With Destiny, Bungie hopes to strike a balance between rewarding players for building up specialized characters and allowing them to stay flexible with their choices at the same time.

While your race and class selections will remain with you for the entirety of your playtime with that specific character, it seems like equipment and ability choices won’t be so permanent. “So when you want to change your mind about something, whether it’s a weapon or whether it’s what abilities you’re using, we let you change the stuff that your character is using and we let you upgrade the stuff that your character is using rather than having to reset your character or throw your character away,” Bungie investment lead Tyson Green recently told EuroGamer.

He likened Destiny’s upgrade system to that of Call of Duty’s Prestige mechanic, mentioning that while players enjoy the freedom of choice, they also crave that sense of distinction that comes with a high level of investment in a certain character. “I think Call of Duty is really interesting in this respect because they have the prestige system,” Green said. “You might say, ‘Why would anybody reset their character and throw all of their guns away?’ The answer is people actually like that. People enjoy this, so let’s build a good system that lets them do that, that doesn’t make them throw their character away.”

In Destiny, there are three upgrade categories; weapons, armor and focus. While weapons and armor are fairly self explanatory, Green describes focus as a thematic specialization that includes your grenade abilities, super attacks, and passive abilities. However, because these three categories of customization can be upgraded independently, it should allow players to come up with some creative character builds, like a Warlock sniper that uses heavy armor, for example.

Green also mentioned that while weapons, armor, and focus earn XP at the same rate, it’s possible to level up one category faster than the other using equipment attributes or ability modifiers. Weapons can also be specifically tuned to better fit certain situations or game modes.

Head on over to EuroGamer’s report to learn more about what Green had to say about the three character classes of Destiny. You can also read up on a few more of the game’s RPG elements, including loot drops and high-difficulty encounters, in an earlier report.

Destiny launches on the Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 September 9, 2014.