‘Destiny’ Players Don’t Need A Roadmap, But Bungie’s General Plan For The Series Would Be Nice – Forbes

“Roadmaps” are all the rage in video games these days, particularly ones in the games-as-service genre that release ongoing paid or free content updates in order to keep players engaged (and spending) in the long term. Sometimes these work out well. Destiny’s have been pretty accurate as of late, for instance. Sometimes they spell disaster, like with Anthem’s initial roadmap that had about 90% of its offerings delayed as that game struggles to find its footing.

Destiny is in kind of a weird spot right now. The only concrete news about the game lately has been a number of high-profile figures leaving Bungie to go work elsewhere. While appearing strange, it’s not necessarily a negative indicator, as this is an industry where people job-hop after their contracts are up or they get bonuses frequently. But it has worried some fans that Destiny is sailing into an unknown era without a number of the key people who made it what it is today like, well, the guy who designed almost every raid, for instance.

Past that, we are in the post-Activision era where Bungie is the only one in charge of Destiny’s fate going forward. But since that split was announced, the only place we know Destiny is going is to the Season of Opulence in June, the final part of the year two Annual Pass.

I don’t think Destiny needs another roadmap, laying out bite-size individual pieces of content that are coming out after Opulence, but I think it would be a good time for Bungie to stand up and explain at least a little bit about their longer term plans for Destiny going forward.

There are a few key questions that I think need to be addressed, even if no specifics about what future content contains are given:

• After Season of Opulence, what are the plans for this fall? A Rise of Iron-sized expansion which is what would have happened under the Activision deal? Smaller, Warmind-style DLC? Or the beginning of another Annual Pass, this time perhaps four seasons instead of three?
• Longer term, are we getting a full-on Destiny 3, or does Bungie have any attachment to the idea to make Destiny more of a permanent, WoW-like game that keeps expanding without numbered sequels?
• Whatever the next “big” installment is for Destiny, what are we leaving behind? Are we going to see a repeat of what happened with Destiny 1 > Destiny 2 where we lost quite literally everything, from loot to zones? Or are there plans to carry anything over between games this time?
• Big picture, what does Destiny being fully owned by Bungie actually mean? What were they doing under the Activision deal that they won’t do now, or what did they want to do, but weren’t able to do? The only thing we know for sure is that they don’t have to stick to rigid fall expansion/sequel schedules, but past that, what does a fully Bungie-owned Destiny actually mean?

I don’t know if Bungie needs to wait for some big gaming event to announce this kind of stuff. Half the regulars aren’t even showing up to E3 this year, and I think many fans are feeling a bit lost right now and looking for some reassurances about the future of the series past two more months of Annual Pass stuff. I am very curious about Bungie’s long-term vision for Destiny now that it’s fully in their own hands, and how similar or dissimilar that might look to what’s come before it these last five years.

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