When Destiny launched in the second half of last year it was on the receiving end of a mixed reception. While mechanically there was very little to fault, many (including us) agreed that from a narrative perspective, there were issues.
Things have improved drastically with The Taken King, the major expansion that dropped in September, and Destiny looks in a much healthier place now. Still, there's no denying that the journey up to this point has been far from smooth.
Now a report has emerged over on Kotaku that outlines the development of Bungie's shooter, and offers some explanation as to what went wrong. It's an interesting read, but there's a few important details that are worth highlighting.
First, writer Joe Staten left the company in the summer of 2013, and with the game launching the following year, the studio had little time to cobble together a story (which completely explains why the story feels like it was cobbled together). The studio chiefs were reportedly unhappy with the "supercut" produced by the writing team and decided to scrap it completely.
According to the report (which offers some interesting details on the alternative storyline that could have been), Bungie's Jason Jones thought the narrative too linear, and wanted the game to be playable in whatever order the player wished. There were also concerns that players visited all of the game's locations too early on, and so missions were chopped around and bolted together so players would then visit the different sandbox areas in order.
Kotaku also writes that in order to meet a revised deadline of September 2014, they studio had to prioritise the mechanical elements of the game - shooting, public interaction - over story. This is one of the chief factors that contributed to the mixed critical reception, something that was unexpected at Bungie with internal predictions much higher (one source confirmed to the site that they missed out on a major bonus as a result of the lukewarm review scores).
Another interesting point comes with the news that some of the Diablo III team went and visited Bungie post-launch, and it's easy to draw parallels between the successes and failures of both Diablo III and Destiny. The comparison between The Taken King and Reaper of Souls is certainly intriguing given everything we know now.
According to sources, the expansion that became The Taken King was originally called Comet (this was widely known due to an earlier leak), but according to the site the whole expansion went through its own evolution, and the Dreadnought sandbox that featured prominently was actually content that was pulled from the base game when the story was reworked in late 2013.
Finally, the article elaborated on the decision to ditch the DLC rollout that was originally planned to follow The Taken King. Bungie has recently introduced microtransactions to Destiny, and instead will add free content between now and the release of the next game in the series, relying on the money made from cosmetic purchases in place of selling smaller expansions akin to House of Wolves and The Dark Below.
If you're still enjoying Destiny then the article is worth a read. We've played plenty of The Taken King since it was launched last month, and you can read our thoughts on the expansion this way.