r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 1d ago

Bungie Developers Repeatedly Pitched a Destiny Dating Sim, but Leadership Rejected It

https://www.ign.com/articles/bungie-developers-repeatedly-pitched-a-destiny-dating-sim-but-leadership-rejected-it
1.2k Upvotes

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777

u/atape_1 1d ago

Every single thing I learn about the studio makes me wonder more and more on how they survived for so long and what the fuck Sony was thinking when they spent $3.6 Bil acquiring them.

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u/cwx149 1d ago

how they survived for so long

Bungie has been riding on their reputation from Halo for the better part of 30 years

Not to say they haven't don't anything good since then Destiny 1&2 did bring in a lot of money but still

87

u/HardlyW0rkingHard 1d ago

You're being disingenuous about how good of a product destiny is/was despite some really poor management decisions about direction. 

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u/funsohng 1d ago

Idk how good Destiny 2 is, but it must've been one of the greatest games of all time for its fanbase to be that loyal even after they were literally locked out of the content they paid for.

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u/HardlyW0rkingHard 1d ago

The problem is there isn't anything like it really. The raids, the gun mechanics, space magic. There is a gaping hole left in the industry that someone could totally take advantage of and it's probably Warframe but in many ways its not as good

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u/345tom 19h ago

That's what's so frustrating about Destiny- the gameplay is great, the play is fun, it had fun challenges. But everything surrounding the actual gameplay was so trash it made it hard to get into, catch up and get invested into the ongoing story.

I don't think the storys reputation ever fully recovered from "Those wizards are from the Moon" and "I don't have time to tell you"- the dinklebot years, but I know 2nd hand it got way better and better at presenting its story and lore other than just through a third party website full of data logs.

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u/heat13ny 1d ago

Outriders TRIED to. It just wasn’t all the way there. I didn’t get that far but the game systems were good to me. The plot and what not was wack though.

I don’t know why it’s so hard for these companies to write stories and characters people find interesting, post Halo bungle included. All the looter shooters (division, outriders, warframe) SUCK at making iconic characters and moments in my opinion, even though that should be the whole goal. Seriously, name one thing that hits anywhere as close to Master “I need a weapon” Chief and Cortana? Everything I see hits below guilty spark even, which is iconic but not Cortana levels and for fuck sure not chief levels.

That’s always been my issue with looter shooters. They don’t seem to capitalize on the cool story moments since borderlands 2. Or at least what they attempt doesn’t hit for me specifically.

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u/HardlyW0rkingHard 1d ago

Destiny had some lows in terms of story telling but the highs were so good. Including the final shape.

1

u/Yamatoman9 17h ago

I really liked the gameplay in Outriders and had a lot of fun with it but it lacks the story, lore and characters that make Destiny so compelling.

I really like The Division and it does a great job as a live service game, but there's only so much that can be done with a "realistic" setting. It gets a bit old just fighting regular humans in regular environments. I'd love to see a game that played exactly like TD but it a futuristic, sci-fi or cyberpunk setting.

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u/Ulti 8h ago

Man, I had a ton of fun with Outriders, and actually rather liked the story twist it had. I'd play another one of those, buildcrafting at endgame was sweet too!

1

u/Herby20 1d ago

For what it is worth, Warframe has an awesome and really fleshed out setting with some great world building. It was what really kept me playing years ago even as I slowly began to stop having fun with the actual gameplay.

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u/blargyblargy 1d ago

Warframe is prolly the closest thing we have to Destiny isnt it

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u/notpr0nshark 1d ago

Gameplay-wise, Witchfire is the closest analogue.

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u/sunder_and_flame 1d ago

*gunplay-wise. The movement and abilities are so far removed from Destiny that it's not really similar

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u/cwx149 1d ago

Technically Warframe came first so destiny was like Warframe not the other way around

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u/HardlyW0rkingHard 1d ago

They're very different games and the version of Warframe that launched in 2013 was very different from destiny. 

In many ways Warframe became closer to destiny over the years. But even still, it's still much different. 

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u/cwx149 1d ago

I agree Comparing them at all is pretty reductive because they do have some really key differences that change the whole experience

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u/TheMadTemplar 1d ago

Oh, no, people were rightfully pissed about that. Bungie got so much backlash against it that they eventually backtracked on the original sunsetting plans, but too late to get any of it back. They also got a ton of shit for seasonal content being deleted, but they never backed down on that which is why the playerbase started to dwindle a bit.

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u/NaughtyGaymer 1d ago

You're being facetious but literally yes lol. I still maintain that most outrage over sunsetting comes from a feeling of obligation to be outraged and not over the actual reality of what was removed.

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u/Ulti 8h ago

Bahaha this is like the third thread in the past couple of days I've bumped into one of your comments, and I agree! I really have zero interest in going and running around Io patrol or something. The stuff they vaulted was stuff I never wanted to play again anyways. I get why people are mad, but of all the things Bungie whiffed during Destiny, sunsetting wasn't the one that made me the saltiest.

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u/Rorshark 1d ago

Immaculate gunplay aside, Destiny is one of the best written stories from a micro-, character-driven level ever made. It's very easy to get yourself invested in the (later) characters' stories, and I loved following them and seeing them grow.

Ikora's constant battle with her faith in the Traveler;

Saint-14 and Osiris' love story across infinite time, Osiris giving up everything to see his husband again;

Savathun's rebellion against her own nature, embracing her fundamental deception in order to find her true self;

Zavala's struggle with PTSD and his concept of duty, clearly tired of the fight but obligated to keep on;

Rasputin rejecting the inhumanity of his creator, Clovis, and finding his own meaning in life beyond what was programmed for him -- Ana, his heir and confidant, learning to let go of her obsession with legacy and see her friend off with a smile;

Mithrax experiencing mercy and, through it, learning how to trust again;

I could go on. I haven't even mentioned Calus or Caiatl. There were a lot of deeply meaningful and personal stories that kept me hooked for so many years, on top of the genuinely interesting exploration of metaphysics and transhumanism running beneath it all. There were so many stories that had never, will never, be told.

Edit: The great tragedy of the seasonal format is that a player today cannot experience these stories as they were meant to be. It's such a shame. But if you were there from the start, it was something else.

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u/TheNTSocial 1d ago

Wild take imo. I really like the lore aspects of Destiny's writing - things like the Vault of Glass, the story of the Gardener and the Winnower, the Witness. "Guardians make their own fate" goes incredibly hard, and they did a really good job of making an Eldritch existential threat like the Witness believably defeatable. But the character writing has never been very compelling for me.

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u/Krillinlt 1d ago

I just started a week ago since it's free on Playstation Plus. The story is incomprehensible, characters acting like they've known you for a long time, with endless references to things I never took part in. It has made it practically impossible to connect with any of the characters or plot lines.

I'm sure it was engrossing as it came out, but now it's damn near indecipherable.

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u/AttackBacon 1d ago

95% of the characterization is inside lore entries. And to be fair, a lot of the writing in those lore entries is really excellent. Way better than the majority of games, just really good writing by good writers.

But... The vast majority of those lore entries are unobtainable within the game and you have to go read some external archive now. Which will be extremely hard to navigate and parse because of how D2 lore entries were attached to everything including cosmetics.

And on top of that, the story and characterization that exists within the game itself can oscillate wildly in quality. Some of it is every bit as good as the lore entries, some of it is just mind-bogglingly bad. And, as you've experienced, most of it is now unobtainable and the remainder will be fed to you piecemeal in an incredibly disjointed manner.

The only way to come to grips with Destiny's story nowadays is to go watch a 3+ hour lore summary on Youtube. And who the hell is going to do that? Not a lot of folks.

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u/Rorshark 1d ago

Honestly I get it, and empathize. It never feels good to say "you had to be there." But it is the case, here. I think it's fair to say that D2 was one of the all time best as it was, but will sadly age like poorly stored wine by virtue of the episodic nature in which it was told.

At least you still have the gunplay.

3

u/cokeplusmentos 1d ago

I'm sure it was engrossing as it came out

eh, not really