Bungie talks Destiny: next gen IP "feels like the equivalent of Toy Story" for games

Bungie's been talking to Polygon about Destiny, the studio's forthcoming, online-centric, sci-fi shooter project for Activision. It's going to be big, would you believe. "Big" with a side order of "massive". Think of a random number, and odds are it's bigger than that.

"It feels like I'm part of something and doing something meaningful. That's really important," chief operating officer Pete Parsons told the site. "We all want to make great games; we all want to kick ass; world domination is absolutely within our sights."

What little we know of Destiny suggests that it borrows a trick or two from the MMO rulebook, with distinct player factions and a persistent open world. According to technical director Chris Butcher, this is the realisation of an agenda that began life with Halo 2, back in 2004.

"We were going to make this online universe where people are going to be able to sit on their couch and play games with people from the other side of the world," Butcher reflected. "It was going to be this great communal experience. Everybody was going to realize that we were all just one shared humanity, and look, there's gonna be an outbreak of world peace.

"What it actually turned into was a bunch of frat boys teabagging one another and calling each other names. So I think we can do a lot better."

Seeking a precedent for the project's ambition, animator Tom Sanocki drew on his 10 year experience at CGI film-maker Pixar. "It feels like we're back at the equivalent of Toy Story," he said. "We're about to create something big that no one expects. It's going to kind of come out of nowhere and be really exciting.

"It's fun to be at that cusp again, at a company that can chart its own destiny and chart its own future, and to be able to be a part of it not just by myself, but with all these other people," Sanocki went on. "Together we can do something that's a lot bigger than any one of us could do by ourselves."

Destiny will go public at the Game Developer Conference in March, but we'll have more to say about it before then. For everything that's currently fit for public consumption, read Alice's Destiny first look.