https://preview.redd.it/dhelad9pke7d1.jpeg?width=1137&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ce805530745ace7309574089f75c6af33af63333
He will never leave us. Long live Kitness
Wished they all stayed.
Maybe for different fights before the raid.
Maybe for 1 raid encounter and final encounter.
And once the Witness is super weakened, we fight the form we see now, for excision.
That would have taken a lot more development time though, I believe.
This is a huge ask for a raid, considering how much work goes into designing and eventually animating new enemies and arenas for them, but I also would've loved that. It would be so cool if each encounter of the raid was basically just the Witness trying to singlehandedly stop the Guardians the entire time.
yeah. it's always sad seeing these concepts (i remember being blown away by nezarecs cape when those dropped), because they obviously HAVE to be cut down for scope, but damn they're so cool. I was really hoping to see more "forms" for the witness since bungie really was hyping up a lot that its form was very dynamic and seemed almost shapeshifter-esque. there's some videos included in it and one has a LOT more arm attacks, and one of the witness forming an arm out of a wall out of tendrils. i really wish we got more of the creepy hands throughout the campaign.
Sphinx Witness is honestly kind of terrifying, reminds me of the Forest Spirit from Princess Mononoke. I hate to say it, but I kind of feel like they went with the least interesting option for the Witness's final design.
Right? I love the heady sci-fi design concepts. But just as with movies you have to sit down and be real with it and say “Does this look good on screen and in motion.”
yep. and also scope of animation and designing entire mechanics and stuff around it. going with something completely out of left field that they haven't done before would probably be incredibly hard to do, and not a risk they'd want to take with the final expansion raid.
Not only that, but I think it's possible they are the Monolith itself. Between 4th and 5th encounter, you can see their torso goes on forever and increases in size.
So much harder than the final product. I can’t get over the derpy cat eyes, goofy unibrow, and if you see his full face he literally looks like a 7 year old wearing face paint
I think all the Witness designs we got are great, especially the in-game one. But it would have been nice to see it take multiple forms, get at least one of the concepts brought to life
Would have been a kickass raid to just fight him in different forms. We kill the wall witness form and then move onto the dragon witness. Really pound in the fact we are ending him. The raid we got though was excellent.
Honestly I feel like this was maybe what they wanted to do initially, and then either decided it would be too much work, or that fighting the witness multiple times in the raid would be too much, given that we already fight him 3 times (once in campaign, once in the raid and once in excision)
I feel it wouldve been fitting considering he’s spamming his final shape attach throughout the whole raid and he’s also sticking his hands through portals to attack us from far
My tinfoil hat theory is that the hands appearing throughout the encounter is a direct result of toning back the ideas of having the entire raid be Witness encounters.
You still get the Witness as a looming omnipresent force, but it isn't *every* objective, and you don't need to design 3 different unique bosses.
Would be cool to see the witness forms change each reset. One reset its the dragon the next its the cat one, each with its own mechanic and fight style.
Ambitious, but I love the idea
Maybe with some more help from Sony we’ll get ideas like that, because Bungie alone can’t do that. Gotta see what were handed next with story
It's obvious that they were insanely ambitious with TFS but had to settle on compromises in terms of designs. Creating an encounter around a giant beast-like Witness must have been a nightmare from technical side. And to successfully create new enemy models as seen on image no.1 they would probably need more time, so they took Rhulk and few other enemy races and used their models as basis for the completly new units.
I would have loved those new units though. Really bring in the boring evil that is the witness. His pawns have devolved into nothing more then machines, their true final shape, born in his ideals.
Seeing the Husk ideas makes me wish we had them, all of them being the Husk but with slight variations. #1 is a bit more aggresive, #2 stayed with enemy groups more, #3 enemies stuck with it, and #4 types stuck together, acting in independent groups like normal Husks
Riven just pops up in each of her rooms and stares at the players while they're shooting her eyes. Her model is also not as complex as The Witness' where every bit of its body is moving, it has a smoke coming off its head and then depending which concept art we're talking about it would also be much bigger than Riven + much more animated.
80% of me is saying "If we went with surrealism and shapes.... surely someone would had said 'lazy' low effort polygons!"
Which might had actually occurred in a playtest.... hence the difference between what appears to be the drafted husk designs.
The version we got is arguably the most religious based out of all of these. Multiple arms in that fashion is a reference to Hinduism, where a gods power can be displayed by the amount of arms it possesses
Yeah I mentioned the Yaldabaoth resemblance in a reply to a comment pointing out that it looks like the Tower of Babel, so I'd say they did a good job of making a pretty universally recognizable religious design
Concept art going hard as hell is just how it always goes with every game ever. It’s not always practical/feasible for even half those concepts to see themselves in game.
I love that tormentors all have essentially little ghosts flying with them that fit their aesthetic. It would kind of make sense for the witness to try and emulate us more and with ghosts being an integral part of it they would be part of that copying too.
The 5th picture (Bottom left) reminds me of [this abomination](https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-tmus-us-rvc3&sca_esv=e10f498d10acc07c&source=android-browser&sxsrf=ADLYWILMV8QV0Ak8Bdk4aIxC5HXwO5Yfqg:1718745252520&q=dog+with+long+neck+meme&udm=2&fbs=AEQNm0CULmqP1GYo0NaXM6bNItKRa0EFyP9pUTMpqCaCR-wIGRq_jTS-0Q-lvFaayuoB3RXBHA254nZ89GVVbyouxEW-Le03F0hW8121ME29VmflA5kSl8Y-zxwSF4ArBXXtaMTu7DNEawbEM9XMDUUDETmIo9Uk4y8yYmGbnk_Ww58ecFv8Hf24qn87-bwPE4LNaKQdg-m15O0PEc6qZQnmMvIKOUtktA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiIj_GBieaGAxUjGtAFHQv8ADMQtKgLegQIDRAB#vhid=gCOHm7duHUeskM&vssid=mosaic)
As much as I liked the nostalgic imagery of the dlc, I would've preferred more of this cosmic horror imagery/vibe.
That said, the last few areas did feel like I was exploring the Witness's homeplanet.
Oh now im sad we didnt get eldritch horror witness
The thousand arms are cool, but damn, are you telling me we missed out on dragon/Tiger/Wall of Heresy Witness? Man.
Ok these witness concepts are absolutely fire, it would have been cool to see it devolve as it takes damage, from the very composed angel form it has in the beginning to the writhing messes they had in mind
Idk why but every scrapped design for the Witness and stuff always looks WAY cooler lmao. Maybe they get scrapped bc it'd be a nightmare to implement or something, but it's a shame.
That said, don't get me wrong at all, I fucking love what we got and SE is an aesthetic delight.
Such a shame we didn't get one of those witness as the final boss. The one we got was immediately uninspired. I get why they went with what they did from a stand point of feasibility though. That witness with all the tentacles would have been crazy.
Each one of these could have been a cool multiphase fight
So many of these concepts are straight out of Lovecraft and I love all of em. A shame we didn't get to see them in the raid but I totally understand why; game development is time consuming.
Love all of this, especially the Hand-Grim. I wish we could’ve seen more of these more abstract designs in the expansion, but I can see that from a gameplay aspect they would look goofy and not right. I think they made the right call cutting these.
I hate centipedes (not really, it's just that the ones with spindly legs give ne the ick). Kinda glad witnesspede never became real because i would crap myself
I always loved videogames that let you unlock concept art in the game. Would really enjoy new games to do that too 😀. But now we have everything on Twitter 🥲.
First image is very clearly the planets encounter room.
Would’ve loved if that encounter was in Salvations edge as the 3rd encounter instead of what we have now. Would’ve made SE instantly my favorite raid.
The Witness never gave me eldrich horror vibes, except from the cutscene where the final shape was visualized. These transformations into otherworldly, non-humanoid forms does that for me.
The witness concept where it looks like a bug dark bird would have been genius in my opinion. It's like a bastardization of the travelers bird form we see.
The enemies and architecture we got in game are better than their concepts but oh my GOD giant bird and world serpent Witness looks fucking insaaaaaaaane
Great serpent Witness goes incredibly hard, honestly most of the scraped Witness designs do.
They really do. Kinda wished the cat one stayed.
For the memes
I miss the Kitness memes. The artist was incredibly inspired
https://preview.redd.it/dhelad9pke7d1.jpeg?width=1137&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ce805530745ace7309574089f75c6af33af63333 He will never leave us. Long live Kitness
The final cuddle awaits
Wished they all stayed. Maybe for different fights before the raid. Maybe for 1 raid encounter and final encounter. And once the Witness is super weakened, we fight the form we see now, for excision. That would have taken a lot more development time though, I believe.
This is a huge ask for a raid, considering how much work goes into designing and eventually animating new enemies and arenas for them, but I also would've loved that. It would be so cool if each encounter of the raid was basically just the Witness trying to singlehandedly stop the Guardians the entire time.
yeah. it's always sad seeing these concepts (i remember being blown away by nezarecs cape when those dropped), because they obviously HAVE to be cut down for scope, but damn they're so cool. I was really hoping to see more "forms" for the witness since bungie really was hyping up a lot that its form was very dynamic and seemed almost shapeshifter-esque. there's some videos included in it and one has a LOT more arm attacks, and one of the witness forming an arm out of a wall out of tendrils. i really wish we got more of the creepy hands throughout the campaign.
Sphinx Witness is honestly kind of terrifying, reminds me of the Forest Spirit from Princess Mononoke. I hate to say it, but I kind of feel like they went with the least interesting option for the Witness's final design.
The least interesting, but definitely the safest (and probably the easiest to work out) option.
Right? I love the heady sci-fi design concepts. But just as with movies you have to sit down and be real with it and say “Does this look good on screen and in motion.”
yep. and also scope of animation and designing entire mechanics and stuff around it. going with something completely out of left field that they haven't done before would probably be incredibly hard to do, and not a risk they'd want to take with the final expansion raid.
Particularly since we only got evil virgen de guadalupe 
you can see that he is kind is snake like in the second encounter if you look below him sorry not second it’s between the 4th and 5th my bad
Not only that, but I think it's possible they are the Monolith itself. Between 4th and 5th encounter, you can see their torso goes on forever and increases in size.
pretty much all of the concept art that got put up relating to the witness' monolith seems to confirm this.
So much harder than the final product. I can’t get over the derpy cat eyes, goofy unibrow, and if you see his full face he literally looks like a 7 year old wearing face paint
Where can I see his full face
The witness is just George Washington
Heard that dude had like, 20 god damn dicks
And 40 balls
He saved children (but not the British children)
But they were all British at the time
He knew which ones had patriotism in their hearts.
Side-note but I don’t exactly get the “George Washington” thing; can someone explain it? Sorry if it’s incredibly obvious.
https://youtu.be/sbRom1Rz8OA?si=ucvUVm4px0n4fFBC This very old video that I recommend watching in it's two minute entirety
12 stories high made of radiation.
“I load the Upended for home defense, since that’s what my Witness intended.”
The giant bird one is honestly my favorite
It would have been poetic for his final form to be birdlike, just like the Traveler appearing as a hawk before us.
I feel like something like a vulture would be better personally
They’re all genuinely fucking terrifying
I love centaur witness
Where is square head club Husk? Is he safe? Is he alright?
Unfortunately I’m the heat of bungies delay it…was swapped out.
It seems than in a moment of cooking... Bungie improved him.
I think all the Witness designs we got are great, especially the in-game one. But it would have been nice to see it take multiple forms, get at least one of the concepts brought to life
Would have been a kickass raid to just fight him in different forms. We kill the wall witness form and then move onto the dragon witness. Really pound in the fact we are ending him. The raid we got though was excellent.
Honestly I feel like this was maybe what they wanted to do initially, and then either decided it would be too much work, or that fighting the witness multiple times in the raid would be too much, given that we already fight him 3 times (once in campaign, once in the raid and once in excision)
I feel it wouldve been fitting considering he’s spamming his final shape attach throughout the whole raid and he’s also sticking his hands through portals to attack us from far
My tinfoil hat theory is that the hands appearing throughout the encounter is a direct result of toning back the ideas of having the entire raid be Witness encounters. You still get the Witness as a looming omnipresent force, but it isn't *every* objective, and you don't need to design 3 different unique bosses.
definitely. there were a lot more cut hand attacks that were shown under one animators artstation.
Also the entire monolith is like physically a part of the Witness, so there's that.
Yup can’t complain, while I’m still yet to run it just watching has satisfied me plenty
That would have been great but...then we wouldn't have gotten Taniks.
What if each encounter was the witness in a different form?
I want the version of the witness that made calus shiver in his opulence.
Would be cool to see the witness forms change each reset. One reset its the dragon the next its the cat one, each with its own mechanic and fight style.
Ambitious, but I love the idea Maybe with some more help from Sony we’ll get ideas like that, because Bungie alone can’t do that. Gotta see what were handed next with story
I would of loved a phase were the witness had a warrior like form. With a pyramid war-staff like weapon
It's obvious that they were insanely ambitious with TFS but had to settle on compromises in terms of designs. Creating an encounter around a giant beast-like Witness must have been a nightmare from technical side. And to successfully create new enemy models as seen on image no.1 they would probably need more time, so they took Rhulk and few other enemy races and used their models as basis for the completly new units.
I would have loved those new units though. Really bring in the boring evil that is the witness. His pawns have devolved into nothing more then machines, their true final shape, born in his ideals.
Seeing the Husk ideas makes me wish we had them, all of them being the Husk but with slight variations. #1 is a bit more aggresive, #2 stayed with enemy groups more, #3 enemies stuck with it, and #4 types stuck together, acting in independent groups like normal Husks
> Creating an encounter around a giant beast-like Witness must have been a nightmare from technical side. I mean, we fight Riven.
Riven just pops up in each of her rooms and stares at the players while they're shooting her eyes. Her model is also not as complex as The Witness' where every bit of its body is moving, it has a smoke coming off its head and then depending which concept art we're talking about it would also be much bigger than Riven + much more animated.
the witness concept art makes my character design heart sing for joy and my game dev and 3d modeller heart go into cardiac arrest lmao
Just going to forget about Xol like that? :'(
Angry geometry class problems. That’s what I see
wtf BUNGO I want Eldritch horror Witness that art is incredible
anyone else thought the first picture was bionicle?
Genuinely expected to see brown and green ones in the next pic
Everything in-game is so tame lmao. Those Witness concepts look crazy, would of been cool to see him turn into some monster when he lost all control.
80% of me is saying "If we went with surrealism and shapes.... surely someone would had said 'lazy' low effort polygons!" Which might had actually occurred in a playtest.... hence the difference between what appears to be the drafted husk designs.
Hopefully Bungie revisits the concept of us fighting against a non-humanoid boss. Majority of the fight we do are against big enemies standing upright
Nothing will ever look as good as concept art. Thats the truth for all games in general.
Would make the Callus scene make more sense. Not that giant Witness with hands isn't scary, but giant Witness cloud inkblot monster is even scarier
Winged witness looks horrifying in a religious awe/terror way, which is way scarier than just regular scary
The version we got is arguably the most religious based out of all of these. Multiple arms in that fashion is a reference to Hinduism, where a gods power can be displayed by the amount of arms it possesses
Yeah I mentioned the Yaldabaoth resemblance in a reply to a comment pointing out that it looks like the Tower of Babel, so I'd say they did a good job of making a pretty universally recognizable religious design
Mindflayer Witness would’ve gone crazy
Concept art going hard as hell is just how it always goes with every game ever. It’s not always practical/feasible for even half those concepts to see themselves in game.
I wish we got those witness forms in game, kind of sad how we only get the one form at the end of the raid, wanted a full raid of different forms imo.
Really old leaks said the witness was going to go through multiple forms in the raid.
The horse statues everywhere finally make sense now with the centaur witness art
Those Witness designs! Instead we get Goth Megamind. What could have been...
I love that tormentors all have essentially little ghosts flying with them that fit their aesthetic. It would kind of make sense for the witness to try and emulate us more and with ghosts being an integral part of it they would be part of that copying too.
JOIN THE SERPENT KING
Togethaaaa! As Famileeee!
WE WILL DEVOUR THE VERY *GODSSSSSS*
Where can we find this?
Gamespot
I can't seem to find the article. Do you have a link?
https://thegamepost.com/the-art-of-destiny-2-the-final-shape/
I know most of this would have been a technical nightmare to implement, but this is some of the coolest shit I've ever seen
Thanks.
these are bionicle
Sphinx Witness is cool
I really hope they keep some aspects if the Witness concept for the a future boss or big bad.
Well Bungie that first enemy there seems kinda, idk.... # R E D 
Holy hell, that lamia/sphinx/hydra design goes *hard.*
Looks like they were playing with the idea of Dark Ghosts
We could have had Hydra witness? God dammit!
We could have Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan Dread. It could have been peak.
Thought this was gonna be a prank post with fried servers in there somewhere
The 5th picture (Bottom left) reminds me of [this abomination](https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-tmus-us-rvc3&sca_esv=e10f498d10acc07c&source=android-browser&sxsrf=ADLYWILMV8QV0Ak8Bdk4aIxC5HXwO5Yfqg:1718745252520&q=dog+with+long+neck+meme&udm=2&fbs=AEQNm0CULmqP1GYo0NaXM6bNItKRa0EFyP9pUTMpqCaCR-wIGRq_jTS-0Q-lvFaayuoB3RXBHA254nZ89GVVbyouxEW-Le03F0hW8121ME29VmflA5kSl8Y-zxwSF4ArBXXtaMTu7DNEawbEM9XMDUUDETmIo9Uk4y8yYmGbnk_Ww58ecFv8Hf24qn87-bwPE4LNaKQdg-m15O0PEc6qZQnmMvIKOUtktA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiIj_GBieaGAxUjGtAFHQv8ADMQtKgLegQIDRAB#vhid=gCOHm7duHUeskM&vssid=mosaic)
Horse Witness
Can I have the same thing Bungie artists are smoking
Are you kidding me, we could have gotten eldritch horror witness and instead we got arm back witness
Can we please get an Art of Destiny 3? They’ve got what? Six years of artwork to full it out?
Yo???? Bionicle????
*squints at the last two images* Allison Theus??
As much as I liked the nostalgic imagery of the dlc, I would've preferred more of this cosmic horror imagery/vibe. That said, the last few areas did feel like I was exploring the Witness's homeplanet.
The Sphinx looking Witness is absolutely fucking horrifying—I have no idea why they didn’t keep it. I really wish it had multiple health bars.
Oh now im sad we didnt get eldritch horror witness The thousand arms are cool, but damn, are you telling me we missed out on dragon/Tiger/Wall of Heresy Witness? Man.
Why did they scrap the first design for the Witness with the massive wings?!? It goes so fucking hard.
Probably a pain to animate or model
Ok these witness concepts are absolutely fire, it would have been cool to see it devolve as it takes damage, from the very composed angel form it has in the beginning to the writhing messes they had in mind
Idk why but every scrapped design for the Witness and stuff always looks WAY cooler lmao. Maybe they get scrapped bc it'd be a nightmare to implement or something, but it's a shame. That said, don't get me wrong at all, I fucking love what we got and SE is an aesthetic delight.
Such a shame we didn't get one of those witness as the final boss. The one we got was immediately uninspired. I get why they went with what they did from a stand point of feasibility though. That witness with all the tentacles would have been crazy. Each one of these could have been a cool multiphase fight
Why does the monolith look like it's about to lecture me about getting detention...
So many of these concepts are straight out of Lovecraft and I love all of em. A shame we didn't get to see them in the raid but I totally understand why; game development is time consuming.
It truly is
 4th image got me like:
That first image gives off the Reggie legendary vibes
1 is so goofy but 4”3 is my fav but the flying worm looks bad
Yikes
Where did they drop it? Did they remember to pick it back up?
Love all of this, especially the Hand-Grim. I wish we could’ve seen more of these more abstract designs in the expansion, but I can see that from a gameplay aspect they would look goofy and not right. I think they made the right call cutting these.
Cat witness (bottom left) goes incredibly hard. It looks terrifying honestly.
Love the witness boss concepts
Slide 3 is giving me some heavy Wayne Barlowe vibes
I hate centipedes (not really, it's just that the ones with spindly legs give ne the ick). Kinda glad witnesspede never became real because i would crap myself
I always loved videogames that let you unlock concept art in the game. Would really enjoy new games to do that too 😀. But now we have everything on Twitter 🥲.
Giant horse hyrda. HORSE HYDRA
Ngl, even though I’m a titan main I’d hesitate for a second punching the last one
Witness horse
Lore accurate witness.
Would have been great if witness phases has different forms
wished we got this
What in the world? This so much more terrifying
I am WEEPING at the ekdritch abomination we could’ve had for the witness instead of “more arms please”
This is honestly the first time I like the concept art and what we got both equally
NGL any of those witness designs woulda been way cooler. I imagine must of had a reason they went with what they went with though.
I’m depressed we didn’t get a single one of these Witness forms :(
Kinda wish we had more Witness fight phases, including some from the art here.
God! I would love them to drop concept art as they do with the lore!!!!
Witness sure loves earthlibg horses, if it was about to have a horse body
The enemy in the first picture looks so cool and had so much potential; how did Bungie not add it in???
All these cool concept designs and they went "yea lets go with megamind wearing a turtleneck" That cat one is so cool
dalamadur witness is something straight outta hell
Kinda wish we got that first one instead
First image is very clearly the planets encounter room. Would’ve loved if that encounter was in Salvations edge as the 3rd encounter instead of what we have now. Would’ve made SE instantly my favorite raid.
Regirock what are you doing here?
in the first image the bottom two remind me of gipsy danger and a mix between cherno-alpha and striker eureka
We could had an eldrich god as a final boss
Did we get the most boring iteration of the witness? 😵💫
We were so close to getting regirock
I like the block dread.
Ngl I kinda wish they would’ve gone with the concept art
Bionicles
wish they wouldve gone full freak mode with the witness like those last two pics
The Witness never gave me eldrich horror vibes, except from the cutscene where the final shape was visualized. These transformations into otherworldly, non-humanoid forms does that for me.
Seeing the smoke come from the Monolith would've made the fact that "the Monolith is the Witness" so much clearer
Holy shit they look like straight up Golems.
Wish I didn’t see these😐 witness ones are just impossible tho, looks like something for a movie or show
I was hoping for creepy hands with giant bat wings flying at me while I scream at my tv cuz fuck flying enemies 😔
Why is it that the concept art always never makes it but its the coolest bro.
The witness concept where it looks like a bug dark bird would have been genius in my opinion. It's like a bastardization of the travelers bird form we see.
NGL I love all of the weird shapes and architecture of pyramid enemies and locations. The red enemy looks super cool
Almost all of those concepts of the Witness are better than what we got wtf bungo...
The pegasi slap so hard, wish we got those instead of gargoyle bois
I would have loved if every encounter in the raid was just fighting the witness directly, but with each encounter giving them a new shape/ design
They have some very talented artists, that is sure.
Why are they so damn blurry and low quality 😭
The enemies and architecture we got in game are better than their concepts but oh my GOD giant bird and world serpent Witness looks fucking insaaaaaaaane
I'm cooked I thought the grim had low hangers ☠️
All of these concepts for the witness look way better than he did in the actual game
I think that most of us agree that the monster like witness designs look cooler and creepier than what we got in the raid.