Running content repeatedly is second nature to Destiny 2 players. The game’s latest dungeon, Warlord’s Ruin, isn’t different, but it has a catch: it poses a mystery with your first clear, and you need to wrap up a quest to get to the bottom of it all.
The mystery of Warlord’s Ruin lies in its story, which is far deeper than it seems at first glance. The Guardian is storming a former Warlord’s castle in search of an Ahamkara that dwelled there. They kill the Ahamkara—and when they do, a quest invites them to try again. The dungeon’s quest, In the Shadow of the Mountain, is a new spin on the familiar collectible system, bringing order and progression to the storytelling and improving the dungeon’s replay value, Bungie developers said at a roundtable event last week.
If you’ve tried out Warlord’s Ruin without knowing much about it, odds are you left the dungeon with more questions than you had when you went in. The doors with different levels of Dispel locks (based on how far you’ve gotten in the quest) don’t help sate your curiosity, either. Without lore on the armor and with chunks of the dialogue hidden away, the quest seems to be the main way to figure out what’s happening, at least without resorting to Destiny lore experts like My Name is Byf. Whether you want a tip from Hefnd on the quest screen or you’re hunting down another audio message, you need to jump back in if you want to figure it out on your own.
All that was deliberately built by Bungie right from the start. “Our whole goal with that was to extend the life of the dungeon itself, so that repeat plays also felt really rewarding,” test engineer Amanda Baker admitted. “So you could be exploring a corridor and be like, ‘Oh, I couldn’t open that door before, but now I can because I progressed the quest.’”
The doors that hold Hefnd’s bones are a key draw to ensure the story keeps evolving. Each run, you stumble on something you know holds a secret, but you may not be able to open it yet. The team wanted to reinforce that exploration “through narrative, storytelling, and encounter design,” according to senior environment artist Ryan Baker.
Those repeat clears are integral to understanding the story in an almost inescapable way. And once you have the full picture, the image you get is different from what you may have expected from your first instinct when dealing with an Ahamkara. “It wasn’t so much about manipulation and control as it was about love and loss and vengeance,” senior narrative designer Nikko Stevens said.
