It was again through the showcase for the Beyond Light growth in 2020 that Bungie first gave a sign of the place its total story for Destiny 2 can be headed over the following few years. It was the primary time the developer talked about The Witch Queen, the growth to comply with Beyond Light, and gave a good additional look to the long run with Lightfall. Though Bungie supplied few particulars on the time, a black-and-white emblem therapy and the title of the growth had been sufficient to conjure numerous concepts about simply how darkish and desolate Destiny 2 would get because it hurtled towards the conclusion of its present story arc, the Light and Darkness saga.Two years later, Bungie has lastly supplied extra particulars about Lightfall with its annual Destiny 2 showcase, and the newest have a look at 2023’s growth has utterly upended expectations of what the first-person shooter MMO’s subsequent chapter might be like. The black-and-white, stark emblem therapy has been changed by a 1980s-esque, cyberpunk strategy, and the cinematic trailer that got here with the showcase confirmed that gamers will discover themselves in a vibrant, neon-lit city–a far cry from the destroyed and overgrown ruins of a lot of Destiny 2, or the destruction {that a} title like Lightfall first conjures up.
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Now Playing: Destiny 2: Lightfall – Reveal Trailer
Laying out the course of the story by means of the expansions following Beyond Light–The Witch Queen, Lightfall, and the concluding episode, The Final Shape–gave Bungie a roadmap for the long run. It additionally demonstrated the truth that the trajectory of the story is likely to be too darkish.”When that Beyond Light showcase was coming out and had Witch Queen, Lightfall, and The Final Shape, I think in that moment, we knew narratively where we needed to be,” Destiny 2 director Joe Blackburn mentioned in an interview with GameSpot. “We knew that, in Beyond Light, we’re going to start teasing the Darkness. In Witch Queen, we have got to put the Witness on the chessboard for real. We knew where we needed to be in The Final Shape, and we knew a few beats that needed to happen in between those, narratively.”I believe it was actually after we began planning The Witch Queen and we began wanting on the surrounding seasons, we mentioned, ‘Okay, with Witch Queen, we actually like True Detective, we actually need to go swampy and moody.’ Then we checked out Shadowkeep and Beyond Light, how they formed up, and the way the seasons had been shaping up, and we mentioned, ‘Okay, we all know the temper The Final Shape must be.’ And we had been like, ‘Oh, my gosh, is that this going to be the heaviest 5 years of Destiny that we have ever made? Are we going to fill one notice all through this complete factor?'”Blackburn said the team started looking at how it could avoid making its expansions feel too tonally similar, while still maintaining the story it had set out. The Light and Darkness saga is headed toward a climax in which players will finally face an ultimate villain that’s been teased since the original story of Destiny 1. The threat is enormous–Destiny already takes place in a post-apocalyptic future world, and it was that villain, the Witness, who caused the apocalypse to begin with. The Witness is returning to finish the job it started with that apocalypse, which is known as the Collapse, so Bungie also needs to make sure the story carries the proper gravity to befit something so dire.”As we began getting in direction of Lightfall, we mentioned, ‘Hey, how can we maintain the stakes excessive however change the temper for a launch?'” Blackburn continued. “We checked out issues like The Empire Strikes Back, that has a sense of, oh, my gosh, [the heroes] lose, however the film would not really feel like they lose the entire time. We began to have a look at, okay, what are issues with actually excessive stakes which have a special tone to them? I believe we received actually interested in type of blockbuster motion films.”You can look at things like Aliens. You can look at things like Commando. You can look at things like The Old Guard and you can say, these have a specific feel throughout them, but they don’t sacrifice that, like, hey, the world is at stake. Independence Day is another one that we really like. It’s like, oh, my God, watch the trailer for Independence Day. You’re like, ‘This is going to be a hell of a movie. The Earth’s going to get destroyed.’ Then you get in the theater and Will Smith’s like, ‘Welcome to Earth.’ You’re like, ‘Oh, it’s this kind of movie.'””We were like, ‘Oh, my gosh, is this going to be the heaviest five years of Destiny that we’ve ever made? Are we going to fill one note throughout this whole thing?'”With The Witch Queen, Bungie tried to seize a fantasy that made gamers really feel like they had been working by means of a detective story as they tried to uncover the motivations and plans of the growth’s antagonist, Savathun. In preserving with the blockbuster motion film inspirations, Bungie desires gamers to really feel like they’re motion heroes, “to oversimplify it,” Destiny 2 assistant normal supervisor Dan McAuliffe informed GameSpot.He likened the expertise to that of Michael Bay films and different motion movies, one thing “over the top, in not just the stakes, but everything that’s happening,” he mentioned.The new vacation spot that is central to Lightfall, the Neptune metropolis of Neomuna, can be a giant a part of that blockbuster feeling, McAuliffe mentioned. As depicted within the Lightfall trailer, Neomuna is a pristine location that has been hidden for a whole lot of years, current nearly because the Collapse, but it surely’s coming underneath assault by armies of Cabal enemies within the growth. For McAuliffe, the setting calls up parallels to the film Blade Runner and different sci-fi movies of that period.”Just a cityscape in and of itself is tall, larger than life,” he mentioned. “It is a very different point of view and different silhouette than the player’s used to seeing. Then add that into that very hyper-futuristic, modern, neon type of atmosphere, and I think you have a lot of the hallmarks from those great blockbuster action movies.”Just because the tone of Lightfall in its trailer is a departure from what gamers may need anticipated, the look of Neomuna may be very completely different from what Destiny followers have seen earlier than. Because it takes place within the aforementioned futuristic post-apocalypse, lots of the places gamers battle by means of in Destiny 2 are ruins of civilization which have been reclaimed by nature. Neomuna, however, is a lived-in and functioning city–albeit one underneath siege when gamers arrive.”I think that’s going to be a really interesting change in the player perspective and just a different feel, that vibrancy,” McAuliffe mentioned. “Not that the other areas aren’t vibrant, but it’s a different vibrancy. This feels lived-in currently. This feels lived-in now, as opposed to lived-in in the past.”Blackburn mentioned that whereas Neomuna will really feel extra vibrant and purposeful than different places gamers have fought by means of in Destiny 2, it is nonetheless a warzone–“expect blown-out windows; expect pyramids crashed into stuff,” he famous. But the distinction is the immediacy; Neomuna is a spot the place the destruction is going on actively, or has occurred within the very current previous. That’s versus places just like the Cosmodrome, a rusting break gamers go to on Earth, the place the destruction happened a whole lot of years earlier.The completely different strategy and extra full city setting of Neomuna may even change the texture of fight throughout the new location.”We looked at things like The Empire Strikes Back, that has a feeling of, oh, my gosh, [the heroes] lose, but the movie doesn’t feel like they lose the whole time.””From a gameplay perspective, we still have a really classic–all the way back from Halo to Destiny–pedigree for the kind of spaces that we like to build, but we’re building that in a new way,” Blackburn mentioned. “This is tighter gameplay spaces, more interior-to-exterior changes; when you’re in interiors, what that feels like. Not every place that you go into in Neomuna is a science facility, which I feel like anywhere else you go in Destiny, it’s like, ‘They did science here.’ It’s not true for all the places you’re going into in Neomuna. I think that’s really exciting for us to see and explore.”Building this completely different type of area was one thing new and tough for the workforce to strive, Blackburn mentioned; it isn’t one thing Bungie is used to, versus different studios, reminiscent of Uncharted and The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog.”I’ll say just straight up, this is a big development challenge for us, because we’re not Naughty Dog. We don’t build these kinds of lived-in cities a thousand times,” he defined. “How do you do that in a Destiny way? How do you make something feel familiar to players, but also have that little bit of that Destiny spin? Yeah, that’s been a fun challenge.”Finding methods to subvert participant expectations is crucial to creating Destiny 2 work total, Blackburn defined. He mentioned the studio spends numerous time fascinated by the sport and franchise as a complete, and that longview can push expansions in particular instructions. The trick is assembly the wants of the sport, like together with particular sorts of enemies at sure locations, whereas additionally ensuring new Destiny 2 content material nonetheless feels recent.”Even when you’re planning out something like the Throne World [from The Witch Queen] or something like Neomuna, we have boards that talk about the colors of each destination,” he mentioned. “Then it’s like, ‘Oh, are we too blue? Are we too green? Are we too orange? Can we not add another orange planet to the game?’ These are things that people talk about in a really serious way about the franchise, and all of that starts to form this constraint on, hey, these are the aliens that we need to see because of the narrative beat, but also because we haven’t had a destination with them in a while. Suddenly you start to have this list of, hey, we need to hit these checkboxes, and then you start running different experiences through them and say, ‘Can we make something exciting out of this?’ We don’t want Destiny just to feel like, yeah, they make things because of a series of constraints. It’s a fun balance to be a part of, for sure.”The pondering on Lightfall appears mirrored in Destiny 2 proper now, with its Season of Plunder. After Season of the Haunted, which put gamers on an infested ghost ship stuffed with ghosts and targeted on predominant characters coping with their trauma, Plunder is an area pirate journey. It’s an amazing deal lighter than the place Destiny 2 has gone recently, however appears intent on sustaining stakes–it’s already gesturing at interpersonal conflicts that appear poised so as to add some seriousness to the swashbuckling. We’ll have to attend till Lightfall’s launch on February 28, 2023, to see how its story, aesthetics, and gameplay additions will slot in with Destiny 2.
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