Bungie's recent Destiny 2 Lightfall showcase definitely caught the eyes of veterans with new reveals like the cyberpunk Neptune City of Neomuna, the Strand Subclass, and enemies like Tormentors, while also appealing to new and/or departed players by revealing that content like Shadowkeep, Beyond Light, and Witch Queen were going to be free for a limited time. The showcase was definitely an in-depth dive, but many fans were left hungering for more.
PC Gamer recently spoke with Bungie's game director Joe Blackburn and assistant general manager Dan McAuliffe about a variety of topics, including sunsetting and the challenges of maintaining such a game, the Cloud Striders home of Neomuna, and much more. Perhaps the biggest topic was just diving a little bit deeper into the upcoming Strand subclass, especially its grappling hook mechanic.
With Destiny 2's Strand subclass, Hunters will be able to wield a rope dart, Warlocks will be able to summon creatures, and Titans will wield giant claws, but with the various colors associated with subclasses in the game, PC Gamer asked if creating subclasses had begun feeling restricting. However, Blackburn suggests that Bungie has an overabundance of ideas for new subclasses, and that Strand came out of the desire to make something very blockbuster: "it started to get really crystallized when we saw rope darts and whips and weird things being grafted onto people's arms."
It's also known that the Strand subclass will let players create grappling hooks out of thin air, as Strand manipulates life and death out of nothing, and this is an exciting feature. There are few games that a grappling hook couldn't improve. As a movement and combat tool, Blackburn expects to see "people use grapple in high-level PVE," noting players could dunk an object in an area filled with enemies under the cover of a smoke bomb, as one interesting tactic. And it's known that this Strand grappling hook won't be limited to Neomuna in any way, and that makes McAuliffe excited and nervous at the same time: "it's nervous excitement. We want to push boundaries of freedom and choice."
Its inclusion in the game will let players revisit old Destiny 2 content and explore it in new ways or even let less skilled players traverse locations that couldn't reach easily before. McAuliffe also acknowledges there will be players looking for ways to break the game with such a movement mechanic, but believes the team will be able to fix the worst issues before launch (and likely quickly when/if more are discovered). He also states the trade-off for that — "cool moments of feeling like a superhero when you grapple in, revive a teammate, and get the heck out of dodge" — will be worth it.
Blackburn also stated that the grappling hook was greenlit the moment the team saw it, simply because of how cool it was. And it seems the reception of Destiny 2's Strand subclass and the inclusion of this mechanic echoes the same sentiment.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Source: PC Gamer