In Bungie's new online first-person shooter Destiny, everything levels up. But what happens when you hit the level cap?

During the journey to get there your character, called a Guardian, gains new abilities, and the way these are given to you as you play the game is called "investment". There's even someone in charge of investment at Bungie, and his name is Tyson Green.

Tried and tested role-playing game mechanics are at play here, layered on top of the 30 seconds of fun first-person shooting gameplay loop Bungie is known for. Bungie's Halo games steered clear of a progression system for the most part. All players in Halo's much-loved competitive multiplayer, for example, began each match on a level playing field. Not so in Destiny. In Destiny, improving your character with better equipment, weapons and abilities is the name of the game.

Each of the three classes has access to a focus, a sort of tech tree, which carries your abilities within it. The core ability of all focuses is the super ability. But not all focuses, or super abilites, are available at the start of the game. You must level up to unlock them. The Titan, for example, begins the game with the Striker focus. Its super is called Fist of Havoc, which is a high damage melee AOE attack. But you can also unlock the tanky Defender focus, which is based around the Void Barrier super (like the Bubble Shield from Halo). Destiny will launch with two focuses per class for a total of six, but you'll have to play through your Guardian's progression to unlock them all.

Bungie has carefully planned out how progression should feel in Destiny. Even competitive multiplayer, aka PvP, is tied to it. In Destiny you can't jump into competitive multiplayer as soon as you pop the disc in the drive - a key point of difference with Bungie's Halo. You have to unlock PvP, but once you've done so with one character, all characters tied to your account can play PvP without restriction.

According to Green, you need to play "a couple of hours, tops", to unlock PvP. "And that's only on your first character."

But why force players to play Destiny for a couple of hours before letting them try PvP? According to Green, it's to ensure players have good enough abilities and equipment to compete.

"We found early on that people here in the studio, when they jumped on the game - these were people who were already really familiar with the game mechanics - they would roll a new character, play through the first mission then go right into PvP, and they would just get really beaten up by the other players because they didn't have a super ability yet and they'd only got an auto rifle from the first mission," Green says during a recent visit to Bungie's office.

"And they said, 'this is really awful, this is a terrible experience!' And we said, 'you're right, we have to make sure that doesn't really happen.'

"So when your first character unlocks PvP, you're a little bit further into the game. You've probably done one or two of the campaign missions, probably unlocked a special weapon and your super ability. And then once that's happened we unlock it for all the characters on your account. Once you know how the game works, if you want to take a Hunter into PvP at level three, yeah, we're okay with that. You know what the game is at that point, so that's your decision to make."

Green said he expects most players will agree with Bungie's approach here: "II think most people are going to say, 'I want to have my super ability, I want to have my Golden Gun before I go into a PvP match against other players.'"

The age-old cross-platform play debate While there is currently no cross-platform play between the console versions of Destiny (Sony and Microsoft won't allow it), Bungie is looking at allowing character transfers from within the same console family. "We want it to be so if you're playing on a PS3 when they game comes out, and you get a PS4 for Christmas or something like that, you don't leave your character behind, Green said. That would be a really important experience." The hope is that you'll be able to transfer your Destiny saves from PS3 to PS4 and from Xbox 360 to Xbox One, so you can take the progress you've made on one console to the next.