Hot on the heels of the Destiny 2 gameplay reveal, game director Like Smith has been speaking with Glixel about how Bungie designs the game’s intense co-operative ‘raid’ missions.
In an intriguing exchange, Smith revealed he personally pulled a lot of inspiration from Blizzard’s long-running fantasy MMO, World of Warcraft — a game he’s been a fan of for quite some time.
According to Smith, he wanted to capture the feel of WoW’s co-operative gameplay. So, it wasn’t so much about bringing across specific game mechanics, as it was about investigating how WoW toys with player agency and emotion during its own raids.
“The feelings that matter from cooperative gameplay are those around other people making things easier — it’s about being able to see the impact everyone has on the success and failure of the group,” said Smith.
“There are moments of accountability, moments of responsibility — personal or group-wide responsibility. And so when we were looking at the construction of raids in a shooter, it wasn’t about, like, ‘Let’s take mechanic X from game Y,’ it was about, ‘Let’s create these different feelings.'”
For example, in Destiny’s Vault of Glass campaign there’s a section that’s essentially a labyrinth full of insta-kill monsters that players aren’t supposed to fight. That comes straight after a period of high action, and was designed to bring a social dynamic to the game by forcing players to work together to pass through the maze unscathed.
“It’s all about how you’re gonna communicate with other people to get through the space together,” explains Smith. “That’s about the translation of communication from other games to a place where you’re running around in first person holding a weapon. The translation of language from, you know, a different experience into our action game.”
To hear more from the game director be sure to check out the full interview over on Glixel.