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[Man Called Aerodynamics]

Pretty much what everyone had already guessed then... Scrapped and rebooted the story aspect of the game with only months left to pull something else together. And it really really showed.

 

[Mechanized]

“Let’s say a designer wants to go in and move a resource node two inches,” said one person familiar with the engine. “They go into the editor. First they have to load their map overnight. It takes eight hours to input their map overnight. They get [into the office] in the morning. If their importer didn’t fail, they open the map. It takes about 20 minutes to open. They go in and they move that node two feet. And then they’d do a 15-20 minute compile. Just to do a half-second change.”

Holy fucking shit. What the hell would a live team be able to even do?

 

[Smokey_Run]

Interesting read. So we had the Dreadnaught axed and moved, a social space on Mars and a raid on Mars axed, another zone on Earth axed, and what looks to be axed gameplay mechanics for the future (converging fireteam activities).

The most troubling part is the nugget about their tech. While rewriting the story and stuff hurts the game, battling their own internal tech to develop content sounds terrible. Hopefully, it's an issue working with the older consoles and they ditch them for Destiny 2.

 

[Zeta Oni]

No matter how controversial that original supercut was, surely it would have been better to go with it than scrap the whole story right?

Or, alternately, if it really was that bad, how did company management allow it to get so far in the first place? They should have decided to redo it way earlier.

This is kinda whats bothering me about the whole thing. Its not like Staten was writing this game for a year or something. Since at least 2010 this thing was being worked on, AND NO ONE SAID: "Hey, I dont think this is working. Story might be a little campy Joe. Should do a little editing and work stuff out, we got a couple years"

Thats not how companies work. With all due respect, this sounds much more personal.

 

[ryan299]

Most of the development team was proud of the game, a source told me, and many were shocked to see harsh reviews; although most at Bungie had anticipated that players wouldn’t love the story, the team thought Destiny made up for that deficiency in many other ways. One source says they had internal surveys pegging the Metacritic score at around a 90 average; it turned out to be a 76.

Shaking my head.

 

[Kalamari]

Great article, Schreier.

The gaming press needs more journalism like this.

 

[Kenzodielocke]

8 FUCKING hours to load, what the fuck is this shit.

Great work, Schreier.

 

[Kosma]

Difference between Reaper of Souls and the Taken King is that you would benefit of the changes without buying it (via the patch) The core game and story where there.

The Taken King demands you spend 40/60 euro again otherwise you dont get the story etc (as far as I see)

Its not the same AT ALL

Taken King is a big fuck you to people who got the vanilla game whereas ROS was a big sorry

 

[DorkyMohr]

It seems weird to focus so much on the story. Both from a development perspective, and from analyzing what went wrong with the development. Surely they would have some idea of the games structure without outlining specific story beats in an internally produced movie?

 

[Obliterator]

Is Jason Schreier (and Kotaku by proxy) one of the only gaming journalist doing long form articles anymore? Love reading these kind of articles with some research put into them.

He's probably one of if not the best journalists in the industry in terms of hard hitting, heavily researched, stories. In other words a TRUE journalist.

I dont always agree with his opinions but I have huge respect for Jason

 

[Loxley]

I liked this bit about Activision bringing in some of the Diablo 3 leads to basically give Bungie a "Here's how to fix your broke-ass loot system" presentation:

In December of 2014, Diablo III director Josh Mosqueira and a few other members of his team at Blizzard came to Bungie for a talk, according to two people who were there. The parallels were uncanny; Diablo III had launched to commercial success in 2012 but saw a great deal of criticism from fans thanks to randomized loot, frustrating online DRM, and a lack of endgame content. Both games shared a publisher, Activision, that thought Destiny could redeem itself in fans’ eyes the way Diablo III eventually had after its release.

“They basically came in and said, ‘Look, here’s our story of developing Diablo III and then bringing in [the expansion] Reaper of Souls,’” said one person who was at the Blizzard talk. “They were saying, like, ‘Hey, random numbers are not fun—dice rolls are not fun. You can give the illusion of randomness, but you want to weight it towards the player… The only point you have to deliver on is that when people leave your game—because they will—when they leave your game, they need to be happy.’”

People who were at the presentation say it was extraordinarily helpful for Bungie’s team. One source called it “invaluable.” Others said it drove some of the decisions they made for The Taken King. In previous interviews with Kotaku and other sites, director Luke Smith has talked openly about avoiding randomness and designing quests with guaranteed rewards, an approach that has served Destiny well throughout year two so far. Destiny’s meta-narrative has followed the same path as Diablo III’s: It had a rocky launch, then the developers found redemption.

 

[Nirolak]

Shaking my head.

There's a reason you hire external companies like EEDAR to do your mock reviews instead of doing it internally.

 

[hamchan]

Really makes you appreciate the team that developed the gunplay for Destiny, as it's far and away the best console shooting to date. The action just feels so damn good.

They were able to weather whatever storm was going on at Bungie and create some seriously kick-ass FPS gameplay.

Makes sense actually. They could just focus on the feel of the game while every other department was burning down around them, since they aren't really as connected. It's why the feel of the game was the only great thing about vanilla Destiny while everything else was a train wreck.

 

[iNvid02]

sounds like they're tools fucked them, if only scrapping an engine was as easy as scrapping a story.

 

[BokehKing]

Difference between Reaper of Souls and the Taken King is that you would benefit of the changes without buying it (via the patch) The core game and story where there.

The Taken King demands you spend 40/60 euro again.

Err what are you talking about? You didn't have to buy ttk for quality of life changes

 

[Banderdash]

Is Jason Schreier (and Kotaku by proxy) one of the only gaming journalist doing long form articles anymore? Love reading these kind of articles with some research put into them.

Several of the Kotaku staff write great long form pieces... Keza at KotakuUK, Mark Serrels at KotakuAU. But I don't think their stuff get populated to the KotakuUS site.
Also, those 12 page Polygon pieces are generally pretty damn interesting.

Back on topic, I wonder if High Moon are partnering in the way that Sledgehammer, Treyarch, and Infinity Ward are partners... IE: each doing a game at a time and alternating years?

 

[tuxfool]

“The writing team Joe put together was ostracized,” said one person who worked on the game. “The story was written without writers.”

It certainly showed.

 

[Kosma]

Err what are you talking about? You didn't have to buy ttk for quality of life changes

Did they ad a story for vanilla owners to enjoy for free?

Vanilla D3 was fixed by ROS cause only mechanics needed changes, vanilla Destiny needs to make sense

 

[Naythan]

I'd rather have a campy story rather than what we got. The "story" in Destiny made me feel absolutely nothing, it's a non-entity.

 

[Jarmel]

Dat press sneak fuck

 

[hydrophilic attack]

Press sneak fuck DOING WORK

 

[The Technomancer]

The vast majority of reviews were ragging on it for the story.
If they hadn't had to cut out and reboot the whole thing it wouldn't have seemed so disjointed, and everyone would have had plenty of time to make enjoyable and logical missions like the Halo games had.

They, Activision, were justified in expecting 90+, and Bungie deserved to lose the bonus.

The loot and drop system too right? I put about 12 hours into Destiny back about six months ago and even then it didn't seem great

 

[Felix Lighter]

No wonder they haven't touched a PC port. Who at Bungie wants to work on that engine to release on a new platform.

 

[Carn82]

They are better off putting in the work to mimic the core gameplay in UE so they have proper tools to work with for future changes. Their tools right now sound like a complete disaster and will plague the game for it's entire existence.

Well, it's not just the gameplay. This GDC talk might be a nice read: http://gdcvault.com/play/1022106/Lessons-from-the-Core-Engine

 

[Liamc723]

Difference between Reaper of Souls and the Taken King is that you would benefit of the changes without buying it (via the patch) The core game and story where there.

The Taken King demands you spend 40/60 euro again otherwise you dont get the story etc (as far as I see)

Incorrect. Update 2.0 was for everyone.

Did they ad a story for vanilla owners to enjoy for free?

Yes they did.

 

[Blablurn]

cant wait to hear jeff gerstmanns take on this

 

[Alucrid]

Great article. Do writers usually work so sequestered from the rest of the devs? I just can't fathom never checking in on the story and then being presented the final product only to think it's terrible.

 

[Nirolak]

8 FUCKING hours to load, what the fuck is this shit.

Great work, Schreier.

There was a time when this was quite common in the industry.

It's why you saw a ton of companies doing massive technology overhauls focused on tools vastly above all.

The developers who didn't take that approach were not happy in the long run.

Your avatar is actually a good example. If you remember, early Fox Engine screenshots were actually quite ugly, but they were pouring all their efforts into the toolchain up front since they could always fix the graphics later, but the ability to develop the game very efficiently had to be there as soon as possible.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

God I love scuttlebutt, especially the clusterfuck variety. The engine sounds like Madden 1996.

decent article from Kotaku? Probably Jason Schreier...and it is!

Press Sneak Fucks have the time.

 

[Zoibie]

That was fascinating, fantastic work Jason. So am I to take it that their new Year 2 model allows them the time to go back and rework the engine a bit? Obviously there's only so much you can do when you have to ship another full size product in less than 12 months but it can only be a good thing that they don't have to worry about another two expansions at the same time.

 

[LiK]

There was a time when this was quite common in the industry.

It's why you saw a ton of companies doing massive technology overhauls focused on tools vastly above all.

The developers who didn't take that approach were not happy in the long run.

Your avatar is actually a good example. If you remember, early Fox Engine screenshots were actually quite ugly, but they were pouring all their efforts into the toolchain up front since they could always fix the graphics later, but the ability to develop the game as efficiently as possible had to be there as soon as possible.

where is your new avy from?

 

[BLCKATK]

Damn, just imagine what kind of game the original or Destiny 2 could be if their engine actually worked correctly. Multiple new zones, new raid. The game would actually match up to the ambitions that the team put forward.

 

[Htown]

That stuff about the tools is fucking amazing

Press sneak fuck DOING WORK

yup

good shit, Schreier

 

[Obliterator]

Great article. Do writers usually work so sequestered from the rest of the devs? I just can't fathom never checking in on the story and then being presented the final product only to think it's terrible.

More common than you would think. For example Mass Effect 3

 

[Nirolak]

where is your new avy from?

Shin Megami Tensei 4's sequel: http://abload.de/img/smt41f9syr.jpg

 

[jelly]

You know when devs say games cost a lot to make, well no shit with tools like that.

 

[Newtype-001]

Those Fuckers.

"Campy Linearity" is exactly what i wanted from destiny.

 

[The Lamonster]

Damn. That was awesome. Love the teaming up of the Blizz & Bungie devs.

Totally. My two favorite devs for a long, long time.

 

[Kenzodielocke]

There was a time when this was quite common in the industry.

It's why you saw a ton of companies doing massive technology overhauls focused on tools vastly above all.

The developers who didn't take that approach were not happy in the long run.

Your avatar is actually a good example. If you remember, early Fox Engine screenshots were actually quite ugly, but they were pouring all their efforts into the toolchain up front since they could always fix the graphics later, but the ability to develop the game very efficiently had to be there as soon as possible.

I understand that, I thought this was a problem developers had about 15-20 years ago, but not in the 2010's.

 

[Nokterian]

In December of 2014, Diablo III director Josh Mosqueira and a few other members of his team at Blizzard came to Bungie for a talk, according to two people who were there. The parallels were uncanny; Diablo III had launched to commercial success in 2012 but saw a great deal of criticism from fans thanks to randomized loot, frustrating online DRM, and a lack of endgame content. Both games shared a publisher, Activision, that thought Destiny could redeem itself in fans’ eyes the way Diablo III eventually had after its release.

“They basically came in and said, ‘Look, here’s our story of developing Diablo III and then bringing in [the expansion] Reaper of Souls,’” said one person who was at the Blizzard talk. “They were saying, like, ‘Hey, random numbers are not fun—dice rolls are not fun. You can give the illusion of randomness, but you want to weight it towards the player… The only point you have to deliver on is that when people leave your game—because they will—when they leave your game, they need to be happy.’”

See? I was saying this before Destiny was Diablo 3 at launch and seeing the taken king finally up on level with reaper of souls this game is more then redeemed.

Also i still play RoS since the patches and expansion made the game great again.

 

[psynergylover]

WOW!!! I must say Saten version seemed pretty cool, seems like pre-reboot destiny had alot of conent

 

[SomTervo]

Ok, have read it now, and I'm gonna trust the Bungie management on this one, they wouldn't have scrapped all that work without damn good reasons.

Statens original space-opera plan could have been a load of bloated horseshit, as opposed to the barebones bullshit we ended up with.
There are no winners here.

I don't know. What we got wasn't even barebones. It was half a skeleton with bits of flesh hanging off it.

I would have fully preferred it if we got a whole bloated zombie-fleshed thing over a half-assed flawed thing.

Like, I spent £55 on the game, and the story content could all be summed up in about 15 minutes. The gameplay lasted me probably 8 hours, maybe less, before it was just diminishing loot-based returns (except the Raid which I never had the patience to reach). If there had been a story, I at least would have felt happy I completed something. Rather than nothing.

 

[twobear]

Jesus. Well, I guess this puts paid to 'why doesn't every studio build their own engine like in the good old days'.

 

[MAX PAYMENT]

Glad we got the obvious out of the way. Now someone needs to find out what the fuck happened to MGSV.

This.

 

[LiK]

Shin Megami Tensei 4's sequel: http://abload.de/img/smt41f9syr.jpg

tank you

 

[hamchan]

Damn, just imagine what kind of game the original or Destiny 2 could be if their engine actually worked correctly. Multiple new zones, new raid. The game would actually match up to the ambitions that the team put forward.

The amount of content this game potentially could have had with a more efficient development process makes me sad.

 

[dmr87]

Thereitis.gif

 

[Banderdash]

There was a time when this was quite common in the industry.

It's why you saw a ton of companies doing massive technology overhauls focused on tools vastly above all.

The developers who didn't take that approach were not happy in the long run.

Your avatar is actually a good example. If you remember, early Fox Engine screenshots were actually quite ugly, but they were pouring all their efforts into the toolchain up front since they could always fix the graphics later, but the ability to develop the game very efficiently had to be there as soon as possible.

I thought part of the investment in tools came about from spending a generation getting shafted over the cost of engine outsourcing?

 

[de_facto]

Alright, one mystery solved gumshoe.Good Work!! Now onto the Kojima/Konami fiasco.

 

[ezekial45]

Great article. Despite how the story turned out on release, I really do like how it's shaping up now. They're building the characters in a great way now, and with this steady stream of new features coming, I think we're in store for something really cool.

They definitely did the right thing by having the D3 devs consult on Destiny, as TTK showed a lot of improvement. I really hope we'll see the new Earth zone, Mars raid, and Europa eventually.