Bungie has moved to reassure fans that while there may be only one playable area on each planet in the game, there's still plenty to do and a huge game world to explore.
During a recent Twitch stream, at the 1:49:30 mark, community manager David 'DeeJ' Dague revealed that each planet in the base game will have a single playable area. "Yeah, we're calling them destinations. You go to Mars, you go to the Moon, you've got Venus, and you've got Earth," he said.
Aside from those terrestrial worlds, could the game be expanded upon beyond the solar system? "Not so far," DeeJ remarked. "We've revealed everything that you'll explore in the first version of the game."
Old Russia, the main area in both the alpha and recent beta, covers a large area but some expressed concern that the region could represent a quarter of the game's total playable area.
Eric "Urk" Osborne, another Bungie community manager, replied to a NeoGAF thread on the matter commenting:
"Destiny's pretty big. It's the biggest game we've ever made, by far, and we're sort of known for making games you can play for months, years, and even decades if you're a little bit… dedicated.
"With Destiny, we're looking to exceed what we've done before, not just in terms of scale – the Moon is our smallest destination – but in terms of scope and breadth of activities. That's true for day one, as you expect, but it also means we want Destiny to have super long legs."
In April, Bungie said each planet featured in the game is "more or less" the same size as Halo: Reach.
Osborne says Bungie has "cool activities" planned for to keep people playing for "months" after launch. He adds that the studio plans to support co-operative players in Destiny for a long time, not just competitive players as was the case with Halo.
"We think we did a decent job supporting Halo, post launch, but we were only ever able to cater to the competitive set. That left a lot of players out in the cold. That made a lot of the team grumpy. We wanted to do better. So, Destiny is philosophically built support every type of player, and all modes with ongoing activities and events."
Destiny launches on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on September 9th.
