Destiny 2: Beyond Light Brings Back an Old Weapon With a New, Absurd Ability

Destiny 2 will be shedding a lot of playable areas and other content when Beyond Light arrives next month, but its collection of weapons and armor is only going to grow. Bungie's giving a sneak peek at the new Exotic items the expansion has in store for players, and at least on paper, some of them do seem like they'll be well worth the grind.

Take, for instance, the Cloudstrike sniper rifle. Every precision hit (a headshot, or hit to another weak point) will "generate lightning bolts at the target location," with a succession of on-target hits building up to an entire storm. The Lament, meanwhile, is a giant, silicon-covered sword that looks like it could've come from Transistor, and which can heal the player when damaging enemies.

There's also a returning weapon from the first Destiny that's getting a wild new perk. At the end of the original campaign, a character known as the Exo Stranger (Beyond Light's star) gave players a pulse rifle that was... well, nothing to write home about in the days of the SUROS Regime and Gjallarhorn. It later returned, in a manner of speaking, as No Time to Explain, a pulse rifle included in Destiny's Taken King expansion. That version had a nifty perk that returned all precision hits right to the magazine. Now, Beyond Light's making it even better.

With No Time to Explain's new incarnation, any precision hit or hit on an enemy affected by Stasis, the Guardian power debuting in Beyond Light, will return ammo. On top of that, when those effects are stacked, the gun will "summon a portal which will fire bullets from an alternate timeline of the weapon."

As Edge Editor Jen Simpkins says, that's enough to make a Destiny player shiver. If we're talking about shots equal in power to the player's rifle, that time portal could make the new No Time to Explain quite the desirable primary. Combine it with some Stasis-enhancing armor, or a squadmate using a new Stasis-powered grenade launcher, and you could get up to some serious time-bending shenanigans in a firefight.

Beyond Light launches for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia on Nov. 10. Along with all the new loot and missions, the Beyond Light update will remove or "vault" older Destiny 2 content (much of it free-to-play) and make some changes to basic systems, including character customization. In the future, Bungie will bring next-gen versions of Destiny 2 to PS5 and Xbox Series S or X, with free upgrades within console families guaranteed.

As for whether any of these fancy items will stay relevant in Destiny's meta for long, who can say? Along with looking to next-gen consoles, Bungie is planning at least two more major expansions to Destiny 2. In other words, the loot train won't be making its last stop at Europa.