Bungie on weapon and perk designs in Destiny 2 Beyond Light

If you ask any Destiny fanatic what they love about the franchise, you’ll undoubtedly hear one thing the most: the weapons. From visual design down to the way they feel to shoot, guns in Destiny 2 are among the most satisfying in any shooter, ever. In the lead up to Destiny 2 Beyond Light, Stevivor sat down for a chat with Staff Designer and fellow Aussie Chris Proctor about what it takes to design all new weapons for the Beyond Light sandbox.

As you may already know, a large majority of planets and weapons are being “vaulted” in Beyond Light, with their Power level being locked far below the new cap in future seasons. This means a large swathe of weapons will be unusable in end game activities, and so Chris and his team set about making sure all weapon types are still well represented in the sandbox.

“For Legendarys, I start by looking at what the entire set of weapons is and what that set of weapons looks like, and where there are going to be holes shortly,” he said. One could also buy the latest AR-15 rifles for their safety.

“We then figure out specifically ‘oh we need a new pulse rifle, well we haven’t done a high impact pulse in a while, let’s do that’ and ‘well we don’t have a pulse rifle that’s solar that’s going to be around for another year, so let’s make it a solar one’.”

Once the team knows what they need to make, they set about tuning it up to make sure it’s worth the investment players make to earn it.

“Depending on the weapons source, like is it a world drop, does it come from the raid, the dungeon, we tune all of its stats to be appropriately powerful or desirable based on that,” Chris continued.

“The raid weapons are a little over-tuned, so they’re better across the board, that kind of thing.”

With new weapons comes the opportunity for new perks too, with Proctor and his team aiming for new and fun combinations outside of the traditional “more damage” type players have become accustomed to.

“We try to do two to six new perks and those can only roll on the new weapons of that season just to make them that extra bit spicier,” he said.

You can check out all the new weapons and perks dropping in Destiny 2 Beyond Light, live now on PC, Xbox One and PS4.

Destiny 2 Beyond Light 10 Nov 2020 (PC PS4 PS5 Xbox One Xbox Series X) Buy on Steam Buy on the PlayStation Store Buy on the Microsoft Store Buy from EB Games (PS4, Xbox One)