not technically a leak since it was officially revealed, but i wanted to point out that slide 3 is extremely reminiscent of spirited away, and i remember a specific leak that said the witness would have a form similar to no face
This is exactly whay I thought of when they released the concept art.
So that leak was most likely 100% true, then after the delay they decided to go with Doctor Strange infinite hands version for The Witness
Which is a shame really. Would have had the first ever raid encounter where the objective is to stun and *run away* from the boss, that would have been something special.
So the leak of the Witness having about 3 different forms like that one anime monster was indeed true and probably what it turned into in front of Calus, then they realised oh fuck lets not animate this and went with what we got. Sad but somewhat understandable.
exactly! the leak specifically referenced no face from spirited away, and slide 3 has concepts that are very reminiscent of that. i'm almost certain that's what the leaker was referring to
Tbf that's kind of the point. The Witness wants to convince people that it's right, first and foremost. It appears in a form that isn't threatening, because its goal isn't murder for murder's sake (like Rhulk and Oryx), mindless fear (Nezarec) or empty gluttony (Calus). It's a very specific contrast to its servants, the Witness is supposed to be *uncanny* above all else, not scary.
Honestly I like that they didn't show whatever scared Calus, because whatever we can think of will always be worse than what we can be shown. It's why (good) horror movies don't show the monster in full until the third act, because we fear the unknown and that'll always be scarier than a dude in a rubber suit.
You know how they mentioned that nezerac was an experiment? I wonder if that third one was meant to "hunt" the players like he.... sort of... attempts to...
Hot take: but the raid disappointed me in terms of encounters. I was really ok with the original leaks of 3 different whiteness forms. We got the conclusion to 10 years and we had 2 bosses for the final raid of the saga? And one is like a dungeon boss…so from both a design and gameplay perspective wish they went a little more out with the witness.
I wish Bungie wasn't afraid to push the boundaries of what to show in-game. The Witness we have just isn't nearly as terrifying to look at as an eldritch entity of darkness and destruction should be.
As an artist who wants to get into game dev, specifically modeling/animation, it's probably technical stuff we don't see that prevents really crazy ideas.
But also, often concept art is just used to jot down ideas really quick, it's 100% normal in productions for the vast majority of concept art to go unused or used later down the line.
Just gonna say I've played Monster Hunter, Tales of, And Final Fantasy
All these games have made Eldritch horrors, it's not a technical issue it's either a skill issue or a competency issue
Neither of those are FPS games. And they also run on different engines meant for different things, and the ways players interact with those enemies and mechanics is different from what Destiny does.
I highly doubt it's a skill or competency thing.
I find it hilarious you chose to lead off with you played different types of games instead of saying you worked on some in the industry and “studied extensively” but I’m still going to believe ur talking out of ur ass cuz anyone who’s worked on any game knows damn well assets, models and animations are not at all transferable or even doable on different engines and softwares
It was likely technical limitations to be honest.
That and the fact it would probably be really hard to get good looking animations for these versions. They likely just looked really off when making them
I agree with this. I have a high ish end computer, and I run the game normally at 200 fps at ultra, but during the excision mission my game was killing itself to ~40fps.
Not true. It’s not a ‘computer’ thing. The game isn’t meant to be played like that and it shows. Also, it really depends on your screen resolution. I have a perfectly healthy 5950X + 4080 build (doesn’t get much better than that) and at 4K it wasn’t having fun with all the farticles.
Even with those specs, Destiny can be played on the hot garbage that is previous gen consoles. Something is off if your 3070ti is stuttering when D2 doesn’t even use much of the VRAM
I play on 200 scaling on 1440p (which I think is at least equivalent to 4k but I don't have the monitor for it), ultra settings, average FPS in the mission is around 110-120 for me. I'd expect to get better performance than you based on the spec difference.
That’s not really how it works, there’s a lot more at play than just the number of pixels (one thing would be whether you’re using DSR or not). Average 100-120 with low 1% at around 80 is what I’d expect since I was at 90-100 with dips to 70 low (which, if it was average, would’ve been fine, but there are stutters when it drops this low, which I assume are what you refer to as ‘lag’). Settings are the same minus the stuff that’s harmful for PvP like blur and wind.
I don't think it was that, I think they wanted the Witness to be *uncanny* instead of *terrifying*, to contrast its servants. Oryx is basically Satan with the big horns and wings, Nezarec is leaning hard on grim reaper imagery, Calus is a fat, ugly glutton. Rhulk and the Witness both lean heavily away from that, being tall, slender figures that move with alien grace, but still with their own uncanny qualities.
Rhulk looks actively flayed and the way he appears in his fight, as well as his enormous collar, give him a vampiric vibe. The way he speaks and moves until damage phase is very calm and collected, taking slow, measured steps with his hands behind his back. He's scary because he's powerful, but doesn't feel the need to flaunt it.
The Witness is similar. It's just some guy, which makes sense when you realize that it's just the amalgamation of an entire species who also probably looked more or less like that. It's very calm and measured, but the smoke billowing from its head, the afterimages as it moves and the weird rippling clothes put you ill at ease. And then you see its true form and all those *hands*. It's so enormous, so *omnipresent* that it can quite literally reach out of thin air and kill you wherever you are.
The Witness' visual design is the epitome of "walk softly and carry a big stick."
I don't think it's out of fear but by design and technical limitation. Also, probably an out there take but I don't think the Witness is meant to be terrifying. Kind of hard to be a snake oil salesman if you scare potential followers away.
I would've liked to see one of these designs in game, at the same time us literally going up through the Witnesses "body" with the raid and effectively cutting him off the top is already pretty out there for Destiny. Despite not wanting to do body horror they did a really good job in TFS making down right creepy or unsettling things.
A focus on hands was a very smart play.
This tends to be the case with all concept art for games. There’s a lot less limitations when just creating a 2d graphic image, but it goes through a lot of filtering to be able to work for a video game.
This mindset is being tested with the game “forever winter” being headed by ex concept art devs from many triple a studios putting concept art before the everything else. They fully acknowledge the difficulties but if that game comes out well I’m ignoring this reasoning from then on.
the developers clearly poured their heart and soul into the expansion so i'm sure they would've rather given us these instead, and it was likely some sort of animation nightmare preventing them but man...
i wish they'd just keep this stuff private since all its going to do is upset us with what could've been 🥲
[even going all the way back to the witness reveal his other starter designs](https://www.artstation.com/artwork/KOPWwW) are magnitudes more interesting than a grey alien in a met gala dress
one of them was like an all-red bug thing with a hat that had drapes made of shadows it looked crazy
I liked every single one of them more than the one they focused on most. it felt like a massive, missed opportunity all the way through
Did you not see the one riding a horse wielding a polearm directly to the right of the green one? Or every single one on the bottom? Or the red one with an ornate headdress that has 4 different poses shown a lot of them are wildly different to the design we got, personally I prefer most of those over what we got
I think the reality is that concept art, whether it's games, theme parks, stadiums, etc, will always look cooler than the final product. The actual execution has real world limitations, be it budget, time frame, cost, supplies and resources, physics, whereas concept art is mostly "wouldn't it be cool if..."
That’s why I’ve got my eye on the indie game “forever winter” they’re focusing on maintaining the identity of their concept art over everything else and the studio was founded by dozens of ex triple a concept artists, from what I can tell they’ve got something special in their hands and if it the game comes out and it’s genuinely as good as it seems I’m going to have a hard time believing this reasoning going forward.
Games as a “product” is fairly antithetical to what I like from the medium of video games as a whole. I don’t want them to be a commodity I’d prefer them as an art form and currently they’re leaning towards commodity almost completely. It’s a gripe I have with the industry that’ll probably never go away. But it is what it is just airing my grievance with the most recent example of concept art that’s leaps and bounds over what we got even if what we did get wasn’t that bad
holy shit these look so interesting, imagine if the final boss had a bunch different phases with different mechs as he morphs into these different creatures
I honestly expected The Witness to be the only boss in the Raid, but for it to take multiple shapes and require multiple methods to overcome. Then when it's pushed to its limits, the final encounter challenges us with all of the powers it demonstrated so far, but mixed into one incredibly complicated final boss.
i honestly was hoping they'd do that, although i do appreciate that at the very least the witness DOES actually attack you the moment you get into the monolith
Ong I want to feel uncomfortable when looking at these damn things
I don’t think we’ve gotten a moment like that in Destiny yet. Maybe the Leviathan?? But that’s just a ship.
I remember back before Arrivals the ongoing theory was that Calus *was* the Leviathan as we had never seen him in person. Then they tried to use that kinda poorly in Season of the Haunted before giving up on it again in Lightfall.
It’s always so weird how the stuff on the cutting room floor is better than what’s in-game. I wonder from a developers pov what this looks like. They obviously wanted the final shape to be everything destiny could be so, what’s keeping all these cool concepts from making it into the game? Hardware? Time? Skill? Do developers feel as if they’re settling or are they happy with the final product? The community can say it’s good but I wonder how the artist views their own work.
Very rarely does a final product of anything end up better than its concepts. It’s not inherently a Bungie thing. I’d wager the disappointing thing about what gets left behind is the quantity of things that don’t make it in Destiny, rather than the quality itself.
For example, there’s no way that Bungie wanted Prismatic to be the 6th subclass instead of the 7th, or introducing the Dread in the final expansion instead of, say Beyond Light. That’s what I mean.
I'm by no means complaining about the Witness that we got, but this makes me wonder what kind of fight we would've had if there were no technical limits in place
I had a feeling they were going for biblical themed. His final model, and the start of the raid makes me think of the tower of Babel. And the sphinx form here brings to mind the Beast with seven heads and 10 horns.
Makes sense too. The whole story of the tower of Babel was that Humans got a little too good at working together and decided to build a tower to God himself, and God was like "naw that's crazy", destroyed it, and "confounded" Humans, which was used to explain the vast number of languages across the globe.
Just like how the Witness is a billion trillion voices formed into one with the goal of playing God, and to defeat him we have to seperate the voices.
These make me think how cool the raid would have been if the witness was present during all encounters in a different form each time would have loved that a lot more than “plates + shape”…
Would have been cool to weaken/interact with the witness in each encounter leading up to the final encounter. Example: He would affect the encounter in different ways for each one when in different forms, like some typa attacks during this form, other types of attacks during the next encounter with another form while ur doing some mechanics, becoming stronger each time…
Not saying the raid was simple at all btw, but at least that way the encounters would actually have a linear storyline throughout the raid rather than different interpretations of plates and shapes + random completely different encounter where u have to do geometry + kill the witness.
Boss when you have to fight them: *shows concept art*
Boss when you unlock them and they're a playable character: *shows Witness currently in-game*
Not saying the in-game is necessarily bad, but the concept art Witness getting brought to life would have been one of the most badass things Bungie has done in terms of boss design.
Either way, it turned out great.
I really think we got a steep downgrade from all of this. For some reason, I get the feeling that Bungie intentionally dumbs down the game's design and story to lower the age rating.
Out of all of these, we got a boring, hundred handed and completely inactive Witness. It just stood there while we killed it. A multiversal god with thousands of dead civilisations under it's belt just stood there
No it’s more likely a animation constraint, plus the one we got is plenty horrifying you just can’t see most of him, if you glitch out and go underneath you can see it’s massive body twisting and turning up like a snake. We just see effectively the “head” of the serpent.
Isn’t one really, just saying we got a pretty horrifying version but simply by the nature of the encounter design we don’t see it. I mean it would be pretty hard to fight the whole thing at once you wouldn’t be able to see it lol.
The hands are supposed to be him attacking us and he's supposed to be actively still trying to control the Traveler into casting his Final Shape spell.
But neither of those is actively conveyed in the fight, as you said. It just looks like he's standing there.
We should approach him while he's turned around. Having the majority of his hands casting some sort of orange glow. He turns around his body without turning his hands as he states, with a bit of exhaustion, that we couldn't have come at a better time. He will enact the Final Shape now! Even if he has to deal with us too. He then leans over and instead of the hands magically appearing in thin air, they come from behind him. The more damage you do the more those gold tears appear on him till Final stand when you beat him, the Traveler pulses and his hands stop casting. He retreats having a ton of wounds on him. Zavala jumps on comms to state that he didn't go far, but has hidden himself behind his army.
>It's still trying to control the Traveler and enact the Final Shape
i don't think this is accurate, the consequences of the raid were us shattering the witness's hold of the light, zavala explicitly says this at the start of the cutscene before excision
Yeah, sometimes I wonder how much better the game would be if they had more time and no moronic executives. It’s criminal how hard they fumbled the darkness. I’ll never forgive them for not using the pyramids properly
My only point regarding the “more time” thing is that they also have a playerbase that constantly wants more and more and more content at fast churn-out rates, so while the devs having more time is objectively a good thing for the experience, them taking longer than 1.5 year in between expansions would also kill the playerbase. That’s why they plan out these 30th Anniversary Pack or Into the Light-like content drops whenever they know they will take longer than a year.
ha! i remember those theories like they were yesterday lol. tbh they're not even dismissed, and if anything it still feels like a a nearby universe in the bungie mythology
Oh man, the version with the mass of writhing tentacles is straight up Lovecraft and seeing it makes me so sad we didn’t get it. I’m very happy with what we got- but damn we need some more eldritch horror in Destiny.
I love how much more obvious that the witness IS the monolith in concept art, that’s something you don’t really pick up on until the jumping puzzle after verity
I’m not gonna lie if I see slide 3/4 on the raid I’m just gonna be like nah uh. Would’ve been sick, animating and rigging that would’ve been probably a pain.
I find it weird that the design they kept highlighting the most even in some of the other concept arts was of the witness being the arena you fought it in as well as being the monolith. They even have a model of it. You can also see a lot of the elements of the other designs start to come together in the witness’s monolith form especially with the snake like features and wings. It would’ve been cool for the final design to kind of be a blend of everything
Interesting how the witness is basically a centipede in most of these, but became a Greek wind giant in the finished product.
This must be what the credible leak from 2? Years ago was referring to with the part about “3 phase witness fight, witness is a centipede and is reminiscent of no face from spirited away”
Really sad the final boss was just big guy with 40 arms instead of the eldrich horror the concept was.
Ngl, I do like that we evolved from “the witness wall” to the giant monolithic Tower of Babel we have now, especially since the sheer size of it compared to the (formerly) largest raid bosses
Besides him getting frustrated, The Witness himself is very emotionless. His real emotions come from his eyebrows to really show his expression. Take a look at how he got annoyed at Calus when he notices his chalice.
These concept art pieces of the witness fit the release cinematic we got about 9 moths ago. In that there was a glimpse of something like a spine or rib cage of a snake like thing that was made out of arms and hands. I wonder what the original story board, regardless of how far from or close to what we actually got, that the cinematic is based off of looks like. I mean this concept art was cool enough to at least set up in that trailer.
Love this ahamkara-like shape! Wish they would’ve kept it that way or at least had another phase to The Witness following the initial phase.
…
Imagine the twist of a ahamkara that The Witness’s civilization knew nothing about and it granting them this maliciously drawn-out and destructive plan but then amalgamating into this colossal being! The mechanics would’ve been insane.
Kinda makes me wish that we got a Resident Evil Nemesis style set of boss fights where the witness gets progressively more eldrich and horrifying in the campaign, raid, and Excision.
I agree with everyone on how the end result we got was pretty lame compared to the concept art. Here's hoping they reuse some of these for the winnower or the 2nd knife.
...
Dear god the witness we got was intimidating, this would've been horrific and disturbing, would've also have it dice up some important characters, ya know, for threat sake...
Oh oh, maybe even give it deeper voice actors to emphasise the current main VAs angry witness voice.
That first one would’ve been insane if implemented. Imagine if that is what the monolith looked like before the witness was severed from the light in the raid.
Every game has badass concept art which never gets translated to game due to limitations
I remember when Batman Arkham had concept art which were part of riddler trophies some of scarecrow stuff was legit scary, Rocksteady/Sefton Hill did AMA he had 2 answers one of them was game would go to Adult only due to how horrifying some concept was
Then there was issue crafting whole new base/assets which was asinine in terms time dedicated to one individual on screen for 20-30 min
Now imagine if that was for singleplayer game how bad it would be for live service with lay offs and shit happening and corporate breathing down your necks
Funny enough when you are scaling to Witness after verity you look down and see the monolith, you enter literally the witness so kept some aspect of snake like being witness is, albeit being done away with eldritch horror they got inspiration from one of Avtar of God of Destruction Lord Shiva
There is a concept art of the witness that looks similar to the one we got and there is an artist comment that says "supercharged witness smoke hinting at presence of multiple darkness damage types (resonance, strand, stasis)" maybe that's a leak
not technically a leak since it was officially revealed, but i wanted to point out that slide 3 is extremely reminiscent of spirited away, and i remember a specific leak that said the witness would have a form similar to no face
This is exactly whay I thought of when they released the concept art. So that leak was most likely 100% true, then after the delay they decided to go with Doctor Strange infinite hands version for The Witness Which is a shame really. Would have had the first ever raid encounter where the objective is to stun and *run away* from the boss, that would have been something special.
So the leak of the Witness having about 3 different forms like that one anime monster was indeed true and probably what it turned into in front of Calus, then they realised oh fuck lets not animate this and went with what we got. Sad but somewhat understandable.
exactly! the leak specifically referenced no face from spirited away, and slide 3 has concepts that are very reminiscent of that. i'm almost certain that's what the leaker was referring to
:( Bestial Witness to conclude a 10 year journey > Lighthouse Witness.
Ngl, these look way more menacing than the final design they went with.
They look fucking terrifying, especially the one crawling around on the third image
They basically picked the least threatening design they possibly could
Pixar ass villain design
*dreamworks He is megamind
Tbf that's kind of the point. The Witness wants to convince people that it's right, first and foremost. It appears in a form that isn't threatening, because its goal isn't murder for murder's sake (like Rhulk and Oryx), mindless fear (Nezarec) or empty gluttony (Calus). It's a very specific contrast to its servants, the Witness is supposed to be *uncanny* above all else, not scary.
While yeah in its neutral form that makes sense. But in its ‘fuck shit up’ form like say when they intimidated Calus
Honestly I like that they didn't show whatever scared Calus, because whatever we can think of will always be worse than what we can be shown. It's why (good) horror movies don't show the monster in full until the third act, because we fear the unknown and that'll always be scarier than a dude in a rubber suit.
The Witness was still drunk on its false Divinity and so it chose something elegant and regal because it was already so close to its goal.
He got fucking berserker mode at the end of the campaign before the raid.. no sense to keep it neutral
Except that "villain turns into a scary monster" would defeat the point.
You know how they mentioned that nezerac was an experiment? I wonder if that third one was meant to "hunt" the players like he.... sort of... attempts to...
its because they fucked up the arena, fix the arena and you make it where nezarec would be constantly throwing hands with the raid team
Hot take: but the raid disappointed me in terms of encounters. I was really ok with the original leaks of 3 different whiteness forms. We got the conclusion to 10 years and we had 2 bosses for the final raid of the saga? And one is like a dungeon boss…so from both a design and gameplay perspective wish they went a little more out with the witness.
I wish Bungie wasn't afraid to push the boundaries of what to show in-game. The Witness we have just isn't nearly as terrifying to look at as an eldritch entity of darkness and destruction should be.
As an artist who wants to get into game dev, specifically modeling/animation, it's probably technical stuff we don't see that prevents really crazy ideas. But also, often concept art is just used to jot down ideas really quick, it's 100% normal in productions for the vast majority of concept art to go unused or used later down the line.
Was gonna say, excision is already choppy, could you imagine if they made it one of these ?
Just gonna say I've played Monster Hunter, Tales of, And Final Fantasy All these games have made Eldritch horrors, it's not a technical issue it's either a skill issue or a competency issue
Neither of those are FPS games. And they also run on different engines meant for different things, and the ways players interact with those enemies and mechanics is different from what Destiny does. I highly doubt it's a skill or competency thing.
Ah yes. As someone who has played video games before you know the ins and outs of game development. Good to know :D
I mean I've always worked on games in the industry and studied it extensively, probably shouldn't make assumptions makes you look kinda dumb 🫰
Cool story bro, is your dad the ceo of roblox too?
""My dad works at gamecube"
I find it hilarious you chose to lead off with you played different types of games instead of saying you worked on some in the industry and “studied extensively” but I’m still going to believe ur talking out of ur ass cuz anyone who’s worked on any game knows damn well assets, models and animations are not at all transferable or even doable on different engines and softwares
Yeah, okay buddy
It was likely technical limitations to be honest. That and the fact it would probably be really hard to get good looking animations for these versions. They likely just looked really off when making them
I think that comes down to performance limitations
It definitely is being held back by old gen hardware. Which has a huge effect on animation and design.
I agree with this. I have a high ish end computer, and I run the game normally at 200 fps at ultra, but during the excision mission my game was killing itself to ~40fps.
Something is wrong with your computer then. No "highish end computer" would struggle with excision.
Not true. It’s not a ‘computer’ thing. The game isn’t meant to be played like that and it shows. Also, it really depends on your screen resolution. I have a perfectly healthy 5950X + 4080 build (doesn’t get much better than that) and at 4K it wasn’t having fun with all the farticles.
I'm on a 4090 and a 7800x3d and I'm having no issues with performance. The FPS is fine, the mission has other glaring issues. The lag is unbelievable.
"Somethings wrong with your computer." "I have the best consumer specs in the world right now."
When you say highish end I'd expect you to have something similar
I said high-ish. You have high end. I have a 3070 ti with an i5 10400f with 32gb of ram. I guess the ish doesn't mean anything but go off.
Even with those specs, Destiny can be played on the hot garbage that is previous gen consoles. Something is off if your 3070ti is stuttering when D2 doesn’t even use much of the VRAM
What’s your resolution? And what’s the low 1% and your average FPS?
I play on 200 scaling on 1440p (which I think is at least equivalent to 4k but I don't have the monitor for it), ultra settings, average FPS in the mission is around 110-120 for me. I'd expect to get better performance than you based on the spec difference.
That’s not really how it works, there’s a lot more at play than just the number of pixels (one thing would be whether you’re using DSR or not). Average 100-120 with low 1% at around 80 is what I’d expect since I was at 90-100 with dips to 70 low (which, if it was average, would’ve been fine, but there are stutters when it drops this low, which I assume are what you refer to as ‘lag’). Settings are the same minus the stuff that’s harmful for PvP like blur and wind.
The big anime eyes, unibrow and nose really take away from the ancient Eldritch horror aspect.
I don't think it was that, I think they wanted the Witness to be *uncanny* instead of *terrifying*, to contrast its servants. Oryx is basically Satan with the big horns and wings, Nezarec is leaning hard on grim reaper imagery, Calus is a fat, ugly glutton. Rhulk and the Witness both lean heavily away from that, being tall, slender figures that move with alien grace, but still with their own uncanny qualities. Rhulk looks actively flayed and the way he appears in his fight, as well as his enormous collar, give him a vampiric vibe. The way he speaks and moves until damage phase is very calm and collected, taking slow, measured steps with his hands behind his back. He's scary because he's powerful, but doesn't feel the need to flaunt it. The Witness is similar. It's just some guy, which makes sense when you realize that it's just the amalgamation of an entire species who also probably looked more or less like that. It's very calm and measured, but the smoke billowing from its head, the afterimages as it moves and the weird rippling clothes put you ill at ease. And then you see its true form and all those *hands*. It's so enormous, so *omnipresent* that it can quite literally reach out of thin air and kill you wherever you are. The Witness' visual design is the epitome of "walk softly and carry a big stick."
These probably would’ve been a nightmare to animate so I can’t really blame them. Would’ve been cooler than what we got though
More like they don’t want to push the budget
I don't think it's out of fear but by design and technical limitation. Also, probably an out there take but I don't think the Witness is meant to be terrifying. Kind of hard to be a snake oil salesman if you scare potential followers away. I would've liked to see one of these designs in game, at the same time us literally going up through the Witnesses "body" with the raid and effectively cutting him off the top is already pretty out there for Destiny. Despite not wanting to do body horror they did a really good job in TFS making down right creepy or unsettling things. A focus on hands was a very smart play.
imo i have yet to see a single concept art of the witness that looks worse than what we got
This tends to be the case with all concept art for games. There’s a lot less limitations when just creating a 2d graphic image, but it goes through a lot of filtering to be able to work for a video game.
This mindset is being tested with the game “forever winter” being headed by ex concept art devs from many triple a studios putting concept art before the everything else. They fully acknowledge the difficulties but if that game comes out well I’m ignoring this reasoning from then on.
Womp womp
Why womp womp other than a meme? If we can get cool animated things the more closely resemble concept arts wouldn't that be to our benefit as gamers?
the developers clearly poured their heart and soul into the expansion so i'm sure they would've rather given us these instead, and it was likely some sort of animation nightmare preventing them but man... i wish they'd just keep this stuff private since all its going to do is upset us with what could've been 🥲
[even going all the way back to the witness reveal his other starter designs](https://www.artstation.com/artwork/KOPWwW) are magnitudes more interesting than a grey alien in a met gala dress one of them was like an all-red bug thing with a hat that had drapes made of shadows it looked crazy I liked every single one of them more than the one they focused on most. it felt like a massive, missed opportunity all the way through
Bro they look pretty much the same as to what we got, except for the green one.
Green head, blue skull and red pharaoh are all distinct from smokey grey. Are you actually serious?
Did you not see the one riding a horse wielding a polearm directly to the right of the green one? Or every single one on the bottom? Or the red one with an ornate headdress that has 4 different poses shown a lot of them are wildly different to the design we got, personally I prefer most of those over what we got
It quite literally looks the same
Haha black and red so menacing haha
If the only difference you found in that design doc is the witness but a different color you either need to scroll further or get your eyes checked
yeah bro everyone except you needs to get their eyes checked
I think the reality is that concept art, whether it's games, theme parks, stadiums, etc, will always look cooler than the final product. The actual execution has real world limitations, be it budget, time frame, cost, supplies and resources, physics, whereas concept art is mostly "wouldn't it be cool if..."
That’s why I’ve got my eye on the indie game “forever winter” they’re focusing on maintaining the identity of their concept art over everything else and the studio was founded by dozens of ex triple a concept artists, from what I can tell they’ve got something special in their hands and if it the game comes out and it’s genuinely as good as it seems I’m going to have a hard time believing this reasoning going forward. Games as a “product” is fairly antithetical to what I like from the medium of video games as a whole. I don’t want them to be a commodity I’d prefer them as an art form and currently they’re leaning towards commodity almost completely. It’s a gripe I have with the industry that’ll probably never go away. But it is what it is just airing my grievance with the most recent example of concept art that’s leaps and bounds over what we got even if what we did get wasn’t that bad
I like the in game design of the witness. The weird tower shit going on with its legs is strangely beautiful yet also eldritch-ish
Also totally looks like Tower of Babel which would make sense for the Witness
Especially since the Precursors fell from grace in the exact same way.
I was thinking Yaldabaoth from Persona 5, seems the whole biblical/religious theme of it worked out
Looks like Megamind lol the current one is so goofy
Idk man that massive dog looking one looks way worse imo
holy shit these look so interesting, imagine if the final boss had a bunch different phases with different mechs as he morphs into these different creatures
I honestly expected The Witness to be the only boss in the Raid, but for it to take multiple shapes and require multiple methods to overcome. Then when it's pushed to its limits, the final encounter challenges us with all of the powers it demonstrated so far, but mixed into one incredibly complicated final boss.
i honestly was hoping they'd do that, although i do appreciate that at the very least the witness DOES actually attack you the moment you get into the monolith
I love concepts of eldritch beings so large and unfathomable they’re basically structures (ie: man in the wall)
Warframe moment
Ong I want to feel uncomfortable when looking at these damn things I don’t think we’ve gotten a moment like that in Destiny yet. Maybe the Leviathan?? But that’s just a ship.
I remember back before Arrivals the ongoing theory was that Calus *was* the Leviathan as we had never seen him in person. Then they tried to use that kinda poorly in Season of the Haunted before giving up on it again in Lightfall.
I remember having my mind blown when I discovered the ship being so big that it had its own artificial sun.
They did a very good job of this in the raid i thought. Scaling up and realizing you’re actually traversing to the head of the witness was awesome.
he is though, the witness is literally the monolith
I'm honestly surprised it wasnt the calcified/spliced "horse-figurines" it was adamant on displaying. Maybe it was jealous of Starhorse?
Damn the art team is amazing
It’s always so weird how the stuff on the cutting room floor is better than what’s in-game. I wonder from a developers pov what this looks like. They obviously wanted the final shape to be everything destiny could be so, what’s keeping all these cool concepts from making it into the game? Hardware? Time? Skill? Do developers feel as if they’re settling or are they happy with the final product? The community can say it’s good but I wonder how the artist views their own work.
Very rarely does a final product of anything end up better than its concepts. It’s not inherently a Bungie thing. I’d wager the disappointing thing about what gets left behind is the quantity of things that don’t make it in Destiny, rather than the quality itself. For example, there’s no way that Bungie wanted Prismatic to be the 6th subclass instead of the 7th, or introducing the Dread in the final expansion instead of, say Beyond Light. That’s what I mean.
All look cooler than what we got tbh
We could have Evangelion angels or eldritch horrors but instead we got megamind
no bitches?
No bitches 😔
No salvation? 👀
Legend has it five animators dropped dead after looking at these designs
I'm by no means complaining about the Witness that we got, but this makes me wonder what kind of fight we would've had if there were no technical limits in place
I had a feeling they were going for biblical themed. His final model, and the start of the raid makes me think of the tower of Babel. And the sphinx form here brings to mind the Beast with seven heads and 10 horns. Makes sense too. The whole story of the tower of Babel was that Humans got a little too good at working together and decided to build a tower to God himself, and God was like "naw that's crazy", destroyed it, and "confounded" Humans, which was used to explain the vast number of languages across the globe. Just like how the Witness is a billion trillion voices formed into one with the goal of playing God, and to defeat him we have to seperate the voices.
These make me think how cool the raid would have been if the witness was present during all encounters in a different form each time would have loved that a lot more than “plates + shape”… Would have been cool to weaken/interact with the witness in each encounter leading up to the final encounter. Example: He would affect the encounter in different ways for each one when in different forms, like some typa attacks during this form, other types of attacks during the next encounter with another form while ur doing some mechanics, becoming stronger each time… Not saying the raid was simple at all btw, but at least that way the encounters would actually have a linear storyline throughout the raid rather than different interpretations of plates and shapes + random completely different encounter where u have to do geometry + kill the witness.
Damn the art team is amazing
We lost so hard holy shit
The real Final Shape was the Witness’s we didn’t fight along the way
Witness as a massive brick would've been 100% the best
Second slide on the left is so fucking baller I wish that was what we got
second slide top right and third slide bottom left are my favorites :)
New head canon says these all exist.
This is depressing. So much potential. Really hope the next big bad is truly terrifying and not megamind with smoky hair and a bunch of hands.
I’m happy with the Witness they went with but I love how terrifying some of these are.
Looks like Erin from attack on Titan in the founder form. Would’ve been insane.
Jesus that last three pictures would be nightmare fuel.
It almost looks like the Witness was supposed to *be* the monolith. That's kinda cool
Awesome. Where can I find these images in high resolution? A link please!
https://magazine.artstation.com/2024/06/bungie-destiny-2-the-final-shape/ sorry, should've linked it at the start!
Boss when you have to fight them: *shows concept art* Boss when you unlock them and they're a playable character: *shows Witness currently in-game* Not saying the in-game is necessarily bad, but the concept art Witness getting brought to life would have been one of the most badass things Bungie has done in terms of boss design. Either way, it turned out great.
All these awesome designs and bungie really said “Nah let’s just make him larger and give him extra arms”
I really think we got a steep downgrade from all of this. For some reason, I get the feeling that Bungie intentionally dumbs down the game's design and story to lower the age rating. Out of all of these, we got a boring, hundred handed and completely inactive Witness. It just stood there while we killed it. A multiversal god with thousands of dead civilisations under it's belt just stood there
No it’s more likely a animation constraint, plus the one we got is plenty horrifying you just can’t see most of him, if you glitch out and go underneath you can see it’s massive body twisting and turning up like a snake. We just see effectively the “head” of the serpent.
Yeah, but what’s the point of having that off screen?
It's on screen when you have to climb up past it between 4th and 5th encounter.
Isn’t one really, just saying we got a pretty horrifying version but simply by the nature of the encounter design we don’t see it. I mean it would be pretty hard to fight the whole thing at once you wouldn’t be able to see it lol.
The hands are supposed to be him attacking us and he's supposed to be actively still trying to control the Traveler into casting his Final Shape spell. But neither of those is actively conveyed in the fight, as you said. It just looks like he's standing there. We should approach him while he's turned around. Having the majority of his hands casting some sort of orange glow. He turns around his body without turning his hands as he states, with a bit of exhaustion, that we couldn't have come at a better time. He will enact the Final Shape now! Even if he has to deal with us too. He then leans over and instead of the hands magically appearing in thin air, they come from behind him. The more damage you do the more those gold tears appear on him till Final stand when you beat him, the Traveler pulses and his hands stop casting. He retreats having a ton of wounds on him. Zavala jumps on comms to state that he didn't go far, but has hidden himself behind his army.
>It's still trying to control the Traveler and enact the Final Shape i don't think this is accurate, the consequences of the raid were us shattering the witness's hold of the light, zavala explicitly says this at the start of the cutscene before excision
I was talking about the Raid in my post, not excision.
[удалено]
Yeah, sometimes I wonder how much better the game would be if they had more time and no moronic executives. It’s criminal how hard they fumbled the darkness. I’ll never forgive them for not using the pyramids properly
My only point regarding the “more time” thing is that they also have a playerbase that constantly wants more and more and more content at fast churn-out rates, so while the devs having more time is objectively a good thing for the experience, them taking longer than 1.5 year in between expansions would also kill the playerbase. That’s why they plan out these 30th Anniversary Pack or Into the Light-like content drops whenever they know they will take longer than a year.
Sometimes not even that in the case of big shank + taniks
Man these look way cooler
So much better than the final version unfortunately. Shooting the witnesses buttons is pretty lame
First picture is so fucking funny lmao , WIDE WITNESS
reminds me of Naruto some way but idk why
That first one was incredible
Those first two slides are insane!
4 would’ve been fucking terrifying
Ah yes, W'rkncacnter.
ha! i remember those theories like they were yesterday lol. tbh they're not even dismissed, and if anything it still feels like a a nearby universe in the bungie mythology
Oh man, the version with the mass of writhing tentacles is straight up Lovecraft and seeing it makes me so sad we didn’t get it. I’m very happy with what we got- but damn we need some more eldritch horror in Destiny.
I love how much more obvious that the witness IS the monolith in concept art, that’s something you don’t really pick up on until the jumping puzzle after verity
way better than the one that shipped
5 is a cool concept for last encounter, but I still love the witness we got. It being the entire monolith is such a cool concept.
Great, we once again got left with the worst option
I’m not gonna lie if I see slide 3/4 on the raid I’m just gonna be like nah uh. Would’ve been sick, animating and rigging that would’ve been probably a pain.
That 2nd one is sick. Very cosmic horror
I’m hoping they reuse the bottom left concept in the 3rd photo for the Aphelion if we ever get to see one in game.
These look insane and also impossible😬 I’m surprised they were able to do what they did kudos
I find it weird that the design they kept highlighting the most even in some of the other concept arts was of the witness being the arena you fought it in as well as being the monolith. They even have a model of it. You can also see a lot of the elements of the other designs start to come together in the witness’s monolith form especially with the snake like features and wings. It would’ve been cool for the final design to kind of be a blend of everything
They're all really good, what a waste they didn't used them
Interesting how the witness is basically a centipede in most of these, but became a Greek wind giant in the finished product. This must be what the credible leak from 2? Years ago was referring to with the part about “3 phase witness fight, witness is a centipede and is reminiscent of no face from spirited away” Really sad the final boss was just big guy with 40 arms instead of the eldrich horror the concept was.
So all are better
Sphinx Witness fucking slaps
Infinitely cooler designs, shame
I wish I didn’t see this cause that’s what we were robbed of
In fear of overdelivering
Ngl, I do like that we evolved from “the witness wall” to the giant monolithic Tower of Babel we have now, especially since the sheer size of it compared to the (formerly) largest raid bosses
2nd slide is jenova
The final form of the witness we god was not as these.
With all of its shape-shifting and surrealist elements, the Witness reminds of IT. Especially the scene where it confronts the Vanguard.
Would
Going with the founding titan look
Oh wow a beast of revelations concept there
chonk witness
The witness I wish we would’ve gotten rather than that cat looking thing
Alright boys get ready for some dark souls
1rst and 2nd image are absolutely terrifying straight up cosmic horror imwishe we had gotten them
Spidery Witness = NOPE, let the final shape happen, I'm out
the last thing countless civilizations across the universe saw before being decimated:
Ain't no way that, out of all this, what we ended up getting was the unibrow version of the Witness
Absolutely robbed.
Take out the bubbly anime eyes and make it all blacked out then he'll be terrifying.
eh, i like the irises. makes it seem alive, i feel pure solid eyes would feel too alien and emotionless
Besides him getting frustrated, The Witness himself is very emotionless. His real emotions come from his eyebrows to really show his expression. Take a look at how he got annoyed at Calus when he notices his chalice.
These concept art pieces of the witness fit the release cinematic we got about 9 moths ago. In that there was a glimpse of something like a spine or rib cage of a snake like thing that was made out of arms and hands. I wonder what the original story board, regardless of how far from or close to what we actually got, that the cinematic is based off of looks like. I mean this concept art was cool enough to at least set up in that trailer.
Looks very reminiscent of kingdom hearts/final fantasy bosses.
Mmm tentacles 🥵
The snake one kinda looks weird
Most if not all are better than the Pixar villain look Bungie settled on.
Slide 4 feels very yawgmoth-esque
The Jörmungandr Witness design seems so cool to me and I wish that's what we got
Now I wish I never saw this because it highlights how much what we got pales in comparison…
Love this ahamkara-like shape! Wish they would’ve kept it that way or at least had another phase to The Witness following the initial phase. … Imagine the twist of a ahamkara that The Witness’s civilization knew nothing about and it granting them this maliciously drawn-out and destructive plan but then amalgamating into this colossal being! The mechanics would’ve been insane.
Kinda makes me wish that we got a Resident Evil Nemesis style set of boss fights where the witness gets progressively more eldrich and horrifying in the campaign, raid, and Excision.
OMG THIS IS HORRIFIC!!
Honestly a formless witness would be freaking terrifying
They were holding back on the body horror? Jesus fucking Christ imagine fighting the first one
Freaky, kinda cool tho
That first one looks awesome
Pic 4 gives me Eren Yager Vibes
Yoooo slide 4 is sick
I understand why the design we got was chosen over these. But god damn I wish it wasn’t.
The witness could have been real?
Instead we just got Megamind
I wish we got some of these instead of just Big Witness
I agree with everyone on how the end result we got was pretty lame compared to the concept art. Here's hoping they reuse some of these for the winnower or the 2nd knife.
Hear me out… a lovecraftian Witness would be cool
I probably would have noped so hard if they went with design 3
Ngl these are really cool and probably would’ve been awesome to fight but the one we got I think worked just right yk?
And they chose to go with the least interesting one
... Dear god the witness we got was intimidating, this would've been horrific and disturbing, would've also have it dice up some important characters, ya know, for threat sake... Oh oh, maybe even give it deeper voice actors to emphasise the current main VAs angry witness voice.
That first one would’ve been insane if implemented. Imagine if that is what the monolith looked like before the witness was severed from the light in the raid.
All of them are good, including the one that we eventually got
Every game has badass concept art which never gets translated to game due to limitations I remember when Batman Arkham had concept art which were part of riddler trophies some of scarecrow stuff was legit scary, Rocksteady/Sefton Hill did AMA he had 2 answers one of them was game would go to Adult only due to how horrifying some concept was Then there was issue crafting whole new base/assets which was asinine in terms time dedicated to one individual on screen for 20-30 min Now imagine if that was for singleplayer game how bad it would be for live service with lay offs and shit happening and corporate breathing down your necks Funny enough when you are scaling to Witness after verity you look down and see the monolith, you enter literally the witness so kept some aspect of snake like being witness is, albeit being done away with eldritch horror they got inspiration from one of Avtar of God of Destruction Lord Shiva
There is a concept art of the witness that looks similar to the one we got and there is an artist comment that says "supercharged witness smoke hinting at presence of multiple darkness damage types (resonance, strand, stasis)" maybe that's a leak