Bungie's Destiny revealed

Since joining Activision in 2010, Bungie - developers of the super successful Halo franchise - have been quietly working away on a new title. The game - Destiny - was today announced to the world and while the details are sparse, most of them sound pretty impressive.




Destiny will be available on both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, along with next-gen consoles. There will be no PC version, for reasons we will get into later. The game is a 'shared world shooter' - which is marketing speak for MMOFPS - it won't require a subscription however - but it will require a constant internet connection.

Destiny takes place in a 'mythic science fiction' universe. Humanity flourished after a giant sphere known as the Traveler arrived on Earth, growing powerful and expanding their touch across the solar system. Out of nowhere however, they were crippled by an unknown enemy - and now the remains of our once great and vast civilization now live in a single city beneath the Traveler, maybe the only safe place for humankind now.

Players take the role of Guardians, able to weild some of the incredible power of the Traveler to defend the city and try to take back what was ours. There are currently three known classes to choose from - the Hunter, the Warlock and the Titan - each with their own special abilities. Due to the large array of customisable weapons, gear and vehicles planned for the game, there will no doubt be a lot of variety between players.

Many of the details of Destiny are still very vague, but it certainly seems ambitious. You'll travel across the galaxy in ships, fighting alongside strangers and friends and finding a large variety of different things to do along the way. It sounds pretty outstanding and I'm genuinely excited to hear more - very unusual for a person like me, who generally has no interest in playing FPS on consoles.

Embedded below is the first Destiny ViDoc - in which Bungie gives us a look into the world they are creating and their plans for it. The gameplay footage is a little sparse, but what we can see looks pretty nice. Naturally the ViDoc is also available in our videos library. Does Destiny look like your idea of a good time? Or are you wary about a game that purports not to be an MMO but has an always online connection? Let us know in the comments below!



Finally, I said I would mention the PC's position in all of this and... the truth is, these things are up in the air. As reported by Ausgamers, Bungie aren't ruling a PC version out - but it isn't in the cards right now. A lot of sites have run with a news piece by Destructoid which quotes Bungie co-founder Jason Jones saying:

We did a bunch of ambitious things on Halo deliberately to reach out to people," Jason Jones told us. "We limited players to two weapons, we gave them recharging health, we automatically saved and restored the game -- almost heretical things to first-person shooters at the time. We made the game run without a mouse and keyboard. And now nobody plays shooters the way they used to play them before Halo 'cause nobody wants to.

They are then using this to shout to the high heavens that Bungie are full of wild hubris and claiming that nobody plays first person shooters on a keyboard and mouse anymore - which is not what that quote says at all. In fact, Destructoid's original article on Destiny uses a similar but slightly modified version of the same quote - but missing the keyboard and mouse line. In other words Bungie are not having a go at keyboard and mice, they are talking about the changing nature of First Person Shooters over the years. In other, other words, knee-jerk reactions help no one - but especially not people who are attempting to educate others. I have reached out to Bungie on this issue but have yet to hear a response.