There’s a timeline somewhere where a Destiny dating sim could have been released. That’s according to two former Bungie staff who recalled pitching such an idea internally at the company. Former community manager Liana Ruppert was first to share the anecdote. “Fun fact, the team actually made one,” said Ruppert on X when asked about a Destiny dating sim, “but leadership [gave a] very ‘Hard No’ that nobody wanted romance or silliness. Very Dream Daddy inspired lmao. It was fun getting to be a small part of it.”
Robert Brookes, a former Bungie senior narrative designer, later added to the conversation, revealing that they were part of the team that actually pitched it. According to Brookes, the Destiny dating sim idea came from a “Carnival” game jam-like event hosted internally at Bungie where teams were given one week to create prototypes which might later be turned into games.
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“It was never a full-fledged project,” Brookes wrote on X. “That said, we did pitch that as a full-fledged project every year.” And the pitch was apparently very detailed, down to having its own pitch deck. “Myself and two other narrative team members (who both came from romance game design) had an entire pitch deck for one, complete with costs and real hard metrics on returns. Never got anywhere.”
It’s hard to say how the Destiny community would’ve reacted to such a game if it ever came out. As much as love as millions have shown Destiny 2 when they poured in to say goodbye recently, after the release of its final update, they may not have been as enthusiastic about the idea of several team members being sequestered to work on a romance side project.
More and more details about the game’s development are being revealed by former members of staff. Ruppert herself recently dropped a bombshell saying Bungie was very closing to shutting down ahead of the Sony acquisition, which was seen at the time as a lifeline for the struggling studio.