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[Kotaku] The Messy, True Story Behind The Making Of Destiny

T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
Uhhhh is this normal? I feel like "being able to adjust locations of geometry without loading in the entire volume of assets" should be a feature of an engine
“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.”
Click to expand...
 
P

ps3ud0

Member
Kinda upsets me how Destiny might have been as Ive been completely alienated by Year 1 Destiny and how Bungie kept tinkering with it. Its not a game that at all respects peoples time and even if it became something brilliant Im now going to automatically ignore it for the next 8 years

Feel sorry for the devs who got fucked over pre-launch, Bungie lost any respect I had for them

I should say thanks for the article

ps3ud0 8)
 
R

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Fantastic piece. Everything makes a lot of sense. This part in particular stood out to me.

It’s not uncommon for a game’s scope to reduce during development, but Bungie had a unique problem. People who worked on this project say that one of Bungie’s fundamental issues over the past few years has been the game’s engine, which the studio built from scratch alongside Destiny. Four sources pointed to Destiny’s technology—the tools they use to design levels, render graphics, and create content—as an inhibiting factor in the game’s development.

“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.”

People who have worked with Destiny’s tech say the company is capable of powering incredible things behind the scenes, like player matchmaking. It’s also clear that Destiny is one of the best-looking video games ever made. But as a tool-set for designers, sources say, Destiny’s engine is subpar, and creating new maps and missions at Bungie can be grueling for developers.
Click to expand...

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

Future

Member
All makes sense. Story and missions all felt cobbled together

Thank god they talked to blizzard about handling loot. Legendaries turning into random low tier loot was one of the worst decisions I had ever seen in a game.
 
L

LiK

Member
RoboPlato said:
Fantastic piece. Everything makes a lot of sense. This part in particular stood out to me.



This is really, really bad for a game like Destiny.
Click to expand...

yea, ia lso suspected that the engine was at fault for how limited in scope some missions were.
 
C

ClubCyberia

Member
“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.”
Click to expand...

Ouch.
 
E

EmCeeGramr

Member
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.
Click to expand...

this is amazing

I... everyone joked that the two games shared that in common, but to see it revealed that that they intentionally did that is pretty funny.
 
I

ironcreed

Banned
Meanwhile at Bungie and Activision:

richpeople-bed-money-laughing.gif


I doubt they really give a damn at this point. The game was a success and they are probably smiling as they read this. But it is definitely interesting to hear the behind the scenes details, yet it's not at all surprising.
 
R

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Familienoberhauptvogel said:
Honestly could it possibly have been worse than what we got in the final cut?

Why would you scrap a bad story when you don't have the leniency to make a better one and why would the leadership not come to the conclusion sooner.
Click to expand...

High Moon has said they're partnering with Bungie on supporting Destiny. I assume that means that stuff that's partially made/less important will be finished by High Moon and Bungie works on the bigger, new stuff.
 
B

BiggNife

Member
This is a pretty fascinating article

The part where Bungie got Blizzard's Diablo team to come in and explain how they fixed Diablo 3 with Reaper of Souls is cool. You usually don't see developers working off each other like that, so it's nice to see Bungie took advantage of their Activision partnership in that way.
 
M

M0nochromatic

Member
I would love to see the story that was there before. It must have either been garbage, especially compared to what it is now, or it was actually alright but was scrapped by people who didn't know better.
 
T

theSlacker

Member
The missing extra zones makes sense as well. Always noticed the extra subtitle on some Crucible maps, like the "European Dead Zone". Hope we get them someday and they arn't just relegated to pvp stuff like what Osiris has turned into
since I don't really like pvp and will never get to see Osiris's Lighthouse as is.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
EmCeeGramr said:
this is amazing

I... everyone joked that the two games shared that in common, but to see it revealed that that they intentionally did that is pretty funny.
Click to expand...

The one thing the article doesn't really hit as much is what the hell the development process behind the entire loot and leveling structure was. I wish he'd gotten more information about that, because I'm amazed they were "surprised" at its reception on release. Tunnel vision I guess
 
R

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
BiggNife said:
This is a pretty fascinating article

The part where Bungie got Blizzard's Diablo team to come in and explain how they fixed Diablo 3 with Reaper of Souls is cool. You usually don't see developers working off each other like that, so it's nice to see Bungie took advantage of their Activision partnership in that way.
Click to expand...

Given how positive the recent changes have been, I assumed that Blizzard and Bungie had to have met.
 
AHA-Lambda

AHA-Lambda

Member
EmCeeGramr said:
this is amazing

I... everyone joked that the two games shared that in common, but to see it revealed that that they intentionally did that is pretty funny.
Click to expand...

More and more I get the impression that Bungie have gotten super lucky with Destiny as it is now.
 
LifEndz

LifEndz

Member
Damnit. The bombcast was already recorded for this week. Gotta wait till next week to hear Jeff's reaction.

Great work, Jason.
 
G

george_us

Member
I honestly don't understand why developers change directions so drastically like this when they clearly don't have the time to polish it correctly.
 
B

benny_a

extra source of jiggaflops
I enjoyed reading this background information.

The best part was the Blizzard spec-ops team that shared their lessons learned with Bungie.
 
H

hamchan

Member
Studio heads thinking they knew better than a well respected writer, who contributed greatly to Halo's story's success, and ending up with a huge mess as their end product. Sounds about right.
 
B

Blue Ninja

Member
To early players, and even to those who stuck with the game for the long haul, playing Destiny felt like battling against the developers themselves.
Click to expand...

That's the most perfect description of playing Destiny that I've ever heard. I've enjoyed my time with the game last year and I utterly loved The Taken King, but after a while it still devolves into struggling against Bungie's baffling decisions.

It's a shame to hear Joe Staten got shafted the way he did. Can't blame him for leaving, must've been heartbreaking.
 
B

Briarios

Member
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.
 
P

Pooya

Member
"campy and linear"

I thought they wanted it to be Star Wars, guess not!

So everything we thought is true, on top of that their engine is trash too. lol.

Destiny 2 powered by Unreal Engine incoming.
 
B

BraXzy

Member
Slow development tools drive me insane, if this is true I feel so bad for them :|

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.”
Click to expand...
 
L

LiK

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

WinFonda

Member
The story was probably scrapped because the game didn't accommodate it. I mean, there was maybe what, 6 hrs worth of gameplay in the base story missions? That supercut sounds like it needed a lot more game and dev time to go along with it. Bungie doesn't seem overly picky about plot given what shipped. That all sounds like a convenient scapegoat and the real issue was this shit

“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.”
Click to expand...
 
J

jett

D-Member
Alien Hive would have kidnapped the machine and brought him to their Dreadnaught spaceship, which was later cut from vanilla Destiny and moved to The Taken King. Originally, this Hive ship would have been part of the main story. “The entire last third of the game took place on the Dreadnaught with you rescuing Rasputin,” said one person who worked on the game.
Click to expand...

Yeah ok.

Yeaaaaa.

Yeah ok.

I'm glad I gave up on this franchise.
 
E

EatinOlives

Member
And yet, they were rewarded with one of the most profitable console games of all time. Who's to say they did the "wrong thing" by rebooting the story the way they did since it mattered so little to the bottom line?
 
S

suddenlyissoon

Member
This explains so much. I left Destiny quickly because the lack of single player story and what there was, it was incomprehensible, but have come back recently with TKK. I still can't believe how disjointed it really is at times.

I still think if EA tried this with Star Wars they'd make a trillion dollars.
 
S

spyder_ur

Member
Fantastic article Jason if you're reading - well-written, researched, and measured.

I don't think there's a smoking gun or anything but this further outlines what many have suspected.

The big takeaway for me moving forward is continued pessimism about the quality and volume of content we're going to get from the 'live team' in lieu of formal DLCs, supported by statements like this:

People who worked on this project say that one of Bungie’s fundamental issues over the past few years has been the game’s engine, which the studio built from scratch alongside Destiny. Four sources pointed to Destiny’s technology—the tools they use to design levels, render graphics, and create content—as an inhibiting factor in the game’s development.
Click to expand...
 
AHA-Lambda

AHA-Lambda

Member
"I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain!"

Yeah, you do, you scrapped the script and left us with that masterpiece of writing >_>

schwagger15 said:
Fantastic article Jason if you're reading - well-written, researched, and measured.

I don't think there's a smoking gun or anything but this further outlines what many have suspected.

The big takeaway for me moving forward is continued pessimism about the quality and volume of content we're going to get from the 'live team' in lieu of formal DLCs, supported by statements like this:
Click to expand...

As much as Destiny has clearly made a lot of money I wonder how ATVI feels about signing on Bungie for 10 years and giving untold millions to, only for them to need to have Blizzard fix their game?? >_>
 
C

Carn82

Member
antennaehead said:
Great article.

One particular bit that caught my attention:



Does this mean that Destiny 2 will not be developed by Bungie?
Click to expand...

High Moon are 'helping out', as far as we know. If Schreier's story about the quality (regarding 'turnaround time') of Bungie's tools is correct, they need all the help they can get to put out a good amount of content before Year 3 launches.
 
Interfectum

Interfectum

Member
“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.”
Click to expand...

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.
 
V

vvise

Member
really good read. i'm sure they had their reasons for cutting the original story, if it was great they wouldn't have scrapped it.
 
N

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Kotaku said:
It’s not uncommon for a game’s scope to reduce during development, but Bungie had a unique problem. People who worked on this project say that one of Bungie’s fundamental issues over the past few years has been the game’s engine, which the studio built from scratch alongside Destiny. Four sources pointed to Destiny’s technology—the tools they use to design levels, render graphics, and create content—as an inhibiting factor in the game’s development.

“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.”

...

“A lot of the problems that came up in Destiny 1, and that happened in development of The Taken King, are results of having an unwavering schedule and unwieldy tools,” said a source. “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.”
Click to expand...
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.
 
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