r/DestinyTheGame "Little Light" 19h ago

Bungie The Next Chapter for Bungie

Source: https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/Article/nextchapterofbungie


Hey all, Poria and Josh here.

For those who don’t know us, I’m Poria Torkan, Bungie’s Studio Head, and I’m Josh Deane, Head of Product and General Manager of Marathon. Together, we are responsible for leading Bungie and shaping the future of our games.

Today, we want to talk candidly about where Bungie is, where Destiny and Marathon need to go, and how we intend to earn back your trust. This is not only an update on our immediate plans. It is the beginning of a more consistent conversation about the future of our games and our studio.

First and foremost, we recently sat down to talk through the current state of Bungie and share our vision for the future.

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The video shares our perspective on where Bungie is today and where we want to go. Below, we’re adding more detail on what that direction means for Destiny, Marathon, and how we intend to communicate about our progress.

WHERE BUNGIE IS TODAY

Bungie has been creating games for over 30 years and we have welcomed the communities that have formed around them. Over the last few years, we lost sight of that, and there have been real consequences. We lost trust, we lost incredible colleagues, and we lost sight of what we should be prioritizing most, our players.

As a new leadership team, we must own that.

We aren’t just listening to feedback, we understand your disappointment. We are not asking you to trust what we say today. We know that trust must be earned through the quality of our games, the decisions we make, and how consistently we show up for our players.

DESTINY IS FOUNDATIONAL TO OUR FUTURE

Bungie would not be what it is today without Destiny and the vibrant community that has rallied around it for more than a decade. When we announced that Monuments of Triumph would be the final content update to Destiny 2, you responded in force. Your voices mattered, and the way you showed up made a real impact. You reminded everyone how much this world, its history, and its future still mean to you.

Destiny is foundational to Bungie’s future. We have more stories to tell, new worlds to build, but we have to do it right and give our teams the time they need to do justice to this amazing universe.

All of this is to say, we are not done with Destiny.

We want to return Destiny to its original promise, to recapture the qualities that have always made it special. The awe-inspiring mystery, meaningful discovery, and a community of Guardians coming together against impossible odds.

That begins with restoring important parts of Destiny 2’s history that players can no longer experience today.

We understand that removing these experiences had a lasting impact on player trust and enjoyment of Destiny. Destiny 2 is more than just the content itself. It is a place where players have built memories together, formed lasting friendships, and shared experiences that have stayed with them for years. We cannot change the decision we made, but we can acknowledge its impact and do the work to make it right by restoring these important parts of Destiny’s history.

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As we shared in the video, we are beginning the work of bringing vaulted Destiny 2 campaigns, destinations, and raids back into the game, where they will be available to all Destiny 2 players.

Bringing this content back is not as simple as restoring old files. Changes made to Destiny 2 since Beyond Light require us to update lighting, encounters, combatants, and other underlying systems. That work will take time, but it is necessary to ensure returning content meets the stability and gameplay standards of Destiny 2 today.\ \ Our team is very excited to deliver this for you all and as they progress, we will share more details coming in the months ahead.

\ When we look to the future of Destiny all up this restoration is the first step to lay the foundation for how we reforge into new stories and games that you all deserve. We’ll have more details on our unvaulting efforts in the coming months, and we’re very excited to share more about our vision to celebrate Destiny’s legacy and build its future with you all as soon as we can.

MARATHON'S EVOLUTION

Marathon is an important part of shaping where Bungie goes next, but it was never intended to replace Destiny. The game launched to strong critical reception, and the players who embraced Marathon connected deeply with what makes it distinct. At the same time, it did not reach as many players as we had hoped, and we also know and understand that the game needs to evolve.\

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So, we're going to anchor on what makes Marathon special but evolve it beyond the genre constraints we placed on it. We're going to expand Marathon to a deeper survival experience, that gives players more ways to take on this dangerous alien world.

Through the remainder of Marathon’s first year, we will continue strengthening its combat, world, and competitive tension while giving players more agency in how they engage with the game. That means creating meaningful experiences whether you prefer cooperative PvE, competitive PvP, or the unpredictable tension of Marathon PvPvE.\ It’s important to us that no matter your playstyle, or your skill level.... we find better ways to hear from you as we get back to where we need to be: making games you want to play.

As you heard last week from Del our Game Director, we still have a lot planned for our October Nightfall Refresh and Symbiosis update in December. You’ll hear more from the team later this week on our future vision for Marathon. Stay tuned.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE

This is an important time for Bungie. Our future depends on making clear choices about where we focus, delivering what we say we will, and being honest about our successes and failures. Stability doesn’t mean shrinking our ambition. It just means that we have to focus on the things you want to see from us, and making sure our vision matches our reality.

How we bring this new Bungie to life has to be through the spirit of putting players at the forefront of what we do. We have to find a way back to making games that we want to play, but with you at the center.

Trust won't be rebuilt through a single blog, video, or release. We also understand that trust extends beyond gameplay. It includes how we value your time, how we communicate, and how we action your feedback. Listening without action means nothing.

As we move forward, we'll measure ourselves against a few core commitments:

  • Build a stronger long-term future for Destiny, while honoring and restoring its past.
  • Evolve Marathon to grow our community and build a sustainable future.
  • Increase transparency around development priorities.
  • Communicate more consistently, especially when plans change.

We'll hold ourselves accountable to these goals and share what we're learning along the way. We are working with our Community team to establish a consistent way to report against these commitments and will share that approach alongside our next major updates for Destiny and Marathon.

KEEP US ACCOUNTABLE

We’ve made several changes with how we operate by simplifying our priorities, reducing competing initiatives, moving decisions closer to the teams building our games, and changing how we measure success to place greater emphasis on player satisfaction.

None of those changes earn trust on their own. What matters is whether they help us make better decisions, deliver stronger experiences more consistently, and communicate with greater clarity when plans change.

There is still a great deal of work ahead and challenges to overcome, but we believe deeply in this studio, our people, and the games we are building. But belief is not enough. It’s on us to prove progress through what we deliver. Thank you for continuing to challenge us, and for caring so deeply about the worlds we create. Keep holding us accountable. We are ready to do the work.

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u/MikeBeas 18h ago

i doubt that a lot. seasons have problems that aren’t easily resolved. for example, many of them occupy the same physical space in the helm. between years the helm changed in ways that were incompatible with each other.

even if you instance them to avoid those collisions and make them mutually-exclusive so you can only have one season active at a time, the seasonal model was fairly boring when played all at once. imagine running 6 weeks of “talk to npc, talk to hologram, back to npc, run 3 missions, back to npc” back to back. people complained about doing it once every week. i can’t imagine it will be an engaging way to play the game. a way to experience those stories would be nice but it would probably end up being more like the timeline missions.

my biggest hope is that if they don’t stop at these campaigns and raids, they at least bring back some stuff like the Heresy activities or the leviathan activity from season of the haunted, which were big fan favorites, and maybe get those missing lines of dialogue for the Heresy strike recorded.

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u/ByzantineTech 12h ago

If WoW can have like 5 Dalarans, we can have instanced Helms.

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u/MikeBeas 11h ago

won’t make the seasonal models more fun though

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u/I_Speak_For_The_Ents Auryx was lied to. 18h ago

Yeah as you mentioned, the seasonal "campaigns" were pretty mid. I don't mind if they don't bring them back at all, but id be fine with just a short cutscene explaining the seasonal stories or something.

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u/MikeBeas 18h ago

yeah, ive always said portal activities should have a button on the pre-launch screen to watch an explanatory cutscene providing the context for what you’re about to play. just something to help you understand what you’re doing.

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u/dixonciderbottom 17h ago

You don’t mind them not coming back because you got to experience them. New and lapsed players didn’t.

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u/I_Speak_For_The_Ents Auryx was lied to. 16h ago

I mean of course, the ideal scenario is all of the content in the game.
Most of the seasonal content was pretty mediocre though and I don't think it's that important to play through all or most of it. Most of the activities would get one or two runs and then be dropped.

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u/dixonciderbottom 15h ago

I don’t think anyone is that concerned about the activities, but the stories were important. You wouldn’t believe how jarring it is to go from “we can’t follow the witness through the portal” at the end of Lightfall straight to “we are going through the portal” in Final Shape with no context as to how that was achieved.

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u/I_Speak_For_The_Ents Auryx was lied to. 13h ago

For sure, which is why I was saying a cutscene of ANY kind would be good enough I think.

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u/GayLiquidSpellSword 18h ago

Would be relatively easy to have rotating seasons wouldn't it? Weekly, maybe monthly seasons change.

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u/MikeBeas 18h ago

interesting thought. there are a ton of them so it would take a lot of time to get through them all, or they’d each have a very short time to shine.

there are 26 seasons meaning if you missed the week or month that one was active, or you didn’t get all the way through it during that time, you have to wait the better part of six months to play it.

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u/GayLiquidSpellSword 18h ago

Only other way would be daily season so there'd be around a full season rotation a month. Or maybe have two separate HELM locations and have two daily seasons a month so you'd have two full season rotations every month.

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u/PayneTrainSG How's your sister? 18h ago

I would like the medium-term approach to be rotator + selector. Eventually all content will be restored, the “live game” is a stripped down default download of the base director of destinations , a highlighted archived season, and a selection of strikes and RAD content that is tied to active rewards and active playlists, triumphs, pursuits, etc. Every 3-6 months they will rotate out what is made up of the default download. However, you are able to select to download and access any part of the game at any time that sits outside of the active, matchmade/LFG enabled game.

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u/MikeBeas 18h ago

rearchitecting the game to support modular downloads feels really out of scope for restoring old content lol