Bungie Wants Destiny to Have Star Wars' Cultural Impact

[Trippy Turtle]

Well, I don't think they will do quite that well, but I suppose if anybody could do it, its Bungie.
A lot of people on here like to complain about Halo but you can't deny its one of the most successful games and one of the few ones to pretty much redesign its genre. Achieving Halo-like success is ambitious in itself.

Bungie's universes are pretty much what will make or break the game. From what I've played, they are always fun to poke around in. They have secrets everywhere and the environment is interesting. The other 'big' companies such as Bioware or Valve (outside of portal) almost seem to discourage exploring unless its to scavenge for stuff.

Still it might achieve great success but it will appear to a smaller audience in the end. With the relatively small amount of people who would play and care about game compared to those who would watch or read the others it will be nearly impossible to get as well recognized.

As for PC... it would help the longevity at least. It would create a whole lot of problems having to satisfy people who don't want to pay for a game unless it pushes the limits of their $9000 PC rig.
Halo already proved you don't need PC to be wildly successful anyway.

 

[Mr.Squishy]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAno.
Ambitious, but no.
People have explained why so much better earlier in the thread.

 

[zf6hellion]

Just putting this out there; how many of the cultural titans set out with that goal in mind?

JK Rowling started writing Harry Potter on the back of napkins while she was literally living in poverty, and JRR Tolkien wrote The Hobbit as a story for his children, while the general Middle Earth lore was not much more than an exercise in myth-making he did to go alongside his hobby of making up languages.

Seems like they both started out with rather meek goals in mind.

It ain't poverty or exercises becoming the back bone for most fantasy worlds ever, but Lucas also couldn't find anyone to fund Star Wars and obviously never had any idea how successful it would be. What with the name change for ANH and such.

 

[tmande2nd]

Eh scuse me while I go get a nice seat to wait for Bungie to realize that they cant get what they want.

Then watch some of Destiny's fan howl in rage that it did not.
Its going to be funny really.

Non-pc shooters must compete with COD.
Its like watching a puppy trying to fight a wolf.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Good luck Bungie. Oh god, what a joke. I've seen the gameplay. It's just another sci-fi FPS disguising as an MMO.

Even if this was coming out on PC, and even if I gave a shit, this kind of statement would turn me off the game completely.

 

[Scott Rothman]

Yeah good luck with that.

That was my reaction.

I don't know if the Mario or Zelda franchises have even had the cultural effect that Star Wars did.

 

[Quellist]

In the background i hear Jim Sterling saying how just because a developer wants something, the magical pixies dont come and make it happen.

Also stating this out loud? really Bungie? bloody fools, if there is any way to stir up fan ire its to pull something like this out of your ass...

 

[PuckFuppet]

Then they should probably release it on PC.

 

[GAunderrated]

I love Bungie threads on the Escapist. It's like a full moon comes out and the Escapist's GAMING MASTER RACE all get together to furiously suck each others' cocks and groan about how Bungie are literally worse than Hitler for daring to do (and do so proudly) all the things they spend their days complaining that other developers don't do for no other reason than because they're Bungie and they made Halo and hating Halo gives them a raging boner and conveniently always forgetting (or not knowing by virtue of being twelve years old) Marathon, Myth or Oni also exist.

Not everyone who disagrees with Bungie does it because we have some biased hate towards the Halo series. I own 3 halo's myself and I can clearly see this is just eyes bigger than their stomach.

It is especially funny when they are talking about having a Star Wars like cultural affect. However, the funniest thing is they are missing one small detail. The system they are building for will last only 10 years max and then they will fade away because they fear backwards compatibility.

So in truth even if they succeeded in making the best game we have ever seen, it will die in a decade and be forgotten even faster while Star Wars is being ported over to your Google Glasses.

 

[Vigormortis]

I didn't get any feelings of self-praise from the dev-diaries, but that's just opinion I guess.

Honestly I think what he meant was closer to him believing that it isn't going to be a game you play and forget. Sure, it may have sounded a little arrogant, but I am choosing to interpret him as being proud of what they've done. I refuse to assume they'll screw it up just because one person has unrealistic hopes.

Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't ordinarily mind one or two of the speakers in the dev-diaries essentially 'bragging' about a past, successful project. If the old titles were praised, they have every right to mention them while speaking on their new title.

However, almost every single person who's spoken in the diaries has, at some point, talked about how 'amazing Halo was/is'. Some even went on wild tangents about the series.

I get wanting to talk about prior successes, and describing them as guide-posts for future projects, but come on!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now, I agree with you that the COO's statement is likely drawn, at least in part, from a sense of pride in the product. However, let's be fair here. If the COO is speaking on a particular vision for the project, then it stands to reason the design team either shares that vision or is being forced into it. At least, at one point in time.

Or, conversely, the COO may be operating under pretenses based on promises made by the design team.

And that's my worry. I'm not assuming they'll screw up the project because the COO said something ludicrous. I just worry that the COO's comments may be coming from far-too-heady promises and design goals from the dev team. Or, that the managements goals for success may be a bit too lofty.

I'd feel the same if, say Relic or Valve or id (some of my other favorite devs, besides Bungie), came out and said the same thing. That they were attempting to make the next "massive, cultural phenomenon".

I'd be worried they too would be setting their goals a bit too high. At least, at the outset.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

I love Bungie threads on the Escapist. It's like a full moon comes out and the Escapist's GAMING MASTER RACE all get together to furiously suck each others' cocks and groan about how Bungie are literally worse than Hitler for daring to do (and do so proudly) all the things they spend their days complaining that other developers don't do for no other reason than because they're Bungie and they made Halo and hating Halo gives them a raging boner and conveniently always forgetting (or not knowing by virtue of being twelve years old) Marathon, Myth or Oni also exist.

It's never a dull day until the Escapist posts a news article about a game that's not on PC.

For almost every time I've seen a console thread or a console related news there will always be the PC circle jerks who drown out any amount of positivity purely because it's not on their prefered console.

I've never thought for once that I'd want a game to come from one platform to another and become exclusive while thinking the rest are inferior, this is what most users here preach and it's just sad.

normally I'd go to say "so what it's not coming to PC?, just go out and buy the console it was released on", but then my inbox would be full of scathing angsty replies about how that logic is so wrong and how they are always right.

As a side note I'm actually expecting my inbox to fill up anyway because I know some people on here love to start a fight out of thin air.

 

[Ishal]

Coming back to threads like these make me seriously consider posting on forums. I'm usually ok with cynicism, even though I don't agree with it most of the time. I suppose its cathartic to point and laugh at something and hope it would fail. Personally I think thats a pretty toxic attitude to have.

 

[Evonisia]

Wait, are they serious?

Oh, oh dear. Destiny doesn't look like this big leap from Halo, which itself was the closest we could probably get to the Star Wars/Harry Potter/LotR impact. Now Halo is crashing and burning like Star Wars did from around 2001 onwards. Good luck with that, Bungie, just don't come crying to us when it doesn't work out.

 

[TheSapphireKnight]

With the popular culture so fractured, there is no way for something like that happening. The best that they could realistically hope for is on par of other successful games, like Skyrim or CoD. I doubt they could even hit Halo heights.

I think you really hit on an important point. It reminds me of the No Right Answer of what is this generation's Star Wars. There were quite a few differing opinions on that matter, but to me that says there is no single 'Star Wars' of this generation and I doubt there really will be again.

We are able to communicate so easily now that people who are fans of any one franchise on any medium can find each other and build their own community. Before the internet people would never hear about or even if they had they would have a much harder time finding a way to actually check it out.

I doubt that any one 'thing' is going to become a new 'Star Wars' whether they want to or not but. So this sort of talk makes me nervous for Destiny even though I have really been looking forward to it. Since they don't seem to understand what they are actually trying to do.

 

[sumanoskae]

Let me just get my initial reaction out of the way first...

http://airstre.am/dopamine72/Nicolas%20Cage%20Laugh.gif

Now, on a serious note, I actually admire Bungie's ambition. I mean, it's a little bit like how you admire a 5 year old for saying they want to be Spider-Man when they grow up; you know that makes no kind of sense as an adult, but the sentiment could become a positive character trait later in life, baby steps

The fact that a developer wants their game to be held on the same level as high art is inspiring, even if they've never demonstrated that they even know what makes high art.

If they can pull it off, more power to them, but I find that prospect unlikely.

 

[pspman45]

guess what, everyone wishes their franchise could rival perhaps the largest licence with the most cultural impact of anything ever
they are so full of it

 

[Dansrage]

To quote Austin Powers: "And I want a solid gold toilet baby, but it just ain't in the cards."

That said if anyone can do it, Bungie can, they already got half way there with Halo. From what I've seen of Destiny though, it doesn't look that impressive, while not generic by any means it looks formulaic. It's a Halo aesthetic with Borderlands gameplay, the setting isn't too exotic, from what I've seen the character designs are off the shelf, and unless it has an amazing story I really don't see it being more than a somewhat popular MMOFPS.