Destiny 2's new dungeon, Duality, was absolutely taking names when it launched at the start of the Season of the Haunted, and Bungie💦 says it did intentionally tune the dungeon up a bit to be harder than usual. 

During a recent interview with GamesRadar, dun﷽geon and design lead Brian Frank explained that with Duality, the end-game team made a "conscious decision to not pull 🌺back too heavily on lowering the challenge."

"I knew going out the door thꦚat we were going to tune more aggressively," Frank said. "I don't want raid and dungeon conten🎀t to be really formulaic. We always try to present novelty. And this content is pinnacle, aspirational, so I think it makes sense to ask a lot of players. They're becoming more powerful with all the build-crafting elements, so I think we need to provide them with challenges to test their abilities. 

"It was a conscious decision to not pull back too heavily on lowering the challenge," he adds. "We saw a ton of eꦇngagement with Grasp of Avarice, and I think that one felt sort of lighter on the tuning end, so this is just the team experimenting with the boundaries of what it f♛eels like to go a little heavier or relax. I don't think it necessarily is the standard. We're gonna move along that spectrum." 

Duality's difficulty spike sparked some discussion among players, and Frank says he "saw a pretty balanced aꦅmount of supporters and detractors, and I think that speaks to how we're hitting a broad spectrum of players." 

Ultimately, he says he and the end game team "want to set a high bar for this content" to make dungeon and raid rewards "satisfying to achieve" and lend them "a certain🌸 amount of exclusivity." 

Check out our full Destiny 2 Season of the Haunted interview for a fascinating deep-dive on Duality, horror in Destiny 2, and how Bungie's investing in end-game content.