Why doesn't Bungie just make an all-black shader? It's a question that has puzzled and infuriated Destiny players since pretty much the game's inception. It was almost two years after the original game's launch before the studio finally added the shader, and despite the name even that still had some shades of grey in it.
Meanwhile in Destiny 2, we've had to make do with the likes of Metro Shift, Shrouded Stripes and Abyssinian Gold—none of [[link]] which quite hit the pure black spot due to unwanted Kevlar effects, camo patterning and so on. For us fashionistas hoping to enjoy peak Bela Lugosi is Dead levels of Hot Topic edgelord with our fits, it has been a struggle.
That struggle ended earlier today, when Bungie released the new Erebos Glance shader at the weekly reset. Available for the entirely reasonable sum of 300 Bright Dust from the Eververse store, as you can see from the looks I've thrown together below (one for each class), this is as close as we've been able to come to a truly blacked out look.
That's pretty black, right? Some [[link]] might say: none more black. Okay, yes, the eagle-eyed among you will have spotted there's some bright orange accenting going on. And veteran players will be only too aware that Bungie's shader icons rarely tell anything remotely like the full story when it comes to what colours are actually going to be displayed on your gear.
I mean, seriously, do you see any orange in the icon below? You do [[link]] not.
And yet there it very much is...
In fact, the orange element, which tends to pop up on certain cloth textures, can be pretty punchy on some items. But choose your transmogs carefully and you'll be able to pull off a look that screams 'I have at least read Nietzche's Wikipedia page and own the Cure album with Lullaby on'.
Which of course brings us to the obvious answer why Bungie has historically been so reluctant to give us predominantly black shaders. We are, by and large, a bunch of unimaginative beggars, and faced with the choice between crafting a coherent, colorful look or just slapping black on everything and calling it done, I know what path most will take. Just don't blame me when the Tower looks like a Nine Inch Nails convention for the rest of the year.
