destiny stuff

talked to a source but this was like a rly normal friendly conversation, i know this guy and didn't feel like grilling him about a sequel so be warned there is no DEFINITIVE destiny 3 stuff in here


i asked about changes made to the final shape during the delay and i was told:

-"ppl seem so confident that if prismatic had existed the whole time we would have shown it in the initial reveal, but we didnt plan to show it at all."
-acquisition of prismatic was redesigned and was originally more like strand in lightfall
-prismatic would probably be much weaker or at least far more uneven in the sandbox balance
-transcendence would trigger differently and would be less useful
-there would be less post-game stuff
-the dread were always *planned* for TFS, and concepts similar to the dread had been kicked around many times before for previous
expansions, but my source is pretty confident that they would not have made it into the game had it shipped on the original planned
release date (the uncertainty surrounding the dread in production is why they make no appearances in any pre-rendered cutscene)
-campaign design would have been weaker (a lot of crunching went toward the campaign)
-the raid was always going to be this hard (lightfall was easy on purpose for the sake of an experiment)


i asked about the STORY:

-the vex will eventually be taking a larger narrative focus, but they wont settle into being the primary antagonist like many people
suspect. there will be a reveal, at some point, that we "haven't been fighting the real vex"
-bungie is fine with the literalization of the winnower in text only, we will never meet that guy.
-the dread will have "something to do" post-witness
-bungie has grown more confident in writing and the stories will be getting more ambitious
-bungie has peaked their own interest by writing villains like savathun who have distinct relationships with not only the player character but the players themselves, the next saga's primary villain will have an intimate relationship with the player albeit in a less tongue-in-cheek "savathun type way" (yes they're thinking this far ahead)
-going forward they want their major villains to be a bit more personable and "human" than the witness, with more comprehensible ambitions and motivations.
-episodes won't be very interesting (lol)
-despite the phrase "end of the light and darkness saga" bungie won't be moving away from these themes
-there is a massive amount of internal regret for the lack of consistency and follow-through in the story over the years (for example, the pyramids were always meant to have aliens in them, and bungie sees the introduction of the dread as "too little too late") though they are glad they stuck the landing with the final shape, they want to dedicate far more planning in the next major saga to ensuring proper cathartic story moments.
-we will be seeing more new aliens
-they want to naturalistically phase the fallen and cabal out of the story as antagonistic forces, but they aren't sure how to do it without removing them from gameplay (they really don't want to remove them from gameplay)
-frontiers was conceptualized alongside the final shape and will be narratively important
-frontiers will be about leaving sol (shocker)
-frontiers does not mark the start of destiny's next saga, but will rather act both as a bookend to the epilogue for the current saga AND a transitional moment for the next saga to propel itself off of
-we are done "learning" about the traveler (???)
-there are witness-sized things happening throughout the larger universe
-aliens will interpret guardians as a meddling, self-important force

i asked about LIGHTFALL:

-the lightfall we got was not the one planned when they announced the title (bungie just lies about this now)
-there are two camps at bungie, one that regrets neomuna and finds it to be largely dissonant with the game's overall visual and thematic language and another that "just likes it"
-neomuna was first designed visually and narrative context had to be thought-up retroactively to justify it
-a lot of people hated working on lightfall
-neomuna was supposed to be very big and was supposed to have real human civilians in it
-an inside joke at bungie is to suggest new stories be focused on the cloudark
-the cloudark was invented to justify the lack of civilian npcs in neomuna without sucking all the tension out of the story
-another heavily debated suggestion to solve this problem during lightfall's development was to have dialogue explaining that the shadow legion had already wiped out nearly the entire populace, but they thought this was too heavy for destiny (i feel like stuff this sad happens in the lore all the time)
-bungie is uncomfortable with nimbus' unpopularity
-bungie knew everyone would hate lightfall
-had everything gone according to plan, neomuna would have been largely different and more desolate, it would not have been host to an entire campaign but rather one large setpiece battle (i am shocked neomuna was planned from the start)

MISC:

-prismatic was not part of the ***original*** plan, but was conceptualized alongside the final shape since the moment it was split from lightfall
-there was supposed to be another dark subclass at some point (obv!)
-bungie is currently considering the 3rd dark power (alluded to in vow) to just be the orange stuff used by rhulk and the witness
-this may be retconned and we may get another dark power, as bungie does want a 7th subclass for the sake of symmetry (it would be either orange or red)
-there will literally NEVER be a taken or siva themed subclass
-they knew dual destiny's core mechanics would be frustrating to solo players, the developers didn't want to disappoint anybody and did not originally intend for prismatic or exotic class items to be used in marketing (this was all meant to be a massive surprise, as alluded to in the original TFS vidoc, but it was later ordered that more be shown as a result of low pre-orders)
-the dev team was SUPER excited to see players reaction to a fully new subclass being included in TFS as a surprise
-the youtuber sentiment that "if there's a new subclass bungie has to show it because it would help sell the expansion" is incredibly frustrating to dev staff, who have absolutely no care in the world for sales and have no control over what is shown prior to launch (they feel there is always too much shown)
-they don't know what to do with glaives
-well of radiance will not stay this bad forever
-they're terrified of nerfing any prismatic tools
-the relationship between dev staff and business-types at bungie could not be worse