Destiny 2:
Season of Opulence
Role: Designer - Sandbox Team
Software: In-house Tools - Grognok & Bonobo
Team Size: 3
Development Cycle: 4 months
Destiny 2: Season of Opulence is the third DLC drop of the Annual Pass. As part of the Vicarious Visions team I created content for the weapons team!
- Owned the creation, implementation, and iteration of the Exotic SMG Tarrabah
- Collaborated with other disciplines to execute on Tarrabah's vision
My primary duties were owning the creation, implementation and iteration on the exotic SMG Tarrabah obtained from the raid. There were a couple design objectives I wanted to execute on for this weapon:
- Utilize a weapon archetype that synergizes well with the DLC's content
- Create an exotic that gives the player more control of its game loop
- Experiment on designs that haven't really been seen yet in Destiny
I decided on the SMG archetype as it seemed like the perfect weapon to utilize in the menagerie content in the Season of Opulence. It would also add some variety to exotics as a lot of them are power weapons. While there's a mix of encounter types, there is a lot of close quarters combat where the player can play aggressively which is where SMGs shine. Building off this idea of aggressiveness was the origin for most of my ideas, so when deciding on a thematic vision for the weapon what better than a Tasmanian Devil.
Now for the weapons game loop I wanted to create something interesting the players can interact with and control rather than just a passive benefit. This creates more engaging gameplay and creates a bit of a skill gap which I believe is very healthy for any game. If players can find ways to use a weapon in advantageous ways / scenarios, they'll feel a greater sense of accomplishment knowing they found a way to use the weapon that others haven't, or can't execute properly. This promotes a healthy engagement loop.
In the beginning I tried to focus on mechanics that haven't been explored before in the Destiny Universe. Iteration yielded some interesting results but due to time restrictions they weren't feasible, so I switched to explore how to fix the SMG archetype's weakness. And that is to deal effective damage you need to be almost directly in front of an enemy. This led to coming up with ways to close the gap between enemies and the player.
Due to the Activision / Bungie split we had to ensure the weapon was in a good state to hand off to Bungie. This translated to us helping Bungie move forward with a different implementation of the weapon from mine, but they maintained my broad stroke objectives I set forth when creating Tarrabah.
