Destiny Players Really Want to Have Beards

Bungie's upcoming shooter Destiny offers a lot in the way of character customization, but one thing that it's missing is beards, and players are letting the studio know about it. Asked by Kotaku UK what Bungie took away from Destiny's beta, production director Jonty Barnes said the team was surprised to learn about players' affection for facial hair customization options.

"Here's a funny one for you--this was a surprise: beards," Barnes said. "I am not kidding you. "The amount of requests for beards--and this isn't just people, this is cultures as well that find them very important."

"For some people, it was very important for them as human beings to be able to have a beard, because that's part of their personality" -- Jonty Barnes

This is actually the second interview with Barnes that mentions the community's call for beards in Destiny. Speaking with The Sixth Axis last week, Barnes said, "For some people, it was very important for them as human beings to be able to have a beard, because that's part of their personality, I guess, in real life. So that has started a very heated internal dialogue at Bungie about we do beards, what is the prioritization of that and how we can accomplish that. So that's been a funny one!"

Barnes said Bungie prototyped beards for Destiny at one stage of development, but this customization option was never a priority. But that could change based on the feedback. "Now maybe we should be thinking about that in a very serious way," Barnes said.

He went on to say that Bungie is currently "having this active conversation about what it would take, whether or not we can deploy it, if it's something we're going to do very soon [or] a while from now, what's the impact of it, how do we get players to suddenly be able to define a beard because they haven't done it before."

"I don't know when you're going to have beards, but I'm pretty sure by the end of time there will be plenty of beards in Destiny," he added.

Destiny launches September 9 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4. Bungie plans to support the game extensively following its release with additional content, and who knows, maybe even beards. Beards.