As we ramp up toward the launch of Destiny 2: The Final Shape, Bungie has been releasing ViDocs detailing the development of the last major expansion in the game’s current story arc. While these look at every aspect of the game’s new content, it’s the design for its location, the heart of the Traveler, The Pale Heart, that’s piqued my interest.
In The Final Shape, Guardians will travel into the Traveler to battle The Witness and prevent it from doing what it’s been trying to wreak havoc on the universe, as it’s been trying to do ever since Destiny was initially released. In The Pale Heart, we’ll find a world that’s forged from our memories and its. As a result, it’s the strangest place I’ve ever seen in the franchise.
In their efforts to make The Pale Heart as strange as Destiny 2‘s story requires it to be, Bungie has inadvertently created a location that would look right at home in Warframe. As someone who is currently rolling through the story missions for Warframe but also has hundreds of hours in Destiny 2, I think this location looks like a real treat.
Lead Concept Artist for The Final Shape, Gabriel Garza, explains in the first ViDoc how the vision for The Pale Heart was to make it feel surreal. The team achieved this by using objects that are normal, everyday ordinary to us, and placing them in unexpected places. The term he uses is “shire-to-spire,” which, to me, feels like a blend of The Lord of the Rings and Cyberpunk 2077.
One of the best surreal shots is of a room with pillars detailed with hands and faces. As I play more and more of Warframe, I find the faces of the Grineer enemies, particularly those with shoulders that are just a bit too high, quite unnerving. The faces in the shot above give me that same feeling. It’s very reminiscent of Han Solo’s body frozen in Carbonite, his face strained in pain and always seeming to try to burst out of the hardened shell.
Another outstanding example of the strangeness in The Pale Heart is this house with The Witness’s ever-trailing headdress coming out of the chimney. This reminds me a lot of the house in Returnal that you could stumble upon at any point, and it’s much more terrifying because it’s so totally out of place.
Maybe the best shot that directly translates to Warframe, though, is this one of a large Ghost stuck in a rocky outcrop. The poor machine that’s usually so full of life and floating around to try to protect its Guardian is instead a statue in death for all to see.
This image juxtaposes the giant humanoid in Warframe‘s Whispers in the Walls questline. In that story, players discover a giant humanoid, an unfinished project that is very much aware of its surroundings and moves and responds to you.
The Pale Heart’s dead Ghost is no less unnerving because it’s more a part of the scenery. What it shows is that the location is struggling to reconcile what it should be. On one hand, it wants to be a Ghost that is helpful to Guardians. On the other, it wants to be a lush, vibrant world and not the frozen wasteland The Witness desires, hence its overall strangeness.
The image that really cements just how unsettling The Pale Heart really is, though, is the concept art of a giant, hellish Ghost on the horizon. It’s as if the brightest source of light and reassurance in Destiny 2 has been rendered a demon and grown to immense proportions, so there’s no possible way we could beat it.
This image also details Russia, the first point in Destiny where every player begins their journey. It leads into the distance up to this demonic Ghost. It’s almost like the world is actively hostile to us and wants to hurt us. Of course, that is the influence of The Witness and shows how everything we know can be twisted to work against us.
The last example I want to use takes us back to hands. Bungie has made tree hands in The Pale Heart, and they’re the creepiest thing you could ever hope to see in a landscape as you venture forth to battle the forces of darkness. I don’t think it’s hands that are necessarily the creepy thing here, but I know that growing body parts is a basic part of nature.
While Warframe isn’t a horror game, I feel a lot of body horror when looking at some of its characters. Faces on machines or places you don’t expect them, and machines resembling humans moving in ways that almost make me feel sick. Most of these characters and enemies are genuinely fantastic, and I love speaking to and fighting them because of that blend of organic, inorganic, and immensely strange they bring to the table.
Destiny 2 has always felt very sleek and futuristic to me. Even its version of strange has always been beautiful in a way, whether it’s a Hive nest, a Fallen ship, or Mars covered in sludge as its ice caps melt. The Pale Heart is the first time I’ve seen Bungie truly embrace the strange and create environments that might make you feel a bit icky or even violated as you explore.
I can’t wait to jump into this new world and uncover all its creepy secrets. Like Caonpic Jars tucked away out of sight, I’m sure the unsettling elements of The Pale Heart will maintain the sense of dread you feel when your sixth sense tells you something isn’t quite right about the environment you find yourself in.
