I'm autistic and realized I can seethe about Destiny forever. Anyway:
Can’t reply to
@Professional Noticer for some reason, but both of you hit it on the head. The best parts of Bungie are why Destiny was so enjoyable despite failing to reach its potential, and the OG crew from the 2000’s and 2010’s were that best part.
Marty O’Donnell is the GOATed composer who, alongside Michael Salvatori, created the amazing Halo and Destiny soundtracks. He has done several interviews talking about why Bungie has declined so precipitously over the last 15 years, and a lot of it has to do with a combination of managerial incompetence within Bungie. Bungie always wanted it’s independence, but the studio heads could never find a way to make it work without an overseer like Microsoft or Activision cracking the whip.
Moral of the story, Bungie
had a lot of talented devs, writers, and artists, but they were never good at doing business. Sony gave them just enough rope to hang themselves like 41% of their current fanbase.
I would also like to give credit to two other people who made Halo what it was and were pivotal to the original seed that made Destiny: Joe Staten and Jaime Griesemer.
Joe Staten wrote the guts of the Destiny original story, Jason Jones got butthurt that it was too linear and readable, thus throwing it out. Joe quit after that. However, the concepts were either repurposed or directly lifted to make the core of the launch version of D1. Destiny's story is shit, and very little they actually portrayed on screen was any good whatsoever, but they had amazing guts for good writers to work with.
Jaime Griesemer is an absolutely dedicated game design autist who successfully made Halo a game that was fun for anyone to play (not just the top or bottom 1% like every 343 Halo game was) by not listening to pros or shitters and making it fun for the core playerbase. This, for some reason, is anathema to the entire games industry. However, he was able to create the core gameplay loop before he quit along with Marty - with whom he's still friends - and it shows. Jaime Griesemer made 2000s Bungie, no doubt about it.
If you want to see how dedicated Joe was to the story of Destiny before it was all fucking ruined, I recommend
this video. It plays like an art gallery, and the inspiration Joe has is contagious (watch the old Halo 2 presentations he did for more of that).
If you want to see Jaime Griesemer sperg out (correctly) about how they made Halo a fun game, I recommend
this one. If you're even moderately a fan of old Halo, and saw how fucked it got, this guy talking is like a breath of fresh air vs every 343 retard that ruined Halo's design.
All that said, Destiny still had potential, once the greats were gone. The guts I mentioned earlier were given life by the Grimoire/backstory writers, most notably for the Books of Sorrow. (Amusingly enough, there's even a grimoire card that points out Muslims are going to take over everything). All of it is amazing, and
none of them were ever hired for the main games. Bungie instead hired fat women (not even joking) to make generic villains shout "NOOOOOO" or trans Yaoi robots ride surfboards.
If you want to see one of the better serious-tone trailers ever made for D2, watch
Zavala's Prelude. I remember seeing this and thinking D2 was in good hands.
It was not. All the problems above kneecapped it, with a nice topping of Marvel-style dissolution of tension and sandbox changes. Luckily, Jaime Griesemer's work really shone through, and the game was still fun to play. Joe Staten's passion shone through, and the world remained beautiful to explore and look at. Marty's music shone through, even as he was gone, and the game was not only wonderful to look at, but to listen to.
But in the end, that's all Destiny was. Execs and zoomer faggots riding on the shoulders of the old greats while disregarding the raw talent they had under them. And it still lasted ten fucking years. Imagine if they actually cared.
Good riddance. I hope nu-Marathon was worth it.
