Despite the cat jumping out of the bag in the hours prior to the big stream, we definitely have learned a lot about both The Witch Queen, which is set to be Destiny 2’s biggest expansion yet, and Season of the Lost, which launches today.
The Witch Queen
Let’s start with The Witch Queen. As expected, the expansion is set to star Savathun as the big bad. For those playing at home, she’s a Hive god and the sister to Oryx who met an unceremonious end at our hand in The Taken King expansion. The introduction of Savathun has been a long time coming for lore nerds and we’re expecting this expansion to dive into some pretty exciting stuff from that perspective.
The expansion introduces Savathun’s Throne World as the new playspace and it bears resemblance to the Hive homeworld of Fundament.
The big point of difference for this expansion is the introduction of Guardian Hive who are able to utilise the Light and appear to mirror the player’s through their arc, solar and void subclasses. They’ve even got little Ghosts, which is cute.
As is always the case, this expansion brings a lot of new stuff into the fold. There’ll be an entirely new weapon type in the Glaive, which doubles as an energy blaster and a sharp poker. The Witch Queen is also going to see the introduction of weapon crafting, which feels like a pivot away from random weapon rolls. They didn’t elaborate too much on what’s involved, but they did they all of the new weapons from the expansion would be crafted.
There’ll, of course, be a raid. If it’s anything like our titanic battle with Oryx, we’re in for a treat. Though many in the community expected it, there is no new Darkness subclass. And those who pick up the deluxe edition of the expansion will receive two extra dungeons.
Season of the Lost
It looks like we’re headed back to the Ascendant Plane as we’re tasked this season with helping Mara’s people get home. The big players in this season’s narrative seem to be Mara Sov herself, Petra, Prince Uldren, and Osiris.
Season of the Lost overlaps with Bungie’s 30th Anniversary event and, as such, there’ll be plenty of free rewards and events for players to partake in. There’s going to be a new Cosmodrome dungeon, taking place at the site of the original loot cave, which will see the return of Gjallarhorn which is awesome.
The season obviously brings with it new Exotic weapons, but they’re also implementing new anti-cheat systems into their competitive modes including Trials of Osiris.
Also, with the launch of Season of the Lost, cross-play is now fully integrated into Destiny 2. Once opted-in, players will be able to group up with players across all consoles and PC. Guardian’s names will become their “Bungie name” when they log in and remains consistent across all platforms. This serves as a clean, elegant way for Guardians in different ecosystems to friend one another.
The Witch Queen releases for all platforms on February 22, 2022, while Season of the Lost is available now.
