"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." (via Bungie.net)
Bungie's new leadership duo laid out the "next chapter of Bungie" today in a blog post with an accompanying video. The big news is that Bungie has essentially uncanceled Destiny 2, or will at least go the lengths to finally undo its greatest mistake: vaulting a bunch of raids and multiple of its story campaigns. Funnily enough, that work has already begun on the community side with a mod project that makes vaulted content playable through an offline build of Destiny.
I got off the Destiny train a long time ago, but its "downward spiral," as PCG's Lincoln Carpenter put it in May, was a series of unforced errors that really began with the widely-hated decision to "sunset" (delete) gigantic chunks of the game in the name of "dealing with bloat." I still remember when a friend told me that the Destiny 2 campaign, I thing I bought and enjoyed in 2017, was simply gone.
The news comes just three months after a brutal round of layoffs that affected hundreds of Bungie devs, essentially disbanding the Destiny 2 team. It's unclear if the studio will attempt to rehire the talent it shed with the shortsighted decision to call it quits on Destiny, but at least what's left of Bungie understands that it has lost whatever goodwill it had left, and will need to slowly rebuild trust.
On the Marathon side, Bungie reinforced that the extraction shooter is undergoing its own transformation with a permanent PvE mode and social space coming in December. To me, this also serves as a proof of life: Marathon isn't shutting down in the immediate future.
