Destiny, Bungie's next game.

[Varsity]

Note. Nothing is known about Destiny other than Bungie is making it
SHORT VERSION IN THIRD POST

"With ODST, with Reach, in ways that we haven't revealed yet we absolutely learned important things from all of those games."
Joe Staten, Lead Writer and Cinematics Director for Halo 1, 2, 3, ODST and Reach

Practice.

Bungie began the development of Halo 3: ODST and Reach after their departure from Microsoft. In return, Microsoft contracted Bungie to develop two more Halo games before they could be set free to do their own thing. I think this benefitted both Microsoft and Bungie, allowing both companies the time, money and momentum to get them prepared for the final transition of Halo ownership, which will be complete, come March 31st 2012.

For Bungie, it seems that those extra 3 years of preparation, from 2007 to 2010, gave them the chance to do more than just prepare themselves for a life without Halo; it gave them an opportunity to actively field-test concepts, techniques and gauge public response to what they were planning to do post-Halo.

"The deal was essentially: we make a couple more Halo games, we leave Halo with Microsoft and we can split amicably."
Harold Ryan, President of Bungie

Halo 3: ODST - Developed 2008-2009

Halo 3: ODST came to be when the Halo Chronicles tie-in with the Halo Movie fell through. It was developed in the space of just 14 months and was released in September 2009; which means the development began in August 2008. This is supported from this update posted by lukems at 8/15/2008 4:09 PM PDT.

So, what's important about ODST? Well, it gave us a few things that were ultimately different from Halo 1-3, that I believe were Bungie's important development lessons.

* The VISR mode (night-vision)
* Much more realistic characters and interactions
* Subliminal messaging for the future (through environments)
* The compass (NSEW at the top of the HUD)
* The overview map, which we could set destination-markers on, or see quest-locations
* The hub world; reusable environments, both day and night
* Our first sense of being the character, having no backstory to go by but our own
* Quest items (clues)
* Multiple playable characters
* A huge consistent open environment with naturally spawning AI and events
* A meta-story, Sadie's Story
* Our introduction to a space-to-ground sequence
* Huge scripted sequences in the distance in real-time (glassing, etc)
* Introduction to animals that aren't just birds or rats, although dead (this is actually important)
* A true sense of being vulnerable against enemies that would be pushovers as a Spartan
* Firefight - an understanding of controlled combat situations and environments and how to design for the ultimate experience that could go on for hours, yet still be fun
* Music that breaks away entirely from the heroic, ancient and galaxy-saving superhuman theme; much more relaxed and moody
* Made with a really small team using a pre-existing engine and some pre-existing assets, but being able to construct such a large amount extra in just 14 short months

And there are probably even more that I'm neglecting to mention.

Halo Reach - Developed 2007-2010

Halo Reach ties in many of the significant features from ODST and expands upon them a thousandfold.

* Armor Abilities (Sprint, Jetpack, Camo, etc)
* MoCap-animated characters and cutscenes
* Vignettes sequences in level (scripted animated action scenes during gameplay)
* An entirely detailed planet and backstory, along with geographies and architecture
* An entirely customizable character, with an in-built economics system
* Integration of multiplayer and Firefight areas into Campaign to truly maximize for tested enjoyment
* Reusing environments to see how changes such as a higher tide, or battle-damaged affect mood
* Our second and properly fleshed out sense of being the character; having no backstory to go by but our own
* Orbital weaponry (this seems significant to me for some reason)
* Fully fleshed out characters with defined personalities, actors and appearances
* Epic space battles.
* Hugely non-linear environments and levels, with sufficient dialogue and action to support, without negatively affecting level appearance in an obvious way
* A meta-story, the datapads
* A true in-engine cutscene transition from ground movement to space battles without any loading screens (this is SUPER important)
* Huge scripted sequences in the distance in real-time (glassing, warfare, etc)
* Introduction to huge and lifelike fantasy animals that you can interact with, and even kill and be killed by (this is more important than ODST's animals)
* A return to being afraid of the aliens you're fighting, in terms of their brutality and alien nature.
* Not many people know this, but Bungie actually wrote an entire Sanghelios language for the voice actors to do their Covenant dialogue in. An entire alien language. Not just warblgarlblarrgh or reversed English.
* Music that breaks away entirely from the heroic, ancient and galaxy-saving superhuman theme; and much more focussed on the death and loss on a dying planet in a lost war.
* Forge was completely revised to incorporate massive amounts of asset-placement with a variety of reusable objects in a map roughly the size of a small campaign level.

But don't just take my word for it:

"We wanted to make sure that this planet felt like a real place; that it was a lived in place, with a real history, a population and a backstory all together."
Marcus Lehto, Creative Director

If you've ever explored Winter Contingency, you'll know full well the extent that Bungie went to populating this game with detail that the gamer familiar with Halo games from the past would never see. Why wouldn't they focus on simply designing a linear path as they have before? Why the multiple paths, the multiple locations, orders and scenarios in a level largely designed to be linear? Why the decorated history of the population that we only get to talk to for a whole of 5 minutes?

We'll get to that.

"We defined three distinct geographies that we wanted to explore: Boreal, Badlands, and Temperate. In addition we explored a ton of architectural styles, including this Pioneer style, which is this more rustic colony kind of place to live, Industrial, Hyper-Urban and ONI."
Marcus Lehto, Creative Director

Winter Contingency - Boreal, Temperate, Pioneer
ONI: Sword Base - Boreal, Badlands, Industrial, ONI
Nightfall - Badlands
Tip of the Spear - Badlands
Long Night of Solace - Badlands, Industrial, Space
Exodus - Hyper-Urban
New Alexandria - Hyper-Urban
The Package - Boreal, Badlands, ONI, Industrial
The Pillar of Autumn - Badlands, Industrial
Lone Wolf - Badlands, Industrial

That's a lot of variety in geographies, now that you mention it, Marcus. I wonder if you could say that it was practice to get used to, and to have a library of concept art and reference images for such environments. Seems to me like they could all quite easily be interconnected together to build a cohesive world that isn't limited by cutscenes and levels, don't you think?

"We set out really to define every detail about this planet Reach, including the planet's colonization history, its overall geography, primary economies, major population centres and strategic military sites. You might not see this in the game, but for example, Reach orbits Epsilon Eridani, a star. It's got a 27-hour day, a 390-day year, and those that are born on the planet are called "Born-Heavy", because it's a little bit bigger than Earth."
Marcus Lehto, Creative Director

Okay, dude, that is an entire planet. You weren't joking about clearly defining the details. Combine that knowledge with the geographies and architectural styles and you've got yourself a pretty formula for creating an entire playable planet, don't you think? Or at least a continent. Not to mention the sheer level of detail you've gone into the planet's backstory, most of which we aren't "privy" to, which I believe you're going to discuss with us now.

"As far as the shooting style: we didn't have any "Meanwhile" moments, things that you've seen in movies all the time, when you see someone that might'velike, Colonel Holland giving a briefing the Spartan team, if you saw him prior to this and seen some of his motivations, it would certainly tell you more about the story, but it's not something that the Spartans are privy to, so That gave us the opportunity to know that we were working within these rules, and use the Spartan reactions as our information throughout the game."
Marcus Lehto, Creative Director

So you've developed all of this information about Reach, its population, its fauna, its geographies, its system, but you've decided to slap some tunnel-vision on us and only show us what we're privy to? Intriguing.

 

[Varsity]

This does two things; the first being that it puts us into a solid and entirely conceivable and believable world; the second being that it made me think about why you went to the effort in the first place. The only logical conclusion I can reach (no pun intended) is that you went to such effort in order to warm Bungie up for what's yet to come with Destiny, for all disciplines.

So what does all of this mean for Destiny?
I believe Bungie has spent the past 5 years defining the nature of Destiny through small windows in ODST and Reach, really showing us what they wanted to do with the game. There's plenty tests that have shown things that never fit into a Halo game, such as boats, boarding of wildlife and enemies, huge planet-wide warfare, large-scale battles with hundreds of AI participants. None of these things made it into Reach, but only because they weren't suited for Reach. Who's to say they won't make a showing in Destiny? There appears to be many opportunities for one to use all kinds of transportation, such as boats, aerial vehicles and carsor even wildlife, like how the Moa were intended to be rideable, or even the huge Gúta.

Many of you have already read through and had a look at my Destiny Map Revision, and in it are what I believe to be volcanic mountains, dense forests, a lake (with depth indicators, which is curious), a city, roads, rivers, as well as badlands and potentially marshes. Most curious of all, are the two giant circles that appear unnatural to the environment as we've already seen it.

Here is the definitive list of things that I believe will be in Destiny:

*An entire world made of varying geographies that interconnect and make up one huge playable planet
* Armor Abilities (Sprint, Jetpack, Camo, etc)
* MoCap-animated characters and cutscenes
* Vignettes sequences (scripted animated action scenes during gameplay) naturally occurring around you (either involving you or completely separate)
* An entirely detailed planet and backstory, along with geographies and architecture
* A compass (NSEW at the top of the HUD)
* An overview map, which we can set destination-markers on, or see quest-locations
* Reusable environments; both day and night, populated, unpopulated.
* The truest sense of being the character, having no backstory to go by but our own, making our destiny as we go along
* Quest items
* A huge consistent open environment with naturally spawning AI and events
* A meta-story (perhaps many, many meta stories)
* Realtime space-to-ground sequences that we choose (with orbiting satellites, or moons as our destination) without any loading screens or perhaps even cutscenes (see Infinity for what I mean by this)
* Huge scripted sequences in the distance (and perhaps nearby) in real-time
* A whole variety of wildlife that can be interacted with; marine, aerial, mammals, etc.
* A true sense of being vulnerable against certain enemies whilst feeling powerful over others
* Controlled combat situations and environments and how to design for the ultimate experience that could go on for hours, yet still be fun (as seen in Firefight)
* Entirely new music; new motifs, atmospheres. From what's been heard at the start of O Brave New World, it sounds like it'll be dark, ominous and foreboding.
* An entirely customizable character, with an in-built economics system
* Orbital weaponry
* Epic space battles.
* Fully fleshed out characters with defined personalities, actors and appearances
* Gigantic and truly non-linear environments and missions/quests, with sufficient dialogue and action to support, without negatively affecting the worlds' appearance in an obvious way
* Being terrified of the aliens or enemies you're fighting, in terms of their brutality and alien nature.
* In keeping with the little-known Covenant language developed for Reach, perhaps we'll see a much more documented version of this for Destiny. Keyword: practice.
* Forge making a comeback. We've already seen Grognok in the O Brave New World ViDoc, and we've already heard that they've trademarked it. Sounds to me like Bungie may release this software to allow us to build our own worlds, our own missions...our own everything...and then share it with the world.
* Theater mode, or at least Bungie Pro in some form, will be making a comeback. I imagine this will function in the same way as Halo Reach's, but with a much more in-depth functionality, perhaps even an in-game editor.

Currently, that's how I see Destiny shaping up to be. There is no easy way for anyone to figure out what Bungie is doing until it is revealed to us, but if I know Bungie, I expect a lot of what I've listed above to be the case.

Bungie did say that their game will eventually be more the fans than theirs, and I feel like with the features, Groknok, the idea about having a destiny and owning it, and making it yours...just seems to add up to make perfect sense.

Guess we'll just have to see Bungie starside whenever they're ready. I'm looking forward to it.

OTHER ARTICLES YOU MAY LIKE

Cortana 5's Bungie Formula: Durandal, Cortana, Joyeuse? thread.
Cortana 5's Seven Seraphs, Osiris, New Monarchy, Dead Orbit thread.

SonicJohn's Destiny Map thread.
SonicJohn's Bungie Servers - Connecting Multiple Platforms Online thread.*
(*Ignore the Aerospace perspective.)

x Foman123 x's Destinypedia - External Wiki for all things Destiny

risay_117's Destiny Information Shortlist thread

ncsuDuncan's Waiting For Destiny blog.
ncsuDuncan's Scraps of Destiny blog.

ShamusYoung's "The Biggest Game Ever" video

 

[Varsity]

Short Version.

After bungie seperated from microsoft, they had to make 2 more Halo games. This gave Bungie a perfect opportunity to experiment with new things. Why do you think ODST and Reach were so different? Because Bungie was experimenting! They wanted to do some experiments with the characters, the story, environment, and the sandbox of the campaign. What did they get? Very possitive reviews with ODST. Now they know how to make Destiny's campaign great. Multiplayer? Why do you think Reach's multiplayer was so different? They were experimenting with different gameplay of course! Was it given good reviews? Yes, by halo fans? No, because it wasnt Halo. Well no it obviously didnt feel Halo at all, obvious factor to Bungie experimenting. Now Bungie knows how to make a great multiplayer thats different than Halo.

Please post your opinions!

 

[zwave343]

sounds good, wonder what type of game its gonna be?
FPS?
RPG?
Strategy?

 

[Varsity]

sounds good, wonder what type of game its gonna be?
FPS?
RPG?
Strategy?

Bungie has been making mostly FPS games, unless they still have the old Bungie staff, or hire some new people. Then for now we can expect a FPS.

 

[Unity]

That was a great lead man! I wonder if this will have to do with Marathon . The last words in Marathon Infinity are
"I know who you are......You are Destiny "

Just my 2 cents lol

EDIT:

What is this?

 

[p bro]

What is this?

Good question, what is that? I was under the impression Bungie was still dark. Source?

 

[Ruze789]

What is this?

It's bogus.

Original image was by adonihs on Deviantart as a cover to ImagineFX magazine. It was posted on dA in 2009.

http://fav.me/d2dpirz

 

[Ruze789]

Some details about Destiny were revealed via Activision's CoD court case:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-bungie-activision-contract-20120521,0,3463781.story

The 27-page agreement calls for Bungie to develop four "sci-fantasy, action shooter games," code-named "Destiny," released every other year, beginning in the fall of 2013. Bungie also agreed to put out four downloadable expansion packs code-named "Comet," every other year beginning in the fall of 2014. Activision has never disclosed release plans for Bungie's titles.

The first Destiny game will initially only be available on Microsoft's Xbox 360 consoles, as well as its potential successor, which the contract refers to as the "Xbox 720." Later games would be made for Xbox consoles as well as Sony Corp.'s expected successor to the PlayStation 3, and on personal computers.

......

The contract also reveals for the first time that Bungie is working on a potential successor to its Marathon game, which became a cult hit after it was published in 1994 for the Apple Mac. The document refers to Bungie's right to devote no more than 5% of its staff to develop an action-shooter prototype dubbed Marathon while Bungie remains under contract with Activision.

The full contract can be seen here:
http://documents.latimes.com/bungie-activision-contract/