It’s been weeks, but fans are still mourning the end of Destiny 2, which has reached its end of service and even gotten its last hotfix after hundreds of layoffs of the team supporting the game at Bungie. There does not seem to be any way that decision will be reversed, but fans want to know how and why Sony would abandon this historic IP completely.
Nothing has been announced. And even I don’t have any inside information on what’s coming next, which, last I heard, is nothing. But if we are talking about future potential here, I really only see one pathway toward revisiting the Destiny IP any time soon, and I don’t mean the barely-hanging-on Destiny Rising mobile game.
The main request, Destiny 3, is not happening for ages, if ever. Sony has soundly rejected that idea because of risk and sky-high cost. I know there are other Destiny-adjacent games being pitched as potential projects for Bungie, but none have been greenlit, and I don’t know what genre those are even meant to be.
There seems to be one obvious conclusion about how Sony might return to Destiny, and that is a remake of the original Destiny, first released in 2014. The famed “6 out of 10” at launch seemed like it was a borderline failed experiment for Bungie, but through years of additions and changes, it went on to be one of the most successful live games of all time. It spawned not just a sequel, but many, many imitators, most of which flamed out. It took 11 years for Destiny to do the same.
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A Destiny 1 remake is logical for a few reasons:
- Not that a remake is easy, but it is obviously less time-consuming and costly than a full-on sequel. And Sony has remade or remastered every IP it has under the sun at this point, with half a dozen versions of something like The Last of Us series alone. Doing a single game like this does not seem like a stretch.
- Bungie may no longer have the manpower for such a project, given these deep-cut layoffs, but as Sony and other publishers often do, other teams are tasked with these kinds of projects, or can at least offer significant support.
- Much of Destiny 1 has already come to Destiny 2, including locations, strikes and raids. Not all of it, of course, but it’s absolutely a kickstart, to be sure.
- Destiny 2 has offered enough quality-of-life changes to make this revisitation interesting. Not that everything should be carried over, of course. I don’t want to see tier 5, six perk, enhanced weapons over there, but you could say…ledge mantle, or any number of other common-sense additions that Destiny 2 has added since the original.
- Destiny fans are now starving for Destiny content, practically going through withdrawal symptoms. While Destiny 2 is often accused of recycling content, many would love to revisit a full-on second go-round of Destiny 1 beyond the decade-old one that currently exists. The base game, The Dark Below, House of Wolves, The Taken King, Rise of Iron, it’s a decent amount.
- This would not have to be a Destiny 2 replacement. I mean, it couldn’t be. But it could also produce at least some level of live, ongoing content the way we’ve seen with something like Diablo 2: Resurrected. It does not need to be near the scale of D2, or else all the same problems resurface again.
This would sell. A lot. I’m certainly convinced of that. It may be a one-off for many players, but it would be something to bridge the death of Destiny 2 and at least some hope that new Destiny content would arrive in the future, be it a separate type of game or a true sequel. This seems like a no-brainer, but Sony is not one to have all that many brains as of late.
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