New Evidence Suggests Destiny's Story was Completely Changed a Year Before Launch

Haha, "story" good one.

Games change during development, so it's incredibly likely. However, I doubt the story was any more impacting then the one in the game right now.

Do people really care about this crap game anymore?

@Boxmonkey Judging by the amount of people still buying it and the amount of hype surrounding The Taken King, they most definitely do!

Did Density have a story? Oh, that's what that was supposed to be.

I'm going to be the devil's advocate here by saying that I think stripping Destiny of its story was the right thing to do given their target audience. It's not that there is no story, you just have to look for it really hard and when you aren't interested but are just there for the rush of the loot and the gameplay loop like most, there's no story standing between you and your fun.

Let's be honest now: the biggest group of people who play Diablo, Halo and even MMORPGs like FFXIV and WoW skip the story as much as possible and focus on gameplay elements and I think Activision's thorough research and play tests showed just that. If I want a cool Sci Fi story I'll watch a movie or tv show, if I want to have excellent FPS mechanics combined with a addictive loot system while listening to podcasts: I fire up Destiny.

I believe that the people who actually want Destiny to have a substantial story are a minority, albeit a very vocal one. The lack of story gave lots of gamers a valid excuse not to bother at all or an excuse to drop out because they moved on, but I don't think more story elements would've changed that. I do think that the Destiny as Bungie at first envisioned it would have been far less of a succes with the masses, after being critically applauded first.

Readers of sites like these tend to forget that the main audience isn't anything like them and game critics are mostly even worse. We hardly ever take in account what audience certain games are meant for. If critics would always be right, the Wii U would've sold 80 million units by now.

@kyleforrester87

True! The whole second screen cards thing is laughable, there is a better way to implement it. If they'd given some audio logs and maybe even an in- game encyclopedia they would not only catered more to the people who do like lore, it would've added an extra dimension because of the extra stuff there is to collect.

I feel Dark Souls is indeed a good example of a game where you can decide for yourself which element you find important, gameplay, story or both. But in Destiny they could've made it even easier and more attractive since the lore is there anyway. And with giving people an option they might even start to like it in the end and if they don't it doesn't mess with the experience.

I myself couldn't really get into Destiny, but it didn't have anything to do with the lore. It was purely because of the fact, which Bungie acknowledged themselves, that they didn't respect the player's time. And for someone who's 16 it really doesn't matter that much, it even is an advantage in a way because you can get better than others, but the randomness of the game is just killing for a working father of 3 (and passionate husband ). But now Bungie has sorted it out I'm most certainly going all in; there is the promise of an excellent system behing the already superb mechanics and only Halo Warzone will be a true contender for my FPS game time.

What I'm saying all the time. There's plenty of evidence that there were different starting locations for each species, more lore, cutscenes and much much much more context within the world itself. Awful.

I doubt we'll know the full story behind Destiny's development for a while yet, but it'll be interesting when it does eventually get out!

And now I hate this game more.

I thought that it wasn't possible.

@Boerewors
Fair points. For me gameplay will always be king, and as far as FPS mechanics go, I'd argue there's few, if any, better than Destiny. But, there's no reason a good story can't be thrown in as well. If I can only have one, I'll always take gameplay but it bothers me when people downplay a good story, or good graphics as well. We're at a point in this industry where all are achievable in the same game. It's just a matter of actually wanting to do the work. Unfortunately too few studios seem to want to do that.

The believe the rumours make more sense than Bungie just being incompetent with the story. It seems likely they were forced to change the story drastically (the lead writer left/was fired) and not given enough time to re-work the game properly. The grimoire cards were pretty much an afterthought added in at the last minute to try and salvage things. They aren't even viewable in-game.
I think this was the thread I agreed with:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2hqmkb/how_destinys_content_completely_changed_over_the

@Gamer83
But I believe in Destiny's case the story got in the way of the type of gameplay Activision believes the majority of gamers wants. If you ask me personally than I don't mind them cutting some "excess fat", but if they kept the story intact that would've been fine too, but your average Joe doesn't care about age old galactic wars, treaties and why you're the chosen one: they want a Gallarhorn (?)! And in order to do that they have to kill the big green dude with the spikes on that red planet where that ugly witch lives, instead of killing Zo'arb the Enforcer on Planet Epsirton where Agatha lives.

Only time will tell if this was the right decision, what I do find interesting is how easily Bungie gave up on their ideals and completely abandoned everything they set out to do. If they made this for Xbox only I bet they've gotten all the freedom in the world from MS.

@Boerewors
I think Bungie would've been restricted to just Halo had it stayed with MS and that's why it wanted to get away and ironically, the situation is worse now, or at least looking at it as an outsider it would appear worse. I don't know as MS would've given Bungie free reign but I do think Halo would've been in better, more capable hands. I'm still not sure about 343.

@Gamer83
I believe the Destiny that Bungie had in mind and Halo can totally coexist and if they pitched this to MS I'm positive they would've give them the green light. They already negotiated that they would no longer work on Halo and I don't even know who owns the Destiny IP now, but Destiny in its original form sounds like it was way more of an MMOFPS than it is now, set in a totally different universe than Halo. And 343 wouldn't have had to copy Destiny either (Warzone, online 4p co-op) so it would've stayed more true to its core.

They opted for freedom, they got even bigger shackles. I think things could've been different, but the same goes for Bungie being a PS property; this is one of the few times I actually believe it could have worked, because normally publishers just don't give you the freedom Sony has always done and MS is doing since quite recently.

@Boerewors
I've actually always had a lot of respect for MS as a publisher. They went astray a little bit after Kinect was released in 2010 and became mostly a Halo, Forza, Gears factory. Prior to that, MS had stamped its name on a lot of different games however. Crackdown, the phenomenal Project Gotham Racing, Bioware's best work was done with MS publishing its games, Crimson Skies. There also duds like Brute Force and Grabbed by the Ghoulies but MS always tried, its just hated on because it's MS and people want to discredit the company because it's the cool thing to do.

I always thought the Bungie, MS split had more to do with Bungie wanting to move on from Halo than anything else, though, but it's entirely possible I misread that situation. I do remember independence being a big theme too but that's clearly out the window in this partnership.

Well Activision is inc that make their money from dlc and getting the normal gamer hook on their games like lil kids so if its too complex for them to understand then they can make money that why they cut up the game so much i think, and also it was their money that paying for the game so what ever they say bungie had to go along with it which is sad. So that why bungie should have had money in the bank and become a Video game publisher and developer at the same time that way they could have do what ever they want with the game.