When creating a character in Destiny, three races are available: the Human, the Awoken and the Exo. The humans are as you'd expect - what's left of the human race huddled together inside the last great city on earth under the protection of the Traveller. They're described as "relatable", "tough", and "uncomplicated". Bungie used images of sports stars, such as David Beckham, and action heroes to help define what Destiny's Humans should be.
The Humans.
The Awoken are described as "exotic", "beautiful" and "mysterious". For inspiration Bungie looked at vampires, elves, ghosts and angels.
The Awoken.
The Exo are "sinister", "powerful" and "tireless war machines". For inspiration here Bungie looked at the undead, Halo star Master Chief and the Terminator.
The Exo.
One race, though, didn't make the cut, Bungie said: the noble, bestial and wise Tiger Man.
Then Tiger Man has served his purpose. He has become the bullet shield. That's his role. He is brave and noble and strong and wise.
Destiny's character creation will sound familiar to those who have played MMORPGs in the past. After picking a race you can tweak hair, make-up, accessories and even tattoos. After settling on your look, you're then faced with deciding your character's style of fighting. There are three to choose from: the titan, the hunter and the warlock.
The titan is the "future soldier", inspired by hulking space marines of traditional science fiction. The hunter is a bounty hunter of sorts, inspired by Westerns. Hunters wear cloth and cloaks, with a "cool, collected" feel.
And, finally, the warlock, described as the "space wizard". Bungie spent much time debating the rights and wrongs of having "wizards with guns" in Destiny, before eventually deciding it was okay, and that's because, in Destiny, "guns are like swords".
Warlocks.
In your GDC session you talked about character creation. The impression I get is you want it to be an immediate experience, almost like you pick based on a gut reaction to the options. What is the overriding philosophy behind what you're trying to do there?
Chris Barrett: When we were talking about how that process would work and the choices the players would have, we knew if we gave somebody a choice and then betrayed that choice later down the road, that would be bad. We wanted players to just go on gut. What do they like the look of? What sounds cool to them? And not betray that in any way. We don't want to make something where a character plays very differently, or isn't what they thought what they were getting. That tied in to that process. We want to give people whatever they want to play in that world and not have any negative side effects.
Joe Staten: Making it up front and quick and largely emotional, and nothing that's going to, later down the line, make you feel like you made the wrong choice. You're going to make this gut emotional choice: 'I'm going to look at that robot and I'm going to look at that more exotic space elf and I'm going to look at that human and I like... robot.' It's like, bam. I'm going to be a robot. And there's nothing about being a robot that's going to play any different from the other two.
We want to make it immediate and quick and gut, for sure when it comes to race, and then make sure we don't screw you down the line.
Chris Barrett: We didn't want to give a plus eight bonus or whatever it is, that people are going to be like, 'Oh, I made the wrong choice! I've got to start over.' That always sucks.
