Destiny 2

An expanding universe. A clear next move.

As Feature Owner at Bungie, I worked on Worlds UI, map, HUD, navigation, and activity systems, shipping Beyond Light and The Witch Queen. My scope sat in the connective layer between player intent and the next playable action.

Destiny 2 moves players between split-second combat, careful equipment choices, and the question of what to do next. As the game expands, the interface has to connect those decisions without losing the sense of a living world.

This retrospective covers Worlds UX across Beyond Light (2020) and The Witch Queen (2022), with archived interface footage and visual studies.

Focus: Worlds UX, player orientation, activity discovery
Platform: Destiny 2 · console and PC
Role: Feature Owner
Responsibilities: Worlds UI, map, HUD, navigation, activity systems
Sources: Beyond Light · 2020 The Witch Queen · 2022 Destiny 2 roadmap · 2020 Update 3.0.0.1 · 2020 Update 4.0.0.1 · 2022

Destiny 2 Destinations screen showing Europa, Savathûn’s Throne World, the Tower, and other worlds and activity destinations.

From the Director into the world.

The Witch Queen · portal

For The Witch Queen, the portal makes a new destination feel like an invitation. The hover ring, layered light, and blurred edge bring motion into the node itself, creating a focal point within the Director.

Nav Mode · shipped design

Nav Mode carries that guidance back into the world. Quests, bounties, and tracked Triumphs sit in distinct categories, so players can check progress and return to the action without leaving the scene.

From attention to action

Keep the next move clear.

From combat awareness to a destination and an activity.

01Protect attention in the world

A combat HUD must make urgent signals legible while leaving the scene readable. When a player is downed, those priorities change: match status, teammates, and revive timing become more important. The two examples show how the same interface language supports different states of play. The design challenge is to make the next useful signal clear without overwhelming the world behind it.

Combat awareness

Destiny 2 combat HUD displaying weapon and ability status during gameplay. — Quest HUD updates · Bungie, 2020 ↗

Spectator state

Destiny 2 Trials of Osiris spectator HUD showing team rosters, revive countdown, and a change-view prompt. — The HUD keeps match and revive state visible after a player is downed.

02Keep context beside the choice

Free-cursor interaction makes equipment inspection direct: select an item, see its details, compare, and decide. The same relationship between a choice and its context carries into world navigation: what does this destination offer, and what can I do there?

Equipment inspection

Destiny 2 inventory cursor inspecting equipment with a contextual item panel. — Contextual detail beside the selected item.

Subclass choices

Destiny 2 subclass screen showing the cursor inspecting a movement ability. — A familiar cursor model across different decisions.

03Turn the map into a next step

The Director connects the scale of a solar system to a concrete activity choice. Its destinations and activity nodes preserve a sense of place while offering routes into play. The archived Crucible interaction below shows the transition from a broad category to a specific mode.

The product tradeoff is breadth versus orientation. A spatial overview makes the universe tangible; a focused activity layer makes it actionable. A consistent path between them helps players build familiarity even as the available experiences change.

Destiny 2 Director moving between Crucible activity choices. — Destinations in transition · Bungie, 2020 ●

The detail work lives in the nodes: destination silhouettes, activity emblems, labels, and selection states need to feel distinct at a glance while belonging to one navigable system.

04Stay oriented as destinations change

Beyond Light added Europa and returned the Cosmodrome while other destinations rotated out. The Witch Queen later introduced the Throne World. Navigation therefore had to accommodate changes in what was available while maintaining a recognizable relationship between destinations, goals, and activities.

During this period, the product also connected guidance across screens. Beyond Light’s November 2020 update added HUD quest-progress feedback and automatic waypoints for tracked quests with map locations. The Witch Queen’s February 2022 update brought tracked Seasonal Challenges into navigation mode.

Destiny 2 destination map displaying contextual information for a public event. — Director · destination and activity context. Historical navigation updates ●

05Make the visual language recognizable

Color, silhouette, and repeated geometry organize a large vocabulary of abilities, activities, and progression marks. These studies show how individual symbols stay distinct while reading as part of the same world.

Destiny 2 icon study organizing Arc, Solar, and Void abilities by Titan, Hunter, and Warlock. — Ability icon families across Arc, Solar, and Void.

Destiny 2 visual identity study with green activity emblems, circular symbols, and progressively elaborate rank marks. — Activity emblems and a progression of rank forms.

6 node families · 12 sprite slots

Destiny 2 node and sprite inventory, grouped by player, vendor, objective, and interactable-object families.
Index and family	Notes	sprite_0	sprite_1	sprite_2	sprite_3	sprite_4	sprite_5	sprite_6	sprite_7	sprite_8	sprite_9	sprite_10	sprite_11
0biped_player	Systemic, do not use	Biped Player
1biped_ai	Systemic, do not use	Biped AI
2biped_vendor	Social spaces only.	General	weapons	armor	pvp	postmaster	bounties	map
3primary_objective	All standard objectives.	primary	secondary	Kill ai	Kill vip	collect	Ghost scan	recon	Multi-scan	checkpoint	The nine	Taken hunt	unused
5travel_objective	systemic	03hn waypoint
6Fireteam_vehicle	Used on interactable crates

A shared vocabulary of player, objective, vendor, and interaction symbols.

06Make activity state readable

Player prompts, team progress, and end-of-match results call for different levels of emphasis. These studies move from compact signals during play to a structured results table, keeping status and comparison readable as the activity changes.

Destiny 2 interface study showing player prompts, team score bars, invasion indicators, and alternative scoreboard treatments. — Player prompts and HUD scoreboard explorations.

Destiny 2 match-results interface study with Bravo and Alpha team rows beneath a red Crucible emblem. — A match-results composition organized by team and performance.

Shipped releases

Depth without losing orientation.

Worlds UX across Beyond Light and The Witch Queen.

I shipped Beyond Light and The Witch Queen as part of Bungie’s Destiny 2 team, with responsibility for Worlds UI, map, HUD, navigation, and activity systems. Those surfaces connect moment-to-moment awareness with the larger world of destinations and activities.

Worlds UX connects a player’s goal to the next available activity, even as the world around that route changes. The durable part is the relationship between intent, location, and action.

The Witch Queen · reveal trailer. Expansion context.

Explore The Witch Queen · Bungie ●More selected work ●