It's no secret that Bungie's mammoth shooter, Destiny 2, the game that used to be one of the exemplary models for other publishers on how to build a live service game, has been struggling. Players know it, people who follow games but don't play Destiny 2 know it, and of course, Bungie knows it. However, in a recent interview with IGN, game director Tyson Green and core creative director Ben Wommack spoke about how they believe they can build a strong future for the game, starting with Destiny 2: Renegades.
Green was up front with what he believes happened following the conclusion of The Final Shape. While the expansion was, overall, a well-received ending to a decade-long saga, the drop-off in players that followed wasn't exactly part of the plan, and the release of Destiny 2's last expansion, Edge of Fate, didn't help bring players back.
"The Final Shape brought things to a crescendo, where it's like a fantastic ending that tied off a lot of threads," said Green. "People were pleased and satisfied with what they played, and then the big [downwards] spike in population [came after]. That happened because we ended the saga. So you get what you pay for, right?"
"That wasn't the plan from the business perspective. We still want to keep making Destiny; we still have many stories to tell in this universe. There are still lots of things to do, and we have to keep building the game. Unfortunately, it was not gracefully managed, but we had to try something."
Continuing on about the Edge of Fate expansion, Green said, "We looked at the problem we had [after The Final Shape], and we said, 'We think there's a route here,' which is leaning into more systems of pursuit, getting new tiers of gear, armor sets, and power progression, and things like challenge customization. These things that can allow a core audience of players to really say, like, 'I'm really gonna take this game and put it through its paces, and get good rewards for it.'"
"It sounds great on paper, but it didn't work. I think we've been taught a bunch of hard lessons about what our players want, and there are really two kinds of live games: those that listen to the players and respond, and those that don't. And we don't want to be a dead live game, we want to keep building Destiny. So we're listening to our players, and what our players are telling us is that they don't want to chase a simple number that goes up, they want real rewards."
According to Green and Wommack, the listening and adapting to what their players are asking for begins with Destiny 2's upcoming Star Wars-inspired expansion, Renegades, which is releasing on December 2, 2025.
The studio showcased the expansion in more detail earlier this week ahead of its upcoming launch, showing off new elements of the game, including the syndicates, new weapons like the Blasters, and the lightsaber-inspired Praxic Blades. According to Wommack, elements like the Praxic Blade are a sign of Bungie pushing outside its "usual boundaries" for Destiny 2, while Green affirms that Renegades is "still fundamentally a Destiny expansion."
"When you're making something new, you often have a bunch of conventions and boundaries that you have to consider, especially for games that have been around for a long time like Destiny," said Wommack. "It's tempting to stick to those conventions as being the boundaries of the rules, but the truth is that you need to re-examine all of them every single time when trying to really create something special and make a splash. This is especially true when working with Lucasfilm."
"We looked at how we made the sandbox stuff we've done, we now have blaster weapons that will stay with us going forward, seeing how the Praxic Blade turned out, and we have the various new syndicates that turned out well. There are things that we definitely wouldn't have done, but we had to accept and push past those usual boundaries to do these things, and as long as it's still fun and people are responding to it, the feel is there, then it's the right decision."
It's good to hear that directors like Green and Wommack feel confident in their thinking with how they are trying to chart Destiny 2's path forward, but how players respond to Renegades when it arrives in a few days will be a turning point for the franchise. Even if it's a massive success, there's still an argument to be made that Bungie would be better off moving on from Destiny 2, to try and move the series forward in a new way.
Perhaps that's why we're seeing rumors appear about Bungie working on Destiny 3, because the studio is aware that, after over a decade of Destiny since its release in 2014, and nearly a decade of Destiny 2 being the face of the series, it's time to move on to something new. Renegades being a success along the way would definitely be a nice boost for the company, but considering how much the game has been struggling, and considering all the internal problems Bungie has, even with its non-Destiny titles, a fresh start, or at least an attempt at one, feels inevitable.
At least it sounds like Bungie is open to trying for one.
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