Bungie’s second Season in the year of Lightfall launched on Tuesday, May 23. In Season of the Deep, Guardians will be traveling to Saturn’s moon of Titan to explore its uncharted oceans for powerful new rewards and to learn more about the Witness’s origin.
The Season contains a hefty bundle of new content which includes weekly missions, a new matchmade activity, as well as new Exotics and Legendary weapons and armor, ornaments, and a collection of cosmetics inspired by iconic video game characters like Kratos, Aloy, Jin, and more.
Let’s start with the weekly missions.
Deep Dive
Deep Dive is the weekly Seasonal story activity, where Guardians can explore the methane seas of Titan to salvage the power they need to communicate with Ahsa, the creature that lingers in the Titan’s depths.
Salvage
For the Guardians interested in matchmaking for quick games and unpredictable encounters, Season of the Deep features the six-player activity, Salvage.
When playing a Salvage, players will recover Golden Age tech from sunken Arcology structures on the Titan seafloor. They’ll face Fallen, Hive, and Taken combatants. There’s no recommended Power level, so anyone with the Season Pass can jump in and get started. Salvage runs are fast and furious, lasting around 15 minutes, and feel inspired by the Dares of Eternity activity from the Bungie 30th Anniversary Collection.
Both Deep Dives and Salvages are great action-packed ways to take your new Legendary weapons and armor out for a spin, but maybe sometimes you’re in the mood to relax. Good thing Destiny 2 now has fishing.
Fishing
The Drifter has noticed that the corruption on Titan is starting to spread to life forms elsewhere and, thanks to some of his special Gambit tech, Guardians can fish up some of the corrupted critters around the solar system. The debut of this Destiny 2 activity includes multiple destinations where players can catch unique fish that they’ll be able to display in their new fishing tank located in the H.E.L.M.
When Guardians are done taking a break, they can swap their waders and fishing poles out for some of the new Exotics being added to the game.
Exotics
For anyone new to Destiny 2, Exotic items are some of the most rare and powerful items in the game. Exotic weapons will often have abilities not found on any other weapons, and the same goes for armor. Many Guardians will create entire builds centered around one or two specific Exotics. Along with the new Seasonal Exotic weapon, Season of the Deep is introducing three new armor pieces; one for each class.
- Triton Vice: When wearing these Gauntlets, a Hunter’s Glaive comes alive with power and overflows with each foe they dispatch. Matching subclass and Glaive elements cause projectile eliminations to detonate.
- Arbor Warden: With this new chest piece, Titans are empowered to create grenades fueled by the Traveler’s Light. When thrown, these grenades explode and create a barricade at the impact location.
- Cenotaph Mask: With this Warlock helmet, Trace Rifles automatically reload and mark combatants. Allies who assist in eliminating these targets are rewarded with Heavy ammo.
And about that Seasonal Exotic weapon, the Centrifuse Exotic Auto Rifle allows its wielder to build an electrostatic charge while they sprint or fire the weapon. When they reload, the weapon releases the charge and blinds nearby enemies. Centrifuse is unlocked immediately for anyone picking up the Season Pass. Once you hit level 100, you also unlock a really cool cosmetic.
Speaking of cosmetics…
New Cosmetics, Legendary Weapons, and Armor
These Exotics are complimented by new Legendary weapons and armor that continue the Season’s deep sea theme. All these new rewards, along with new universal ornaments, can be acquired simply by playing the game. They’ll drop in activities and unlock as you progress through the Season Pass.
But wait, there’s more.
PlayStation Partnership
Bungie has partnered with PlayStation to bring new armor ornament sets and finishers that pay homage to three iconic video game characters: Kratos, Aloy, and Jin Sakai. There’s also a Clicker-inspired collection that includes a Ghost Shell, a Sparrow, and a ship.
Finally, if Guardians are looking to lighten the mood when someone climbs on their Cordyceps- infested Sparrow, there’s a bright emote inspired by the fun-loving pair of universe explorers, Ratchet & Clank.
Start Playing for Free
To get started, download Destiny 2 for free, pick a class, customize your Guardian, and jump into the story. It only takes a few minutes to hit the ground running and if you like what you see, you can try the first mission of the Season for free as well.
Like what you see and want to explore the new Season? Grab the Season Pass for your platform of choice and the next three months of content, along with the instantly unlocked Seasonal Exotic, are yours to enjoy.
See you starside (and under the sea).
Destiny 2: Season of the Deep Interview
Xbox Wire’s Danielle Partis had a chance to catch up with Design Lead Brian Frank and Senior Narrative Designer Robert Brookes for a deep dive into Destiny 2: Season of the Deep to learn more about the sorts of enemies and encounters Guardians will face, the challenge of balancing difficulty, and what sort of secrets players should keep an eye out for while exploring Titan’s uncharted oceans.
Can you give us an overview of the new dungeon, its setting and background story?
Robert Brookes: This Season’s dungeon, Ghosts of the Deep, is centered around the Lucent Hive arriving on Saturn’s Moon of Titan to perform a mysterious ritual. It takes place within and below new sections of the New Pacific Arcology which was last explored during the Red War campaign in early Destiny 2. Now we’re delving deeper into it than ever before and trying to uncover what could possibly lead the dead Hive god Savathûn’s brood into its depths.
What sort of enemies and challenges will Guardians face in there?
Brian Frank: Since The Witch Queen, we’ve wanted to feature Hive Guardians in our pinnacle cooperative activities. To that end, the dungeon features Lucent Hive. As an extension of those themes and narrative tie-in’s to Savathûn, players will use Deepsight to reveal and interpret symbols to overcome challenges. Additionally, players will have to master navigating Titan’s methane sea and survive its crushing depths.
Robert Brookes: The Lucent Hive are our enemy in Ghosts of the Deep. You’ll be facing off against some new faces, as well as formerlydeceased members of different Hive broods from Destiny history brought back by the Light. Keen-eyed players will recognize quite a few memorable figures from past conflicts with the Hive. And of course, there’s whatever lies in the darkest reaches of the dungeon.
What were the technical challenges of taking Destiny’s mechanics underwater for the first time?
Brian Frank: Destiny is built upon many interrelated systems, driven by the action game and player sandbox. Particularly from the standpoint of visual and audio experience, it’s a major challenge for the team to support all the permutations and interactions between those systems and content that were not initially built to support the underwater context. From real life experience, players have expectations for how movement, weapons, and abilities should behave underwater. We have to meet those expectations, or immersion is eroded.
Our goal was to create entirely new gameplay experiences that played on the fantasy of diving, like the joy of weightlessness and the beauty of deep-sea life. We also leveraged anxieties from the sense of depth and isolation, the fear of drowning, that play into the theme of the Dungeon: exploring unknown and dangerous enemy warrens.
Robert Brookes: In any game where you’re treading into new territory there’s unexpected challenges and surprises awaiting development. Thankfully our team really took to the fantasy of deep-sea exploration and created some outstanding opportunities for us to explore a whole new environment. Of course, we’re also developing this alongside other seasonal content, so it had to not only be a rewarding new experience but one we could iterate on fast.
How do you ensure that each Dungeon, especially this one, has its own identity?
Brian Frank: We start with high-level thematic and experiential goals, which are keyed off the broader themes of the accompanied seasonal content. We look at the dungeon catalogue holistically for opportunities to feature enemies or settings that haven’t been explored. We also draft a narrative premise that informs the call to action, what players seek to accomplish by overcoming the challenges within the activity, and how it ties into or expands the Destiny universe. Those become the creative direction that serves to focus the ideas generated by the cross-discipline team that will contribute to the project.
Robert Brookes: That’s an ongoing discussion with every dungeon, where the team discuss potential concepts and brings them through a greenlight process. We try and make each dungeon feel distinct from previous ones, especially dungeons releasing close to one-another. For example, Ghosts of the Deep couldn’t feel like Duality or Spire of the Watcher in narrative, art, or play experience. And whatever comes next needs to play, look, and feel different from Ghosts of the Deep too. All of that requires tight collaboration and alignment on an idea everyone is excited about.
How do you tie that identity into the mechanics of the dungeon?
Brian Frank: The mechanics are an opportunity for us to reinforce the themes. Both with verbs that players express through them and in the text we use to describe them: interactions, buff titles, announcement text, etc. Usually the setting or enemy faction will suggest a palette for them. We often take existing mechanics and use them in a new way or extend them with new functionality to create and experiences.
Robert Brookes: The dungeon’s fantasy is present at all levels of its creation. From the gameplay mechanics to the narrative, the art, the sound design. We’re all aligned on hitting the specific fantasy, which for Ghosts of the Deep was kind of an eldritch horror underwater exploration. The dungeon wouldn’t exist without the defined fantasy all of its disparate aspects are hung on.
How difficult is it to balance dungeons for one player and three players simultaneously?
Brian Frank: The dungeon experience is modelled after raids; they are endgame activities that feature unique mechanics. With the primary difference being coordination is a form of mastery you can express, but is not required to succeed. We have to be intentional and preserve the possibility for the dungeons to be completed solo. However, the feat holds a place as one of the most difficult things a player can achieve in Destiny PvE, so we err on the side of maintaining the aspiration of that accomplishment.
Are they any secrets that players should keep an eye out for? (I’d imagine yes)
Brian Frank: One of the pillars of the raid and dungeon activities is to journey in to the unknown. We want players to experience the narrative, setting, challenges, rewards, and secrets for themselves. To reveal anything we’ve hidden away in the dungeon would be a disservice to those who delight in their discovery and counter to that goal.