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Storyline / lore / character classes
The story arc of Bungie’s new online persistent world game, Destiny, engulfs the human experience, casting us 700 years into the future:
The Traveler, a massive, Moon-sized globe, hangs over the Earth, emanating a mysterious source of power and strength. The Traveler has finally brought sanctuary to the human race — humankind, who finally had mastered technology. The humans who had built the Golden Age unified technology into their culture and had skillfully adapted environments far beyond the confines of Earth, expanding human colonies throughout the Milky Way to Mars, Venus and the Moon.
The heroes of the Golden Age had formed hybrid structures that moulded their mechanistic forms into the landscape, forming advanced citadels with domes, spires, towers and plazas. These techno-pioneers had synthesized the powerful implements of technology into potent, mechanistic bodysuits, powerful, destructive weapons and lightning-fast space vessels with highly developed weapons systems.
But the Golden Age wasn’t to last. All manner of hate-mongering aliens stealthily crept into the human galaxy and hit humanity hard with their brute force and thundering strength: the fearsome Cabal, hulking, armored rhinoceros aliens carrying slug throwers and driving big tanks. The Fallen, four-armed insectoid aliens, and the Vex, time-traveling robots. The brave human survivors of this hellishly fierce onslaught picked up the remains of Earth’s civilization and began anew. They built the Last City, under the shade of the Traveler’s protective umbra. They formed a hierarchy of classes, the fighting vanguard of Humanity. They would fight this new threat to human existence, and would call themselves the Guardians. The Titans. The Warlocks. The Hunters. They harness the power of the Traveler to power up and fight those who would destroy the Earth.
The Titans are the powerful mechanistic soldiers of the Last City, equipped with powerful weapons and indomitable advanced mech-like suits of fiercely devastating power. The Warlocks wield the power of spells to complement their weapons and overpower their enemies. Finally, the Hunters are the reconnaissance masters of the Last City, who seek, find and destroy those who want to end Humankind’s tenur.
These three classes are the protectors of the Last City, the brave Guardians of the last urban enclave safe to inhabit on Earth. They bear the burden of defending the Last City, defeating the alien hordes and reclaiming the humanity that we lost along the way. These brave soldiers of Earth have begun to explore the former colonies of Mars and her red dunes of sand, Venus and her luxuriant jungle foliage, once showpieces of teeming, enterprising Terran culture and intellect, now the rubble of ancient ruins. But the enemy is everywhere. They are now the benighted Guardians of the Last City. They are the knights of old, reforged, fighting against an implacable enemy whose sole purpose is to erase our presence from the surface of the Earth forever.
The theme of Destiny‘s persistent world is, above all else, hope, an ancient trope and a pervasive theme of video games. Players take up arms as a Guardian of the Last City. And if you are on the side of the Guardians, you are on the side of good. Players will always be on the on side of humanity, and according to Bungie, players will encounter a rich experience in the game.
Platform / Fee structure
The game will launch on the XBOX 360 and PS3, and Bungie has not yet revealed any plan for cross-platform development. Bungie has confirmed that the game will not have subscription fees, but it remains to be seen it they will implement the microtransactions of in-game merchandise or other possible options.
Development
According to Project Director Jason Jones, Destiny has seven core features which have guided it’s development since 2009. Here are the Seven Pillars of Destiny’s development, along with some select quotes from Jones.
Pillar 1: A World Players Want to Be In
“…the most important stories we tell aren’t going to be told by us. They’re going to be told by players – their personal legends built from shared adventures.”
Pillar 2: A Bunch of Fun Things to Do
“It’s a place where I can leave my mark.”
Pillar 3: Rewards Players Care About
“a lot of great things to earn, find, and make…”
Pillar 4: A New Experience Every Night
“every time you sit down to play Destiny you have a different experience than last time.”
Pillar 5: Shared With Other People
“Everything that’s fun to do is more fun to do with your friends…”
Pillar 6: Enjoyable By All Skill Levels
“All core activities can be enjoyed by a novice player…”
Pillar 7: Enjoyable by the Impatient and Distracted
“players don’t want to work hard, they don’t want to read, and they don’t’ want to go to the Internet to figure out our bull****.”
The game is being characterized by Bungie as an “expansive, persistent, online world,” however it is not an MMO. Bungie’s engineering lead, Chris Butcher, shot down the “MMO theory” circling in the press and video game circles. But, Bungie has invented a new term for Destiny: “the world’s first shared world shooter.” As far as platforms go, the game will be not just be playable on consoles, but will also have a companion app on the iOS platform, where players can continue to interact with each other, receive notifications of new content drops, and review the level stats of their characters. Bungie confirms that “in-game interaction will include ‘ideas’ to bring people together.”
The game was developed with a state-of-the-art, proprietary game engine called Grognok that can deploy and edit terrain, objects, maps as well as lighting and audio. The tool operates as a cooperative development platform, which enables the team to have shared access in real time to objects, models, environments in course of development. There are astoundingly luminous lighting effects in a relatively new technology called “ambient occlusion.” Ambient occlusion is a lighting technique used to give models a global illumination-like effect, as if it were lit from the entire hemisphere (rather than a point light).
Implemented in partnership with Nvidia Research, this techniques allows objects in-game to take on astoundingly higher luminosity, intensity and shading effects that change in real time. Changes such as time of day and the weather will be displayed in the game’s environment. Players will be able to demonstrably see the difference as they stand and watch the sun set over The Last City, or the moon come out in the landscapes of Destiny‘s highly graphically nuanced game environment.
Server / Network Technology
The company passed on my question of whether they would choose a single-shard server implementation for the game. There is a precedent for this, a first in the industry. CCP Games’ Eve Online already runs as a persistent world MMO. On Jan. 22, CCP ported the Dust 514 beta to the Eve Online Singularity test server, creating a single persistent online universe that links the PC and console platforms in real time. What we do know is that Bungie will implement a series of distributed servers to balance the traffic load of players throughout the world. Theoretically, the distributed server deployment could resolve the slow matchmaking times and inaccessible playlists that were problems with the HALO: Reach servers during the HALO: Reach beta.
Bungie has confimed that as players enter certain areas of the game, the distributed servers will register which areas are public domains or combat areas. When a player does go into the shared third person space or combat area, the server will automatically search for another gamer with whom to matchmake the player. The server will download all of that player’s customized gear. As the player progresses in the game, the server will integrate another player into the game, seemlessly.
Bungie will be deploying new networking technology, one they claim will seamlessly facilitate online competitive matchmaking. One concern, of course, is the ever present fear of sluggish matchmaking because of latency issues, and it remains to be seen how the new technology will address and fix this problem. That being said, Bungie has confirmed the biggest lesson the studio learned from Halo is that players are willing to invest in technology necessary to play a game for the shared experience, and they clearly are factoring this variable into the future equation of p[layer] + x[box] 720 = D[estiny]‘s shared gameplay experience.
Gameplay / Weapons
The game’s FPS element will be the “biggest part of the model” according to Bungie. Players will connect in the game around the core game mechanics of first person shooter interactions. So we might call it “sci-fi fantasy FPS expansive, persistent, online world.” Bungie says that Destiny will be a “next generation FPS with a focus on the world.” Bungie will likely create branded FPS interactions that made HALO a recognizable IP around the world with it’s storyline, multiplayer matchmaking and large team-based combat maps. Bungie has confirmed that planetary travel will be an option in Destiny.
Bungie stresses that while they will provide the over-arcing storyline and lore, the player-base will create it’s own legendary story. These player stories will join the creative whole of what will become Destiny‘s ongoing saga. Bungie has confirmed players will ”create your own legend as you and your friends venture out into the solar system to reclaim the treasures and secrets lost after the collapse of humanity’s Golden Age.” Players will have the ability to personalize with custom colors schemes and upgrade every piece of battle armament in-game. Bungie tell us that during gameplay, players will “fight with a near limitless combination of armor, weapons, and visual customizations.” In addition to the usual competitive multiplayer and cooperative play, Bungie is attempting to redefine the gameplay experience across other media, with a “combination of cooperative, competitive, public, and community activities.”
Players will have access to their customized armory and characters through every mode of play. They will be continuously immersed in Destiny’s story, and will have access to competitive multiplayer and diverse public combat destinations. The Last City will become Destiny’s third person social space, and the place where players will be able to interact with each other’s characters. During the course of gameplay, players will return to The Last City to “refuel, repair, and rearm” vehicles, body armor and weapons before setting out on their next mission. Over the course of their adventures players will gain more power. Players will progressively be able to wield rare and exotic weapons, gear, and powers. We have no details yet on how the use of these rare in-game artifacts and abilities will affect the actual calculations of healing, damage, spells, etc. during combat against other players.
Music
According to Bungie Audio Director, Mary O’Donnell, music is the “emotional journey of Destiny.” A secret no longer, Destiny‘s score is being co-authored by Paul McCartney, along with the team of O’Donnell and longtime composing partner, Mike Salvatore. Paul McCartney is no stranger to composing for video games, having previous been involved in creating music for the Rock Band franchise. Jonty Barnes is the production director.
The way it works, according to O’Donnell, is the primordial way of how melodic themes create emotion in people. And it’s that emotion that forms the affective experience of the player within the game, helping to shape their total gameplay experience. O’Donnell stated that from the beginning, he wanted a suite of music that could be adapted and built upon, the concept being to create a live, organic music suite. The style of the music is orchestral with choral elements, but will have percussion and synth tracks as well. O’Donell has disrupted the model of typical video game music composition. Music for video games is usually composed after the game is developed. However, the music for Destiny was composed well before the game was in development. The composing team drew their inspiration from artwork and concept drawings of the game.
The score of Destiny was recorded at Abbey Road Studios with the 106-piece London Symphony Orchestra, accompanied by a boys’ choir. O’Donnell counts among his musical influences the likes of Brahms, Beethoven, Debussy, Holst and Vaughn Williams.
No official release date has been provided for Destiny. This will be an historic release for Bungie, the beginning of a 10-year legal contract to publish content for Destiny with Activision Publishing, Inc.
By Michael Venables (Forbes). Link to original article
Destinythegame.com
Bungie.net
Youtube.com/Destinythegame
http://youtube/EwOUi4JDC4o
This looks SO good!! Cant wait for a beta!! "Faction Warfare" has been so there will be in-game clans
