The senior writer for Destiny, Eric Osborne, recently sat down with IGN and touched on three points many of us have been eagerly waiting for answers on.
Destiny is a very high-budget and high-risk title for Activision title due mostly to its dependence on being online. Thankfully, it seems there are no plans to hedge their bets by nickel and diming players who wish to “pay to win”.
“We’ve not announced anything on the microtransaction front but our goal is to absolutely make sure that when we deliver a game for $60 that’s a great experience no matter what type of player you are… So we’re not looking at any pay-for-power type stuff. That’s what I hear as a player when people say they’re worried about models and schemes that nickel and dime people; we’re not going to do that.”
Two other key features of the game that have been reported on are interplanetary travel and the ability to customize your spaceship. This has lead many to wonder exactly how involved this mechanic would be. Osborne goes on to say:
“We’re not making a space sim where you’re flying through the stars,”
“We’re making a first person shooter. So the primary way you’ll get around the world is on foot as a first person shooter, then space travel is a cool way for you to customize your ship and get around.”
So it would seem the customization is more of a cosmetic thing… at least in the initial release of the game.
Lastly, the question I’ve been dying to know was addressed–what about a PC version of the game?
“We know there are a lot of people out there asking for PC and we know that there are a lot of gamers that would willingly give us money, but what we have to do is make sure we’re focused enough to bring a good experience to any platform that we ship on. What we 100 percent are not going to do is spread ourselves so thin that it negatively harms the other platforms. So right now we have the four platforms, which is a lot to focus on.”
Which, in developer talk, means there will likely be a PC version a year or so down the pipeline by a third-party studio… similar to how Gearbox ported the original Halo to PC.
“From our perspective as a developer, it’s hard to fault GTA Online for caving under something like 10 million players trying to hit servers at the same time.”
So is anyone here planning on participating in the massive beta? Should Activision be worried about launching a massive online game after disasterous launches like Sim City and GTA Online? We’re destined to find out when the game launches next year.
