Bungie's Destiny: A Land of Hope and Dreams

[Editor's Note: This is a massive feature, so it's been broken up into two pages. Be sure to check out page 2!]

[Editor's Note 2: Don't have time to read all 2,300 words of this right now? Check out our quick-and-dirty Destiny FAQ right here!]

You know Bungie is serious about its first public steps in post-Halo life when Jason Jones – the studio co-founder and Halo mastermind who’s notoriously media-shy – is on hand to introduce the 360-person studio’s new always-online first-person shooter franchise for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and “future-generation technology” – a not-so-subtle nod to the Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4.

“Destiny is our next great shooter in a totally new world,” he said confidently, displaying none of the public-speaking fears you’d expect from a man who hasn’t given an interview to a games media reporter in over a decade. “By the end I hope you’ll agree that it’s a little crazy.”

Crazy? Not necessarily. Wildly ambitious? Most definitely.

“We did a bunch of ambitious things on Halo deliberately to reach out to people,” Jones continued. “We made the game run without a mouse and keyboard, and now nobody plays [first-person shooters] the old way anymore because they don’t want to.

“[So] how do we take this genre that we love so much and turn it on its head?”

Destiny’s answer is to offer a quasi-massively multiplayer sci-fi experience (they call it a “shared world shooter”) that is fully playable by yourself, but designed to seamlessly connect you with friends. “We built this game from the ground up to be social and cooperative,” Jones reinforced. Is Destiny an MMOFPS? Sort of. Is there a subscription fee? No, emphasized Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg. Does it require an Internet connection in order to play? Yes.

From left to right: Titan, Hunter, and Warlock.

Bungie boils down Destiny’s basics to seven key pillars – an unsurprising number if you’re at all familiar with the company’s cheeky obsession with the famously lucky digit – claiming that “every piece of code and every piece of art must justify these pillars or they get thrown out.”

“This pillar really influenced us early in development,” Jones said, noting that Destiny has already been a six-year odyssey for him, while the rest of Bungie started to get in on the action in 2009 and jumped fully onboard after Halo: Reach shipped in September of 2010. “Is this world cool? Do I want to stay here? Do I want to learn more about it?”

That world is a post-apocalyptic earth. Humanity has been nearly wiped out, but saved by the extraterrestrial protection of The Traveler, a gigantic white globe that now floats claustrophobically close above the planet’s last safe city – a place where humanity’s greatest minds have come together. Over time, humans have regained their technological mojo and again taken to exploring the stars of our own galaxy: Mars, Venus, the Moon, etc. Except now various forms of alien life seek to stamp out humanity once and for all, and it’s up to you as a Guardian to help stop them and keep earth safe.

Not much is known about the Black Garden...

Though Destiny’s actual plot is likened to a series of novels that will each house self-contained stories over the course of the franchise’s planned decade-long lifecycle, Bungie narrative director Joseph Staten noted, “One lesson that’s critical is that the most important stories we tell aren’t going to be told by us. They’re going to be told by players – their personal legends built from shared adventures.”

Staten proceeded to tell a story about a possible gameplay scenario in Destiny, in which Staten’s Warlock class character and Jones’s Vanguard (Staten explained that every Guardian wields some of the Traveler’s power: “You can call it magic, I guess.”) head off on an adventure together.

You’re at the Tower, a reinforced monolith that serves as your home. Here you can socialize, gear up, or group up and then aim for the stars – literally. Many other players mill about. Some you may know, some you may not. Some are making plans for adventure, but others may simply be watching the sunset – a worthwhile endeavor thanks to the spectacle of Destiny’s new engine, which pairs real-time dynamic lighting with global illumination for some truly spectacular vistas (one of the few things I actually did get to see with my own eyes).

Jones is a higher-level player, and as such has better gear, including an impressive sleek, black spaceship that makes Staten’s smaller, simpler vessel look like, in his own joking words, a “Space Corolla.” Ships will serve various purposes. Only a Scout class was specifically mentioned, though it was implied that space combat will factor into Destiny as well.

Mars' Exclusion Zone is controlled by the Cabal.

Whooshing to Mars, the pair finds “the bones of a lost human civilization.” It’s “an ancient city,” Staten detailed. “Buried in sand. The precious remains of a golden age.” Here to prevent you from reaching any of the literal gold that’s rumored to lie beneath the ruins of the Dust Palace are the Sand Eaters, a group of massive, armored rhino-esque creatures known as the Cabal.

A shootout soon turns ugly for Staten’s Warlock and Jones’s Vanguard. Fortunately, a mysterious female player – rocking a Hunter class – speeds in on the very Ghost-like Pike vehicle and helps turn the tide thanks to her unique weapon, dubbed “The Fate of All Fools.” The battle was won thanks to invisible, behind-the-scenes matchmaking that linked the players – think of it as the next evolutionary phase of Bungie’s groundbreaking hopper technology that served as the online backbone for every Halo game starting with 2.

Earth's moon is broken. Check out the tectonic action!

“Every time you run into another player, it’s amazing,” Staten exclaimed. “It just doesn’t happen in other shooters.”

The two of them are now three, and the trio plumbs the depths of the Dust Palace, reaches Charlemagne’s Vault, and Staten scores a new pistol. Like the Huntress’s sidearm, it too has a custom name: “Thorn,” a fitting description for a 45-caliber hand cannon. With this outing complete, the Hunter leaves just as quickly and quietly as she arrived. If this sound a bit reminiscent of IGN’s 2012 Game of the Year Award-winning Journey in that regard, you’re not alone.

The Hunter class of Guardian lies in wait as a few different foes pass.

“And just like that,” Staten explained. “The Dust Palace becomes part of my story. The breadth and depth of Destiny’s world encourages me to find my own adventures.

“It’s a place where I can leave my mark.”

Jones explained how the game will have “a lot of great things to earn, find, and make,” reiterating that “everything you do in Destiny earns rewards.” Besides unique weapons, every piece of your kit will be your own, from your helmet to your cape to your armor pieces to your face. Their goal, he said, is to keep players coming back “day after day, week after week, month after month, [and] year after year.”

“Imagine you could spend an hour and accomplish something,” Jones mused. Bungie aims to have emergent activity, where “you get distracted from doing the thing you meant to do when you logged on.” Furthermore, Jones expressed hope that “every time you sit down to play Destiny you have a different experience than last time.”

All we know about the Vex is that they're time-traveling robots.

The word “raids” – a term MMORPG fans know well – was used at one point during the presentation, suggesting large group scenarios as well as solo and smaller-party endeavors. Bungie says they’ll have “an activity for every mood.”

As an extension of this pillar’s concept, Destiny will have no main menu. Instead, it just lives and you’re always in it when you boot the game up.

[Editor's Note: The story continues! Click below for Page 2!]