The new DLC, arriving in a few days, could decide not only the future of Destiny 2 but also have a major impact on Bungie itself…

Destiny 2, which once served as a benchmark for other publishers on how to build a successful live-service game, is now going through a rough patch. Everyone knows it, including Bungie. In a recent interview with IGN, game director Tyson Green and creative director Ben Wommack talked about how they hope to build a stronger future for the game, starting with Destiny 2: Renegades. Green explained what he thinks happened after the conclusion of The Final Shape. While the expansion was generally well received as the finale to a decade-long saga, the sharp decline in player numbers was not part of the plan, and the launch of the most recent expansion, Edge of Fate, did not help bring players back.

“The Final Shape brought everything to a climax, it felt like a fantastic ending that tied together a lot of threads. People were happy with what they played, and then there was this sudden drop in player numbers. That happened because we finished the saga. You got what you paid for. From a business perspective, that was not the plan. We still want to keep building Destiny, we have many stories left to tell in this universe. There is still a lot of work to do, and we need to keep evolving the game. Unfortunately, we did not handle that situation gracefully, but we had to try something. We looked at the problem that arose after The Final Shape and thought there was a solution that leaned toward more chase systems, new gear tiers, armor sets, power progression and things like customizable challenges.

These are the kinds of things that let the core players say they will really dig into the game and be rewarded for it. On paper, it sounds great, but it did not work. I think we learned a lot of hard lessons about what our players actually want, and there are really two kinds of live games: the ones that listen to players and respond, and the ones that do not. We do not want to be a dead live-service game, we want to keep growing Destiny. That is why we are listening to our players, and they are telling us that they do not want to chase a simple rising number, they want real rewards,” Green said.

Listening to players and adapting to their needs will begin with the Star Wars-inspired expansion Renegades, releasing for Destiny 2 on December 2. This week, Bungie showcased the expansion in more detail, revealing new elements such as syndicates and new weapons (for example, Blasters and the lightsaber-inspired Praxic Blade). According to Wommack, features like the Praxic Blade show that Bungie has gone beyond Destiny 2‘s usual boundaries, while Green stresses that Renegades is still fundamentally a Destiny expansion.

“When you create something new, there are always a lot of conventions and constraints you have to consider, especially with games that have been around as long as Destiny. It can be tempting to cling to those conventions as if they were hard rules, but the truth is you have to re-examine all of them every time you want to make something truly special and make a big splash. That is especially true when you are working with Lucasfilm. We looked at how we built our sandbox elements, now we have blaster weapons that are here to stay, we saw how the Praxic Blade evolved, and we introduced several new syndicates that came together nicely. There are things we definitely would not have done before, but we had to accept that and push beyond our usual limits to make them happen, and as long as it is fun and people respond to it, and you feel that, then it is the right call,” Wommack said.

It is reassuring to hear that the team feels confident about charting the future of Destiny 2, but player reaction to Renegades will be a turning point for the franchise. Even if the expansion becomes a massive success, the question may still arise whether Bungie would be better off moving on from Destiny 2 and steering the series in a new direction. This may be why rumors are spreading that Bungie is working on Destiny 3, as the studio is well aware that more than a decade has passed since the original Destiny launched in 2014, and that after almost another decade with Destiny 2 as the face of the franchise, it might be time to move toward something new.

The success of Renegades would certainly give the company a much-needed boost, but considering how much the game has been struggling and taking into account Bungie’s internal issues (even with projects outside of Destiny), a fresh start, or at least an attempt at one, seems almost mandatory.

Source: WCCFTech, IGN