While it seems Bungie is already working out the details for “Destiny 3” - or whatever the follow-up to Destiny 2 ends up being - fans of the series will need to “wait a little longer” before the developer reveals anything. Originally released in 2017, Destiny 2 recently entered its third year with the launch of the Destiny 2: Shadowkeep expansion.
If Destiny 2 follows the pattern of the first Destiny game’s expansion schedule, it’s entirely possible that its third year could be its last. Shadowkeep arrived with a smaller content pool than Destiny 2’s first major expansion, Destiny 2: Forsaken, providing something more akin to Destiny 1’s Rise of Iron expansion. Bungie’s developers have made the Rise of Iron comparison themselves, and Rise of Iron kicked off the original Destiny’s third and final year, so all signs point to a 2020 launch of Destiny 2’s successor.
Bungie Communications Director David ‘DeeJ’ Dague recently spoke to PCGamesN about the future of the franchise. When asked how long Bungie will continue updating Destiny 2 before moving on to a sequel, Dague said he didn’t have anything to announce about “the next bold moves we’ll make in the franchise,” instead saying the team is currently focused on delivering on the game-world-changing seasons and evolving story of year three. “We’ll have a lot of cool stuff to say on that later,” Dague continued, “but I’m afraid that moment will have to wait a little bit longer.”
Dague’s wording does at least seem to indicate Bungie is making plans for what’s next, but the big question in the air right now is whether or not that next step will actually be Destiny 3. After the Bungie-Activision split in early 2019, Bungie’s outlook on what Destiny could become seemed to shift. The developer finally began calling Destiny 2 an MMO rather than a “shared-world shooter,” and Bungie introduced the idea of Destiny 2 as a “single, evolving world” that adapts as time goes on. Fans have seen the first steps of this process with Shadowkeep and the Season of Dawn, and it looks like content will roll out on more often and in smaller chunks. If Bungie plans to continue this strategy, it might make more sense to create one big Destiny game rather than a traditional sequel, perhaps combining Destiny 1 and 2 into a World of Warcraft-like MMO. This new “Just-Destiny” MMO could then that receive occasional big expansions like Shadowkeep and Forsaken alongside regular, seasonal updates (and the bugs those seasonal updates bring).
If Bungie wants releasing a brand new game as a sort of clean-slate Destiny MMO, there’s another big hint besides Destiny 1’s content cycle that Destiny 3 could come at the end of Destiny 2’s third year. Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s recently unveiled Xbox Series X both have holiday 2020 launch windows, which line up closely with the end of Destiny 2’s year three. This makes it the perfect time for a big leap forward for the Destiny franchise, built from scratch for a the next console generation’s more powerful hardware. Destiny 1 had some overlap between the Xbox 360/PS3 generation and current-gen consoles, however, so it’s also possible the PS5 and Series X’s launches won’t have any effect on Destiny 3’s release window.
Next: Destiny 2 Shadowkeep Delay Shows Bungie’s Leadership Will Be Different
Destiny 2’s latest expansion, Shadowkeep, released on October 1, 2019 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Source: PCGamesN
