When Bungie’s shooter/MMO hybrid, Destiny , was released, critics and gamers alike found fault with its lackluster narrative. According to a report by Kotaku , this could be a result of a last minute reworking of the game’s story.
In the feature, Kotaku speaks with several vetted but anonymous sources who claim that a year before the game was set to ship, the team was tasked with restructuring the succinct, straightforward narrative into a new form that would allow players more freedom to choose which missions they were taking on.
According to one source, the design team had to “cobble together and cut and restitch and reuse a bunch of stuff that was already built for a different thread, but now tie it together in some way that fit this amorphous, ‘You pick where you’re going in the director’s story’.”
Blending narrative with design is often an obstacle that development teams have to overcome. In terms of Destiny , the development team seemed to have opted to sacrifice narrative for gameplay. For many gamers, they made the right choice, but complaints about the story still managed to surface in full force.
What about you, readers? Do you think they made the right choice?