They made their own engine. Kojima is using it for Death Stranding.

To be clear, I'm sure there are people at Bungie who would love to have more time to work on Des2ny, but 3 years is not a totally unreasonable amount of time to create a sequel.

And, controversially, on the long side for the majority of mainstream franchises.

Yup. Most franchise games are in the 1-2 year cycle. 1 year if it's a sports type game where it's really just a small feature add and a roster update most years, and a major overhaul every 2-4 years. Call of Duty is a 2 year dev cycle where two different devs work on a staggered schedule so a game can still come out every year.

CoD switched to a three-year dev cycle after 2014, with Sledgehammer, Treyarch, and IW each putting out a three-year product since then (Advanced Warfare, Black Ops 3, and Infinite Warfare, respectively).
That said, Treyarch (as always) seems to be the only dev putting out a high-quality game each time, with Sledgehammer and IW putting out minor tweaks to each other's formula (and mediocre content as a result).

If you're in-house dev-ing the engine (a'la bungie), you're adding a huge amount of work to your dev cycle well before most of the other team members ever get started. I think 3 years for Destiny 2 is pretty reasonable given where they're jumping off from. Destiny 1 had enough time, too, but because of mistakes made early on in the design of the engine (really the backend toolkit design) and disagreements with/lack of coherent direction, they backslid a lot. That aside, it sounds like they know where they're going with Des2ny and I expect it will far outshine the initial offering.

Not to mention that they've had an entire game to see where their weaknesses have been, and what has worked to fix those weaknesses...

Back to the topic at hand, the 6 years for HZD could be a very long time if they used someone else's engine, or a very quick time if they made it all from scratch. I didn't watch the interview so I can't really say.

As CheapLEY pointed out, they use their own engine (Decima), though they did have to overhaul it because it was built with linear gameplay in mind.

Also, it's indeed the one being used by Kojima Productions in Death Stranding; there is a neat story to go with that too...

And what specifically led to the adoption of Guerrilla Games’ Engine?
Kojima: I visited many studios all around the world, meeting many great people. Guerrilla Games in Amsterdam: their technology was just a league ahead of everywhere else. Even though they have an open world they are able to render very rich scenes with many objects. As you know their upcoming game Horizon Zero Dawn, which is coming out in February, has an artistic sensibility, particularly with regards to the use of color, whereas we’re looking for a very photo-realistic sensibility.

Their engine is built for their purposes, for the game that they wanted to create, and as I said we wanted to create a game that even at the very base levels looks very different from that, so we needed to test it to see how far we could tune their engine to fit our purposes.
Usually when you go to use, buy or borrow an engine, someone will say, “Lend us your name,” or of course ask for payment. We had no contract with Guerrilla Games, but when we met them they suddenly gave us a box, a very pretty box. When we opened the box, there was a USB dongle inside that had the source code for the engine.

Keep in mind we had no contract or anything at this stage, yet still they handed over what was basically the crystallization of their efforts over many years. They simply said, “Mr. Kojima please use this engine,” and we thought these people are incredible.
There was one condition though, that Kojima Productions doesn’t just use the engine, but that we develop the engine together with Guerrilla Games, that it should be a collaborative effort. So we were really blown away by their stance on this and being so open with the engine and we thought “Wow, these are the people we have to work with.”

...and if not in D1, than in D2.

Keeping it in its current role is such a waste.

I would actually be able to say "I've gone to the lighthouse" Then! I mean, it would be ash in my mouth, but I could say it!

...and if not in D1, than in D2.

Keeping it in its current role is such a waste.

You are operating under the assumption that the space only does its job if it is seen by everyone. By your logic, there is no place for secrets in games even though it greatly enhances the world. Just because you build something doesn't mean the player should see it.

In fact when you think about it secrets only do their job if the player hasn't found them all. The moment you have found everything, the limits of the game are known and the mystique is gone. This is also why tracking secrets or completion percentage is a flawed idea.

It's a sequel and we are starting over. Everything should be brand new. Everything.

It's a sequel and we have been set back. Lots of things will be brand new. The very definition of a sequel means everything won't be new.

The old hubs exist in Destiny 1 should you care to revisit them.

But they are still part of the game world, and now they have meaning behind them. If they fit and can be used, I say use them.

Don't get me wrong, I love new stuff but it's also a total waste to give a place meaning and then throw it to the curb.

It's a sequel and we are starting over. Everything should be brand new. Everything.

Nope.
In Borderlands 2, while 99% of everything in the world was brand new, you do get to go revisit the starting town from the first game near the end. Everything is changed, but the town's remains are still as you remember them, and they don't flat-out tell you that it's Firestone at first, so when it hits you, it's a great moment in the game, and one I appreciated.

I'd love to revisit some of the old patrol regions for story's sake (Ishtar Archive, Rasputin's Bunker).

Imagine, if the crazy plan that the Vanguard come up with is to send the Dreadnaught's Core straight at the Cabal's base of operations outside of the solar system, so you land back on the dreadnaught, and while it's the same spawn point as before, the area looks different (Guardians have cleared the place of Hive and Taken, and have probably been working to clear the debris around the Cabal ship). You go to reactivate the Cabal ship that had crash-landed on it, transfer the Dreadnaught's core (with the Cabal's bombs still strapped to it) to the ship, and escape while Cabal come in from the large hole, just like the Prosecutor defense chapter in Republic Commando. Or we could load up a ton of explosives or Guardians onto one of the Golden Age colony ships in the Cosmodrome and shoot up into space like the Sabre launch sequence in Reach... The ways that you could justify revisiting old areas is endless, and really only limited by the developers' imaginations...

The old hubs exist in Destiny 1 should you care to revisit them.

And some should exist in Destiny 2 to remind you of how much has changed...

In Fallout 4, the first time I heard Carla or whoever the wandering merchant was, I'm like "ahh fuck it's Chloe." Then I helped out the girl's brother in that one vault. Fucking Chloe. NBD. I'll play Rise of the Tomb Raider. Go to a bloody locker to find a lost remnant called Nadia. FUCKING CHLOE.

Seriously search Youtube for her characters. It's just growly Chloe voice or high pitched Chloe voice, or Chloe voice.

That's crazy. I've played all of those games, and none of those characters made me think of her. Maybe she sounds like someone that you know personally, so it sticks out more... who knows?

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