Last week, we brought you the news that Bungie and Activision were bringing an end to their eight year partnership. Now, Bungie’s Luke Smith—who is the Destiny Franchise Director—has spoken about the future of Destiny in this weeks “This Week at Bungie” blog.
Smith started by thanking Activision for their work on the Destiny franchise, likewise thanking High Moon Studios and Vicarious Visions for their work on Forsaken and the PC version of Destiny 2 respectively. He went on to discuss the learning curve that Black Armory has been for Bungie, and he also spoke about their ongoing efforts to build the promised content for the Annual Pass:
“In the short-term, we’re continuing to build the content we’ve promised for the Annual Pass. 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.”
Smith went on to assure fans of Bungie’s commitment to Destiny following fans concerns over the $100m investment that Bungie received from NetEase last year to create an all-new game. To help allay fears, Smith revealed that most of the Bungie team is still working on Destiny rather than concentrating on any other project:
“Bungie is committed to Destiny. 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.”
Smith wrapped up his statement with some comments that I read as signs of optimism on his part now that Activision are out of the picture:
“We’re thinking about what it means to be truly independent, what it means to self-publish, and crucially, what Destiny’s future can now look like for our players. When I look ahead and think about Destiny and where it could go, I see a bright future, with roots in a memorable past. Not everything has been lost in the dark corners of time.”
The Destiny franchise, although successful, hasn’t been without its critics during its lifespan having drastically failed to live up to the hype it was given. The original Destiny was particularly lamented for a lack of content at launch, with most people accusing Bungie of holding back content so that they could sell it to us as DLC later, while Destiny 2 was particularly criticised for its heavy implementation of microtransactions. A lot of fans—me included—strongly suspect that those heavily criticised aspects of the franchise have been down to Activision, and although he doesn’t say it, Smith’s statement reads to me like he thinks the same – phrases like “what Destiny’s future can now look like for our players” and “Not everything has been lost” suggest to me that Smith thinks Destiny is in a better place now that its future is entirely in Bungie’s hands.
The next main entry in the Destiny franchise is likely to be a couple of years away yet, but personally I’ve never been more excited to see where Destiny goes from here now that Activision aren’t involved.
As for the here and now, numerous changes are on the way in the upcoming 2.1.4 update, including buffs to “underutilized weapon archetypes” such as Scout Rifles. You can read about all of the changes that are coming by following the link at the start of the article.
Leave a Reply