I remember being nervous about Joseph Staton's departure last year. Makes me wonder why the lead writer would leave...

I can say nothing about Joe in particular.

From what I have heard, the story was supposedly revamped significantly as recently as 2013. I don't know why. A bunch of writers were subject to some tough crunch time. That took its toll on the story, and the writers. A lot of the story effort was at the last minute, including the grimoire stuff apparently.

I think it is reasonable to speculate that things were definitely rushed, for whatever reason.

A couple of thoughts on this:

1. A game's development can be a nasty thing. One of the neatest things I ever read was the look back at the 2013 Tomb Raider called: The Final Hours of Tomb Raider. It's an app for iPad (and other platforms maybe?) that had in-depth interviews and inside information on the struggles of making that game. Tomb Raider had a very rocky development for a long time. It's basic story changed at least twice. Its targeted mix of combat and exploration and survival changed significantly over the course of development. Finally though something clicked, the basic combat system I think, and the game all came together... not quite in "the final hours" but closer than you would like to think for a multi-million dollar project.

Those were a great watch. They're included in the DE, I think. Can't recall if I saw them in the last-gen version, but I'm fairly certain that's where I watched them.

Also, The Last of Us has a great Making-of. So much was changed, cut, or outright reversed in that game...

Perhaps Destiny was similar? Hopefully not, but then we only learned of Halo 2's development problems after it shipped.

Reminds me of Transformers 2, where everyone was raving at how awesome it would be, and how much attention was being paid to the fans... Then all of the apologies and excuses came months after release...

2. Right now we don't know what is coming. Currently there are 6 high level story missions listed on the DestinyTracker site. Mission we have not seen. Without spoiling anything, each one follows up on what has happened in the story so far. Optimistically, Bungie has a lot more missions in waiting that fill out a rich full story. We don't know that the Queen's Brother doesn't come down to Earth and have that cutscene at some later point, for instance. Right now I think it's too early to tell if something went wrong with Destiny's story or if it's being held back for some reason.

My thoughts too. I'm not one to moan about story being left out or wanting it spoonfed to me, but there's definitely the vibe of major arcs and development missing from the game, and not just hooks for the DLC content. The entire Venus/Mars portions of the game feel insanely rushed. And it sucks, because Venus got off to a great start, and then, whoomp, off to Mars.
How did the Vex make it to Mars? What was that about Mercury? Why the Archive? Why are the Vex going home? Never mind, Vex mind is dead, the Traveler is happy now, everyone's debt has been wiped and Healthcare is free.

But no, something's still bad...

I'm all for vague bits and expanded content... But yeah, either Staten didn't leave soon enough (my guess), and Bungie had to work with his amateur style, or he left too early for Bungie to know what the crap he was going on about...

In the end I agree... something is up. The depths of the Destiny universe are amazing but the up front story is... very oddly incomplete. I've either played or read through the story of ever Bungie game and none have left so many thing hanging. Hopefully this is because they intend the 25 or so mission we have now to be just the start of a much longer, more complete story...

I was talking to someone here about story expansion. Do we expect post-campaign content, such as Borderlands 2's "Assault on Dragon Keep"? Or mid-game story expansions, such as Mass Effect 2's character DLC?

I'd personally prefer mid-game content to give the story depth and clarity, rather than filling out the hooks post-game...

I'm going to take a guess and say it's the result of absurd levels of mismanagement by upper-level staff, like it usually is in the industry.

I think Cody may have been somewhat on the right track when he implied that the investment system may be partly to blame.

I think a focus was made to prioritize the investment/loot system, and then working a story around the progression system hindered time to actually develop the in-game story as was originally intended. Tons of notes and story had to have been deferred to the Grimoire cards as they got cut in favor of pushing the grind elements forward. Why work on cutscenes and character interactions and drama when you need to focus on a stable online ecosystem? It seems odd that after five years in development, we get much more polished and functional systems than we get in-game story content, and the Grimoire cards aren't implemented into the game itself, but rather worked into a website, so they can be updated/added to later...

I had a couple friends at Bioware working on Star Wars: The Old Republic and about halfway through development they talked about this sense of dread that kind of just permeated the office and everything they did, because the vast majority of the people there realized they were literally copy-pasting World of Warcraft with a Star Wars skin and hoping millions in dollars in voice work would save the game. To make things worse, everyone from producer level up was resistant to any sort of input from the people actually busting their asses on the floor because of ego issues and the amount of money invested in the game's success.

I don't know. I'm having fun with Destiny, and I've played it for hours pretty much every day since release, but it is so drastically different and disappointing compared to the game I thought I was going to get, and expected from my favorite studio.

I'm going to take a guess and say it's the result of absurd levels of mismanagement by upper-level staff, like it usually is in the industry.

I would posit that Activision has at least something to do with it.

But games can be a lot of fun despite their story flaws or lack of story. The arcade games of old are still fun despite having no story. Newer games can have great gameplay but little to no story and still provide many hours of enjoyment. Lil' Blue and I still play Crackdown together, not because it has any redeeming story qualities, but because the sandbox is fun. Same thing with Reach.

I guess it comes down to which is more important for you, story or gameplay. Obviously having both be great would be ideal. If one was lacking, which would you rather it be? If I had to choose, I would rather have great gameplay with a lackluster story. For me, Destiny is great despite its story telling problems. The gameplay keeps me coming back, just like old arcade games do. Would I love it more if they improved the story elements? Absolutely, but their lacking hasn't ruined the game for me.

The vision was bigger than they had time for. The additional miscalculation is that BUngie planned for more content, stories, and ideas than could possibly fit in the first release, because they knew they had ten years. But just like all projects when the release date came closer they had to start cutting things, drawing a line across things that would come first, or come later. The absolute easiest thing to do is to cut visual content and story, because that eliminates large amounts of artist work and testing. Unlike some studios though, they had an out. They knew they could release continuous patches and added content in the weeks and months after release. So they polished what they could and shipping.

You know you've seen those games where there are bugs, or balance issues, or map design flaws. Bungie, for all their lack of story content and feeling or repetitive missions, has managed to lay an absolutely SOLID base to build upon. Even the greatest detractors admit that he game is fluid and fun. I have personally witnessed no bugs or flaws, and I haven't really seen any reported. Yes, there were networking issues, but it's really hard to test what happens when a million people globally try and hit your servers at once :)

Yes, it's an optimistic take. But having worked in Software for a number of years, I can say that the digital medium allows for absolutely crazy and large ideas, and they are ALWAYS cut short by funding and time.

Something happened in this development of Destiny and I want to know who to blame, because what we were told we were getting isn't at all like the final product.

"Yet". Okay, it wasn't in the Sept 9th shipping product, but it may still make it into the Destiny universe.

While I wish Bungie would open up and admit to what is really going on, I don't think they can. To admit they ran out of time is to admit failure, which the industry and the buying public, regardless of how fun the game is, would murder them over. No, they have to hang their heads high, say "we know what we're doing", and hope that in time they are able to create the universe that they dreamed about. And I think we have absolutely every reason to believe they can.

Great observations. For me, grandiose vision not quite realized covers a multitude of sins. Swing for the fences, goddamnit.

While I wish Bungie would open up and admit to what is really going on, I don't think they can. To admit they ran out of time is to admit failure, which the industry and the buying public, regardless of how fun the game is, would murder them over. No, they have to hang their heads high, say "we know what we're doing", and hope that in time they are able to create the universe that they dreamed about. And I think we have absolutely every reason to believe they can.

They ran out of time for Halo 1, hence running missions backwards. They didn't admit they ran out of time until Halo 2.

They then ran out of time for Halo 2 and cut the entire campaign short, and finally admitted that around Halo 3.

My guess is that the scope of Destiny got to be too big for the previous-gen consoles. These older consoles have a very large install base compared to the current-gen. They needed those last-gen people to buy-in, so they have incentive to continue the 10 year run when they finally upgrade. hence the "you can bring your character from last-gen to next-gen." I bet things were cut to fit on last-gen consoles. Hopefully, future iterations of Destiny will be PS4/XBone only, so that they can take full advantage of the hardware available.

While I wish Bungie would open up and admit to what is really going on, I don't think they can. To admit they ran out of time is to admit failure, which the industry and the buying public, regardless of how fun the game is, would murder them over. No, they have to hang their heads high, say "we know what we're doing", and hope that in time they are able to create the universe that they dreamed about.

Really? Usually big companies get massive props for discussing failings, so much so that I'm surprised they don't use it more often as a marketing tactic. It makes them look humble and close to their customers and "authentic."

Hanging their heads high is exactly the thing that a lot of people already are murdering Bungie over.