Destiny 2: Shadowkeep

As a World Activity Designer on Destiny 2: Shadowkeep, I took over as the Design owner of the Strike activity named “The Festering Core”. Work on this Strike started before I joined on as the owner, but it was still pretty early in some of its design. It had the beginnings of some interesting concepts already in development (holographic moving walls that killed the players on contact, for example), but they weren’t fine tuned or necessarily fun to experience. It was also lacking all of its combat, most of its encounter spaces weren’t yet built, and it didn’t have an ending or an end boss designed, either. So I got to work!

First, I collaborated with the Combatants team to see what kind of end boss we could create in a cost-effective way. We had some ideas that we were able to pull from existing (and scrapped) enemy ideas, and worked them together to form the beginnings of the end boss enemy that ultimately shipped. I also worked directly with the art team to begin reworking the golden path space into usable encounter spaces, iterating and redesigning as needed. I also began pacing out the experience, designating specific areas for narrative Radio Play in between more intense combat moments. I also worked with the VFX and animation teams to help set up unique abilities for existing enemies and to help re-time the holographic moving walls. It was a lot of positive collaboration between teams, and the final result is one that audiences really enjoyed.

Video playthrough of “The Festering Core”, by Youtuber Lord Bojacx.

This served as the last content I was able to work on for Destiny, and I think it really shines as a great piece of content.