I think they partnered with the wrong publisher. Activision is a greedy company. Bungie may have chose them because they knew Activision had the money to fund Destiny, it's always-on servers, its astronomical development cost (present and future), everything. But Activision is really only concerned with money. Call of Duty being the perfect example. A rehashed bulletfest every year that only changes in title and story (but even that is subject to similarity). Part of why Destiny may have changed in the past while is Joe Staten (writer of Halo, writer of "original" Destiny) left under unknown circumstances. 2 rumored reasons as to why he left have surfaced. 1. His creativity was stifled and his vision was killed and cut up. Him leaving prevented Activision from keeping his intellectual property of the "original" story and making money off it without paying him (which Activision would try to keep every penny they could.) 2. The original story that was play-tested behind closed doors and under an NDA (which the reddit poster claims to have been part of) was spoken against claiming it was too "Halo-like" and wasn't original/unique enough. He chose to discontinue work and left to do other things considering the rest of Bungie was already under contract to produce Destiny for atleast 10 years. Also, other members of Bungie have left under unknown circumstances and places have been filled or redacted. The true reasons behind why Destiny is not what we saw last year is hidden behind NDAs and locked deep on Bungie's vault of secrets. Until someone from Bungie (current or ex) says anything (and can prove it because it is the internet after all, liars are rampant), we will never know. And I doubt someone would say because of NDAs. Someone would get fired and/or sued for breach of contract.