Destiny 2 Raid Along Dives Into The Game's Latest Raid

If you're someone who enjoys developer commentary, Bungie offered a rare treat today for its game, Destiny 2. The studio streamed what it calls a Raid Along — a peek behind the curtain at what goes into building such an activity. And that video is now available to check out on Twitch.

Raids are Destiny 2's pinnacle pieces of content, and they're what is considered an "end-game activity," meaning that players have to complete the campaign and increase their power level significantly afterward in order to take part. They're one of the tougher activities for the team at Bungie to design. They feature encounters with several mini-bosses — all with their own unique mechanics — and the team must figure out a way for those encounters to make sense with six players.

Several of the team members behind the design of the Last Wish raid — Andrew Hopps, Katherine Walker, Joe Blackburn, and Jonathan To — all shared bits and pieces of their experiences leading up to the raid's launch.

Andrew Hopps, for instance, was the Art Lead for the Last Wish raid. It was his job to ensure the art within the deeper parts of the raid's Dreaming City locale stayed true to the game's current direction while introducing some unique-looking art to various encounters and areas.

Katherine Walker, the raid's producer, spoke about coming on board to make sure everything in the raid was tested and that all of the "fires" were put out, so to speak.

Joe Blackburn, lead designer on the Last Wish raid, talked about how important it was to bring good Destiny players into the studio for three weeks (!) to simulate how the general public would play the game at launch.

And Jonathan To, the raid's narrative lead, outlined some of the challenges of creating a new story in the raid that stayed true to the past lore introduced in the first Destiny and in the Forsaken campaign.

It's a pretty fascinating look at the way different facets of a studio come together to work on a game. There are just four people in Bungie's video representing the art, production, design, and narrative teams. But hundreds more took part in the development process, and somehow, it all came together into what is arguably the best version of Destiny to date.

If you have some time over the holiday, it's worth a watch.