This past weekend, the folks at Bungie took to their official forums to discuss a variety of topics. Of course, it wasn’t long before the focus shifted to answering fan-submitted questions about the developer’s upcoming first-person shooter project titled Destiny. I encourage anyone interested to visit the link posted above for the entire Q&A, but here is a brief recap of what we know so far, followed by a small snippet of the interesting responses Bungie gave about what we can expect out of the production:
“If you remember anything about Destiny coming out of our reveal, remember these three things:
- Destiny is an action game set in an amazing and mysterious new universe. If you love first person shooters – if you enjoy Bungie action games – then you’re going to love Destiny.
- Players are the center of our world. You create a character, and you grow and customize it over time.
- Destiny is designed from the ground up to be better when you play it with your friends. You can have solitary cinematic experiences, but Destiny is built from the ground up to be cooperative.
This is the next first person shooter from Bungie. If you know what that means, buckle up and enjoy the ride. If you don’t know what means, stick around. We’ll have more to share in the months to come.
We’ll water all the little seeds we hope are tumbling around in your brain now that we’ve begun to pull back the curtain, ever so gently. We’ll tell you about Earth and the City and the Tower and the Guardians sworn to protect it. We’ll tell you about our new frontier and the enemies scouring the bones of our long-forgotten worlds. We’ll show you how incredible it feels to see a Fallen Captain’s ethereal soul rip from its body after you’ve dusted his crew with your Gravesend Mk. 28 Heavy Machinegun, shattered his absorption shield with a perfectly-placed pulse grenade, and delivered a final, thundering shot with your beloved hand cannon. We’ll show you how satisfying it is to tactically carve through the suppressing fire of a fortified Cabal war base with your fireteam, gouts of oil, geysers of steam, and shimmering loot punctuating your victory as you go.
Destiny will be a profoundly Bungie experience, no matter which platform you choose to play it on. It will be made better by the independent, but connected communities that rise up to support it and shape it and make it sing. It’s heart-warming to see old, familiar friends once again dreaming and speculating about what might be in a brand new world. It’s great to see new voices join the party – people eager to see what all the fuss is about. We’re going to do our absolute best to live up to your lofty expectations.”
Summaries and teases aside, here is an excerpt of the Q&A segment:
1) Unisaur 64: Your page for preorders on the homepage tells of “…some exclusive incentives available now to reward the first players who reserve their copy of the game.” What kind of incentives are these, in-game or otherwise?
Bungie: There are three pre-order incentives currently available at select, participating retailers. There’s a two-sided poster available at GameStop and EB Games Canada featuring artwork of the Traveler over Earth on one side, and the Fallen on the other. Select retailers outside of the US also have the Traveler art, but the B-side is occupied by the Cabal. We’re working to get the full list of non-US participants, but if you ring up your local shop, they should be able to confirm whether or not they’re on the list.
If you pre-order through Amazon.com, they’re currently offering a digital wallpaper featuring the Destiny logo and the inky, black starfield backdrop you’re probably well familiar with.
On the undisclosed front, we’ve also been keeping tabs on those of you who have kept us company during our dark phase, and we fully plan on rewarding our loyal fans in some small, but hopefully meaningful ways in the future. Signal received?
2) Hipi07: What differences will there be between current gen and next-generation versions of the game?
Bungie: We’ve been planning for multiple hardware platforms from the very beginning, and while we can’t get into the minute technical details of each console, we’re fully committed to delivering our full vision for Destiny on every console we ship on. Currently, that list is PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
3) TheDeisman: When will we be hearing more about Sir Paul McCartney’s contributions to the music of Destiny?
Bungie: Marty, Mike, and Jonty fielded questions on this front for the press last week. If you scour the internet, you should be able to get some additional details about the partnership. You can also hear the fruits of their blossoming friendship in the music Marty has already released.
We’re already listening to nearly an hour of orchestral music. We’re biased, but it doesn’t feel at all a stretch to say that this is Marty and Mike’s best work to date, by far. It’s wonderful in the most literal sense of the word. We hope you enjoyed the few minutes you’ve already heard.
4) DesertStormer27: How annoyed are you by all the Destiny questions?
Bungie: Are you kidding? We’re not annoyed in the slightest. It’s frustrating not being able to answer your questions. Some of us have been waiting for years to be able to talk about Destiny openly. We’re going to be able to answer more and more questions in the months ahead. Stay tuned.
I think one of the most interesting takeaways here is Bungie’s answer about delivering the full Destiny experience on every platform it releases for. Considering the game’s obvious focus on cooperation and inter-connectivity amongst players, and the PS4’s overwhelming emphasis on the shared gaming experience, it will be interesting to see what features the current-gen consoles offer that are enough for Bungie to consider them the “full” Destiny experience. It seems the more we learn about Destiny, the more questions arise in need of answering. Hopefully more information will trickle out over the next year, and possibly at E3, so that we can form a more reasonable opinion of what to expect out of Bungie’s latest adventure.
Are you guys excited to learn more about Destiny? What types of features would you like to see in a game where Bungie is promising expansive character customization? And seriously, what the hell is “The Traveler”? Work together in hopes of solving one of the gaming industry’s greatest mysteries in the comments below.
