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...AND SPACE MAGIC
There's a lot of crossover between Classes in terms of weapons and gear. But it's their unique perks that really emphasise Class differences and give a strong nod to the MMO genre. All these are bundled into what's called Focus - a class-based skill tree that unlocks new abilities over time but limits how many you can have active at once, forcing you to test each setup then decide on the best combination for you.
Each class has a different jump skill. Titans get jet-pack boost, Warlocks a descending glide, Hunter a double-jump and one other, yet unseen, option. Then there's the real unique stuff. The Hunter's melee attack is a long-range knife throw, the Warlock's is a Jedi-like kinetic push. You feel like a badass doing either. Then you start getting into the higher-grade options, like a powered NFL-like charge that'll let you steamroll through enemy groups.
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Due to the shared wealth in weapon proficiency and skills, everybody has their time to shine on the battlefield. However,
the class-specific Focus attacks (such as the one above) means you can have your moment of glory during combat.
Getting the right balance of Focus powers on a fireteam will be of huge benefit come the more dangerous encounters.
Then, there are the Supers. These are short-term effects that are either offensive and defensive abilities, activated at any time - once charged - with a press of the shoulder buttons together. The Titan's Defensive Codex ("the names keep changing" admits Green when he has to double-check with a colleague about what ability is called what) drops a sphere, not unlike Halo's Bubble Shield, which the fireteam can hide in while their energy shields recharge (like Halo, each character has an overshield and an energy bar, though these only appear on-screen when that character is attacked). The Hunter can imbue their bullets with high-damage thermal energy, while the Warlock can fire a semi-locked Nova Bomb, which hits with a wide area of damage when it explodes.
It's cool stuff. And sadly something we don't get enough time to tinker with or test, even as we rotate Classes - Hunter, Titan and Warlock - during our trio of plays through the Strike mission. Expect a lot of column inches dedicated to this in future. Bungie's showed that the traditional Halo feel is still present, but they've only teased the really interesting new combat abilities.
COUNTDOWN TO DESTINY
The game's ambitious. No doubt about that. And from the sliver of what we've seen, Bungie are able to maintain the idea of both shared world and story-driven campaign by keeping numbers down and areas fragmented. It's an idea that, on paper, works well.
Of course the question is going to be how and if they can maintain this ambitious enterprise when they invite the world to participate come September's release. As with any online game worth its salt, a beta is due in the near future, giving us a taster of the core concepts while Bungie stress-test the backend.
"What we're showing now - Strike, Patrol, The Tower - is a sampling of what we'll bring to bear in the beta," says Osborne. "We want to make sure people are getting their hands on pretty much all the core activity lines... we want to make sure there's a healthy amount of content that they can have those experiences; get into a fireteam, check out a public event. All the things that are important and native to the experience, without spoiling the entirety of the game."
Even with a game as ambitious as this, its not something we haven't heard before. But what raises an eyebrow is the number of times Bungie staff elude to the fact they're still working things out. Nearly every facet of the game seems under review; something that isn't obvious until we collate the interviews together post-trip. Five months from launch, and the game's still shifting its shape.
Like when we ask Bakken about how Bungie are approaching the different difficulty settings. Bungie veterans will know tinkering with Halo's different difficulty settings produced a completely different experience. The franchise's Legendary setting AI may be complete bastards, but you have to respectfully concede they're smart bastards. That's all Bungie's doing. So how do you approach it in a shared world, when multiple Guardians of different XP levels cross over and tackle the same set of enemies?
"That's a really hard problem to solve," Lars admits. "We have some ideas, we have some stuff we're currently working on right now that's pretty awesome. But it's not quite ready to share. And we will talk about that. Maybe at E3, or definitely shortly after. But trust me, it's cool. It makes sense in Destiny, and fits in with the world. It allows you to have the experience that you want."
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The areas we explored during our Strike mission were full of details big and small. You find yourself walking through, on
and into the planet's history, the relics, wrecks and skeletons of your ancestors smeared across the landscape. As with
Skyrim, there's a sense every corner you explore has its own bloody backstory.
But then, Bungie are used to the crunch. If there's a sudden worry they won't get this huge project done in time, you remember that they've been in similar circumstances before, and they've learnt from the experience.
Halo 2's development infamously saw them abandon most of the work they'd produced for an E3 proof-of-concept video, and the subsequent race to get the game finished saw certain elements abandoned and the intense crunch period forgoing the usual polish to the title that the studio is known for.
"There's definitely some light at the end of the tunnel," Osborne acknowledges, "but to use an American analogy, it feels like we're on the two minute clock and we're driving. We have to score a touchdown to win the game.
"There's a lot of work to be done and the game's really ambitious, and a really big challenge, a big launch for us. It's bigger than anything we've taken on before. There's a lot of drive upstairs and a lot of people who have a lot to prove."
And Bungie have more to prove than some. Even the intense focus on Respawn's Titanfall was dispelled in part as not only was it that team's first game, but for all its uniqueness, it was a straight forward online shooter.
Bungie not only have the pressure of bettering their past work, but needing to offer something as defining and revolutionary as the original Halo. Multi-faceted as it is, Destiny isn't lacking for ambition. Yet they don't expect to gain universal praise whatever they deliver; they're aware they're going to alienate some of their audience. This isn't their Halo 4.
"My hope is that we capture a wide gamut of things," outlines Osborne, who's role lets him get a wider viewpoint of the project as a whole. "Like Raids - we have guys playing Dark Souls, or Dark Arisen, and we think about how we can give the player in for the long term something to overcome. We brought a Clan out to bang away at this [particular mission], and they couldn't beat it.
"Then you have the story," he continues. "This emotional resonance in the world to make you feel like you're an adventurer. You can forget about your 9-5. There's competitive multiplayer, there's Strikes... crack a beer, shoot some aliens, relax. Have fun. Laugh with your friends. That spectrum of stuff is what ends up being the hobby. That's where we find our relevance, our meaning. We want people to play longterm, to fall in love with a facet of it.
"There's definitely some distinct decisions we make. We know people won't like this, or we can't satisfy this particular audience, so we have to adhere to our pillars and say ‘this is what we're making, we can't be everything to everyone'."
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Enemies will no longer drop situation-specfic weapons. You'll need to carry a number of different types to deal with
different encounters.
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Bungie take you from the peak of the world to its bowels. Thanks to the fantastic score evolving naturally to compliment
the action, you get fitting musical accompaniment whether you're tackling a huge boss or exploring the dark deeps.
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GOODBYE TO THE SOUND OF DESTINY: Talking about the game's music, what came to light during our visit to Bungie's
offices was that the company's long-time composer Marty O'Donnell, who'd worked on Halo and had scored Destiny, had
been let go from the studio. The composer tweeted that "Bungie's board of directors terminated me without cause on
April 11, 2014". The tweet published at the end of our first day visiting the studio, and overnight they issued a press
release stating that they'd parted "as friends". When we and other press arrived to start the second day - a day that
was mainly booked for interviews, Bungie COO Pete Parsons read out a short statement to us. "I'm sure many of you
have heard the news about Marty O'Donnell. At Bungie, we don't take that kind of thing lightly, we don't make decisions
lightly. We're a team that's committed to making an amazing game, set within an amazing universe. We hope you
understand today is about that experience that you had yesterday; that's what we're going to be focused on. At this
time, we won't be commenting any further."
source:gamereactor