Destiny is infamous for its features that never made it from the planning stage to the final game – or even from one of their conference builds to launch. We already knew that the Cosmodrome was supposed to be much bigger, there were a lot of story elements hastily cut, and so on. What we didn’t know was that Bungie’s knack for changing elements of Destiny before launch even went as far as changing the Guardians’ dance moves.
Dancing is an integral part of interacting with other players in Destiny – so integral, it makes up one quarter of emotive gestures. That being said, it’s incredibly enjoyable getting into a dance party with a room full of other Guardians on the Tower, or dancing your way through one of the game’s Raids.
It’s interesting, then, to learn that Bungie actually drastically changed the dancing animations before Destiny launched. While I’ve never had any problem with the dancing myself, because it makes me laugh every time, some players have cited it as ‘cringeworthy’ and too stiff, among others. Taking a look at Destiny‘s original dancing, we’re treated to a far more fluid experience.
This video was taken from Bungie’s appearance at E3 2013, over a year before the game launched. (watch from 1:58)
This event isn’t particularly newsworthy within itself, but the fact that it comes after Bungie has received incredibly negative reception for excluding multiple elements from the launch version of Destiny gives it relevance.
What’s baffling is the fact that dancing is such a minor thing for Bungie to change. Making the Cosmodrome smaller was due to social reasons and hardware limitations, omitting story elements was supposedly due to their lead writer, Joseph Staten, walking out during development – every change has a reason, be it good or bad.
There could have been plenty going on behind the scenes at the time, but the dancing didn’t look bad to me, so I find it that much funnier that we now have drastically different dance moves after launch.