Thoughts on Bungie's Project Destiny?

[DragonV2.0]

I'm a big fan of bungie games but right now all i can think of destiny is "..." seeing how there is nothing to go off from

While the vidoc was great and i was glad the they are getting the marketing train going since it means ill finally get to know what is going on in this universe. since right now all i now is that it involves shooting stuff on other planets in our solar system

About the always online and peeps being able to stumble across your game as it were, the option to completely ignore em or shoo em away has to be there, i want to enjoy this story by myself dammit and not have to worry about entertaining people who barge in on my session, like wise if i stumble across another player/team at most ill help em with their current fight if they are not doing well otherwise ill just leave em be

 

[Colt47]

Considering what just transpired with Aliens: Colonial Marines and noticing the similarities in promotional music and styling, I'm not even going to pretend to be excited over this game. Promotions and marketing have become almost paradoxical with video games. As in, the marketers create a hype machine that is designed around generating excitement for the game, which leads people to create artificially high expectations of the game being marketed. Then when the game finally hits the best possible outcome is people are "satisfied" instead of being "impressed", and at worst "resentful" instead of "indifferent".

Yes it's almost as if they are trying to convince you to buy it

It's important to raise awareness of a game. With Bungie, it's probably not required to go over the top orchestral: it just makes them look like they are trying to cheese it. This isn't like Gearbox Studios who sort of had to go over the top with their stuff, especially an Aliens franchise game given the track record of that particular IP.

 

[Cabisco]

I am very excited, and I shall likely be getting it on preorder.

I trust Bungie to make amazing games and I loved the Halo series. The fact they are trying something new excites me and I want to be part of that.

I'll also be interested to see how Halo plays into this, some people 'hated' halo with a passion usually reserved for Murderers, will they simply dismiss this game because it's by the same people or give it a chance. Pretty interesting to see how that pans out.

 

[Thommo]

Considering what just transpired with Aliens: Colonial Marines and noticing the similarities in promotional music and styling, I'm not even going to pretend to be excited over this game. Promotions and marketing have become almost paradoxical with video games. As in, the marketers create a hype machine that is designed around generating excitement for the game, which leads people to create artificially high expectations of the game being marketed. Then when the game finally hits the best possible outcome is people are "satisfied" instead of being "impressed", and at worst "resentful" instead of "indifferent".

Yes it's almost as if they are trying to convince you to buy it

It's important to raise awareness of a game. With Bungie, it's probably not required to go over the top orchestral: it just makes them look like they are trying to cheese it. This isn't like Gearbox Studios who sort of had to go over the top with their stuff, especially an Aliens franchise game given the track record of that particular IP.

This i understand but my point is that it is the marketers job to raise hype about a game.

 

[xDarc]

Never played a single minute of a single Halo game. Probably not gonna go run out and buy a console to play this either.

 

[Zenn3k]

Just like nearly every game these days, I don't think it has a chance in HELL of living up to that trailer they put out. I think the game will be filled to the brim with broken promises and broken game design. If its even 1/4th of what they are advertising, I'll be shocked.

 

[Cpt. Lozan]

It looks really, really cool. I'm getting a kind of fallout vibe. The "humanity's past it's prime and your trying to survive"/"humans are the little guys in someone else's playground" feel from it. I think it'd make an excellent Action RPG and I really hope its gonna be on PC.

 

[Colt47]

Considering what just transpired with Aliens: Colonial Marines and noticing the similarities in promotional music and styling, I'm not even going to pretend to be excited over this game. Promotions and marketing have become almost paradoxical with video games. As in, the marketers create a hype machine that is designed around generating excitement for the game, which leads people to create artificially high expectations of the game being marketed. Then when the game finally hits the best possible outcome is people are "satisfied" instead of being "impressed", and at worst "resentful" instead of "indifferent".

Yes it's almost as if they are trying to convince you to buy it

It's important to raise awareness of a game. With Bungie, it's probably not required to go over the top orchestral: it just makes them look like they are trying to cheese it. This isn't like Gearbox Studios who sort of had to go over the top with their stuff, especially an Aliens franchise game given the track record of that particular IP.

This i understand but my point is that it is the marketers job to raise hype about a game.

Yeah, and unfortunately it's a tougher job than some people like to think. However, the results of previous campaign can effect the results of a later campaign, even if it's only tenuously related. (And as is the case in this scenario, completely out of the marketers hands).

 

[Thommo]

Considering what just transpired with Aliens: Colonial Marines and noticing the similarities in promotional music and styling, I'm not even going to pretend to be excited over this game. Promotions and marketing have become almost paradoxical with video games. As in, the marketers create a hype machine that is designed around generating excitement for the game, which leads people to create artificially high expectations of the game being marketed. Then when the game finally hits the best possible outcome is people are "satisfied" instead of being "impressed", and at worst "resentful" instead of "indifferent".

Yes it's almost as if they are trying to convince you to buy it

It's important to raise awareness of a game. With Bungie, it's probably not required to go over the top orchestral: it just makes them look like they are trying to cheese it. This isn't like Gearbox Studios who sort of had to go over the top with their stuff, especially an Aliens franchise game given the track record of that particular IP.

This i understand but my point is that it is the marketers job to raise hype about a game.

Yeah, and unfortunately it's a tougher job than some people like to think. However, the results of previous campaign can effect the results of a later campaign, even if it's only tenuously related. (And as is the case in this scenario, completely out of the marketers hands).

That is true but it is also important to note that bungie has used the over the top marketing for previous games and they will probably continue doing so for this one; it is better for marketing that each ad/vidoc/thing has the same feel to it in order to create a sense of continuity. Also the music and scenery, in this case, are being used to create a feeling of size and majesty to the game, something the developers want to convey to the audience without them seeing it or reading it before they play the game; sort of a show not tell thing

 

[Dansen]

Damn, the community must really hate Bungie for some reason. Everyone is approaching this as cynically as possible when it is just the first dev diary. At least wait until you see the gameplay, geez.

Personally Im excited as this sounds a lot like one of my dream games that I imagine from time to time, particularly the premise.

 

[Netrigan]

Pretty much a meh from me. Same basic sci-fi military shooter with a major focus on multi-player which they've been doing since forever.

Way too much developer double-speak going on in the video, which immediately brings Brink to mind as a game which promised to revolutionize the first person shooter... while every bit of game play footage gave lie to that claim.

Maybe they'll strike gold with the combination of all the usual FPS tricks to all the usual MMO tricks, but absolutely nothing I've heard so far has inspired the tiniest bit of excitement in me.

 

[Auron]

I play shooters with a mouse and stuff so not interested at all.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

All in all sounds interesting, and while they, once again, sound pretentious as hell I really want this thing to do well.

...just not too well. We don't need a million apparent 'Destiny killers' and crappy knock offs to spring out and cloud other releases for the next decade.

At least wait until you see the gameplay, geez.

That's pretty much my main reason for concern at this point though. Not that they haven't shown any gameplay, it's probably unreasonable to expect that at this point, but that they haven't even described what it's going to be like in any significant detail. We know there's going to be classes, magic which apparently totally isn't magic and vehicles, but they haven't elaborated on what they'll do, how they'll be used and how they'll influence the gameplay.

We have absolutely no idea how combat in the game itself is going to look and feel like, yet they've been going on and on about this apparently great new setting of theirs, which at this point, really doesn't seem to extend much past the same sort of 'special space-faring humans protected by super soldiers vs technologically advanced genocidal aliens' thing we've seen in both Marathon and Halo. I don't feel there's anything all in all bad about their setting, (except for the part how most of civilization got destroyed and somehow noone knows what did it) but the fact that they've been going on about their new universe yet are saying very little of the gameplay suggests that they're thinking a lot more towards crafting a new setting rather than new gameplay mechanics, and Bungie's rather meh track record in that so far is a bit of a concern.

 

[Netrigan]

At least wait until you see the gameplay, geez.

Personally Im excited as this sounds a lot like one of my dream games that I imagine from time to time, particularly the premise.

At least wait until you see the gameplay, geez

I know the hype machine started up a bit early because of the PS4 launch and Sony needed proven performers on the ground to get some sort of excitement going, but talking up the "revolutionary" nature of the game before they release more than 30 seconds of gameplay footage is a large part of the disconnect.

The funny thing is that video doesn't even offer up a good explanation as to why it could conceivably be revolutionary, only serving up the over-used shooter cliches everyone knows all too well. I watched a fan commentary on the video which makes it sound like the idea has a lot of potential, which is to take a sandbox game and populate it with other players... hopefully without bogging it down with the usual assortment of meaningless MMO missions to "kill 25 of those guys, collect 25 shards, etc." or too many trips to the random mission generator.

Which is a really cool idea which hasn't happened because of the massive amount of time and thought required to make something like that interesting in the long run. While it would have been seriously cool to have other players running around in my single player game of Red Dead Redemption, I probably wouldn't have played the game any longer than I ended up playing it. Once the unique content runs out, players move on, and expansion packs are usually a case of diminished returns.

And that's assuming Bungie are the right guys to do this sort of thing and not BioWare. Then it's Gearbox which has come closest to realizing my dream of this with the easy drop-in/drop-out co-op of Borderlands 2, which did so in a pure twitch-shooter kind of way... and even then they only got me because I enjoyed the comic tone of the game.

So I'm not going to bash the game before we're closer to launch, but their hype first, details later approach tends to precede games which come up well short of their promises.