Gunplay and the overall feel of the variety of weapons in the original Destiny was one of the highlights of an addictive if otherwise flawed title. Perhaps then it is a little perplexing that Destiny 2 PC Project Lead, Mark Noseworthy, spoke with Finder.com.au about the joint decision between Bungie and Vicarious Vision to remove recoil from the upcoming PC port of Destiny 2. His reasoning included that aiming a weapon with recoil just wouldn’t feel right if the player’s mouse was moving without physical input.
Here’s the full quote from Noseworthy:
“Yeah, we’ve thought about that quite a bit. Ultimately, we have one design for the game. And so, if you’re playing the Raid on PC or you’re playing it on PlayStation [4], it’s the same Raid. It’s the same experience. And we’re going to try and keep them as similar as possible because hopefully, we want this to be the best experience. We may look in a few places where weapons need to be handled differently, and we’ll treat them slightly differently.
For instance, there’s no recoil on guns on PC because recoil on the controller feels really good. ‘I’m firing, I’m firing, I’m firing, oh, I’m losing control of my gun a little bit.’ That feels great, especially with magnetism and all the magic in the controller that makes you feel it. With a mouse and keyboard, you don’t want the mouse moving without you moving it, so recoil doesn’t feel good, so there is no recoil on PC.
There are a couple of key ways we’re going to try and change it, make it so it feels native to that platform because we want people to feel like Destiny 2 is built for PC”
All of this seems a little odd considering PC first person shooters have featured recoil on weapons for decades. Half-Life 2’s shotgun would firmly jutter into the air after taking a shot at the Combine and DoomGuy’s iconic BFG 9000 could recoil back with enough strength to take someone’s arm off after unleashing one of its’ megaton blasts on hell spawn. Even games like the more recent Call of Duty titles have taken recoil in an RPG direction – giving players the ability to reduce and control precise amounts of recoil depending on the modifications equipped to the weapon or perks that they have active.
From Noseworthy’s comment, it seems that the console and PC versions of Destiny 2 – in terms of content – will be as alike as possible, if not downright identical. Using a keyboard & mouse is widely seen as more precise than even the most sensitive controller, so I have to wonder if the removal of recoil in the PC version (if this does indeed stay as it is currently is when the game ships this October) will make Destiny 2 PC feel like a different game when compared to the console versions.