22 story missions? lol! I think some investors got took if that turns out to be true.

Bungie must need to sell DLC to make up for that $500M cost.

yeah, i'm not liking the sound of that. borderlands had a ridiculous amount of story. if that's true, i may consider canceling my LE. i might wait to read reviews first then decide if i don't want it.

I was able to get Borderlands 2 on release week for $34.99. While I didn't touch the game until months later, I ended up investing nearly 60 hours into the game without touching the DLC.

If I was able to play seven story missions and a strike mission in under three hours, I would assume outside of the competitive multiplayer aspect, I would complete everything there is to do under ten hours. That would put it on par with the campaign times of the Halo games which I guess is par for course for Bungie.

You could say the rest of the money is going towards the competitive multiplayer, but after what I played in the beta, I never want to play that again.

I could see a collective backlash against Bungie come September. Here's everything we know guaranteed so far:

Crucible Maps

Earth:

• Twilight Gap
• Rusted Lands
• Exodus Blue

Moon:

• First Light
• The Anomaly

Mars:

• Bastion
• Firebase Delphi
• Blind Watch

Venus:

• Asylum
• Shores of Time

Mercury:

• The Burning Shrine

All maps include Clash, Skirmish, Rumble, Control, and Salvage game modes.

Crucible Gametypes

• Trials of Osiris (Skirmish): 3v3. You have caught the eye of Osiris. Venture to Mercury and prove yourself as one of the Crucible's elite. Only the worthy may face the Trials of Osiris, for only the worthy are strong enough to endure what is to come. A string of victories will earn great rewards - but lose three times and you're out.
• Iron Banner: 6v6. Champions are born in battle. Prove your might and earn the respect of the Lords of Iron.
• The Grand Arena (Rumble): 3v3. Prove your merit to the New Monarchy in pure combat. You against all. Hone your Light by challenging your fellow Guardians in a fight for survival.
• Dead Sectors (Control): 6v6. Dead Orbit desires new territories to expand their reach beyond the City. Fight for control of strategic battle zones. Hold your ground to gain the momentum.
• Ancient Relics (Salvage): 3v3. The Arachs of Dead Orbit covet rare artifacts. Secure and defend the Relics to claim the secrets of our past.
• Executor's Challenge (Skirmish): 3v3. New Monarchy seeks those capable of reclaiming the frontier, one battle at a time. A focused engagement between two fireteams. Teamwork is your greatest weapon.
• Eternal War (Clash): 6v6. The Future War Cult seeks champions who can face the inexorable future. Form an alliance and fight for supremacy across the ruins of our old worlds.
• Machines of War (Combined Arms): 6v6. Heed the call of the Future War Cult and master war on a massive scale. Coordinate vehicles and your ground game to control the battlefield and rout your opponents.

Social

• The Tower

Exploration Areas

• Venus: Ishtar Sink
• Earth: Old Russia
• Moon: Sea of Storms
• Mars: Meridian Bay

Raids

• Venus: Vault of Glass (levels 27, 30, 31)

Story Missions

Earth:

• A Guardian Rises (level 1)
• Restoration (levels 2, 5)
• The Dark Within (levels 3, 6)
• The Warmind (levels 4, 7)
• The Last Array (levels 5, 8)

Moon:

• The Dark Beyond (levels 6, 9)
• The Sword of Crota (levels 7, 10)
• The World's Grave (levels 7, 10)
• Shrine of Oryx (levels 8, 11)
• Chamber of Night (levels 8, 11)

The Reef (Asteroid Belt):

• The Awoken (level 10)
• A Key Awaits (level 12)

Venus:

• A Stranger's Call (levels 10, 12)
• Ishtar Collective (levels 10, 12)
• The Archive (levels 11, 13)
• Scourge of Winter (levels 11, 13)
• Eye of a Gate Lord (levels 12, 14)

Mars:

• Exclusion Zone (levels 15, 17)
• The Garden's Spire (levels 16, 18)
• A Rising Tide (levels 17, 19)
• The Buried City (levels 17, 19)
• The Black Garden (levels 18, 20)

Story Challenges

• Earth: The Queen's Wrath (Kill Order; level 24)

Strikes

Random:

• Vanguard Eagle launches a random strike at level 18
• Vanguard Viper launches a random strike at level 20
• Vanguard Wolf launches a random strike at level 22
• Vanguard Tiger launches a random strike at level 24

Earth:

• Nightfall: The Devils' Lair (levels 22, 26, 28)
• The Devils' Lair (levels 6, 8)

Moon:

• Nightfall: The Summoning Pits (levels 22, 26, 28)
• The Summoning Pits (level 12)

Venus:

• Nightfall: The Nexus (levels 22, 26, 28)
• Nightfall: Winter's Run (levels 22, 26, 28)
• The Nexus (level 14)
• Winter's Run (level 14)

Mars:

• Nightfall: Cerberus Vae III (levels 22, 26, 28)
• Cerberus Vae III (level 18)
• Dust Palace (level 18)

Note: The "Nightfall" strikes may open up for limited times on rotation, rather than being available at all times.

Items

• 262 helmets
• 178 chest armors
• 217 class items
• 244 gauntletsa
• 181 leg armors
• 169 primary weapons
• 120 special weapons
• 85 heavy weapons
• 74 ships

Note: As with everything here, I'd say the number of items is just what we can expect at a minimum. Also, keep in mind that a large number of these will presumably also have randomized upgrades.

The top comment on the link I provided asked, "Hold on a moment; this can't be the complete list. There has to be more missions on Earth because how else are we going to access King's Watch, the Jovian Complex and the Seraphim Vault? And where does Bunker RAS-2 fit in here? I really doubt that areas that big and closed off don't have any more significance than just explorable areas.

EDIT: For those of you saying it's DLC, I'm skeptical of that. The way the Expansion packs are structured, it looks like there's "Expansions", which seem to add story missions to existing locations (see The Dark Below), whereas "Comets" are the yearly additions that add new content. This doesn't seem to fit either of the ones that were announced, since no expansions were announced to take place in Old Russia.

Furthermore, we have a map of Venus that shows a few more story missions than what DestinyDB is telling us."

So, there might be some more information before September 9th. Either way, for an open-world game, the content that we know of is lacking... especially at a $59.99 SRP.

EDIT (5:00 PM PST): Someone else on Reddit is now claiming 32 (not 22) story missions, 5 (not 4) explorable areas, 23 (not 6) strike missions, and 2 (not 1) raids.

Time has shown that Bungie puts out a quality product and the Beta shows that. You guys canceling orders are crazy. I'll take a short Bungie game over a long drawn out COD or Battlefield any day of the week.

That's where my theory of the free DLC came from. If they were given a deadline and needed more time release part of the game and work on the rest after the release adding bits and bits of content that would complete the game.

Or like you said they'll be greedy bastards and charge double to get the full game.

Except most of the original Bungie staff has either quit or been fired. A decent number of them are currently working with Microsoft right now for the Halo collection.

Here's how I look at it.

I've invested hours of time into first-person, open-world games like Borderlands, Borderlands 2, Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas. All four of those games, even without the purchase of DLC, would take the average gamer around 40-50 hours to go through. Add in the DLC and some of those titles will double that length.

Maybe not first-person, but open world games in general? Even without Grand Theft Auto Online (which sucked), I invested nearly 90 hours into GTAV to get 100% completion. On the opposite side, you have a game like Watch Dogs which one can complete everything in under 24 hours.

Most people, like myself, who play FPS games like Battlefield, COD, and Titanfall do it strictly for the multiplayer. I've invested over 100+ hours into every COD game since Modern Warfare 2 whereas I maybe can beat all the campaigns in under six hours. I've already put in 150+ hours into Titanfall. I've wasted over two months of my life playing Team Fortress 2.

Based upon the content Bungie is providing, we know we'll get under 10 hours of gameplay minus the raid and multiplayer. Since I hated the multiplayer, I can't justify $60 on 10 hours of gameplay before it collects dust or I trade it in.

Destiny didn't cost anywhere close to half a billion dollars, from what Bungie has said. Activision is apparently estimating the cost of ten years of the franchise, or they may be pulling that number out of thin air.

Bungie community manager Urk posted about similar content hysteria on NeoGAF:

Exactly. While some are drooling over the Halo 2 trailer (with no gameplay) and then coming in with some of these comments is pretty entertaining. I've loved what I played so far, and Bungie has a pretty damn good track record. I don't see them fucking this up. This will easily be the best selling game of the year and a game that will have some legs (unlike Titanfall).

at believing the corporation's line. Sure, they're gonna be totally honest about that...

that all translates to me to read if you want to keep playing keep handing over your money

by the way I had fun with the alpha/beta and likely will be purchasing
still the game is very derivative and nowhere as ambitious as we were led to believe
I never cared about anything I was missing in Halo being a Playstation fan and I'd feel the same here if it was only on the MS platform

they may be dishonest about it. but do you honestly think the budget for a video game is going to be $500 million? let's put that in perspective here. that amount would be 2.5 times the cost of the avengers movie. that makes absolutely no sense in the context of real world economics. while i have no doubt that this game may very well cost over $100 million, to think that any game being produced today would cost that much is pretty ridiculous.

For Activision and Bungie to break even on a $500M investment, it would require them to move +/- 9M units... which is doable as its an AAA title across four platforms.

Well GTAV apparently cost $265 million dollars to make. If Activision is including the cost of whatever deal they made with Bungie for that 10 year relationship, plus marketing, plus the actual development cost on Bungie's side, plus maybe on going support costs as an online game across multiple platforms... and a bit of hyperbole on the actual quote from Kotick, it might not be too far fetched.

I have to agree with Deftones and say no way they spent 500 million on one game. I also would like to point out that the source of the 500 million claim is them. So If you going to believe someone when they say they are investing 500 million into a game, and then say that that is over a 10 year period, why only believe the first part?

Based upon Bungie and Activision's contract, the production budget on the game itself sits at $140M+. The other $360M comes from such other factors like advertising and distribution. We also don't know how much Sony spent on Destiny exclusivity, so Activision and Bungie have already began to recoup costs.

Here's a list of the most-expensive games ever produced.

I also would like to point out that I enjoyed the hell out of the beta. I got more fun out of something free and spent more time with it than 90% of the shit that comes out at 60 bucks. I am the first one to say that an open world rpg like fps needs to be at least 40 hours of content. That being said, I spent at least 10-15 hours playing the beta and that does not even count the PVP. If what they have given out is 20% of what is in the game, I will easily spend 40 hours on this with my friends and have a blast doing so.

The PVP is shit. Hell even a game I went 2.0 K/D in felt off. I don't like a game with unbalanced weapons. It is just not fair. I was able to do well by sneaking up behind and using my powers well, and would lose so many strait up fights because I felt my weapon was underpowered. In the call of duty games, when one gun is 10% stronger than others they quickly try to balance it (outside the Remington in black ops 2..lol but like other op guns in these games it would only up my K/D on some maps and usually about 10%) and even if they did not balance it out we ALL HAD THE FUCKING ABILITY to use the Remington if we wanted.

Not in this game. They have a SERIOUS problem with the PVP, and I hope they release some sort of mode that lets everyone be on the same playing field with weapon damage and armor. (they do have a mode that balances out player level, but that should be a no brainer really..why would you want to fight people level 6 when you are 20?)..if they don't it will die a quick death and lobbies will be filled with people with perfect weapons and armor waiting for noobs to come in and get destroyed.

and the source of that Wikipedia article is a cnet article that is sort of vague on what the money is spent on. My understanding is the 500 million is also for publishing for activision on all bungie games for 10 years (which seems to be the case from the same cnet article the wikipedia uses to claim it cost 500 million)

Based upon what Activision spends per year on Call of Duty on advertising and distribution (its over $200M+), I wouldn't be surprised if they were spending even more on Destiny.

There's no way that they're spending $360 million dollars just on marketing and distribution, so that's just someone making a terrible assumption of what the remainder of the $500 million, if accurate, would constitute.

EDIT:

Agreed, Kotick's quote is pretty vague just saying they're making a $500 million dollar bet, but my guess is that figure and the quote is about the Destiny franchise as a whole and the big upfront cost to the rights for the entire franchise and sequels. It also wouldn't surprise me if the initial $140 million budget has been exceeded since the initial agreement.

Either way, I don't think Activision is bullshitting that figure. As a publicly traded company, I imagine someone can continue to hunt and find operating costs and their financials in addition to the contract with Bungie posted if they really wanted to verify.

MW2's marketing and distribution budget started at $200M.

MW2 did not have half the advertising that the current entries have. I would not be surprised if that number is closer to $300M for Destiny.

It won't matter...the game is going to sale 8 million copies first week right guys?

Source? I only see sites quoting an LA Times article that quotes a $40-50 million dollar production budget and a $200 million launch budget.

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov...s/fi-ct-duty18

To me that reads as $200 million total overall, and even then obviously not from an official source. Regardless, i'm more then skeptical that $360 million is going in to marketing but you can believe what you want.

I can't take you seriously.

.

[taking the over on 8M BTW]