Bungie just announced that the new secret quest available in Destiny 2, The Whisper, will be dissipating at daily reset today, turning the event into a sort of PvE Trials event that appears will only crop up on weekends going forward.
It has been a whirlwind couple of days in the Destiny community, and the Whisper quest and its resulting mysteries and rewards have arguably been the best moments of Destiny 2 in its entirety. Hell, this was one of the most fun weekends in Destiny series history for many players.
The Whisper of the Worm hunt shows what Destiny can still be if Bungie understands and embraces what players want. It’s an incredibly important turned corner for Destiny 2, a game that is slowly improving in time, but this is the clearest evidence yet that Bungie is listening and is still capable of delivering exactly what fans want when they put their minds to it.
The Whisper quest has everything:
- It wasn’t announced, and was simply discovered by players randomly as a new mystery to solve.
- It isn’t recycled content, but an enormous new zone built specifically for this challenge.
- The entire community watched streamers try to beat it for the first time, as well as attempting themselves, without anyone knowing what was on the other side.
- It’s a brutally difficult challenge (at least at first), a harrowing jump puzzle and rooms full of Taken enemies that will slaughter even the toughest of players.
- But if you prevail, it offers players easily the best power weapon the game, the Whisper of the Worm, a sniper that’s even more powerful than the pre-nerf Black Hammer.
- There’s even some interesting lore here, including the implication that by completing this quest and getting the Whisper, we’ve been corrupted by a Hive Worm god.
- The mission also contained a second layer of secrets, chests that led to Oracles which led to a puzzle that produced a ship blueprint.
- This mission still isn’t over yet. It’s at least three weeks’ worth of content as players have to beat it at least twice more to unlock the Whisper’s catalyst and build out the hidden ship blueprint.
It was just phenomenal, from start to finish. Bungie designed an elaborate (truly elaborate, practically a raid) challenge that rewarded one of the best items in the game and contained bonus mysteries to boot.
The only real problem with the Whisper quest was sitting around on Io waiting for the Taken Blight event to spawn after waves and waves of Cabal events appeared instead. That meant you could only even attempt the mission once every hour or so, or even every few hours if you had bad luck. Bungie supposedly changed that in the final day to make the Blight event spawn more, but it was annoying all the same. I may have had time to try and run this mission a few times this weekend, but I did not have time to sit around for hours and hours with a fireteam waiting for the trigger to appear.
But outside of that one aspect, it’s hard to understate just how much the Whisper has energized the Destiny community, and given them hope that the upcoming Forsaken expansion is going to feature a lot more stuff like this going forward.
This weekend was Destiny at its prime, the community coming together to solve mysteries, unlock powerful gear and regain faith that Bungie well, knows what they’re doing. Destiny 2 has been a long, tough road for players, and the simple truth is that no matter how much D2 improves, some people are simply never coming back because Bungie lost them in those first six months. But the fact remains that Destiny is probably in the best spot it’s ever been right now, perhaps short of The Taken King launch, and it very well might surpass even that if Forsaken delivers on its promise.
No other game can make me furiously write articles on a Friday night, watching streamers try to be the first to solve some fresh new Destiny hell mission and see what the reward is. I will never forget watching the Whisper drop for the first time anywhere. I won’t forget the look on Teawrex’s face when he was the first one to solve the Oracle puzzle. And when I finally get the damn thing for myself, I won’t forget that either.
This is Destiny at its best. And hopefully there’s a lot more to come like what we saw this weekend.
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