LUKAS GOODMAN
STUDENT GAME DESIGNER
480-815-2310
AURORA KNIVES
ROLE
Independent
DESCRIPTION
"Valkyrie. Sleeper Simulant. Hades Flame. Aurora Knives. The weapons of the future are being developed by the Warmind Rasputin today. Would you like to know more?"
With so many weapons constantly in development during the golden age, the Warmind AI Rasputin is a gold mine for new exotic concepts for the Destiny 2. I recently came across this excerpt in Destiny Grimoire Anthology, Volume 3. I immediately knew that this was a perfect opportunity to take an existing name from the game's lore and give it shape.
YEAR
2022
Armor Type
Exotic Hunter Gauntlets
ARMOR DESIGN
A name such as Aurora Knives commands and deserves a lot of power to go along with it. My goal for this exotic was to run with the name as far as I could, with the intent to land on something just as unique as the other Rasputin developed weapons and armor that already exist in Destiny 2. With the word knives in the name, my mind immediately jumped to the hunter subclass tree, "Way of a Thousand Cuts". The only issue with this was that there already exists a plethora of exotic armor pieces to augment this ability tree. Realistically, this would likely mean that the resources would be better used elsewhere, however, I saw this instead as a challenge to be overcome. I knew that in order to make this an exotic that could be realistic for Destiny 2, it not only had to stand out among other exotic armor pieces, it also had to truly be a cut above other armor pieces that are designed around this ability tree.
What resulted was an armor piece that I felt was extremely unique, not only among the subset of armor pieces that are meant for this ability tree, but also among all other exotic armor pieces in the game. The perk from this armor piece, "Warmind's Insight", does not, seek to allow players to use their abilities more often, nor does it seek to make them intrinsically more powerful. Instead, the perk fundamentally changes the way that the powered melee for, not only this ability tree, but also, the entire subclass works. This was done in an effort to change the way that players use each melee.
There are three separate and unique melee abilities that are a part of this ability tree. The first is the proximity explosive knife. Warmind's Insight changes the way that the knife is thrown from that of a traditional throwing knife to a Japanese style kunai. This change causes the knife to move faster, and not rotate while in the air. The second melee ability is the Knife Trick melee. The change to this melee makes the three knives spread out in a vertical pattern as opposed to the standard horizontal pattern. The final melee is the precision Weighted Knife. This ability is again changed to be thrown more similarly to the way a kunai would be thrown. This change makes the knife throwing animation faster and causes the knife to do more precision damage.