Destiny Development Team Now Over 500, Started With Four People

In a video posted before Christmas by GameInformer Bungie technical art director Ryan Ellis revealed that the development team working on Destiny has grown from four people in 2009 to over 500 today.

While that isn't the largest number of developers to have worked on a game, recent Assassin's Creed and Grand Theft Auto titles have been closer to the 1,000 mark it is still far beyond most studios including other AAA developers. Only 80 people are developing PS4 title The Order: 1886 for example. 

Ellis said he was one of the first people at Bungie to work on the game which fuses science and fantasy, he said the game's development is like an "artist paiting on canvas" and that the developer wasn't trying to create an accurate reflection of our solar system. 

This isn't terribly surprising as it has previously emerged that the game could have been a pure fantasy title.

However, there are nods towards scientific reality in Destiny. Discussing the moon, one of the locations you can visit, Ellis said that at night the light you see on the moon is actually the sun's light reflected off of the Earth because the moon rotates on the same side at all times and this is something they've worked to recreate in Destiny.

He said that there are still elements of third person sequences in the game, a legacy of the time when Destiny was entirely third person only. 

Regarding the launch platforms Ellis commented that "we haven't announced" a PC version and said that there are no plans to do so but stopped short of ruling out the possibility that the game might be made available on the platform eventually. 

Destiny is set for release on September 9th for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and not, as Ellis mistakeningly alluded, on the original Xbox.