Artists working onDestiny 2appear to have already come up with comprehensive reasoning as to why Rhulk, Nezarec, and, to a lesser extent, Calus look the way they do. While much ofDestiny’s world and creature design is very deliberate and grounded in the game’s universe, this information isn’t always communicated directly to the player.
Bungie’sDestiny 2thrives on its mysterious lore, and even though the game is slowly untangling its core narrative focusing on the clash between the Light and the Darkness, there’s still much that its main narrative developments simply won’t be able to touch upon. The nature of the Witness’s Disciples, for example, has been touched upon in a broad, metaphorical sense via the various lore books, but the same explanations weren’t provided about their alien biology.
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Now that much of theDestinyplayer base has gotten acquainted with theLightfallDLC and its raid, the Root of Nightmares, Bungie artists have finally been able to update their ArtStation portfolios with all-new art they had created for the DLC. Concept Art Lead Tobias Kwan posted the works of character artists Andrew Bonczyk and Alexis Velazquez alongside lore-based explanations as to whyDestiny 2’s Darkness-infused Disciplesand the all-new Tormentor enemies look the way they do, and as it turns out, all of them have been biologically modified by the game’s big bad, the Witness.
Artwork descriptions specify that the Tormentors, Rhulk, Nezarec, and Emperor Calus have all been taken apart by the Witness and put back together with ample modifications. The process is described as “chimeric fusion,” and it explains why all the encountered creatures of Darkness look the way they do and contextualizes their behavior. In other words, even thoughDestiny 2: Lightfalldropped the ballwith its story, its background lore remains as stellar as it’s ever been.
Granted, Bungie announced that thenext season’sDestiny 2 Lightfallstory questshould address some of the missing narrative beats, but this is highly unlikely to touch upon the matter of Disciple aesthetics. Instead, Bungie is bound to focus on the nature of the Veil that rests underneath Neomouna, its relation to the Traveler, and maybe even the specifics of what happened to it after it was invaded by the Pyramids.
Due to the scope of the game,Destiny 2needs to cover huge batches of its core backstory using lore books, as was the case withRhulk’s creation of the Hive inDestiny 2. Its DLC campaigns and seasonal stories, on the other hand, touch upon the ongoing, contemporary events as they unravel. The obvious downside to this approach is that there’s not much space left for the game itself to explore details such as the character design tidbits featured above. Thankfully, reading up on Bungie artists' notes has helped provide more context on the Disciples, and it’s possible that some of it may end up being communicated to the players in-game in the future too.
Destiny 2is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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