Gamers who played sci-fi first-person shooter Destiny upon launch probably noticed that the game's story was a bit on the weak side, which was a disappointment considering that developer Bungie was said to have been working on the game for years before it was released.
A report by news website Kotaku, however, reveals that in the summer of 2013, just months before Bungie was supposed to release Destiny, the developers were faced with a disaster, leading to the weak story upon the game's launch.
Jason Schreier, the author of the report, said that he investigated what happened behind the scenes of the development of Destiny for the past 13 months, talking to both former and current employees, who all spoke anonymously as they did not have the authority to talk about the matter in public.
The exhaustive report revealed that two years ago, Bungie veteran Joe Staten presented a "supercut" of Destiny to the company's senior staff, including Destiny project lead Jason Jones. It was a two-hour video that included the cinematics and major story components of the game. Despite having already worked on the game for years, the executives were unhappy with the it, saying it was "too campy and linear." A decision was then made to scrap Staten's story altogether and start creating the story from scratch.
The report reveals Bungie being overwhelmed by the combination of a sudden story reboot and a ruthless production schedule, along with having to face the technical challenges of working with a new game engine.
As such, the game's story upon launch was vague, with characters thin and the dialogue opaque. Rumors surfaced that there were major changes in Destiny's development, as several characters and missions included in old videos of the game are not found in the game's released form. It seems that the rumors were true, as characters were overhauled and most of the dialogue was rewritten. One major change was the fact that in Staten's story, players hunted for the warmind Rasputin, while in the new version, Rasputin is just in a steel bunker on Earth.
It was amazing that Destiny was released on time with all the troubles that Bungie faced in reworking the game's story. The story that was in the released version still left much to be desired, and the MMO elements were disastrous, but Destiny was saved by the game's mechanics, with gamers sticking around and growing Destiny into what it is today.
