We discuss Destiny 2’s stunning environments with one among Bungie’s key artists.
Destiny 2 presents larger, extra interconnected, extra detailed and way more stunning environments than the primary recreation. Speaking in a roundtable interview final month, Jason Sussman, one among Bungie’s atmosphere artists, mentioned this variation just isn’t associated to dropping PS3 and Xbox 360 for the sequel.
“It’s more along the lines of what the narrative was that we wanted to achieve. And, honestly, some personal pet projects, things we wanted to do,” he mentioned.
“For Nessus, for example, I got to work on Nessus, and we always wanted to do some crazy jungle, just extreme jungle. That was our opportunity to really push that further. I think they all just kind of went in certain directions based on some personal goals we had as world artists, and some fictional relevance to what we were building.”
Bungie’s artists do, after all, wish to problem themselves, and to greater and higher, however whereas they lean into sure applied sciences – Destiny 2’s particle results and reflection, lighting and atmospheric methods particularly – however the staff solely pushes the envelope “where it makes sense” to take action, Sussman added.
The inventive problem is as vital because the technical one. Sussman’s work on Nessus, a Vex stronghold that has “been fully terraformed”, needed to deliver again a longtime structure as seen in D1’s Venus and Black Garden environments – with out simply regurgitating the identical outdated surroundings.
“How we differentiated ourselves was to push other areas of the architecture you hadn’t seen before, so doing some of the circular stuff on a large scale, echoing back to Vault of Glass in certain aspects, leaning in on that fiction in various ways,” he mentioned.
“It was just fun. The Vault of Glass thing was like ‘hey, it would be really cool, what does this mean?’ So we go to the fiction guys, we’re like ‘how’d they build this shit? How do you guys think they built this shit? This is what we think.’”
The results of this dialog is a planet with some breathtakingly massive Vex constructions, slathered in Vex “milk” – the white natural fluid which is the organic entity contained in the robotic fits you get to combat in Destiny 2.
“That’s the essence. That’s the Vex,” Sussman confirmed. Not being a part of the story staff, he wouldn’t be drawn on the operate of Nessus (is it a breeding floor? Are these constructions manufacturing Vex milk?) however he did clarify why it’s splashing round freely whenever you’d count on the cell Vex to be a bit extra protecting of it.
“That’s what’s inside some of these large structures. One of them is actually decomposing and breaking apart over time. So that’s actually leaking out, but it can be reformed. Like, they can re-terraform that stuff. But that block has had its day,” he mentioned.
The numerous story and artwork groups (“designers, lighting artists, world artists, effects artists, cinematics”) work in a round style, Sussman mentioned, with workers from everywhere in the firm contributing concepts that commute, slightly than being handed down from on excessive.
“We’re all speaking to one another. We take loads of these concepts, push them ahead, however there’s additionally loads of concepts that come from the skin in. Bungie’s actually inclusive that approach, it’s by no means a case of ‘it’s my approach or the freeway’. I believe loads of that’s simply that there’s fixed communication forwards and backwards from the administrators to the groups.
“We want to evolve the game, we want to make it as beautiful as possible, we want to make the gameplay as diverse as possible, we want to constantly push the envelope of what we want Destiny to be. That’s a conversation internally at the studio, and that’s how we drive all those decisions, like ‘hey, let’s try some more verticality than we have in the past, let’s push this a little bigger, let’s hide some things deeper than we did before and tell a story while we’re doing it’. So that’s how those opportunities are born.”
Destiny 2’s fiction provides Bungie a substantial amount of inventive freedom in designing environments, as a result of every of its Destinations have been absolutely or partially terraformed by the Traveller or an alien race. The “bones” of a Destination are grounded in what we all know of those planets and moons, Sussman mentioned, and Bungie does have a look at questions of scale and realism in designing its environments and skyboxes.
“We actually had Craig Hardgrove come by the studio a couple of times. He’s actually one of the guys who worked on the Mars Curiosity Rover; he’s a geologist as well, so he gives us some insight when he sees things. It’s always nice grabbing someone who’s a professional and asking ‘hey, are my rocks cool? Is that something you would see?’” Sussman mentioned.
But inventive ambition, story issues and scientific accuracy should take a again seat to designing an excellent recreation. Bungie’s first objectives with environmental design, Sussman mentioned, is “to make a beautiful space for people to play in, to make sure the players can navigate the space easily, and [to make a space that] they understand immediately upon entry”.
“One of the cornerstones of the world art is that the space, they understand the exits, they understand the encounter pockets, they understand where most things are,”
The atmosphere staff aimed to steadiness the necessity to populate the world with numerous actions with out making it over-crowded; to tuck non-compulsory content material out of view with out making them too laborious to seek out; to design for the circulate of the story missions, Adventures, Strikes and even presumably Raids which may come by means of the area.
“It’s a fine balancing act, making sure that space flows for the player and is easily digested by the player,” Sussman famous.
Bungie goals to make its world navigable by way of psychological map, although gamers can now name on an precise world map in Destiny 2 to assist them discover actions, observe their progress, and work out easy methods to get the place they wish to go (even with out our fabulous Destiny 2 information, plug plug). Sussman mentioned the staff didn’t let the addition of a mpa change their design objectives.
“We always build for player orientation. We do the same thing in our sky boxes. We call them bubbles. So we have like bubble-to-bubble, each area, whether it’s a private bubble or a public bubble,” he mentioned.
One of the methods Bungie achieves that is by use of “weenies”, a concept with origins in theme park design. It principally means at all times having the ability to see some distant object that orientates you within the area.
“The player has spatial orientation, they have somewhere they’re aspiring to get to, and they know where they came from. So we have things you can always see in the sky box, whether it’s a tower, or it’s the actual crashed colony ship in Nessus,” Sussman mentioned. “We’re at all times making an attempt to point out you the place you’re going and the place you got here from in some capability.
“That’s the macro, and the micro is the stuff we do in the actual destination, each bubble individually, to telegraph entrances and exits. So we’re constantly trying to do that so, again, any time the player doesn’t know where they’re going, there’s a large learning curve for someone, when they go into a destination, it’s not going to be a fun experience. We want you to be able to easily navigate each destination. ”
Sussman mentioned it’s simpler to construct the large macro strokes than the smaller bubbles, the place every little thing is crowded within the participant’s face – so Destiny 2’s bigger environments didn’t trigger extra challenges for the artwork staff.
They do create an extra problem for the participant: loads of strolling. One of the complaints levelled at Destiny 2 throughout our playtime was the lengthy walks between mission beats, particularly in facet quests. Destiny 2 doesn’t provide you with a Sparrow proper off the bat, you see – not like the primary recreation.
“The biggest thing for us is that we wanted players to be able to take [it] in – there’s a lot of content now. There’s a lot of off-shoots and pieces of history,” Sussman mentioned.
“And we don’t want people just blasting past it. We want you to understand that space, get map knowledge, and understand those spaces. There’s more content there for you to enjoy, and we want to make sure you’re not blasting past it and missing opportunities. There’s little nuggets everywhere.”
As effectively because the extra apparent avenues of exploration like Lost Sectors, gamers can look forward to finding some little secrets and techniques and Easter Eggs in-game.
“It would be terrible of me to reveal them, but there’s stuff to find,” Sussman mentioned.
“There’s also neat little [environmental touches to find]. Because I’m an environmental artist, I love just going through other people’s environments for how they tell their stories and history. Even if it’s just like ‘hey, this stuff is knocked off the table’ and you can see, it doesn’t just look like it was randomly placed. And then there are Ghost scannables, they tell bits of story as well.”
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