Activision and Bungle split

Hexx wrote:
OrangeRKN wrote:From the little I played of Destiny and subsequently saw being played, I got no impression that the setting and plot was anything other than generic, and the same for the visual design.

The last city is literally called "The Last City" and that really sets the level for the game world's glossary of terms. The antagonistic force being referred to as "The Darkness" is enough to make me put any book back on the shelf it came from, and when there is a race of aliens literally called "The Hive" who live in subterranean colonies on the Moon then I'm going to groan loudly and go read The First Men in the Moon which did the exact same thing but better in 1901.

Yeah you have no idea what you're talking about.

I mean everything I said is correct and how the game initially presents itself

OrangeRKN wrote:On the contrary I am totally on board and interested in something described as "shapeshifting wish dragons, corrupt worm gods, pocket dimensions, Mad Max style apocalypses and medieval knights with swords and ray guns".

How much of that is presented in game and how much of it is buried in audio logs or the wiki?

Is it similar to The Elder Scrolls, where there is some really cool and interesting lore that has been progressively hidden deeper away in favour of a generic high fantasy setting to appeal to the mass market?

It's the opposite I'd say.

The lore in the first game was relegated to a website which unlocked as you played the game; the Grimoire. Here, all the actual story and lore was unspooled as you completed such exciting events as "Kill these robots" and "Guard this area." All of it is here:

http://www.destiny-grimoire.info/

Some of it is real good gooseberry fool:

But it had almost no part to play in the game.

In D2, all of this has been moved into the game and also into weapon descriptions, Dark Souls style. It still didn't really effect the game proper though.

Until Forsaken...

The Dreaming City is the lore writ large, a converted planetoid made possible by a wish dragon's domination by an eternal queen, complete with its own pocket dimension which is slowly beginning to leak into this reality. The whole place is also stuck in a three week time loop which has both narrative and mechanical effects. The final boss of the raid is a 50 foot wish dragon (Ahamkhara to give them their proper names) called Riven of a Thousand Voices who taunts you throughout the raid in the voices of your closest allies.

Hence my excitement now Activision have departed!

PostRe: Activision and Bungle split by **Mafro** » Fri Jan 11, 2019 12:20 pm

I'm worried about what Destiny will look like without Activision's help.

PostRe: Activision and Bungle split by **Sandy** » Fri Jan 11, 2019 1:01 pm

Mafro wrote:If you think Destiny is a generic space marine game then you really don't know what you're talking about

I've played all Halo's and both Destiny's for lots of hours and they're the epitome of generic space marine games. You run around in your over powered space suit powering yourself up more and more as you go while trying to make yourself look as cool and unique as possible. Every now and again an overly flamboyant enemy turns up and you have to run around it shooting it to rock music. You could turn off the entire story and still have fun.

If you want more highbrow scientifically sound sci-fi that still has guns then read The Expanse. If you want to shoot gooseberry fool with pseudo-science sci-fi then play Halo and Destiny.

I like both.

PostRe: Activision and Bungle split by **Parksey** » Fri Jan 11, 2019 1:12 pm

As I said before, there are many things you could level towards Destiny, but no matter what you think, it isn't a generic space marine FPS. It just... isn't.

That's not a defense or criticism of the game - Halo is a great FPS and a space marine game - but Destiny just isn't that.

I think bringing The Expanse into the equation is a little jarring too. I hate the "sci-fi" tag as it is anyway, but if you consider all the lore, there's arguably more fantasy about Destiny's plot. Just because it's set in space doesn't automatically make it sci-fi, nor does it make it a space marine game.

Last edited by Tafdolphin on Fri Jan 11, 2019 2:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sandy wrote:If you want more highbrow scientifically sound sci-fi that still has guns then read The Expanse. If you want to shoot gooseberry fool with pseudo-science sci-fi then play Halo and Destiny.

I like both.

Wait what? In what way is the Expanse highbrow? It's Game of Thrones-esque pulp. Good pulp, but pulp. I mean, it was written in part by one of GRR Martin's copy editors who created the universe during a tabletop RPG session! :lol:

It's certainly not Asimov or Dick. Also, it's a strawberry floating bizarre comparison to make here as, compared to Destiny, The Expanse's fiction is pure realist blandcore.

None of this is high literature, that doesn't mean it's not original.

PostRe: Activision and Bungle split by **False** » Fri Jan 11, 2019 1:59 pm

bungie is a toilet and I honestly dont trust those bellends as far as I could proverbially chuck them

if they get Marty O Donnell back then perhaps there has been some actual progress

False wrote:bungie is a toilet and I honestly dont trust those bellends as far as I could proverbially chuck them

if they get Marty O Donnell back then perhaps there has been some actual progress

This, I agree with. Their handling of Marty's departure, and the reasons he was fired, was strawberry floating atrocious.

PostRe: Activision and Bungle split by **Mafro** » Fri Jan 11, 2019 2:03 pm

Is The Expanse the one Peter Crisp is always going on about?

PostRe: Activision and Bungle split by **Pedz** » Fri Jan 11, 2019 2:11 pm

I see the term generic used a lot. I'm not trying to be a dick, but how do you make something not generic now-a-days? Like, hasn't everything been done and done to death by now?

Mafro wrote:Is The Expanse the one Peter Crisp is always going on about?

It's a good series of books and a great TV show. But it's a series that is based on realism and hard science fiction. I have no idea what it's doing in a discussion of a fantasy sci-fi videogame

PostRe: Activision and Bungle split by **OrangeRKN** » Fri Jan 11, 2019 2:24 pm

I think it's as much about expressing a strong and interesting identity as anything else. Things feel generic when they lack any differentiation. It's the combination of elements as well as the uniqueness of the elements themselves, but also the avoidance of particularly overdone and predictable sterotypes or tropes.

The marketing of Destiny, if not the actual lore as people have argued, was very safe and standard from what I have seen.

PostRe: Activision and Bungle split by **Sandy** » Fri Jan 11, 2019 3:44 pm

Tafdolphin wrote:
Sandy wrote:If you want more highbrow scientifically sound sci-fi that still has guns then read The Expanse. If you want to shoot gooseberry fool with pseudo-science sci-fi then play Halo and Destiny.

I like both.

Wait what? In what way is the Expanse highbrow? It's Game of Thrones-esque pulp. Good pulp, but pulp. I mean, it was written in part by one of GRR Martin's copy editors who created the universe during a tabletop RPG session! It's certainly not Asimov or Dick. Also, it's a strawberry floating bizarre comparison to make here as, compared to Destiny, The Expanse's fiction is pure realist blandcore.

None of this is high literature, that doesn't mean it's not original.

More highbrown and still has guns. I'm not calling it To Kill a Mockingbird.

Acti-Blizzard stock plummets after Bungie Departure.

Activision Blizzard stock continued its plummet Friday morning following news Thursday night that Bungie was ending its contract with the publisher and retaining the rights to its “Bungie” franchise.

Stock fell nearly 7% in postmarket trading Thursday night and continued to drop Friday morning, down about 12% as of this writing.

It’s unclear why the two companies terminated their ten-year contract early, but a joint statement released Thursday made it seem as if the separation was amicable.

https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/ac ... 203105444/

PostRe: Activision and Bungle split by **Karl** » Fri Jan 11, 2019 3:53 pm

Something is going very wrong at Activision-Blizzard at the moment. From rumours it looks like Activision have very much tightened their grip on Blizzard over the last year or so - replacing their upper management - while at the same time telling their development teams to do more with less.

I play a lot of Overwatch and development has slowed right down over the last 12 months. They just don't seem to be able to put out content like they did in 2017, despite it remaining a pretty popular game (& esport).

PostRe: Activision and Bungle split by **Lagamorph** » Fri Jan 11, 2019 4:00 pm

I wonder if the issue is that Activision-Blizzard have more or less reached the peak of money they can squeeze out of the consumer and they realise that. So in order to continue driving profits upwards they're at the point where the only method left is bringing in the same amount of money whilst spending less.

I love the expanse but I'm not sure I'd call it highbrow.

It's classic sci-fi I'm unsure how that can be classed as highbrow.

PostRe: Activision and Bungle split by **Gemini73** » Fri Jan 11, 2019 10:42 pm

Only briefly played Destiny 2 (for about a week) with friends after being sucked in by the pretty PR machine. It was okay, but it felt like a lot of busy work that I simply didn't have time for.

As for the split? I've no idea what that means looking ahead, but I am kind of hoping we see more devs break ties with their respective AAA publishers and the AAA industry eventually collapses in on itself because the business model isn't sustainable. The rest of the industry carries on regardless as the likes of Activision, EA etc are left crying over what remains of the obscenely greedy environment they created.

One can hope.

https://www.pcgamer.com/divorcing-activ ... he-better/

Divorcing Activision won't stop Bungie making mistakes, but will change Destiny for the better

So my reaction yesterday was much the same as everyone else's: Excitement tempered with realism. Bungie isn't blameless for the things that went wrong with Destiny 2, and Activision wasn't out to destroy the game. But on balance, as someone who considers Destiny as one of the great games of my life, seeing it placed entirely in the hands of its creators has to be cause for optimism. Particularly with guys like Chris Barrett and Joe Blackburn apparently at the helm now. They get what makes the game special, which makes the rumours that Destiny 3 will lean hard into its RPG side even more juicy.

PostRe: Activision and Bungle split by **Mafro** » Sat Jan 12, 2019 9:14 am

The amount Destiny/Bungie fanboys in that Era thread that think Activision was the root of all the game's problems sure is something.

Activision and Bungle split

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