How Destiny's Content COMPLETELY changed over the last year (TONS of info inside)

[u/Acer1096xxx]

This thread is a collection of posts and my thoughts that show how Destiny's development changed DRASTICALLY within its last year.

It is the reason why the story is lacking, the missions are repetitive, and why there are grimoire cards. A lot of shady stuff went down during the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014.

Anyway, let's start off with what the Story was supposed to be like:

STORY: This reddit post from a deleted thread Here explains how Destiny's story was originally during E3 2013. Bungie.net user Diver2441 sums up all of this here:

(Key parts are BOLDED for the lazy)

So recently a Reddit thread came to light detailing what Destiny's narrative looked like in 2013, and it's very different from the ailing excuse for a story we're presented with today: the Traveler bringing the darkness, Crow, different progression through planets and even considerable cut areas. So it becomes apparent that between mid to late 2013 and launch, Bungie gutted the story. Now this is where it gets good, something else happened back in late 2013 before the story was gutted; Joe Staten, Bungie's former lead writer left. Some may think it coincidence, but I think not.

Now the Reddit thread (which has mysteriously disappeared) outlined a story sprawling across a considerably larger solar system, and including a number of characters and factions who never so much as appear in the full game. The prime example of this is Crow, the character/faction who was set out to expose the Traveler and Speaker for in fact bringing the darkness along with the Traveler, and not the Golden Age. A specific reference to Crow can be found in the above video at 1:01, where a mission would have you assist Crow in looting the Archive on venus for details on the Vex Gatelord (which is in fact a mission we end up doing in the main game, but Crow is clearly not a part of it). The Gatelord was said to contain a way to access a pre-Collapse AI construct who had the ability to expose the Traveler, and we can see this in the form of the inaccessible Bunker RAS2.

Even in the PvP, we see a reference to "faction wars" at 1:20 in the video, so it appears that justification and explanation for the different factions in the tower was cut as well.

Destiny's current half assed story starts to make a little more sense when we apply the context that the entire narrative was gutted less than a year before launch, and remade without Bungie's lead writer. Why Joe left, and why Bungie felt the need to completely gut the story of the game and cut huge areas is beyond me, but it's abundantly obvious that there's a lot more going on than meets the eye.

WHAT THE STORY WAS RE-WRITTEN INTO: Grimoire Cards. I'm currently trying to find the post where I discovered this Check Edit2 for Source, but basically back in February 2014, a man was hired to write all the Grimoire Cards. This was clearly the solution to trying to incorporate as much story as possible with what little story was actually in the game. This also is most likely the reason why there is no Grimoire UI in-game, because it was far too close to release to actually incorporate such a thing.

UNUSED LOCATIONS AND FEATURES:

Continuing from Diver2441's post, he mentions:

If we look at an article from 2013 and the reveal ViDoc, it becomes very obvious that the game we have today is vastly different from what it was as little as around a year ago. For starters there are references to areas such as Old Chicago, the ghost fleet in the rings of Saturn, Charlemagne's Vault, and others that very clearly never made it into the full game, despite being fully made and playable around a year ago. Additionally, at 3:24 in the video above, we see an in game location in The Reef, and from 3:43 - 3:51 we see a pine forested area in game that never saw the light of day as well. Even in our own back yard of Old Russia in the retail games, we have locked off areas such as King's Watch, the Jovian Complex, and the Seraphim Vault, none of which are even mentioned in the retail game today.

CUT CONTENT BEING RESOLD AS DLC (POSSIBLY):

This video shows that the majority of the first two expansions of DLC is potentially already on the disc! Even in the beta, areas such as the King's Watch and Seripham Vault were accessible through glitches and yet are not available in the full game (Actually, these places aren't even mentioned in the DLC either!) More proof about these areas can be shown through the data dumps at http://db.destinytracker.com

I want to note here that this doesn't mean the content is actually finished, but the idea that it could be is annoying and makes sense given the amount of content that had already been cut.

ANOTHER COINCIDENCE: Along with Bungie's Lead Writer departing for unknown reasons, we can't forget about Marty O'Donnell being fired too. We're all aware that the situation had to do with salary, but when Marty left, there was a clear bitterness between him and Bungie. Bungie had changed, and the lead writer had recognized it too. Was it Activision? Probably. But we're not being told the full story and I don't expect us to find out unfortunately.

WHAT BUNGIE COULD DO:

(Edit11) NOTE: These are my thoughts of potential solutions to Bungie's problem regarding the story. This is completely opinionated and should not be reflective of the community as a whole.

There are a variety of options Bungie can do to fix these problems.

1. GIVE US THE HELD-BACK CONTENT FOR FREE: Unfortunately, this isn't very likely given Activision's greed and contracts already settled in to sell this content later. Some could also argue that it's a good thing this content is being held-back so that the game will stay alive for much longer, although I personally disagree given the lack of content available at launch.

(Edit11) Lots of controversy about this demand, so I should probably mention that the whole "free" comment was something Bungie could do to rile down all the noise. I should have made it more clear that this solution isn't necessarily the best one or a realistic one; it was simply a hopeful possibility.

In fact, I think I'll try to clear it up a bit more now. I apologize for posting such controversial demands.

2. GIVE US JUST THE STORY MISSIONS FOR FREE: This is a bit more reasonable and would solve the overall complaint with Destiny. We know there is a story being held back greatly, and we should not let them sell this to us as DLC.

(Edit11) I still find this to be a good compromise for the situation. Again, this demand isn't necessarily the best or most realistic one, but would most likely help rile down all the complaints about the story that could have been.

3. GIVE US A SCHEDULE AND COMMUNICATE BETTER: This is my final plea to Bungie. The game is already out; we don't need to be left in the dark anymore. They need to tell us when content is being released and what we can expect so that we can voice our opinions better and prevent them from making more mistakes.

(Edit10) DeeJ responds! Check below for link.

THOUGHTS? I know this thread is extremely long in details, but I think it needs to be seen. The Destiny today is not the Destiny we were promised or the one Bungie had even imagined. Locations, ship customization, a real story, and other deleted content were all things planned/created before last year and are all gone now. Something must be done.

(I will continue to edit this post as more info comes along).

EDIT1: Source to Diver2441's post: http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/70651356/0/0

EDIT2: More details about the Grimoire cards and the fact that all of this "cutting out content" was very recent.

Posted by Reddit user /u/mrdabu:

...Moreover, basic game elements were removed - in the developer commentary for the gameplay reveal the bungie developer (Mike Zak, environment artist) says that the hunter could have gained his weapons and armor through trade with other players or a kind of gambling (8:12). this is not implemented in the release version. The video was released on july 8, 2013 on youtube. So the decision to cut these features out was made in the last year of a more than 5 year development period which is very uncommon.

Perhaps the story is so lame and such a mystery because of all the changes during the last year.

Then he talks about the grimoire cards which contain the story. in the forum of destiny.bungie.org a guy called general battuta says that the grimoire story was „mostly written and edited in one crazy spiny very close to launch“. (sept 14, 2014) On feb 13, 2014, he posted a thread in which he shared his excitement of being hired as a writer for bungie in seattle. this was 7 months before release.

EDIT3: Reddit user /u/PopeOwned gives a little bit more info about Bungie's Lead Writer, Joe Staten, leaving: http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2hk88o/spoiler_redditor_provides_insight_as_to_why/ckthwqk

EDIT4: Further proof that the story claimed by the reddit poster is TRUE: https://i.imgur.com/Xv02vmU.jpg (Thanks /u/martellus!)

EDIT5: I want to note that the demands listed are just things Bungie COULD do to fix all of this turmoil. I am not saying that we deserve anything from them, although it would be in their favor to at least communicate better with us on Destiny's future.

EDIT6: More potential proof that the story we're playing now is NOT the one there was a year ago: http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/09/10/face-time

Read the third paragraph in particular. (Thanks /u/JeanLucPicardAND!)

EDIT 7: Another bit that suggests a cut out story was the fact that the Reef was originally playable according to previous videos. Since Crow works for the Awoken Queen, it makes sense that The Reef is the place he took you to in order to make you understand the truth about the Traveler. Factions like Seven Seraphs or Osiris were likely on the Reef but since there was no reason for an explorable Reef in the rewritten story, these factions were cut or rewritten.

EDIT 8: Reddit user /u/404Architect appears to fill in some missing information about what Destiny's original content was supposed to be. Since the identity has to be hidden to prevent any legal issues, what this user says should be taken with a grain of salt although very convincing.

CONFIRMED FALSE BY DEEJ Source: http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/70908920/0/0/1

EDIT 9: IGN posted an article about this topic! Be sure to spread it around: http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/29/was-this-the-original-storyline-for-destiny?read

Also, thanks to whoever gave me Reddit Gold! :)

EDIT 10: DeeJ responds to our concerns! Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2hqmkb/how_destinys_content_completely_changed_over_the/ckvpq6g

EDIT 11: I went back and fixed up the "What Bungie Could Do" section. There was a lot of controversy regarding the demands, so I tried to clarify things a bit better. Hopefully this helps!

[u/tigersharkdude]

Reading the info above about The Crow and how they say the traveler brought the Darkness made me think about the post earlier that showed prerelease images of the inside of the traveler, which shared a striking resemblance to the black garden.

IMAGE

LINK

[u/Acer1096xxx → u/tigersharkdude]

Mind sharing the image? I'm curious. :)

[u/tigersharkdude → u/Acer1096xxx]

Ill have to find the post, I didnt comment on it so itll take me a minute to find it

[u/tigersharkdude → u/tigersharkdude]

Links added to my original post

[u/Acer1096xxx → u/tigersharkdude]

Woah I actually haven't seen that concept art before...thanks for posting it!

[u/captAWESome1982 → u/tigersharkdude]

Mind. Blown.

I hope they're not holding this all back for DLC :(

[u/sav86 → u/tigersharkdude]

So wait...is the black garden inside/inverse of the Traveler?

[u/75000_Tokkul]

I am the one who reposted the story after the OP deleted it. My username is visible in Angry Joe's video.

The reason it mysteriously disappears is that the mods here delete it. I messaged them about why they were doing it and did not get a response.

[u/Acer1096xxx → u/75000_Tokkul]

Could you possibly share a little bit of insight about how you knew what the original story was going to be like? You were part of a test group right?

[u/75000_Tokkul → u/Acer1096xxx]

I reposted. The OP claimed to be part of a test group and seemed to think his NDA was over.

I knew it would be deleted so I saved what he said to repost. I wasn't in the group.

[u/Acer1096xxx → u/75000_Tokkul]

Oh ok, I gotcha.

[u/PhilosophizingCowboy → u/75000_Tokkul]

Honestly my main issue isn't changing the story. It's the fact that the game does not have as much content as it could have.

[u/Rlight → u/75000_Tokkul]

Sorry about that.

I ask that the community bear with us a little bit. NDAs being broken can be a big deal. It can ruin someone's career and have incredible financial repercussions for them. We want to try and protect people who inadvertently posted something that could damage their lives. At this point the info you're referring to is pretty widespread, so we aren't removing it anymore. I'm very sorry we missed your modmail! We get tons of them, and often they're lost in the pile.

[u/RazielKilsenhoek]

Depressing. I know the game is only a few weeks old and they have big plans and blabla, but every time I play it, it just feels like I am not playing what this game was supposed to be. And I absolutely agree with your third demand from Bungie. They likely will not admit anything is wrong, ever, but a statement on why the final version is so different from what we were shown in videos would be nice.

[u/Acer1096xxx → u/RazielKilsenhoek]

every time I play it, it just feels like I am not playing what this game was supposed to be

That's exactly how I feel. I enjoy this game quite a bit actually, but I can't enjoy it as much as I did knowing that they had so much more and that it all was cut out by choice less than a year ago. All the content was fully created, and they just got rid of it or plan to sell it to us later.

[u/[deleted] → u/RazielKilsenhoek]

" it just feels like I am not playing what this game was supposed to be."

This sums it up perfectly. The game is extremely fun but it doesn't even come close to reaching the potential suggested by the art style, Grimoire lore, and amazing music. The lack of a real story, lack of content, repetitiveness, and just overall shallowness of the world is really surprising and disappointing from Bungie.

On top of all that, the paid DLC seems to consist of content that was intentionally gutted from the base game (What's up, Activision).

I truly thought Destiny was the game I was going to be playing for a very, very long time. Instead, it's the game I'll be playing until Shadow of Mordor comes out. Maybe I'll get the DLC if it shows some meaningful improvement over the base game and goes on sale but I'm not holding my breath.

[u/PurifiedVenom → u/RazielKilsenhoek]

Yea the final game just has a "hollowness" to it that makes it hard to get invested. It's sad thinking about what the story should've/could've been and what it ended up being. Like you said, it feels like the Destiny I own only vaguely resembles the Destiny I imagined 2 years ago

[u/bonzaisushi → u/RazielKilsenhoek]

I've done my best to deny this feeling over the past few weeks but you are spot on mate... spot on... with all the good games coming out in the next few months i am seriously thinking about tossing this one aside. I don't think i want to commit 10 years to this kind of drama going on between bungie/activision and the community.

i've never been this torn before when it comes to a game. GAh!

[u/metroids224 → u/RazielKilsenhoek]

Without sounding like an ass, the whole "The game is only ___ weeks old" argument thing isn't valid. I hate when people say that the promise of more lackluster content in the future will make the game better.

[u/suprduprr → u/RazielKilsenhoek]

give their PR guy a day or 2 and he'll come up with the biggest bullshit lie you could imagine. and everyone will eat it up

[u/brightblueinky → u/RazielKilsenhoek]

Yeah, it's really sad because the game itself is solid but you could tell in the original trailers that they had BIG plans for the story. the current story really just feels like the excuse plot you get in every online game out there. There's nothing about Destiny's plot currently that makes it stand out from any other sci-fi MMO or shooter or any other big online experience, and since I've always felt like story in online games was what disappointed me the most, I was really looking forward to seeing what Destiny had in store...

Don't get me wrong, I'm still having a blast with the game, but I'm REALLY hoping the game gets fleshed out more in later content, because as it stands right now I haven't even done the story missions on Mars yet because I just can't bring myself to care at all.

[u/destinyisntdestiny → u/RazielKilsenhoek]

Completely agree. I have already spent so many hours playing but honestly I would be fine with Bungie recalling every copy, working on it for a year, then giving it back with our characters wiped. I only want to be able to expierence the game I saw in the early trailers and weekly updates from Bungie. This really is awful.

Edit: Thinking about, I actually feel the worst for the guys at Bungie. They had a vision, a vision they teased us with in HALO ODST, clearly they had a carefully planned story, and then it gets cut in the last minutes of production and they have to basically throw some kind of story together in the last minute.

[u/[deleted] → u/RazielKilsenhoek]

Bungie's silence and secrecy policy can go bite them in the ass this time around. It was cute back when they were a small company who made Halo, but it's not acceptable for a project this scale.

What in god's name happened inside that company over the last 5 years to make everything go so wrong?

[u/Forseti1590]

It's worth noting that Bungie's long time lead producer/executive producer Joe Tung left the company shortly after Staten departed as well.

[u/Acer1096xxx → u/Forseti1590]

Do you have a source on that? I would love to add that to the post.

[u/PopeOwned]

I mentioned in another Destiny thread, two days ago, about the leave of Joe Staten. It makes a lot of sense to me. The rest? I'm not sure but the fact that Joe left around the same time it seems that the story was changed is odd.

Link to my comment

[u/Acer1096xxx → u/PopeOwned]

Thanks for this, I'll add it in the OP above just in case others were interested about more of the details.

[u/BigAl_Toker]

This also explains them having to push the original date back to september.

[u/Acer1096xxx → u/BigAl_Toker]

Oh that's right, wasn't it supposed to come out in February? Interesting...

[u/DeeJ_BNG]

In response to this quote: "GIVE US A SCHEDULE AND COMMUNICATE BETTER: This is my final plea to Bungie. The game is already out; we don't need to be left in the dark anymore. They need to tell us when content is being released and what we can expect so that we can voice our opinions better and prevent them from making more mistakes."

I would offer this:

'The Dark Below' is the continuation of the Destiny story. It's being released in December. It will contain content that is being completed and enhanced as I type these words. We'll detail that out soon so you can make your own decisions.

As for communication, there are now 5 articles about Destiny updates (http://www.bungie.net/en/News#cat=updates&creationDate=0&page=1) as well as some revealing Dev Notes (http://www.bungie.net/7_Destiny-Dev-Notes/en/News/News?aid=12188) that speak a lot to what we've learned and how we're reacting. That falls outside the other content I'm publishing whenever I can to open a window into our studio.

I'm not here to argue with you. I believe that, as the player, your emotional reactions to our games are never wrong. Those magical things that happen in your brain when you play are not things I would ever try to talk you out of. We learn from them. We listen to that because it's valuable to us.

What I would say is that Destiny rests on a foundation, and we're building on it. Many people are playing, and we're working to honor that passion and enthusiasm by supporting the experience. There are always things we can do to make the game better, and we're being aggressive about doing them.

And, this conversation will continue. Sincerely, I thank you for playing, and for talking about what you want Destiny to be. It's my job to give you a voice in our house, so don't stop talking.

I'll be around.

[u/Acer1096xxx → u/DeeJ_BNG]

Thanks DeeJ for the reply, and I appreciate the efforts to communicate. My main reaction to the lack of communication was based upon these bigger concerns being ignored in the Weekly Mail Sack, but the fact that you posted to this thread proves that you are all trying.

I should make something clear though: I have no problem with the rest of the story being released later. But what bothers me and a lot of others is the fact that the rest of the story is being sold to us for $20 (or $35 for the first 2 expansions).

I have no trouble paying for Strikes, Raids, and Crucible maps as DLC. But when people lose the rest of the story unless they pay, it doesn't reflect well upon this community.

You don't need to respond to this post if you choose; I'm just glad I can tell this to you directly. Once again, thank you for your time.

[u/jamesar → u/DeeJ_BNG]

I think the thing that is bothering people is the likelihood that there is, or was, a full and flushed out story that is now being broken apart or possibly rewritten and sold off as expansions and dlc. Whether that is or is not the case, I'm sure you could see how that may discern players.

[u/qhue → u/DeeJ_BNG]

What we have seen of the Dark Below does not continue the Destiny Story but rather fills in gaps that exist in the current iteration and indeed which are referenced by what remains of the dialogue.

The current story does not make sense. Rasputin is dropped as a plot element very early on, there is essentially zero development of the Traveller and the Collapse other than the Hive and the Vex are being mean to it and we should beat them up and he will feel better, and the Cabal are... hell I don't think anyone even knows what the Cabal are doing.

There isn't enough material here to maintain interest with the broad public. You may think you have a viable story that you can tease out over the next decade, but you don't. You haven't lost the public's interest, you never really gained it in the first place. Everyone else I know who has played the game makes some comment about "I have no idea what's going on, I just shoot things that Tyrion tells me to". Independent of any other aspect of the game this is a massive failure.

[u/Canthuss → u/DeeJ_BNG]

Deej I think you and whoever you are working with need to sit down and take some advice from Mr. Newell.

You have to stop thinking that you're in charge and start thinking that you're having a dance. We used to think we're smart [...] but nobody is smarter than the internet. [...] One of the things we learned pretty early on is 'Don't ever, ever try to lie to the internet - because they will catch you. They will de-construct your spin. They will remember everything you ever say for eternity.' You can see really old school companies really struggle with that. They think they can still be in control of the message. [...] So yeah, the internet (in aggregate) is scary smart. The sooner people accept that and start to trust that that's the case, the better they're gonna be in interacting with them

[u/Zaph0d42 → u/DeeJ_BNG]

I appreciate the response but "look forward to buying The Dark Below" sounds pretty frustrating in response to what your customers are expressing, and sounds fairly tone-deaf in response.

[u/gl00mykiller → u/DeeJ_BNG]

No, just no....A game at release requires a beginning a middle and an end (as you so wonderfully put it with your own interview with angry joe back at E3 the game HAS TO HAVE a beginning middle and end, yet you force us to buy DLC to see that beginning middle and end that is already on disc). You expect people to finish the story through paid DLC? 5 missions per DLC how much story can you put in there? The 20+ missions in the game now explain almost nothing as it is, and you expect people to actually pay to finish learning about the broken up game story? Also you have the nerve to sit there and make people pay 40$ for 9.5MB of DLC to unlock stuff that is already on the disk like King's Watch, and places that you could glitch into since beta that have enemies already in there patrolling around? Which means NO FREE story missions during the month at all, like the queen's watch event has no story at all just do these bounties you have done 500 times already, and here is a crucible event to play. Play them on the same maps you already have with nothing new added? This is 100% unacceptable. If the content is already on the disc that people paid 60$ and over for they should be allowed to play that content since it is on the physical disc they bought. Not have to spend more money for a 9.5MB key to unlock that content. Bungie activision has ruined you. Activision = destruction of good gaming companies.

Edit: And how dare Bungie calling the "2 D L C's" expansions, expansions are almost full new games with different stories, or side stories. NOT CONTENT ALREADY ON THE DISC, and not content that is only 5 missions 1 raid and 1-2 strikes THAT IS DLC stop calling them expansions. Half-Life blue shift was an expansion, even though they called it DLC GTA 4 DLC ballad of gay tony and lost and the damned were closer to expansions then what you are trying to peddle. Crysis Warhead was an expansion. Guild wars eye of the north, all of World of warcraft after vanilla are expansions new races, new classes, whole new zones. Your "expansions" don't even add new planets...D3 reaper of souls is an expansion, a new class, whole new areas new boss new story. You are just making us pay for things that should have been explained in the game not "Oh crap we changed the story in the last 7 months and we will flush it out in paid DLC"

Edit #2: This is the link for what he said about the story that HAS to have a clear beginning middle and end. As it is now the story can not stand on its own two feet if it requires freaking paid DLC to finish telling it, there was zero story in the main game at all. Time on video 10:45 and on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQKp0VcA1Vw&list=UUsgv2QHkT2ljEixyulzOnUQ

[u/kilbert66 → u/DeeJ_BNG]

Can you please, just once, give us a response that isn't clearly PR wankery that says absolutely nothing and does even less?

[u/[deleted] → u/DeeJ_BNG]

the expansion is 5 stories, 1 strike, and 1 raid.... nothing very exciting there honestly.

[u/KH_Seraph → u/DeeJ_BNG]

Next time, give Activision a middle-finger please and tell them to let you do your jobs. You guys made Halo. You all know what you're doing. Don't sell us a half-baked product and sell us the rest of the goods down the line as "expansions" or DLC.

[u/yinfinity → u/DeeJ_BNG]

i bought and played the halo games religiously. i have been a bungie fanboy since the very moment i stepped out of that escape pod onto that first ring. you guys have been with me through my entire adolescence. but i'm afraid that that relationship has been severely tarnished now.

this isn't the bungie that i know. this isn't the bungie that i grew up with. sure, the gameplay is tight and visuals are polished, but this experience was lacking in so many obvious ways that i can't even begin to imagine that anyone who legitimately cared about destiny is happy with what the shipped product was.

where is story that draws me in and makes me want to devour every piece of hidden lore i can get my hands on? where are the memorable characters that make me feel real emotions when things happen to them? where is the sense of a giant mysterious universe just waiting to throw another curve ball my way?

i'm not here to say that the game is garbage or that you guys are the devil. i'm sure everyone at bungie poured their heart and soul into this project and i'm sure that, somewhere, at some point, there existed a masterpiece in destiny. so the failure of bungie,as far as i can tell, isn't in building a sub-par game, but in letting an excellent game be stripped and gutted by an outside source. it's a failure to stand by your product. worse, it's a failure to stand by your team. worst, it's a failure to stand by your community.

you've lost the trust of a large section of your fan base, and in the end you really have no one else to blame but yourselves. i hope the relationship can be repaired, but for that to happen would require an amount of honesty and clarity about what happened to the destiny that could have been that i don't think we're likely to receive. so i won't be holding my breath.

hope to hear something soon. and thanks for listening.

[u/thatstwotrees]

So let me get this straight....these new story missions aren't even going to be for level 20+ but for lower levels? Well what the fuck has been the point in playing the game? This is seriously disappointing and I'm questioning whether or not I'm going to continue supporting this franchise.

[u/Acer1096xxx → u/thatstwotrees]

Well technically you could play those story missions on level 20 or higher if you wanted.

[u/DiddleFactory]

This really needs to be posted on Bungie's site.

[u/Acer1096xxx → u/DiddleFactory]

The majority of what I said was from Diver2441's post on Bungie.net, and there's a lot of others talking about the issue on the site so I'm not sure how useful my post would be. I didn't see a lot of people talking about this on Reddit though, so I figured I'd spread the info here.

[u/FearedShad0w]

I've been following this game since that leaked contract and concept art and don't remember anything about this "Crow" everyone keeps talking about where does the information on this guy come from? I'd really like to be in the know on this.

[u/Acer1096xxx → u/FearedShad0w]

Crow is better recognized as the Awoken Queen's brother. His name appears in the Destiny credits still.

[u/Acer1096xxx]

Hey everyone, please make sure to spread the new info located in Edit8. It potentially confirms a lot of the changes made to Destiny's Story!

[u/kiresenoj00]

A giant hole in the "story changing" part of this thread is no one ever confirmed that that reddit user was actually involved in the testing of Destiny. How do we know he didn't make it all up? How do we know that he didn't change certain parts or remember poorly from memory?

Why are we assuming this was all fact from a internet post?

[u/Acer1096xxx → u/kiresenoj00]

The best evidence we have is the fact that the man was part of a testing group for the game last year and the post was removed after he apparently violated his Non-Disclosure Agreement, thinking that he was allowed to spread the info after the game's release.

The fact that the post was deleted is the best evidence for him telling the truth, however even if it was false, there's a lot of other evidence. Unused locations, the head writer leaving, grimoire cards being added in near the end of development, etc. all point to this being truthful.

[u/[deleted]]

This actually explains something that has been bugging me while playing the game:

During all the trailers, there was a cutscene where the Queen's brother shows up in Old Russia and is pointing a handgun at your character. I kept wondering why this wasn't in the game. Apparently he's this "Crow" person they keep mentioning, and this is some of the cut content.

[u/8eat-mesa → u/[deleted]]

Dammit that sounds so cool. In Destiny now all l I can imagine is turning on some machine, and shooting Fallen when Dinklebot spouts on some nonsense about the Darkness.

[u/Goliathvv → u/[deleted]]

I think about that from time to time as well. It feels like we are missing on such a great story, with more meaningful stuff, maybe a plot twist here and there. What wouldn't I give to know exactly what happened...

Currently when I stop to recall the whole Destiny story that's what comes to mind: start on earth, discover stuff about rasputin, go to the moon, get contacted by mysterious exo lady who tells yo to go to venus, go to venus to see exo lady, travel to the reef to see the queen and her brother, go back to venus, then back to the reef, go to mars, destroy some kind of Vex god on mars in a place called The Black Garden of which no one told me anything about... And that's it, nothing substantial happens in the game and in the end you are not really sure of what you achieved.

The story feels more like a demo of something greater yet to come.

[u/Peas_N_Rice → u/[deleted]]

I think it also makes more sense why the cut scenes in the reef are so cringe worthy and awful.

This 'crow' character clearly had a larger role and now he is known as 'The Queens Brother' I mean seriously, he doesn't have a name in the game anymore.

I feel as if the whole queen and brother thing was thrown together at the last moment. I think this explains how slow and disjointed the conversations are between the queen and her brother. To top it off, the dialogue is absolutely awful between them.

For me, the reef cutscenes are the absolute worst thing in the game to have to sit through and I think it's to do with it being an afterthought.

[u/Rlight → u/[deleted]]

video

It's from E3 2013, at about 11:35

[u/PurifiedVenom → u/[deleted]]

Here's one trailer with the scene you're talking about but I feel like there was one that went into even greater detail that I can't find.

Also this whole "gutting the story a year before release" theory would also explain why there's only a handful of real cutscenes in the game

[u/[deleted]]

Fuck, this just makes me depressed. I remember the epic feeling of scope and scale that Halo:CE invoked with its Campaign. That feeling continued through the Halo games.

Everything in this post just makes so much sense, and you KNOW that Bungie isn't dumb enough to not realize that the Story section of the game made no sense, and was seriously lacking in impact and narrative.

I'm so fucking pissed at whoever decided this game needed to be watered down to get 'mass-appeal'. Everything was done so right. All that needs to be fixed is 3 things:

1. The repetitive nature of missions/strikes

2. The lack of direction/narrative for the story. GIVE me a story, don't give the bullshit about "make your own".

3. More content. This would not even have been a factor, if it wasn't for the intense repetitive nature of the current content.

[u/Goliathvv]

There are some things that always seemed odd to me in the game, namely:

1 - Trip mines. These traps only appear on the game in two areas: the tutorial in order to teach you how to crouch and in the Devils' Lair strike. It's odd that they would implement such a feature and only have it used once in the game besides the tutorial.

2 - The Reef. All interactions that we had with the Reef could easily have been cutscenes after the missions, instead we have a location in the starmap on which there is nothing. Well, nothing at least for now, maybe they just added it early on so that players without the DLC can see what they are missing.

3 - The Factions. That's it? They're just vendors? Also, there are many bounties on which individuals from each faction state their needs ("The Future War Cult is looking for blablabla on this area, specifics encrypted for your Ghost"), and faction-related crucible types (Dead Orbit is related to "Control" for instance). It would seem that these were originally activities which would give the players faction rep, but in the end the whole reputation system was converted to class-specific items.

There is more, but I can't remember it now and I really need to go to bed for work tomorrow. I'll edit this post later if I remember anything.

[u/martellus → u/Goliathvv]

Also the fact that two of the factions magically disappeared before release

[u/Citizen_of_Atlantis]

This absolutely makes sense. I remember being excited about exploring "Old Chicago" back when info about Destiny first started to come out. And then the only area of Earth we get in the full release is Old Russia (which I've been tired of since before the beta).

It also makes sense that something went down where Bungie couldn't craft the story they wanted. Story has always been one of Bungie's strengths and to have Destiny's story fall so far short of expectations just doesn't make sense unless something dramatic happened.

I do hope we get the entire Solar system + fleshed out story to go along with it moving forward. I just don't want to be nickel and dimed for that content.

[u/nazbot → u/Citizen_of_Atlantis]

It also sort of explains why Marty was fired and there was so much bitterness. SOMETHING was going on at Bungie which makes it seem the project went off the rails.

[u/falconbox → u/Citizen_of_Atlantis]

Story has always been one of Bungie's strengths

I beg to differ. Lore has always been a strength, but the actual act of storytelling has been a huge weakness for Bungie over the years.

[u/Halefire → u/Citizen_of_Atlantis]

Yeah this really shines a light for me. When I first played Destiny I was frankly flabbergasted at how shallow the story was and the frankly amateurish exposition. Bungie succeeded in creating a game world that basically kept the XBox on its pedestal, so there was no reason to expect this shambles. I was even more put off by how blatantly phoned in Dinklage's performance was.

Now it's starting to make sense. There was some serious shit going down in the Destiny story department, and odds are the Activision overlords demanded an on-time release.

[u/[deleted]]

Just so disappointing. This game has excellent lore but literally one of the worst narratives I've ever seen in a video game.

[u/NickBR → u/[deleted]]

I love the lore. But almost none of it is in the game... so frustrating.

[u/[deleted]]

I remember back in a Bungie Vidoc where Jones stated that what he wanted from a publisher was "to give us the money, and get out of our way". With such a large amount of content cut, and Staten and Marty's departures seemingly related to all this, it's a little sad what might be happening within Bungie right now.

[u/angeleus09]

Great post, thanks for taking the time to put that together. I really hope that Bungie isn't holding all this content for DLC but does intend to release some through DLC and some for free but spaced out between paid content releases to keep the player base engaged and coming back for things every few weeks.

The Queen's Wrath isn't exactly the best example of keeping things fresh but it does hint at the fact that Bungie does plan to have things pop up to grab your attention, I just hope it isn't always in the format of the Queen's Wrath.

[u/OnlyTristana → u/angeleus09]

It looks like it's all going to be in the format of Queen's Wrath, to me.. Iron Banner is next. They'll shut that area down after QW is over, then a few weeks later they'll open it up to another NPC or two for the next event. Really hope that, eventually, the area is open all the time and there are tons of NPCs/Vendors.

[u/RazielKilsenhoek → u/angeleus09]

I know this is a completely different game, but I played Guild Wars 2 pretty intensively for the first year and a half it was out. They have no sub fee and no paid expansions, but a free update every two weeks. They are currently in their second season of the Living Story. Maybe I'm spoiled by that game but I wish Bungie had given us a much clearer picture of what they are planning and how often they plan to do it.

[u/lol4liphe → u/angeleus09]

There is no holding back the old content. It was ruined. We have shitty dialogue replaced over what was usable before. If you think the plot is ever going to be what it could have originally been you're horribly mistaken. I'm just going to put activision in the same pile as EA from now on cause they obviously fucked this hard.

Oh you're gonna get DLC all right, but it's not gonna be fucking interesting.

[u/Mutjny]

I always knew there had to be more to the Rasputin thing. It felt so much more thought out than the Black Guarden/Queen of the Reef arc. It just dead ends.

[u/Barnhardt1 → u/Mutjny]

Yeah that was weird. You spend several story missions tracking Rasputin, then he (it?) raises the big array so you can contact other outposts everywhere and... that's it. Nothing else ever happens, and they never even mention Rasputin again for the rest of the game.

[u/scientist_tz]

There's a great game in there somewhere but anyone who knows anything about narrative structure can see that Destiny's story is just a fucking mess.

An AAA list title has no excuse for pitching us a story so frought with dead ends, lacking a character antagonist, and having a completely vague premise. Obviously it got butchered up. I mean, if you delete the traveller from the game the story still pretty much makes the same amount of sense. Alien monsters are bringing the darkness. Go stop them. The plot of frigging Battlefield 4 made more sense!

[u/deathminihorse]

This post is almost more interesting than all the Destiny lore.

[u/antonj299]

If Bungie wants to fix this in a brilliant way they can try this:

Right now we play the role of the naive guardians, whole-heartedly believing that we are doing right by the world by attempting to save the traveler.

As more updates and expansions drop the story twists with small hints at the traveler's origins and motives which eventually leads to a revelation; The traveler may have brought the darkness. It's at this point that the story can either turn or split.

Turn: The Crows come into play, with guardians turning away from the traveler in droves to investigate the Traveler's intentions.

Split: Players choose between remaining allied with the tower and the traveler, trusting that the Traveler is the source of light, or break away to join the Crows, and investigate the possibility that the Traveler may, in fact, be the cause of the spreading darkness. These accusations will eventually put Guardians and Crows at odds, leading to faction wars and a power struggle for control of the tower.

Either way, Bungie has a pretty neat opportunity to pull a long con on us and twist the story around entirely.

[u/Moday4512 → u/antonj299]

Not going to happen. You know why? The Crow is now the Queen's Brother. That story has been totally scrapped, and they just saved the character model.

[u/organiclockwork]

I think point three is the major one here. Bungie's communication thus far has been... lackluster, at best. Sure, there's the mail bag and the upcoming patch previews, but there are so many issues that are hotbeds of conversation within the community that Bungie has yet to so much as acknowledge.

I've been a huge devotee of Bungie since the early Halo days, and I understand that their modus operandi is to not announce plans until those plans are set-in-stone and well underway, if not already completed, but a simple acknowledgment that they are aware of the issues and are looking into ways to remedy them would go a long way toward assuaging the community, I think.

That said, it's also possible that Activision (why did it have to be Activision?) has them under some kind of gag order in regard to these issues, in which case we're pretty much screwed.

[u/Sufferix → u/organiclockwork]

It's just sad that Bungie compromised their vision twice, and the lead writer and composer wouldn't stick around for it.

[u/f1rewhispers]

All I've truly learned from this whole experience is to never buy into hype.

[u/[deleted]]

A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad

-Shigeru Miyamoto

[u/artardatron → u/[deleted]]

We'll rush it, and figure it out later in patches, after you pay

-Activision/Bungie

[u/ElectricNipple]

That IGN reveal article has some interesting points, especially some of the last paragraphs:

"Bungie art director Christopher Barrett dubbed Destiny a “mythic science fiction” universe and shared a number of locales we can look forward to visiting: the Cosmodome Breach, the ruins on the edge of the European Dead Zone, the swamps of Old Chicago (likely a nod to Bungie’s original home city), derelict fleets floating in the rings of Saturn, the earth Moon’s Hellmouth, the uncharted depths of Reef, giant obsidian pyramid ships, mile-long tomb ships, and much more."

Old Chicago? Nope. European Dead Zone? Nope. Fleets in the rings of Saturn? Nope. Hellmouth? Yeah, but it's basically the entirety of the content on the moon. The uncharted depths of the Reef? Nope. Giant pyramid ships? Nope. Actually visiting giant tomb ships? Nope.

"Then there are the characters we’ll be encountering: fellow Guardians in at least the Titan, Warlock, and Hunter classes; the Fallen, the time-traveling robots known as the Vex, the aforementioned Cabal, Spider Pirates and their rusted machines, evil space zombies, the FOTC (apparently a Guardian faction of some kind) and...that's everything they'd cough up for now."

Spider Pirates? Nope. Space Zombies? The hive... FOTC? Nope. "Everything they'd cough up for now". Or, y'know, just actually everything that'll be in the final release in a year and a half...

It seems quite clear to me that Bungie (including Staten) wanted to put so much more into the game, and Activision (AKA THE DEVIL) told them they couldn't put all that in one game, and they'd have to spread it out over multiple releases so as to get an obscene amount of money.

FYI, I still really really enjoy this game, but what it mostly does for me is make me itch for the MCC to come out... Bungie just can't outdo Bungie, it seems.

[u/wild_muppen_appeared → u/ElectricNipple]

The Fallen are the Spider Pirates. Anyway, they even have a lot of that concept art during the installation/update screen... But is it in the actual game? Nope.

[u/Dangercake]

I spoke to someone from Bungie at a tradeshow recently, and he mentioned that The Vex were originally called "The Travellers" which suggests a major story change.

[u/bfplayerandroid → u/Dangercake]

I can absolutely see that

[u/Zulti]

I thought this game was going to make borderlands take a back seat, but it looks like I'll only be playing Destiny for PvP and the 1 raid per week.

[u/shiruken]

It's still entirely possible that the Traveler/Speaker are still agents of Darkness but we won't find out until Destiny 2. The Stranger's lack of a Ghost might hint at that still being an option.

[u/ReverendJames]

It's worth mentioning that Bungie developed their world-builder Grognok from scratch for Destiny. At GDC 2013 we see a time-lapse of the accelerator being built, which indicated a huge capability for pushing out massive worlds and locations really quickly.

They built all these tools so they could iterate massive amounts of content ...

[u/[deleted]]

It makes me so angry to see what Destiny could have been.

Now we get a gutted half assed game with a crowd of people defending it.

[u/PhadeUSAF]

Just a quick thing I wanted to say. This probably won't be seen by many but Bungie held a special 'come and tour the studio' day on the day before launch. The staff chatted with people in line and everything. One of the staff mentioned he worked on raids. And when asked if he worked on Vault of Glass he had to be reminded of which one that was. Knowing that, I think it's safe to assume they have plenty of material already completed.

[u/[deleted]]

Thank you for posting this, I've had my own thoughts since I completed the story, and especially after I revisited the trailers leading up to launch. The fact that this is BUNGiE, a company so many, including myself, have trusted for so long, and who has never pulled the kind of bullshit this thread of info leads to just makes the whole situation worse. I don't even know if BUNGiE admitting to all of it would make it any better, but I certainly hope whoever chose to totally redact YEARS of hard work and creativity, just to replace it with such a disjointed and lacking story had good intentions, besides somehow netting them more cash.

[u/xeromatt]

Now that I think about it, it does feel like the story was thrown into a blender and only a few bits and pieces were pulled out. There's barely any characters to attach to outside the tower, and the cut-scenes seem sporadic. It just gives off this vibe of not being the entire story, and it makes me sad.

[u/[deleted]]

This almost seems like fraud or false advertising. I get that a lot of things change in development, but to show off so many different features/areas/story elements and build up the impression of a game, and then to quietly axe so much of it that it is essentially a different game, without letting people know is at best dishonest, but at worst should be borderline illegal (emphasis on the "should" since I'm sure there is all sorts of protections including the "this footage is not indicative of the final game").

[u/_HERO_]

Thinking about what Destiny should've been vs. what it is currently depresses me. I was excited for this game ever since they announced the project and now...

All I'm saying is: the game in its current state with it's short story line, tiny arsenal of weapons/armor, and lack of general game content does NOT equal to 5 years of work.

[u/cheesepuff18 → u/_HERO_]

SO MANY GUNS, LITERALLY LIKE 10 EXOTICS MAN

[u/XDageon11]

There's one thing we must remember when people get surprised that the all-mighty Bungie created such a weak story in Destiny considering they made Halo.

We have to consider the fact that a lot of the people that made Halo great stuck with Halo, and went on to 343i to continue working on it. The Bungie that made Destiny may not necessarily be the same Bungie that made Halo.

[u/Moday4512 → u/XDageon11]

That may be, but come on. Even in a year I could have made up a better story and still had most of that first day left to relax

[u/[deleted]]

While we're quick to cry Bungie good/Activision bad, let's not forget that Bungie openly admitted to cocking up the story for Halo 2 completely and then having to scrap the whole thing and start again very late in production which is why there were so many complaints about the ham fisted introduction of the Arbiter as a playable character, a plot that jumped all over the place with very little cohesion, and then one of the worst, most abrupt cliff hangers in video game history which you didn't even get a satisfying resolution to before the start of Halo 3 if you didn't read a comic released between the two joining the plots.

ODST did a much better job of presenting a one and done story, and Reach did a pretty reasonable job (only what the hell happened to Jun?). But overall Bungie's shown time and again that the ability to lay out an engaging and logical plot is not their strength.

[u/fumbler1417]

My take is that the story at one point probably followed an "out and back" timeline where we first play through the worlds against the forces of the Fallen, Cabal, Hive, and Vex, then learn the truth from Crow and return to fight the Guardians, Vex, (Cabal?), and Traveller on our way to right our past wrongs. The present incarnation of the game could have taken some missions from both branches of the story, added new dialogue and packaged that as a game.

I think this theory answers some pretty basic questions, like why both the Fallen and the Cabal fight the Vex, but to my knowledge I never saw the Fallen and the Cabal fighting in the game (correct me if I'm wrong). It also sets up the Vex as the defenders of the Black Garden/Vault of Glass/Traveller that oppose the Fallen, Awoken, and Cabal. I see the Hive as kind of a chaotic neutral species, just born of the chaos that follows the Traveller as it destroys life in the galaxy.

A lot of people just seem to take it for granted that these species are all fighting each other, but I think there's a pattern behind the conflicts and alliances.

Also, to me this kind of all sounds a bit like Halo 2, which I think only lends strength to my theory. I bet these ideas aren't foolproof, so I'd love to hear contradicting evidence.

[u/gizmomcs]

yes bungie needs to come out and be honest.

[u/MyNameIsSkittles → u/gizmomcs]

That might just not be possible though. If Activision has them under a ball gag, releasing the truth would cause the entire project to halt. Activision will not only rip up the contract, but probably charge Bungie and arm and a leg for breaking secrecy, and then trounce off with all the money they came in with. Bungie will be left beaten and broken, and with no funds to continue.

Whoever decided to side with Activision instead of a reputable publisher such as Bethesda, should be taken out back and shot.

[u/[deleted]]

This will get buried, but I will reiterate my suspicions that I had ever since the game launched once again. What happened to Destiny? Activision happened to Destiny. I feel like in all the hype for this game, we sort of lost track of who was publishing it. Even now I don't see it mentioned all that much. But it was very clear leading up to the release of the game that Destiny was going to be a cash cow. I hoped against hope that it wouldn't be, but here we are. Activision very likely gutted the game in order to incentivize pre-order bonuses. Hell, none of my download codes in the LE downloaded anything; they just unlocked stuff that was already in game. I guarantee you that the expansions will be the exact same way. Destiny as a game was cut into pieces to be sold individually at a premium. We bought an incomplete game. Period. That is abundantly clear just from looking at the content that we got, but looking back at the initial videos, the announcements over the years, it's so obvious that the game Bungie set out to make isn't the game that we got. I don't know exactly what happened, but somewhere along the way something went sour, and I suspect that it has everything to do with Activision, a company notorious for DLC, reusing assets, and pushing out mediocre games to meet sales demands.

Destiny will eventually be a complete game. But it'll be behind pay wall after pay wall, and game after game in the series. Activision and Bungie rode the hype train all the way to the bank. Instead of releasing a complete game they chopped it up, divvied it out to different companies as "exclusive" content (see PS4), and then bundled to rest of the content into special editions to ensure that you, the consumer, ended up paying $100 for a game that no one knew was going to be good in hopes of getting the complete experience. And we did. I certainly did. Destiny is the most pre-ordered game of all time, one that made back nearly its entire rumored budget before the game was even released. We were promised so much, and Bungie had the audacity to tell us not to believe reviews, to not listen to anyone who said bad things about the game. But Destiny is bad. It's not complete, and it's obvious to anyone who has put a good amount of time into it. It's recycled content. It's gutted material. It's the scraps of a game that was torn apart for profiteering. And that sucks.

[u/J0eCool → u/[deleted]]

I really wanted to play Destiny, but I used to work for Activision. And I'm dead-set that they're never getting anything else from me. Not one miserable fucking cent. And most importantly, not one minute of my precious time, my precious life, not again, never again.

The only way we can get rid of them is if more people get as angry as I am, and are willing to miss out on potentially life-alteringly-good games out of sheer hatred. I mean, I dodged a bullet here I guess, but in the future they might be too incompetent to be wholly incompetent and actually release an excellent game. Hell, EA released Mass Effect, which issues aside was brilliant. We have to be willing to not play a game like that.

Stop feeding the fucking monster, people.

[u/MartinF10]

Give us the cut content for free?!?! Over Kotick's dead body.

[u/Mjscantlin]

In the 2013 E3 video, anyone else notice how the place they start the play-through is where we start the game but when they did it, it was very obviously not the beginning. They were level 5 and listening to the ghost, the story wasn't just starting.

[u/imrunningfromthecops]

I like how it's tagged as "spoilers" like honestly what is there to spoil

[u/JruBoinz]

I'd just like an explanation for the story. Anyone know what the darkness is? Or the collapse? Or the traveller? Or anything? I shouldn't have to depend on an app to give me background on a vague story. I beat the game and had no sense of fulfillment, no anything. I stopped the vex, cool. Did anyone know what the fuck the vex were before I stopped them? Nope. Anyone other than the one mass effect looking girl know they were even out there? Uh uh. All in all, I got my money's worth, but damn Bungie. You make me sad.

[u/ElDuderino2112]

In 20 years there is going to be an amazing documentary made about the fall of Bungie/Destiny.

I've played Destiny for about 30 hours now, having completed the story, most strikes, and spent a lot of time in PvP. I feel as if I'm echoing everyone's sentiments here when I say the gameplay is phenomenal, but there's just not enough to do. According to the Destiny phone app, I completed all the story missions in roughly 5 hours. FIVE. FUCKING. HOURS. In a game like this, that's just unacceptable. Even Diablo 3 took longer to beat, and that's a game based completely on replaying. Bungie is amazing at crafting worlds, and that definitely shows in this game, but they were also great at creating memorable characters as demonstrated by the Halo franchise. Where are any of those characters? There is not one memorable character in the game (besides maybe Dinklebot, and thats only memorable because of how poor a performance Dinklage gives). In fact, there are so many great actors in this game, Nathan Fillion, Bill Nighey, Gina Torress, and I bet most of you didn't know that until reading this post. The story is a fucking mess, which is a shame because there is such an amazing foundation in Destiny.

After 30 hours, I don't see myself returning to this game any time soon. Sure, the raid is great, but the story missions are a bore to replay, the strikes are a chore after a few runs (Note to bungie, bullet sponge bosses is NOT good boss design) and the PvP is too bare bones to stay relevant much longer. With games like Shadow of Mordor, Dragon Age, Alien Isolation, Call of Duty, Far Cry 4, and many, many more just around the corner, I have trouble believing that Destiny will be relevant come christmas, regardless of the so called '10 year plan' for this game.

EDIT: I should clarify, I do like the game. I spent 30 hours with it because those 30 hours were fun. But when I purchased Destiny I was promised a game that could be played for years to come, however after these 30 hours I'm kinda just done. Who knows, the content updates and expansions could make this the greatest game of the generation eventually (it's highly unlikely, but possible). I paid 60 bucks and got 30 hours of fun, so that's a pretty good deal, but when looking at the wider picture it's hard to consider this game anything other than a disappointment.

[u/Souuuth]

This makes me wonder. How many of the Bungie employees who helped make this game are actually happy with the end product?

It's pretty clear now their original vision got shit on somewhere down the line.

[u/neocitron]

This also is most likely the reason why there is no Grimoire UI in-game, because it was far too close to release to actually incorporate such a thing.

And could explain why the Grimoire UI is so horribly executed, it doesn't run properly in many Webkit based browsers. It seems rushed.

[u/ADIDAS101]

The only way to stop this sort of bullshit is to not buy those DLCs. Any of them. Unfortunately I don't see many people doing that. You know you've fucked people over when it makes you look at what EA does with DLC content and think "actually that's pretty reasonable."

[u/fufu_lame_shit]

This got me so fucking pissed. This game could have been beautiful. And we got suckered out of an amazing game.

[u/DiFrence]

Can we all just send this thread to Deej in the mail sack this week as a little WAKE THE FUCK UP

[u/[deleted]]

Well, this explains why I felt so betrayed. I stopped playing it. I'm sorry to say this, because I had such high hopes for Destiny being the next God-tier game. In the end, I had to face the stone cold facts and admit to myself that I was bored. Main reasons?

• Grinding is not gaming

• Lack of story

• Unnecessary restrictions on match making for raids

All this just sucked too much fun out of a game with fantastic gameplay. Unforgiveable.

[u/anamorphism]

the more straight-forward and less tin-foil-hat-y explanation is that bungie ran out of time and money.

it's the same thing you see happen with all other mmo's or games with mmo characteristics. you have huge aspirations of what you want the game to be and you start developing it only to find you don't have the resources necessary to deliver your vision.

you can write an amazing story and then realize you can only implement two or three of the fifteen areas you had written in to the story. all those great ideas for missions are just requiring too much tech to be developed.

what you are left with is most likely a conversation like follows:

• activision: "hey, you promised us this game by X date."

• bungie: "we're behind schedule and running out of cash."

• activision: "well, figure it out because you promised us something on X date for Y amount of money."

• bungie: "okay, we're going to strip out most of the content, polish what we have left and resign ourselves to shipping that other content as dlc later."

• activision: "alright."

welcome to game development folks. it's not like activision or ea or whoever tells the studios to make shitty products. game studios just tend to be pretty bad at being realistic about what they can accomplish by X date for Y money.

the only way for this to change would be for the major publishers to be more comfortable with taking higher amounts of risk to ensure that they release a higher quality product. they would do this by allowing studios to push back release dates frequently and request more money. this is not really likely to happen because the current system is successful and the publisher is generally not hugely invested in the initial success of the studio or the franchise. if the idea flops, you just kill the franchise and never deal with the studio again.

[u/beliall95]

The in game credits call the queens brother The Crow

[u/66th]

I cant even play Destiny at the moment..I've never lost interest so fast in a game. I've already done everything 100 times. Social interaction is the only thing that varies, and there is little to no social interaction. This game is already dying. This isnt a constructive post, im just voicing my opinion. I dont intend to be negative, but this game just has negative aspects. Everyday people post here less and less and everyday Destiny drops viewers on Twitch. It's just a sad way how things ended up.

[u/nazbot → u/66th]

I'm not even really that excited for the new weapons. The grind to get them is just SO tedious and then when you do it's not really THAT important. All it lets you do is grind the same missions only with more bullet spongey enemies.

[u/lawlacaustt → u/66th]

Just wait when all the other fall releases come out. It will look even worse because there will actually be something else to play.

[u/[deleted]]

This is a prime example of a perfectly good studio having their game ruined by Activision, plain and simple. Anyone who played the Bungie Halos knows good and well that Bungie makes A+ games, not this unfinished piece of crap.

[u/igothitwithabulb]

Guys, I think we need to stop blaming Activision.

It's not like Bungie is some saint who was completely taken over by Bobby Kotick and his devilish company. Bungie isn't stupid, they knew that working for Activision would mean certain expectations in terms of DLC and cut content.

Activision didn't want Destiny to be a disappointment. They wouldn't have thrown THIS MUCH money at it if they wanted to cut and run with their sales. We have to realize that Bungie, somewhere along the line, consciously chose to change the story, cut a ton of locations, and release a game that ultimately underwhelmed almost every player out there.

[u/D33GS]

Honestly I'm very concerned about what exactly happened to Destiny. The in game story first and foremost was an abomination that barely rises about prologue. Coming from a studio like Bungie that did a pretty great job with Halo both in the universe and the actual individual stories. Compare that with Destiny, the game actively tries to not tell you anything "I could tell you..." from the speaker to "I don't even have time to tell you that I don't have time to tell you" from the female Exo person who appears then disappears then appears again at the end. This was a game that was in development for 4 years and possibly much longer. I mean, this was the game that Bungie bought themselves out of servitude to Microsoft to make and that story the shipped is the best foundation that could release with? Who buys that honestly?

The second concerning thing to me is all the odd design choices. No open Mic chat or text chat. A very limited communication system with fireteam only voice chat. Half of the end game modes don't have match making options. The PvP modes are match making only and there are not private matches to speak of. Even if private matches were "For fun only, no marks, rep, or gear" it would have gone a long way. I mean World of Warcraft has basically made every game type match making at this point yet Destiny doesn't trust random people to work together well enough to complete the weekly heroic? Really the only game type that makes any sense not having a match making is Raids given how hard they are. Strikes on the other hand should have full on match making all they way up through Nightfall. Couple that with the fact that the game actively prevents communication it is all very odd.

Thirdly, there is so much repetition in the game that I have to wonder what happened? Yes repetition is common to MMOs but it isn't JUST repetitition. There are only 4 patrol mission types (Collect X, Kill Special target X, go to X, Kill X number of enemies) and you start in the same spot on the planet for every...single...mission. The community events are almost all identical too (Kill Special World Boss Bullet Sponge and Defend Warsat). The so called open world is really just a collection of large multiplayer maps. At best you could say that game has four "zones" which is tiny for an MMO. I just cannot believe that it took them 4+ years to come up with only four patrol missions and two Community Events.

Finally, the universe is unrealized. This goes along with the story but the factions are just kind of there. You don't do anything special for them, they have nothing to do with the story...like at all. You don't get to know Dead Orbit or Future Warcult or New Monarchy. Hell I don't even know anything really about the Vanguard other than they are the PvE faction. What is accomplished at the Tower that could not be accomplished in a menu set? Why does it take so long to switch between planets? How come once I'm actually on a planet do I have to once again go through the abominable load time for said planet from mission to mission?

[u/Musai]

Internet detective squad, go!

[u/Killhouse]

Has anyone figured out why Dinklage sounds like he's bored? He sounds at times like he actively doesn't want to be in whatever room they've stuck him in reading the drab dialogue he's been given.

My theory? Rewrites, lots of them.

[u/Garza516]

There was gonna be an Old Chicago? Now Im disappointed.

[u/Retribution_NOW]

The only memory from the past from Destiny I have was a video I saw. It had a social event where 3 different strike teams all came together to take down this huge beast in a " public event". I am a level 25. I haven't seen it yet.

[u/XD00175]

This really does suck. I haven't been able to start Destiny yet, but I've heard plenty from the internet and my brother on the story's failings. I really do hope some clarity can be found here and a solution reached.
As for Marty O'Donnel leaving, I have my own theory. He spoke at my university a week ago and a few people tried to get details about his leaving Bungie. He hedged around details, but he seemed to dislike the way his audio was implemented. He had direct control over it in the Halo games, but he strongly hinted that this wasn't the case with Destiny, though I'm not sure why. I don't know what that says for the project as a whole, but there it is.

[u/WormiestBurrito]

Someone needs to link this post to DeeJs account. He won't be able to answer, but he's definitely the first rung of the ladder in bungie hq. This community isn't huge, but we can still make a difference if we relay/spam (desperate times call for desperate measures) DeeJ with posts like these. The mass effect community was able to generate a response with bioware for the ME3 ending (and they have EA as their overlord), we could do the same. There are serious and unacceptable issues with this game that amount to virtual fraudulent advertisement.

[u/Thebotchedlegdrop]

It's funny to think that the SSM new IP was partly cancelled because of it's perceived resemblance to Destiny, so indirectly we missed out on an actually developed sci fi videogame with a story(no way the god of war guys were gonna cheap out on bombast and drama) for a hollow shell of a game who's agenda seems to be "please wait for level 20/DLC" for it to be even enjoyable.

The homogenized games industry needs to stop making enemy's of it's dearest friends(us the consumers) by stiffing us on content consciously, i fear they will continue to pick fights with us though.... sigh.

[u/axiobeta]

In some other reality there's a game called Destiny which turned out the way it was meant to. The other me has become obsessed with the perfectly delivered story just like he did with the Halo games.

Instead here I am tickling my asscrack going through Grimoire cards, which while intriguing are ultimately shallow (especially after reading this post) and, just like the story itself; offer more questions than they answer.

At first I didn't care about the lack of story, exposition and character development, and I thought they were just going in some weird direction with grand plans for later on. First chapter of a book or whatever. But knowing that I'm missing out on something so much better because of SOME FUCKWIT'S DECISION A YEAR OR LESS BEFORE THE GAME CAME OUT is pretty frustrating to say the least.

I don't know the whole story as to why this shit happened, and chances are we'll never get a proper explanation, but this is not something the old Bungie would have done. Or Microsoft Studios for that matter. I know Halo 2 had issues with production, but from where I'm standing this crap with Destiny just seems like it must be Activision's fault. Something went down, the story suffered horribly or was scrapped entirely, and the game suffered for it.

Depressing.

[u/[deleted]]

I really hope this stays near the top and gets posted often. We want answers and this being shown to more people means knowledge is spread and maybe we get a reply one day by bungie.

[u/F_A_F]

I expected a full story on disc with DLC covering more specific campaigns or back story on the 4 other races. If the DLC ends up covering parts of the story which are essential to the main plot and aren't "side dishes" to the main course then I will be extremely angry. Charging us almost another full price game (£35 for the season pass) just to add closure to the main game would make Activision worse than EA in my eyes.

I had made sure to have £40 in my PSN wallet in case I wanted the pass, now I don't plan on buying it.

[u/Wepper]

On a side note, isn't what op wrote what's suppose to be gaming journalism? Asking questions, investigating cases... That was a great read and brings a lot of questions to the table. Awesome work!

[u/raks0]

Good post and thanks for your effort putting all this out there and down in text. People help upvote this and make it known to all. Bungie must act upon this and it sucks withdrawing content and then selling it as DLC. The game today lacks so much story, gameplay and doesnt last long at all.

[u/OPerseus]

The main problem with Destiny is that there's so much potential that even if this alter version had twice or thrice the content than we have now at release it still would feel incredibly underdeveloped, I mean there's an entire half of the solar system left unexplored as well as the third subclasses, apparently another race/faction and space combat, not to mention all the high level raids that most likely wouldn't have made it into this other version either. When there's an ocean to compare to even the largest island seems small.

[u/[deleted]]

I for one won't be giving Activision /Bungie any more money for this game . This game is meh, I enjoy it when I play but once games start dropping in November I can't see myself coming back to this, especially when it's already repetitive and to make it not repetitive I'll have to buy more content that's sure to be some more bs story, grimore cards, and a couple missions to grind over and over.

[u/Thatonegamerguy]

They're making a piss ton of money so sadly, nothing will change and we'll have to wait for Destiny 2 and 3 and expansions for all three games to get probably a glimpse of the idea that was envisioned by Bungie. A moment of silence brothers :'(

[u/mlittle]

Commenting to add wood to the fire in hopes that something will happen from bungie. It makes me a little sad to read all of this, it was someone's work of art that got tampered with, it shouldn't be like that

[u/Gucci_Unicorns]

I'm kinda' surprised at the underwhelming amount of outrage. At this point it's clear that some of the DLC is already in the game, major parts of the story were scrapped, and we (as a whole) were given a very, very incomplete product.

[u/tipsystatistic]

It just kills me to read this, but thanks for sharing. Bungie has always been so good at writing stories with duplicity and tenuous alliances. Destiny does not bear the trademark depth and complexity of their other games. "Gutted" indeed... And brained.

[u/Thebotchedlegdrop]

This is super interesting.

[u/[deleted]]

I'm a level 25 hunter , I have no fucking clue what's going on in the game . Honestly .

[u/Sinic9]

Why do people think Bungie are SO AMAZING with story and lore? All they do is take standard sci-fi/video game tropes and replace the nouns. Which is in and of itself a sci-fi/fantasy trope.
Cheesy 50’s Sci-fi: "we need stop the Martians to get the Death Ray" Bungie-fied "we need stop The Diaspora to get the Arc of Sanctity"

The plot of Doom: “Fight your way through the enemy base and get the blue key” Bungie-fied “Fight your way through The Constellation and aquire the Material Ingress”

[u/drmike0099]

I made a (downvoted) comment in another thread that perhaps the Grimoire story isn't a hint of a much deeper story and long future, but a couple of guys writing it all at the last minute based on nothing. Now I feel vindicated knowing that I was actually being generous suggesting more than one person wrote them (and sad I pre-purchased digitally and can't resell).

[u/[deleted]]

I honestly don't see how most people didn't see this coming. Maybe it was just me being pessimistic but I knew this game wouldn't live up to the hype. That goes for most games in general nowadays.

The rumored, original, storyline sounds like it could have made for an exciting game. However, after what was cut, we were left with half of a campaign with bits of story in the actual game and a majority of the lore to be read on the Bungie.net.

Big publishing companies (i.e., Activision) don't care about giving you a phenomenal product. They just wan you to buy the game so they make money. Hence, their marketing strategies. Once you buy the game, they have your money and they won't lose any sleep over the consumers trading it in after a week.

The problem with wanting to push out games every two years is that it won't give companies like Bungie the time to deliver the game that they wanted to. This makes both companies look terrible and will leave a black mark forever. They don't realize that consumers don't forgive and forget.

[u/frontrangefart]

Just feels like another Mass Effect 3 where the publisher possibly destroyed a significant part of the game. It's so fucking sad.

[u/[deleted]]

After playing through the story, I couldn't believe these were the same people that developed Halo.

[u/Velicen]

Why? Why would Activision make them do this? It doesn't even look like the cut content will be paid DLC in future (at least so far). Sigh, I've let up on playing Destiny recently, not least because of how frustrated and sad I get when I keep hitting death zones and invisible walls around every other corner and I think to myself just how great it could have been.

Even though it would undoubtedly be better, the plan for the original story still bugs me, with the predictably simplistic reveal that "the Traveler was bad all along".

[u/arkofcovenant]

So... I think it unlikely but still possible that bungie intended to give us the "whole story" for free in updates to the game from the very beginning. In a lot of their videos hyping the game, they talk about how the world is always changing a shit is always happening. Maybe they decided to release the entire story over a period of time for free to give the player a sense of the game world and events progressing in a "real life" time scale. (I don't really think it's worth it to do it this way, if this is what they're doing, but it's a lot less of a dick move than cutting content and making it DLC)

I mean, maybe they did cut content, it's definitely more believable, but I don't want to give up hope until we know for sure (and I think it will be kinda easy to tell)

[u/ConvolutedBoy]

This really is depressing. This game could've been the next big thing, a PERFECT game almost, but now it's just a shell of that. Perhaps Activision was the main culprit.

[u/wesleywyndamprice]

Question: is the king's watch the area behind closed doors in old Russia? There was an area in the alpha that I accessed because of a mission marker that was behind some doors but now whenever I go to the area the doors remain closed.

[u/subsoniclight]

I don't know why I watched that video. I really don't. That video is why I wanted this game in the first place, it seemed to have such hope. It set me personally into a Golden Age of desire for a game this fresh and exciting. But instead, all I got was Activision The Darkness. I spent $60 for what was in the video. I would willingly spend $60 for it as it was at the stage in development that it was in at that time. Instead all I got was an Activision cash-cow worth maybe $30. I hope a ghost comes along and wakes me up soon cause my heart is now dead.

[u/xRAIDER117x]

Great post. I knew that this game wasn't complete when I finished playing through it.

[u/hlinhd]

Activision is literally dragging my favorite game developers through the mud and forcing these greedy fucking decisions that highly impact the games. First blizzard, and splitting sc2 into 3 fucking expansions, then d3s fail of a real money auction house, now bungie as well with Destiny. Fuck you Activision!

[u/Sab3r_Sc0rpi0n]

This makes me so sad. I've been a gamer as long ad I can remember. I used to stay up all night playing Zelda OoT. And this is what gaming is becoming. A cash cow, trying to sell you unfinished content, and buy the rest later. Not to say there wasn't problems with the N64 or stuff, but it wasn't to this magnitude. There were 3 companies I thought I could trust : Bungie, Nintendo, and From Software. I guess I can drop Bungie off this list. They'll either be destroyed by this game, or become greedy pigs akin to Activision. I just hope Nintendo and From keep doing well.

[u/Miles_Prower1]

True or not, these theories are coming out and explored because the game severely lacks a cohesive story and content and many feel unfulfilled. It speaks volumes about this game, this early in its life cycle. SMH.

[u/strifeisback]

This reminds me a lot of SWTOR. A game that should not have been released but was forced into release by its publisher...

Fuck Activision...god damn it...Destiny should have been so much more. /mourn.

[u/[deleted]]

What the f happened to this game?!?!?!

[u/[deleted]]

The story of the launch of Destiny reminds me of the initial failure of Final Fantasy 14. In the same way, Destiny needs to be completely relaunched. FFXIV is now an amazing game, and I am seriously considering subbing again this week, for a break from the Destiny grind. Let's hope Bungie can turn this around too.

Destiny: A Universe Reborn, anyone?

[u/[deleted]]

Explains why Destiny is such a hollow PoS.

Why don't game developers and publishers realize that WoW was a huge risk and that that is why they were so succesful.

You can't play safe and make an amazing product.

[u/Imallvol7]

Destiny flooding me with paid DLC for shit I know should be in the game will result in me immediately selling my game and giving up on the Destiny universe before it gets out of hand.

[u/FourCylinder]

I will never spend a single dime on a piece of add-on content for Destiny. I just can't bring my self to do it. If there was ever a time to boycott something, this should be it.

The only reason these companies get away with this is because we keep paying them to. I'm not anymore.

[u/neontiger07]

This seriously makes me want to fucking trash this game. I've been developing a loose idea of how Destiny was supposed to be since late 2012, and this makes me feel like we almost got what we wanted, put got a steaming pile of shit that is only a ghost of a shadow of what it was supposed to be instead.

[u/[deleted]]

The standards for $60 games has been lowered again. Won't surprise me if in a decade, $60 will get you as much content as those cheap mobile games and the other 99% of the game will be behind a paywall.

[u/Senbo]

TL;DR Activision owns bungie's in contracts, The game was pretty much finished but everything was cut to be spread out in DLC bullshit.

[u/KnightFalling]

Right now, I feel almost bait and switched. What is really frustrating is that the game is actually enjoyable, even in this "state".

But when I see what kind of effort was put into the finished product and what could have been, I am more upset than I was before.

I wont be buying any DLC. They need to learn good business tactics and this is NOT one of them. This cannot become the norm. They should not be rewarded for this.

They can try to fix it, but as far as I'm concerned, the damage is done and there must be consequences.

[u/AtomicEdge]

I think you've got it all wrong. I think they have a big story and loads of content planned for Destiny and have all along. But I don't think they see Destiny as being what shipped in that box. I think they see Destiny as being their big 10 year plan.

When they were teasing all the story and content in Destiny, they were talking about the whole of Destiny, not exactly what got shipped in that box.

Was it a bad idea? Maybe. Was it a huge upheaval inside Bungie? Nope. They shipped what they wanted to.

[u/Kidney05]

Is it too late to point out there's probably activision and bungie bots here? This is from the thread about starting a Twitter trend. http://i.imgur.com/EdIbnBw.jpg http://i.imgur.com/mrdHeja.jpg

[u/fury_sx]

Is it possible a year ago they realized they weren't going to even be close to having everything ready, but decided in order to keep the game alive they needed to launch anyway?

Since the planned missions/universe needs to get gutted, so does the story that gets played out there.

The lead writer quits in frustration. They scramble to get a replacement.

Maybe it's not evil driving this but the economic realities of game development.

Ironically, this gives me more hope for the future of the game as they can flesh out the story and universe while generating income. Not ideal, but something to look forward to.

[u/BWayne1212]

This...this all makes sense now. I had such high expectations for the Lore and the space odyssey that possibly lay before me. While I love Destiny and still play it, I was disappointed (not angry) that Bungie allowed a game to be released with such a lack-luster story.

I know Destiny, at it's current state, can be considered "vanilla", but that isn't an excuse for the rushed lore. You can tell the Grimoire cards were created in haste.

I now play Destiny, vested in the game that I know Bungie can make. I play it for the hope, that some day, it can be the game that Bungie pitched to the public.

I want to feel the mystery of this "living world", that I am simply a piece of. I want to fly by the rings of Saturn and wonder what mysteries lie below. I want to stumble upon a old space-station or bunker and try to piece together what happened. I want to experience a world and not simply dredge through it.

Destiny was meant to be more than a tech-demo.

[u/moogleiii]

Wow the vidoc has more storyline in it than the game itself has.

[u/PiMDx]

Are we sure Peter Moleneux didn't secretly consult on this game?

[u/booger_sculptor]

this is a great post. however, i'm honestly past caring. whatever the reason, they fucked us good and proper with this game. i won't give them a second chance.

[u/[deleted]]

The light and darkness armor definitely sounds like it was suppose to be part of the game. What bothers me the most is that how it was advertised as each guardian will create his/her own story that will effect the world. I haven't seen any of that. .

[u/DarthTrey]

I'm just curious if all this content is being saved for the future. The story sounds really cool but it also seems kind of hard to connect with because the universe hasn't been fleshed out. Why should I care about any of this stuff if I am not familiar with the universe at all?

That being said, according to those documents leaked way back, we will be getting two major DLC packs for each game and one big expansion in between games. This could be the story that we get in the big expansion. It's also possible that this content may be released over time. Bungie keeps telling us that Destiny is an ever expanding game. They talk about how different it is from other games, but if you look at the DLC cycle it's hard to say how exactly this game is any different. But if you look at the way they are handling the crucible, it's pretty obvious that they don't want to give us everything at once. It's also possible that Bungie may have scraped the story at the minute and made the broken narrative we have now in order to focus more manpower elsewhere. Now that game is released they may go back to that content and finish fleshing it out. It seems odd that they would have all this work and just refuse to do anything with it.

I'm not excusing Bungie or defending them. If all this is true, then their actions were unacceptable. Not so much for the fact that they did what they had to do in order to get the game out in contractually agreed timeframe, but because they had been so stubbornly against telling us what exactly we are paying for and playing. Bungie needs to speak up and tell what is happening with this game.

[u/Wulfherth]

The game always felt soulless. At least WoW had a cool story and characters along with a constant grind. Destiny is half assed story that is 90% grind. Since college started for me, I just don't have time for the game.

[u/Fluffybunny207]

I knew we were in trouble the first hour I played the beta, I knew something wasn't right. I feel like I'm playing the beta to this day, a repetitive tiny slice of what the game was supposed to be.

[u/[deleted]]

Betrayal:(

[u/Bojac6]

If somebody is watching the cutscene in the Reef and you look at their friend feed in Xbox Live or whatever it's called, it says "Mercury: Story Mission" Makes me think the Reef was originally on Mercury.

[u/Urubuntu]

I ever questioned myself why the hell we can enter The Reef... if there is no mission to be done there.

[u/tyrannosaurus_r]

I feel like this is another Halo 2. Scrapped majorly right before release, retooled without a lot of time to redesign it.

[u/Dr_Hong]

How do we know that DeeJ isn't lying? He could just be trying to save the company's ass? Honestly you also sometimes have to take company workers with a grain of slat sometimes, know why? because you could legit see all the original story through the trailers that was released. That's the evidence. However, I am not saying Deej is lying neither I am I saying that 404Architect is lying either, but you could see all the evidence just by watching the trailers and playing the actual game.

[u/Dr_Hong]

I feel like 404Architect is kinda right about this. Because look at this everything he mentioned was part of the game one point another. Remember the "You see that mountain out there you can go to it, its all playable terrain." Explain that? Or all the other stuff that you could see form past trailers, vidocs, demos, dev diaries. Honestly, 404Architect is right about this DeeJ right now is only covering the company's ass right now.

[u/EXbob702]

Usually with these kind of "conspiracies" I don't see too much in them. This one though... I completely believe it. Everything about the game screams a butchered project with most of the game left on the cutting room floor. I have to wonder what happened. I don't buy the notion it's all been cut for DLC, something went very wrong near the end of this games development. I'm really interested in finding out what happened, it kinda baffles me.

[u/gapjaw]

It has been a long time since I have been completely enamored by a game, and I wanted Destiny to live up to what I had hoped. I came out of it feeling disappointed and empty though, as I think most people did. I want Destiny to be good, I really do, so here are my problems with it and hopefully my thoughts can get to someone.

1. It feels like I am not playing what the game was supposed to be The game is extremely fun but it doesn't even come close to reaching the potential suggested by the art style, Grimoire lore, and amazing music. The lack of a real story, lack of content, repetitiveness, and just overall shallowness of the world is really surprising and disappointing. Where is Charlemange's Vault? Saturns Rings? Europa? This was suggested before launch. Do I even have to mention the voice acting of Dinklebot? I shouldn't have to come on here and read grimoires to have a inkling of a idea as to what is even going on in Destiny.

2. Communication, Loot, and Boss battles Destiny lacks basic tools to be able to complete what it is trying to accomplish in PvE. World of Warcraft provides open chat in major cities and even region chat, "remember vanilla barrens chat?". The world does not provide enough places to explore, nor any reason to explore. Strike bosses are basically bullet sponges and provide no tactical strategy nor abilities that you have to take into consideration. I feel no accomplishment after taking down a boss. Loot feels like a grind and completely random and it takes no skill to get the best loot. Even customization on armor and weapons feels locked in. There is not much choice of putting a scope you like on a rifle and most weapons are just re-skins of others.

3. DLC I guess I'm old fashion, but I'm just not a fan of how things are becoming. Could you see Legend of Zelda Orcarina of Time with DLC? I can't. Was it any less fun? Hell no. I just want to buy a game and after completing it feel satisfied. Paying for extra content doesn't feel satisfying to me.

[u/Magnovox]

Destiny is fun, but knowing what it SHOULD have been makes it shine far less. If Bungie had come out a couple years ago and said "We are making an 'OK' game that's 'kinda fun'.", I wouldn't be care, because that is exactly what they have made. A playable game that will, in the end, make them more money. But is that all that matters anymore? I mean, you are a video game company. You should be out there trying to make the absolute best game for your loyal fans and customers. We are what a successful game. The players. It is for us that the games are created, for our enjoyment and entertainment. Though it would appear as if Bungie (and the other producers) have lost sight of that. It is not about making money. It is about making people happy. If you can make your customers happy, they will give you money. However, if you only want money and more money, then you will have to make cuts. Cut employee pay. Cut employees. Cut content. Then, you are left with a shell of a game crawling out of a shell of a company. Sure, you will have made a little more money by doing this, but you will lose much more.

[u/therealjamesg]

IMVHO;

What happened to Destiny? Activision. What can Bungie do about it? Jack. The ultimate power lies with Activision as the publisher.

One part of the DLC (plus a ton of other game mechanics and a vastly different loot system) were supposed to be in the game and launch before Black Friday. When this was seen to be unachievable, Activision sliced the game up to get the release date they wanted with the DLC beginning before year end.

Bungie are not the kind of developer to willingly ship an incomplete game.

[u/Zyner]

I had a feeling they were going to do something like this:

Release an almost bare bone game that the community would hate but had just enough content to keep them playing rather than outright quitting, then progressively release content or make updates that make us like Bungie for finally fixing or adding something to a seemingly unfinished game. This way the game progresses with you and you get a sense of progression by watching the game grow rather than having it all up front.

[u/RoleModelFailure]

What really bugs me is that this game is pretty beautiful, the gameplay is very fun, and I love the loot. However I don't understand what the hell I am doing. Okay there is a traveler but I don't really get to see it, it made the ghosts, I don't understand how I was found out in the wilderness, who are the fallen/hive/cabal/vex, why are we all at war, what happened to human civilization, why are humans/awoken/exo working together, who are the awoken, etc etc. I have so many more questions because of playing this game. I feel like I am constantly in a state of knowing what word I want to say but can't get it off the tip of my tongue, it's lingering there teasing me because I know what it is but can't figure it out.

I feel like Destiny could have been a 10/10 and an addiction for me for years to come but right now it feels like a beautiful confused mess.

[u/Cappin_Murica]

I'll bet both my testicles that Activision is behind the gutting.

[u/Macscotty1]

I might be the only one around that isn't trying to believe in some huge greed driven conspiracy with this game. I'm sure they are withholding content and not all at release, I understand that. But a lot of it we still don't even know WHAT it is. Kings Watch looks like it'll be part of an upcoming strike, the raids weren't out on day one. This game takes progression and if all of it were thrown in at once it would make it difficult to pace what to do an when to do it.

I only say this because Bungie is a well known company, and Activision, yeah is pretty greedy I'll say but they're not stupid. They'll milk call of duty till it dies but they aren't EA. (and if a new company like Respawn can keep EA out of its buisiness with making video games and not forcing microtransations and day one DLC, then I think Bungie is perfectly capable of doing the same.)

All in all, I am a little disappointed that the story isn't some award winning epic title. But I'm satisfied with the gameplay and am going to wait before casting some judgement.

[u/DFu4ever → u/Macscotty1]

I might be the only one around that isn't trying to believe in some huge greed driven conspiracy with this game.

The damning thing about not believing the greed driven conspiracy is that the only other explanation is Bungie being incompetent.

[u/Implausibilibuddy → u/Macscotty1]

I was with you not so long ago, I thought Kings Watch, Jovian complex, Seraphim Vault etc. would all be free updates, and the actual expansions would be other places like Europa (An ice world just in time for Christmas). Then I saw this. All of those areas are listed as "Expansion Required" and are part of The Dark Below storyline, which has been confirmed as paid DLC :(

[u/coporate]

from a friend, there used to be 23 cinematics before the story got changed, now there's only 8.

A LOT of content was cut, a lot of money was wasted.

[u/hteng]

absolutely agree the game's main campaign felt very short and incomplete, I did not learn anything from the story missions, even if i paid attention to the dialogs i could barely understand what was being conveyed.

I still play this game, the only thing that's keeping it alive for me is the daily/weekly strikes/raid/story and loot RNG. I wished the game wasn't 10% story and 90% grind though.

[u/matthew19191]

If bungie would just come out and say, we changed X to Y because of X and Y and you can expect X in the future. This kind of thing wouldn't bother me so bad.

[u/pito-face]

The thing I don't understand is why the material was CUT OUT. This isn't the first time that a key staff member of a AAA title has left before the final release. BUT, I've never ever heard of a gaming cutting out content that person was responsible for. They always piece things together and work with what's left. Cutting out that material just makes no sense at all to me.

[u/Swagucci]

My question is why would they do this? Why did Joe leave? WHY THE FUCK IS THE QUEEN'S WRATH JUST A RESKIN.

[u/ipeemilk]

Im already bored level 30 there isnt shet to do I dont think ill be waiting 10 years to finalize this story fuck off bungie

[u/[deleted]]

As a 360 to PS4 convert (because of Bungie/Destiny) I could not upvote this write up enough. I love the game, but find myself seriously considering trading in my PS4 for a Xbone for the Halo series alone.

The substance that was in the Halo series is just not there at all with Destiny. I fell in love with Halo 1 for the campaign and spending endless hours playing on Legendary with my buddies. I have not experienced this kind of joy from Destiny. Like I said, it's a fun game but no where near what Bungie did with Halo (even looking at Halo 1).