Predictions for Bungie/Destiny at GDC

by Spawn , Sunday, March 17, 2013, 20:09 (4267 days ago)

Greetings DBO, found this great write up from Conscars over at DestinyHub on his future predictions for Bungie and their presentation on March 28th for GDC. I encourage you all to give it a read. Here are some of highlights:

Back in November, an advertising agency leaked some concept art and game details. The leaked slides actually tell us a lot about the game's high-level requirements:

• A deep, tangible, and relatable universe
  
• Centered around adventure; fun and accessible
  
• Highly social; always filled with friends
  
• Allows for open exploration; full of things to discover

These key values need to remain intact through the entire production cycle and are the measure of success during testing. Therefore if Bungie's session is to cover their world building techniques "from concept to production", then I would expect to see at GDC how the above values are applied to the process. I predict that we'll see specific examples (case studies) of how these requirements get turned into in-game environments or gameplay mechanics.

I hope that we'll learn more about the scale of this brave new world and how much freedom players have in it. Bungie gave us 3 early hints at Destiny's scale during the O Brave New World video:

As the sun moves overhead during the video, we see the dynamic lighting Bungie has developed for Destiny. In all the Halo games, levels were lit with pre-rendered lightmaps. While pre-rendered lighting is as realistic as you need it to be, high quality lightmap generation is very computationally expensive. A better alternative for Destiny and its day/night cycle would be dynamic lighting that approximates high quality lighting but does so at interactive frame rates. In 2009, Bungie published some research regarding real time lighting and atmospherics.

-Grognok
-Bigger Enviornments
-A look at future features and key elements
-Possibly a look at the world (but I doubt it)

Nonetheless, the next big wave of information will no doubt be throughout Bungie's spotlight at GDC in a couple weeks. I think we'll be looking at an overview of the principles of Destiny, more so clarification on the game mechanics and principles that have already been talked about.

From the most recent Bungie Mailsack, DeeJ says that it's "157 slides of amazing information" so what do we expect?

GPK Ethan What do you guys plan on showing at GDC?
"The GDC is really more of an industry affair than a marketing venue. If that’s what you’re after, we’ve got some thoughts about what we might share from the proceedings. When last we checked in with Joe and Barry, their presentation was a whopping 157 slides long, and bursting with Bungie secret sauce." - DeeJ

Cheers :)