Well, this was a long time coming and it only seems fitting to discuss it now, considering the current news from the court room involving Bungie. As we all know, Destiny wasn't exactly the game we expected it to be; the sweeping, epic narrative was little more than a dried raisin with a few cutscenes thrown in. The multiplayer was unbalanced and lacked sustenance. The side missions and strikes were horribly grindy and repetitive. And then there's all the DLC and NOW MICROTRANSACTIONS AS WELL...

Where is this masterpiece of a game we were once promised? How could such a prized and loved studio like Bungie possibly fail to deliver?

For the simple fact, that the Bungie currently creating Destiny is not the same as the one we used to know.

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Starting right from the beginning, we know that Destiny was already a thing way back during Halo 3 ODST, with all the little Destiny easter eggs that only were discovered when the game was revealed. Halo 3 ODST was released all the way back in 2009...meaning Destiny was in development for the good amount of 6 YEARS, knowing that 343i and a much smaller percentage of Bungie employees worked on Halo Reach. 6 YEARS and we got...well, a failure of a game. Almost akin to the more recent Duke Nukem installment.

All the way up to E3 2013 it's clear that Bungie was still Bungie; that first Destiny reveal left the world in awe, promises of a game that you could sink hundreds of hours into and still have barely scratched the surface...but even in that first trailer, there was a problem. Martin O'Donnell, the genius behind the Halo soundtracks and the man who made the entire Destiny soundtrack as well, had his own work cut from that preliminary trailer and replaced by some of Activision's own music.

This...was the beginning of Bungie's downfall.

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It's clear that after that trailer, things got progressively worse at Bungie. It's possible Activision continued to play with creative control over the game whenever they saw fit to and our first truly public clue to this was when Joseph Staten, the head writer and one of Bungie's founders, left the studio. Why? Well it's clear that the sci-fi epic that was Destiny's story was gone, cut to pieces. Even now, it's unclear as to how much of the story we have today was Staten's work. Perhaps none of it is and it's been entirely redone. But it's clearly nowhere near the quality we all expected from Destiny upon release.

Various other employees also left, most in smaller roles, but all played some crucial part in the games development; cinematographers, writers, animators...all leaving Bungie mysteriously throughout 2014, some even crawling over to 343i to continue working on the Halo franchise. Even now, we know that Joseph Staten is back with Microsoft and is soon to release a new Halo novel.

The once great game that Destiny was, slowly descended into the shadows of corruption and mystery, not that anyone knew at the time. Even just before launch, people were blind to all of Bungie's shady moves in the past year or so. Of course, it's easy to point out Activision as the evil guy in all of this but, despite what the Bungie fanboys may tell you, there's one piece of evidence that proves Bungie is just as bad as they are: The Martin O'Donnell court case.

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After Destiny was released, many fans were disappointed to not see the soundtrack released to the general public on things like iTunes like the Halo soundtracks were. It was odd knowing Marty's past for it NOT to be released, but this was just the beginning. Almost every time any Destiny trailers were released, Marty would put up tweets specifically telling fans "that's not my music in the trailer". Obviously, no-one seemed to blink an eye as to why these tweets were made but clearly, Bungie did.

Only now do we realise that Marty was trying to break free from the machine. Bungie and Activision were taking his creative freedom and crushing it with an iron boot. He tried to reach out to the fans, tell them that his work was not on display like it should have been, and he was punished for it. He was sacked, quite abruptly, and not to mention, Bungie illegally stole money from him through this. Unpaid wages...profit cuts...etc. Despite Bungie's sugar-coating of the matter, Marty had not left on 'good terms'...he was kicked out of a studio that was slowly turning into a developer you love to hate. Not only that, but Marty has said that the ordeal has destroyed his passion for making music.

Although, it didn't turn out too bad for Marty in the end. The court was able to give Marty all the money he's rightfully owed, and Marty will still be receiving a cut of Destiny's profits until his contract was meant to expire sometime near the end of the Destiny franchise. And what do we take from this? Bungie is different. Activision may be the boogey man, but Bungie are their lapdogs. The CEO is all about the money and very little concern is given to the community. Bungie Day has practically disappeared, their brave ideals of 'a new world' and 'world domination' are gone. Now, they're just another copy and paste company brainlessly puking out products for the big snobs in their ivory towers (yeah, looking at you Activision)

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Don't know why I felt the need to do a rant at 2AM, but hope you enjoyed anyhow. Just trying to spread some truth