DESTINY 2: THE RED WAR
Adieu | Activity type: Campaign Story Mission
Adieu was the second mission in the Destiny 2’s original The Red War story campaign. In it, players have lost their special abilities (“Light”) and are tasked with finding a way out of the city currently under attack by an invading alien race known as the Cabal. It was a very challenging mission to develop, as the goals involved doing a lot of things the engine simply was not built to support (even something as simple as “remove all the player’s weapons”, which required the development of special tech).
I was responsible for the level design here, blocking out this sewer space, the overpass, the surrounding buildings, and upper walkways running parallel to the player’s path. The goal of the space was to provide a fairly linear path for player’s to follow, because they were initially limited to 25% of their normal movement speed. I also needed to build in a few key chokepoints for scripted cinematic moments that played out during the mission.
Artist credit: Andrew Hackathorn, Jason Sussman
The second stage of the mission took players outside the city walls and into the surrounding mountains. Waypoints and navigational UX were disabled during this portion of the mission, so we used a falcon to try to lead players onward - he is perched on the rock directly ahead of the player and flies away towards the intended path whenever the player gets close to him.
I roughed this space out using the Bungie terrain tool, then collaborated with our world art team to refine it to support a light combat encounter that happens shortly after players passed this spot in the level.
Artist credit: Andrew Hackathorn, Jason Sussman
Closer to the end of the mission, and with players moving at full speed and with multiple weapons at their disposal, the second and final combat encounter of Adieu happens in this small hollow. The Cabal warrior on the rock in the middle of the image waves his arm and a pack of four-legged Cabal ‘Warbeasts’ swarm towards the player on either side of the rock.
The blockout for this space started with the terrain tool, with meshes added to provide cover and hard boundaries on the left and right of the space.
Artist credit: Andrew Hackathorn, Jason Sussman
Nearing the conclusion of Adieu, players face a light traversal challenge as they jump from cliff to cliff in an attempt to reach the clearing at the far end of this valley. There is no combat in this stretch of the mission, allowing players to take their time or just stretch their legs a bit and have fun, having been in a weakened state for a significant portion of the mission before this.
The blockout here was done almost entirely with rock meshes, with only minimal layout changes between my initial passes and the final version shown here.
Artist credit: Andrew Hackathorn, Jason Sussman