Bungie Reveals Persistent Character Growth Across Campaign & Multiplayer in Destiny - AusGamers

AusGamers recently had a chance to catch up with two Bungie devs working on their ambitious Destiny title - a game that literally spans 10 real-world years: Joseph Staten, writer and design director; and Christopher Barrett, the game's art-director.

Among much covered, a snippet of info leaked from the interview, pointing out that your character will remain persistent in the world regardless of what mode you're playing.

"The story that evolves out of a competitive multiplayer match is different to the kind of story that we want to tell in a more campaign mode,” reveals Destiny writer and design director, Joseph Staten to AusGamers. “But the critical thing that’s new for us -- at least, and really new for shooters, I believe, and someone correct me if it’s not -- is that your character really will go; it will journey through all of these different modes. So the legend that you’re building, you’ll have stuff that you got out of the campaign, you’ll have stuff that you earnt fro...

[raWfodog]

Good read. Very ambitious game that Bungie has planned. They have to make it very appealing to keep today's gamers interested with their short-attention spans. It definitely has me intrigued though as I tend to gravitate to persistent games like this. I will definitely be keeping an eye on it.

[US8F]

I still don't get it, please someone make it clear for me.

So destiny is an online game but has a campaign as well but you still have to be connected to the Internet the whole time?

[jimbobwahey]

Have you ever played Test Drive Unlimited or its sequel?

When playing singleplayer in those games and driving around the island, you're connected online and it merges your singleplayer game with other peoples. So they're all driving around the island playing at the same time you are.

As you do singleplayer races (or driving around exploring) you might bump into another player and you can choose to challenge them to a race or whatever, or just both go on your way.

I think Destiny operates the same way. You're roaming around these worlds and planets and may bump into other players during your travels. You can choose to team-up with them or (presumably) fight them.

The example that Bungie themselves gave was a couple players teaming up cooperatively and traveling somewhere to do a mission, but they might be overwhelmed by enemy forces (AI enemies) and really struggle. During the firefight, they said another player in the area might come across them while driving around in a vehicle, and decide to hop out and help them.

I can see why some people might struggle to understand the concept, since Bungie haven't done a great job of making it clear to people in my opinion, but the idea sounds absolutely fantastic I think.

I'm really excited to see how the game turns out.

[_-EDMIX-_]

I was just as confused as you were when the game was first announced. I fascinated as they're trying to make the game out to be I understand exactly what destiny is. though I don't play many mmos I own Guild Wars 2, the idea that they're trying to propose is open world in which you could travel from one planet to the next seemingly in real time travel has been talked about owning a ship and physically flying it has been talked about now just based on space limitations on the 360 this is literally impossible to do on the scale and scope that bungie has been showing us.... unless the game is not physically on a disc and limited.

this is why it needs to be online a game world of that size is not simply one planet its space and several other planets. so the idea of always being online it's not just something gimmick it's a necessity just to have the actual game world of that size. I 100 percent believe that destiny just isn't possible without doing exactly what bungie is doing right now.

I actually believe the mystery surrounding this game actually has to do with console gaming's core audience. the typical console gamer does not play MMOs, bungie does it make PC games... the first it's clear that the audience won't have a clue on exactly why destiny is online whereas the PC audience fully understands the reason for this despite not actually being on this games radar.

so PC gamers are familiar with this and are not getting destiny

console gamers are not familiar with this and don't play MMO's

thus you essentially have a game with genre on a different platform of audiences that don't necessarily play those type of games. though destiny hasn't been classified as an MMO its gameworld size is definitely that of the scope of an MMO. I think they are purposely leaving it as a surprised on how huge the world is but I think a couple PC/console gamers fully understand the reasoning behind this.

I not trying to make it sound like also console gamers are dumb but before I've ever played Guild Wars 2 I've never actually played an MMO, I never completely understood the scope or the size of an MMO game world until I physically played one myself. I also think a lot of gamers are very naive about the size and what it takes to run such a game on current gen systems .

of all the forums I've read destiny news on not a single person had actually addressed that this game just cannot be made on 8gigs (dvd9). I'm sorry but to some people even understand what it takes to seamlessly travel between one planet to the next? The idea of even attempting such a thing is kind of like screaming that it's not on a disc!! but to people who are not number crunchers like like myself in a lot of PC gamers it will go right past their heads. think about it like this it's the size of an MMO world meets a single player fps..in space. lol.

another nice thing to note is that destiny apparently has 0 menus. ie you will not be selecting world and then loading it you will be physically flying to get to where you need to get to.

[US8F]

Thank you for the wonderful explanations, the both of you. Really really helpful and I added a bubble to both.

The problem I have with this model is three things really;

-My Internet connection is capped monthly
-Very very unstable Internet connection
-server shut downs

For the first problem, I have a 100 mbps /300gb bandwidth (the highest in ontario, Canada) cap, and as a family man, I always reach 250gb, without playing any online game. if there is a better deal in Canada, I don't mind shelling a few bucks but there isnt( that I know of atleast)

I have a satellite connected to the Internet for the family as well and at night time, it's barely unwatchable due to the drop in connection, so that is why I say it is unstable.

- I have played online games (before raising a family) and after falling in love with a few, the lost popularity after some time and server shutdowns happened. Heck I still have the cd's they are considered just paper weight.

That is why I'm avoiding watch dogs, and probably any other Mmo only game. Offline games you can pay once and play forever if you so choose, and not worry about any of the reasons mentioned above.

Plenty of other offline games like the witcher 3 and grand theft auto 5 that are going to be huge and yet they learned to put them in a single game disc( GTA 5 atleast, ps3). Who says that the next generation bungee game can't make that possible? It's a business model that I'm really not interested in, and the execuse of not being able to have that world in a single disc is no execuse. Can't we install the data into the system( seeing its a next generation title, so our hard drives are going to be big/ ps4 atleast).

If you like these kind of games then all power to both of you but that business model, no matter how person spins it, is of no interest to me.

Good day

[IK IR Y IP T]

This game is hugh and ambitious and if anyone can pull it off Bungie can ...