How Destiny Influenced Witchfire

In a recent blog post The Astronauts discussed how Destiny influenced one of their titles, Witchfire. The game is a dark fantasy shooter that’s still currently in development, and seems to combine the tropes of the fantasy genre, magic and mythical creatures, with fast-paced gunplay that has a truly visceral feel for the player.

Apparently it got to the point when one member of the team, Adrian Chmielarz, had responded in the same way so many times that the team’s internal chat saw the following meme. Adrian’s response was always, ‘see how Destiny does it‘, so the team quickly learned to look at Destiny before asking their questions.

A trailer for the game has been released, though it only shows a little gameplay of the player fighting a horde of undead with swords. The reaction to this gameplay was fairly positive though, and even referenced Destiny without knowledge of the game’s inspirations. Some mentioned how the pistol gameplay looked identical to Hand Cannons in Destiny, and how that was the most satisfying game in which you could shoot with a pistol.

Adrian believes that Destiny still has the best movement and gunplay of any immersive shooter. Other games have come along to offer a different approach to this same gameplay, such as Apex Legends and Battlefield, but none come close to offering the feeling players get from playing as a Guardian in Destiny and Destiny 2. I agree with this, because after a wile in both games I felt like I really understood the limitations and abilities of my character, so much so that I was able to judge whether I could make it to a team mate and revive them without dying, even in raids when every death matters.

Using Rage 2 as an example, Adrian talks about how Destiny strikes the perfect balance between movement speed and gameplay. He said he always wished he could strafe faster, but after playing Rage 2, which allows players to move slightly faster, he understood why Bungie limited the player’s movement speed. In his experience it’s harder to let players see and pick up items in a game when they’re moving too fast, and Destiny seems to have the fastest possible movement achievable without giving the player so much speed that they either miss a pick up, or are so fast that their button press to pick up the object is missed.

He goes on to refer back to strafing at the same speed as the protagonist is in Rage 2. At this speed players tend to strafe further than intended, and actually end up getting shot because of it. In Destiny 1 and 2 this would be the difference between winning a match in the Crucible, and losing.

The same goes for general movement. In Rage 2 it’s almost impossible to push forward on the stick and run in a straight line, the speed is so fast that it jars you as you move the stick. In Destiny 1 and 2 this has been avoided by the acceleration the player must go through to reach their maximum sprint speed, making for a cleaner and overall better-feeling experience.

Those are the comparisons that Adrian mentioned, and when you look at the videos in the blog post, which you can see here, you really do see the big differences subtle changes make. Of course Witchfire is inspired by other games too, such as Dark Souls, but the fact that its shooting mechanics take inspiration from Destiny is most important to me. At this point the Destiny franchise has been around so long, and is played by so many dedicated fans, that it’s become one of the great titles from gaming history. While the franchise isn’t as old as World of Warcraft yet, it’s still inspiring developers today in the modern games they’re making, meaning its DNA can be seen from the point that the first Destiny Alpha demo went live, all the way up until 2019.

Let us know what you think of how Destiny inspired Witchfire in the comments.

Image Source: The Astronauts