The Witch Queen Will Make Crafting Feel “More Special” – Bungie

One of the many new features coming to Destiny 2 with its expansion The Witch Queen is crafting. Destiny veterans will be familiar with how the Gunsmith could re-roll weapons in the first game (and which never made it over to Destiny 2 due to how easy it was to obtain OP guns). Speaking to Polygon, game director Joe Blackburn says the new version is “definitely a more in-depth system than anything that we had in [the original Destiny].”

“We really want you to feel like you’re building a bond with anything that you’re super passionate about.” But don’t expect to be like some other action RPGs where you’re constantly creating terrible versions of an item until getting the one you want. “I think we all have the MMO, ‘Hey, how do I level up and do crafting,’ and it’s like, ‘Well, I make 1,000 of this bad pickaxe, and then I make one thing that I care about,’ and that’s what crafting is.

“We really want it to feel more sacred, more special. And we want [you] to have this sort of long relationship with your weapons. And when you master a weapon, we want you to feel like, ‘Yeah, I’ve put in some time, I’ve put in some grease. And I feel like an expert with this thing.’ And so I don’t think you can feel like an expert if you’re, you know, driving around destinations, picking up grass, and then you’re like, ‘Yeah, I turn all this grass into a gun.’”

How this will play out remains to be seen – the only clue about the nature of crafting is that it will focus more on combat. Resource requirement is still a given but long-time players who have amassed a horde of Legendary Shards won’t have a big advantage over new players. As Blackburn notes, “This is a pretty new system, from the ground up.”

There’s also the Glaive, a new weapon type that can create a shield, shoot and stab foes. It will come in Legendary and Exotic versions, and along with the first weapon that’s only available via crafting, it’s also the only melee weapon usable in first person. Unlike a sword, it uses Special (Green) ammo.

“We haven’t had this style. […] Even if you’re out of ammo [with the glaive], you can stab something. Even if you need to reload, you can stab something. […] I think the first time someone picks a glaive and they put Swashbuckler on it, they’re like, ‘Oh, oh, I just won’t reload then. I will just stab things and shoot things forever,’” says Blackburn. Which is good news for sword users futilely smacking things when out of ammo.

Destiny 2: The Witch Queen is out on February 22nd 2024 for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC and Google Stadia. Alongside the new content, Bungie is also reworking all of its Void subclasses, adding Fragments and Aspects to them along with new abilities. Read more about that here.