Iron Banter: This Week In Destiny 2 — It’s A Worm Gun, Jerry

The hype train is gaining a dangerous amount of speed as Destiny 2 barrels toward The Witch Queen. This week, Bungie detailed a bunch of changes coming to the weapon sandbox, while showing off some new Exotic weapons coming with the expansion. One of those guns is a grenade launcher, only the grenades are the worm larvae from which the Hive derive their dark powers. I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about this.

But first, let’s check out some of the changes to guns coming in The Witch Queen.

Brand loyalty

The details on weapons are pretty extensive in the latest TWAB, and I have to say, they all sound like solid changes. The best-sounding aspect of the whole deal is the addition of Origin Traits, which are apparently intrinsic to guns based on elements like where you get them, or who manufactured them. For instance, guns from the Trials of Osiris will have Origin Traits similar to the Celerity and Bottomless Grief perks, where they gain boosts when the rest of your teammates fall in battle. Nightfall weapons get traits that boost them against Champions. Crucible guns are better at reloading out of fights, to help you prep for your next engagement.

The more customization options Bungie brings to Destiny 2 loadouts, the more interesting that whole side of the game becomes. I really like the idea of having guns that you get for doing certain things and that reward your specific playstyle. If you’re into PvE activities, hitting up Nightfalls gets you better tools for PvE–that’s a cool idea that helps make repetitive activities more rewarding.

Origin Traits also sound like added benefits, rather than necessary components, which helps with one big aspect of this discussion: gunsetting. In the immediate aftermath of the TWAB, I saw a few complaints from people who were worried that adding Origin Traits to guns starting with Witch Queen would immediately deprecate the guns you already have stockpiled, which won’t receive Origin Traits–you’ll need to find new copies of those guns to get access to the new system. They worried that, effectively, Bungie was finding a way to make everything they already had obsolete, but that doesn’t sound like it’s the case.

The additional perks that Origin Traits offer sound like they’re nice to have, but not essential to Destiny’s meta. You’re going to be picking up a lot of new guns anyway, so you can slowly replace your old gear with the slightly better, newer versions. But having the “slightly faster reloading outside of combat in the Crucible” Origin Trait isn’t going to render your current Dire Promise into obsolete junk.

One last thing that I think is cool about Origin Traits is the fact that they extend to gun manufacturers. This is an aspect of Destiny that has felt like something Bungie wanted to do more with in the past, but it never quite worked out. We have a bunch of brand names in Destiny 2 who make weapons, but those names have only ever dictated aesthetics. It was, more or less, a neat lore thing that some guns came from some specific foundries. Now, guns from Omolon or VEIST have Origin Traits intrinsic to the brand. It’s not a massive change, but I love the idea that these names actually mean something in terms of what their weapons can do and how they operate. I’ve been seeing guns that say “HAKKE” for years and that’ll finally actually mean something to me.

Okay, time to talk about the worm gun.

Someone explain to me the worm gun

A recent weapons trailer for Destiny 2 showed off several of its upcoming Exotics, including a machine gun that fires missiles like those of a Cabal Colossus, a submachine gun that sounds a lot like Halo’s Needler, and Parasite, a grenade launcher that hucks live Hive worms at enemies, which explode.

From a story standpoint, this sounds fascinatingly nonsensical.

Sure, sometimes guns are just fun or funny or weird. One of Eris Morn’s friends is a bug who lives inside Xenophage. It doesn’t have to be that serious. But even the weird guns have story and lore tied to them. So what’s the story behind the worm gun?

I mean, think about it for a second. Someone in the Destiny 2 universe made a gun. Rather than make that gun shoot standard projectiles, they configured it to launch Hive worms. So first, this is someone who would think, “Hive worms are great for blowing things up,” I guess. And they would either have to hate Hive worms such that they would think those worms should be used to kill things rather than let them just live their lives, or they would have to be indifferent to Hive worms, neither interested or disinterested in whether those worms lived.

Also, this is a person who would have to have enough Hive worms around to load into a cannon–they would have to have a reason to even think to build a cannon into which they could load Hive worms.

If we look at Parasite, we can see what look like Hive runes on it, so maybe this is a Hive weapon. My thinking is that Savathun built or commissioned this gun. Her goal in the Season of the Lost is to get rid of her worm, and in The Witch Queen, she has the power of the Light, which suggests the removal of the worm was successful. Savathun doesn’t seem to be a fan of the worm gods, the pact the Hive made with them, or the Darkness in general. The other Hive in her Lucent Brood also don’t seem to have worms–or at least, the ones with Ghosts probably don’t. So if Savathun got rid of her worm, and isn’t a fan of worms, and doesn’t need a bunch of worms hanging around…maybe she built a worm-launcher. Maybe she even gives it to us, since, despite the fact that we’re fighting in her Throne World in The Witch Queen, there still seems to be a weird relationship between Guardians and Savathun in the story.

It might even be a thumb in the eye of Xivu Arath, who is likely still on the prowl to kill Savathun in The Witch Queen.

That’s my story theory on Parasite. Savathun’s mad at the worms, and rather than just stomping on them or devising a way to kill them, she makes a gun that shoots them at people–preferably other Hive. It’s some deliciously petty payback for eons of a parasitic relationship requiring the Hive to constantly conquer other species in order to gain power and resist being consumed by the worms inside them.

I also want to know who at Bungie thought of this thing, because it’s excellent and ridiculous.

We’re working on a lot more Destiny 2 coverage ahead of The Witch Queen in the coming weeks, including some catch-up guides to get you ready. To start with, you might want to check out our story catch-up article that runs down everything that happened between Beyond Light and The Witch Queen. It’s expansive and detailed, and if you missed anything this year, you’ll find it there.

And as always, leave any Destiny 2 stuff you want to discuss in the comments below.