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[Stone Ocean]

This is really, really bad for a game like Destiny.

What the fuck lol

 

[Kill3r7]

Fantastic read. It seems Blizzard had a really positive influence on Bungie. Not sure how Bungie pulled it off but they got incredibly lucky having Destiny turn out to be such a great success.

 

[theSlacker]

Destiny 2 should really be a complete restart. To me, Destiny is kind of a mess in pretty much every way except the mechanics, which are great. If they can do better at the MMO side of progression and story, I'll jump back into 2 ... But the game totally feels like a scramble to fix what went wrong.

There is some really great story stuff, but it's super hidden behind the Grimore cards.

 

[Nirolak]

Fantastic read. It seems Blizzard had a really positive influence on Bungie.

Reaper of Souls was a very popular comparison to make for The Taken King, but I never realized Blizzard went over to their office and suggest they literally do just that haha.

 

[Blue Ninja]

(One person familiar with development says Bungie sequestered a team and had them crunch out Dark Below in just nine weeks, which may explain how insubstantial it was.)

And yet they still charged 20 dollars for it. Jesus.

 

[GRIMREEFZ]

" it was too campy and linear"

Now if we could get an article explaining what the hell that means... LOL but this is great. Good OT!

 

[NegroNinja]

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

 

[Disguises]

I love behind the scenes stuff like this. It was so clear when Destiny launched that something had happened so I'm glad some of it is in the light. It's just a shame that none of us will ever get to play pre-reboot Destiny.

 

[Interfectum]

This is so astonishingly embarrassing I felt the need to add it to the OP.

This is like when Respawn revealed that Insomniac's engine circa 2010-2011 had a 47 step process to import an art asset.

In case anyone is wondering why Epic and Unity get a ton of business, bask in the glory of internal one studio engines.

Yup that stood out to me the most. Put Destiny 3 on UE4 and be done with it.

 

[Carn82]

Why do devs keep killing themselves with these in-house engines? Instead of just scrapping the story, they should have scrapped the entire project and moved everything to Unreal Engine.

Bungie wanted to keep their 'core gameplay', so they iterated on what they already have. Also, support for 3rd party engines gets more complicated the more you thinker with them.

 

[Fushichou187]

This is a meaty, thoughtful peek behind the curtain you've brought us, Mr. Schreier. Really good read. Thank you.

 

[Obliterator]

This is so astonishingly embarrassing I felt the need to add it to the OP.

This is like when Respawn revealed that Insomniac's engine circa 2010-2011 had a 47 step process to import an art asset.

In case anyone is wondering why Epic and Unity get a ton of business, bask in the glory of internal one studio engines.

Yeah that bit is pretty damning. They have a lot to work on for the sequel, and further evidence that has me wondering if Destiny 2 is still a 2016 title

 

[The_Hitcher89]

Surely it was better than the shite they actually ended up with? Unless the intention was to scrap something solid yet bad, and implement something so nonsensical that a decent story could be told in future iterations without necessarily contradicting the basis.

 

[schlongdog]

They won't make the sea mistakes with 2 right? RIGHT?

 

[Bold One]

I'd rather have campy than stiff boring characters we got. TTK brought back a lot of camp which is kinda amusing.

I know, right?

 

[Blue Ninja]

This is so astonishingly embarrassing I felt the need to add it to the OP.

This is like when Respawn revealed that Insomniac's engine circa 2010-2011 had a 47 step process to import an art asset.

In case anyone is wondering why Epic and Unity get a ton of business, bask in the glory of internal one studio engines.

Seriously.

“Bungie is ravenously appreciative of the people that play their games, and they listen, they listen so clearly. But because the tools are shit, and because no one can reach consensus on how to fix the game in the time that’s allotted, you get a lot of sort of paralysis.”

This article is eye-opening. Amazing writing.

 

[Interfectum]

Bungie wanted to keep their 'core gameplay', so they iterated on what they already have. Also, support for 3rd party engines gets more complicated the more you thinker with them.

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.

 

[DNAbro]

The Blizzard visiting Bungie part kind of leads even more proof at that leak for Destiny 2 earlier in the year. Where it said Mercury was a huge part of Destiny 2 and will focus mostly on Osiris.

 

[shanafan]

Good article, but just not sure what I am expected to gain from this knowledge. Been playing Destiny since launch, and still playing it. I imagine even if the original supercut made it into the game, I would probably still be playing it right now.

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

“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.”

Remember guys, Destiny 2 is coming out in less than 12 months and they are still dealing with this shit

 

[Jeremy]

Finally! I've been waiting on this. Next I need the MGSV story.

 

[theSlacker]

The story changing stuff sounds and is disappointing, but was highly expected. The real problem with development seems to be the engine though. Like it doesn't sound like the game would have been any better if they kept the original story since it was making the game itself that is holding everything back, not implementing story.

 

[tuxfool]

What I don't understand is how the game progressed so much without other departments getting in touch with the story. How is it that people were surprised that it was bad after all that time?

I would imagine when the story is brought together, there ought to be glints of things worth keeping, and further revisions work and massage the story to get better, not for the story to be so bad that it warrants a complete refresh from ground zero.

 

[The Lamonster]

Fascinating. Kotaku is blocked at my work so thanks for all the quotes, guys.

I'm Team Jones.

 

[mnannola]

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.

 

[mattp]

“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.”

well, that sounds like a nightmare

 

[Midas]

That's a really great article. Thanks for that Jason.

 

[BokehKing]

Great article.

One particular bit that caught my attention:



Does this mean that Destiny 2 will not be developed by Bungie?

I think the social space is being made by high moon


I'm very concerned over he games engine, I wanted to blame it on last gen, but apparently the engine is just ass

 

[ultron87]

I'm still interested to know when the game went from the open world "if you can see it you can go there!" game they originally pitched to the very contained patrol zones we have now. I have to imagine that happened before these story changes.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

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.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

So if Bungie continue to screw up and need Activision's own internal studios to complete their game, what will Activision do (if anything) regarding their contract? I can't imagine they'd be happy with this performance surely??

 

[hamchan]

Gosh I hope they have a solution to that shit engine for Destiny 2.

Also the DLC being so sparse and lackluster is explained if they only had 9 weeks to make it. Didn't stop them from charging $20 for those "expansions" though.

 

[Fergie]

If the original story structure was similar to TTK, then it would have been fine. TTK is the best thing so far about Destiny, for the first few hours at least.

Really amazing how everything just worked out in the end. That engine sounds like a nightmare.

I still don't know what Destiny is about. Not a single damn thing. 400 hours and counting.

There are cards online to read about the background of the universe.

 

[Imbarkus]

Why do devs keep killing themselves with these in-house engines? Instead of just scrapping the story, they should have scrapped the entire project and moved everything to Unreal Engine.

You know, we have no idea how much of a developer's margin a third party engine licensing agreement requires.

If Unreal Engine is such a boon to the bottom line, why did most third party developers seem to struggle to survive last gen?

 

[The Lamonster]

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.

 

[Balmung421]

That meeting involving the diablo 3 developers was really awesome to read.

Hope they can fix their shitty tools for Destiny 2.

 

[Obliterator]

Reaper of Souls was a very popular comparison to make for The Taken King, but I never realized Blizzard went over to their office and suggest they literally do just that haha.

Whats funny is I suggested that may have happened to a degree in a thread before. I just had a feeling Blizzard would get involved in some way, as Destiny’s performance would also affect them, as they are financially part of Activision. Also it made sense with them and Bungie all being part of the Activision family

 

[BokehKing]

I'm still interested to know when the game went from the open world "if you can see it you can go there!" game they originally pitched to the very contained patrol zones we have now. I have to imagine that happened before these story changes.

That was never going to happen, even in Wow you can't go everywhere

 

[Sylas]

I'm really curious to see if they can actually support an annualized Destiny. Part of the reason why TTK sold so well, I think, is because of the marked improvements made over Destiny 1. They managed to capitalize on the ill-will towards the game by capturing the attention of the naysayers that wanted to see if it'd crash and burn or start to pull up.

Which is basically a 1-time thing. People have seen that TTK can be an improvement, and while it's certainly better it still has a load of issues. They don't have the sheer volume of negative press to turn around and blow up for Destiny 2.

It's cynical, but you only get one big do-over. It worked for FFXIV and it worked for Destiny, but it's not the sort of thing you can repeat. Keeping the hype train rolling 3-4 years down the road is going to be difficult--and expensive.

 

[Xaero Gravity]

Absolutely fantastic read. Great work, Jason.

 

[Cybit]

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

Kudos Jason!

 

[LordBaztion]

The Rasputin mission is one of my favorites in the game.
/continues reading

 

[Haruko]

“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.”

The worst part is, he wanted to go in to move the node "two inches", but accidentally moved it "two feet" instead.

Poor guy has to do this process all over again.

 

[Patryn]

The vanilla Destiny story is considered non-linear?

I guess in the sense that none of it makes sense so it doesn't matter what order you play things in, but what?

 

[dex3108]

I still can't believe that they were hoping for 90+ Metacritic. Working long time on something can really cloud your judgement.

 

[Glendemonium]

Wait, so they thought the original story was too campy, so they replaced it "That wizard came from the moon?"

I'm far more curious how "campy" the original story was to make a good comparison. I think the change had more to do with executive meddling more than anything.

 

[Felix Lighter]

If the engine information is accurate, that sounds like an extremely painful work environment. That would be an insane bottleneck to deal with. The story stuff sounds about what I expected. They scrapped the original and just tried to tie things together as best they could to make the deadline.

 

[Swordsman VII]

If the original story was what some leaks said it was ("the traveler and speaker are actually evil guyse omg"), then I'm glad it got the fuck out. So predictable and unimaginative.

The solution to just cut out story entirely was equally lame. So much wasted potential in the launch version of Destiny. Taken King's story seems to be a sign that they are moving in the right direction though.

 

[Teriyaki]

If moving a resource node takes 2 days, I don't even want to know how long it took to make an emote.

 

[BokehKing]

That meeting involving the diablo 3 developers was really awesome to read.

Hope they can fix their shitty tools for Destiny 2.

Diablo 3 team should have started off with "you're going to need 10 different versions of every exotic with various cosmetic tweaks for each one.....basically you need at least 500 exotic weapons.....can you do that?"

"We have about 20"

"......."