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Destiny dev diary details armor, weapons, and loot
Destiny's making headlines this week, and it's not simply due to the sci-fantasy shooter's rumored $500 million price tag. Bungie lead designer Lars Bakken and community manager Dave Dague have taken center stage in a three-minute video designed to show off the title's armor, weapons, and loot. View it in its entirety after the cut.
Destiny designer offers a guided tour of the game's loot
With a beta test arriving in less than two months, this seems an opportune time to bone up on the gear you'll find in Destiny. Helpfully, lead designer Lars Bakken and Bungie community manager Dave Dague recorded a video that does just that. [Image: Activision]
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. Bungie also spoke to Eurogamer about the lack of a PC client. Despite the fact that the game was designed and developed on a PC, design lead Lars Bakken says releasing it on the world's most powerful gaming platform is "not that simple." Parsons agreed, saying that releasing on "four platforms on day one is a lot, considering we've been a one platform team for a very long time." Destiny launches September 9th for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4. A PC version is "pretty complicated," Bakken continued. "That doesn't mean it can't happen in the future, it just means it won't happen right now." Click past the cut to watch the Devils' Lair vid.
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. "I would never rule out [nerfs]," Bakken explains, "however we have systems in place so theoretically, if something is really good at one point, it could grow to become less good over time."
Interview: Bungie's Lars Bakken on Halo: Reach and the franchise
Following my extensive hands-on preview of the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta at Bungie's Seattle area offices last week, I spoke with Lars Bakken, lead multiplayer designer, to discuss how Reach fits into the studio's long term strategy, how community feedback affects design decisions and the future of the Halo franchise. Joystiq: What did you learn from how you conducted the Halo 3 multiplayer beta? What are you doing differently for the Reach beta? Lars Bakken: I think one of the things we learned from the Halo 3 beta is that we want to keep this thing focused and that might mean less playlists initially. But that's really to keep the people focused and keep them playing the same thing, so we'll be turning on things and turning off other things as the beta progresses. And that's something we really learned from Halo 3, because we wanted to make sure that we were getting all the relevant information that we needed to get -- all the data -- and make decisions and changes on the final game. %Gallery-91245%
Halo: Reach multiplayer modes blown wide open
[1UP] As we predicted with our last post on Halo: Reach, the flow of information on Bungie's final Halo game -- well, the beta, anyway -- has now become steady and consistent. Today's exclusive preview of the beta's new multiplayer game types (read: not CTF/Slayer/etc.) at 1UP is further evidence of just such a trend, detailing the Headhunter, Invasion, Stockpile and Generator Defense (quaintly dubbed "Network Test 1 Beta" by Bungie internally) multiplayer modes. Read on after the break for all the details.
Bungie explains 'series of stumbles' in ODST marketing
From the initial talk of a lower price to a renaming, Bungie's ever-changing plans for Halo 3: ODST left a lot of people confused as to what the final product would be. "I'm no PR expert, but it's pretty obvious the game had a series of stumbles; from the naming, to the initial E3 2008 countdown reveal failure, and finally pricing ... it would definitely be nice to have a do-over for the game introduction," senior designer Lars Bakken told G4TV in a recent interview. "The big takeaway for us is just to never comment on matters that are outside of our control," added community manager Brian Jarrard. The subject of ODST becoming an "expansion pack," however, was never an arguable point to executive producer Curtis Creamer. "Though ODST was built from the Halo 3 engine, there were enough changes made to the engine that we could not have released it as an expansion in the way that you might equate with a PC game expansion pack ... the ODST executable is not compatible with Halo 3." The crew of Bungie devs also reconfirmed that "there are currently no plans for any ODST DLC," with all of the studio's resources tied up with Halo: Reach. Hopefully, our thirst for more Firefight maps will be quenched by the inclusion of the mode in future Halo games -- a prospect to which the developers responded, "Only time will tell." Do it for us, Bungie! Please? %Gallery-72961%
How not to pitch Halo 3: ODST
Listen, we're sure Halo 3: ODST is going to be a fine game, but Bungie's got to get a better pitchman than developer Lars Bakken. When asked by The Guardian about additions to the game, Bakken explained, "Obviously the things that have been brought over would be the weapons, the enemy types – those kinds of things haven't changed. Everything else is completely new: your character's health model, the fact that he doesn't have a motion tracker, he can't dual-wield, he takes damage when he falls off high surfaces, his health doesn't regenerate. All those things were not in Halo 3. That's very different."... So. It's like the Halo everybody loves, except with the addition of taking things away. It's a shame Bungie's done with Halo after Reach -- we'd love to see them add things to Halo until it's basically just a guy in football pads with a potato gun going against the Covenant.
Bungie says Halo: Reach is its last Halo game, working on new IP with new publisher
Let's face it, folks -- ten years is a long time to be working on a single franchise. That ten years could feel like a lot more when you're rarely on break, back in the development seat for another new Halo nearly every two years. Such is the tale for ex-Microsoft developer Bungie Studios, who told IGN UK at this week's San Diego Comic-Con, "After Reach that's it for us." Meaning that after next year's Halo: Reach ships to stores, Bungie is out of the alien killin', FPS genre -- at least those starring members of the UNSC, that is.Though Bungie's Lars Bakken doesn't go into tons of detail about the studio's next game, he does say, "We're already working on a new IP that we can't talk about yet ... we've done a lot of different styles - first person to third person to RTS - so it could be anything." Eurogamer found out earlier in the day from Bakken that the upcoming game has yet to find a publisher, though Bungie is currently in talks with various companies and he says, "those talks are, I guess, close." Future Halo titles (you thought Reach was the last?) will be handled by 343 Industries, the recently trademarked, Microsoft-owned studio.We contacted Bungie for comment on Mr. Bakken's comments and were told, "While it's great to see so much public interest over what the future holds for Bungie, we're not ready to talk about any plans or games beyond Halo 3: ODST or Halo: Reach. It's no secret that we've had multiple projects in development nor that we've also been working on original IP in tandem to our Halo titles but our focus right now is on our two upcoming releases. We'll have more to say when the time is right."Source 1 - IGN UKSource 2 - Eurogamer
