Destiny 2: Forsaken
Developer: High Moon Studios Co-Dev with Bungie
Genre: Shared World; First-Person; Shooter; RPG
Engine: Bungie Proprietary Tech
Platforms: Playstation 4; Playstation 5; Xbox One: Xbox Series S/X; Microsoft Windows; Stadia
Released: September 2018
Gameplay Overview: The third expansion for Destiny 2, this release featured a new campaign, new destinations, a new combatant race, a new game mode, and much more.
My Role: Lead Game Designer
Duties: Team lead, personnel management and career growth, design direction and feedback
Responsibilities:
Led the team responsible for creating the new combatant faction, The Scorn
Additionally built the barons and campaign bosses for the Tangled Shore destination/campaign
Led the development of three new strikes and their strike bosses - Warden of Nothing, Broodhold, and Hallowed Lair
Led the development of two new public events for the Tangled Shore destination
On Forsaken, High Moon took on a much bigger and broader chunk of work than we had ever done before. Not only did we build a new destination and all its open world content, but also, we took on the development of the campaign that would largely take place there, three new strikes, two new public events, and a new faction of combatants. I built up a team of technically minded designers to take on the work of the new combatants and bosses. I also oversaw the pods working on the new strikes and the public events.
Highlights for me were:
Without a doubt, we exceeded all expectations with the Scorn combatant faction. The initial ask was a slightly modified group of Fallen combatants perhaps with some new weapons, but none of us felt satisfied with that and all of us knew we could do much more. We ended up fully replacing all the Fallen and then some, ultimately creating 10 new combatants, each with new weapons and special abilities.
I’m just as proud if not more so, of the Tangled Shore barons, a set of mini-bosses that players encountered in the campaign. Each one featured unique mechanics and personality and the quests to take them down were very special. They were intimately tied up with the character and game mechanics of the barons themselves. I’d say that the way we developed and tailored the quest steps, the fight locations, and the baron mechanics together was some of the best design work I’ve ever done.
Scorn Combatants
The Screeb is a slow-moving Exploder unit with a low profile and a large weakpoint on its back (which is on top due to its crawling locomotion).
The Stalker is a modified Fallen Dreg with alternate weaponry and a void flame grenade. They are also more aggressive than their Fallen counterparts. They do not bunker behind cover, and they will become enraged and charge at players for a melee strike.
The Ravager is a melee/area denial unit. During development, it was the first enemy that really captured the Scorn feel and helped establish a theme for the rest. The aggressiveness and ritualistic feeling of the swinging censer weapon became a cornerstone for the faction.
I knew we needed a short-range combatant leaning toward the fodder side because the rest of the lineup was getting pretty tough and long range. We had also been playing with ideas for survivability in the absence of the cover-bunkering behavior. So, the Lurker was born. A hand-held shield/scatter gun combo on a relatively weak frame.
The Raider was our Fallen Vandal corollary. He could be equipped either with a sniper crossbow (long range) or a sawblade gun (medium range). Both weapons were extremely interesting to develop. Mobility was key for them, so we gave them a smoke-dash ability, allowing them to turn into smoke and dash quickly across the battlefield.
The Solar Chieftain, one of three elemental variants on this totem-casting anchor unit. Once we developed and refined the totem ability, we realized we could pretty cheaply make one variant for each of the three elements in the game (at the time) - solar, void, and arc. The Solar Chieftain spawns a spinning totem that spits gouts of flame, creating a dynamic area-denial hazard in the play space.
The Void Chieftain's totem casts invulnerability shields to allies within its radius, much like the regular Fallen Servitors do. This was a relatively quick, no-brainer, re-use of an existing ability with a twist.
The Arc Chieftain's totem snares enemies within its radius, inhibiting movement. This was a tricky one to get right, but I think we landed on a good balance. Messing with player movement in the middle of combat, when not done right, can be a frustrating experience for players.
The Wraith was a nice bonus addition to the roster relatively late in development, after we had a pretty good handle on the Scorn gameplay in general. He's a highly aggressive and tough, dedicated melee unit. When used in moderation together with other Scorn units, they do a great job of disrupting player flow and forcing them to prioritize.
The Abomination is another unit that came together pretty last-minute. We were looking for a big heavyweight unit to add to the roster. The inspiration for him came from a meeting with Bungie where someone said, "Just make a big guy that shoots lightning from his hands." or something to that affect.
The Barons
Fighting the Machinist is all about positioning, mobility, and capitalizing on your dps opportunities. This manifests in her weapons, her attacks, and in the arena, a hazard-filled wasteland.
The Hangman, a giant Ravager, and executioner for the Scorn. He's big, he's scary, and you fight him in dark, close quarters where his attacks can be most effective.
The Mad Bomber not only chucks bombs at you, but he pulls players around the arena with mine defusal objectives, and, in the end, tries to blow up his entire lair, leading to an explosive escape sequence for players
The Mindbender could turn the Hive to his will and we leaned into ritualistic totem gameplay and an otherworldly dimension for his final battle.
The Rider was one of the trickiest barons to pull off - a boss on a vehicle hadn't been done before in the game so we were in new territory. In the end we found ways to script an experience that hit the fantasy on target and had the players chasing the Rider through multiple arenas.
The Rifleman was a game hunter, so he hunts players throughout the mission, using decoy versions of himself to distract and confuse. The final fight was in a bowl-shaped arena where the Rifleman could take full 360 degree advantage around players.
The Trickster was fun to design for. She was, at base, a powerful Raider with a souped-up sawblade gun and the ability to escape in a cloud of ether smoke. She also rigged various pick-ups, like ammo and resources with explosives. In the final fight, she would spawn these traps along the ground as she skittered away, hiding behind the many nooks and crannies of the arena.
The Bosses
The Mad Warden is a delightful callback to a character from the Prison of Elders from Destiny 1. For this iteration as a boss, he is brimming with Solar energy. The Warden has two main attacks - a massive beam from his central eye, and the ability to turn into a mini-sun, scorching the whole arena. Players must pay attention to his location when he does this and keep to the shadows cast by the geometry in the arena in order to survive.
The Fanatic is technically one of the Barons, but he also appears as a strike boss. We played up the fanaticism angle in the boss encounter with waves of charging, fanatical hordes. The Fanatic himself can summon lightning storms in a large area, and for his large-scale room attack, he ensnares each player and slowly pulls them in. Players must break his shield in order to cancel the attack or otherwise suffer an explosive hit at the end.
The Brood Queen is a Hive witch with two forms, physical and shadow that she cycles between during the fight, each with different powers, and then just at the end, both forms manifest separately at the same time and must be killed within a short duration of each other, otherwise she cannot be fully defeated.
Voice of Riven is the final boss of the Forsaken campaign, and the fight mechanics and encounter are appropriately epic for this purpose. Fighting a Taken enemy for the capstone of a campaign centered on the Scorn is a bit of a twist, both narratively and in gameplay, but it fed right into the end-game arc that Bungie was building on their end. The arena becomes progressively hazardous as the player is pulled back and forth between dimensions over the course of this fight.