Image via Bungie

We're just one week and one mean solar day out from the impending arrival of The Witch Queen expansion for Destiny 2. Developer Bungie has been keeping its cards close to the chest with small-scale teases over the last few months, but players have finally gotten to know more about what the new DLC has in shop this calendar month. A trailer released Monday shows the development procedure behind the glaive, a new weapon archetype coming to the game with The Witch Queen.

New additions to the sandbox are something of a rarity in Destiny, with the last major one being the introduction of bows back in 2022's Forsaken expansion. The video gives players a small backside-the-scenes wait at the development process behind the glaive, a hybrid betwixt a polearm-styled melee weapon and a projectile launcher with special abilities related to your Guardian's form.

Hardcore Destiny fans have been waiting a long fourth dimension for more melee options beyond swords, and the glaive seems poised to fill that niche while having an identity all its own. "Calculation something new to the sandbox is never not going to be difficult," Bungie designer George Kokoris says in the video, "and when we first started running playtests with information technology, they were mode too strong, which is a proficient thing. That'southward a skilful problem to have."

One of the biggest differentiation points for the glaive is staying in Destiny's usual beginning-person while hacking away at enemies, giving its animations and combat an up close and personal feel that's very different from the distant tertiary-person view players are used to from swords. "The glaive is a much more than focused, much more directed affair. It'southward a polearm, you're very conspicuously holding it in a sure direction," Kokoris says. "We wanted to keep that feel in first-person. Information technology has an immediacy that I call up would've been lost if we were exclusively in third-person."

Bungie's previous pre-release textile for The Witch Queen let players know the special properties each grade can make use of through the glaive. Warlocks get healing turrets to go alongside them equally they fight, while Titans can summon a shield to soak upwards enemy fire and Hunters become a flashy concatenation lightning issue in the vein of Riskrunner and Trinity Ghoul. The weapon crafting system coming to Destiny 2 will introduce players to the archetype, and Guardians should be able to tailor their Glaives to focus on the traits that fit their playstyles best.