Bungie's latest video game, Destiny, expected to change the face of gaming
Years in the making and costing US$500 million, a futuristic fantasy called Destiny is widely expected to change the face of the industry
It all began more than 20 years ago, in a cramped student flat in Chicago, where two friends, Jason Jones and Alex Seropian, programmed computer games from their living room and hand-assembled the boxes.
Many claim that Destiny will revolutionise the face of gaming when it is released globally tomorrow, in the same way that Halo, the influential franchise that put Bungie on the map, did when it was released in 1999. To date, Halo has sold 50 million copies.
Destiny will be Bungie's first project since Halo, and the anticipation and secrecy surrounding it has already ensured it is the most pre-ordered piece of entertainment software in history. When a demonstration version was released in July, a record-breaking 4.6 million people played it.
In a sign of the increasingly mainstream nature of video games, Paul McCartney has co-composed a 50-minute orchestral suite as well as writing a theme song for the game.
"The hype levels that have surrounded the game have been stratospheric, it's ridiculous," said Alan Ismail, who boasts more than 15 million views on his YouTube gaming video blogs under the name Moreconsole and has worked with Bungie to test Destiny.
"This is definitely a game that is going to change the industry. It's a decade-long project as well, and you see Bungie comparing their game to and , that kind of epic sci-fi trilogy, and they want to build this universe that will last a decade."
A sci-fi fantasy set in a post-apocalyptic world 700 years in the future, it enables players to become "guardians", travelling through space, either alone or with friends, with the task of investigating and destroying aliens before the human race is wiped out. The project cost US$500 million, more than twice the budget of the new films.
Derek Carroll, a designer for Bungie who has worked on Destiny for almost five years, said the investment had been strongly focused on the social aspect of the game and of the Destiny universe, which is what has set it apart from other games.
It can only be played online, ensuring everyone entering the Destiny universe is connected and can appear and interact in each other's games.
"Destiny is a tremendous undertaking and it is certainly the biggest game I've ever worked on or that possibly anyone has ever worked on," Carroll said.
"I would say Bungie aspires for Destiny to be a hobby, for you to spend your time playing it. There is a story that we are developing and everyone will experience the bones of it, but they will experience it in their own way, depending on if they are with friends or run into strangers."
Bungie suggests 10 million people will hit the game's servers when it launches tomorrow for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3 and PS4, with Carroll jokingly adding that the company's goal with Destiny was to "break the internet".
Matthew Pellett, editor of the magazine, said he had spent almost 50 hours playing the demonstration version of the game and expected that the hype around it would only increase on its release.
"If you look at Destiny's features in isolation, actually it isn't really doing anything that hasn't been done in other games before," Pellett said. "The online features, the social features, the shooting mechanics, the loot appear scattered across other games. But Destiny is the first title to bring them together."
