What actually happened to Destiny's development? (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Friday, September 26, 2014, 01:14 (3948 days ago) @ Ragashingo

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...