Frontiers,’ ‘Destiny 3’ And The State Of Bungie

In the wake of Bungie’s mass layoffs and transfer of roles to Sony, the future of Destiny 2 and other projects remains unclear. The official line form Bungie is just that nothing about announced plans have changed, which means…two Destiny Episodes, “Frontiers” after that and Marathon in 2025.

Further reporting has dug into what precisely is happening next, and I’ll try to add to that with additional context, content and clarification from conversations with sources familiar with the situation. It is certainly possible things don’t come to pass as plans change. This spans a number of topics, and I may alter bits and pieces of this if further info continues to come in.

Future Destiny Plans

• The larger “content packs,” though not true expansions, will contain familiar elements like new destinations, raids and campaigns, just much smaller scale on the whole. Shadowkeep-ish size, maybe, though not that same format. A goal is developing more replayable, unique activities like The Coil. If we are leaving the system (my speculation) this is where we’d see those new worlds to visit. I am not sure if this is free.
• That will be the main release of a given year (I believe starting with Frontiers launch) and then six months later, there will be another “pack” of smaller content that’s more something along the lines of what we got with Into the Light. This should be free.
• Between these, there may be something akin to current Episodes, though the scale and schedule is not clear.
• Generally speaking, the idea is less sprawling, one-off campaigns and a greater focus on replayable activities, the “hobby” aspects. With the new Frontiers format, there aren’t widespread updates that will hit every facet of the game at once like most expansions used to. It will be less than players are used to, not to say there will not be things worth playing.

Cancelled Projects, Destiny 3

• Some elements of Payback seemed to be shaping up well, the third person adventure spin-off shooter Luke and Mark were doing. I have not heard anyone say it was a flat-out bad idea or terrible in practice, even if the concept sounded like a significant departure for the series.
• Have heard multiple people say that of all projects, Gummybears seems the most promising, the game that is going over to Sony under the new team. It has MOBA and Smash Bros-ish fighting game elements and is supposed to be very fun.
• Destiny 3 was and is considered too big of a risk in the current market. The idea was instead to split up Destiny as an IP into more manageable components. The PvE portion we have now continuing in D2, Payback for an adventure genre expansion, a mobile Destiny game from NetEase and spinning out a separate 3v3 Crucible game channeling Trials. It appears none of this is happening now, alongside Destiny 3 never being in production in the first place. There are no plans to just…shutter Destiny, however, and longterm rebranding remains unclear. But it’s D2 “Frontiers” content only for the indefinite future and Marathon remains The Big Thing right now going into 2025.
• One of Destiny’s biggest ongoing issues is that its playerbase is skewing much older than everyone wants to see, which is worrisome to higher-ups. You want to attract a younger crowd and that was no longer happening, hence the desire for new projects like Marathon and Gummybears. And another reason as to why no Destiny 3.

Bungie Internally

• Everyone does not trust leadership at all but leadership does not really seem to understand that, and some actually believe this week and this situation went well, considering.
• The sheer amount of stuff that was done for the Final Shape was massive, story was rewritten multiple times, missions redesigned multiple times. During the delay they built a colossal amount of new content, Dread, Dual Destiny, the Verity encounter, exotic class items, Ergo Sum, GM Excision. The reason being is that the studio was told the expansion was “make or break” and now they all feel lied to for…obvious reasons. Now the new mantra is that Marathon is make or break for the studio.
• The new player onboarding experience remains bad because the team who did the Cosmodrome/Shaw Han stuff got one crack at it and then essentially no one ever tried anything of significance again. That may change with future plans.
• Bungie is essentially tied to GAAS games forever. Nothing single player. Matter was not a live service FPS so that was part of the reason it was axed.
• Many, many departments have been gutted after layoffs, much of QA is outsourced to people who are unfamiliar with even basics of the game.
• Everything has been divided up into strike teams now, even individual missions and activity modifiers. They form, are dissolved, reform. Speculation is that higher-ups saw that players liked when they called things “strikes teams” so now there are a million strike teams.
• Even with updates, many tools are exhausting to use and everything takes forever. And if Destiny 2 content is still being added there will indeed be more vaulting for technical reasons alone, though whether the “no more expansion content vaulting” rule applies is unclear.

Like when things were bad during the pre-Final Shape layoffs, those that remain are confident in the actual work they’re doing and believe they can make great things. They are hoping for community support as they continue to work, which is different than approving of leadership. I for one am happy to keep cheering them on.

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