Destiny 2: Bungie on Designing the Dread - Fireteam Chat
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Welcome to Fireteam Chat, IGN's Destiny Show. Thank you so much for joining us. Joining me today is Travis Northup. Travis, how are you doing? I'm clunky. I'm doing great. And we have a very special guest today, Ben Womack. Did I say it right?

No, you didn't. It's Ben Womack. Ben Womack. I am so sorry. You're ahead of the game because you asked right at the beginning. I've had people go a decade without saying it right. So you're way ahead. Ben Womack. First time I've actually tried to say your last name, so I'm doing okay. I am so, so happy and grateful that you made the time to join us. And we are delighted to have you on the show today. Thank you. Now, for those who don't know who you are, what was your role with Final Shape?

Right, yeah. So I've had the pleasure and privilege of being the combat area lead for the final shape on Destiny 2. And so that's essentially the design lead in charge of the people that are working on the core parts of the combat, all the combatants and the bosses. In particular, final shape, you may know the Dread, you may know Prismatic. Those are two of our biggest features we worked on. There are a lot of other smaller ones in addition to that, but those are the big ones.

And why did everybody make The Witness so hard? Why did the team decide to make that rape boss so tricky at the end of the day?

So we, honestly, I think there was more discussion about we, we don't want it to be too easy. This is like, this is literally the witness. It's like end of the 10 year journey. And there, there was definitely a concern that we were going to make out the witness, uh, this as cool raid fight, but that the players would absolutely smash the witness and just like roll over the entire experience. Like, wait, what's next Bungie. And, um,

And while there is plenty that's coming next, we wanted that witness to stand out as, you know, be appropriate for the level of challenge. All right. So I just you just joined a raid team. You were the Sherpa. Explain the Verity encounter to me.

Oh, no, that's the wrong person you're talking to. I know the people you could talk to and maybe you can get them another fireteam chat. The part that I'll share is that that was something that I think that was complicated enough that not everyone working on it knew exactly how it worked. Everyone was very confident that the people who made the encounter knew how it worked.

But it was definitely, you know, it was appropriate. It fulfilled its purpose, I would say. It was the final shape of...

Right. I mean, that's they say it like right in the raid in the raid lore text. So, well, you know, there's a lot of foreshadowing going on with that one. Yeah. I love love the snake design to big, big fan of the raid. Travis, you did the review for us. You were you gave it a scathing nine out of 10. Just kidding. You also really enjoyed the final shape. We talked about it a bit last week. You had some questions for Ben also.

I did. I have many questions for Ben. So first I want to just clarify the specifics of what you're involved in, and then that'll narrow down the million questions I have that, you know, because I don't want to, I don't want to ask you questions that you're not fit for. So when you say the combat area designer or combat area lead, you're talking about prismatic. Yeah. Yeah. You're talking about prismatic. You're talking about

the dread. Are you talking about the design of actual bosses? Like in the campaign, if I'm fighting an ogre and going between teleporters and all that, that's you, that's your team. Well, so the boss characters, uh, the combat area is, uh, focused on making sure that the fundamentals of what you're playing when you're doing like the, the, the,

the combat gameplay in Destiny is really solid with a foundation for creativity for the people that are making the activities and the encounters and other experiences. So, you know, if you're fighting a giant ogre in a mission,

If that ogre has something really special about it that's unique, then that was probably developed by the people on my team. But the actual placement of them in that mission and the fight with them, that is owned by another designer who's making what we call the activity. And so making it actually is this really big, huge collaboration exercise every single time that turns into what we end up players actually experiencing.

and I will say, though, that the ogre itself, like that ogre, the foundational giant ogre is something that was made years ago with the intention of then being used for stuff for years to come as well. So that was also combat, but before my time, to be fair. Yeah, I'm sure. Okay, great. So it's good to know the kind of scope that you're focused on. So my first question is one that I talk about with lots of people who play Destiny, which is the Dread must have been

getting worked on for years right because we kind of saw pieces of them come like they were we saw the tormentor and lightfall a lot of us guessed that that was going to be part of this new faction that was headed our way um my question is how long does it take to work on something like that like from from conception to bringing it into the game to players how many years does it take for that to happen because in 10 years of Destiny we've had it happen three times so I imagine right it's pretty heavy lift huh

Yeah, it's a heavy lift, and it's really always built on the backs of the people that have worked on the game before. I think my favorite story of the Dread is how the Grimm came about, and we called it internally, we called it the Gargoyle. And it wouldn't have actually happened, I think, if we didn't have this really cool prototype from years ago.

I think pre-Shadowkeep or Shadowkeep area, there's always this chance for teams to make prototypes and to explore ideas and make something that's going to be cool potential. And one of them was this idea for this barely kind of bat-winged unit that was going to be a real stand on the battlefield.

And so a bunch of experiments were done on that unit that was going to have actual articulating wings. And we did that with orcs, technically, in Taken King. And we did that with Savathun more literally. But those were unique characters. They weren't units that you could play with a bunch or have a bunch of them in a room. There was never the intention for any of those to be repeated.

And so if we hadn't done all that work years ago, then we wouldn't have actually been able to take the plunge to actually execute on this new kind of unit with this new kind of look that operated with this cool feeling that it actually was flitting around the battlefield, that they were really agile. Because the thing we don't want to do is we don't want to have one of those cool ideas, and then we start working on it. And then we're actually going to ship it this time. We're going to put it in the release, and we don't get to the point where we need to, where we feel like, oh, it's not going to hit like it should. That's like--

Something we're always trying to be wary of because we want to put our best foot forward, especially on the fundamentals of the game and with any part of the game. But with combat, especially, there's this real desire to have like the core experience be extremely well represented. And so that's that's one example of one of the ideas that led into the dread that took years to see fruition.

I think my favorite part... Oh, go ahead. I was going to say, it sounds like some of these ideas have been floating around forever, but from the moment your team is actually saying, okay, the Dread's happening, we've got to get this in the game, what year did that start for the Dread? If you can remember, kind of a vague... So the Dread started... It was really like... It's like the initial part of the Dread for what led to it really was the Tormentor.

That was actually the year before. There's always this idea that we're going to make this awesome new unit, but we're going to do it differently this time. We're going to do the new faction differently this time because, like you said, this is something rare in Destiny. It's rare because it's very hard to hit that level of impact we want that will then stand the test of time for years. And the idea was like, hey, we're going to start by top end.

we're going to make the top end of the, of the combatant faction. First, we're going to have the tormentors all the way up here on the dread. And we, we know that, and that's the plan. And then we're going to work our way down from there. And so having the tormentor debut in light fall as this like complete, I call it boss in the box myself. It's just like such a experience, even though it's one unit, um,

it, it's kind of set the tone for the rest of them. And then that led us to move down to the next part we developed, which was the actual subjugators, which were the Herald and the Omen. And, and,

They were like, okay, well, these are the ones that are more the commanders in the battlefield. These are the ones that are going to represent a lot of the themes that we want to explore, which were the new damage types, the darkness damage types, I should say, because they weren't new now. And that then led down to, okay, what are we doing for soldiers? What are we doing for fodder? And so we had all these ideas. We were cataloging the time, and it turned into us being able to say, okay, we've made it where we want on time.

the next unit, let's work on the next one, let's work on the next one, until we started to really kind of burst out with the fodder units, I would say, in the last part of the year overall. And it was the fodder units being the Grim, like I said, which is something we had been kind of incubating for a long time. And then the Husk-- I'm trying really hard not to say the development names in my head-- and then the attendant weaver.

You can't say gargoyles anymore. Yeah, right. I was sort of curious. I love design aesthetic, right? Like, how do you land on the specific looks of each of those different enemy types? You mentioned, obviously, the tormentors were one of the first. But when did you lock in, you know, that's what we want the husks to look like. That's what we want the weavers to look like.

Yeah. So it was interesting to think about where we come from with that, because it is still building off of aesthetics. But in some ways, that's actually building off of the aesthetics of what the pyramid ships are and the interiors are. If you go all the way back to the Shadowkeep era, when we were kind of trying to come up with the version of a pyramid we wanted to ship.

back then that was informing a lot of the language that we wanted to have for the race that the excuse me the faction that the witness would actually represent and so that was that kind of leads to the color choices and the angularity and eventually into like the the perspective of like what is their body like and what it where do they come from fictionally you know and so the with the husk for example like that was us actually

actually kind of moving more into what are we going to do for gameplay and then into more of the visuals. And so with the husk, we decided that, OK, that was like mid-development when we were firming up our gameplay idea about we wanted to have a melee unit and we wanted to have it do things that we wished melee units could have.

Like we, we were really frustrated sometimes, like not frustrated, but there's times when you're like, okay, thralls are really cool, but you can jump on a box and they can't get you. And it's like, okay, well, what if we made a unit that can do more than that? And what if we made another interesting game to make it more threatening? And then that,

taking those ideas and prototyping them and having something you like turns into, well, let's have more of an identity. What is it going to hit you with? Oh, it has these cool blades. And that turns into, oh, let's make it more acrobatic. And then it turns into, but oh, you know what's really cool? That idea that this person had of we're going to have something pop out of it if you don't do the crit game right.

But maybe that's actually more important than the unit. Maybe the Geist is literally the ghost in the shell, which led to the rest of it. So it was this really process of what do we want to make? And then what's the aesthetic, right aesthetic for it? And who has the cool ideas coming in? Because the thing I like about the team working with the combatants the most is that as you're working on stuff, people come up with their own ideas all the time. And the team takes the best ideas in the end, which is why we get this cool result that we feel so good about.

Yeah, they look really cool. And anytime I get pulled into battle, I actually just, my brain just goes, all right, we're doing this. Let's whatever happens is going to happen. I know it's not like a high risk thing, but I see it as an opportunity to like really just let loose and get, get to a reset point where you can get where you want on the battlefield. And I love that it kind of keeps the energy going in a positive direction throughout the dance you're doing in each of the battles. Yeah.

Yeah, that was definitely-- so we were talking about the Weaver, how it pulls you forward, Strand ability. That was actually something we iterated on up till the very end, practically. It was great to have more time to work on the idea of, hey, we want to have units that can control the battlefield and can move you out of your comfort zone, whether you're out of cover, in of cover, the attacks are going to come that are going to make you reconsider. If you look at the Herald and the Omen, the Subjugators,

our strand powers send you into cover and the stasis powers flush you out of cover. And then if you look at both of the tenant and Weaver, they do kind of the same thing. You know, it's like the, they're intended to do that. They're intended to like have a different kind of, well, push and pull, not quite as literally, but you see what I mean. Yeah. And that, that was definitely something I remember the visual there is, it wasn't, it wasn't quite right. Even leading up to the last, like, like weeks of, of development on it. And then,

I saw a diagram from artists and designers about how they wanted to do it instead. And it was what we did in shipping. It was this cool, like, oh, it goes forward. It makes this kind of rubber band, like, and pull forward. Because it wasn't communicating to players what was happening.

for a long time and that was a problem it was doing its job in combat but people didn't know what was going on and so it still suffers a little bit from that kind of can surprise you but as soon as you see it you get that directionality and you understand what's happening and and that's part of that big iteration cycle i was talking about we landed somewhere that was going to not only feel cool and do that combat thing we're discussing but you could see it you'd get it no one have to explain it to you

Right. So you mentioned how it was nice to have some extra time, which obviously is the final shot. Sorry, you're cutting out for me a little bit. Okay. Am I cutting out for you as well, Dustin? Just a little bit on Discord. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, so you mentioned how it was nice to have a little extra time to work on some details with some of these enemies. What was the state of the dread and prismatic and those sorts of stuff during the original release window before the delay? Like, what are some things you guys really got to fine tune with the extra time you got? Yeah, so the thing I really value about the time that we got on the release was that we could make everything more cohesive.

we could really take everything and be like, okay, how is this going to work together? How much of it can we actually make as a big package? I would say that the idea of having Prismatic blend in with the units, with the chosen, and having it blend into the environment and having it be representative more of the overall picture was something we could really convince ourselves was true.

with the extra time. It was something that we were able to weave into the fabric of the game a bit more. There was always this intention of light and dark. It's all about light and dark, right? From the very beginning, this is it. But how are we going to execute on that? How are we going to make people feel like they're playing a new gameplay experience with the abilities that we're making for them, like with Prismatic and with the Dread faction? How convincing will people be that this is actually the place in the game it needs to?

And the thing that I saw come together was that as soon as we had that extra time, we managed to make everything work the way we really wanted them to.

and go back and revisit the whole game in a lot of ways. It's not like we redid everything. That's impossible, right? But we're able to go back and make a lot of cool, smart decisions, and plus at times in ways that we weren't before. I think that the combat in general got a lot better because we had that time to go back and look at all the missions and where different parts were introduced. And there was a lot of careful attention being given to where the dread units could go because we had extra time to reconsider that.

as opposed to something that was like, I mean, we had spreadsheets about like which subjugator was where and when should we introduce one or the other, you know, and that just falls all away once you have the time to play test and then make changes, which we had more time to do that.

Yeah, so just to dispel some of the bad player expectation, you know, you getting an extra six months doesn't mean, you know, you made all the dread and those extra six months you got. It's really about fine tuning and making them feel better and turning good into great. And then speaking of you...

having conversations about where each subjugator is going to be really interested to see the map for the Grandmaster Excision because I just got done playing that and I have I want to know what that spreadsheet looks like or that map because that was pretty crazy I don't know if you got a chance to play it Dustin but it's a little chaotic

Not yet. I did the Echoes week, but I didn't get to Excision yet because there was this server issue today. I don't know if you saw, but it was like, no, you got to wait. So lots of people are playing right now. And I guess on that note, Ben, how does it feel to see the community sentiments this positive? I don't think I've seen the community this happy in a long time.

Yeah, I mean, me neither. I've been on Destiny for a long time. I actually worked on Halo before Destiny. And so I've been kind of watching it go from the very beginning, not the very beginning, but pretty close. And the...

The only time I remember it being this positive was back during Destiny 1, after we released Taken King. And I think what that says to me, though, is that we managed to fulfill what we really wanted to. The big thing that always feels good and bad about a release is you release all this amazing stuff.

But maybe it isn't the way you really you want it to be in the end. Or maybe it's like not hitting the way you wanted to or you have hindsight. You know, there's a million restrictions and compromises you have to make. And with the final shape, it it proved to ourself. We proved to ourselves in development that we were going to hit where we wanted to. I mean, we literally had people in tears inside the studio in a playtest lab.

playing through the end of the campaign once everything was in together and flowing correctly and everything. And that's as much proof as I need that we're having a good product and a good game. And so it's been invigorating and it's been really exciting. And it's probably the best part of working on games, I think, is making something that you see people are enjoying and they're getting a lot of value out of. When did you know that it was... Was there a point...

pre-release where you knew it was good? It was pretty close to the end, actually. And it was in those play tests I was mentioning. Playing is the real proof. Like getting your hands on the controller or the mouse and keyboard or whatever you use and putting your own time in and experiencing it and talking to people around you. And the reactions you have at it, even if you develop it, I think are pretty genuine.

I think that once you play it again after one time, that stuff can change. You are familiar with it, but that first time experience of it is pretty telling. We were doing tons of playtests over and over again, and

For me, it was not only playing it myself, but then looking to the person next to me and talking to people next to me and seeing their reactions about it. And it was the same reaction over and over again about like, oh, that was really fun. Oh, I'm like tearing up about this cinematic. Oh, did you like I can't believe that, you know, this happened with Savala. I'm not I don't want to inject too many spoilers into this. But yeah.

the, it, it, it hits, you know, it proved to us that we could do it in right in front of us before even released. Sometimes as a creative, you'll have a problem seeing a negative that you wish you could have corrected. Once, once something comes out, is there something like that for you with the final shape launch? You can't say the servers, it has to be something, not the servers, but you took it from me. Oh gosh. One thing, um,

like there's an animation where the, the thumb doesn't look right or something. So I had a thought, but I thought, Oh no, that person will kill me if I point it out. So I shouldn't point it out. Um, yeah. I think like if I could choose one thing, um,

I would probably go back and do some more cycles on the starting kits for Prismatic, just because that was a really interesting challenge that we did a bunch of different runs at to try to make the starting kits. The ones that you get when you unlock the subclass. There are some bugs with getting the subclass that we just fixed in the latest patch as well, finally, which I would definitely take those away first. But I think that we would take more runs at it and try to--

do an even better job. It was like we did a lot of iterations and we got to the places we thought were really good but we just at some point you have to put your pencil down you know and then you wait to see what players tell you and you know I definitely saw that and like okay yeah I feel like

It could have been better. But at the same time, I am told by internal statistics that we actually did a pretty darn good job about getting people to actually like Prismatic and play it. So I feel like at the very least, it didn't turn people off.

definitely not uh speaking of which uh you had mentioned that um you know you don't go out of the way to make something like the dread without uh without knowing that they're going to be in the game for a long a long time going forward so i assume the end of the witness isn't the end of the dread and similarly with prismatic being the new uh subclass

In the past, we've gotten add-ons where we'd get new aspects or fragments added that happened with Strand. Is that in the cards for Prismatic down the road?

Yeah, we want to keep on adding to Prismatic. It is something that is going to be just as important as adding to the other subclasses. And it's like right time and right project alignment on different parts. What part of the game needs our attention the most? I'm not going to lie. We're talking about Titans a lot right now internally and looking at that, which is not just Prismatic at all.

And so weighing all that together, we're definitely not done touching prismatic at all. If anything, I was actually a little surprised that we didn't have more to emergency touch as prismatic than I thought. I was prepared for us to--

have to do some real big emergencies right at the start. But things worked more like I thought they were going to than I thought that they would turn out to working when you get millions of people touching your content. So yeah, we're going to be working on Prismatic for a long time, just like all the other parts. And there's a phrase I like to use called evergreen. When we're working in combat, we make evergreen content. We don't want stuff to leave the game if we cannot help it. Restrictions on the technical nature of the game notwithstanding,

It's something that we don't ever want to go away.

Very cool. You know, you see a lot of sensationalism online. In your opinion, do you think Prismatic is broken, quote unquote, or do you think it's pretty well balanced with the other light subclasses? It's very interesting. It does scratch it. Having played more, it definitely does scratch that itch of wanting to try it out more. But specifically, you see a lot of people saying it's broken. Do you think it's broken or pretty well balanced with the others?

So it's really interesting, right? Because we tried really hard to have it subvert expectations of what a subclass is and what you're actually playing with your kit, with your build. And we did a lot of that. I feel like it really does that well. It makes you want to keep on trying, just like you said. The bit that I think is true is that it's letting you...

kind of get your hands into systems in ways that were impossible before. And I think that's exposing some problems we want to deal with on like the higher systemic level, not so much exactly what prismatic is doing. So there's definitely, I think room for us to examine, Hey, is prismatic feeling like it's way like over the top? Why exactly is that happening? Is it because specifically these abilities or is it because it's letting you do something in a direction that is like kind of like going out of the ballpark in ways that

that is not expected. What do we do about that? You know, cause like the last thing we want to do is just to completely like do tiny little changes and smash this and smash that and change that and change that and do that forever. That's not a good solution, you know? So we'll tune as it goes. And, um, and we'll, I know some of the prismatic, uh, uses, I think you're talking about like, you know, uh,

infinite multiplication of melee builds and things like that. And we want to take a good approach to making that not something that invalidates the rest of the game. There's a careful balance you have to do. And it's not just balance. It's making a change that affects other things while addressing one thing.

Because something that's also bad is people have good time with that stuff. I don't want to take their build from them. That would suck. And that's never the intention. Any balance change is always trying to say, hey, we're trying to make things better.

every single time it doesn't always work like we're not perfect by any means but i do think that we're trying to really like hit it as much as we can yeah sometimes the right answer isn't to hammer the nail all the way in it's just to tap it just a little bit right because yeah or yeah just like get another tool and do something else you know yeah yeah we have to consider all those

The Diablo team, also live service, they call it not shaking the jello before it sets. It's not bad. I had a question about, so I loved the final shape. Some people online noticed that I was not as happy with Lightfall. With the Dread now in the game,

And part of my problem with Lightfall was that it seems like something was missing, perhaps a Dread faction that should have arrived with the Witness. Has there been any thought to adding the Dread to some older activities? I'm thinking Root of Nightmare specifically, just because to me, it seems like there should be a little bit of Dread in there. Has that been considered at all? I mean, the thing that you have to weigh, even though I think that's a cool idea. I mean, I'll tell you right now, I think it's a cool idea.

And if I just had infinite time, I'd probably do it myself. Because my background is in activity design and making encounters and stuff. I worked on public events for a long time. And so I love doing that work. But what should I spend my time on? And my boss would tell you, well, you're supposed to be leading, Ben. Get your hands out of the editor. But I think that the other question is, if we have people working on the game, what's the best thing for them to be spending their time on? And usually, usually that's on making new stuff for the players.

So they have new cool stuff to play. I mean, I think that there's this wonderful future where we manage to make things so efficiently that people have time to do extra fun projects on their own more. And then someone has a really cool idea like that and they want to do it. Like, I figured it out. I have a test partner. And they're going to cover it all. It's all going to be great. It's all in a nice bow. And let's just do it. And if you can accomplish that, then cool stuff does happen that is out of band. But it's very challenging, especially when we're like, well,

we have a new thing coming out and it's gonna be really awesome and we want to be really awesome and you're awesome so we want you to work on it so can you work on that please i mean like there's always that balance to consider so i mean i'll say though you're right about the dread like they exist for purposes like that like they are an evergreen faction they're here for good and so if that becomes like the focus of a of something in the future of taking dread and putting more places then they're ready for it and that was our intention

Cool. Very cool. Yeah. On that note, seeing the pale heart and seeing how it...

added all new public events, or at least we'll call them remixes of public events, new puzzles to solve, like chess that you have to do something special. It really was refreshing. It was one of my favorite things to see. The first time I remember seeing this was with Forsaken, where you still have patrols, but there's like a character who's hunkered down and is actually asking for help. And I really liked seeing that.

in the pale heart and in other expansions i think shadow keep also did it where like you're getting uh uh ghosts or spirits who are trying to get your help with something but it was a lot of the temple stuff pale heart is a whole new ball game though it's like refreshing the ground up you brought up activities did you have any hand in in crafting any of those

Not this time. I kind of did my own little transfer over to combat about a year and a half ago now, something like that. So I'm fairly new to combat when it comes down to it. I kind of moved over from another section of the game to work in this place that I'd always really loved and admired, but hadn't had a chance to actually give a contribution to. And so in a previous life, I totally would have been working on that stuff.

but it's just as well because I think the team that did work on it, they've done an amazing job and I can't speak to it like super directly, but I can speak as a player and I think it's awesome. Like I love it. I think they really knocked it out of the park. I had a great time running around with friends or myself just in the last couple of weeks. I played a little bit of it, you know, I like enough to kind of really understand it. Um,

Like, before pre-release, but not as, like, as I would as a player. I didn't play in 25 hours, you know, running around like I have. And so, like, I think that it's representative, I think, of all the lessons that we've had in the past, like, expansions and places we've gone. It feels like a cool distillation of the great parts. And people are seeing that, too. Because, like, I was a little worried at times. Like, is this just me? And then I'm reading everyone's responses and it's like, what are you talking about?

So I'm really happy for the world's team that was working on that. Yeah.

One question I had is that I'm sure you have analytics to support this, but Prismatic is a huge success. I would go so far as to say that now when I switch to other subclasses, it feels wrong. It feels weird to just be like, oh, I'm just a void Titan who just used void. It used to be each of the subclasses had its own identity. The Sunbreakers were a specific faction of Titans. And now it feels like it's all just sort of

melded together into this awesome guardian. And now going back to those other classes makes me feel like I'm like a weirdly limited guardian who only does this one specific thing now. So I think, I think prismatic is almost a victim of its own success. How are you guys thinking about that challenge or the fact that like now we have this version of the guardians and it kind of makes the old version feel a little

antiquated. And how are you guys thinking about that challenge? Yeah, it is a big challenge. And I can't really talk about our future plans like obliquely about it or anything. The part that I think is true, though, is that we were trying to be very careful to not invalidate

the old subclasses and all the other builds. There's some stuff that I think that people look at and they're like, oh, I'd rather do it on Prismatic now. But I think that anything that is showing up like that for players that we can then see and get feedback on and understand is our opportunity to try to figure out, okay, well, what's the innovation for subclasses in the future that is going to help put

Put them more on equal footing. And equal footing means the excitement that players have to use them. I think balance and use for a specific activity or a specific purpose is like, that's all really relative and it's very nuanced. And like, you can't say that every single build will work for every single thing in the game, right? Even though you could play it and it was still, you would function and you would probably perform. We all know that some builds are going to be better than others at a specific thing.

And how many builds should we get at that thing? That's a whole other conversation. And so the thing that is true is that we've committed to making Prismatic a part of the game now. And if the rest of the game requires us to take some balancing attention to it, we're going to do that. And we're going to figure out how it works. And if you look back in the past, that's kind of what we did with Stasis. Stasis came out with this new concept of aspects and fragments. And because of that new concept, we were able to then take that and make it--

unification of the subclass system and an improvement along with new abilities and keywords and other stuff on the other subclasses. And so I'm not, I don't know if that's exactly what we're going to do. I can't even tell you right now because we're still figuring stuff out, but I can, what I can say is that that's the sort of like forward progress you want to make with destiny to keep on going forward. Best of luck. A quick, quick question. So,

The kids are playing. You helped create the new light experience. Now, when somebody signs on to the final shape, they are introduced to prismatic. They're introduced to a lot of new stuff. And I do think it is a really good entry point, in my opinion, to get in and kind of get caught up quite quickly. How do you see the new light and the onboarding experience for new players evolving with final shape and beyond that?

Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know if I can really speak to it directly. But I will talk about it in the concept of "Final Shape" a bit, because it's really near and dear to my heart. I worked on that team for a long time. And it's a part of the game I always want to spend more time on. Like I said, if I had infinite time and just gave me the editor and no one could bother me, I would be probably working on New Light as one of the first things myself.

And there's a lot of thoughts about what to do about it. And the thing that I really liked about Final Shape was that I felt like it was a great-- more so than in past, it's like I think you could get into it when you hadn't been too far into the game before. Just because the characters are really endearing, and I think the stakes are really understandable, and then using Prismatic,

That's you try out the stuff that if you hadn't been playing before, you get to experience it now, like darkness abilities. And you don't have to necessarily grind up from zero in a subclass like you do in the core experience. And so you go into the Paleheart Destination, you get to fight all the different enemy factions, more or less. And so there's a lot to enjoy that is representative of Destiny as a whole that's really high quality. And that's

I think that is actually really intriguing for new players. It's not perfect, and I think there's improvements we can do. But the final shape feels like a better entry point than we've done in years in some ways. I do agree. I think part of that is also the fact that all the gear, you start at 1,900, right? And you're going to 2,010?

I'm on the grind right now. I'm like 2002. So yeah. Yeah. And I think anytime you have one of those reset points and the fact that you also unlock all of the old gear is, is it's interesting to, to,

even a lapsed player. Like I hadn't played a ton, you know, between having kids and all the other responsibilities I have in my plate. I kind of lapsed there for a while over the last year and coming back in, it does feel really refreshing and interesting to know that all these old weapons are unlocked now if I didn't delete them, you know? So I have some perks that like nobody else has access to.

Was there any difficulty with balancing that aspect of it? Like, oh yeah, so we're turning on all these old weapons. Maybe we should take a look at PvP again and make sure that's not going to break anything, as an example. I think you guys would have to get Chris Proctor back in the room to talk about that more specifically. He can speak to it way better than I can. The parts that I am more focused on were the core parts and not so much the nuance of the weapons team. And the weapons team, they're the ones who have the answer for that.

And I mean, the part that I will say is that, yeah, I think they were very careful about that. It was something that came up a lot. And how many words was our sandbox update for the patch notes? It was huge. And that's representative of the effort, I think. I liked it. Travis, did you have anything else?

I've got so much else. Yeah, my question was which enemy within the Dread faction took you guys the most time to... You spent the most time developing, tweaking, making perfect? I want to make sure I'm getting which one is right. Because I'm getting the names mixed up hard. Weavers attended? What were the codenames? Can you tell us the codename? Is it Kulon? I could, but I feel like they'd be cheating. Is it like the Sphinx? Yeah.

The Stinks was my favorite. It's the... Oh, hold on. He's Googling it really quick. I am because I want to make sure it's the right word. Hold on. Subjugator? It's one of the subjugators. It's the Strand subjugator. I was trying to be cool. Gosh, I'm going to... It's the Herald. Yes. Okay.

Harold. Got it. A different name internally. And the Harold we spent a ton of time on. We kept on going back to iterate on its abilities. And one of the problems was is that-- and this is one of the reasons why, by the way, we made the most challenging units of the Dread first, because they take the longest amount of time. I bet. And it's because you want to hit this fine line of it being something that is strong.

and beefy, but not too beefy so it feels bullet-spongy, and not too strong so it feels like you're always kill you. And it's like, oh, but it's not so beefy because people just pop their super and kill it immediately. And that's the problem. And then how do you balance that feedback?

And so there was a lot of back and forth about it and trying to find the right place. When you encounter that first one at the end of the first mission as a boss, that was a lot of back and forth on that encounter and every other part because players would see it and they would just rush in. And they had just used a rally flag. So they'd be like, pop a super, throw a rocket, whatever, boom, done.

And then, okay, well, let's make it harder. Let's make them deadlier. And then people would run into do that and then just get smashed by it's like shotgun blast or they would get suspended and annihilated, you know? And so it was this, this constant back and forth. And then the part that probably was the longest for us to pin down was

was its enrage ability. I'm just calling it that because it's a general-- it's half health, and it gets essentially-- it grows this kind of black exterior and moves a bit faster and more aggressive, and it shoots a little bit faster. And then it spreads that to other Dread units around it.

And that was actually something that came in fairly late compared to everything else. We were iterating on that a bunch. And eventually, it even got to the point that I think us and the team were like, are we pushing this too far? Should we just cut bait? But it did turn out really cool. And it took a lot of effort from the VFX artists and the designers and 3D artists and stuff trying to make sure that all work. And then the ability to work on the other Dread. So that took the longest one, I think.

I was excited. I guess tormentor was technically longer, but that was the previous year. So I was excited to get to that part because I had played the preview. So when I came to retail, I'm like, Oh, I'm ready. I know what's up. Yeah. I'm going to take, I'm going to play this a little more careful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, man, if you are not prepared for that, especially on legendary, you can get stuck. You really can. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Who decided to make the stasis subjugators crystals so horrifying? There must have been iterations of that where it was like over-tweaked or under-tweaked and you guys just went with... You guys chose violence, I think, with the little bit of a spread there. You can't really jump over them. You're in a very bad time if you try. Yeah, like the... I mean, that was... Actually, I think that was in reaction to us trying to move the omen up

to the Herald because it was... Wait, did I say the right thing? Yeah, sorry. These names, Harbinger... Harbinger up to the Herald. Which is not his codename, by the way. But that was actually saying that, oh yeah, the Omen is not as scary as its compatriot, as its comrade here. We need to move it up. And there was definitely a point of where that needed to be pushed. But I knew we hit the right point, that we would hit the balance when...

I had this campaign feedback that I was reading from different people. And I knew the people that they were from and how they played. And one person who was very aggressive, they were like, oh, yeah, no, the Harbingers are the worst. They always kill me. Ugh. But oh, I felt like the Omens, I just took them out. It wasn't a big deal.

And then another person said the exact opposite. Like, oh yeah, Harbingers, I'm not really worried about them. And the Omens are like, they always got me. And I was like, oh, one person is like a super cautious ranged player. And they're really careful about cover and positioning. And the other person is someone who is very aggressive and tries to get in there and get the big hits and the big combos. And I was like, OK, we did it. That works. They have their different niches. Nice. That's wonderful.

I had asked about the raid earlier in the beginning. Were you watching the raid race at Bungie HQ at all? Did you check it out in the theater? I did not have the chance to go to the theater, though I was watching the people on the camera internally of the people in the theater while I was watching the raid race at home on my couch in the wee hours.

So I did not get a go, but there are literally people in that theater the whole raid race. Yeah. What's that like from Bungie's perspective? I'm really curious. What's the vibe like in the office? Oh, it's sort of as good as releasing a game, I would say. It's like the raid races are their own thing. I feel like they're really... I mean, they exist in MMOs and other games and such, but Destiny raid races feel pretty special, I think.

And I think they're proven out from the community, but they're also proven out internally. I mean, it's a whole thing. We're streaming it where everyone's talking on chats about what the progress is. In this case, people go to sleep and they wake up and they're like, what's going on? Who is there? And people are updating. Everyone's watching different streams and saying, so-and-so is at this point. And so it's a big deal. And then as soon as it comes out, we have a whole host of people who are actually working, not people just enjoying the raid race who are like,

validating results and trying to do the communications and in this case trying to make sure excision kicks off correctly that was a big one we want to make sure that didn't that that worked correctly and it did it was pretty flawless I think in the end which is awesome so there is a there's just a ton of effort being put behind the scenes from an official work standpoint because it's a big deal you know and then there's the the enjoyment part and I would say that it's like the people who work on the raids like for them it's like a

it's like a sacred, um, like delicious treat that they get. It's like the proof, like all of their effort paying off. And I'm so happy for them because like, I've had the privilege of like working with the raid team, um, raisin dungeons team or, and either physically nearby or like directly helping with stuff on various parts. Like,

Like my team made the witness boss in collaboration with the raid team, you know, and, uh, and they're just like always so committed. There's the most passionate people about raids in the company for sure. Uh, and I'm glad that they are because they're the ones making them. Travis, we had time for one more. If you got one more in you.

Yeah, I've got plenty. Yeah, so you said you worked on the Witness raid boss, which I assume means you worked on hands a lot. Hands, yeah. Because that's sort of an enemy type, right? Like the three different types of hands that spawn and the stuff they do. Yeah, in the end, they're their own little combatant, pretty much. Yeah.

So what was that like? Can you tell us a little bit about... I have to imagine that that is a challenge unlike any you guys have worked on before, making a limb kind of its own enemy. Were there a lot of high fives when you knew you got it right? We don't have the animation time for that. Man, it was a challenge. I had the position of coming into the team after they had started working on the hands, actually. And it was something that...

that like was trying to solve that problem of how do you make

a witness raid boss that this was going to fulfill what we need and have the representation of so many arms and this like ever present, like semi infinite, like, you know, incredible amount of millions of individuals combination, like communicate all this stuff, right? How are you gonna make it happen? And then feel deadly and powerful and then fulfill the raid mechanics and everything else. And the, and so rather than trying to make like something that was like

10 times the size of Oryx or 10 times the size of Riven or something, we're like, well, why don't we have a lot of pieces is what the thought process went to. And if we do that,

then we can do other things with the main character. And then we communicate some level of regalness and ambivalence, but also deadliness and effortless power. Because when you're looking at the witness, either in the raid or in Excision, you are watching it try to enact the final shape.

you know, trying to race against the clock, trying to, you know, take over the universe in its own way. And so we wanted to have that main character occupied with that at the same time while it's trying to stop you in ways. And that escalates as you go through fighting the actual character where then finally it's paid direct attention to, you know, when you're doing DPS and other parts. So.

So yeah, it was definitely trying to get this big character range and communicate that it was doing multiple things and everything. And I think it worked out. It was a long road to get those arms to where we needed to go, though.

Well, I'm very much enjoying the final shape. Travis, you have a whole review about how much you enjoyed it. And we're very grateful to have just a wonderful season of destiny content to look forward to. I've been having a blast with it. Thank you for all your hard work, Ben. Oh, I'm glad you're enjoying it.

All right. That is all we have time for on this episode. A huge thank you to Travis and a huge thank you to Ben from Bungie and Bungie for allowing Ben to have the time to come join us. Thank you so much for watching everybody. But until next time, that's it. So guardians out.

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