Destiny 2 director Luke Smith says Bungie is not working on a Weapons 2.0 system
For now, it's all about armor and builds - weapons are in a good spot
Ever since the reveal of Destiny 2 Armor 2.0, a new and greatly expanded armor system coming in Destiny 2 Shadowkeep, players have wondered if weapons would receive a comparable upgrade in an upcoming season. In a recent chat with Kinda Funny, Destiny 2 director Luke Smith confirmed that Bungie doesn't have a would-be Weapons 2.0 in the works at this time, but he says the team is looking at weapons as a part of broader build variety.
"We're looking at weapons overall right now," Smith says around 1:22:00 in the video. "There's a long, long, probably 2,000-word deleted scene from the Director's Cut that's really looking at things like Infusion and weapons and the relationships that we want players to think of with their weapons in Destiny. We're not working on Weapons 2.0 right now. That's the type of thing where we could bet on that right now, but what we're really looking at is how are we going to grow build crafting, that's the frontier we're exploring right now.
"I could imagine at some point taking a look at weapons, but that's pretty far down the road. I think there's some stuff that we're going to continue to improve about weapons. We want certain weapons from certain activities to feel more special, but there's not an active like 'Let's overhaul weapons!' Nope, those are good. Let's figure out what the emotion we want players to feel with their items and figure out the right thing to do with weapons once we have that answer."
I reckon weapons are stronger and more interesting than armor in Destiny 2, so it makes sense for Bungie to focus on the latter with Shadowkeep. The addition of new and more accessible armor perks, as well as seasonal perks via the new Artifacts, stands to crack build variety wide open. On top of that, where armor perks play into your entire play style, weapon perks - as they are now - tend to be more insular and only benefit your currently equipped gun, which probably wouldn't rekindle build variety in quite the same way. Perhaps we'll see a veritable Weapons 2.0 in the far, far future, but at the earliest, that might be a conversation for next fall or even Destiny 3.
Armor 2.0 is one of many ways that Destiny 2 is slowly bringing back the best parts of Destiny 1.
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Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with 12DOVE since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.