15 Best Reload Animations in Games

Destiny 2

A weapon’s sound design is just as integral as the visual stimuli offered in a supremely animated reload. Destiny 2, for the record, features stunning sound design, a seamless blend of industrial clang and synthetic texture. It’s a topic that’d need a whole other rundown. For the animations themselves, well, they’re on the faster side requiring streamlined and meticulous actions despite they’re otherworldly designs. Like the weapons in Borderlands 3, Destiny 2’s reload animations offer barely any set up, but there is a glimmer of post-reload animation momentum as your Guardian arcs the barrel back to centre. Of course, there’s room for intricate and unique details throughout Destiny 2’s plethoric arsenal: the Sturm hand cannon’s bulky hammer movement is at its most extreme when forcefully cocked back, or the moment before The Colony grenade launcher’s magnetised cartridge seizes onto the receiver, its projectile then auto-loading into the chamber before the barrel weightily slots back into place. Magical.