With the closure of the Destiny 2 Beta yesterday, fans of the series have been wondering as to why the Beta for Destiny 2 was so starved compared to the Beta for the original Destiny. Turns out, this was a conscious decision on the part of the developers since they want to keep “a whole bunch of the game secret”, according to Game Director Luke Smith who was interviewed in the latest Namek vs Saiyan podcast.
The beta is an extremely small slice, intentionally so. We’re actually keeping a whole bunch of the game secret.
We disabled progression which is a huge part of Destiny 2, we’re not really showing any of our open world, we’re focusing on one map of our competitive playlist. We very intentionally have made the beta focus on the technical diligence with a very small slice of content so that players can be surprised and delighted in September.
Smith argued that this decision was influenced both by the original Destiny beta, and the experience with last expansion for destiny, The Taken King.
This was influenced in some ways by the original Destiny beta, but also influenced by our experience with The Taken King. We had a whole bunch of content we never told players about, we just let them experience it. We didn’t come out and make big statements, we instead focused on getting the game in the players’ hands and I think that strategy really paid out.
That’s really important to me because so much of Destiny 2 – like the first one – is about being part of the community. And discovering this game together, I think they’re going to have an amazing experience.
Destiny 2 will have a beta on PC next month. It’s due for release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 6th, while PC gamers will have to wait for October 24th.
