While there might be plenty of excitement regarding the future of the Destiny franchise following Bungie’s announcement that it will slowly bring back vaulted content into Destiny 2, the company has now said that fans shouldn’t expect any major announcement at the upcoming The Game Awards. In a new blog post, the studio spoke about its plans for the future, and the fact that it still has plenty of things it needs to figure out.
Head of product Josh Deane has confirmed that Bungie is currently in the pre-production phase of its long-term content unvaulting plans. The studio is specifically targeting content from campaigns, strikes, and raids to be brought back, along with the Menagerie and all of its activities. After this, the studio is looking at other things it could bring along as stretch goals, like more PvP maps and updates to raids and their associated weapons. And finally, Bungie might look at how it can improve the New Light experience, and we could even see things like seasonal story missions and their associated hubs return.
As for the timeline, Deane has said that the current timeline indicates that pre-production and the proof-of-concept stage will end by February, following which the full-blown production will kick off. All in all, the studio expects it to be completed in around 12 months from the first announcement.
“I think before we close it’s important to know that this is a true reset moment for Bungie, Marathon, and Destiny. We also know time isn’t our friend; we’re playing from behind with the cards we have and I’m sure we’ll have to take more punches and make some hard decisions along the way,” Deane explained. After discussing how the company has to work on its ongoing projects with different constraints and the need to allocate resources to them in appropriate ways, he went on to say that fans shouldn’t expect to see the Destiny logo randomly show up during The Game Awards.
“Knowing we are early in incubating our future and actively working on projects to bridge us to that new home, don’t expect us to make a Destiny announcement at the TGA’s this year, or to randomly drop a logo that sets the world on fire right away.”
In the meantime, Deane has also spoken about what it means for Bungie to be “not done with Destiny”. There are seemingly three things planned for the game: a “Celebration” beyond Moment of Triumph, “Legacy”, which might indicate plans to bring Destiny 1 content over to Destiny 2, and a “Redacted” thing. The last one wasn’t really detailed, with Deane simply offering a tease by saying, “Launch Ventrilo Message: ‘We’re back’”. Each of the three Destiny-related projects will get their own progress bars, with “Celebration” and “Legacy” getting theirs in February.
On the subject of “Redacted”, Destiny 2’s communications manager Dylan Gafner said that the “[I] always love when we use that.” He went on to reassert the fact that Bungie wants to be more transparent with its fans, and the progress bars for its projects are meant to be promises “we intend to keep”.
