This week, Destiny 2 director Luke Smith released Part 1 of his Director’s Cut blog series, which will focus on the lessons learned from Bungie’s game thus far and how those will be applied towards the next expansion, Shadowkeep. Initially, the plan was to release the post as one single blog entry, but after Luke Smith’s Destiny 2 post turned into 20 pages, the need to break things up arose.
Largely Part 1 is focused on Season of the Drifter and Season of Opulence and what did and didn’t work from those Destiny 2 content releases. Smith explained how the team is usually working on a feature for a future season before it has even received (or even released) a previous season, and that is why there can be discrepancies in approach.
For example, Bungie discovered that the Chalice of Opulence in Season 7 was a much better way of offering rewards than the Reckoning drops in Season 6, but by then Season of the Drifter was out the door. If Smith had that all to do again, he said that Gambit Prime would offer gear and let Reckoning function similar to Menagerie in that players can’t really fail the activity, as they chase specific weapon rolls like the Spare Rations.
One detail that Smith highlights is the Hasapiko, Beloved by Calus boss fight in the Menagerie, which he says is also beloved by him. As a big MMO player/fan, Smith reveals that the boss is actually a reference to a World of Warcraft raid boss.
Fun fact: Heigan the Unclean was often called the "dance" boss in the WoW Raid Naxxaramas and Hasapiko means "the butcher's dance" in Greek. It's a little nod back to Blizzard's Xûr reference.
In Menagerie, Hasapiko is the Vex Minotaur boss that players damage while avoiding oncoming “death walls” by moving to the left, middle, or right portion of the boss room. To Smith, this is like a type of dance but translated to an action game, and he sees it as Destiny 2’s version of the Heigan the Unclean raid fight from the Naxxaramas raid in World of Warcraft. In that fight, the raid team needs to move around the arena to safe zones in a type of “dance.” It’s why WoW players call Heigan the Unclean the “dance boss”.
With all that in mind, it then makes sense that Hasapiko means “butcher dance” in Greek. It’s Bungie’s way of paying homage back to World of Warcraft after Blizzard’s MMO included a Xur reference in its games by naming one of its vendors Xur’ios.
Destiny 2: Shadowkeep releases October 1, 2019 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.