Am I the only one around here

by uberfoop , Seattle-ish, Thursday, March 28, 2013, 22:53 (4049 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Am I the only one around here wondering why, with all the other engines that were shown that completely outclass what we've seen of destiny so far, Bungie still insists on going with their own engine and not licensing? Say what you will about Bungie but their engine tech has always been middle of the road compared to other contemporary games.

Because as much as people insist otherwise, Bungie is not technologically clueless.

First off, a lot of the stuff being shown right now is for the next-gen consoles. Bungie can't take full advantage of those resources at the moment because Destiny is a cross-gen game and has to be able to run on eight-year-old hardware. It's also technically quite ambitious in gameplay, which is going to limit the polish of its visuals.

The more important thing, though, is that Bungie can always tune their engines for the look and feel they're going for.
Halo 3 is a great example of this. There's a ton of design choices, like how the water works and the way some foliage reacts to things, that are costly and subtle but contribute to the game's feel. But on a core engine level, nothing stands about the lighting model. It's unique, and it's fantastic, and it's absurdly expensive and would never have happened if Bungie has gone with a cheap middleware solution.

Bungie's games haven't usually competed at the bleeding edge of battles over the amount of detail in the foreground, and they don't always tick off all the standard graphical checkboxes that every middleware engine ever does... but they generally manage to hold their own well enough, while doing awesome experimental stuff that sets them apart, while nailing their aesthetic vision, while also being very full-featured. If having fewer polygons is what it takes for spartans to go splashy splashy float float down a river, I'm down with it.