‘Destiny’ Details: Bungie Talks Customization, PC Release, Microtransactions, & More

Over the past few days, Bungie has unleashed a ton of new details regarding their forthcoming multiplatform shooter Destiny, covering everything from the world of the game to specific details like control options and player interaction. With a game that appears to have a very rich mythology and a sprawling universe, there’s a lot for Bungie to cover, and while they’re not ready to reveal everything, the developer does want to give gamers as clear a picture as possible.

In the latest trailer for Destiny, dubbed the “Moon” trailer, Bungie showed another one of the game’s “Strikes,” which are repeatable missions scattered throughout the universe. While the strikes will vary depending on which planet the player inhabits, the mission featured in the trailer saw the player team exploring a deep cavern carved into the surface of the moon.

In addition to the new trailer, a few members of the Destiny dev team sat down PlayStation Access to discuss customization in their game. Specifically, the Bungie devs outlined the three weapon classes in Destiny: primary, special, and heavy. Each will come in many different flavors, and suit a number of situations, with the exotic weapons sitting at the top of each tree.

Exotic weapons, as the developers explain, are unique weapons that have their own back-story, a specific design, and can only be found by completing certain missions. Players can also unlock exotic armor types, to help their Destinycharacter stand out from the pack. When all is said and done that’s presumably the end goal of these exotic items: to give players greater rewards for completing more challenging objectives.

Customization also extends to vehicles in Destiny, with players having three types of transportation to select and alter. The Sparrow and the Pike are ground-based, hover-type vehicles that come in a few different variations. The Pike, for example, resembles a speeder bike from Star Wars.

But while the Pike and Sparrow will have their distinct advantages, the major selling point as far as Destiny‘s vehicles are concerned is the personal ship. Ships inDestiny are fully customizable, but even so, Bungie wanted to stress that their game is not a space sim. Each player will use their ship to travel from planet to planet, but the game is primarily made up of ground travel.

Check out the full interview in the video below:

Although Destiny bares some similarities to Bungie’s previous franchise, Halo, the developer set out with the goal of differentiating their current work from their previous work. In fact, Destiny was, at one point, envisioned as a medieval style game, with knights, swords, and sorcery.

However, Bungie saw that, in trying to differentiate Destiny from Halo, they were limiting their creative potential. And so, rather than avoid sci-fi altogether, the development team decided to incorporate fantastical elements into their current ideas and eventually landing on Destiny‘s current design.

“Really, the artists were trying to push hard away from sci-fi because of the Halo legacy and history. They were just thinking, ‘What can we do that’s radically different after 10 years?’ So there’s actually some concept art that you can find online of a very fantasy-driven world of knights, swords and sorcery in a white city on a hill. That was very much pure fantasy, but the more they continued to work and the more their ideas formed over time, the more they realized that the lure of sci-fi was just something they loved and they were denying themselves that creative space. So they thought, ‘What if we just take these two things and smash them together?’”

Elsewhere, Destiny Senior Writer Eric Osborne talked about microtransactions in the game, specifically addressing players’ concerns the game might deploy a play-to-win approach. Luckily, as Osborne reveals, microtransactions will not be used to give players an advantage in the game. He wouldn’t say how exactly microtransactions will impact gameplay – our guess is that players will be able to purchase cosmetic changes – only that the $60 retail product will be a complete experience.

That retail product, unfortunately, is not currently planned for the PC, which will come as a disappointment to many gamers out there. Bungie does understand that the PC community is equally as interested in Destiny, but, as Osborne explains, they don’t want to spread their efforts too thin and hurt the console releases. In other words, console release first, and then maybe a PC port.


“It’s a huge challenge to ship four platforms and a massive opportunity to reach a new audience. We know there are a lot of people out there asking for PC and we know that there are a lot of gamers that would willingly give us money, but what we have to do is make sure we’re focused enough to bring a good experience to any platform that we ship on. What we 100 percent are not going to do is spread ourselves so thin that it negatively harms the other platforms. So right now we have the four platforms, which is a lot to focus on.”

And finally, a Q&A session with Bungie Community Manager Deej broached the topic of next-gen support, and how Destiny might take advantage of the DualShock 4′s touch pad. While Deej couldn’t confirm anything, he did say that Bungie has next-gen dev kits in-house and they are looking at what each new system offers. Aside from that, though, the Q&A was a lot of interesting questions followed by noncommittal answers.

Clearly, there’s a lot to cover with Destiny, to the point that it feels like we still haven’t scratched the surface of Bungie’s forthcoming game. There are plenty of elements that Bungie still isn’t ready to talk about, from PvP to deeper story elements, which leaves us more curious than ever. One thing’s for sure, we’ll know more about Destiny when the beta goes live next year.

What element of Destiny are you most curious to know more about? How would you like to see Bungie use microtransactions?

Destiny is slated to release in Q2 2014 for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.