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(image courtesy of Bungie.net) As the dust settles from events at E3, gamers anticipate additional information drops and little tidbits of any new revelations of Bungie's upcoming title Destiny!! This information includes audio played at Blizzard's massive multimedia main stage. Bungie referred to the stage as the Ronut! (see video below) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=yuRyrlQDkBM Now sit back, relax and listen to new audio found in Destiny by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori! Program Notes by Marty O'Donnell: Repeating patterns and signals enfold us day and night and in all ages. Unmoved mover that moves all others. Inclining from heaven towards the Seven. New music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all. Enjoy the concert!! http://www.bungie.net/pubassets/1455/Awakening.mp3

Marty O'Donnell and Mike Salvatori were at video games live where they brought us a piece of music from the Destiny album Music of the Spheres, they also give us an interview where they both talk about themselves and destiny and answer some questions from the community. Videos uploaded by Datto Does Destiny. This post has been promoted to an article

Marty O'Donnell and Mike Salvatori were at video games live where they brought us a piece of music from the Destiny album Music of the Spheres, they also give us an interview where they both talk about themselves and destiny and answer some questions from the community. Videos uploaded by Datto Does Destiny. View full article

Bungie's composers Marty O'Donnell and Mike Salvatori will be conducting Destiny's soundtracks live at the video games concert at Comic Con Saturday July 20th. The pre show will begin at 6pm PST and they will be playing at 7.30pm PST. The show will last nearly 3 and a half hours so Marty and Mike's music will be playing at the half way point of the concert. You can watch the event live on twitch, there is a list of music scheduled to play at the show from a lot of up coming video games head over to Game Informer to see who's paying. This post has been promoted to an article

If you're like me, then you've probably watched the PS4 Destiny reveal video a hundred times, looking for any detail you may have missed the first time you watched. Watch AGAIN as 3 of Bungie's artist add their commentary to the video as it progresses. Commentary by: Ryan Ellis, Technical Art Director Marke Pedersen, Environment Art Lead Michael Zak, Senior Art Lead http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=h3G3V5PCJbk (video courtesy of Bungie.net)

(image courtesy of Bungie.net) As the dust settles from events at E3, gamers anticipate additional information drops and little tidbits of any new revelations of Bungie's upcoming title Destiny!! This information includes audio played at Blizzard's massive multimedia main stage. Bungie referred to the stage as the Ronut! (see video below) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=yuRyrlQDkBM Now sit back, relax and listen to new audio found in Destiny by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori! Program Notes by Marty O'Donnell: Repeating patterns and signals enfold us day and night and in all ages. Unmoved mover that moves all others. Inclining from heaven towards the Seven. New music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all. Enjoy the concert!! http://www.bungie.net/pubassets/1455/Awakening.mp3 View full article

Bungie is revealing new Destiny gameplay for the first time at E3's Sony Press Conference. Watch the Destiny gameplay trailer today -or anytime you want after 9:00pm EST/ 6:00pm PST Monday, June 10th. Here's the Bungie news page with the actual official Destiny gameplay reveal cut from the Sony Press Conference. Big thank you to Smokin Shadowz for bringing us the actual trailer. Here is the Gameplay Demo. Here is a Live Gameplay Demo So if you'd like, watch E3 here on the site and head on over here later to watch the Destiny reveal. The news page on Bunge.net has a livestream setup for the Sony Press Conference.

This was Bungies first E3 presentation in 3 years and we finally got to see some destiny gameplay. Below are videos of gamelay, trailers and interviews. Destiny E3 Trailer [uK] Destiny E3 Demo + Interview with Deej Game Informer interview with Harold Ryan Destiny Gameplay walkthrough Adam Sessler and Bungies Joes Staten Deej's E3 Video Blogs This post has been promoted to an article

An Interesting part from the destiny presentation at GDC was that the player will be able to choose from different races. Besides being a human there are 2 others that are selectable when customizing your character they are "Awoken and "Exo. Bungie describes the awoken as exotic, beautiful and mysterious beings and they said they look to ghosts, angels and vampires to capture the feel of this race. the Exo, which bungies describes as sinister, powerful, and tireless beings they said the looked to famous characters such as the terminator, the undead and their very own master chief to capure the feel of the Exo race. Here is a picture of the races. As the humans have different classes (hunter, titan and warlock) I'm pretty sure the awoken and exo will each feature their own classes to choose from. So from the pictures and the descriptions bungie gave which race do you like best at the moment? This post has been promoted to an article

A tweet from Destiny's twitter page confirms that a live action trailer will be shown this Thursday, no specific time or place has been told where to view the trailer yet but we might get an update on that pretty soon. The link in that comment brings us to this image, it could possibly be a script or a document that explains how the trailer will play out. You can see the words "Law Of The Jungle" printed, this could tell us that the trailer will be set in a jungle area on Earth or on of the planets in out solar system? Update Law of the jungle is a term that means every man for himself, dog eat dog, survival of the fittest etc. This may be a clue to what the theme or plot of the trailer may be about. Possibly it could be about a stranded guardian being persued or hunted down by an enemy or maybe showing how humanity is on the edge of extinction and we see humans doing everything they can to survive. What ever happens, the feeling of a gritty and dark feel seems to be hanging over this trailer. This post has been promoted to an article

A tweet from Destiny's twitter page confirms that a live action trailer will be shown this Thursday, no specific time or place has been told where to view the trailer yet but we might get an update on that pretty soon. The link in that comment brings us to this image, it could possibly be a script or a document that tell explains how the trailer will play out. You can see the words "Law Of The Jungle" printed, this could tell us that the trailer will be set in a jungle area on Earth or on of the planets in out solar system. View full article

From playstations latest issue of their magazine we get to know a little more about bungie and their approach to their new universe. With over half of the team that worked on Halo: Combat Evolved they are still here today helping to bring us a brand new universe. This article is from The Official Playstation Magazine If we’ve looked at any developer with green eyes here in the realm of PlayStation gaming, it’s Bungie. A studio that defined the first-person console shooter formula with its pioneering two-weapon, recharging health mechanics in Halo and went on to make that formula so effective that gamers spent a collective 235,000 years playing the series. A studio that created one of the most iconic player characters in history, and a multiplayer experience that’s hosted over two billion games since Halo 2’s release in 2004. These numbers aren’t intended to sting your eyes, nor should they. Bungie’s new project Destiny, a persistent shared-world FPS, is heading to both PS3 and PS4 – and with platform-exclusive content to boot. It brings not only the Halo studio’s undeniable shooter mastery, but one of the most ambitious visions we’ve ever heard. And it’s all funded by Activision, creator of enormous, world-stomping franchises. If any partnership can make such an ambitious game as Destiny actually work, it’s this one. So now we can finally acknowledge Bungie, and it feels great. But who exactly is this studio? A collective of savant coders in green spacesuits that stomped DualShocks on sight until its split from Microsoft in 2007? Do the staff bounce around the office on space hoppers, extolling the merits of a Valve-esque ‘flat hierarchy’ and taking bi-hourly group hug breaks? To crack into the Bungie psyche, we explore its Seattle headquarters – a converted cinema. “This mezzanine is where the projectors used to be,” says COO Pete Parsons, guiding us through an impressive open space littered with awards gongs, life-sized Master Chiefs and wide-eyed journos. Sure enough, there’s a touch of the unorthodox to Bungie: a ten-foot climbing wall where most offices would have a couple of sofas, an absence of individual offices, masking-tape marks on the floor where a kind of knighting ceremony for new employees and five-, ten- and 20-year veterans took place several weeks back, and an ever-shifting desk arrangement. “Over half the team that created Halo: Combat Evolved back in 2001 is still here today, working on Destiny” “Back in 2005 we decided to put everybody’s desks on wheels,” says Parsons. “We probably do ten to 15 desk moves every week.” These are the affectations of a studio that’s earned the right to hang a little loose by its body of work. You could walk through the doors in foot gloves and a propeller hat if you had a particular predilection for it… so long as you helped make one of the biggest shooter series of all time. And there’s more to that knighting ceremony than fistbumps and bro-ing out – over half the team that created Halo: Combat Evolved back in 2001 is still here today, working on Destiny. An increasing rarity in game studios that’s well worth celebrating. And arguably for the first time since 2001, the studio’s truly out of its comfort zone. Destiny is a rather nebulous project at the moment: it’s a persistent online world, but not an MMO. It’s a first-person shooter, but bears glaring RPG elements that include loot, character upgrades and stat progression. One thing’s crystal clear, though: this isn’t a rebranded Halo for multi-platform release. As Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg describes it: “I think what Bungie has created is the world’s first shared-world shooter. It’s a game that’s always evolving, with persistent progression for your character.” Bungie’s approach? Build an awesome world (these guys love the word awesome), and you’ve already won half the battle. It’s even one of the seven ‘pillars’ of design that creative director and co-founder Jason Jones describes: “A world you want to be in… This pillar was a big influence early in development. It let us create a world that was hopeful, that was full of mystery, a world you wanted to be part of and to explore.” You can throw in all the brutal melee takedowns and slo-mo ‘mark for death’ mechanics you like, but if your world is as fun to inhabit as an Aldi car park, your game’s going to fail This post has been promoted to an article

From playstations latest issue of their magazine we get to know a little more about bungie and their approach to their new universe. With over half of the team that worked on Halo: Combat Evolved they are still here today helping to bring us a brand new universe. This article is from The Official Playstation Magazine If we’ve looked at any developer with green eyes here in the realm of PlayStation gaming, it’s Bungie. A studio that defined the first-person console shooter formula with its pioneering two-weapon, recharging health mechanics in Halo and went on to make that formula so effective that gamers spent a collective 235,000 years playing the series. A studio that created one of the most iconic player characters in history, and a multiplayer experience that’s hosted over two billion games since Halo 2’s release in 2004. These numbers aren’t intended to sting your eyes, nor should they. Bungie’s new project Destiny, a persistent shared-world FPS, is heading to both PS3 and PS4 – and with platform-exclusive content to boot. It brings not only the Halo studio’s undeniable shooter mastery, but one of the most ambitious visions we’ve ever heard. And it’s all funded by Activision, creator of enormous, world-stomping franchises. If any partnership can make such an ambitious game as Destiny actually work, it’s this one. So now we can finally acknowledge Bungie, and it feels great. But who exactly is this studio? A collective of savant coders in green spacesuits that stomped DualShocks on sight until its split from Microsoft in 2007? Do the staff bounce around the office on space hoppers, extolling the merits of a Valve-esque ‘flat hierarchy’ and taking bi-hourly group hug breaks? To crack into the Bungie psyche, we explore its Seattle headquarters – a converted cinema. “This mezzanine is where the projectors used to be,” says COO Pete Parsons, guiding us through an impressive open space littered with awards gongs, life-sized Master Chiefs and wide-eyed journos. Sure enough, there’s a touch of the unorthodox to Bungie: a ten-foot climbing wall where most offices would have a couple of sofas, an absence of individual offices, masking-tape marks on the floor where a kind of knighting ceremony for new employees and five-, ten- and 20-year veterans took place several weeks back, and an ever-shifting desk arrangement. “Over half the team that created Halo: Combat Evolved back in 2001 is still here today, working on Destiny” “Back in 2005 we decided to put everybody’s desks on wheels,” says Parsons. “We probably do ten to 15 desk moves every week.” These are the affectations of a studio that’s earned the right to hang a little loose by its body of work. You could walk through the doors in foot gloves and a propeller hat if you had a particular predilection for it… so long as you helped make one of the biggest shooter series of all time. And there’s more to that knighting ceremony than fistbumps and bro-ing out – over half the team that created Halo: Combat Evolved back in 2001 is still here today, working on Destiny. An increasing rarity in game studios that’s well worth celebrating. And arguably for the first time since 2001, the studio’s truly out of its comfort zone. Destiny is a rather nebulous project at the moment: it’s a persistent online world, but not an MMO. It’s a first-person shooter, but bears glaring RPG elements that include loot, character upgrades and stat progression. One thing’s crystal clear, though: this isn’t a rebranded Halo for multi-platform release. As Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg describes it: “I think what Bungie has created is the world’s first shared-world shooter. It’s a game that’s always evolving, with persistent progression for your character.” Bungie’s approach? Build an awesome world (these guys love the word awesome), and you’ve already won half the battle. It’s even one of the seven ‘pillars’ of design that creative director and co-founder Jason Jones describes: “A world you want to be in… This pillar was a big influence early in development. It let us create a world that was hopeful, that was full of mystery, a world you wanted to be part of and to explore.” You can throw in all the brutal melee takedowns and slo-mo ‘mark for death’ mechanics you like, but if your world is as fun to inhabit as an Aldi car park, your game’s going to fail View full article

Here's a funny side to Bungie as they explain why "Tigerman" just didn't fit in Destiny! Rather entertaining! Rest in peace "Tigerman"! Tigerman was wise. Tigerman was bestial. Tigerman was wise. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxJVDZpUEHI&feature=player_embedded Could have made for an interesting character, especially dressed in a suit, lol!

Want to know the answers to the community's questions straight from the creators themselves?? Hand-picked questions that are answered by Bungie. Be brave...read on! Image and content courtesy of Bungie.net. "The Mail Sack of Love" Bungie's Mailsack - April 5, 2013 SonOfTheShire - If we ask questions about Destiny, will we actually get proper answers, or are you still not allowed to talk about most of it yet? Are we there yet? We’ve only begun to introduce you to our brave new world. There’s a lot more to discover, and we’ll continue to lead the expedition here on Bungie.net over the next few weeks. While we’re no longer dark, it can’t exactly be said that we’re burning bright. Our hands are on that dimmer switch, though, and we’ll be turning up the heat slowly but surely over the coming months. What was it that Joe Staten said to bring our GDC talk to a close? Ah, yes. Here it is: “See you at E3!” In the meantime, we’ll have to do the old metaphorical dance. Old Monarch - What meal would you use to describe Destiny? A knuckle sandwich. Elliott Gray, Graphic Designer Medium-rare filet mignon, but with marshmallows on top. Leland Dantzler, Tester Macaroni and cheese with gold leaf foil. Mat Noguchi, Programmer* A three gravy poutine flight, with watermelon lemonade and Snow Phoenix Scotch on the side. In other words: Savory, bright, and intoxicating. Troy McFarland, Motion Capture Lead Destiny is like having catering delivered from your favorite restaurant. The table is set before you with a ton of different entrée options, and you can have whatever you’re in the mood for at that particular moment. Josh Eash, Release Manager From my wife’s repertoire: Fried Rabbit. It’s the new black. CJ Cowan, Story Design Lead Dim Sum. You never know what to expect and it just keeps coming. Jake Lauer, Web Development Engineer Christmas Dinner with the whole family, there is so much to choose from, everything is delicious and there are presents to boot. Luke Ledwich, Test Engineer An all you can eat wedding buffet. Jonty Barnes, Production Director A seven-course meal with portions of awesome, camaraderie, and victory. David Johnson, Engineer Hive Central - What can you tell us about the Hive? Are they an organized hierarchy? How did they establish themselves as a threat in the universe of Destiny? Are they Zombies? Cyborgs? Zombie-borgs? These are all great questions. And we will answer them, but not in the Mail Sack. By the way, Zombie-borgs? C’mon, man. That’s just silly. And I’m being sincere when I say that. I’m not saying it in an ironic way, like “Zombie-borgs confirmed for Destiny.” ibex1001 - How much of an affect do new scientific discoveries have an effect on your games? For example what would happen if they found fish on Europa? We would attempt no landing there. As for scientific discoveries, Bungie has an interplanetary scientist on speed-dial who is sworn to alert us as soon as new discoveries come to light. In all fairness, his Non-Disclosure Agreement is probably thicker than ours, so all we really do is swap snarky emails with each other. xgeua - How much work do you do from home? Only when I do the mocap laundry. Troy McFarland, Motion Capture Lead Does waking up count? That’s sometimes hard work. Leland Dantzler, Tester None. Except for those ideas that manifest into being in that weird place between being awake and asleep that make me excited to go back to work and put them in to action. Kurt Nellis, Technical Cinematic Lead Regularly. I typically bring my laptop home, turn on some smooth jazz, and work from my kitchen table in my underwear. Drew Smith, Producer I own several services that require occasional after hours attention, but the work is usually monitoring and minor bug fixes. I heartily prefer doing real work at the office, so I come in for anything major. Luke Ledwich, Test Engineer When we were supporting the Halo back-end, I worked from home quite a bit to help keep things stable. Michael Williams, Senior Engineer I find that I’m often thinking about how to solve difficult problems even while away from our pristine towers. David Johnson, Engineer Enrathe - When Destiny comes out, will we encounter Bungie Employees while we are adventuring like you? Most certainly. Have you ever heard that we make games that we want to play? Destiny is being designed to deliver chance encounters on the road to adventure, so you can expect that some of our encounters will be with you. GREEDY39 - Is the "competitive" side of destiny getting as much work put into it as the campaign/live world? Or is it more of an afterthought? Destiny will provide you with activities for every mood. Sometimes, you’ll want to form up a fireteam to rout the Cabal from the Buried City on Mars. Other times, you’ll want to battle against your fellow players to see who’s the fairest Guardian of them all. That mood gets ahold of us on a regular basis in the studio. Justrec - During your after-work-Destiny-parties, who usually does the most trash talking? I’ve seen Jon Weisnewski bring a grown man to tears with his vitriolic spew. Leland Dantzler, Tester From what I’ve heard and seen, Nate Hawbaker. But he usually plays well, so maybe it’s deserved. Jake Lauer, Web Development Engineer Luke Smith. David Johnson, Engineer Mat Noguchi. Not limited to after-work, either. Elliott Gray, Graphic Designer Luke Smith is the champion, but Mat Noguchi is louder. Michael Williams, Senior Engineer Bolt Ons23 - I want to buy the PS4 now that Bungie makes games for PlayStation. But I am worried that it will effectively mean I am starting with a blank slate. How will this affect everything I have achieved with Halo? With the rebuild of Bungie.net, we’ve sort of wiped that slate clean for you. Destiny (and the online experiences that will support it) will provide brand new opportunities for you to distinguish yourself as a rare and unique snowflake who kicks ass in a living world. The great feats you achieved in Halo may yet impact your legacy as a player of Bungie games. We still have a database with billions of rows of player data, and we’re not afraid to use it. Player3Thomas - What is love? Love is feeling a little bit guilty when the landscape is littered with the corpses of your enemies. Leland Dantzler, Tester Love is taking a brief detour from your objective to help out a fellow Guardian in battle. Josh Eash, Release Manager Love is a night on the Moon – the ultimate date destination. Jake Lauer, Web Development Engineer Love is ignoring the tantalizing prospect of new loot to go save your mate. Luke Ledwich, Test Engineer Love is fulfilling a mission on Mars as I softly whisper, “I’ll be back soon. Promise.” David Johnson, Engineer Love is stumbling into a massive squad of enemies, only to be saved by a stranger on the ridgeline. Michael Williams, Senior Engineer Modernarcher - How big will the destiny art book be? You assume too much. However, were we to publish a book of all the art we’ve created to help us realize this brave new world; it would be heavier than all of our previous publications combined. player 900709 - Should the less awesomely talented community members (this guy) feel intimidated and not share their creative Destiny-related works? Not at all. We only learn when we try. There are some amazing illustrators who are flexing their creative muscles in Art and Stuff, and their appreciation society is shaping up to be a great place to have your work critiqued by your peers. Mfish125 - Does Bungie use 3ds Max or Maya? Both. And Motion Builder. Troy McFarland, Motion Capture Lead Max is typically – although not exclusively – used for environment creation and hard surface creation while Maya is typically used for character creation and animation. We also use software programs like Zbrush, Mudbox, and a variety of highly specialized software. And of course we have our own proprietary tools that our artists use. Dave Dunn, Head of Art EZcompany2ndsqd - What does it take to become a community manager or assistant community manager? Practice, baby. Practice! Bungie likes to hire people who have already demonstrated an ability to tackle the work that we need done. In the absence of professional experience, personal projects are a great way to demonstrate that you pack the gear to serve on our team. I won’t speak for how my predecessors prepared themselves to man this station, but I was managing a community (a smaller, more intimate alliance of online warriors) before I was drafted into the service of the Seventh Column. As a recruit from the community, I’m not alone at Bungie. Our games provide gamers with a lot ways to express themselves, and those expressions tend to prepare them for the craziness that cultivates in our studio every day. LordMonkey - What is your spirit animal? This could have been an interesting exploration of our various internal expressions of power, but it’s a safe bet that everyone would have just said “Tiger.” Hylebos - Human, Awoken, or Exo, and why? Human! Cause we awesome! Awoken. Cause blue! Exo. Cause robots! Francisco Cruz, Artist Awoken, because getting destroyed by a female Edward Cullen is great bragging rights. Leland Dantzler, Tester Human: I love the raw passion and heroism that humans bring to the table. Michael Williams, Senior Engineer Exo Warlock! An ancient rusted war machine in a tattered robe who wields unknown powers and carries a shotgun? Does it really need any explanation? Christopher Barrett, Art Director korokva117 - What are the fates of the Giant Frogs, Grub Lords, and Giant Rat Piranha Fish? You could only have learned of those lost visions from our GDC talk. They’ve been committed to a crate, and stored in a warehouse right next to the Ark of the Covenant (no, not that Covenant). Along with the Tiger Man, they are casualties in the battle for the best idea. It’s a war that we love to wage at Bungie, but it leaves a lot of blood on the field. It should be said that good ideas die hard at Bungie. You never know when inspiration will strike, and we start busting open those old and dusty crates. Progo - What is most important at Bungie, being able to self-manage or to be able to work in large teams? At Bungie those two are inseparable; the work you do on your own self-motivation and management directly affects your [large] team. Leland Dantzler, Tester Well, if you can't self-manage you can't really be effective with a large team. We are a large team. Therefore, by modus tollens, you must be able to self-manage. Mat Noguchi, Programmer* By being able to self-manage, you come prepared and ready to work in a large collaborative team environment. People know you’ve got your end covered and can count on you to deliver. Troy McFarland, Motion Capture Lead The most important thing is being able to work in a SMALL team, the ability to help your pod kick ass. Everything else flows out of that. Elliott Gray, Graphic Designer While we do work in teams, and that is important, I’ve found that striking out and finding your own plot of soil and fertilizing that over time is the path to success. David Johnson, Engineer At Bungie and in life; both are of equal import. Who will build a shelter for you while you hunt? Joe Spataro, Senior Technical Designer Social intelligence and the ability to collaborate are more important than both those things. Jonty Barnes, Production Director Jjswanson24 - Can we get a picture of DeeJ in a MoCap suit? Never. There are few promises that I dare make to the Bungie Community, but staying as far away from full-spectrum spandex is one of them. I like you people too much to subject you to that. Jakaii - Are you going to show a new trailer at E3, or at least more game footage? You’re going to have to wait for E3 to see what we have planned. All we can tell you is that it’s a show you won’t want to miss. The Mail Sack is now empty. We’ve committed to your screen all the community love that is fit to pixelate. As we make our way into a restful weekend, we must take a moment for one final expression of solidarity. This week, Bungie learned of a kindred soul in need of some strength in the face of great adversity. Joe Staten, as he is known to do on many an occasion, will do the best job of speaking for us. Bring it home, Joe: Friends, we learned some very sad news this week. Iain Banks, a tremendously inspirational author for many of us at Bungie, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. His open letter about his condition was clever and courageous, just what you would expect from the man who gave us the Culture series of books and so many other wonderful stories. If you haven’t ever read a book by Banks, or if you haven’t recently re-read your favorite, might we suggest: now would be a great time. And then, if you feel inspired, why not leave a message on his guestbook? Many of us at Bungie certainly will, offering thanks for all the joy he’s given us—and hope and comfort for his days ahead. Be Brave, Iain. Love, Bungie. - Dee J More Bungie Mailsack to come...

Contrary to the leaked contract we saw last May, it appears as though, via the Character Development GDC piece, Destiny will be intended for a mature audience. This may seem fairly obvious but it hints at a larger scope of possible changes made to the leaked contract, all of which it seems are unknown at this time. This next development is also somewhat vague and quite old. Bungie filed for five trademarks on March 11th: 'Glimmer', 'Fallen', 'Hive', 'Cabal', and 'Vex'. The trademarks cover a number of uses from Halloween costumes to ringtones. All of these trademarks have been used as enemy alien titles except 'Glimmer'. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ - I also wanted to add this in but I felt it would be a little too strong on the speculation; first, at 24 minutes, when discussing their second World Pillar ("Idealized Reality") they mentioned these "Giant Onyx Pyramid Ships". After noting that a good game needs them, Christopher Barrett also told us this: "I really love this one but I'm not allowed to talk about those yet, maybe someday down the road." Literally directly after this they moved their presentation on to Destiny World Pillar Three "Mystery and Adventure" during which they talked about populating these worlds with enemies. At 31:09 they showed us this. An early moodboard of five alien race concepts, the far right section depicting pyramids, perhaps indicating the unannounced fifth race left out of the discussion for later. (pure speculation, from left to right: 'Vex', 'Fallen', 'Cabal', 'Hive', 'Glimmer') EDIT (6/17/13): "Glimmer" is all but confirmed as the in-game currency of Destiny. Only time will tell what other uses for Glimmer there are, and whether there is any connection to the fifth alien race at all. As evidenced by this 'enhanced' view of a screengrab from the gameplay demo; "Glimmer" appears to be involved in the upgrading of at least weapons. Other components of weapon upgrading seem to be concepts called "weapon kits" and "talent points". GDC Concept Art

On April 4th an article was published at Eurogamer.net that reported on an interview with Joseph Staten and Chris Barrett, our panelists of interest at GDC. Here is the full article. There are plenty of brand new juicy tidbits but I'm not going to single out any in particular, you'll have to find them for yourselves. Here is the Q&A section for your viewing pleasure. I've got a funny feeling fans will bug you about Tiger Man for a long time, and you may have shot yourselves in the foot by even mentioning him. Joe Staten: Then Tiger Man has served his purpose. He has become the bullet shield. That's his role. He is brave and noble and strong and wise. Chris Barrett: I guess Blizzard did it with the panda, right? That turned out to be a whole expansion. Oh dear... Joe Staten: No! I've already seen #TeamTigerMan on the internet. So, well done! Joe Staten: Thanks. Whoops. You mention mythic sci-fi and idealised reality as guides for what Destiny is, and you've created some stunning concept art. But building an actual video game that lives up to the promise of that concept art must be a particularly difficult challenge. Chris Barrett: Switching gears for the whole team and coming up with this new world was certainly tough. We had a lot of people who were used to making Halo games for a long time, so trying to communicate that new vision and get them on board, we had to do a lot of concept art to show people what we were thinking about and what mixtures of sci-fi versus fantasy worked and what we were going for. The other thing though, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. When you start making characters who fit into that world, or stories players are playing, or bring some of it into the gameplay, it all starts to form that feel. Joe Staten: I remember playing a build maybe a month ago, and for some reason the build just wasn't rendering cloth. I play as a hunter character with the big cape and cloak and hood. That part fell away, and all of a sudden there was something missing from that mythic sci-fi, because nobody had cloth on, and it looked much more like a straight up sci-fi game. It's that texture that the art is bringing to the world, and the colour palette and the screen effects. It is this combination of things that make it happen. I'd also say - and I never thought this would happen - but it's crazy that so many of the pieces of concept art we made long ago are actually present in the game. You can look at that postcard and go into the game and as you're playing you'll say, 'Oh my god, that's The Buried City.' The challenge is communicating the vision and the theme clearly enough to the people who need to make it, answering their questions, being open to their push back, but all having a very clear vision of what you're going for. And if you define that well and you define it right, you can achieve a lot of these things we thought early on would be really hard if not impossible to do. And that's been really great to see. You talk a lot about players creating their own legend and their own stories in Destiny, but from a writing perspective, you also want to create a story. It must present an interesting design challenge to combine a story Bungie wants to tell with players who are creating their own stories - at the same time. Joe Staten: Without getting into too much detail, if you think of Halo, you had two sort of experiences in general. I'm going to play the story, or I'm going to play competitive multiplayer. In the story I'm playing the story. And in competitive multiplayer I'm just fighting against people, and there's not really a story there except that awesome story of the moment to moment combat experience I'm having and the post-game, 'Oh, wasn't that awesome when you drove the Warthog that way?!' That story was really important to PvP. But there was this cinematic story that lived in a sort of silo over here. The simple answer is, we still believe in a great narrative cinematic story. We want your character, whatever character you are, a female robot warlock or a male human titan, whoever you are, you're going to be the star of that cinematic story. But there are many many other activities that cross the divide between story and multiplayer in this world of Destiny, and your character is going to go through all of them. So, whatever character you are in story is the same character you are in all these other activities, including competitive multiplayer. And so, our hope is that it will feel like a consistent experience. Your legend will take you through all these different activities. Some are more narrative driven. Some aren't. Some are just more emergent. But you're a consistent character across all of those. That's the key. That's where that consistent experience comes from. In your GDC session you talked about character creation. The impression I get is you want it to be an immediate experience, almost like you pick based on a gut reaction to the options. What is the overriding philosophy behind what you're trying to do there? Chris Barrett: When we were talking about how that process would work and the choices the players would have, we knew if we gave somebody a choice and then betrayed that choice later down the road, that would be bad. We wanted players to just go on gut. What do they like the look of? What sounds cool to them? And not betray that in any way. We don't want to make something where a character plays very differently, or isn't what they thought what they were getting. That tied in to that process. We want to give people whatever they want to play in that world and not have any negative side effects. Joe Staten: Making it up front and quick and largely emotional, and nothing that's going to, later down the line, make you feel like you made the wrong choice. You're going to make this gut emotional choice: 'I'm going to look at that robot and I'm going to look at that more exotic space elf and I'm going to look at that human and I like... robot.' It's like, bam. I'm going to be a robot. And there's nothing about being a robot that's going to play any different from the other two. We want to make it immediate and quick and gut, for sure when it comes to race, and then make sure we don't screw you down the line. Chris Barrett: We didn't want to give a plus eight bonus or whatever it is, that people are going to be like, 'Oh, I made the wrong choice! I've got to start over.' That always sucks. With Halo you were locked in to working on a single main character with Master Chief. Now you're working on multiple main character types. That must have been quite the change, being able to say, actually, I can create whatever I want now. Chris Barrett: Absolutely. Some of the early brainstorms on the enemies for example were just lining up, what are awesome things we want to do? Like, 'Oh, let's make ancient robots! We need those!' Or, 'Let's make dimensional beings!' Whatever it is we thought could fit in the world we could do because we had all those more options. We wanted space zombies and robots and we could do that in this world, which was super cool. So it was liberating. It was a lot of fun doing all that stuff instead of trying to cram it all into one character design. It was freeing. With Master Chief you had to consider just one central character's backstory. Now you have to deal with multiple stories for multiple characters. Joe Staten: As long as you as a writer remain flexible and don't try to put too many rules on the process up front, your really fun job is to make everything possible. So if Chris comes to me with an image of the Traveller, or if he comes to me with an image of a guy with a soul ripping out of his head, or space zombies or robots, it's been a real pleasure just to assimilate all of those ideas loosely and try to create a world where it's less about the constraints and the rules and more about, what's possible? Like, give me the big brackets. Give me fantasy and sci-fi. There's a lot that can fit in between those two big brackets. And then it's just a matter of, well, where do space zombies go? Do they go on the moon? Do they go on Mars? What's cool? Artistically, what looks better? What's a richer combination of palettes? So much of our fiction conversation is just about creating this pleasing world, this inviting world, this world that looks good, that's beautiful, that draws you deeper. It's less about writing about a bunch of backstory. We certainly do some of that, but it's more about sort of colour blocking. Like, big, thematic blocking we do. Let's talk about Mars. Okay, let's look at it thematically. Who belongs in Mars? Is it big Kabal? Is it space zombies? Really, much of the work has been just moving around these different elements until we get a pleasing whole big picture. Then we have to tighten the screws. If I were writing a Halo game, what I would do is, typically, I would sit down and write a linear script that looked a lot like a film. I would just bang it out. Here's what the story is going to be. Here's what the characters are. We'd make a story. We'd talk about backstory. In this world, we spent a lot more time just doing what I think people would do in a television show, which is, we've got this plot card, and that is, like, space zombies invade the moon, or whatever it is, and that's an awesome idea. Let's just put that there. And then let's come up with other ones. And then let's start moving them around and stay flexible and then f***ing play the game so we know it's going to be fun, and then, let's finally tighten the screws and shoot it. That's been a really rewarding, different process than we've gone through before. Some of the art shows Earth reclaimed by nature or in some abandoned sci-fi style. Will we be able to visit these places on Earth in the game as well as go out into the solar system? Chris Barrett: We're doing both. It's exciting to explore what was humanity. What happened to humanity? And be able to explore those spaces on Earth. Those are real places we want to explore. And then also what's also cool is seeing how humanity spread into the stars and what happened on those other planets. Both are super exciting in the same way. Joe Staten: We sometimes toss around loosely terms like galaxies and universes and solar systems, but we're really excited about telling, at least during the beginning of the story, the story of a human civilisation in our solar system. So we're talking about the moon and Mars and Venus and the moons of Saturn. You can Google Enceladus or the Moon. But we want to take that familiar understanding of what these places are and tweak them into this world of strangeness and mystery. And that's true for Earth as well. You can type in Chicago but you're not going to get a picture of flooded streets.

Shortly after their hour long panel at the recent GDC, Joe Staten and Chris Barrett sat down with Eddie Makuch of Gamestop for a little more "in-depth" information regarding Bungie's upcoming game "Destiny". A very insightful look into a game that looks to have enough depth in both the Campaign storyline and Multiplayer to hold a player's interest for years. Be Brave. Read on. Content and image courtesy of GameSpot.com On inspirations for Destiny Barrett - Some of the things that I like, or our team really liked, from that kind of mixture of genres--you could go anywhere from Thundarr the Barbarian; that was something I loved as a kid and actually has some of those similar elements. Obviously the big ones like Star Wars or Dune or any of those things that we liked as kids. As far as the art, the art style definitely looked towards painters and images that had those big ideas in them…sort of timeless. Like I said in the talk, John Harris had that kind of feel. Seventies sci-fi art had this big world-building kind of feel and idea; stuff that would span galaxies and solar systems. And all that stuff really was inspiration for me, for sure. Staten - So in terms of other inspirations, I would just pile on there certainly we read a ton of genre fiction. Absolutely sci-fi and fantasy. We eat it up. But the thing we really looked at…I think typically, for the Halo games, we looked at movies. But really for this game, we looked at serial television; great dramas like Lost or The Wire; Battlestar Galactica. When you're building a world and you want to evolve it over time, it really helps to have an understanding of how you build this longer-form narrative. So for us, that was a really interesting new thing we did. I think we probably spent more time watching television these days than we do movies and that's definitely influenced the way we think about building our story. On the difficulties of creative collaboration with a 400-person team Staten - For me, I think [Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien], having just read through the books with my ten-year-old son, is an incredible talent. I think [Lord of the Rings] is this creation of a single person, though, and we're in a totally different world. We're creating a game that's the creation of 400 people. And you have to be really careful in that world not to get too precious; to go too deep down your own rabbit hole. And then come out with a whole bunch of rules and strictures; 'this is possible in our world,' 'this is totally off-limits.' It's not good collaboration. And ultimately, I don't think results in creative ideas. On whether or not Destiny needs consistency Staten - We absolutely do. And we have pages of words that define things in great detail. But there's nothing worse than having words that go stale. Writing reams and reams of words and then nobody ever reads them or nobody updates them and they go out of date. So this has been really, really hard; we don't do it perfectly. But we spend a lot of time just trying to boil down things to a simple sentence like 'This is what this place is all about' and 'If you remember nothing else, remember these simple words.' And that's been hugely effective. And so we try really, really hard not to create a story bible; we'll create a style guide to talk to people about art, but we're trying really, really hard not to build a bible. Barrett - The other thing is, when we started talking about what this world could be, we always said to ourselves we want to make some place where almost anything is possible, so even now, as we're building the world, we have those defined, but we're always evolving. Over the next ten years we're going to be making up new stuff to put in there and we want to build as big a net as possible so those crazy ideas can fit. On whether or not games have a responsibility to show seedy sides of humans Staten - I think if you want to tell a credible story, yes, absolutely. In terms of the player choice, which is what we were talking about, we want players to be a hero. And if you're a hero, then that means you're largely on the side of good. And you might make a racial choice to be an Exo, which is artistically and thematically a little more sinister and dark. You might choose to be a Hunter class, who is just a little bit more in the bounty hunter, roguish vein. But at the end of the day, when you're a player in this world, you're a guardian of the last safe city on Earth. And it's really important that you are this heroic, hopeful figure in the world. That said, you're absolutely going to run into other humans and other Exos and other Awoken who, some are, bad people. They have bad plans. There aren't all good people in the world that you run into. So you will see that breadth across all the characters in our game, but if you're the player, you're the hero. On how the idea of hope factors into Destiny Staten - The kinds of experiences that I want to play, and that we as a studio I think want to put into the world--I think about my own kids or people who are going to play this game. How do we want them to interact with this world? What experience do I want them to have? Post-apocalyptic worlds are fun. Worlds with skulls and blood and hellfire are awesome, but if I want to spend time in a world, if I want to be an agent of change, I want to be an agent of good. I want it to be a hopeful outcome. We go back and forth about the name Destiny and we joked about it for a while about whether it was the right name, but I think we think about Destiny and what kind of Destiny do you want to have? Do you want to have one that ends in annihilation and reprehensible things? Or do you want to end in a hopeful, heroic place? For us, that's really important. That legacy that we want to build is a hopeful one. On the mystery of Destiny's world Staten - One of the choices we made early on, like [barrett] said, was where to set this game. And when. Do we want it to be a galaxy far, far away? Do we want it to be a planet-of-the-week like Star Trek? What really clicked in my mind when we started mixing sci-fi and fantasy is with fantasy you get this strong sense of history; you get myths and legends and ancient gods; different dream realms and stuff that's steeped in time and legend. And we wanted to create that same feeling in this mythic sci-fi world. Bungie hopes players will want to explore the red dunes of Mars. So one of the things we did early on was decide we wanted to center it on Earth, but we want to build a history. We want to build a block of time that occupies from the here to the now to the distant future. But we want players to go back and explore this lost human history. And so for us, that was the source of a lot of the mystery in our world was this [period] of time where something happened, but you don't know what. And we're hundreds of years in the future now exploring back through these ruins of human civilization. Barrett - We talked about a lot in our concept art; if you look at a painting and you don't want to know more, if there isn't a mystery there, you're going to get bored looking at it. So every shot we try to create, especially the key images, we want somebody to ask a question about it. 'Why is that there?' 'What's behind that little door off in the distance?' or 'What's that character doing in the distance?' That's absolutely a key part of making evocative concept art. Staten - You show up on Mars, now in the game we're playing, and you see this city buried in sand and it's a mystery that draws you deeper; it's not one that's repellent or dark and grim. It's a beautiful place that is steeped in mystery and wonder so that's really what we want the world to do; just keep dragging you deeper and deeper and deeper. On whether or not science-fiction can avoid thematic repetition Staten - I hadn't really thought about it in that way, but I think it's the big reason why we wanted to inject fantasy into this world. With the world of mythic science fiction, anything is possible. And when you round a corner and see up high a combatant; for example something that looks much more like a wizard-space-zombie. That's not an experience you get when you're playing most straight-up action-shooters or sci-fi shooters. That was really a critical part to making that experience unique and fresh--was injecting these more fantastical and exotic elements. Barrett - I think it's always something you think about is creating this completely new idea that no one has ever seen before. And we definitely have some of those in the game, but also we do that like…players aren't bringing anything to it; it's not familiar; in some way, you want them to see things that they recognize in some way so they feel emotional when they see it again. So we try to strike that nice balance between those two elements. Destiny is currently in development for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4. The game is described as the very first "shared-world shooter." It is an online-focused title, though it is not a massively multiplayer online game and will not carry a subscription fee. Activision is not planning to ship Destiny until 2014.

Image and video courtesy of Bungie.net According to Dee J at Bungie.net... "This video was originally screened as part of our GDC 2013 presentation. It provides a rare glimpse into the character art, development and design of Destiny – from early sketches and concept art, to animation and in-engine 3D character models." http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xKOY8zJx2Q4 Another great video providing more images of the upcoming game by Bungie! Enjoy!!

Today Bungie was in the spot light at the game developers conference, they discussed some of their techniques and inspirations when building destiny but the main part of it all was the new concept art. As a large amount of concept art was shown I will try and provide the most interesting pieces I captured from the video First up we have an abandoned colony on Europa which is one of Jupiter's moons Here we have alien ruins on Venus it's unknown which alien race once inhabited this place These are some early concepts of space ships that did not make the cut Here is a space station and a space ship, bungie said they focused more on these so it's possible these made the cut. Here is a hanger where human ships are docked one of the bungie guys said this is a place where heroes show of their armor and personal space ships. This seems to suggest the player can customize their own personal ships. Here is a place that bungie describes as a frozen city occupied by machines where towers and skyscrapers become dungeons. Here is a place currently known as the buried city as you can see ruins buried in mountains of sand on Mars. This is one of the enemy races space zombies but officially named "Hive". The flooded streets of Old Chicago. And here are some different types of weapons, they didn't mention that these were early concepts or finalized concepts but no doubt we will be seeing some of these in the game. This post has been promoted to an article

An Interesting part from the destiny presentation at GDC was that the player will be able to choose from different races. Besides being a human there are 2 others that are selectable when customizing your character they are "Awoken and "Exo. Bungie describes the awoken as exotic, beautiful and mysterious beings and they said they look to ghosts, angels and vampires to capture the feel of this race. the Exo, which bungies describes as sinister, powerful, and tireless beings they said the looked to famous characters such as the terminator, the undead and their very own master chief to capure the feel of the Exo race. Here is a picture of these races. As the humans have different classes (hunter, titan and warlock) I'm pretty sure the awoken and exo will each feature their own classes to choose from. So from the pictures and the descriptions bungie gave which race do you like best at the moment? View full article