Months after ending development on Destiny 2 and laying off most of the development team behind its hit shared-world sci-fi shooter, Bungie is returning to the franchise. In a studio update from Poria Torkan, Bungie’s studio head, and Josh Deane, head of product at Bungie and GM of Marathon, the executives say they’re planning to “return Destiny to its original promise” with major changes.
That includes unvaulting the game’s major content updates and laying the foundation for “new Destiny stories and games.”
The future of Destiny
In a video message from Torkan and Deane, the duo addressed the future of Destiny at Bungie, saying that the studio “wouldn’t be what it is today without it.”
“It’s the foundation upon which everything else rests, and we are absolutely not done with Destiny,” Torkan said. “We have more stories to tell, but we have to do it right and give our teams the time they need to do justice to this amazing universe.”
“We want to return Destiny to its original promise, to return to awe-inspiring mystery, the sense of discovery, and the promise of a community of Guardians rallying together, raging against impossible odds,” added Deane. “But that has to start with restoring what’s rightfully yours. It’s gonna take some time […] but we’re going to commit to unvaulting the Destiny 2 campaigns, the destinations, [and] the raids, that never should have been ripped away to begin with.
“That first step, that restoration, will hopefully lay the foundation for how we reforge new Destiny stories and games that you all deserve and that we want to create.”
It’s unclear what this all means in practice, and if Destiny 3 is now back on the cards in some form, or if Bungie is planning a massive overhaul of the 2017 game. It doesn’t sound like we’ll have answers any time soon, based on the expectations set by Torkan and Deane.
Marathon “needs to evolve”
While Bungie reinvests in Destiny, the studio said it also needs to evolve its extraction shooter Marathon. The plan, according to Torkan and Deane, is to “expand Marathon to a deeper survival experience, that gives players more ways to take on this dangerous alien world.”
“Through the remainder of Marathon’s first year, we will continue strengthening its combat, world, and competitive tension while giving players more agency in how they engage with the game,” Bungie said in a blog post. “That means creating meaningful experiences whether you prefer cooperative PvE, competitive PvP, or the unpredictable tension of Marathon PvPvE.”
Torkan and Deane also address the elephant in the room: namely, that Bungie has made similar commitments and statements like this before.
“We understand the skepticism,” Torkan said. “We spent too much time trying to do too much, and that came at a real cost. Stability does not mean shrinking our ambition. It means focusing on the things that you want to see from us, and making sure that our vision matches our reality.”
To reach that goal, Torkan said that Bungie has “simplified our priorities, we’ve reduced competing initiatives, and we’ve empowered teams to make decisions closer to development. Stability comes from focus.”
Deane promised that the studio is “putting players above everything else,” acknowledging that “we have to find a way back to making games we want to play but with you at the center.”
Bungie’s comments have, thus far, seemingly been received well by players. But after a rough year for longtime Destiny 2 players and concerns about the long-term health of Marathon, it remains to be seen how Bungie will tangibly deliver on its latest promises to serve its player base.