‘Destiny 2’ Confirmed For 2017 With ‘Steady Stream Of Great Content’ To Follow
Destiny fans received some welcome news Thursday as Activision confirmed the sequel is confirmed once again to release this fall to at least the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The news came via a financial earnings call looking ahead to the mega-publisher’s next fiscal year.
Speaking of the existing version of Destiny, Activision stated that the game showed “steady engagement” for the third year of release with an “eager” fanbase. “Eager” could easily be substituted with “content starved” as players have not seen any major new content since the Rise of Iron expansion released last September. Events like Festival of the Lost and The Dawning have not sated the appetite of players for new adventures.
Activision declared a “Full Destiny sequel in 2017 to broaden the franchise’s global reach, which along with follow-on content plans, sets the stage for growth” in the shareholder slideshow.
Broadening the franchise’s global reach appears to be a nod toward rumors of a PC release. While Destiny is hugely popular in North America and Europe, other regions prefer to play on PC.
Fans will have to wait until at least September 2017, the month Bungie appears to like most for Destiny releases. However, the slide and comments by Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg during the Q&A session set the stage for a steadier diet of content post-release, which included the mention of “seasons.”
The Destiny “sequel is designed to both excite our highly-engaged current players, but also to broaden the appeal even further, bringing in new fans and bringing back lapsed fans, as well. So, that’s our primary focus right now.
“Beyond that, in the past, I’ve mentioned that the incredible demand for Destiny content has somewhat outpaced our ability to deliver upon that demand. And going forward, along with our partners at Bungie, we’ve put together what we believe is a very smart approach that will allow us to deliver that steady stream of great content to keep our players engaged and keep the universe live and growing in the wake of that sequel.”
Destiny originally launched with plans of two expansions per year plus the major expansion of The Taken King. The development challenges of producing that content quickly without the tools to back it up proved to be untenable and Bungie dropped the regular expansion plans in favor of smaller events. Additionally, the sequel was delayed from a scheduled 2016 release to this year with Rise of Iron attempting to bridge the gap.
While there is no official information on Destiny 2 yet, rumors suggest that much of the action will be moved to Saturn with a major focus on the Cabal. A new rumor that hit Reddit earlier this morning turned into an obvious bit of fakery attempting to build on the community’s hype for an expected announcement during Activision’s earnings call. This was quickly debunked by Bungie Marketing Director Eric Osborne on Twitter.
The Saturn setting is reportedly larger than all the current spaces combined and will be implemented in a more open-world manner versus the hardline zones that Destiny currently employs. This could mean the end of going to orbit to hop from activity to activity.
The new play areas will be populated with “towns, outposts, and quests” to replace the current patrol missions and social areas. This will treat the game more like World of Warcraft, for example, rather than what PS4 and Xbox One owners saw in the original.
The changes in game structure possibly come with some consequences though. The promise of being able to transfer existing Destiny characters to the sequel does not look as promising. Additionally, existing content such as Strikes and Raids will likely not make the trek over, but could appear as completely upgraded content for players to enjoy.
[Featured Image by Bungie/Activision]
