Warlord’s Break, the Destiny 2 dungeon launched with Season of the Want, took gamers in some sudden instructions when it launched on December 1. Where the final two dungeons had a extra sci-fi really feel, Warlord’s Break carries a way more Darkish Souls vibe. It takes place in a ruined fort; it is a dungeon through which you get trapped in a literal dungeon.
However whereas Warlord’s Break and its darkish fantasy parts had been a stunning and recent path for Destiny 2 gamers, a few of these concepts had been floating round with the groups accountable for creating the dungeon for some time.
Throughout a Season of the Want roundtable dialogue, design lead Brian Frank defined that Bungie begins with a brainstorming session to determine some potentialities for what the dungeon will probably be, arising with ideas that take note of a number of various factors. Enjoying off the themes of the season is one thing the crew retains in thoughts, however so is constructing novel experiences for gamers. And naturally, not all of these ideas find yourself getting used.
“We undergo a pre-production section the place myself and the realm artwork lead will begin by thumbnailing a number of ideas. And we’re recency: What we’ve got finished that we do not wish to repeat, or alternatives which might be on the desk, like, have we ever gone to vacation spot X or Y and encountered antagonists A, B, or C?” Frank stated. “So we’re attempting to create distinction in these pitches, after which we current these to the inventive administrators for the discharge and different inventive companions and we give them a possibility to specific a choice and inform us, , ‘Oh, we’re doing a dragon knight fantasy, so yeah, this season possibly the sci-fi one isn’t gonna work.’ Or, ‘Listed here are the characters within the forged that we’re considering of bringing in, so is there a cause there or an apparent tie into this free construction you are proposing?’ And so at that stage it is actually only a setting, it is the antagonist, possibly a few one-line expertise targets and a free narrative premise.
“After which we imagine that any of them might be expanded out by way of our brainstorming and artistic path from other people to be a totally realized dungeon,” he continued. “And what’s an attention-grabbing part of that’s it means we regularly go away concepts behind. It’s an attention-grabbing case the place this concept, of being caught in a jail and having a literal dungeon to flee, was one thing that was conceived possibly over a 12 months in the past, and it simply had not had a possibility to make sense with the discharge.”
These preliminary one-page ideas for the dungeon led to “an enormous sequence of brainstorming classes the place everybody obtained to throw of their concepts,” take a look at engineer Amanda Baker stated. These brainstorming classes undergo all of the completely different elements of the dungeon: There is a session for narrative, for the participant journey or expertise parts, for the bosses and gameplay mechanics, and so forth. These collaborative classes additionally pulled up parts that builders needed to revisit, just like the snowy mountain really feel of the Felwinter Peak location that appeared within the Rise of Iron enlargement in Destiny 1 and briefly in a mission manner again within the Season of the Worthy.
Via these classes, the builders work out the way to lock in on the themes of the dungeon and what objects from the Destiny toolkit can be utilized to comprehend these themes.
“It is also how we form of deal with the gameplay itself, and one thing so simple as a mechanic we give you,” she stated.
Baker gave an instance of a room one designer put aside in the course of the prototype section, which she full of Wraiths, the tanky, melee-focused Scorn enemies that populate the later encounters of Warlord’s Break. As gamers found, the Wraiths in Warlord’s Break are immune to break due to its specific mechanics, however the designer did not inform anybody how these Wraiths’ mechanics labored. Baker stated she and different builders had a “wild time” attempting to determine the way to cope with the Wraiths–which turned out to be a sport of tag through which gamers should punch the Wraiths to switch a debuff to them, after which play keep-away to keep away from getting the debuff again.
The mechanic actually began to coalesce as builders discovered the way to present gamers sufficient info to determine what was occurring, she stated. In-game, the debuff is known as the “Hex of Vengeful Corruption,” a curse that related it with the darkish fantasy aesthetics and the seasonal themes of needs and magic.
“And you then get one thing just like the storm within the second encounter that we wholesale lifted out of Europa and put into the encounter,” she stated. “After all, the blizzard matches the theme of being on a mountain and stuff, however then like the heat, we might have used something for the fires. And we selected these torches that each match the Scorn theme, however nonetheless managed to seize that fantasy theme that we’re pulling off in right here.”
Previous dungeons like Ghosts of the Deep additionally had an affect on parts of Warlord’s Break. As Frank talked about, a part of the objective with designing dungeons is to keep away from repetition within the experiences, and one place through which that is very obvious is in boss mechanics.
Bosses in Ghosts of the Deep have robust shields you need to break with concentrated hearth, in addition to a specific buff you get from killing one other enemy. Some Destiny 2 gamers, particularly these taking over the dungeon solo, complained about irritating parts of breaking these shields, and Frank stated that suggestions knowledgeable boss design in Warlord’s Break.
“We did not introduce [the boss shield mechanic] with the intent that each time was going to have this,” he stated. “A part of what we wish to do with the dungeon actions is get gamers anticipating to be shocked, proper? We’re attempting to not overly set a sample that’s tremendous predictable. And in order that was an experiment and we noticed the affect to solo gamers, and the underside line reasoning that we form of held the road on that’s that these combatants have customized habits when the protect is lively. And so we had been form of caught with, nicely, if we simply take that off, then [players are] not going to see the cool factor that they do. It is a part of why we held the road and that was additionally within the context of desirous to carry problem again to the sport and we form of pushed fairly onerous with Ghosts. So there was positively some extent of suggestions that we centered on once we had been engaged on [Warlord’s Ruin].”
“In all of the [Warlord’s Ruin] encounters, we form of endeavor to present gamers a method to earn prolonged DPS (injury per second) time. You can see this the place, relying on the variety of lanterns or totems that you simply seize, you may get extra time for DPS, and moreover with the ultimate boss, experimenting with this paradigm of the loop construction that provides you extra frequent alternatives to do injury. So your notion of how lengthy it takes to earn progress is completely different than it was in Ghosts, I believe for the better–we can agree it is a extra profitable format.”
Not like main expansions, raids, or seasonal tales, dungeons symbolize a singular alternative for Destiny 2’s storytelling. As senior narrative designer Nikko Stevens defined, the truth that dungeons are self-contained experiences means the storytelling strategy will be extra nuanced than with different components of the sport.
“From the narrative standpoint it is a actually enjoyable and gratifying expertise to work on dungeons as a result of you may have such a cool canvas to work with and also you have a tendency to have the ability to create these encapsulated tales which might be linked to different issues, however they don’t seem to be required to be, , immediately related. It offers us the chance to form of dig a little bit deeper into a few of these tales or inform one thing that you simply would not usually see, that is a little bit off to the aspect, however remains to be necessary and related to the general story of the sport. Or in lots of instances, the narrative does in a roundabout way form of tip its hat ahead to one thing that’s coming. I believe when you look again at a lot of the dungeon narratives, you may see that a lot of them had form of heralded issues that got here after.”
Collaborating between the narrative and design groups, Stevens stated, permits builders the possibilities to arrange “cool experiences in these bespoke places.”
“You get to do these cool issues. Like, we arrange these these scenes of the Scorn who’re round a totem, like one has been morphed into an Abomination, or there’s one that you simply go as much as and a complete bunch of Screebs are round [a Scorn enemy] and it is like its youngsters that it wished to have again, however they had been became Screebs as a result of it is the monkey’s paw of the Ahamkara, and stuff like that,” he stated. “If you’re doing a seasonal marketing campaign or extra of a golden path kind of launch, you might want to shine a highlight on [those moments] and also you want to have the ability to present the participant like, hey, that is what’s taking place and we’re explaining it to you so that you perceive at first grasp. However a dungeon does not have these necessities and we will lean extra into the mystique and the thriller, and belief our gamers to have the ability to discover and expertise these cool moments on their very own.”
If parts of Warlord’s Break had been first conceived of greater than a 12 months in the past, it is honest to guess that Bungie has extra dungeon ideas to attract from for the long run. After we’ll see the following dungeon, nonetheless, isn’t but clear. Destiny 2’s subsequent enlargement, The Ultimate Form, launches in June, and is about to carry a conclusion to the sport’s 10-year narrative.
After that, Bungie has introduced three main “episodes” instead of its present seasonal strategy to further content material, and The Ultimate Form’s annual cross contains entry to 2 new dungeons that’ll launch later this 12 months. We’ll have to attend for extra particulars from Bungie about when these dungeons will launch, and as Warlord’s Break made clear, it is anyone’s guess what awaits gamers inside them.