watching a delivery van drive right by your house after you've ordered something, there's that moment of fleeting hope, "is it now? Is it now??" followed by dissapointment. There were a lot of weeks in Splicer or Lost where I was just kind of going through the motions of it. I knew "I'm doing around 30-40 minutes of gameplay for 2 minutes of new dialogue" and was frustrated, because everything between the 'key beats' of the story felt like padding. Risen did not have this problem. It was focussed and knew what story it wanted to tell and how to tell it. Closure is important. People dropping off the game after the story beats have been delivered is fine, because the most common complaint I hear is that Destiny 'demands' weekly logins, that it requires you to be a constant participant to get the full experience, and that shouldn't be the case. People should play the game because it has something to offer, and if that experience can be compressed and streamlined into a more accessible package, so much the better.
Let's hope they keep up the good work, because to be honest, the 4th wall breaking related to Savathûn "escaping the game" has me uneasy about the payoffs to everything in the story.
I think it is worth thinking of the 'game' in this context as the flower game that the winnower and gardener are playing with 'our' (the Destiny) universe. That's how I took it anyways.
When she says "the game" she means a metaphorical (or as the other commenter said, semi-literal with the Flower Game) game. She's not like the Ahamkara who are aware of the 4th wall. She just wants to escape the universe-spanning game between the forces behind the Light and Dark.
@@skeletor8951 - I don’t think so. A good number of the lore entries (think it was Ikora discussing) are dedicated to the idea that the guardians and such are just characters in a game that some higher being are playing. I think it was far more literal than the Flower Game.
Hey Byf I came into the Destiny world until D2 year 3 and had no clue about the lore, your movie was top class and put me up to speed in preparation for this expansion.
Personally, I much rather enjoy the all at once over the drip feed. I like having a “destiny month” with my friends and come back for new seasons. Destiny feels much better when all of the content is there for me to build my enjoyment off of and immerse myself in rather than playing it and being told to come back next week breaking my immersion. During the content droughts I get to enjoy different games and entertainment and immerse myself in those.
My primary gripe is that the hive ghosts shriek and screech instead of speaking like the two named ghosts we encounter. It makes the hive ghosts feel like they aren't ghosts made from the Traveler. They feel more alien than they should and it distracts from the fact that we are massacring the same things that create us. We have our little revelation on the first kill and never again, even after we meet Fynch, who's gone rogue and is trying to right that wrong. Slight issue with the very forced "Imarru is a bully" thing to get us to hate him, as if his demeanor and him being Savathun's ghost wasn't enough to want to hunt him down. All that aside, the Throne world is beautiful and Savathun's lucent palace really feels like a massive mansion with lots of halls and rooms and not just a giant building with arenas in it. I really enjoyed the mystery of finding out how Savathun "stole" the Light, and the eventual realization. The season has had a very interesting story and watching Saladin and Crow develop and evolve once more. For the first time the first season of the year connects to the dlc story as well which is a welcome change, and in terms of those first seasons(Undying, Hunt) this is byfar the best. Final note, I watched Dynasty before WQ dropped and it armed me with lots of background knowledge and new context to understand the story in. Big thanks to you and the team for putting it together for all us to see. I too geeked out when I saw the Tablet of Ruin!
Three things for devs going forward. 1. If you bring back super good advice, let Byf voice it. 2. Once all subclasses are 3.0 remove all nerfs and see which one (solar) is best. 3. Savathun stomp emote?
Savathun’s song was not mentioned once that I recall. Prior to this expansion it was one of the main mysteries that intrigued me the most, can byf or anyone else explain to me why this wasn’t mentioned or ami missing something?
Front-loading content is similar to a question I raise about raids. The opening encounter to Crown of Sorrow was a chore. I don’t think many people will disagree with that. But when my friends and I were doing Vow of the Disciple on day one, that opening encounter was pretty cool. We learned about a mechanic, and we got the feeling of launching our assault on this mysterious fortress. But even by the second run, it felt like a chore. The question is: is it worth it? Is it worth making the day one experience as good as possible, even at the expense of repeat runs? I’m not sure. Ideally, we could have our cake and eat it, too. On repeat runs, there is some way to speed up or skip these opening encounters. But if that’s not an option, what’s the call?
Yes. The first time (which, I mean, Preservation already does the opening part of the raid) is fine… Like you said, after that it is a chore (granted the whole raid is a chore after so many runs). The opening has ZERO rewards and seems like it is as long if not longer than any of the encounters. Which they want you to grind these raids. Once I have the couple more res boarders I need I will never play that raid again unless trying to do flawless. That includes the master version since I’ve already unlocked all the adepts. However, this one of Destiny’s biggest problems. They make content that is good for a couple runs but become unfun and a chore quickly… yet they build they game around grinding them heavily.
I thought this was the most content-packed few months we’ve had in a while and may be a new bar for the meaning of “live service game” 4 weeks of story, 4-6 weeks of more idle updates, 3 weeks of seasonal event. I cannot recall any other game that has pushed this model and capitalized on it before. That being said, this was the first season were I either didn’t feel like I had enough time to play or didn’t want to play to the extent of last years seasons (haven’t gotten title, ritual weapon, or ritual weapon ornaments even now for first time). I’m excited to see where things go now, not in an “addict” or “fanboy” kind of way, but in a solid “viewer” and “fan” to the coming season and it’s “episodes”
The problem I gave with the witch queen campaign is that narratively speaking, it’s a complete mess. And does Savathun a disservice. I’ll break up some of the issues into parts. 1.) Savathun’s plan makes no sense with the resources she has. We saw in the season of the lost that savathun was able to use form of memory returning magic to return all of uldren sov’s memories to crow. Why didn’t she prepare some form of this within her throne world to restore her memories without putting her plans at risk. Also, another option was to give her Hive guardians the relics to bring back to memories. We know from the unrefined qualichor, that the hive have access to deep sight. 2.) Savathun’s character doesn’t make sense in this update. It’s situation where Bungie needed Savathun to die and resurrect to her old self. We saw that with all of uldren sov’s memories, crow remained as this new character with echoes of his past. However, we had only shown Savathun such a tiny amount of her life, most of being within the last six years through the items we found in the story. How would that translate to Savathun being her old self entirely. Shouldn’t she be in a similar predicament as Crow where she is lost and questions what she is doing. Remember, in a week’s time, she died, resurrected, and built her new throne world. Not once did this character with no memory of who she was question what she was doing. In a way, it seems as though Bungie forgot the lore of how the light works. 3.) The memories are a good Segway into my next topic and that is the final battle with Savathun. I have no issue with the gameplay. I was a little disappointed that it was just redux of ghaul if you compare the two fights. However, the main issue with this is how we messed with Savathun. The basic idea was to show her a memory that even she wouldn’t know that would throw her off her game. However, I don’t understand how Savathun could have ever fallen for this. How could the Hive god of cunning not expect to see a foreign memory brought in front of her. That should be expected especially with how variable a memory could be tied to a certain object. Also, I don’t understand how this memory would throw her off her game. This whole update is about Savathun rejecting darkness because she does not agree with it being the best option. Also, she embraces the light as she sees the benefit it has over the darkness and it literally chooses her right after she dies. So, our plan is to show her a memory that proves the darkness is a liar and shouldn’t be trusted. While at the same time, showing how the light was going to choose them and possibly lead them to a golden age like so many other civilizations. Most of my campaign gripes are that Savathun was built up to be such a intelligent character but it seems that she could not expect the simplest of tricks. Or plan ahead effectively. If any one has some lore or story that proves my statements wrong. Please show me. I want to love Thai campaign and I absolutely loved the experience, but when I thought into it. This stuff just doesn’t hold up.
Not everyone can binge play in the first few weeks of a new season and be waiting on “the content drip” by mid season. Some people, like me, work 50+ hours a week and I think the amount of content that was released with witch queen was perfect. It took me till the last week to finish all the seasonal challenges.
For me I think the biggest flaw of witch queen was the voice of Savathun, not the voice acting, but the cadence of her voice. Oryx had a deep and commanding voice that I think really embodied what a evil space god should sound like, and in my mind I always assumed that Savathun would sound like an ancient and wisened old woman with a rough and kind of facetious cadence to her voice, but to me she just kinda sounded like a normal person. Other than that I thought the story was fantastic.
Savatunes narrations were easily the best part of the season for me. Its been a long time since i was so engaged in a season of Destiny where it didnt feel like i was just going through the motions
Would have been cool if Eramis had been introduced more than just at the end of that dungeon as an "almost ally" that gets corrupted, or a nemesis that was dogging us a bit more. The problem is I think they haven't had a very long term view as you allude to. I'm glad they are setting their stories more across multiple games rather than just the "next expansion". I think the long view on the story will make it much better and avoid the monster of the week problem.
I think one thing that made the seasonal story strong was that it was only 4 weeks. I liked that Bungie didn't take a story that could be told in 4 weeks and stretch it out to 8 weeks. I hope that Bungie continues to make the story last only as long as it needs to.
~4 weeks of Destiny and then an ~8 week break is AMAZING. I love being able to, you know, play some other games in between content. This is similar to the Path of Exile content model, where they frontload a bunch of new stuff each league, and then expect most players to drop off and take a break, and then return next season, instead of trying to be a "always active" game.
iirc you were saying Eramis was 'one of, if not the the best villain' barring oryx before because of 'how much we learned about her in the season.' Interesting to see you 180'd so hard and see things how us debbie downers did now. I'm curious now to see if your opinion on Savathun will hold up or if it'll fall by the wayside as well though I suppose that depends on if Bungie explores her more or just goes "idk maybe they'll come back!" like Eramis being Frozen and left there by the vanguard for some reason.
My biggest criticism was how different the promotional material for WQ felt compared to what we got. I was expecting something between an alien, fey world, and the flood levels from Halo CE, or the introduction of Grey Fox from MGS1. Something beautiful, gossamer, yet inherently unnerving and creepy. I feel like the vibe just fell flat in that regard
I agree, it felt a little weird just how super casual it felt like we were traversing and existing in places that should've been a bigger deal, if that makes any sense? The vibe is kinda there with the cut scene that sorta makes you pity the worm's deception but idk it gets shrugged off pretty easily as we go on.
I think one criticism I have, and it's very nitpicky and minor, is that when it's revealed that the Traveler had already chosen the Hive and that the Darkness deceived Savathun, the emphasis in the initial scene is that Savathun was deceived, NOT that she was already chosen, which is what actually matters.
I think something to consider in terms of "frontloading" is that while they could have waited a week like past expansions, this season's narrative was also less than half as long as usual. It was only 4 weeks before the narrative completely wrapped up for Risen.
I enjoyed the story completely by far my favorite campaign I enjoy the weekly visits to the atlar hearing from savathun My gripe was how fast the season of risen felt
That is a very good break down of all that is good and bad with the Witch Queen expansion, I agree with pretty much all points! Thanks for sharing this, Byf. I feel that we have so much exciting stuff ahead.
I think it's also worth remembering that you didn't have to (and most people didn't) do the seasonal story in the first 4 weeks. I know it sucks for someone like you who plays the game 24/7 but for most, we like to play the content when we like and to have it all there from the get go is great. The "famine" you speak of is only for you content creators.
I think the biggest thing is it's been literally years of our guardian doing these amazing things and we barely know how people see us. We only just recently found out that we are being spied on and yeah Mara has always seen us as a potential threat but she sees everyone including herself as a potential threat but what about just the normal citizens and the eliksni we tore apart the eliksni in almost as good of fashion as Saint we started the commonality of wielding darkness and have been on the Frontline of many of these things are we feared or loved? Hated or maybe we aren't even known after all we are only The Guardian and technically speaking have no name
If I remember correctly, seasons that are tied with expansions are typically shorter, so I always stop playing after reaching rank 100 and getting the guns I want in an expansion season
Drip-feeding is great, and I prefer it. However sometimes it feels like if you miss a week, then it’s hard to catch up. Front-loading makes catch up easier since it’s all available and you can go at your own pace. You can take as long as you like over multiple weeks. Obviously it feels like once everyone is done and you’re still lacking, it’s a bit of a struggle to get those quest lines done. This is where drip-feeding does well, cos most people will be on the same page. Currently I’m in Uni. I don’t have the time for Destiny since it’s exam season. I get to play for maybe 8 hours once/ twice a week on a day off.
I'm so tired of streamers/youtubers stating problems they have without acknowledging that its something that uniquely affects streamers/youtubers. IE drip feeding seasonal content is bad for most people, because most people don't play literally every day. Most people play when they can, which means they miss out on things that only happen for 1 week at the end of the season. Witch Queen and season of the risen has been a huge success IMO. I don't care that a streamer logs on and goes "i don't have anything new for viewers."
I think we might already have the basis for the future saga - THE NINE - after all the project was codenamed Matter. We have the two factions (the 5 and the 4) established in the lore. And I’d love it if we got to play as Cabal & Eliksni too
TL;DR, my biggest complaint is that an unfathomably old God of Cunning and Lies -- Savathun -- being shocked and breaking character/her façade over the realization that the obviously lying liar -- The Witness -- shocker, lied to her, felt like a necessity of using the WQ as a campaign seller and less a necessity of progressing her character/story. Still thought it was a decent conclusion either way.
Generally speaking I agree with the overall premise of this video, but I think Savathûn has always been the one true villain playing a critical role (deeply rooted in Destiny lore) and the Season of the Witch Queen has done a amazing job of demonstrating that fact. Now, don't get me wrong while "The Darkness, the Traveler, Guardians and now the Witness are to be sure the structural frame of the Destiny, anything done with them has far greater consequence to the whole story and becomes end game content. From my perspective Savathûn has always been the thread that has kept everything connected and moving forward, we just haven't been aware it until now but as with many great stories the more questions (Bungie) answered even greater question are created until the story is finished. It's a big game of balance and Bungie has done it successfully a few times now.
While I love the more complex narratives I feel it would have been good if they had kept the old Red war campaign. Its a very good introduction to the setting as well as giving players and idea as to what/who guardians are. We are good guys who use the light, fighting bad guys who don't have the light. Shadowkeep then gives us a good step into understanding what the darkness is and THEN we get into the more complex plot lines: Beyond light and Witch queen.
I don't know if you'll see this comment... Speaking of weapon lore, can you imagine what Omar has to say about all this? Imagine a conversation between parasite and xenophage. That's the lore I want, tbh
I know if Bungie looked at these comments, that this one will probably be missed but I much prefer the front loaded approach. I have other games I want to put time into and it’s difficult to juggle playing D2 every week and actually make progress in other games. I used to have to just accept that I was going to have to miss stuff every season or straight up skip a season. This is the first one that I didn’t have too.
Personally I like when the content front loaded, then if there are other games I want to play I feel like I have more time for them, however I also LOVE Destiny so being brought back weekly is still nice
I think a lot of the pacing issues mentioned came from the fact that this expansion was delayed, and as such pushed the intended story back so far. Had The Witch Queen come out in November 2021, that may have led to a more natural progression of the campaign as it related to the seasonal content, as well as the 30th anniversary content, before we moved on to the next season proper. It may be an awkward segue, but I feel hope that the rest of this year will move much more smoothly.
Agree with the sentiment regarding Savathun. My only concern is that they do a thanos, and spend all of their energy with this BBG , that any proceeding villian/antagonist will either be ad hoc'd, or will just seem thin, comparatively.
I feel like this season was a good start to year 5, it was way better than season of undying or hunt, but I didn't enjoy the way you upgrade the war table and some of the upgrades felt lackluster, at least the weapons this season gave me the same feeling the weapons from Season of the forge gave me.
I gotta say some of the most satisfying to play seasons where for me season of the chosen and Splicer (season of the Lost was only lacking because of the time between the last mission and Savathuns exorcism) all seasons that had spread out varying content without it being: Here is after the front load content this activity! BUT HARDER AND NOT MATCHMADE with maybe a tiny bit more loot.
Your first critique definitely gives us insight as to why Destiny 2 has a "2" at the end of it. Sequels are generally made for more experienced players in mind, and while they've made attempts to make D2 the "definitive" edition of the IP, Destiny 1 gives the new players the context of "Light Good, Dark Bad" pretty well, even if the storytelling of the game wasn't up to par with D2's current storytelling. With the context of D1 added to D2, that revelation of the Light and Darkness morality shift hits harder to a newer player who had played both (Bungie port D1 to PC I beg of you)
For me, Mars has come back, and we get to see.. all of about fifteen minutes of it in one mission. An entire planet vanished, and came back, and we get one mission, to do with firing ourselves into the Throne World through a Cabal Cannon. Fun as it was, wasted opportunity to see how the Darkness has tainted the planet.
I agree with everything you covered in this. The lore and story and game has to been in the best place it has been since Taken King. The worm also talks to you sometimes when you start the Wellspring. I love the voice actor for it...lie down, go to sleep. LOL. Super Good Advice was one of my first D1 exotics, would love to see it come back with a personality like that! I've seen preview images on TH-cam of other creators claiming to have ideas on where we go next season and as of 6pm Central on the 19th Bungie still has ZERO up on what is next. I'm hoping they can hold it until reset on Tuesday. I know they have to release something over the weekend to get folks back into the game but how cool would it be to have no idea at all until the servers came back up on Tuesday reset? :)
Great vid as always good sir. Are you going to do more videos on the Lycent tales lore book? I found the part on Immaru fascinating, perhapse not sheerly from a lire stand point but definately from a character one, it shows a different side of Immaru and of course there's the question we always seen to be asking: what are Savathûn's true intentions?
As someone who has only started playing in Witch Queen (though I knew a ton of lore beforehand, courtesty of friends), my gripes with the Witch Queen are the red-bordered weapons; and the introduction to the story. The red-bordered weapons are kind of self-explanatory, I suppose; I really want those exotic glaives and the fact that I have to rely on the whims of the RNG system to give me the red-bordered weapons for the crafting quest is frustrating to the extreme. With the introduction... when I started playing I joked that today, I slay some scrub Navota, and tomorrow, I'm going after Savathun and the game... made me do literally that. And Witch Queen proper at least had an introductory video explaining some context, even if I imagine it'd make a lot less sense to someone who didn't get live commentary on Splicer and Lost as they were ongoing. But the Risen storyline felt frustratingly hard to get into at the start, especially when the New Lights quests don't say a single thing about how we now have Cabal allies. I don't know where was the last time that questline was reworked, but I feel like it really should've gotten an update with WQ launch, just to bring it up to speed with the post-Lost status quo.
The only thing about witch queen I'm not fully on board with it the fact that savathiccs ghost was already hivified when it resurrected her outside the city, I don't understand why that is
I'd rather have a front loaded season. When the season runs out of content I can just go play another game instead of feeling obligated to come back every week.
To start as a game D2 is at the best it's been since day 1. It has become a properly grown up game with nuance and huge respect for the zero patronising attitude of the team to dumbing down narrative. I struggle with the way that old content is paywalled off for new lights. Even if they've bought the deluxe edition of witch Queen old packs cost including forsaken which is effectively in the DCV. The season of the risen faded way too quickly and the fact certain parts of the war table was undoable as a solo with zero ability to lfg. The end is 2 years off and what next for a new player base make it worth the effort to newbies too
Probably my least favorite thing to come out of this expansion, in terms of narrative, would be the Altar of Reflection. They are so much worse than Forsaken’s Mara Sov dialogues in the Dreaming City. I have stopped listening to them, because everything Savathûn says is so full of contradictions and lies for the sake of lying. And I get it. That’s her thing. But that makes it so boring and makes everything we hear all the less compelling. I don’t feel like I should care at all about her “two truths and one lie” riddles when it’s in all likelihood just three lies. It feels like Bungie is teasing us in a condescending way by going “oOoOhH, but what if THIS time she’s telling the truth, OoOoHh?” And I’m just not feeling it anymore.
Interestingly, I feel the exact opposite about her “two truths and a lie” riddles. Staying within the rules of belief suspension, we have to assume she will be telling two truths and a lie. It’s the only time we can be certain she is telling a truth. The rest of her dialog/story is exhausting for the reason you mention, but I’m stoked during those riddles because I know we’re getting something to use: and it’s kinda fun figuring out which is which.
I generally think the lore, characters and world of Destiny ranges from good to really great, but the actual playable main plotlines (as in specifically what our guardian goes through) for the past two expansions have been so incredibly dull for me. Beyond Light constantly has your ghost doubting whether or not you should be using Stasis as if it's a moral choice when the game blatantly forces you to use it during the plot-related boss fights. It gets very old very quickly. Then there's the climax where Eramis freezes our ghost and takes the pyramid from us but we summon the power of Stasis regardless in a "the power was inside you all along" moment taken out of a children's movie (Yes the powers of Darkness are implied to be held within the bearers themselves and the pyramid is just kind of a set of training wheels, but not at that point in the plotline. Post campaign explanations don't fix in-the-moment eye-rolling.) Witch Queen's entire hook is Savathun stealing the light and trying to figure out how she did it. The whole campaign even has a detective theme to it between the armor and the investigation board. Lore in the past has hinted at different ways Savathun could be trying to create her own bootleg light with draining void light from guardians (ghost actually mentions this in the campaign), secretly allying with Nokris, etc. Turns out all of those were just bullshit dead ends and Savathun just followed the mantra (devotion, bravery, sacrifice) found in the brochures New Lights probably get when they first show up to the tower. It's just so uninspired compared to the potential created by those lore bits. It's also jarring for Savathun to be chosen after how long she's been an enemy of humanity and the Traveler. I know it's implied she did something during the collapse to foil the Witness' attempt to kill the Traveler and it feeds into the " the Traveler isn't really benevolent, it's just looking out for itself" narrative, but it does set a precedent. That being: if Mithrax, leader of House LIGHT, dies at some point and doesn't come back as a guardian, I will be very disappointed in Bungie's sense of consistency.
Man I’ll be honest, I haven’t really felt compelled to care about crafting yet. Most of the weapons I would craft, I’ve gotten fantastic rolls of the weapons during the course of my grind to even obtain enough red border weapons to craft the guns, so my crafted ones get passed over by the ones I used to get the crafting done. And I don’t want to use the subpar crafted gun for a million things until it has the perks I already have on my random rolls. Love the concept, just haven’t really gotten excited by it in practice just yet.
My gripe is with the ridiculous obstacle course for the Parasite quest, and the lack of more checkpoints. The course is hard enough, worrying about Cursed Thralls and Knights only makes it worse!
If they ever sunset Nessus. I can see them using Failsafe as Super Good Advice's AI, if they ever bring back the exotic. She also fits the bill of being sassy 😂
Nothing like logging each tuesday to do the seasonal story for 1 hour and then waiting a whole week for it to progress.. for a whole four weeks that really tell you how little meat are in this seasonal model Bungie is delivering.
I love that there seems to be light and dark within both factions. House light and house salvation for the Eliksni. Caital’s ascendency and Calus’ for cabal. Savathun and Xivu Arath for hive. The vex and the scorn are wild cards with Ashir being assimilated and the scorn “evolving.” The taken are pretty evident as evil because of what they are but every natural faction has light and dark. Now, I don’t entirely like that the story is like avengers with a big baddie that is teased and built up over years. Yeah it’s cool to have a main villain but it kind of takes away from the importance of what we do. Does it matter if we take out Xivu if the person controlling her is still a threat? The story telling has improved dramatically, looking at Curse of Osiris but I like the open and close stories. I also think that seasonal story has improved substantially from season of undying to risen. I’m very excited for season 17.
![Flawless Trials on Every Subclass in One Weekend, the Movie [FINAL SHAPE EDITION] | Destiny 2](/img/n.gif)
i think the biggest narrative failure was the overwhelming Scorn presence - the Hive Lightbearers were such a new and exciting enemy, and it felt like we barely saw any of them during the story
I really hate that they do this soo often. In forsaken, we got Scorn as the brand new enemy, and we had really good fights with them don't get me wrong, but the endgame just ended up being taken. I think forsaken was the least annoying though, Beyond Light set up that both we have Stasis AND the fallen have stasis, yet the only stasis users are campaign, a high value target, and there is ZERO stasis presence in the raid at all. Now it kinda feels like they're repeating this, by making lucent hive lightbearers, but we're probably not going to see them again in 6 months.
@@wood5596 almost exactly six months later, they got two brief appearances in awful campaign missions
I would have loved a final week “epilogue” like we had with the Vex attack on the City in season of the splicer, or the exorcism activity in season of the lost
I do agree Bungie should have a type of “epilogue” for the last week of the season. In Risen’s case, there was probably just so much going on the past few months, that Bungie’s writers had to go with an early, open ended ending. On the topic of the writing, I’d say at this point, the captivating thing about the seasons and story isn’t just our Guardian, it’s how we react and how the characters around us react to certain events and motives.
I personally like the way it was done this season, previously we got a 2 months long wait between the story peaking and the story ending, with XYZ seasonal event cutting in it, that has also nothing to add to it, and kind of dislodges the narration imo. Imagine being the person who left when Guardian Games arrived and you are just left waiting for an additional 3 weeks until that crap is finished, at least it's how it kept feeling like last year for me.
Bungie has done a godawful job at Lost though, that is a definite outlier of how NOT to end a season, not giving enough time to even get a satisfaction out of the epilogue.
@@turkizno I don’t really agree with you at all. I agree that I don’t like having that gap in between of basically nothing, but I’d much prefer the weekly story to persist all season, with one big one week event at the end to cap it off. Yeah, Lost’s story was lacking, and the epilogue was a little weak, but I like it better than Risen’s ending. I think Splicer was like the ideal season to me
@@owenrobinson5031 That is fair! Honestly, Splicer was chuck-full of display screen dialogue too, even the seasonal event started off with Misraaks and Ikora wishing us well and that was heckin awesome.
@@turkizno fully agree. I loved Saint’s development over the season, with him changing his mind about the Eliksni. Him saying “you are my people!” To Misraaks during the vex invasion of the city was such an amazing moment
For me the biggest miss on WQ’s narrative was the post campaign story. The Worm and the Queen quest was great for story and lore. However, I really did miss the way the stasis subclass quest post-BL told its story, leading to the Lament Quest and it’s resolution with Ana, Elsie, and Clovis. Hopefully we’ll get something more like that in Lightfall.
My only big complaint about the campaign was the ambiguous nature of savathun receiving her ghost and the formation of Immaru (and how the hive ghosts got… hive-y). While that I’m certain will be revealed in time, I do believe that an explanation would’ve gone a long way to wrapping our mind around parts of story and bringing closure to that aspect of it.
I'm p sure there's a loretab somewhere that hypothesis that ghosts can change their appearance to better suit their guardians.
@@Lynch2507 there is. I don't remember which one it was. Basically ghosts go through metamorphosis of some kind when reviving a guardian.
@@davidmaldonadov But in the cut scene immaru looks like an evil ghost before even finding savathuns body. I was really irritated with the lack of an explanation but like the op said I am confident bungie will come up with a satisfying explanation
@@rgnszeb123 well, that's right. I'm not sure as to when that metamorphosis takes place
WQ didn’t need a post-campaign story, because the campaign story was good enough. BL campaign story was far inferior, that’s why they needed a post-campaign story
Ada-1's treatment is heartbreaking. The Black Armoury Papers is one of, if not the best lore books. The emotional journey it takes you on and the way the way it shows guardians as antagonists and fleshes out Ada so much to explain why she's cold and almost combative towards the guardians. The feelings go from the introduction to "what's this lady's problem, chill out I don't even know you." to "oh wow, no wonder she doesn't trust guardians and doesn't want to give us the obsidian accelerator."
Now she's relegated to tower grandma who sews us new sweaters.
She used to be living weapon who grants access to some of the most powerful weaponry in our arsenal. It's a massive and unwarranted demotion.
My biggest gripe is having to grind the wellspring for a chance at getting the red weapons to complete the hidden one board mission.
Yup. Honestly, I didn’t even touch wellspring. I was so turned off by the grind that was presented to us for that, especially knowing the glaives at the end weren’t even worth it.
It's got a nice density
At least none of them are that great so other than quests not really necessary to grind for the patterns. Same can't be said for the seasonal weapons though, the sniper and pulse are A+.
Wellspring was trash. Also.... They need to stsrt adding matchmaking for higher tier content. Accept in a GM that would be awful but outside of that it should be fine.
@@bigmol1633 also Legend PsiOps. I cannot finish upgrading the War Table with Insights as the last 3 are bound to a non- matchmade activity, hence not able to get the seasonal reward ship (fully upgrade the War Table to get it). I REALLY hope the Guardian Games' matchmade 1550 was a precursor to that.
My biggest criticism with this season was that I was wanting more, I wasn’t really satisfied with this seasons story line and wanted more
it was dog
@@yourlocalhuman3526 thank you, very constructive :)
Same
@@yourlocalhuman3526 I really liked it
I'd split the season out of the expansion. Thus giving more room to both!
My biggest complaint about WQ was the lack of post campaign content the missions that were put post campaign were fantastic but I found myself done with everything after like 3 weeks which normally wouldn’t be a bad thing but I found myself not wanting to keep doing preservation, or wellspring, or the replay able missions. Coming from a player who does everything and gets all the triumphs I feel like there just isn’t a need for me to want to keep doing psiops or go for the crafted weapons after the first ones Ive done but all around this campaign was absolutely fantastic
yh this is the fastest i've ever been bored with a new season plus a new dlc
I don’t disagree with that. I usually guild a handful of titles but the only one I have already and probably will is Conquerer.
I have a bunch of RL friends that this was the most they’ve been excited for an expansion/season and this was quickest that they’ve ended up losing interest and for the most part falling off from playing. Their lives haven’t changed at all either.
So something is up…
@@amorfati4927 why is it a bad thing to enjoy the game for 3-4 weeks and put it down until the new season. It gives those who can only play a few hours a week a chance to experience everything without an abnormally long season
I've talked to my friends about this, and we all agree, the story is great and something we keep coming back to is that, The Witch Queen is RIGHT. The Traveler GAVE her the light, the Traveler seems to have chosen to be bound to her throne world. The Traveler WOULD be safer in her Throne World. She's right. It's completely plausible that the Traveler tried to abandon us, or maybe even if the Traveler went into the Throne World, we wouldn't lose our light. We don't know. We were scared, so we stopped it. We Are no longer loyal to the Traveler, but The City. We might have just betrayed the Travelers interests.
Fair, and after Savathûn was killed by us the Traveler probably thought "Guess I need to go back to the City then." Because with Savathûn gone we're pretty much all that's left to fight the Darkness. We forced the Traveler's hand by jumping to conclusions and not negotiating after we found out Savathûn was chosen and not a thief
The Traveller didn’t choose to enter the throne world, Sav was forcing it there using the full extent of the power to take (the ability to move worlds between realities).
I guess you could argue that the Traveller didn’t fight back (if it even could) but that’s not really the same thing
You and your friends are wrong, if the Traveler chose to be there, it would have, if the Traveler could leave or wanted to abandon us, it could leave even now, Bungie has to come up with really clever way to tell us, why the Traveler still chose to stay silently floating above our last city.
If it is capable and has its own will, it would just leave unless it did side with humanity, it did choose us or plot twist it is waiting for the right time to make its move (either siphon what it needs from us or just leave for some other reason). Until we get a proper explanation it is pure speculation at best and the writers can just make anything up i.e. it is fiction at the end of the day.
@Cato G This is a long time false statement and has been proven so, the Warmind had contingencies but did not attack the Traveler.
@Cato G Rasputin never shot/harmed the traveller. He had plans in place, sure, but they were never used. Uldren just made it up as a rumour
Regarding content cadence: I for one personally prefer seasons to be front loaded.
No one likes a content drought (I remember the the Taken Spring...), but after having be subjected to drip feed, I find that front loading just feels better. If we were able to rewind time to the gap between the Taken King and the Taken Spring (the massive April update that was the only content after TTK launched) and just add Bungie communicating with us rather than being silent for so long, I think that gap would have been MUCH easier to deal with.
Drip fed content just feels like getting blueballed every week. At least with front loading, you can get it all it all done, wrap up whatever farming/raiding/etc. you want to do, then move on to another game for awhile. The drip just makes it seem like they are trying to shackle me to the game like WoW does, and I hate that feeling.
See I'm the same way. I can't stand having to wait week after week for the plot to move forward and being shackled to the game like that
I honesty think this was better, less time gating means you can play other games 🤷
FINALLY someone gets it. Like, I get how people like drip-fed content if Destiny is their life (or job for content creators), but for normal people, I think front-loading is better. I can take it all at my own pace, experience when I have time, and not feel pressed to get on every week, multiple times a week due to FOMO. Nothing wrong with having things to do outside of destiny
AMEN🙏
My big critique is, as much as we saw plenty of the Witness and their Disciples, we haven't gotten much more about the Veiled Woman. I'm pretty much convinced that the Darkness saw our interaction with the Witness in Shadowkeep and set us on a path to learn to use the Darkness to fight the Witness. Still would love to see more of the other side of the Dark.
Finally! Someone that recognizes that the Winnower/The darkness is not the same as the Witness
@@waterlight0243 I thought that was a given. Savathun herself says the witness is not darkness but wears it as a cloak... Or something like that. Am paraphrasing.
@@waterlight0243 also just to add, and I know we have to preface this with things in the books of sorrow are not necessarily accurate, if you listen to how the witness talks and compare it to how the darkness talks to oryx, it is completely different.
Could be a retcon, but basically my view is the witness is not the final big bad.
I agree, they are not the same. The Winnower is a name for the paracausal force that is the Darkness. The Darkness has no physical form. The Witness pretty much acts as a body, mouth, hand and eyes for the the force that has no form: the Winnower/Darkness. The Witness is essentially an avatar for what the Darkness would look like if it had a physical form, it is a stand in the represents the radical ideology of the Winnower. The darkness as a form of power, a tool, nature, however, is as neutral as gravity or magnetism. The Darkness is not evil, it is a paracausal force of nature. The Witness however, is an evil force that wishes to destroy us. Through, given Destiny’s themes of symmetry, as Ulan-Tan once mentioned (he was more of a precursor to the “dark vanguard” trio), I speculate that the Traveler has an entity inside it that may be more passive, and sees Guardians as its blindly loyal, childish army. If there is an entity inside the Traveler, that’s just my guess of how she/he/it would behave personality-wise.
@@garrettviewegh677 That sounds a lot like the Mistborn books, funnily enough. The difference between the power and the person wielding it, essentially "like a cloak".
I feel like this season has made a clear indication that Bungie sees, or at least has seen, the Hive as the main antagonistic faction of the Destiny storyline.
Even with Destiny 2 opening with the Red War, the strongest updates and story revelations of the Destiny story so far have involved the Hive/Taken.
And that’s my overall criticism of Destiny’s story. None of the other enemy races got the same level of thought and gravitas to their stories as the Hive.
Doesn’t help that D2 vanilla wasn’t great but it really should’ve been a bigger deal that the Cabal emperor was in our system. Would’ve been interesting if the Midnight Coupe happened in Sol, like we’re just collateral in a grander political game.
Calus will def going to reappear, and the Vex may have a say in "The final shape".
Only if you look at the season completely separately from Witch Queen itself. The Seasons in d2 are not the primary thing driving the narrative forward, they are things to tide us over until the next big DLC. This is one of the very first DLCs/seasons where there is any (reasonable) possibility of us at least having a larger ceasefire with the hive (in this case, only the lucent brood) if Savathun is revived by her ghost, and remembers what we showed her (namely the witness tricking the Krill of the osmium dynasty so they could not be chosen by the traveler). It was also the first dlc that introduced literally the main boss of the overall game series in The Witness, at least until after Lightfall. Also I would assume that if bungie wanted to shift the focus to the hive for the overall game they would have made a hive raid boss, rather than someone who is explicitly a powerful servant of the witness. Also the fact that Rhulk, who is again only a SERVANT of The Witness, literally subjugated the hives’ gods (namely the worm gods) kind of puts the power of the hive themselves into perspective. Even just looking at the seasonal narrative this season was more about the improving relations between the Cabal and the Tower, with the hive serving as a common enemy between ONLY TWO FACTIONS. It does not indicate any increase in animosity between, for example, the Eliksni, another major faction that we may develop further alliances with to fight the black fleet. There is also the fact that when Oryx was still the taken king the Witness is the one who granted him control over the taken, and also the taken seem to be making up the bulwark of the Witness’ forces in the throne world in conjunction with the Scorn. I also imagine that the fact that there have been seasons for each and every faction kind of mitigates your point, as each season has been focused on them entirely. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that the Cabal were the main enemy faction after they literally tried to nuke the tower with the Almighty, yet here we are.
Edit: grammar
@UCitT_soGTEMw1u4jyndamcA Right, that is why I said "or at least HAS seen".
If you look at Destiny 1 and 2 you can see clearly that bungie put the most amount of effort into Hive and Taken DLC.
Forsaken was the only other DLC with comparative success across the community and even in the end it was Riven, who was corrupted and Taken by the darkness as well.
Clearly it is the "darkness" that is the main antagonist of the story of Destiny as a whole. The revelation that the Hive were betrayed and manipulated into working for the Darkness is big but that doesn't change the fact that up until this newest dlc and season the Hive were definitely the closest relation to the Darkness we have ever had seen, therefore being the main antagonistic faction we as Guardians have face so far.
I feel the only thing is how the Vex fit in this coming war between light and dark. Savathun and her brood have the light removing themselves from the Witness and Sivu Arath is trying to figure out how and why she did. Calus is gathering forces of his own while our alligence with Caital is getting tense. The House of Light is in the City as another ally and Eramis is still frozen on Europa to become maybe a future villain again. While the vex are just...there. While yes they are somehow tied to the darkness given that the black heart was in the Black Garden, Clovis bray and the exos, even the "we are your salvation" cutscene but that is it. There are even hints of so called friendly vex that have blue eyes but that is all.
Who are the vex, genuinely? Besides just time traveling robots who are afraid of the paracausal nature of the light. It's hinted they have a weird kinship with ghosts revealed in one Nessus adventure. Why? Not only that but the robot shells of the Past, Present, and Future vex hint that they are deteriorating. Why? And again how do they fit in the coming conflict with the Witness?
I loved the format. AND THE DROUGHT! Finally it felt like I could keep up with Destiny And have a life outside of it. I played other games, did more with hobbies, and generally had more time free while also enjoying destiny thoroughly. I think that should be the norm
FINALLY someone gets it. Like, I get how people like drip-fed content if Destiny is their life (or job for content creators), but for normal people, I think front-loading is better. I can take it all at my own pace, experience when I have time, and not feel pressed to get on every week, multiple times a week due to FOMO. Nothing wrong with having things to do outside of destiny
That is the real take for people whos life doesn't revolve around the game.
Before I really get into the video, I wanted to let you know that the audio balance is SO GOOD. In previous videos I'd have to crank you way up and blow out my ear drums when the ads popped in because I'm poor. Thank you and your team for fixing the audio balance! Keep up the great work!
Seasons that are released at the same time as expansions should be drip fed imo. After that the rest should be available to finish day 1. There was an absolute overwhelming amount of content to do with the first month of witch queen and I'm hoping the rest of the seasons are as solid as the last year.
Or at least within the first month to retain a bit if playerbase over time without it feeling like too much of a slog
Wouldn't it be cool if there were Deepsite sites on other locations. Revealing more of how Savathun had been playing her game a very long time. Even one in the tower somewhere
Imo Savathun is the best villain we've seen in Destiny thus far.
EDIT: 33:51 I thought Bungie said we won't be getting a Destiny 3
It's not that we arent getting one at some point but it's no time soon.
They've pointed this out b4
@@crashlads2685 I think I know what post you're talking about. I just don't remember which post that was.
I do think Witch Queen deserves the praise it has received in regards to the main campaign, the phenomenal raid, and where they are taking the story, especially considering the circumstances of the last 2ish years.... yet I really do feel it was lacking in most other regards. As stated by other comments, the post-campaign is near nonexistent and the patrol zone of the Throne World to me is easily one of Bungie's most uneventful. Crafting feels like a barebones red-border/level up slog that has you sitting in a Shuro Chi checkpoint mindlessly trying to unlock a slightly better version of a perk, and raid weapons being craftable makes the adept versions feel absolutely null of importance. The complete lack of any new PVP or Gambit maps seems kinda insane for two modes that are supposed to be cornerstones of the entire game.
Honestly as much as I liked Season of The Risen I feel like the content it added made it just enough for Witch Queen to feel like a full expansion. I may be being a bit harsh but when people call this the best expansion ever period then its going to be held to such a high standard. To me the Taken War from The Taken King was a great way to get players to go explore old locations and see how the events of the DLC affected the solar system as a whole, and while the Psi Ops battlegrounds sort of reflect this, they ultimately are just three missions. Anyways to make a long story short I am incredibly biased because I'm tired of The Hive and deeply despise whoever decided to continue involving The Scorn.
Having the main story and Vox Obscura drop alongside everything was very weird to me , since we had 3 storylines going on at once
I would’ve thought it would be better if Vox came after the finale of the seasonal story , and have that weekly run to see the story develop on Calus would’ve been better
Personally i felt that the seasonal story was cut short, yeah it was good but i would have liked to see more of it.
I’ve been hoping that Destiny’s story, and the slowly revealing motivations of the Light and Dark could inject some more science into the story. The whole “Final Shape” theme gives me big E8 lattice and Emergence theory vibes from Quantum Physics.
One thing I love about sci-fi are the hints of real world science sprinkled in. It seems we’ve gone full fantasy here in D2.
With the main storylines here, I feel like too many things are left unmentioned. What’s up with Osiris and Eris? I wanted to learn more about the hidden, and also give some personality to Savathun’s Risen. This would make our fight with them a morale dilemma if they had personal feelings and motivations, and give more weight to Crow’s decision.
This seasons pace was perfect. Great experience and also gave me time to relax and play other games as well
Perfect? For me the "Trust goes both ways" mission brought the story to a screeching halt even when I was going through the story on my over-leveled 3rd character. Also, the cabal stuff took too long and delivered no intel by the end, despite that being their ONE JOB. Most people would've already killed savathun and gotten her to explain just about everything through the memory missions before the cabal stuff was even halfway done.
@@TheMightyBattleSquid trust goes both ways is a side quest not a part of the main story
I really wish there was a channel for your streams so I could see your reaction to those moments in the story like the moment crow did what he did like you said, or other moments in the story.
I like all content available right away. I'm not able to play all the time and have to travel for work so it's nice when I can play to get it in
My biggest gripe with Witch Queen, and my biggest complaint about Savathun generally is that I don't really feel like the gifting of the Light was well done. Yes, we've spent a lot of the time from here going back to Beyond Light driving home the point that Light isn't good and Dark isn't evil. But the big hype leading up to WQ was, "oh man, this is Savathun's biggest trick yet. How'd she manage to swindle the Traveler out of the Light?"
And the answer to that... is literally that some random Ghost came along and said, "hey, that looks like a good one!" It's entirely, randomly, the result of chance. If Immaru had been on Europa, or Pluto, or Venus, or anywhere else really, none of this would have happened. I find that extremely unsatisfying. It's deus ex villiana of the highest measure, and that kills a lot of what I think Bungie did really well in the other writing for the expansion. The Seasonal story - with Crow and Caital and Saladin - was much more of a high point for me.
I know this is three weeks late but hi, new player here (started when WQ dropped), it's exceptionally refreshing to play a game where the two main supernatural elements are named Light and Dark and AREN'T just bywords for "good magic" and "evil magic". I genuinely couldn't be happier that the story is like this.
Raymond is my fave character from Witch Queen. We need more dialogue segments from him !!
The biggest problems I have with the story is ending which was basically an "until next time" type ending.
Then there some of the writing which reminded me of children's detective shows like Dora the explorer, etc: "there are too many UNKNOWNS. wink wink, get it we're detectives". It was kinda annoying to listen to at times
My one complaint. NEVER do overload SMG/Auto ever again please. It was awful.
Just get rid of champions. They are just awful at this point.
Regarding the "famine or feast" argument, put me firmly in the feast camp.
The narrative for Risen being done, capped off and concluded was immensely gratifying. Because the thing I remember the most about Splicer and Lost was the weekly "will it be this week?" cycle of rising hopes for the next part, and then nothing. Spreading it out didn't fix the 'famine' problem, it just shunted the ending of the season a few weeks away. (Or in the case of Lost, MONTHS.)
Especially pronounced in Season of the Lost, where the conclusion mission launched in a buggy state that disrupted the experience for many, and thanks to leaving it to the very last minute, a lot of people didn't have the option to 'wait for it to be patched' because there was no time to wait.
You're seeing the same thing with the "where trailer??" backlash now. When something's coming on the horizon, every day or week that it doesn't show up can feel aggrivating. It's like watching a delivery van drive right by your house after you've ordered something, there's that moment of fleeting hope, "is it now? Is it now??" followed by dissapointment.
There were a lot of weeks in Splicer or Lost where I was just kind of going through the motions of it. I knew "I'm doing around 30-40 minutes of gameplay for 2 minutes of new dialogue" and was frustrated, because everything between the 'key beats' of the story felt like padding. Risen did not have this problem. It was focussed and knew what story it wanted to tell and how to tell it.
Closure is important. People dropping off the game after the story beats have been delivered is fine, because the most common complaint I hear is that Destiny 'demands' weekly logins, that it requires you to be a constant participant to get the full experience, and that shouldn't be the case. People should play the game because it has something to offer, and if that experience can be compressed and streamlined into a more accessible package, so much the better.
Let's hope they keep up the good work, because to be honest, the 4th wall breaking related to Savathûn "escaping the game" has me uneasy about the payoffs to everything in the story.
I think it is worth thinking of the 'game' in this context as the flower game that the winnower and gardener are playing with 'our' (the Destiny) universe. That's how I took it anyways.
When she says "the game" she means a metaphorical (or as the other commenter said, semi-literal with the Flower Game) game. She's not like the Ahamkara who are aware of the 4th wall. She just wants to escape the universe-spanning game between the forces behind the Light and Dark.
@@skeletor8951 - I don’t think so. A good number of the lore entries (think it was Ikora discussing) are dedicated to the idea that the guardians and such are just characters in a game that some higher being are playing. I think it was far more literal than the Flower Game.
Hey Byf I came into the Destiny world until D2 year 3 and had no clue about the lore, your movie was top class and put me up to speed in preparation for this expansion.
Personally, I much rather enjoy the all at once over the drip feed. I like having a “destiny month” with my friends and come back for new seasons. Destiny feels much better when all of the content is there for me to build my enjoyment off of and immerse myself in rather than playing it and being told to come back next week breaking my immersion. During the content droughts I get to enjoy different games and entertainment and immerse myself in those.
For me this season was packed. I never ran out of things to do. So I don't see the issue of the "front loaded" content
Eramis was first introduced in destiny 1 and plus Eramis was behind the zero hour mission so I think Eramis should get more Credit as a villain
My primary gripe is that the hive ghosts shriek and screech instead of speaking like the two named ghosts we encounter. It makes the hive ghosts feel like they aren't ghosts made from the Traveler. They feel more alien than they should and it distracts from the fact that we are massacring the same things that create us. We have our little revelation on the first kill and never again, even after we meet Fynch, who's gone rogue and is trying to right that wrong. Slight issue with the very forced "Imarru is a bully" thing to get us to hate him, as if his demeanor and him being Savathun's ghost wasn't enough to want to hunt him down.
All that aside, the Throne world is beautiful and Savathun's lucent palace really feels like a massive mansion with lots of halls and rooms and not just a giant building with arenas in it. I really enjoyed the mystery of finding out how Savathun "stole" the Light, and the eventual realization. The season has had a very interesting story and watching Saladin and Crow develop and evolve once more. For the first time the first season of the year connects to the dlc story as well which is a welcome change, and in terms of those first seasons(Undying, Hunt) this is byfar the best.
Final note, I watched Dynasty before WQ dropped and it armed me with lots of background knowledge and new context to understand the story in. Big thanks to you and the team for putting it together for all us to see. I too geeked out when I saw the Tablet of Ruin!
Three things for devs going forward.
1. If you bring back super good advice, let Byf voice it.
2. Once all subclasses are 3.0 remove all nerfs and see which one (solar) is best.
3. Savathun stomp emote?
Savathun’s song was not mentioned once that I recall. Prior to this expansion it was one of the main mysteries that intrigued me the most, can byf or anyone else explain to me why this wasn’t mentioned or ami missing something?
Story was great I was on the edge of my seat with the cutscenes and the hive plot twist.
Front-loading content is similar to a question I raise about raids. The opening encounter to Crown of Sorrow was a chore. I don’t think many people will disagree with that. But when my friends and I were doing Vow of the Disciple on day one, that opening encounter was pretty cool. We learned about a mechanic, and we got the feeling of launching our assault on this mysterious fortress. But even by the second run, it felt like a chore. The question is: is it worth it? Is it worth making the day one experience as good as possible, even at the expense of repeat runs? I’m not sure. Ideally, we could have our cake and eat it, too. On repeat runs, there is some way to speed up or skip these opening encounters. But if that’s not an option, what’s the call?
Yes. The first time (which, I mean, Preservation already does the opening part of the raid) is fine…
Like you said, after that it is a chore (granted the whole raid is a chore after so many runs). The opening has ZERO rewards and seems like it is as long if not longer than any of the encounters. Which they want you to grind these raids. Once I have the couple more res boarders I need I will never play that raid again unless trying to do flawless. That includes the master version since I’ve already unlocked all the adepts.
However, this one of Destiny’s biggest problems. They make content that is good for a couple runs but become unfun and a chore quickly… yet they build they game around grinding them heavily.
Me looking at my watch, seeing that I have 37 minutes until my wedding.
"Yeah, I got time."
I thought this was the most content-packed few months we’ve had in a while and may be a new bar for the meaning of “live service game” 4 weeks of story, 4-6 weeks of more idle updates, 3 weeks of seasonal event. I cannot recall any other game that has pushed this model and capitalized on it before.
That being said, this was the first season were I either didn’t feel like I had enough time to play or didn’t want to play to the extent of last years seasons (haven’t gotten title, ritual weapon, or ritual weapon ornaments even now for first time). I’m excited to see where things go now, not in an “addict” or “fanboy” kind of way, but in a solid “viewer” and “fan” to the coming season and it’s “episodes”
The problem I gave with the witch queen campaign is that narratively speaking, it’s a complete mess. And does Savathun a disservice. I’ll break up some of the issues into parts.
1.) Savathun’s plan makes no sense with the resources she has. We saw in the season of the lost that savathun was able to use form of memory returning magic to return all of uldren sov’s memories to crow. Why didn’t she prepare some form of this within her throne world to restore her memories without putting her plans at risk. Also, another option was to give her Hive guardians the relics to bring back to memories. We know from the unrefined qualichor, that the hive have access to deep sight.
2.) Savathun’s character doesn’t make sense in this update. It’s situation where Bungie needed Savathun to die and resurrect to her old self. We saw that with all of uldren sov’s memories, crow remained as this new character with echoes of his past. However, we had only shown Savathun such a tiny amount of her life, most of being within the last six years through the items we found in the story. How would that translate to Savathun being her old self entirely. Shouldn’t she be in a similar predicament as Crow where she is lost and questions what she is doing. Remember, in a week’s time, she died, resurrected, and built her new throne world. Not once did this character with no memory of who she was question what she was doing. In a way, it seems as though Bungie forgot the lore of how the light works.
3.) The memories are a good Segway into my next topic and that is the final battle with Savathun. I have no issue with the gameplay. I was a little disappointed that it was just redux of ghaul if you compare the two fights. However, the main issue with this is how we messed with Savathun. The basic idea was to show her a memory that even she wouldn’t know that would throw her off her game. However, I don’t understand how Savathun could have ever fallen for this. How could the Hive god of cunning not expect to see a foreign memory brought in front of her. That should be expected especially with how variable a memory could be tied to a certain object. Also, I don’t understand how this memory would throw her off her game. This whole update is about Savathun rejecting darkness because she does not agree with it being the best option. Also, she embraces the light as she sees the benefit it has over the darkness and it literally chooses her right after she dies. So, our plan is to show her a memory that proves the darkness is a liar and shouldn’t be trusted. While at the same time, showing how the light was going to choose them and possibly lead them to a golden age like so many other civilizations.
Most of my campaign gripes are that Savathun was built up to be such a intelligent character but it seems that she could not expect the simplest of tricks. Or plan ahead effectively. If any one has some lore or story that proves my statements wrong. Please show me. I want to love Thai campaign and I absolutely loved the experience, but when I thought into it. This stuff just doesn’t hold up.
Not everyone can binge play in the first few weeks of a new season and be waiting on “the content drip” by mid season. Some people, like me, work 50+ hours a week and I think the amount of content that was released with witch queen was perfect. It took me till the last week to finish all the seasonal challenges.
I didn't see her as much a villain as competition to represent the light as its champion
For me I think the biggest flaw of witch queen was the voice of Savathun, not the voice acting, but the cadence of her voice. Oryx had a deep and commanding voice that I think really embodied what a evil space god should sound like, and in my mind I always assumed that Savathun would sound like an ancient and wisened old woman with a rough and kind of facetious cadence to her voice, but to me she just kinda sounded like a normal person. Other than that I thought the story was fantastic.
Savatunes narrations were easily the best part of the season for me. Its been a long time since i was so engaged in a season of Destiny where it didnt feel like i was just going through the motions
Would have been cool if Eramis had been introduced more than just at the end of that dungeon as an "almost ally" that gets corrupted, or a nemesis that was dogging us a bit more. The problem is I think they haven't had a very long term view as you allude to. I'm glad they are setting their stories more across multiple games rather than just the "next expansion". I think the long view on the story will make it much better and avoid the monster of the week problem.
I think one thing that made the seasonal story strong was that it was only 4 weeks. I liked that Bungie didn't take a story that could be told in 4 weeks and stretch it out to 8 weeks. I hope that Bungie continues to make the story last only as long as it needs to.
~4 weeks of Destiny and then an ~8 week break is AMAZING. I love being able to, you know, play some other games in between content. This is similar to the Path of Exile content model, where they frontload a bunch of new stuff each league, and then expect most players to drop off and take a break, and then return next season, instead of trying to be a "always active" game.
iirc you were saying Eramis was 'one of, if not the the best villain' barring oryx before because of 'how much we learned about her in the season.' Interesting to see you 180'd so hard and see things how us debbie downers did now. I'm curious now to see if your opinion on Savathun will hold up or if it'll fall by the wayside as well though I suppose that depends on if Bungie explores her more or just goes "idk maybe they'll come back!" like Eramis being Frozen and left there by the vanguard for some reason.
Byf mentioning how SGA should have a sassy voice reminds me of Failsafe. 😭 I miss her! I hope she will one day be included in the story again.
I think meant Saladin's progress not Zavala's. Just a note, 100 percent agree with this video
As someone without the DLC, my biggest gripe is that Void 3.0 just appeared without any narrative context.
My biggest criticism was how different the promotional material for WQ felt compared to what we got. I was expecting something between an alien, fey world, and the flood levels from Halo CE, or the introduction of Grey Fox from MGS1. Something beautiful, gossamer, yet inherently unnerving and creepy. I feel like the vibe just fell flat in that regard
I agree, it felt a little weird just how super casual it felt like we were traversing and existing in places that should've been a bigger deal, if that makes any sense?
The vibe is kinda there with the cut scene that sorta makes you pity the worm's deception but idk it gets shrugged off pretty easily as we go on.
Man, this video shows how much the tone has changed since Warmind like holy crap.
I didn't realize until now that the throne works is 3 armies of space zombies fighting for dominance
I think one criticism I have, and it's very nitpicky and minor, is that when it's revealed that the Traveler had already chosen the Hive and that the Darkness deceived Savathun, the emphasis in the initial scene is that Savathun was deceived, NOT that she was already chosen, which is what actually matters.
Fantastic vid, as always. I am interested in this secretive approach to the new season... We'll see on Tuesday!
I think something to consider in terms of "frontloading" is that while they could have waited a week like past expansions, this season's narrative was also less than half as long as usual. It was only 4 weeks before the narrative completely wrapped up for Risen.
I enjoyed the story completely by far my favorite campaign I enjoy the weekly visits to the atlar hearing from savathun
My gripe was how fast the season of risen felt
That is a very good break down of all that is good and bad with the Witch Queen expansion, I agree with pretty much all points! Thanks for sharing this, Byf. I feel that we have so much exciting stuff ahead.
I think it's also worth remembering that you didn't have to (and most people didn't) do the seasonal story in the first 4 weeks. I know it sucks for someone like you who plays the game 24/7 but for most, we like to play the content when we like and to have it all there from the get go is great. The "famine" you speak of is only for you content creators.
this ^
I think the biggest thing is it's been literally years of our guardian doing these amazing things and we barely know how people see us. We only just recently found out that we are being spied on and yeah Mara has always seen us as a potential threat but she sees everyone including herself as a potential threat but what about just the normal citizens and the eliksni we tore apart the eliksni in almost as good of fashion as Saint we started the commonality of wielding darkness and have been on the Frontline of many of these things are we feared or loved? Hated or maybe we aren't even known after all we are only The Guardian and technically speaking have no name
If I remember correctly, seasons that are tied with expansions are typically shorter, so I always stop playing after reaching rank 100 and getting the guns I want in an expansion season
Drip-feeding is great, and I prefer it. However sometimes it feels like if you miss a week, then it’s hard to catch up. Front-loading makes catch up easier since it’s all available and you can go at your own pace. You can take as long as you like over multiple weeks. Obviously it feels like once everyone is done and you’re still lacking, it’s a bit of a struggle to get those quest lines done.
This is where drip-feeding does well, cos most people will be on the same page.
Currently I’m in Uni. I don’t have the time for Destiny since it’s exam season. I get to play for maybe 8 hours once/ twice a week on a day off.
Savathûn's second plan that played out during SOTL was stupid though, when your entire plan hinges on a maybe it kinda sucks
I'm so tired of streamers/youtubers stating problems they have without acknowledging that its something that uniquely affects streamers/youtubers. IE drip feeding seasonal content is bad for most people, because most people don't play literally every day. Most people play when they can, which means they miss out on things that only happen for 1 week at the end of the season. Witch Queen and season of the risen has been a huge success IMO. I don't care that a streamer logs on and goes "i don't have anything new for viewers."
I think we might already have the basis for the future saga - THE NINE - after all the project was codenamed Matter. We have the two factions (the 5 and the 4) established in the lore. And I’d love it if we got to play as Cabal & Eliksni too
I want the front load because I am very busy and I want to take it at my own pace, having it available like that for three months will do me wonders.
I like how Byf uses that glaive. It's a hell of a good tool when used properly. See above video for example.
TL;DR, my biggest complaint is that an unfathomably old God of Cunning and Lies -- Savathun -- being shocked and breaking character/her façade over the realization that the obviously lying liar -- The Witness -- shocker, lied to her, felt like a necessity of using the WQ as a campaign seller and less a necessity of progressing her character/story. Still thought it was a decent conclusion either way.
Generally speaking I agree with the overall premise of this video, but I think Savathûn has always been the one true villain playing a critical role (deeply rooted in Destiny lore) and the Season of the Witch Queen has done a amazing job of demonstrating that fact. Now, don't get me wrong while "The Darkness, the Traveler, Guardians and now the Witness are to be sure the structural frame of the Destiny, anything done with them has far greater consequence to the whole story and becomes end game content. From my perspective Savathûn has always been the thread that has kept everything connected and moving forward, we just haven't been aware it until now but as with many great stories the more questions (Bungie) answered even greater question are created until the story is finished. It's a big game of balance and Bungie has done it successfully a few times now.
While I love the more complex narratives I feel it would have been good if they had kept the old Red war campaign. Its a very good introduction to the setting as well as giving players and idea as to what/who guardians are. We are good guys who use the light, fighting bad guys who don't have the light. Shadowkeep then gives us a good step into understanding what the darkness is and THEN we get into the more complex plot lines: Beyond light and Witch queen.
Thanks, Byf for an extremely thought provoking video, especially towards the end. Beyond the Final Shape, beyond the Saga of Light v Dark.
I don't know if you'll see this comment...
Speaking of weapon lore, can you imagine what Omar has to say about all this? Imagine a conversation between parasite and xenophage. That's the lore I want, tbh
I know if Bungie looked at these comments, that this one will probably be missed but I much prefer the front loaded approach. I have other games I want to put time into and it’s difficult to juggle playing D2 every week and actually make progress in other games. I used to have to just accept that I was going to have to miss stuff every season or straight up skip a season. This is the first one that I didn’t have too.
Then first mission didn't make sense. We could've just flown to Savathun's dreadnaught
Personally I like when the content front loaded, then if there are other games I want to play I feel like I have more time for them, however I also LOVE Destiny so being brought back weekly is still nice
I think a lot of the pacing issues mentioned came from the fact that this expansion was delayed, and as such pushed the intended story back so far. Had The Witch Queen come out in November 2021, that may have led to a more natural progression of the campaign as it related to the seasonal content, as well as the 30th anniversary content, before we moved on to the next season proper. It may be an awkward segue, but I feel hope that the rest of this year will move much more smoothly.
Savathussy being a villain is something I think could be debated.
Agree with the sentiment regarding Savathun. My only concern is that they do a thanos, and spend all of their energy with this BBG , that any proceeding villian/antagonist will either be ad hoc'd, or will just seem thin, comparatively.
I feel like this season was a good start to year 5, it was way better than season of undying or hunt, but I didn't enjoy the way you upgrade the war table and some of the upgrades felt lackluster, at least the weapons this season gave me the same feeling the weapons from Season of the forge gave me.
I gotta say some of the most satisfying to play seasons where for me season of the chosen and Splicer (season of the Lost was only lacking because of the time between the last mission and Savathuns exorcism) all seasons that had spread out varying content without it being: Here is after the front load content this activity! BUT HARDER AND NOT MATCHMADE with maybe a tiny bit more loot.
Your first critique definitely gives us insight as to why Destiny 2 has a "2" at the end of it. Sequels are generally made for more experienced players in mind, and while they've made attempts to make D2 the "definitive" edition of the IP, Destiny 1 gives the new players the context of "Light Good, Dark Bad" pretty well, even if the storytelling of the game wasn't up to par with D2's current storytelling. With the context of D1 added to D2, that revelation of the Light and Darkness morality shift hits harder to a newer player who had played both (Bungie port D1 to PC I beg of you)
For me, Mars has come back, and we get to see.. all of about fifteen minutes of it in one mission.
An entire planet vanished, and came back, and we get one mission, to do with firing ourselves into the Throne World through a Cabal Cannon.
Fun as it was, wasted opportunity to see how the Darkness has tainted the planet.
I agree with everything you covered in this. The lore and story and game has to been in the best place it has been since Taken King. The worm also talks to you sometimes when you start the Wellspring. I love the voice actor for it...lie down, go to sleep. LOL. Super Good Advice was one of my first D1 exotics, would love to see it come back with a personality like that! I've seen preview images on TH-cam of other creators claiming to have ideas on where we go next season and as of 6pm Central on the 19th Bungie still has ZERO up on what is next. I'm hoping they can hold it until reset on Tuesday. I know they have to release something over the weekend to get folks back into the game but how cool would it be to have no idea at all until the servers came back up on Tuesday reset? :)
Great vid as always good sir.
Are you going to do more videos on the Lycent tales lore book? I found the part on Immaru fascinating, perhapse not sheerly from a lire stand point but definately from a character one, it shows a different side of Immaru and of course there's the question we always seen to be asking: what are Savathûn's true intentions?
As someone who has only started playing in Witch Queen (though I knew a ton of lore beforehand, courtesty of friends), my gripes with the Witch Queen are the red-bordered weapons; and the introduction to the story. The red-bordered weapons are kind of self-explanatory, I suppose; I really want those exotic glaives and the fact that I have to rely on the whims of the RNG system to give me the red-bordered weapons for the crafting quest is frustrating to the extreme.
With the introduction... when I started playing I joked that today, I slay some scrub Navota, and tomorrow, I'm going after Savathun and the game... made me do literally that. And Witch Queen proper at least had an introductory video explaining some context, even if I imagine it'd make a lot less sense to someone who didn't get live commentary on Splicer and Lost as they were ongoing. But the Risen storyline felt frustratingly hard to get into at the start, especially when the New Lights quests don't say a single thing about how we now have Cabal allies. I don't know where was the last time that questline was reworked, but I feel like it really should've gotten an update with WQ launch, just to bring it up to speed with the post-Lost status quo.
The only thing about witch queen I'm not fully on board with it the fact that savathiccs ghost was already hivified when it resurrected her outside the city, I don't understand why that is
I'd rather have a front loaded season. When the season runs out of content I can just go play another game instead of feeling obligated to come back every week.
To start as a game D2 is at the best it's been since day 1. It has become a properly grown up game with nuance and huge respect for the zero patronising attitude of the team to dumbing down narrative.
I struggle with the way that old content is paywalled off for new lights. Even if they've bought the deluxe edition of witch Queen old packs cost including forsaken which is effectively in the DCV. The season of the risen faded way too quickly and the fact certain parts of the war table was undoable as a solo with zero ability to lfg.
The end is 2 years off and what next for a new player base make it worth the effort to newbies too
I love how he releases this as an answer to Bungie waiting to release lore details about season 17 until it comes out.
Probably my least favorite thing to come out of this expansion, in terms of narrative, would be the Altar of Reflection. They are so much worse than Forsaken’s Mara Sov dialogues in the Dreaming City. I have stopped listening to them, because everything Savathûn says is so full of contradictions and lies for the sake of lying. And I get it. That’s her thing. But that makes it so boring and makes everything we hear all the less compelling. I don’t feel like I should care at all about her “two truths and one lie” riddles when it’s in all likelihood just three lies. It feels like Bungie is teasing us in a condescending way by going “oOoOhH, but what if THIS time she’s telling the truth, OoOoHh?” And I’m just not feeling it anymore.
Interestingly, I feel the exact opposite about her “two truths and a lie” riddles. Staying within the rules of belief suspension, we have to assume she will be telling two truths and a lie. It’s the only time we can be certain she is telling a truth. The rest of her dialog/story is exhausting for the reason you mention, but I’m stoked during those riddles because I know we’re getting something to use: and it’s kinda fun figuring out which is which.
I generally think the lore, characters and world of Destiny ranges from good to really great, but the actual playable main plotlines (as in specifically what our guardian goes through) for the past two expansions have been so incredibly dull for me.
Beyond Light constantly has your ghost doubting whether or not you should be using Stasis as if it's a moral choice when the game blatantly forces you to use it during the plot-related boss fights. It gets very old very quickly. Then there's the climax where Eramis freezes our ghost and takes the pyramid from us but we summon the power of Stasis regardless in a "the power was inside you all along" moment taken out of a children's movie (Yes the powers of Darkness are implied to be held within the bearers themselves and the pyramid is just kind of a set of training wheels, but not at that point in the plotline. Post campaign explanations don't fix in-the-moment eye-rolling.)
Witch Queen's entire hook is Savathun stealing the light and trying to figure out how she did it. The whole campaign even has a detective theme to it between the armor and the investigation board. Lore in the past has hinted at different ways Savathun could be trying to create her own bootleg light with draining void light from guardians (ghost actually mentions this in the campaign), secretly allying with Nokris, etc. Turns out all of those were just bullshit dead ends and Savathun just followed the mantra (devotion, bravery, sacrifice) found in the brochures New Lights probably get when they first show up to the tower. It's just so uninspired compared to the potential created by those lore bits. It's also jarring for Savathun to be chosen after how long she's been an enemy of humanity and the Traveler. I know it's implied she did something during the collapse to foil the Witness' attempt to kill the Traveler and it feeds into the " the Traveler isn't really benevolent, it's just looking out for itself" narrative, but it does set a precedent. That being: if Mithrax, leader of House LIGHT, dies at some point and doesn't come back as a guardian, I will be very disappointed in Bungie's sense of consistency.
My biggest complaint is still the new light experience how are they supposed to get invested when everything is so unbelievably overwhelming
Man I’ll be honest, I haven’t really felt compelled to care about crafting yet. Most of the weapons I would craft, I’ve gotten fantastic rolls of the weapons during the course of my grind to even obtain enough red border weapons to craft the guns, so my crafted ones get passed over by the ones I used to get the crafting done. And I don’t want to use the subpar crafted gun for a million things until it has the perks I already have on my random rolls. Love the concept, just haven’t really gotten excited by it in practice just yet.
My gripe is with the ridiculous obstacle course for the Parasite quest, and the lack of more checkpoints. The course is hard enough, worrying about Cursed Thralls and Knights only makes it worse!
If they ever sunset Nessus. I can see them using Failsafe as Super Good Advice's AI, if they ever bring back the exotic. She also fits the bill of being sassy 😂
Nothing like logging each tuesday to do the seasonal story for 1 hour and then waiting a whole week for it to progress.. for a whole four weeks that really tell you how little meat are in this seasonal model Bungie is delivering.
I love that there seems to be light and dark within both factions. House light and house salvation for the Eliksni. Caital’s ascendency and Calus’ for cabal. Savathun and Xivu Arath for hive. The vex and the scorn are wild cards with Ashir being assimilated and the scorn “evolving.” The taken are pretty evident as evil because of what they are but every natural faction has light and dark. Now, I don’t entirely like that the story is like avengers with a big baddie that is teased and built up over years. Yeah it’s cool to have a main villain but it kind of takes away from the importance of what we do. Does it matter if we take out Xivu if the person controlling her is still a threat? The story telling has improved dramatically, looking at Curse of Osiris but I like the open and close stories. I also think that seasonal story has improved substantially from season of undying to risen. I’m very excited for season 17.