Destiny Inspired by Dark Souls, Monster Hunter, Bungie Says

Bungie's Destiny won't just be another Halo: the developers are interested in drawing from several sources to create a new experience.

Bungie's upcoming Destiny is trying some cool new ideas, but the content we've seen so far has invited some dismissive labels of "it's just Halo meets Borderlands." While the developers are clearly drawing inspiration from Gearbox's loot-em-up, and will inevitably utilize their experience from the Halo series, Destiny is meant to be more than the sum of its parts. In an interview with Game Informer, Bungie's Tyson Green explained that Destiny is pulling ideas from some unlikely sources - namely, the mechanical depth and brutality of Dark Souls and Monster Hunter.

Green explains that Borderlands did a great job at providing a wide variety of guns and loot, but the RPG elements were weakened by gameplay that quickly got old. "I think that they spent too much effort on [the guns], and not enough effort on, well, what do you use those things for?" Bungie aims to focus on strong moment-to-moment gameplay supported by loot that drops less frequently, but always feels meaningful. "If something drops and you don't care about it, we should take that out of the game," he says.

When Dark Souls launched in 2011, Bungie's development team was captivated by it. The game forced players to learn the intricacies of its systems in order to succeed, and if you didn't, you would die - a lot. "We're building lots of encounters ... where it's not immediately obvious what you should do, and in fact you're going to fail. Oh my god, you're actually going to play a triple-A video game, and fail a lot!" Destiny will feature a more casual experience for players just following the main storyline, but the Dark Souls-style challenge is there for those brave enough to seek it out.

Source: Game Informer