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The official Twitter account for Destiny has posted a new piece of concept art for Destiny; here it is!

Craig Hardgrove, who is a planetary scientist working for JPL and also a Bungie fan from quite aways back, has written an article for Guardians of Destiny, talking about why he loves Halo, why he hates Call of Duty, and what he hopes to see in Destiny. (Hardgrove is also a fan of Bungie's Marathon series and even did some remakes of the game's music.)

GameSpot has posted the entirety of Bungie's GDC talk, given by Joe Staten and Christopher Barrett, about building Destiny's world and characters, over in their YouTube channel. Honestly, stuff like this-- showing the depth and breadth of thought that Bungie puts into making its worlds-- gets me a lot more excited about the game than trailers.

Bungie also has embedded a version of the talk over on their own site, but it's a Flash-only player that probably won't work on most mobile devices.

Bungie GDC Presentation 2013

DestinyTracker (blog, YouTube channel) put up this copy of another video Bungie showed during the GDC presentation by Barrett and Staten; a short timelapse sequence showing the editing of a moon base location in Grognok, the Destiny world editor.

Grognok: Creator Of Worlds

I've added a gallery of screen captures from Bungie's GDC 2013 presentation. Whenever possible I've left out concept art and other images that have previously been released, focusing on presentation slides and other materials that have not been seen before. Keep in mind that a good deal of what is shown is from various points of Destiny's development over the past few years and may not represent the final shipping game. Translation: No Tiger Man for you.

Following Bungie's presentation at GDC by Joe Staten and Christopher Barrett, which you can read about at Bungie.net or watch over at GameSpot I've updated the Destiny concept art gallery and added the short Destiny Character Development video shown as part of the presentation.

This video was shown as part of Bungie's GDC presentation on March 28, 2013.

Destiny Character Development: Bung

Nope, not doing one.

Bungie's latest Mail Sack is up. Here's a highlight:

MastaSin In Destiny, can we play as the aliens or are we locked to the human race? And if we are, why are we locked to the human race? What's the reason?

Deej Not all of the aliens in Destiny are evil, just like not all humans are good. We’ve barely scratched the surface on the character and customization options you’ll have access to in Destiny, but we’re not going to dig in any deeper today.

I believe one of the early IGN stories seemed to indicate that players would only be humans, but this seems to cast a bit of doubt.

You can never truly know a game until you play it.
Seraph, from Matrix Reloaded

Okay, so I'm paraphrasing, but the point stands. Right now we don't know much about Destiny, but it might be pretty difficult to say we know anything at all. I'm starting to get a sort of pleasant feeling of deja vu, and wondering what it was we thought we knew about Halo when it was first revealed. Our first glance at the game back then was more substantial back in the summer of 1999, when Steve Jobs welcomed Jason Jones on stage to show Halo running live, in real time, using OpenGL, on a Macintosh. He then said it was coming out on PCs and Macs next year.

The rest is history.

Perhaps Bungie showed more of Halo back then than of Destiny now because they honestly thought they were closer to releasing Halo than they really were. Possibly they felt they had to generate some hype for the game. Despite being an award-winning cross-platform developer, it's hard to say that Bungie commanded the kind of attention before that game's release in the Macintosh gaming market that they have occupied in the console world ever since. Now, independent from Microsoft, without the need to serve the well being of the Xbox platform over and above all else, the players on Sony's platform may now be their thrall as well, and after that, who knows, perhaps those on Macs, Windows, and even Linux, iOS and Android. Bungie would appear to have big plans for Destiny.

It's not the first time Bungie's had big plans, though, and things have a way of taking on a life of their own. In particular, some of Bungie's plans for Destiny remind me of what I always guessed were Bungie's original plans for Halo...

Shaun McInnis, GameSpot Editor, has penned an article spelling out exactly what Bungie's new game, Destiny, is-- and is not:

"These are living, open worlds with evolving stories, changing time of day…and every one is full of players," says engineering lead Chris Butcher. "Destiny is an always online experience, but it's not an MMO."

Butcher is a pretty straight shooter-- plus there's no subscription fee, so there's that. Check out the full article to see what else will or won't be in Destiny, according to GameSpot.

John Gaudiosi at PCWorld interviews Bungie's COO, Pete Parsons, about Bungie's new game, Destiny. In the interview, Parsons again confirms that an element some fans were worried would be omitted is in the game-- namely, solo play:

We want players to tell their own stories. We’re going to give them the ability to customize their character, and their experience. Then they’re going to go on epic adventures with their friends. You can play Destiny solo, but we believe that everything fun to do in Destiny is more fun when you’re playing with friends. It’s that unpredictable human element that will create the most important moments in Destiny.

The game may need to be online all the time, but it looks like you'll have the option of playing by yourself if that's what you want.

Why, the video kind, of course.

MoreConsole avoids the obvious answer and wonders what Destiny will bring us.

What Kind Of Game Is Destiny?

A good deal of new information about some of the alien races in Bungie's Destiny in this week's Mail Sack. Here, for instance, is some really interesting stuff about the Fallen from Urk:

I fell in love with the Fallen all the way back in 2009. Partly because there’s just something wonderful about the idea of a nomadic race of once noble houses now scattered to the solar winds. Partly because there’s something primordial and instantly terrifying about squaring off against an unpredictable Fallen Captain, his tattered crimson cape draped over a set of four splayed and angular arms that bristle with sleek firepower.

Sounds like an interesting blend of Dune's Landsraad, Mass Effect's Quarians, and Unreal's Nali. Also sounds like they all have four arms.

Bungie's latest article in their Breaking In series of interviews is with Content Tools Team Lead Aaron Lieberman. He's working on Destiny's tools, the Grognok world editor and the Bonobo toolbox editor.

Over at Gamasutra, Shay Pierce wrote a piece entitled Game Designers and the Four Tribes of Artists, and then Sara Gross (also at Gamasutra) wrote a piece called Indie Elitism, partially in response. Response to what? Well, apparently Pierce had read some conversations on Twitter in response to Bungie's Destiny reveal that were a bit less than positive:

A few days ago when Bungie did their first reveal of "Destiny", my friend and former co-worker Josh (who is working on Destiny) was expressing some frustration on Twitter. Josh is a big fan of indie games, and was frustrated because many of the indie game developers he respects were seemed to be expressing immediate disdain for the game.

Josh in this case is Bungie's Josh Hamrick, of course. Pierce started in on how the indie game community has a bunch of snobs in it, but Gross apparently thought Pierce took it too far, or perhaps not far enough, or not quite in the right direction, and anyway ended up here:

I see no reason to vehemently snub the things that shaped gaming as we see them today. Why not embrace them - appreciate what they did for us? Some were pioneers once too. Before they made AAA titles, they made games in their parents’ basements, lived on pre-packaged garbage foods, and suffered obscene deadlines to help their creations see the light of day. They started somewhere too. AAA developers aren’t so different from us, indies.

... and linked to this.