Destiny's launch-day roundup

Destiny's live-action trailer and Dust Palace Strike walkthrough
We've got two new videos from upcoming sci-fi shooter-MMO Destiny today. The first is the live-action "Become A Legend" trailer from Bungie. The second is from the official PlayStation blog, and it highlights Destiny's three-man level 18 Dust Palace Strike mission, a "long-form, loot-dropping mission" in which players "team up with two friends and take down the Cabal in an ancient ruin on Mars.

Tour Destiny's off-world locales via Google Street View
Want to walk through the worlds of Destiny without waiting until next week's launch (and without the usual dudebro audio commentary)? You should tour DestinyPlanetView.

Destiny unveils more raid details
Destiny is coming out very soon, and that means future players are probably thinking about what the endgame will be like. The latest update on the official site shares some more details about how raids will work in both Normal and Hard modes and elaborates on the differences between difficulties.

Destiny: No trading with others allowed
One major staple of online gaming won't be present in Destiny when it launches: trading. The developers have made it clear that all of your gear must be attained with blood, sweat, and tears instead of swapped for another player's loot or bought for virtual bucks.

Here's Destiny's launch trailer
Can you spare two minutes and 29 seconds? Are you looking forward to Destiny? If you answered "yes" to both of those questions, you should click that big green button down there and watch Bungie's newly released launch trailer!

Destiny shows off a Venus trailer
What lurks beneath the cloudy exterior of Venus? In the real world, a blighted hellscape that's about as conducive to human life as the heart of a nuclear reactor.

Take a virtual trip to Destiny's Mars
Mars is but one of the locales on which Guardians will be making planetfall in Destiny, but it is perhaps the most rust-colored and sandy of them all.

Gamescom 2014: Destiny's first expansion, The Dark Below, arrives in December
Bungie Director of Production Jonty Barnes just announced at Gamescom that Destiny's first expansion, The Dark Below, will arrive in December, just a few months after the game officially launches.

Paul McCartney assists with Destiny's soundtrack
Destiny will have another prestigous feather in its cap when it launches on September 9th: ex-Beatles musician Paul McCartney as one of the composers.

Destiny infographic reveals massive beta numbers
We already know that Destiny's beta was big -- on the order of 4.6 million testers big -- but a recently released infographic by Bungie piles on the numbers to give you a clue as to what this avalanche of fans has been up to during the testing process.

Destiny's level cap is sorta 20, but not really
Destiny may not be an MMO in the eyes of many, but it sounds as if Bungie's designers have got the genre's endgame gear treadmill mechanics down pat.

Destiny previews its endgame systems
The team at Bungie has been talking a lot about Destiny's systems, but there hasn't been a great deal of discussion about the long-term game. What's going to keep players going in the long term?

A whole lot of you played Destiny's beta
Destiny's beta phase was what you might call successful, according to a Bungie press release. The company says that 4,638,937 players participated in the testing period that began on July 17th.

Analyst predicts that Destiny will sell between 15M and 20M units
I think we all know that Destiny is going to be a very big launch when it happens this September, but one analyst has put a number to that feeling: 15 to 20 million copies sold.

Bungie explains no cross-platform play for Destiny
As most new video games are striving for a cross-platform multiplayer experience, Bungie decided against it with Destiny. Sure, the game can be played on the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One consoles, but the studio feels that there are too many major disadvantages to allowing those consoles to battle against each other in the upcoming game.

Destiny beta changes Dinklage's voice after criticism
When Peter Dinklage, aka Tyrion Lannister, was announced as the voice of Destiny's voice-in-your-head companion, Ghost, fans went nuts. That is, until they heard the lines in the game's alpha build.

Poke around inside Destiny's special editions
Last week we learned about Destiny's pricing for its three special editions, and now we're allowed to see inside each of these packages. The website has posted pre-order pages for each special edition with interactive elements that allow you to investigate all of the goodies and bonuses that come with each.

Destiny reveals beta dates, expansion pass, and special edition pricing
It's open war across the cosmos, and your wallets look to be the first casualty in Destiny's interplanetary conflict. Bungie announced today that it will be pre-selling two DLC packs and revealed the contents of its special editions.

Bungie COO on Destiny's 10-year plan, business model, and more
Bungie COO Pete Parsons spoke to GamesIndustry.biz at E3 a couple of weeks ago, and the website has now published a wide-ranging interview that covers everything from Destiny's rumored $500 million budget to the fact that Bungie came to Activision with a 10-year plan for a new IP and a tent-pole franchise.

Destiny's alpha testers have played 6,461,871 games
"A lot of our friends asked us if this was a real Alpha," Bungie wrote today of its recently begun PlayStation 4 alpha test for Destiny. "It was.

Destiny's PlayStation players will receive exclusive co-op content and maps
When Bungie's Destiny launches on the PlayStation 3 and 4 in September, gamers on those consoles will be entitled to a bevy of "timed" exclusives that they can crow about to the likes of Xboxers (never mind PC gamers who might never see Destiny at all).

E3 2014: A quick hands-on with Destiny
As much as you might want have wanted to sink your teeth into Destiny at E3 2014, the lines and waits were pretty long. Even after the wait, we were afforded but a small taste of what Bungie's upcoming shooter has to offer before the next group was shuffled through.

E3 2014: Destiny gameplay trailer sells you on the experience
Bungie might have your attention with its upcoming Destiny shooter, but what is it really? For those still a little unclear what this title will have to offer, the team's put together a seven-minute trailer for E3 that covers the gamut of story, features, and sweet hoverbike action.

Destiny claims to be reinventing the first-person shooter
Bungie is throwing down the gauntlet with a new Destiny video, saying that the team has truly reinvented the first-person shooter with this upcoming title.

Kotick says Destiny is a '$500 million bet'
Is Destiny the most expensive game ever made? Time will tell, but Activision CEO Bobby Kotick intimated that total development and marketing costs for Bungie's sci-fantasy shooter epic may reach half a billion dollars.

Destiny shows off Devils' Lair, explains lack of a PC version
Destiny revealed a bit more of itself yesterday, as Bungie released a seven-minute gameplay trailer focused on the Devils' Lair. Joystiq also laid hands on the upcoming sci-fantasy shooter, toured Bungie's offices, and interviewed COO Pete Parsons.

Take a look at Destiny's Earth map
DualShockers has been sleuthing around the new Destiny website, and it found a couple of brief videos that may whet your appetite for Bungie's upcoming console shooter.

Destiny to use facial motion capture
It's time for Destiny's close-up! The upcoming MMO is paying attention to more than just scenery and armor models, as Bungie has hired Faceware Technologies to provide facial motion capture for the game's characters.

This 42-minute video contains all you need to know about Destiny
If you're not sure what to make of Destiny, a new 42-minute video from Destiny Updates is worth watching. The clip touches on the game's MMO, RPG, and shooter aspects, as well as its social building blocks, its economy, and its gear and progression systems.

Bungie really wants you invested in Destiny
How does a game get stuck to you -- or you to it? Bungie thinks it's all about getting players invested with broader experiences and a living community.

Destiny PvP 'certainly more lethal than Halo'
Game Informer has another look at Bungie's upcoming Destiny shooter, this time with a focus on PvP. Multiplayer lead Lars Bakken spends a little over eight minutes answering questions about Destiny's match speed and combat feel ("it's certainly more lethal than Halo") as well as multiplayer balancing issues.

Watch the Destiny VGX trailer... now
It's short on words and long on action, and it's something you should make a couple of minutes for to watch right now.We're talking about the Destiny trailer from Spike VGX, and it's a beauty to behold.

Explore Destiny's early fantasy, sci-fi, and space western art
Game Informer is gearing up for some Destiny content reveals, the first of which is a six-minute video journey through the sci-fantasy shooter's art direction.

Destiny devs on Star Wars influences and the MMO stigma
How does Bungie plan to escape the shadow of its own Halo megaverse in the upcoming sci-fi shooter Destiny? By going the Star Wars route, according to a piece at IGN.

No pain, no gain: Bungie on cross-platform development
Bungie has pushed live another lengthy edition of its long-running Mail Sack feature, this one covering questions from the community about board games (the team likes them), podcasts (Bungie's shall return), Destiny's best moments (all too spoilery to reveal), and the reveal date for the release date of the studio's upcoming next-gen shooter-MMO hybrid (totally sometime in the future, maybe).

Bungie: Destiny is different 'every time you experience it'
Bungie's David "DeeJ" Dague sat down for an interview with the official PlayStation blog at Gamescom, discussing Destiny's world design, class mechanics, and replayability.

Bungie talks Destiny's connected play, Far Cry and Borderlands influence
In an interview with Edge Magazine, Destiny creative director Joe Staten took a moment to acknowledge the contributions of other open world shooters to the Destiny development process.

Game of Thrones' Dinklage to voice main companion in Destiny
If you're a Game of Thrones fan, there's no denying the fact that Tyrion Lanister is one of the most enduring characters in both the books and the HBO series.

E3 2013: Bungie reveals Destiny's first 'gameplay' video
During tonight's Sony press conference at E3, Bungie revealed a fresh new trailer with some gameplay bits for its upcoming co-op FPS, Destiny, a game many MMOFPS fans would gladly claim as one of theirs.

Bungie considered fantasy, modern settings for Destiny
You're probably at least semi-interested in Bungie's always-online console shooter called Destiny, yeah? Would you still be interested if it featured a stock fantasy or modern-day setting instead of far-future sci-fi?

Bungie would apparently love to bring Destiny to the PC
What's that, you say Bungie's new Destiny shooter is going to be console-only? Well, not so fast, according to the Penny Arcade Report. Bungie COO Pete Parsons was asked point-blank if there was a PC version in the works, and while he didn't say yes, exactly, he also didn't nip it in the bud with a no-comment or a PR-soaked non-answer.

Bungie's Destiny: Always-online console shooter revealed
Bungie has officially lifted the veil surrounding its Destiny project, and Joystiq reports that it is a persistent-world console shooter and part of a 10-year publishing deal with Activision.

Concept art and story details leaked for Bungie's Destiny
Bungie's Destiny is "designed for your inner seven-year old," according to company co-founder Jason Jones. IGN reports that the mysterious sci-fi shooter is aiming at accessibility, with gameplay that is "social at its core" and featuring "a world to explore with friends, both old and new.

GDC 2011: Bungie's MMO won't be WoW in space
The top secret MMO project from Bungie continues to raise fan and industry eyebrows despite the absence of any real information about the title.

"WoW in space": Bungie's MMOFPS named Destiny
A couple of years ago, fans of the Halo franchise were crushed to find out that their favorite first-person shooter probably wasn't going to make the leap to MMO space.