Spire of The Watcher, Review

A quick review of Destiny 2’s newest dungeon, Spire of The Watcher.

Spire of The Watcher is Destiny 2’s newest dungeon that just dropped yesterday, just days after its newest season, Season of The Seraph, went live. Much like most of Destiny 2’s high end content, it does not disappoint.

The Dungeon’s Design

We first start off at the outer reaches of the spire, where Osiris gives us a brief explanation of the out mission there. Following the path moving towards the spire, we are met with one of Bungie’s greatest creative works, generators that take form of a western style town.

This is one of the best ideas Bungie has ever placed in Destiny 2. Despite knowing that the this season would definitely be “technology” centric, what with the tyrant warmind being the purpose of the season and all. Seeing a town set in the wild west in a universe where our technology is more advanced and magic actually exists is a breath of fresh air and beautifully ironic.

It’s also here that the main mechanic of the dungeon would be introcuced to the fireteam. Players must kill a minotaur and recieve a buff called Arctrician that only lasts for 30 seconds. With it, you must find the starting node in the area that would lead to the generator at the center. These nodes are connected to one another with a wire and after shooting two succeeding nodes, the wire between them changes color to blue pulsing energy.

While this mechanic may seem simple at first, it must be noted that the wires overlap and go everywhere to generally mislead and waste the time of the Arctician buff. Players will have to balance the time duration of Arctician and track the wires that lead to the correct nodes amidst the chaos of battle against the vex.

I know I am not alone when I say that this is the best mechanic that Bungie has ever implemented in Destiny 2’s history. No other mechanic in any dungeon requires this amount of attention and focus from the players. Most of Destiny’s game mechanic history is Point, Shoot, Next! Little to no focus is needed in their end game content.

Grasp of Avarice and Prophecy is mostly look, fire, move on, meanwhile Shattered Throne, Duality and Pit of Heresy is mostly the run and gun strategy or “You’ll find your way eventually”. Zero thinking or focus needed for them. For this dungeon however, having the players look around allows them to properly examine, admire and acknowledge the developer’s time and effort that they put into this one activity. If Bungie could implement more game mechanics in their game, I’d be all for it.

After connecting all the nodes in the correct order, the door on the ground opens up and we are free to continue our journey down into the spire. The transition from the old west to the “present day” world of advanced tech, magic and aliens is seamless. From the sunny, sandy old west town on the surface of Mars to the dark underground section of the facility serves as a great foreshadow of the dangers we have yet to face.

This eeire, God forsaken land is just one reminder out of the many to make our guardian seem small. This place also serves as a short introduction to the dungeons final boss. You may have missed it on your first run, but that’s fine. You’re gonna kill it at the end anyway.

Once we get through the parkour, follow the correct path and begin to ascend to the top of the spire, we are met with the supposed “boss” of the dungeon. And to our surprise it takes the form of one of the ugliest familiar faces I’ve ever seen, just under a different name.

Meet Akelous, the Siren’s Current, the first boss of the Spire of The Watcher Dungeon.

While this isn’t the consecrated mind from the Garden of Salvation raid, it’s still nice to see something resemble the thing that my clan and I have shot, crashed and bombed into oblivion multiple times before. And since I never got to finish the raid on day one because of this glorified harpy, it was a nice and good revenge to see its health quickly get deleted. It was even more satifying when my fireteam used Divinity despite its nerf, Taipan and double thundercrash. They said it was overkill, but to that I say that there is no such thing as overkill, its dead isn’t it.

Although Bungie is no stranger to using old enemies and turning them into bosses under a different name, I still enjoyed seeing and fighting a boss like this somewhere else other than a raid. I was also happy to see that most of the encounter wasn’t all that different from the raid, nothing added to make it unnecessarily complicated. Other than the nodes of course, but I will never grow tired of that game mechanic.

This encounter served as a great refresher of the GoS raid and is a second chance to interrupt that minotaur’s happy ending massage. If I can’t get intimate with anyone, no one can, not even a stupid virtual robot.

After the encounter, Osiris tells us something is wrong and we must descend the spire once more and somehow take care of the problem. Here we are introduced to a new variant of the dungeon’s mechanics. Up until this point the wires between the nodes were yellow, but as we make our journey down the wires are now red. These nodes this time are on a strict timer, if you don’t shoot them all in time they resart and you have to activate them all again.

*Note: if you don’t do this part with the last word, you’re doing it wrong*

Eventually, we reach the bottom of the spire and meet the final boss of the dungeon.

Persys, Primordial Ruin… the final boss, the big bad, the one stopping us from finishing our mission here… is a giant robot chicken we can find anywhere with a sheild.

I hope I’m not alone when I say WHAT THE HELL, BUNGIE!?! Out of all the enemies to set as a final boss, you chose this. You were doing so well up until this point. The dungeon’s direction was great, the music, the ambiance, the mechanics and the difficulty were all amazing. Then you go and give us this Goomba stompin’ wanna be. I shouldn’t be surprised, but my hopes were really high up after everything before this encounter. I mean you brought Caiatl as the boss in Duality. Why does the most tedious dungeon get an original boss like this but not Spire of the Watcher?

I guess with every zenith comes a nadir and it was time this dungeon reached that point.

While I am dissapointed that this wyvern is the boss of this dungeon, the way this fight goes has got to be in my top 3. Making use of the main mechanic and its variant while being bombarded by a hoard of vex was fun to say the least. There wasn’t a single moment where my fireteam and I were screaming for a revive at each other or panicking over where the next node is.

We even found it surprising that the DPS window was really short, but came to a quick understanding as to why since its faster to get to the DPS phase than the other dungeons.

Apart from the boss, this encounter was unique, original and fun. This is the best part of the raid I’m excited to see how many times my clan and I die trying to farm for its loot.

Weapons and Armor

Bungie’s design team really went all out with this arsenal and committed to the theme of a Rootin’ Tootin’ Good Time. From the Discount DMT to the Desperado roll on a side arm to the double bomb chucking grenade launcher. The space cowboy fantasy is finally complete with these weapons and armor set.

And its exotic weapon is one that I will definitely be bringing with me when doing GrandMaster Nightfalls this season. The fact I got it on my third try makes it even better.

This is the Hierarchy of Needs, the new exotic bow that comes with this amazing dungeon. Its intrinsic perk relys on precision hits for the player to use the bow to be at its best. Once a guidance ring is placed after enough precision shots and a hip fire shot, you can now properly maximize this bow’s full potential.

Shooting an arrow through the guidance ring sends seeking projectiles that deal more damage equal to the distance traveled. It’s still too early to tell if this would actually be good in higher level content like GMs, but you can bet the 5 extra spaces left in your vault that I am bringing this thing regardless.

Final Thoughts

Overall I think that the word amazing doesn’t even begin to describe this dungeon. Story relevance, design and direction were jaw dropping to say the least and is Destiny 2’s magnum opus, dungeon wise.

Spire of The Watcher is Destiny 2’s newest dungeon and shows a lot of promise for Destiny 2’s future. If this was just a taste into Bungie’s creativity and they are holding back for Lightfall, I genuinely look forward to seeing what they have left in store for the community and the future of Desitny 2 as a whole.