Destiny E3 Gameplay

It's no secret that MMO-like Destiny represents a huge undertaking an even bigger risk for developer Bungie. After calling it quits on the Halo franchise, they have seemingly put all their eggs in a completely new basket – one that publisher Activision hopes will sustain a multi-billion dollar franchise for the next 10 years.

However, even though Bungie is betting big on Destiny, they never planned on fully "selling" the game before launch. Instead, the developer has tried its best to save the more intriguing elements of Destiny's puzzle for the game's launch in early September.

For example, Bungie has confirmed that Destiny will include six-player raids, but they have shied away from explaining how exactly those will work. Similarly, they have kept endgame talk to a minimum, so as to preserve that ever-important sense of discovery.

Still, with less than a week until the game hits, Bungie's Luke Smith has shared a few additional details about Destiny's raids. He confirms that raid players will have access to unique, hand-crated loot, and that there will be both a 'Normal' and a 'Hard' difficulty available for players to test their mettle. Moreover, Smith reveals that raids will also save players' progress at specific checkpoints, although that progress will reset every week.

 Because we store your progress in a given week, you don't need to clear the activity in one-go.  Your group could simply make your way into the Vault and call it an evening, reconvene later in the week and pick up where you left off...However, your progress for the week is reset each Tuesday at the Weekly Reset.

While it's not much to go off of, thankfully we won't have to wait too long to see for ourselves just how unique Destiny's raids may be. In fact, some gamers have already got their hands on retail copies of the game, although it's unlikely they did so by entirely legal means.

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Even so, the retail copies of Destiny have revealed some interesting, heretofore unknown details about the game, specifically with regards to install sizes. Those who have already pre-loaded a copy of Destiny – on either PS4 or Xbox One – know that the install size for the base game clocks in somewhere around 18GB, but the retail box claims the game's full breadth could reach as high as 40GB.

Of course, this is only a recommendation by Bungie and therefore not an accurate measurement of Destiny's girth. Most games give players a rough estimate as to how much free space they need, but few actually hit that threshold, and especially not at launch. However, with a December expansion already in the works for Destiny, we wouldn't be surprised to see the game's file size reach 30GB+ before the end of the year.

Are you looking forward to learning more about Destiny's raids at launch? Do you think that game install sizes are getting too big?

Destiny releases September 9, 2014 for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

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Source: Bungie, Gamespresso

Follow Anthony on Twitter @ANTaormina for more Destiny updates