Some of Destiny 2's most notable content have, historically, been the game's various raids. However, the Witch Queen expansion may be the first time that Bungie is attempting to extend its trademark gameplay mechanics to the basic campaign content. According to Bungie, this ties in with its efforts to make this new campaign more similar to Doom or Halo.
Bungie's Destiny 2 game director, Joe Blackburn, has gone on record saying that the Witch Queen campaign will attempt to bridge the "canyon" between a baseline Destiny campaign and fully-fledged raid content. To that end, players should expect a more involved and mechanically challenging experience as they progress through the Witch Queen story.
Though Blackburn wasn't interested in spoiling anything about the Witch Queen raid, which takes place in a broken-down Darkness pyramid, he did explain that Bungie's goal is to make the players' transition from campaign content to hardcore raiding significantly easier. The fact that Witch Queen is launching with a legendary campaign only underlines this further. Raids are, in most cases, a continuation of the campaign narrative, and it's Bungie's goal to make them more inviting to a greater number of people.
Blackburn's interview suggests that the Witch Queen campaign will wrap up satisfyingly enough, but that the raid will inevitably continue moving the narrative forward. The fact that four entirely new Void 3.0 abilities are still unrevealed, and will only end up getting unlocked after the world's first Witch Queen raid completion, suggests that players should expect at least a few major story beats. Perhaps even something along the lines of Dreaming City Curse, which was kick-started following the first successful Last Wish playthrough, back when Forsaken came out.
While Beyond Light did a lot of things right, the DLC's campaign mode was simple and straightforward, there was a massive gameplay gap between the campaign and its Deep Stone Crypt raid. Bungie now seems to be attempting to create a better onboarding process for players that are interested in raiding, but who may have been intimidated by them seeming impenetrable from the perspective of casual play. Succeeding in doing so would be a big deal not only for Bungie but also for the Destiny community at large.
With over a million Witch Queen pre-orders, Bungie has got a massive audience at hand that's hoping to get a "definitively Destiny campaign" that has been promised. Though it remains to be seen whether Bungie can deliver a campaign experience to match the likes of Halo and Doom at this time, it's a reasonably safe assumption that the raid, at least, will be an impressive experience for players that end up playing it.
Source: Polygon
