Because… (Destiny)

by General Battuta, Tuesday, February 16, 2016, 22:09 (3206 days ago) @ Kahzgul
edited by General Battuta, Tuesday, February 16, 2016, 22:20

I wrote a very large chunk of the D1 Grimoire and in-game flavor text, as well as a large contribution to Dark/HoW and all of the Books of Sorrow, and I really think I'd have suffered writing game script.

Grimoire cards were a case of 'we'll lock you in this room, brainstorm and jam and write whatever you want, your boss will review it with his expert eyes and then it's going to translation'. (This process was intense and fun and probably the best time I ever had at Bungie.) Voiced game script is a highly political process, with review from studio leads, multiple rewrites, designer feedback, and, of course, the need to meet the actor's schedules.

Note that the Grimoire cards are pretty stylistically and thematically diverse. You've got talk about mind forking, concatenated simulations, military flash traffic, Cormac McCarthy stylings...how much of this would survive the process of becoming a game script, which needs (for very good reason) to be accessible to a broad audience?

It's a moot point since none of the D1 Grimoire or script team is still at Bungie, but while I'd love to (and hope to) keep writing Grimoire cards, I think they're much more like Marathon terminals than they are like game script proper.

The current Bungie writing team is full of super cool talent and I'm excited to read their cards!