Even if Bungie's upcoming open world sci-fi shooter Destiny doesn't end up living up to all our expectations upon its release, it will at least have served as a fertile source for postcard photos. Since Destiny was officially unveiled last year we've seen literally hundreds of high-definition images showing concept art and screenshots of what the Earth might look like after the collapse of a golden age of technology.

Bungie arrived at E3 2014 with a brand new cinematic trailer for Destiny, which was partially narrated by a friendly AI voiced by Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage. After seeing so many pretty landscapes in the galleries of Destiny images releases, however, many gamers are keen to see more of the actual nuts and bolts of the core gameplay.

There are plenty of opportunities for gamers' attentions to wander during E3, so to grab some of that attention back Bungie has released a beautiful time-lapse video showing the changing skies over various locations in the world of Destiny, as well as 34 huge new screenshots at 7680 x 4320 resolution. Check out the time lapse video above and 1,128,038,400 pixels of sci-fi shooter goodness below.

The screenshots give us our first decent look at Destiny's character creation screen, in which players can tinker with their character's eyes, hair, race, gender and facial structure before hiding every one of these things away under a helmet for the rest of the game. It's the thought that counts.

The screenshots also offer a look inside the Tower, which has been described as "Earth's Camelot" to fit in with Destiny's theme of futuristic knighthood tales. The Tower acts as a hub from which players can plan their next mission and organize their gear, and both a quartermaster and a gunsmith are shown in the screenshots from the Tower's interior. For those wondering whether the game will actually look this good when played on consoles, Geoff Keighley reports that Bungie is aiming for Destiny to run at 1080p and 30fps on Xbox One.

Alongside the fresh batch of environments in the new gallery are stills of players and enemies in combat, using guns, vehicles and special abilities to engage in futuristic battle. Combat is obviously going to be a huge selling point for Destiny, especially for fans of Halo who are eager to see more of the kind of gunplay that they already love, and the demos so far have been very promising. We're looking forward to trying it out first-hand when Destiny beta access arrives in July.

Game Rant E3 2014 Live Coverage

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Destiny will be released on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on September 9th, 2014.