Destiny’s Development was a Complete Clusterhell

When Destiny released last year, fans weren’t entirely sure how they felt about the game, but one thing was almost universally agreed upon: at some point during development, someone at Bungie cut something from the shared world shooter, and it sounds like it’s more than people thought.

According to a report by Kotaku, the writing team from Joe Staten (who no longer works at Bungie) showed off the game’s entire story with a 2-hour supercut of all its cutscenes and major story beats. Six people who worked on the game said that the leadership who were shown the supercut weren’t happy with it and decided that it was “too campy and linear”, so they scrapped the story and reworked it all from scratch. Originally, the Warmind Rasputin was going to make a physical appearance in the game as the bloody Exo in the concept art, and the player would’ve rescued him from the Hive. Also changed on the story aspect was how missions were given. Missions would’ve started with players given a 30-45 second cutscene setting up the context, and each one would’ve ended with a cutscene that lasted three to five minutes.

Gameplay wise, it’s said that Bungie focused on perfecting the mechanics of the game more than the story itself. The first expansion, The Dark Below, is said to have been rebooted months before it was supposed to ship. One person familiar with development said the studio got a team and crunched out the expansion in nine weeks. Two people claim that Diablo 3 director Josh Mosqueira and other members from Blizzard came by Bungie offices to offer advice, which later influenced The Taken King. Taken King was originally planned to launch at $60 as a major expansion that would’ve had a new planet called Europa and a new Earth area called the European Dead Zone. They also wanted to allow three fireteams to converge on multiple paths to fight a boss or mob of enemies, none of which happened.

There’s a lot more to go into from the report, and it’s all really fascinating to read. It’ll be interesting to see how much the scrapped stuff makes it into future DLC or sequels. For now, what do you think Bungie should’ve kept from this scrapped material? Let us know in the comments below.

More Destiny

• Destiny May Be Upping Exotic Light Level and Updating Old Perks
• King’s Fall Hard Mode Release Date Announced
• Trials of Osiris Delayed Until Further Notice