In the MMO shooter Destiny , the Game Director of the new expansion spoke critically about the starting period. They themselves did not recognize the potential of the game and the characters, like Ghost.
Luke Smith, the Game Director of “The Taken King,” is a man of clear words. This sometimes brings him trouble (The thing about throwing money against the monitor), but often provides interesting insights.
In a new interview, they wanted to tease out of him why “The Ghost” somehow didn’t work in the base game. Why he had such difficult lines, why it all sounded so stilted, why the soul was missing? They want to know if it was due to Peter Dinklage’s performance.
However, Bungie does not accept criticism on that point. Smith says, that the Ghost is a good example of the entire game. They didn’t recognize at the beginning what they actually had or where it was headed. The potential of the Ghost and the entire character was not always recognized. This led to some of his lines being lacking. The material Dinklage worked with was not always well-written.
As Smith believes, such mistakes and experiments were necessary to learn from them. In the second year, they now have a much better understanding of Destiny and also of the role of the Ghost. Everything seems more cohesive now, and there is more possible.
The development of “The Taken King” went well whenever individual teams were given the opportunity to shine, Smith explains. Because at Bungie, they can rely on excellent professionals and developers. They achieved more than one could expect from them.
Thus, he told the teams of Audio and Story regarding the missions in the Second Act of “The Taken King,” the “Taken War”: It’s perfectly fine if you only make one line at the beginning of the mission and one at the end. Because time was short at that point.
However, they could not reconcile this with their professional outlook. The teams did not accept that and insisted on providing these missions completely with story and music.
Smith sees the biggest risk in the development of “The Taken King” as the endgame, which now offers something for solo players, has generally more freedom, with legendary weapons as quest rewards and secrets.
This was a gamble during the development period that they took. It looks like it paid off.
