Bungie's Mailsack: Destiny Q&A - March 29, 2013

[Choot 'em]

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.

 

"Aftermath Sack"

 

Bungie's Mailsack - March 29, 2013

 

As we sifted through the contents of the Mail Sack for this week, we realized that most of your questions would be best answered by our presence at the Game Developers Conference. We also realized that there was nothing we could say today about Destiny that would be better than what Joe and Chris said yesterday.

 

If you missed our show, and you’ve been craving another glimpse at the brave new world we’ve been building, pull up a seat and relive the evolution of Destiny from the first ideas to the most recent in-engine builds. Gamespot has archived the event for stragglers, or people who want to sit through it all over again.

 

Video courtesy of

.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiDbv7nftM8&feature=player_detailpage

 

And with that, we’re spent. As the dust settles and your chatter takes a turn in a new direction, there is only one question that we have the strength left to answer.

 

Lashghost - Are we there yet?

 

We’ve taken one more step closer to this mythic world filled with action and adventure.

 

If you caught Joe’s sign-off at the end of the talk, you can look forward to reaching a new shining point on the horizon. We’ll be taking some more baby steps between now and then, but most of our efforts will be devoted to setting the next big stage.

 

“See you at E3!”

 

- Dee J

 

A few more "baby steps" announcements as we continue to wait in anticipation

for new content Bungie will be bringing us at this year's E3 conference! Until then, be sure

to follow coverage of Bungie's Destiny at 343iCF's Destiny:_Bungie's_New_Gaming_Frontier!

 

More Destiny news to come!!

[Drizzy_Dan]

Thank you for continuing to bring us these Choot these are all very revealing in a Bungie secrecy sort of way... This one not as much but I mean usually

[Choot 'em]

This one was lacking the fan's questions but if you watch the end of the GDC panel, there are quite a few questions answered there. I have watched the video four times completely through and find little interesting nuggets of info each time. I love the fact that Bungie walked us through the entire process of how the idea of Destiny came to life.

[Choot 'em]

Since the Mailsack was lacking questions, I decided to post the questions asked at the end of the video.

On the panel are Joe Staten, writer and Chris Barret, art director.

I hope you find these to be as interesting as I did!

 

Audience member 1 - This question is in regards to Project Management. On a team with 400 people, how do you keep a sense of ownership over all of the tasks that you hand out? How do all of the people working on it feel like they own the project individually when they have to share it with so many?

 

 

Joe - "Yeah, I'll get my answer to that and Chris can jump in. I think that this goes back to the point I said earlier where as creative directors it is not our job to direct everything. With a big team, we wouldn't even attempt to do that because it's impossible. So really it's about coming up with things like "postcards", unifying these themes and then handing over those to more highly directional people and trusting these smart, super talented people that we have on our team to do all the hard work and do it well... to fill in the gaps."

 

 

Chris - "Also, involving them in that process of coming up with those first images showing them at that point and talking about changes and stuff. Also, we all sit together as a big team out in open space so we're constantly interacting, we're talking to each other about ideas, so I think that really helps everybody feel like they're part of the same process."

 

Joe - "...and we're part of the same culture. Anyone on the team at any time can call BS on me or Chris or anything and in that big open setting it is a big team scrum and we mix it up."

 

Audience member 2 - So basicly, high concepts, remembering to have large gatherings with your team and then pushing down as much ownership as you can to the people that you are siting work to.

 

Joe - "Yes and thank you for answering your own question better than we could."

 

Audience member 3 - Obviously Destiny isn't the story of one man or one group of people, it's the story of the world, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe. It's huge! How has your technique and what tools narratively have you been finding yourself moving towards in order to tell this much larger story?

 

Joe - "Well, I think if you like the way we tell stories at Bungie (we're cinematic story tellers, we like that approach to story telling) then the great thing about Destiny is that for us the story isn't confined to the campaign in this world. The story informs other activities that you will be playing as well and in a way that we never really could in Halo but I can't talk too much about it today so I'll just say... when you're building a big world, you want that narrative to go everywhere and most importantly, the story you are telling, the legend you are building follows you from every activity. From the character you are in campaign, to the character you are in multiplayer. It's really about creating one cohesive story across all of the activities. Also, we're not really going all over the galaxy... just the solar system. That's crazy!

 

Chris - "... not yet!"

 

Audience member 4 - Moving from a single person action campaign to a large global presence, how are you handling the change in testing for them?

 

Chris - "Well, we're just the writer and the artist. We have alot of smart people who are working on that as we speak."

 

Joe - "The reality is we know it's going to be a big task but we also want to make sure that people have as good as experience as possible and that we can share it effectively with as many people around the world as we can. As much effort that we've put into the art, trust me, we're putting out a ton of effort in ALL the listings that will make the game a good experience."

 

Audience member 5 - What was the process you guys went through from one place in Halo of that tanky soldier to three various types of character designs that you have in Destiny with the Hunter, Warlock, and Titan?

 

Chris - "We really wanted to create archetypes that different types of people would want to play as, not just how they looked but how they played on the battlefield. It was actually really freeing for us as artists to not just have to make one character design or one type of gameplay that met everybody's needs or desires. It was cool to be able to come up with those archetypes and come up with the armored soldier and have the more fantastic Warlock and the one that's sort of the bounty hunter. Those were really freeing for us so it was actually pretty easy for us to brainstorm those ideas and come up with them."

 

Audience member 6 - Did anything that was cut from the previous designs in Halo make it into Destiny?

 

Chris - "I think ideas are always milling around in our heads and maybe if we didn't point to something specifically, I think we're always coming up with crazy ideas and I'm sure things we had thought of back then HAVE made their way into this game that maybe didn't fit then."

 

Audience member 7 - There was a big gap between the initial creative process for world building and the first playable form of Destiny. Do you find that's challenging or are you thinking about that while playing other games in order to think about your ideas in reality and player suggestive experience?

 

Joe - "Yeah, absolutely. I think we all share this frustration. We don't do anything different at Bungie. Everybody has a stage in the development process from where the game is not playable and that's an extremely frustrating time. You can do as much art and paper design as you want but it's not until all those elements come together with Destiny. We've been to this rodeo before with this action shooter campaign and we sort of know how that goes in multiplayer but we're combining so many different environments and systems like investment, for example, building a character that it's taken way longer to get this game to a state where it's playable. I'll just say that when Chris and I are joking about the characters we want to be like a robot wizard and I want to be an awesome female hunter robot (which is the best choice), we're playing that now. We're playing that at our desks with all of these systems online and we're finally at that point where we really can begin to design the game for real. It has been a long time coming but playing it now it awesome. We've crossed the great gap.

 

See you at E3!"

 

A very informative set of questions that give a little more insight to Destiny from a writer and artist's view!