The best mission in Destiny 2: Beyond Light was built on COVID-19 complications and Nolan North's impressions

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How the Salvation's Grip mission was made

Destiny 2 Beyond Light Salvation's Grip
(Image credit: Bungie)

One of the most memorable missions in Destiny 2: Beyond Light is tied to the new Exotic grenade launcher Salvation's Grip, and it only turned out the way it did because Bungie had to make do with limited resources while working from home.

A quick bit of context: the unique mission to acquire Salvation's Grip opens with a rooftop assault and leads into a veritable bank heist, your goal being to snatch some Fallen tech on Europa. It feels straight out of Sly Cooper, and it's great. The best part is that your Ghost narrates the entire mission with their best Drifter impression, since the Gambit ringleader himself is unavailable at the time. As one Bungie designer explained on Reddit, this wasn't actually planned. 

"Fun fact: This actually came about when, due to COVID complicating things, we were unable to book Drifter's voice actor for this mission as it was intended to be him providing the radio dialogue," they said. "One of our writers had the idea to have Ghost just pretend to be him instead (as scheduling [Ghost voice actor Nolan North] lined up better) and wrote all this awesome dialogue. Apparently on the first take Nolan perfectly imitated Drifter and had to be instructed to intentionally do it worse. The end result is some of my favorite dialogue from this release." 

We were this close to missing out on the delightfully playful dialogue of Ghost-Drifter, and while the circumstances surrounding it aren't exactly ideal, it worked out well in the end. The Salvation's Grip finale is arguably the best mission in the entire expansion, and it's easily the most entertaining that our Ghost has ever been.

Austin Wood
Austin Wood
Senior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.