During a panel at this year’s Game Developers Conference, the technical art lead of Bungie Scott Shepard discussed in detail Destiny’s character creation system, which is touted to be very extensive.
As detailed on Polygon , the character models are split up into four different “slots”: the head, the chest, the arms and the legs. Each of these slots can be equipped with additional apparel, pieces of which can be found throughout the game. The respective items for each slot can be customized in a myriad of ways, in which several components can produce a complete item. According to Shepard, Destiny’s development team is currently working on balancing the power and aesthetics of certain pieces, making them functional during gameplay as well as look good to the eye.
“We’ve seen the system get better and better the more content we add to it,” Shepherd said. “This bodes well for a franchise we want to expand on for years and years.”
Destiny’s customization system really began to grow when the developers stopped thinking of the character models as a whole and instead started thinking of them as simple appendages, such as arms or legs. This shift in perspective allowed for the potential of a large amount of customizations options for armor pieces.
Later in the panel, Shepard introduced Bungie’s internal character customization program dubbed Mash Up. During this introduction, Shepard demonstrated that various components of armor pieces could be mashed together to produce complete items that players could wear. A completely customized helmet was made during this demonstration, where its visor, sides and and various other pieces were put together in a number of ways. It is said that many different combinations of helmet iterations are possible with the same number of components.
Bungie will be continuing to iterate on its customization system for Destiny until its launch on September 9. Along with being able to craft pieces of armor with various components, there will also be a decal and dye systems, allowing for color and gradients to be added to your armor pieces.