The most unexpected news of the last few months was Bungie’s announcement that it is splitting with Activision, and that it will be retaining control of the Destiny IP. Creatively, this was the best possible outcome that Bungie and Destiny fans could have hoped for, though of course, it raised several questions about what the future of Bungie and Destiny alike held.
Today, Bungie’s Luke Smith has attempted to address some of those questions in a new update posted on the developer’s website. Thanking Activision, Vicarious Visions, and High Moon Studios, who all assisted Bungie with Destiny, Smith then talked about the franchise’s immediate and long term future.
“Our sincere thanks to the people at Activision who’ve helped bring Destiny to our players, High Moon Studios for their wonderful collaboration on Forsaken, and Vicarious Visions who helped establish a Destiny community on PC, worked with us on Warmind, and who is currently readying their Destiny swan song with content that will appear in the upcoming Season of [Redacted],” wrote Smith.
In the short term, Bungie plans on continuing to support Destiny 2 with a steady stream of content, citing Black Armory, and the feedback it garnered, as what will inform how Bungie approaches this process going forward.
“In the short-term, we’re continuing to build the content we’ve promised for the Annual Pass,” Smith wrote. “We’ve learned a lot from Black Armory that we will apply to future releases, most notably that we’d like the beginning experiences of content drops to be a better point of convergence for the playerbase. In Black Armory, we set the Power requirement for the first forge too high, and that meant it wasn’t a great chance to jump into some new content. We want to find the line between new content that many players can play, and aspirational content for players to progress toward. We’re exploring improvements to catch-up mechanics for players in upcoming seasons.”
In the long term, Smith promised that “the majority” of Bungie is at work “envisioning” future experiences, which I feel may indicate that work on a full fledged Destiny 3 has begun.
“Long-term, Bungie is committed to Destiny,” said Smith. “We created the universe and we hold its future entirely in our hands. The vast majority of the team is hard at work envisioning future experiences, enemies, and ways to play the Guardian you’ve been building since 2014. We’re going to keep doing that.”
Of course, for now, uncertainties abound. But it’s good to see Bungie addressing the obvious elephants in the room, too. Here’s wishing them all the luck.