
The Messy Story Behind the Making of “Destiny” - minimaxir
http://kotaku.com/the-messy-true-story-behind-the-making-of-destiny-1737556731
======
Tycho
People like to paint a picture of last minute changes made in panic, but it
could also just be the leadership exercising the optionality they had built
into the project.

Marathon has my favourite video game storyline ever. Told mostly through text
in 'terminals', they had all sort of literary tools at their disposal. From
journal entries to concrete poetry.

Halo had a wonderful story and universe. But it also had incredibly cheesy
cut-scenes. The real quality in Halo's story was to be found in the plot and
the hidden terminals, plus much of fiction and accompanying material they
published.

Destiny has incredible textual and visual story-telling. All very mysterious
like Marathon - it's still unfolding, and many things are unclear. But between
things like the grimoire cards and the item descriptions, and the appearances
of the ruins in which the game is set, your imagination can run wild.

There were some rough edges, sure, but I'm glad about the way it's turning
out.

~~~
OSButler
For me the grimoire cards were destroying the immersion, as you had to login
to the website to be able to lookup information that could just as well have
been presented in-game. It reminded me a bit of how RPG games of old used to
have journal entries in the manual, in order to be able to flesh out the story
without being limited to a few lines on screen.

The part where I gave up on the story was when you were being told that
there's no time to explain anything, yet here you are, inside a hub area and
without any urgency at all to proceed with the story line. It felt like they
had to explain why they couldn't tell you about the background story with a
nonsensical reason.

I've enjoyed the gameplay, but just couldn't be bothered to keep up with the
story due to the cards and odd in-game explanations.

~~~
Tycho
Lots of people say that but I can't relate except on a very superficial level.
I mean yes you have to look away from your screen to read the card on your
phone or your laptop, but I look away from the screen for all sorts of non
game related reasons. It's not like being in a cinema.

On a deeper level I thought they added a great deal to the immersion. You have
to hunt for scraps of information and try to piece together what happened in
past events. You have to go on the Bungie website and discuss theories with
rest of the community. Some fans even made voice acted recordings of the
cards. Overall it led to much more investment of thought into the story (which
remember is supposed to stretch for ten years) which I think is a greater type
of immersion than what you get from pretty cut scenes that tell the story like
a movie.

~~~
OSButler
This is an interesting point of view. I wasn't even aware of those fan
creations. Having them available in audio log format would actually be quite
neat.

Maybe I'm too stuck thinking about it from a technical point of view, where it
just doesn't make sense to me why this information couldn't be made available
in-game somehow. However, looking at it from a hunt for information point of
view and hearing that there's quite a bit of community discussion going on
actually makes me a bit curious again. It's a shame, and in a way my own fault
then, that all of this went over my head, as the in-game narrative put me off
enough not follow up on the grimoire.

It'll be interesting to see how they are going to handle the story in the next
iterations of the series. I haven't played it myself, but heard that The Taken
King supposedly has a lot more in-game narrative and cut scenes, compared to
the original release version. I'm not asking for a movie, but a little kick in
the right direction to get me curious enough about the backstory (like your
comment) and make me interact with the grimoire would be nice.

------
KVFinn
Any edit to a map required opening up the map the night before so it could
spend 8 hours opening it. And then it might still fail.

>Let’s say a designer wants to go in and move a resource node two inches,”
said one person familiar with the engine. “They go into the editor. First they
have to load their map overnight. It takes eight hours to input their map
overnight. They get [into the office] in the morning. If their importer didn’t
fail, they open the map. It takes about 20 minutes to open. They go in and
they move that node two feet. And then they’d do a 15-20 minute compile. Just
to do a half-second change.”

~~~
cpeterso
How is that acceptable _at all_? Designers must have complained about this
ridiculous problem every day. I understand that tooling is often not a high
priority for big games that have historically been "launch and forget", but
online games are now expected to continue publishing expansions and DLC for a
long time.

------
Jack000
the main problem with Destiny is the repetitive game-play. It'd be fine for a
single-player campaign, but you're expected to do essentially the same things
over and over again to level up. The saving grace is that grinding with your
friends makes the experience much less dull.

the first time we finished the vault of glass raid, I was ecstatic. The next
time we pushed Atheon off a cliff due to a damage-avoidance bug in the enemy
ai, it was hilarious. After the 10th time it just became work - you wanted to
just get it over with to get that last piece of gear for max level.

~~~
jsmeaton
Yep, and despite promises of decreasing reliance on RNG, the most recent raid
(Kings Fall) has more loot randomness than any of the previous end game
activities.

At each loot point you have a chance of getting loot or not. Fine, that's just
like the previous raids. But now instead of getting max level gear, you get
gear between (MAX-10, MAX). It's double randomness, and it sucks.

Introducing a bunch of quest based loot items was great. But you can't
actually _use_ most of the items until you're blessed with MAX level gear from
the raid that you can then dump into this special item you just received.

Oh, and if you want to level up more than 1 piece of gear? You need to throw
the dice multiple times for chances at MAX.

It's like they listen and react correctly on one hand, and then completely
forget the point. Either that, or they just want a farmville like experience.

~~~
oxide
Do you think you'll still be playing this game a few years from now? I can't
imagine the player base is going to stick around for years of that.

Maybe some will, but the idea of a 10 year deal being signed for something
like this as the end result is a bit of a jaw dropper for me.

~~~
jsmeaton
The same game? Most definitely not. I'd probably play Destiny 2 if they
continue on the trajectory they're on. Bungie are listening and solidly
improving the game. They keep messing up the grinding mechanics though. If
they can fix the grind for end game content, I think they'll have a really
successful franchise moving forward.

The gun play is second to none. The graphics are amazing. The missions
themselves are _ok_ , but lack the story needed to fully immerse you. The
other thing is, the worlds feel so __empty __. There 's just big open
desserted areas with a few enemies here and there. Some NPC alias throughout
the world will help that.

Leaving behind last gen is also necessary. But that should be a given. I won't
buy the game if it's also available on last gen.

------
joenathan
This is very poorly written, if you don't already know the plot to Destiny
then this article isn't for you.

~~~
chrischen
I've played the game and still don't know the plot.

~~~
minimaxir
Hence the motivation for the original post. :p

------
jontro
I really hope they get their tooling problems solved and that they now have
some more breathing space.

Is the editors always that tight coupled with the rendering engine or can it
be used by different map editors?

~~~
Tloewald
I assume there's some kind of tight binding or why would they use such
terrible tools? That said, the tools may have improved since the person
describing them last saw them. It's hard to imagine that fixing tools in that
state wouldn't be a huge priority.

------
oxide
so, they've decided to cannibalize the interesting story they cut out to begin
with for the current DLC that everyone seems to enjoy?

------
pervycreeper
Previous submission & discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10419686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10419686)

~~~
aerovistae
there is no discussion on that link, and amusingly it's submitted by the same
person, who is apparently in it for the karma. even more amusingly it's
submitted by the same person who earlier submitted a giant essay complaining
about not getting credit for things

~~~
minimaxir
1) Reposts are allowed on Hacker News provided there hasn't been significant
discussion. Even more so if there has been a week since submission.

2) _I was asked to repost this_ by the moderation team.

~~~
aerovistae
wonder why they asked that

~~~
minimaxir
Example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10460318](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10460318)

