Though the reveal of Destiny 2: The Final Shape certainly could’ve done with an extra banger or two, Bungie is now seemingly on a bit of a path toward redemption with the Destiny community after the failures of the Lightfall DLC. The studio’s hype machine for the 2024 DLC is already ramping up, though, and an all-new interview held by the Game Director, Joe Blackburn, shed additional light on next year’s grand release.
Notably, Joe Blackburn has taken the lead with Destiny 2‘s promotional efforts as of late, positioning himself as the new face of Bungie’s franchise efforts. Whereas the studio previously attempted to depersonalize its community efforts due to excessive harassment, Blackburn has done away with that, for better or for worse, and a recent interview with PC Gamer allowed him to double down on some key information about The Final Shape.
Joe Blackburn tells it like it is in a new Destiny 2 interview
While PC Gamer’s interview is fairly interesting no matter how much experience the reader has with Destiny at large, there are some particularly notable tidbits that are worth singling out. The interviewer, for example, couldn’t help but ask about a relatively popular conspiracy theory that the Strand Darkness abilities were initially supposed to launch as part of the Witch Queen DLC, due to their thematic fit. And, of course, due to the fact that Strand is literally found randomly on the street when players start Lightfall.
“Strand was all Lightfall, all the time,” said Blackburn. “For one thing, it just takes us longer than a year cycle to make a whole new damage type… Even the green correlation is really funny to us because Strand didn’t start out from someone writing ‘Green Power’ on the white board.” Blackburn does add, however, that he knows some people won’t believe him no matter what he says, which is a fair assumption.
What’s really notable here, however, is that Blackburn’s statement underlines the notion that The Final Shape won’t get the third and final Darkness set of abilities after all. Instead, that’s where the new Light-based supers come into the picture.
The Witness wins any 1v1 fight
PC Gamer also asked Blackburn about the Witness and how strange it was that Bungie wasn’t trying to introduce an all-new race of enemies for the grand finale of the Light and Dark saga. Blackburn used this opportunity to contextualize the Witness’ power: “What makes The Witness scarier [than any other Destiny foe],” he asked. “It’s important for us that the Witness has to feel different. The way that we keep phrasing it to the raid team and the combatants team is: ‘If the Witness 1v1s any character in the Destiny universe, The Witness wins.’ The Witness vs Riven? The Witness wins! The Witness vs Atheon? Easy!”
It’s a curious, out-of-universe explanation of the mysterious villain, to be sure, but it should quell any discussions of whether Oryx beats the Witness in a raw power match-up.
Whether Blackburn’s statements about the availability of Strand and the lack of a new enemy race in The Final Shape are taken at face value or not, one must admit that his responses are rather amusing, if nothing else.
