Bungie is trying something quite bold with upcoming multiplayer shooter Destiny. The game will feature intense side-mission raids that can only be tackled by teams of six players - and those players can't be strangers. The game will only let you play them with people on your friends list, because the challenges you'll face will be so tough you'll need to know you can rely on the people around you.
"It's a bit of a risk," Bungie's Luke Smith admitted to IGN. "Because the activity requires you to have a group of five other friends to play with. The activity is going to take you and your group of five buddies into a place that you've never been. A place that you will return to frequently. And [it will] demand of you things you've never even really been asked to do in a shooter before."
These raids will only become available once you're deep into the game, and close to the level cap of 20. If that sounds low compared to RPGs, don't worry - the level cap applies to your character, but once reached all XP collected is transformed into "motes of light" which can be crafted into even higher levelled weapons and armour.
"We want to set you back out into the world to keep going", Smith explains. "We want to try to align your motivations as the player with the motivations of the character who you've been pushing around this world. So for us I think a bunch of the endgame starts right at level 20."
Destiny is, of course, out on September 9th for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3.