Destiny engine "state of the art", to last "the next ten years"

Bungie, the developer making Destiny, believes new tech developed for shared world shooter is quite future-proof. Also awesome, but that's to be expected.

Bungie engineering lead Chris Butcher said Destiny's engine is "fully multithreaded for performance on all platforms, both for today and the next ten years" when speaking to press at a preview event, as reported by OXM.

"We have an entirely new graphics engine and a fully featured world builder that gives out artists more expressive power than they've ever had before," he added.

"Over the last four years we have built a truly state of the art engine. It's by design multiplatform; it's highly multithreaded, scales very well to the current generation and the future generation of hardware," senior graphics architect Hao Chen chimed in.

"We have a ton of new features, from our multi resolution terrain systems, to our forests and trees, to rivers and likes, to real time lighting, visibility, lots of cool technology and I could go on and on about them."

Destiny's underlying technology needs to be future-proof; when a contract between Bungie and Activision leaked last year, the two firms planned to release four games and four expansion packs over eight years. That said, it's not unheard of for engines to be used for years and years; Call of Duty is still using a version of the engine it debuted with Call of Duty 2 in 2005, although it has been upgraded and modified heavily.

Destiny was partially revealed over the weekend; reactions have been mixed. It's expected on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 as well as their successors, with a PC release looking unlikely but on the cards. It's not coming this year.