00:00Peggy XVI
00:30Strand is this network of metaphysical connection.
00:33Objects, people, past, present, future.
00:36We call it the weave.
00:37Anytime a guardian needs to use strand,
00:42revealing all the strands around them,
00:44reaching in, weaving weapons.
00:49Each of the supers kind of reflect that idea,
00:52weaving into needles,
00:54weaving it into a giant rope dart,
00:57weaving it into claws,
00:58revealing it as these green strands in the world.
01:05Green was definitely something that we were excited about
01:07because it stood apart from other damage types.
01:10It kind of gave it its own visual language.
01:12World strands are the things that are more organic, flowing.
01:15It almost looks like a curtain of strands
01:17that flicker in and out of reality.
01:20The idea of the strings, the strands lighting up the world.
01:23I think that was when everything kind of started to come together
01:26and that starts to then influence what's the design.
01:29What is the VFX going to look like?
01:31What does audio sound like for it?
01:32We really wanted to visually show that there's some sort of order in the universe,
01:38or some sort of chaos.
01:40But when players take it in, they're weaving these weapons of destruction.
01:44When developing Strand, we wanted the emotional fantasy to be based on ropes and strings,
01:50and the mechanical fantasy to be rapid movement, creating objects out of these strands.
01:58When you are in each of your super states, you have these strand elements that are on you that are
02:04connected from above.
02:06Things that you create are constantly revealing this world of strands around you.
02:14Threaded Spike, the hunter's melee ability, will bounce between enemies until it can't find anymore,
02:20and then it will come back to me.
02:21If I press the melee button again, as it comes back to me, I will catch it,
02:26and that gives me melee energy for the next time I want to use it.
02:30As a VFX artist, we came up with this idea of,
02:33when it goes out, let's put a bunch of additional communication on it to make it look more dangerous,
02:39and when it comes back, we don't add that stuff, and it's simpler, and then it feels less dangerous.
02:45And then that's when we know that we did it right, when you're not even questioning it.
02:49But getting to that point is definitely a challenge, and each one of the strand abilities, I feel like,
02:53have these little twists in there.
02:57It's so important that you can tell what it is at a moment's notice.
03:01And then as we go through the process, there's revisions and refining it based off of play tests.
03:06Sometimes there are small visual changes, sometimes it's like overall big differences,
03:11and I think a good example is the Titan Super.
03:14We had this really cool swipe attack that was severing enemies,
03:18but it was hard to chase those enemies down.
03:20We need a long-range attack for the Titan that is going to enable us to get close to the
03:26melee attack and attack them,
03:27and suspend was a natural choice for that.
03:30One really cool thing we're introducing with Strand is the ability to suspend combatants.
03:35Combatants are lifted up into the air, they're suspended in these Strand webs.
03:38Their limbs are now like connected to these invisible strands and they are vulnerable.
03:44Then you can then start to set up combos on top of that.
03:47Or even just, I need to take a breath moment.
03:50That really gives you and then your fire team members an opportunity to kind of set up one-two punch
03:55kind of combos.
03:55Sometimes you can use it more as utility and provide support for your team,
03:59and so I think that's going to create like a lot of opportunities where a strand's going to be valuable
04:03no matter what.
04:03I think it was really that moment where everything kind of like clicked and where like everyone on the team
04:09was like,
04:10Oh, I get what Strand is now.
04:15A big part of Strand looking at the concept art that we tried to clue into was the idea of
04:20cosmic webs.
04:21What do cosmic webs sound like?
04:27Anything that kind of evoked this feeling of tension and pooling.
04:34Things like recording as rubbing on plastics, leather gloves.
04:39We would strung out a big sheet of plastic wrap and running our fingers along it in really weird performative
04:44ways.
04:46We actually start taking these sounds and combining them together and creating new things that are starting to sound a
04:52little bit more like something that could be put into the game.
04:54That's just kind of the fun part of the sound design process that really brings everything together.
05:03Some wacky things have happened as we've developed strands, interactions we didn't necessarily anticipate.
05:08When you pick up a tangle and you throw it, you can grapple to that tangle and you're sailing through
05:14the air after this tangle which can then hit an enemy, blow them up and then you just swoop in
05:20and follow up.
05:20Designers will find these bugs that will come back and be like, oh actually you can do this and you're
05:25like, let's double down on that, you know.
05:28Let's make that bug a feature.
05:32One of the coolest things about the way that we work at Bungie is we will take someone's awesome idea
05:40and through play testing, through iteration, we can keep tweaking it and make the idea better.
05:47And then as we start to add the animation support, the VFX support, the audio support, that's when it really
05:53starts to come to life.
05:57All of that goes into making Strand this quality new damage type.
06:01You can imagine how it could work on paper, but then when we actually have the final result, wow, this
06:08is going to be something special.
06:10And feels like nothing else I've ever played before.
06:14As players experiment and figure out all the weird things they can do, they're going to get even more excited.
06:21Oh yeah, this is cool. Like, this is it.
06:24Once it goes live, then it's like, alright, let's see where players take it and that's actually really exciting.
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