There is a trend for Destiny 2's expansions and Seasons to often bring interesting shifts in the game's tested mechanics, such as the introduction of seasonal artifacts and Champion mods. These were just the foundations of something Bungie worked on even more in the following Seasons, always trying to keep each mod pool refreshing and make every artifact feel unique in a way. Season of the Splicer and Season of the Lost brought very interesting mods that dramatically reshaped Destiny 2's meta in many ways, even making some subclass and Exotic options irrelevant.
Today, Bungie's new ViDoc, called Light in the Darkness, started to shed some light on what The Witch Queen expansion entails, aside from Savathun's Lucent Brood and her Throne World. There was plenty of gameplay footage as well, showing more of the Void 3.0 revamp of Destiny 2's subclasses, as well as the new Exotic weapons and armor coming with The Witch Queen. Yet, there was a little something that could easily be missed in the video, and that's the fact that players will be able to wield Season 16's artifact.
Destiny 2's Season of the Risen builds on some concepts introduced in Season of the Chosen, with the Cabal Psions' Light-suppressing technology being offered by Caiatl to mankind to push back Savathun's Hive Lightbearers. Season of the Risen's artifact looks a lot like a spear, not too dissimilar from the Titan's Diamond Lance or even Rasputin's Valkyrie spears from the Warmind DLC. It turns out that players will be able to wield this new artifact for the first time and defeat enemies with it in regular gameplay.
While the details of this are still unknown, the footage included in Destiny 2's new ViDoc does show a Guardian wielding the artifact and using it to battle the Hive. Considering that Season of the Risen seems to be about suppressing the Lucent Brood, this Arc-themed artifact could include some abilities that let players interrupt enemy Supers when damaging them, possibly having extra functions if combined with glaives or seasonal mods.
It's unclear if Destiny 2's newly announced Season of the Risen will allow players to wield the seasonal artifact outside of story missions and The Witch Queen campaign, but it's likely that its abilities will mainly be used to fight the Hive. Savathun's Lucent Brood is going to be a major challenge for many players, but being able to suppress their signature moves might make the encounters less scary.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
