It would be nice to have somewhat of a difference in the skills, gear, weapons, armor between classes. I agree with the idea that picking a character you feel you can relate to based on a purely emotional level is fantastic, and part of the overall immersing experience in to the world that is uniquely yours. But why limit that with a character who's uniqueness is only supplied by its aesthetic aspects? Wouldnt it be awesome to have a massive Titan war machine that is built for heavy combat and can take lots of damage before going down, go up against an agile Hunter whose agility becomes its best weapon as he picks away at the Titans armor piece by piece whilst dodging bullets?! Or a Warlock that uses some sort of magic to slow the Hunter, or weaken the Titan's armor, and so on. The battles would become increasingly diverse, and open a whole new world of tactics that most FPS haven't even dreamed of! In my opinion, having very slight differences, but nothing too overwhelming that would ruin the games equality before factoring in player skill, would provide for that much more of an immersing, and unique experience. In the end I feel that this would make your character that much more captivating and personal. The trick is however, as the article says, avoiding scenarios where you make that emotional decision and half way through the game wind up disappointed that you've made the wrong choice because that awesome piece of armor you could have had as a Titan, or the accelerated speed of a hunter etc etc. Also challenging would be creating these subtle differences in the armor, gear and attributes to where they don't create inequalities on the battlefield. Given the potential downfalls, and the consequences of a mistake, perhaps Bungie is best focusing their energies elsewhere in the game and pulling more of that immersion from the world itself. Either way the game will kick ass, and i'm sure Bungie has already had these conversations, and made the best choice.... or will :) Cant wait for this game!

Nice, I feel disappointed and reassured at the same time. I'm glad there won't be any gameplay differences and I'm very excited to see what the lore will turn out to be.

Thanks, I hadn't seen that. Yes. Me too. Gameplay handling aside, I'm confident that Bungie will make the world respond to your identity choices – even if your choice of character physiology is largely an aesthetic selection – the world responds in a way that is deep, storied and nuanced. For me, that's what really counts, and in terms of classes and abilities I think there's a danger in layering too many stat / mechanic variations – and room for exploits in PvP – on top of one another.