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The release of The Taken King has completed something of a turnaround of fortunes for the once-maligned Destiny .
. As more and more content is released for the game, we’re seeing a real shift from the widespread criticism it was met with at launch to almost unanimous praise.
Part of this phenomenon is thanks to Bungie endeavoring to establish and meet the needs of its audience, but there were also some extenuating circumstances that may well have tainted response to the game. Central to that story was the ongoing legal actionthat led to information on the title’s development being released to the public.
It’s fair to say that once players heard about the ten-year plan for Destiny content, it made them much more suspicious of Bungie’s relationship with Activision. The publisher has been known to chase profits rather than concentrate on a satisfying product, and many thought the game’s DLC schedule was another example of this.
Now, a new interview with Bungie’s Eric ‘Urk’ Osborne suggests that the information that fans have heard might not give such an accurate depiction of events. Games Radarquotes Osborne as describing the whole situation as ‘distracting’.
Osborne goes on to downplay the nature of the agreement between Bungie and Activision, with the outspoken community manager noting “I don’t know shit about $500 million”. According to him, the high-level deal actually has very little to do with day-to-day development, as he outlines here:
To think that somehow, before Destiny had shipped, we had some ten-year plan written down somewhere? It’s comical. We allowed the narrative to get constructed that Bungie is just a corporate entity and not a bunch of humans, a collection of people who are just trying to make a really great game.
There will be those that discount Osborne’s comments as Bungie propaganda, but it’s quite easy to believe that there’s at least some truth to what he’s saying. The video game industry is a changeable beast, so while both companies certainly had an agreement in place, both must have known there would be changes over the course of a decade.
In fact, it’s probable that some of those changes are behind some of the improvements we’ve seen implemented in DLC like The Taken King and the House of Wolves . It’s no secret thathas been a work-in-progress in some ways, and that certainly falls in line with what Osborne is saying.
Last year, there was plenty of discussion about ‘broken’ games— but Destiny doesn’t quite fit that category. It may not have met its potential at release, but the scope of an experience like this will give many players cause to give Bungie the benefit of the doubt. Based on The Taken King , the studio is quite able to work with criticism.
Destiny is available now for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.
Source: Games Radar