The various exotics available to earn in Destiny 2 are a regular source of inspiration for cosplayers and prop designers trying to bring the game to life. Social media is full of creators bringing exotics like the hand cannon Last Word or Titan helmet Helm of Saint-14 to life with varying results. One of the most recent efforts to appear online is yet another hand cannon, but one which holds a special place in many longtime Destiny players' hearts because of its former owner.
Reddit user Little-Miss-Macabre shared their recreation of the Ace of Spades hand cannon online for the world to see. The design they chose is the gun's base look, foregoing any of the four exotic weapon ornaments available to give the gun a slightly different flair. Little-Miss-Macabre's only deviation is, as they told one commentator, the choice to use silver paint instead of white to give the weapon a little more pop in the image.
Accurate real-world recreations like this are nothing new in the Destiny community, but still manage to impress with the attention to detail. While Little-Miss-Macabre admits to one comment she forgot to scale down the size of the gun before printing it on their 3D printer, they were happy with how it came out in the end. It now joins other efforts ranging from bringing Guardians and enemies like the Hive Brood mother to life, to accurate weapon recreations like Gjallarhorn and the Vigilance Wing.
I 3D printed the Ace Of Spades - Ran out of silver paint, just got some more and will finish it tonight! from destiny2
As mentioned above, though, the Ace of Spades hold's a special place in many Destiny 2 players hearts because of its connection with one of the game's most popular character, the late Hunter Vanguard Cayde-6.
The Ace of Spades was first introduced as a Hunter-exclusive exotic in Destiny players could earn from the game's weapon vendor Banshee-44. In its original incarnation, the hand cannon came with the exotic perk Maverick which pulled one round from ammo reserves to the gun on precision kills. Maverick, along with the perk Firefly causing explosion damage on precision kills, made the Ace of Spades a regular choice for PvE players.
Destiny 2 saw the weapon return as part of 2018's Forsaken expansion which saw Cayde-6 killed at the hands of the corrupted Awoken prince, Uldren Sov. After defeating Sov, players regained Cayde's hand cannon and cleansed it of the Taken corruption caused by Uldren before adding the weapon to their collection. While the gun retained Firefly, Maverick was traded out for the exotic perk Memento Mori, granting radar while aiming down sights and bonus damage when reloading after a kill.
Bungie built on the weapon's sentimentality with addition lore in Destiny 2, hinting as to why Cayde called it the Ace of Spades. The gun's namesake is Cayde's supposed son, Ace, who is implied to have died some time before Cayde became an Exo and an event in the lore known as the Collapse. The lore tab for the Rekindled Solstice Cloak says Cayde found the name in a journal he found in the cloak he was found by his ghost in when he first became a Guardian.
Destiny 2 is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X.