Destiny 2 – What To Expect From The Witch Queen Showcase on August 24th
We’re only days away from the Witch Queen Showcase from Bungie on August 24th, 2021, and little is known about what Bungie is going to show. As well as finding out more about The Witch Queen DLC coming in 2022, we should find out more about season 15 plus there are rumors of a Halo crossover to mark Bungie’s anniversary. Today I am going to round up all the info we currently have, plus a little bit of speculation too.
It’s not long to wait now and the hype is slowly building for the reveal of the next major expansion in Destiny 2, and that’s the Witch Queen. On Tuesday the 24th of August at 9 am PDT, we’re going to find out more. Not only about The Witch Queen Expansion, but most likely Season 15 too, plus some other info as well related to the Trials Rework, Anti-cheat, and more.
Today I am going to look at the info we know so far for the showcase, plus speculate a little about what we could see, based on previous announcements. The speculation does have to be taken with a grain of salt, as nothing much has been confirmed, but this is probably my favorite time of the year, just before a major expansion reveal as we’re about to get a whole load of new information and the hype train is ready to leave the station.
Let’s dive into what we’re likely to see.
Witch Queen Story and Seasons
The only real details have had about the next major expansion is that it’s called The Witch Queen and it’s likely to be focused around Savathun and moving along the Light VS Darkness saga, as our ultimate destination is Lightfall. Savathun has been waging a war like only she can against the people of the Last City, using deception and causing in-fighting, which nearly led to conflict in the Vanguard in Season of the Splicer. Savathun has been walking the streets of the Last City, potentially using or influencing Osiris. That probably means The Witch Queen is going to be Hive-focused unless something major happens in Season 15 (but more on that in a minute).
Back in 2015, we had a DLC called The Taken King, where we defeated Savathun’s brother Oryx. This was seen as a turning point for the original Destiny – it had so much content, new subclasses, and a great raid. Hopefully, the Witch Queen will be something similar.
Bungie did reveal one screenshot of a location. Speculation at the moment is this is going to be Old Chicago. It looks like a dark, dank forest and the armor shown indicated chemical elements. Talking of locations, we could get the Dreadnaught back given that was heavily featured in The Taken King expansion… however nothing has yet been confirmed. This would follow the pattern of the last couple of expansions where a legacy location has been brought back. We had the Moon in Shadowkeep and The Cosmodrome in Beyond Light. The Dreadnaught was one of the best locations in Destiny, it was full of secrets and it’s an iconic place. If Bungie were ever to bring it back, this would be the time to do it.
We don’t know anything about the story at this point, although I am sure that’s going to change on the 24th. Before Beyond Light we had a build-up with The Drifter & Eris Morn heading to Europa to meet The Stranger. Mara Sov is likely to return, and I’m sure she’s going to be surprised her brother Uldren is now a Light Weilding Guardian called Crow. Plus Quria has been killed, meaning the curse over the Dreaming City should be broken, but that may happen in Season 15 rather than Witch Queen.
The tagline for the event is ‘Survive the truth’. What truth are they referring to? Could this mean another dent in the belief that the Traveler is good? The Darkness has promised us the truth in the past, but we’re yet to see. In Season of Arrivals, Savathun was trying to obscure the communications between the Darkness and us via Eris. It’s not long to wait now.
New subclass
We could be about to get a new subclass in the game. Many fans want a Corruption or Poison subclass. We can see a sneak preview of this in the game as the moment with the combination of Necrotic Grip and Thorn on a Warlock. I imagine Bungie is going to be looking carefully at any new subclass give the negative impact Stasis had on the game. It was one of the major selling points of Beyond Light, but ultimately so many PVP players have turned off the game due to the introduction of stasis, amongst other things.
It was the first time a new element was introduced outside of the Solar, Void, and Arc trio… and we’ve only seen a couple of Exotic Weapons using that element. We are about to get Legendary Stasis weapons introduced in Season 15, but it’s been nearly a year. Personally, I hope to see a Poison subclass, as that makes a lot of sense with the Darkness and also The Hive too.
New/Returning Exotics
If Bungie follows the same pattern as last year then we’ll have an exotic weapon as a preorder bonus. This could be something like Necrocasm or Touch of Malice. Personally, I’d prefer Necrocasm, which was a fast-firing auto rifle.
Season 15
The primary objective of the showcase is going to be about The Witch Queen expansion, however, let’s not forget we have a season launching on the very same day. This season is going to act as a bridge between now and the Witch Queen. I did a video covering all the info we know about Season 15 so far… so I’d recommend going to watch that. Story-wise I think we could see something on the Dreaming City related to the Curse and the death of Quria inside the Vex network. We have the unfinished story of Osiris and what he’s up to, how that relates to Savathun, plus Crow too. Beyond Light may have started out on Europa telling the story of The Stranger, Europa, and the Bray Family, however, much of the year has been focused on developing Crow’s character.
Crucible
We’ve got some big changes coming to Crucible coming very soon. Next season we’re going to see a Trials Rework, and we’ll find out what that means on the reveal stream. Joe Blackburn, Assistant Game Director for Destiny 2, did outline some other changes coming too including reprised maps in Season 16, a brand new map in season 17, and then more coming after that. The Witch Queen is likely to be Seasons 16, 17, 18, and 19 if Destiny 2 continues with the 4 season cadence like we’ve seen with Beyond Light.
Anti-cheat is coming to Crucible too with the announcement from Bungie today as I am creating this that they have a new partnership with BattlEye, and that’s going to soft launch in Season 15, with perhaps a full launch coming soon after that. We’ll find out more about the fight against cheaters in the upcoming reveal stream.
Destiny Content Vault
This is an interesting one because Beyond Light saw a major shift in content with many planets and moons going into the content vault including Io, Mars, Mercury, The Leviathan, The Farm, and Titan all going away. The Cosmodrome came out of the vault and also later in the year The Vault of Glass returned too.
It could be that more locations go into the content vault. If Bungie is planning on adding a location with Old Chicago, and could perhaps bring back The Dreadnaught, then it stands to reason some content may have to go away. The Forsaken Campaign would make the most sense, and perhaps The Dreaming City and The Tangled Shore could be up for the content vault treatment, however, personally, I don’t want to lose those locations or lose the Forsaken content. One thing that counts against it at the moment is having Uldren Sov and The Crow as different characters in the same game. Yes, you can go and experience Forsaken and then boot up Season of the Hunt, but I don’t think you’d get Uldren’s resurrection sequence and the whole thing would be very confusing.
Free content
Rather than Forsaken being removed, I would like to see all that content go free to play. There’s so much content in the game that cannot be accessed unless you have Forsaken including the campaign, exotic weapons, one of the best raids in Destiny history to name a few examples.
Link with Xbox
Finally, this showcase is running on the same day as Gamescom Opening Night Live plus there’s an Xbox event on the same day too. It’ll be interesting to see if Witch Queen is coming to Game Pass and Bungie continue their good relationship with Microsoft currently. There had been rumors of a Halo / Destiny crossover, but Paul Tassi recently poured cold water over those rumors saying it’s not likely to happen… just yet. I don’t really think it makes much sense for Bungie to be looking backward like that with a Halo crossover. Yes, they created Halo 1, 2, and 3, but I think they’ve created something even better with Destiny and it’s more useful to look forwards to. I think Halo Infinite would get more benefits out of a partnership with Destiny 2, and from a business point of view, they are competing in a very similar space. I can’t see it happening myself, but let’s see how the presentation goes.
Let me know in the comments what you want to see at the reveal, and give me your top predictions. One thing is for certain, Bungie are about to unveil a couple of super hype trailers, which I for one am very excited about.
That’s it for this look at What to Expect from The Witch Queen Showcase on August 24th. For more Destiny 2 content like this, check out This Week In Video Games on YouTube and subscribe today.
