Destiny Strongly Resembled Overwatch Early In Its Development

With Destiny 2's launch upon us, the release of Kotaku news editor Jason Schreier's new book, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, has dived into the rocky development of the original game. Along with many other things, it reveals an early version of Destiny apparently shared a lot in common with what would become Blizzard's Overwatch.

Known as Project Tiger at the time, Destiny went through many different forms in the late 2000s, as reported in Blood, Sweat, and Pixels. While seeking to outdo its work on the Halo series, among the concepts Bungie came up with were those that resembled Blizzard's Diablo and Overwatch--or, rather, Titan, the MMO that Blizzard was working on at the time and would ultimately be canceled, with many of its ideas turning into Overwatch.

Jaime Griesemer, a designer on the first three Halo games who came up with the idea of Bungie creating a shared-world shooter, recounted his discovery of the similarities between Titan and the early iteration of Destiny: "I went to Blizzard for a while, and played Titan, and I was like, 'Holy s***, you guys are working on the same game, down to character classes.'" Destiny would end up being a much different game, but at the time, Bungie hadn't even yet decided on a first- or third-person perspective.

Griesemer also recalled how there were multiple total resets on Destiny, as Bungie was intent on creating something that would be bigger than Halo. The game increasingly became more Halo-like, which is something Griesemer had hoped to avoid from the start. He spoke out later about perceived issued with the project, hoping to "obstruct things to the point where they're either going to have to change [the way] they're going or get rid of me." Bungie's board of directors opted for the latter, asking him to resign.

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels releases today. It dives much further into the creation of Destiny, along with nine other games, including Star Wars 1313, The Witcher 3, and Uncharted 4. It's well worth a read for anyone with an interest in game development; it's a fascinating read and doesn't require you to have any knowledge about how the industry operates. It focuses a great deal on individuals and the challenges they face, and like any look behind the curtain, it will invariably result in you wondering how games ever actually end up being released.