The Destiny lawsuit papers have revealed that the story was changed “substantially” before launch, which might just explain a few things.
Ever since Destiny launched a year ago, there’s been grumbles and mumbles about the game’s storyline.
In all the pre-release trailers and promo material, Activision and Bungie teased gamers with the promise of an epic story for Destiny. And what we got wasn’t quite as grand.
Those rumblings were bolstered by the comments shared on a now-deleted Reddit thread by a game tester, who claimed he had encountered a very different story to the one the game eventually released with.
Despite Bungie remaining mainly quiet on the topic, and at times even gently refuting such claims of a changed story, there was always hints that the departure of Bungie’s lead writer Joseph Staten was a mark of the real truth.
Now, in documents published by VentureBeat related to the lawsuit between ex-Bungie employee Marty O’Donnell and the studio over shares, the story mystery has been solved at last.
It seems that Destiny’s story was “substantially revised”, and it was these changes that led to the game’s release date being pushed back by nearly a year.
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“Although Destiny was planned for release in September 2013, the story was substantially revised beginning August 2013,” the papers explain in paragraph 10 of section II. “Requiring a new release date of March 2014 and edits to much of the work previously completed.
“After a brief vacation/sabbatical in early fall, O’Donnell returned, worked on the story and recorded dialogue, but wrote no additional music. His supervisor and the audio team did not consider him to be fully engaged in the work of Audio Director. For reasons unrelated to O’Donnell’s performance, the release date was again moved, to September 2014.”
What’s particularly interesting is that these decisions were seemingly made in August 2013, a month before Staten’s departure. He’d been with the company for 15 years.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.