Destiny 2 PC interview | Bungie talk esports, cheating and if the original Destiny story will ever come to PC

After over a month of waiting, watching console players get their mitts on everything Destiny 2 has to offer, PC players have finally got their hands on Destiny 2. It's up to play now, after unlocking earlier today. To find out all about it, we spoke to two of the team members from who have been working to bring Destiny 2 to the PC: David Shaw, PC project lead at Bungie, and Thomas Gawrys, lead engineer at Vicarious Visions. In a short Q&A, we went over everything from cheating in Destiny 2, to whether PC players will ever see Destiny's story coming to the platform.

What was the biggest challenge in bringing Destiny 2 to PC?

Shaw - I think the biggest challenge, the thing we really had to make sure we landed super well, was the gameplay experience. Destiny was a fairly mature game on the console, with the controller as its primary control mechanism, and so really one of the biggest efforts we made was in making sure that the game felt like a great PC shooter, but also felt like Destiny, and so that was absolutely one of our biggest challenges. 

What sort of things did you learn from the beta earlier this year, and what have you changed with regards to that?

Gawrys - The biggest thing that was great about the beta was just seeing all the different configurations that people were playing on on their PC, and it was just interesting to see how well everything worked out for us. We definitely saw some interesting feedback across a lot of different angles, some stuff that lined up with what we were already planning to work on, related to things like social features or text chat. 

Shaw - Like Thomas said, the biggest thing was that there's only so much you can do with a compatibility lab, where you've got 30 or maybe even 50 different configurations of machines, but having a huge number of machines that are running different hardware, different software: having exposure to that was a huge boon for us. 

Could you go into why Destiny 2 is coming to Battle.net, a historically Blizzard-only platform?

Shaw - The truth of the matter is that Bungie folks were huge Blizzard fans, we have a tonne of folks here that have played Blizzard games their whole life, me personally, I still have my Diablo 2 Collector's Edition sitting on a shelf at home, and so when the opportunity came to work on this pretty unique platform we looked at it and we think there's a common ground between how Blizzard makes their games and what they think is important. the quality of the world, the quality of the experiences, the way they believe their players are first, it mirrors our own values. 

Something that’s come up recently is new social features on Battle.net, is Destiny 2 on PC planning to use any of those?

Shaw - We're not supporting any of that at launch, but it's something that we certainly will look at, and try to understand where it could fit in with Destiny 2 on PC. 

Do you see Destiny 2 on PC as being the same gameplay experience as on console?

Gawrys - That's the ideal, we want the same game across all platforms, and obviously there's some differences with input using mouse and keyboard, you lose some of that tactile feeling when you've not got rumble on your controller and in how the controller feels when gaming. There's a little bit of a different feel there, but the idea is the value behind it, and the goal is to make it the same.

Shaw - The content is the same, the playstyle should be unique to that platform. 

Will we see Destiny 2 on PC diverge from Destiny 2 on console in terms of balancing for a competitive mouse and keyboard audience?

Gawrys - So, we had this phrase that we used internally as a north star:  it's a one design build. It basically means that we've got one game, the intent is to keep it as similar as possible, and we even made decisions about the game that are like "Well this decision would only work on PC" and so we try to make decisions that work on both. That said, we did build in the capability to tune separately as needed, so if it's the right thing for the game, we have that potential. 

Will events in Destiny 2 be identical and be on same schedule between PC and console?

Gawrys - Obviously we're launching  at a different timeline than console, so when we first launch we're going to have roughly a week or so for trials and raid, just to give people an equal chance to level up so it's not a race to grind and get ready for those things, but then, y'know, after that, everything will wind up and we plan to launch all of our content day and date on all of our platforms.

How do your approaches to things like hacking and cheating have to change when porting Destiny 2 to the PC?

Shaw - One of the things you kinda get for free on the console platforms is they go out of their way to make themselves as secure as they can be, and so there's some thing you can, if not take for granted, you can maybe focus on a little bit less, with PC you have to pretty much expect that anyone who downloads your game can go and try to do interesting and nefarious things to it, so you have to take it seriously. We have a dedicated team that's working on that, and they will continue to keep an eye on it and keep working on things even after we launch. 

Is it possible that we'll ever see the original Destiny's story come to PC in the future?

Shaw -  My default answer would be no.We have no plans to announce that, nothing that I would expect to see.

Given the possibility to play with a mouse and keyboard, would PC be the platform of choice if Destiny 2 were ever to move towards esports?

Gawrys - We love seeing that people spin off their own tournaments and different stuff like that for competitive gaming we don't have anything to announce right now about esports.

Shaw - I think we kinda look at it as that we didn't try to go build an esports, it's nothing we're opposed to in any way, but I think the esports community would decide what the best way to play it is. From our perspective, however people want to play, I mean a lot of the input we put on PC was about choice, letting people play the way they want to play on the hardware they want to play on. 

Would you be looking at changing the aim assist on PC if player feedback calls for it to be improved, lessened, or otherwise changed?

Shaw - So, we heard feedback on that and we're definitely listening and we'll continue to listen going forward, but right now we are planning to ship the controller similar to how it was in the beta. We think our controls on the controller are pretty good, and people seem to like them, and we think that the PC players should have the ability to play that way if that's their choice.

Is it possible that you might change that in the future depending on how the community feels about it?

Shaw - I would be speculating, I can't really say what we might or might not do.We're definitely going to listen to feedback, we can commit to that. What we will or won't change, that I can't say with any confidence.

Going forward do you see PC as the home of Destiny 2 and Destiny as a franchise, given the capabilities?

Gawrys - We just want people to play wherever their friends are. That's what this whole platform is about, for PC it's about enabling PC gamers that aren't on console with their friends, they're playing PC games,which is why we want to enable different kinds of people to play together. Shaw - Destiny is best played where your friends are, it's a great game solo, but also there are activities that are absolutely intended to be played with others, and we think that whichever platform that is for you is the best one. 

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Does that mean that in the future, if there's to be more Destiny games, the focus would be on trying to ensure that as many platforms will get access to the game as possible?

Shaw - When we select platforms that we're going to support, there's a whole lot of information that feeds into that decision, we certainly want to bring Destiny to as many people as possible without making any specific statements about one platform or another.

Gawrys - One thing we think about PC is that we've heard from fans for a long time that they really want this and felt like it was a good fit, and we wanted to do it right, so we took the correct time, planning, the investment to do as best we could, and that's how we'll treat anything that comes up that seems to be that big of a deal in the future. If it fits, it makes sense, and we have the right reasons to go after it, we'll always consider those things.