Bungie’s Destiny: The more things change, the more they stay the same

Over the weekend, Bungie unveiled their upcoming ‘shared-world’ first-person shooter, Destiny. Set among the Earth’s solar system, players will become Knights and Guardians, empowered by The Traveler, a mysterious white orb hovering above the Earth’s last city, to discover what caused the genocide of our species, and who or what is The Traveler. Destiny aims to marry emergent gameplay of an MMO with a persistent first-person shooter, giving players a world that lives and breathes even when they’re not playing. Designed to span over the next 10 years, Destiny will give players a reason to keep coming back as new content and expansions are developed and released, without the need for a subscription fee.

And that’s about all we know about Destiny. Despite the press event held at their headquarters in Bellevue, Wash., Bungie showed little to no gameplay, offering only a high-level look at it through concept art, the engine, in-game models, and music. The assets released thus far have are all concept art shown at the event, with small snippets of gameplay in a video documentary explaining the ideas of Destiny. At one point during the event, they showed a reel not of gameplay, but the reactions of play-testers encountering the emergent gameplay that comes with the MMO design. If testers are involved, Destiny must already be in some sort of playable state, so it begs the question of why Bungie showed things like concept art, but no gameplay.

That’s not to say they can’t pull it off. Bungie did learn how to adapt for consoles with Halo, making it the standard for console first-person shooters. But Destiny is much more ambitious game, both technically and narratively. Without more information like what gameplay is like, how classes work, how multiplayer will work, when it’s coming out, and how it will sustain itself over the next 10 years, I remain skeptical. It’s another reminder that things like CG trailers and early announcements are less relevant.

Destiny is destined for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 sometime in 2014, along other future consoles. Bungie didn’t come out and say it, but expect to see Destiny on the next Xbox and PlayStation. They made no mention of a PC version, but COO Peter Parsons said to Eurogamer, “We would absolutely love to be on the PC. If you talk to the people upstairs, we play it on all platforms. So, stay tuned.” While that sounds promising, I’m not holding my breath. Bungie co-founder and Destiny project director Jason Jones noted, “We've learned a bunch of lessons from MMOs and Facebook games… but Destiny is a console shooter.”

PAX East 2011: The Future of Online Gaming

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games are that one genre where innovation and creativity take center stage. While platformers, shooters, and other genres can continually be released with a different coat of paint and still be successful, MMORPGs that take the same route can easily fall by the way-side. In a market dominated by Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, what changes or additions can be made to the genre that feel natural and progressive, rather than merely change for the sake of change?

Runescape Developer Making Transformers MMO for North America

If you’ve been keeping up with your Transformers game news so far, you’ll know that there are three new games coming out within the next few years. This year we’ll see the release of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, a movie tie-in game being developed by High Moon studios, who also created Transformers: War for Cybertron. A sequel to War for Cybertron is being developed also by High Moon Studios and is scheduled to be released sometimes in 2012. We also know of a Transformers MMO being developed by NetDragon that is set to be launched sometime this year in China, Russia, the Middle East, and North Africa.

A new Transformers game was just announced today, and it will be another MMO but this one will be coming to North America, Europe, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand sometime in 2012. Developer Jagex, creator of the browser-based fantasy MMO Runescape, hopes the title will be, “dynamic and action-packed,” said Jagex CEO Mark Gerard. No word on which era of Transformers the game will be based on or if it will be based on the recent movies.

This is another Hasbro sanctioned game so Transformers will be rolling-out officially to everyone all over the world over the next coming years.

I’ve Been Saying This All Along

THQ revealed their new company logo today. Brian Farrell, THQ President and CEO, said the new logo, “epitomizes the change, innovation and creative growth that are the cornerstones of the new THQ.” This might be considered marketing talk by some, however, it’s true. THQ is setting themselves to go up against the big boys in the industry and they are going about in the right way: building strong brands with great games.

DC Universe Online Launch

It’s been more than five years since I played a game by Sony Online Entertainment. My last encounter with SOE was Star Wars Galaxies and their introduction of the New Game Enhancements. I’m not going to get into why, but suffice to say it was less then stellar. So why am I interested in an SOE game now?

New Firefall Trailer Shows the Future of Free-to-Play

A new trailer was released earlier today for the upcoming free-to-play game Firefall, which was first revealed during PAX 2010 back in September. Developed by Red 5 Studios (awesome name for a development house), the game is a combination MMO persistence with FPS features. Red 5 Studios was founded by Mark Kern, former World of Warcraft team lead back in 2005. While not much is known about gameplay, Red 5 has said that the game will feature, “large, open-world cooperative campaign that can be shared with hundreds of other players as well as a competitive multiplayer component that incorporates things like ladders, tournaments, clans and leagues.” The art style is similar to that of the hit game Borderlands, using a mixture of cell-shading and stylized art to create a feeling one might find in comic books. While the free-to-play in past has been overrun with second-rate games, the trend has shown that AAA titles can use the same business model, and Firefall is just another example of this.Firefall will be available for PC sometime during the fourth quarter of 2011.

That's a Good Look

In my previous post, I said I wanted to try to keep updates coming out every two weeks. I can see how well that went. I’m still going to shoot for that goal, but also insert short posts in between. I realize that not every post needs to be 700-1000 words. Sometimes ideas only need to be planted and left alone to grow, rather than being groomed. With that being said, today’s post will be more of a longer one, but its something shakes my ideas on what gameplay can be.