One of the biggest problems with the vanilla version of Destiny was that it felt like the game wasn’t complete. It only started to feel like a full game once the Taken King DLC was released. So far Destiny 2 has faced similar criticism. On top of another short campaign, the sequel has added a lot more microtransactions, much to the frustration of its fans. So how did Bungie not learn from the mistakes of the original?
According to Kotaku’s Jason Schreier, Destiny 2 was rebooted 16 months before its console release on September 6, 2017. On a New Years Eve edition of the DTR (Destiny Tracker) Podcast, Schrier talked about how despite claims that the game had been in development since late 2014, the Destiny 2 that was released was made in a much shorter window.
“There was a big reboot of Destiny 2 at some point in early 2016. There had been a previous guy who was directing the game before Luke Smith, who’s the current director, took over. So that guy was kind of put aside – he’s not at Bungie anymore – and Luke Smith took over.
He goes on to reveal that Bungie’s ambition was their downfall. Alongside cutting out all of the original planets from Destiny 2, they tried to follow the same content cycle as year one of the first game. In the end, they opted to rely heavily on the Eververse, and the ever dreaded microtransactions, in order to make a profit.
“What Bungie decided was: ‘we can’t do this anymore. This is just too much, this is too hard for us to do – the tools that we work with are really hard to deal with. It’s hard for us to make this much content. It’s just hard making content in general.’ And they said ‘we are going to do a drip feed of smaller stuff, and we’re going to put up the Eververse, sell microtransactions, and make money that way.’ And Activision said ‘okay’ – it was a part of their renegotiated deal – and they got to a point where they didn’t have to be cranking out as much content. And now they’re back to the same pattern, where they have to crank out these DLCs and just be making content constantly.”
Activision and Bungie have yet to respond to these claims.
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