Destiny writing team gets another shake up as story creative lead exits
Destiny developer Bungie has farewelled another highly-placed staffer.
Destiny: The Taken King story creative lead CJ Cowan has left Bungie after 13 years with the Seattle developer.
Cowan started at Bungie as a cinematic designer on Halo 3, and has not announced his future plans.
Although he only stepped up as story creative lead in November 2015, around the time of the release of The Taken King, Cowan has been a ket part of Destiny's writing team for many years. According to his LinkedIn profile, he served as the developer's lead story designer on Destiny for over five years before transitioning to story lead in November 2014 when the game released. During this time he was responsible for House of Wolves and The Taken King.
Cowan's departure follows interestingly closely on the arrival of Christopher Schlerf; Bungie would, of course, want to add more faces to its creative team if it anticipated a high profile departure.
A photo posted by CJ Cowan (@thehidingninja) on
Destiny has been in the works for so long that the constant turn over of staff experienced by almost every developer has left the project without many of its early key creatives - and Bungie has even undergone significant executive changeover. This has fed into rumours of difficulties behind the scenes and the experimental evolution of the shared-worlds shooter to provide ripe material for speculation.