Assistant game director Joe Blackburn took to the Bungie blog today to give fans an update on what’s next for Destiny 2, specifically The Witch Queen release date. While the team has a lot in the works, including crossplay coming in Season 15 and transmog in Season 14, Bungie did have to make the difficult decision to push back the launch of The Witch Queen due to a couple of different factors.
The blog post started out as wholesome as can be, with Blackburn opening up about being a fan of the game and knowing that his passion for it was enough to drive him to want to be a part of its growth in an official capacity. Now, he works at Bungie, and the work is far from over with ongoing content and the future ahead. With Season of the Chosen out now and so many enjoying the newly added features like Battlegrounds, Bungie is heads down when working on what’s next. While there is much to look forward to, a few dates have been changed and largely due to the ongoing pandemic and Work From Home orders.
“Last summer, we outlined our ambition for the next era in Destiny 2 by announcing the full arc, starting with Beyond Light, followed by the Witch Queen and Lightfall,” the blog posts reads. “As we began to scale production on the Witch Queen last year, we made the difficult but important decision to move its release to early 2022; we also realized we needed to add an additional unannounced chapter after Lightfall to fully complete our first saga of Destiny.”
While progress has been made, the health of the developers does come first and because of that, the release has been pushed back to early 2022. Blackburn shares that it was a difficult decision but with it not being tied to legacy expectations, they know that it was the right move to make.
The Witch Queen represents an important evolution in the ongoing story of Destiny 2. Beyond Light built the foundation and allowed us to weave the world-building of Destiny and Destiny 2 together, but The Witch Queen will light the fire on a strongly interconnected narrative across Lightfall and beyond, unlike anything we’ve ever attempted before, with characters, arcs, heroes and villains that persist over multiple future releases. Even more importantly, the conclusion of these releases will also conclude the “Light and Darkness Saga,” the conflict we first introduced with the launch of Destiny many years ago. As we’ve been developing The Witch Queen, we realized that we needed this release to be the first of many moments crucial to the story of Destiny. With so much leading to and dependent on what happens in The Witch Queen, we wanted to make sure that we gave ourselves enough time to build out this journey in the right way, starting with an exceptional first chapter.
Quality over a set release date is something that is very important and an attitude that can save many studios from a lot of headaches. Part of Destiny 2’s launch woes was that many felt that the endgame activity lacked any real meaning. Paired with the microtransaction controversies, and Destiny 2 had a rough go when it was first released. After parting ways with Activision and overhauling the entire system, the Destiny 2 community has been alive and well, with a huge surge of growth following the Forsaken expansion. That marked a real turning point and a turning point that gave Bungie the momentum to truly realize the team’s vision going forward.
With crossplay, transmog, a total overhaul to loot, and tweaks for more meaningful grinds, there is a lot for Guardians to look forward to with the continuation of Destiny 2. With two confirmed expansions on the way and the possibility for even more, I’m personally excited to see where the road leads from here.
