{{
`${userDetail.user.displayName}${userDetail.user.cachedBungieGlobalDisplayNameCode ? `#${standardizeBungieGlobalCode(userDetail.user.cachedBungieGlobalDisplayNameCode)}` : ""}`}}
{{getUserClans()}}
4/5/2012 12:26:45 AM
24
When did destiny development start? Some interesting research...
Some of the longer term members here may remember BentLama (Nathan Walpole) being a Bungie employee. BentLama also worked at 343i recently.
He has previously worked on Halo 2 (Bungie), Halo 3 (Bungie) & Halo 4 (343i/MGS).
Looking at his resume ([url=http://www.bentllama.com/resume_nathanWalpole.pdf]link here[/url]) I see work on "undisclosed projects" reaching back to 2007 with Bungie. It seems interesting to me that a senior animator and conceptual developer for enabling the development team was working on "plural" as in multiple undisclosed projects.
What does this mean? I'm not sure but I wanted to post and get some speculation going. Perhaps he worked on Reach, maybe Destiny commenced all the way back then as well? Personally I think Destiny is in that mix.
I imagine his specialty in proof of concept, pre-vis and character rigging with test animators as well as design viability studies attribute him to working in the very early stages of game development lifecycles.
Any ideas on the projects BentLama worked on during those late years at Bungie? I'm thinking Destiny has been around for longer than we suspect.
Bungie have known for many years now that they were buying themselves back from Microsoft and moving away from Halo. I recall Reach had a small team assigned to retool existing Halo technologies to deliver their best game and ODST was the main focus. However I believe a semi-fast one was pulled on Microsoft and more resources were devoted behind closed doors to Destiny during both those game developments.
This leads me to think Destiny is closer than we think...
Side Note: Another point of interest here is I see 343i had him working on concept animation work for and "undisclosed Halo project" in 2008-2010. This means work for Halo 4 has been going on for over 4 years now.
-
[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Oddley765 Side Note: Another point of interest here is I see 343i had him working on concept animation work for and "undisclosed Halo project" in 2008-2010. This means work for Halo 4 has been going on for over 4 years now.[/quote]As I mentioned [url=http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=69922521]in my prediction thread[/url], 2007-2008 was when the Halo Chronicles series was being designed, but fell through eventually. That team then became the ODST team as we know it now. 343i only got their team properly kitted out for Halo 4 sometime in early 2011 (I was contacted about becoming a concept artist there, so I asked a few questions), and even then production hadn't properly started quite yet. As for Destiny, I'm confident that Bungie's always had something of an agenda for what they want to do after each project is complete. As a company, especially as directors and producers, it's vital to your continuation as a company. Bungie hadn't even expected Halo: CE to be such a success, and heck, originally Halo 2 was intended to be the last Halo game for them. We haven't seen or heard very much from Jason Jones since around this time (in part because he's camera-shy) so I'd happily guess that he and others within Bungie have been developing what they want for Destiny since around Halo 2, for sure (although considering how stretched they were during the development of that game, they probably put it on the backburner until after they finished). If Bungie is putting feelers out for Beta testers already ([url=http://www.bungie.net/Account/Playtest/UserResearch.aspx]which they totally are[/url]), then we can assume that they have already reached an Alpha stage for Destiny. I suspect we'll hear a Beta announcement date sometime this year, perhaps even around E3 or Bungie Day (the One of Seven invitations allude to this as well). [Edited on 04.04.2012 8:31 PM PDT]
