Last week Twinfinite attended the Destiny 2 Gameplay Reveal event in Los Angeles where we got to experience the keynote and trailer live, in person, as well as get some hands-on time with the upcoming sequel (you can check out our preview here). After playing around with the new classes and checking out some of the features Destiny 2 has to offer, we sat down with Michael Zak, the Art Director for Destiny 2, and asked him some questions about development, gameplay, new features, and the dark story Guardians can expect to be thrust into.
Note: This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
New Features, Graphical Improvements, and Development
Ishmael Romero from Twinfinite: I would like to start first with the development. I know that the first Destiny was a very high profile game and it received both praise and criticism for some of the design choices throughout its life cycle. Could you give us some examples of how criticism and player feedback factored into both the development of new features in Destiny 2 and the reworking of features that we see are returning?
Michael Zak: Sure, I mean, we’re all very active listeners when it comes to our community, and honestly we play with a lot of people in our community, too. So I think one of the big, big things we talked about today were clans and guided games, you know? And that’s huge for us. I was actually just telling a guy before that I had this awesome experience in Destiny 1 where I’m a dad, I don’t have a lot of time. I get to play in the office and have designers telling me how to get through it, but it was really hard to coordinate for me in Destiny 1. My raiding was greatly enhanced by getting involved with a clan that their whole goal was actually to help dads, you know? [laughs]
Twinfinite: Yeah [laughs]
Zak: And they’re called the Dads of Destiny and they carried me through my first raid you know, and it was awesome. It was totally all organized outside of the game, right? So we wanna support that and lean into that in Destiny 2 so we’re bringing clan support into the game. We’re gonna give clan leaders tools, and we’re gonna give clans identities with banners and slogans and names. They’re gonna get their own clan page and it’s gonna be awesome.
On the flip side, we want Destiny 2 to be a welcoming experience for brand new players who didn’t play Destiny 1, right? So we want to leverage that community. The same way that it was there for me in Destiny 1 as a new player, we want to give that experience to them and I think we really are. Because from what we saw from a positive community like that in Destiny 1, we feel like using the clan system in Destiny 2 to drive guided games where a player like I was doesn’t need to just get lucky and happen to match in with some guy who was like super awesome and part of a super awesome clan. The game will actually facilitate that for me. I can actually say like yeah I’m by myself tonight and I’m in the mood to play a cooperative activity, I can go to the guided games page, I can log on, and I can also get choice. I can see what the clan is, I can see what their motto is, I can see what their vibe is, and I can decide if they seem like a fit for my style.
Twinfinite: Aside from the new guided games and the clan system, are there any other features that you may have wanted to put in the first Destiny, whether from an artistic standpoint or a gameplay one, that you were finally able to do with Destiny 2?
Zak: It’s really hard to talk about like… specific features like that. I mean, the reason is when you build a game you start with a million ideas, right? You don’t know how those ideas are gonna work together. So it’s really through the process of actually developing the game that you make like an infinite number of decisions as a group trying things, experimenting. What sounded like the best idea ever, like “the thing we wanted!”, you might try it it and it might… just suck when you actually do it.
So I think that Destiny 2 is a great opportunity for us because we have played a lot of Destiny 1. It gave us opportunities to do things that were built from experience, whereas we were kinda coming out of the gate fresh the first time. This was a chance to reflect. It wasn’t about putting in something that we just didn’t get to, it was more about what did we learn? And like how can we take that knowledge from our experience playing and make the best Destiny 2 we can.
So like an example I’ll give you, a personal one as the art director. We talked today about the theme of loss and recovery, right? Of how we get kicked out of our home, the Tower is attacked, the Cabal have overwhelmed us, the Red Legion… I took that sort of thick thematic story beat and I said let’s lean into that for the gear. Let’s really like make that evident on the player, on what they’re wearing, right? Where it’s really tied together. There’s a reason, there’s a fictional reason why you’re gonna look the way you look at the start of the game to try and take you through that progression. So we wanted to have those different parts of the game talk to each other and support each other and really coordinate to create an experience that in some ways just feel better, you know? It’s integrated more.
Twinfinite: Going off of that, that’s really interesting that you’re using the clothes that Guardians are actually wearing to tell part of the story, is that also done with the world as well? Is that something that you as the Art Director really pushed into all facets of Destiny 2?
Zak: Oh for sure, absolutely. I mean, it’s sort of easier initially… I come from a world art background, that’s the content I built back when I was mostly building content. So we’re all about trying to tell stories in the world, which we just call environmental storytelling, like what are the stories of this place. We’ve loved doing that for years and I think the opportunities to do that in the Destiny universe are amazing. We are definitely newer as a studio to this whole idea of progression, and like collection, and it’s so clear that Destiny is so much about that, right? The variety we offer the players, and the range of styles, and then seeing what the community does.
Like I was telling a story about my brother in law, he’s a badass heavy metal guitar player and oh my god the outfits he puts together in Destiny, he puts on like Iron Banner stuff, some exotic helmet, and I’m just like oh dude, you look amazing. Like you should be on stage. And I can’t wait for people to do that in Destiny 2 because the technology is taking a jump forward, the fidelity of the game, some of our rendering systems are getting greatly enhanced, and a technical acronym we call PBR, which is not the beer [chuckles], it’s physically based rendering. So what that allows us to do is basically represent material responses so like the difference between matte and glossy or iridescence, chrome, reflections, like we can do a lot of stuff that’s richer. So that allows us to build environments that just look better period, they look more grounded, look more realistic. But even on the player gear it allows us to beam into material responses. Do you wanna be matte black or super iridescent [laughs]
Twinfinite: I like matte black.
Zak: [laughs] It seems everybody does, but I’m gonna try to convince you to put some color on [laughs] because I’m an art director, even though I’m wearing all black right now. But I’m gonna try to make that as appealing as possible, or at least, if you see someone else who wants to have that incredibly iridescent pink, maybe it’s not what you want, but you’ll be like “holy cow, that looks good.” That’s the goal.
Twinfinite: There were a few features that came to mind with the PC. One being cross platform and the other being dedicated servers. Are either of those in the works, or part of Destiny 2?
Zak: Nope. [chuckles]
Twinfinite: OK! Easy answer!
Next we’ll tackle classes and subclasses, new equipment, and story and lore.
Classes and Subclasses
Twinfinite: Now with subclasses, their new designs are pretty interesting, they seem like evolutions of the subclasses we had in vanilla Destiny. What are some of the ways they’ll function and progress differently?
Zak: So one of the things, I don’t know how deep we let you drill into it, I think you can pull it up and kind of look at it a bit in the build here, but we got this idea of paths. So we wanted to present every super, and I’m gonna be channeling our sandbox designers here, the way they described it to me is basically we got the core supers. So we got the Dawnblade, whereas the core thing they do is throw friggin flaming swords, they float in the air and throw these amazing swords. But there are sort of different playstyles that either might have. So we take this core fantasy and then kind of lean it in another direction. So we’re calling those two paths which you saw in the UI. So you can kind of decide, though over time you can unlock both paths, unlocking all upgrades, but like right now with Dawnblade the Skyfall upgrade, right?
And that node is the key, the anchor node that modifies the super, and that’s what allows you to not only jump in the air and float and throw swords, but allows you to do that dive down to the ground and do the ground smash as part of it. So all of our supers have those two paths, those two flavors, and each one has the core fantasy, which is sort of the main mode of attack. But then, they have sort of layers of like combos you can add on. So you can do your standard just trigger the super or you can trigger the super and pay attention to the key-mapping a little bit more and do the next level stuff. It’s got more of that easy to learn, hard to master thing. Like when are you gonna deploy those combos and those extra personalities that you’re specializing in?
Twinfinite: I’ve noticed you still have Warlock, Hunter, Titan. Were there ever any ideas to bring in a new class, and if so, are there a few you could share? Like any weird ideas or different ideas the team had?
Zak: The weird ideas… we were gonna have a gnome character [joke]. I mean for us, Hunter, Warlock, and Titan they are just the archetypical three, right? In Destiny 2, it’s about the light, the connection to the light, and what happens when that’s severed, when some other a-hole comes and takes it from you, and wants it for himself. For us that really meant exploring those themes, exploring those characters that are related to that – Ikora, Zavala, and Cayde – we’re gonna dig into their stories more. Those fantasies [referring to the classes] are ones that we still think are potent, you know? So we’re sticking with those.
Twinfinite: Is there any chance you can describe how the player progression will work in Destiny 2? Will levels work the same way as in Destiny, and will light still work the same way. I know the line is “A world without Light” but it’s clear that we do reconnect on some level.
Zak: Yeah, that’s something that definitely is… progression really requires lots of hours to play, right? So it’s not something that we’re really gonna be talking about here because you just can’t experience it. Today is about new modes, new powers, new weapons, new art.
Progression is something that just doesn’t demo well. That’s a part of the game where we spent dozens and hundreds of hours play-testing it ourselves and that’s kind of where we are right now in the project. We’re really starting to lean into and really focus on that part of the game to totally make that part feel good. Take for example that art direction I talked about where it’s like okay we got this visual progression, where we can support the theme visually to make sure that’s paced out well to create a satisfying progression. It’s a big focus but it’s not something that really can be talked about even.
Equipment and Customization
Twinfinite: So this is something a lot of our readers wanted me to ask: In Destiny, weapon and armor balances simultaneously affected both PvE and PvP, is that something that will remain in Destiny 2? Because I know you all spoke about new ways of doing PvP, does that include this separation?
Zak: You’re still bringing your same gear across both modes, same avatar, same supers, there’s not a fork. There are minor things that we go into details on stream sometimes about. We want it to be you, right? At the end of the day we want you to feel like you. We don’t want it to feel like you’re a different guy. It’s your avatar, that’s the goal. But there are different game modes, so there are minor adjustments that are made, but generally we talk about those to the audience that really need or want those details, but people constantly ask that on the Bungie streams that are well advertised to the hardcore [chuckles].
Twinfinite: Speaking to how you spoke about the clothing and the way you want people to customize and change things as they see things that are cool, in Destiny 1 we started getting a greater taste of that customization as the game went on and we even got it with weapons like with the Khvostov, I hope I said that right.
Zak: That’s how we say it.
Twinfinite: Perfect, I can say it just like Bungie.
Zak: [laughs]
Twinfinite: Is increased weapon and armor customization, or even some facet of crafting in the works for Destiny 2?
Zak: I can’t talk about any of it today other than to say we’re definitely going to be enhancing that experience long term. We’re hoping to show off more of it in the summer. We got some stuff in the works that we’re going to try to lean into that I think is going to be fun.
Story and Lore
Twinfinite: Okay. Story. Story is something that I know you’ve heard a lot about, have been asked a lot about. At the end of Rise of Iron and at the end of The Taken King and everything, there were a few loose ends at the end of Destiny. Can you guys share a bit about how you plan on revisiting those loose ends?
Zak: Nope [laughs]. I mean it’s a really rich world, right? And part of that is by design. We have really big imaginations and wanted to create opportunities for discovery in the world, and discovery in the narrative, and we reserve the right to explore any of those threads in the future depending on how the light moves us. And for Destiny 2 what keeps resonating with us, because I keep looking back at that [gestures towards a monitor showing the city and Traveler burning].
We said we really want a convergence point for the community. We want a place where there will be something really emotionally poignant hopefully for returning players that they can relate to and be like holy shit, there’s big stakes, something significant has happened, the universe is moving. And, at the same time, an entry point for new players where they didn’t feel left behind, they didn’t feel like they missed out and had to play catch up, where really they could come in at the same time as returning players.
Our solution to that right now is to focus on the traveler and the attack on the city, the Red Legion showing up, and the loss of light. It felt like a really cool way to bring those two groups of people together, something really meaty and fictionally significant in terms of the universe of Destiny for the returning players, and at the very core of what drives the universe, yet also kind of creates this starting point for brand-new guardians too, to come in as this convergence point which is really important for us for Destiny 2.
Twinfinite: Final question because I know we’re running out of time. Destiny’s Grimoire had a lot of information in it, a lot of deep lore in there that was much deeper than anybody realized when they actually read it. I was one of those people that read most if not all of it and it was pretty great. But that had a lot of players split. Is this something that Bungie is looking to address in Destiny 2? Like will the Grimoire or all of the major lore be present inside of the actual game?
Zak: So the thing I can say about that right now is that we definitely want to bring whatever possible experiences that surround Destiny into the game. So part of what we talked about today in broad terms about exploring the world and staying in the world, we’re allowing you to pick up activities without having to leave the destination. We’re trying to layer in different types of content whether that be different types of combat or different moods like explorative content, discover, or, you know, narrative content. We’re going to be layering all of that into the destination in ways we haven’t before and hopefully that sort of tapestry is something that satisfies you and players like you, what you found exciting about the Grimoire in Destiny 1.
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