All of this is fiction but I like to think this is how it played out. A=Activision B=Bungie A: So, this new game you guys are making. B: We've been working on it for years and hope our community will enjoy the story. A: Let me stop you right there, we've found that in our community, gammers don't want story, they want overly competitive multiplayer for bragging rights. B: Well, we don't share the same community, we take pride in our new universe and won't put the focus on competitive multiplayer like we've done with Halo. A: But your community just spanned from one console to two, we need to get our community with playstation to be your community. B: And how do you expect us to do that? A: Console exclusives of course! Win those suckers over with bribes and they'll get some pride over the console they forked over hundreds of dollars for. B: That's insane! Giving a console exclusive will cut our relationship with our already existing community on Xbox. A: Neat, but if you want to go along and not receive a lawsuit for failing to comply with our contract then you're going to have to find a compromise. B: This is ridiculous, the very worst we're willing to do is a timed exclusive that become available after a year. A: A game lasting more than a year? Now THAT's ridiculous. B: You've forgotten that we don't make a new game every year, Halo Reach and Halo 3 still have an engaged community playing it and people are flooding back after the failure of Halo 4. A: Fine, one year of exclusives for Playstation, now about the story. B: What about it? A: Well, it's a bit complex, too complex for the average gammer. Especially since we've decided to shoot for a T rating so we can have kids running into stores without parental guidance and buying the game like a swarm of brats. B: We already have a younger audience, the community for Halo still receives criticism for being too young for an M rating when the games themselves are featuring mature content. How do you expect us to change the story to suit the appeal of children? A: Cutting it. B: You can't be serious! A: We are and if the game doesn't get a T rating by the ESRB then we'll cut your funding for any sequels. B: But it'll leave gaps in the story large enough to fill entire games into! A: Which we'll fill with competitive multiplayer. B: What about some of the key systems for the game, we've established an economy based on a trading system to pare with a random loot drop. That's far more complicated than the story and will give an edge to an adult over any child! A: Well, we don't normally deal with MMO that are also tied with FPS so this trading system thing, our understanding is that it's features guns. If that's the case, we don't think that keeping it would help balance the competitive multiplayer for the people who earned them. B: We can't put in a random loot drop and take out a trading system, players will be grinding the game over and over again for equipment their friends got on the first try! That's not earning, that's gambling! We'd rather have gammers who were unlucky to be able to purchase these items from each other with an in game currency so it would feel less like the lottery. Not to mention, SCRAPING THE STORY?! We already have over half of the lines voiced by Peter and our lead writer has worked on it for years! A: Writing a story isn't that hard, just look at call of duty, we've written more stories than we can count. B: *whispers* That's because you've lost count of how many games you've shat out. A: Sorry, I didn't quite catch that. B: I said if we rewrite the story our community will be angry and cry out. A: I don't see why, it's not like the story of a game is ever the focus. B: And I don't see why we have to scrap it at all, we've already got plenty of die-hard fans waiting for this game to give them a sense of wonder. Plenty are going to preorder the game after you've advertised some of the scenes in trailers. A: And as a company focused on making the largest possible profit, we feel that this pre-ordering won't decrease if the final game is changed before release, so long as no-one hears of it. B: That's false advertising! A: And you're bound by contract to take part in it if need be. B: Fine, we'll cut the story, but I wont be surprised if the lead writer quits afterwards. A: That reminds me, what are you planning for dlc B: One or two expansions with added equipment, 5$ each. A: We could increase that price by adding multiplayer maps, story missions, those raids you keep talking about. B: We only have 3 raids planned at this point. A: That's fine, just cut it out of the story and put it in the dlc, that'll increase the price. B: But those raids are pared with strikes and story missions, they have background to give the players reason to complete them other than for loot drops. A: Then cut the story up and put it into the dlc, why is that so hard to understand? B: Your asking us to cut up an already butchered story? A: You said it yourself, you guys use these stories to sell the games in the first place. B: But the game on release will have less value. A: The players won't know that when they buy it. You're loyal fans pre-order you're games so much we don't need to worry about quality or value. B: Don't you ever take pride in a job well done!? A: Of course we do, our job is to make money, and we take a lot of pride in how much we sell gamers the same game every year with tweaks that could be considered updates rather than a new release. Besides, you're pared with us for ten years, and we expect you to make us a lot of money in that time. B: What about our website A: We won't change a thing on that B: *under breath* good, we can still get a small portion of our story to the fans, but what's lost in the game is lost. A: Well, we look forward to doing business with you all in the future. Bungie's always given us games that blew our minds, and while destiny still does, it doesn't seem like it's all there, I always thought Ghost had a bit more feeling into his presentation of dialogue during the gameplay presentation at E3 that the final game, and since those lines were cut from the game, I'm guessing all of his work toward the original story would be scrapped and he wouldn't be able to give his best because his morale would be nonexistent. If this is anything like how Activision negotiated game features with Bungie, then I hope Activision gets what's coming to them. And please don't kick my ass.