Bungie planned to release what they are now releasing as DLC as part of the base game. There are ViDocs from last year that showed places like the Reef and Old Chicago as being fully textured, designed, and playable, but yet you insist that such content was still in development around that time. I can smell the bullshit miles away, so let me drop some facts. - Halo: Reach had content cut from the base game to be released later and resold as DLC, the Noble Map Pack being a very clear example of this -There were multiple videos showing areas such as the Reef, Old Chicago, the Fields of Glass, and other areas not in the game as being textured and playable -The coding is full of unused weapons, vehicles, Shaders, Ghost shells, and numerous other items that are very clearly designed and intended for the "DLC" -Fields of Glass and Old Chicago are still in the game's coding and still coded for the most part -Bungie began developing Destiny sometime between 2007-2008, and this development process hit full steam in about 2010 following the release of Halo: Reach. That's 2-3 years of preptime and 4 years of actual development So, your argument implies that one employee leaving 6 years into the development around the same time the game was supposed to be released would absolutely screw up everything, including parts of the game he really had nothing to do with? So a story writer leaving a game long after he had written out the story (assuming that somebody as skilled as Joseph Staten would have had at least a basic plotline established after 6 years of worktime) would make it so Bungie had to cut out large quantities of the game's content? Explain to me how exactly his departure would make them remove the Reef, Fields of Glass, Old Chicago, and numerous Strikes even though little to no story is actually necessary for them to be playable? Yes, Bungie had to move up the release date to 2014, but that doesn't help their case in the slightest. It makes it even worse. They had 6 years to make a game, and then an extra year to fix everything. What do they have to show for it? A game that has a content level lower than games that have maybe a year of development time, with Call of Duty being an example of this. Yes, each CoD game just uses a modified engine of the previous game, but lets say it takes a year or two to make a new engine. That leaves Bungie with five or six years to simply make content for people to play. If Treyarch and Infinity Ward were able to take 6-12 months of dev time and make mass quantities of satisfying and fun things to do in their games, then why can't Bungie make more content than them with four YEARS to do so? They should have been able to have four times as much content as, say, Modern Warfare 2. Instead, they made almost four times LESS content with four times MORE development time. Another comparison to a famous developer and their franchise will help prove that Bungie had more than enough time to release more content instead of cutting it out to sell as DLC on the excuse of "they needed more time to work on it." Bethesda and The Elder Scrolls. Now, each Elder Scrolls game Bethesda makes has an average development time of 6 years; on par with Destiny's development time. Lets talk about the most recent TES game, Skyrim. It had a similar development pattern to Destiny's: two years of minor development, and then around four years of fullblown development. Now lets look at what Bethesda produced in that time compared to what Bungie produced in a similar time frame: [quote]Skyrim: 150 Dungeons Destiny: 6 Strikes[/quote] [quote]Skyrim: 244 Quests Destiny: 23 Story Missions and 1 Raid[/quote] [quote]Skyrim: 10 Playable Areas Destiny: 4 Playable Areas (I'd also like to point out that each Hold in Skyrim is bigger than any single PLANET in Destiny)[/quote] [quote]Skyrim: Approximately 600 non-hostile interactive NPCs Destiny: 18 non-hostile interactive NPCs[/quote] [quote]Skyrim: 300+ Points of Interest Destiny: No Points of Interest; no side-quests/missions/activities in Patrol other than Patrol missions and Public Events[/quote] [quote]Skyrim: 8 Playable Races, each with unique abilities and traits Destiny: 3 Playable Races, purely cosmetic[/quote] I could compare even more, but the point is apparent. Now, you could go ahead and tell me "You can't really compare Bungie to Bethesda," but I can. Both had a similar time frame, both were producing an open world RPG, both are experienced developers. But if you will hold to that argument, the lets go back to Treyarch, Infinity Ward, and the other CoD developers. 8 times less dev time for producing in-game content than Destiny did, and they produced far more content than Destiny did. Not to mention Bungie is far more experienced than any of those devs. And now for one crushing comparison you really can't argue with. Bungie, compared to Bungie. In an interview with UOL Jogos, Christian Diefenbach, software engineer at Bungie, revealed that each planet in Destiny is roughly the same size as the entirety of Halo: Reach: [quote]"The destinations [scenarios where the game takes you] like Mars, Moon, Earth, each one is more or less the same size as the entire game 'Halo: Reach'."[/quote] He also explained that the game has a much bigger team working on it: [quote]"In 'Halo', We worked in a team of 130 people. Now there are over 500 people working on 'Destiny'."[/quote] Lets look at Moon now, shall we? Can you honestly tell me that that area is anywhere CLOSE to being "more or less the same size as the entire game Halo: Reach?" No? What about Venus? No? Well what about Mars? Closer, but still nowhere near the same size. What about the Cosmodrome, which is the largest area in the game? Even counting the inaccessible "DLC" areas, this area is barely bigger than Reach's base Multiplayer mode. Reach took 3 years to make, but was far bigger in scale and in actual in-game content; with just one of Reach's MP maps being the size of almost all of Moon. Reach had dozens of unique Multiplayer gametypes, while Destiny only has a whopping 2-3 (If you even count Control as a non-Deathmatch gametype) gametypes. Reach's campaign was around 12 hours long, and Destiny's was around 6 (Not counting having to grind to even access all of the story.) Reach had 13 MP maps, Destiny has 11. A close number, yes; but Destiny's MP maps don't even compare to Reach's. Destiny's biggest MP map, Bastion, is about the same size as a medium size MP map from Reach; Paradiso. Destiny took six years to make, but has less content than other games which took 2-3 years and even some that took 6 months. Games of equal development time to Destiny have ridiculously more content than it. So, in a six year development time, you are honestly going to try and tell everybody here that Bungie intended to have a small amount of content, and that they didn't cut the majority of Destiny out to resell as DLC? If you are, then if you're right that makes Bungie the most pathetic, lazy, unintelligent, mismanaged, and incompetent game developers to ever exist.