Since their separation with Activision in January, it has been all hands on deck for the highly ambitious team at Bungie to deliver some of its best and most meaningful Destiny 2 content. As Shadowkeep rolls out, it's interesting to discover that, although Destiny is Bungie's biggest IP and now one of the most beloved franchises in gaming, they aren't stopping there. Similar to their own sci-fi shooters, Bungie is aiming beyond the stratosphere with yet another title, in addition to an eventual Destiny 3, attempting to complete all this by no later than 2025. If anyone can do it, it's certainly Bungie.
As Bungie CEO Pete Parsons says himself in an interview with IGN:
"So, by 2025 we have a pretty specific path to make sure we transform Destiny and that we have other franchises within the marketplace. We need to build our publishing group, but part of our vision is also to become a multi-franchise company."
In the hopes of becoming the next EA or Activision, Bungie has set some pretty high standards for itself, which is nothing new. It's interesting to note that Parsons specifically mentions building a more stable publishing arm, pointing out a fact that the CEO may have left out: they aren't stopping at just one IP. This will be a major re-invigoration for the Bellevue, Washington-located developer and now soon-to-be-publisher.
Some are wondering if this means Bungie will eventually fund and publish independent studios' titles. This would certainly round out their "marketplace," as Parsons describes. Hopefully, that doesn't entail another dreaded gaming launcher. There's some interesting evidence to examine, as Bungie trademarked "Matter" back in 2018. They also received a crisp $100 million from the China-based company, NetEase, over a year ago. What with Bungie's ViDoc and the upcoming release of Shadowkeep, it will be interesting to see how the developer, like its own IP, evolves over time.
Though Destiny may very well be their favorite child at this point, the game has received plenty of blow-back from critics and fans alike. Parsons described how Destiny itself would be handled in the future, relieving many of the fear that their favorite looter shooter would become irrelevant in Bungie's "multi-franchise" ambitions:
"One, is we need to begin transforming Destiny. The Destiny that we really believe in, like, the thing we think Destiny needs to become. I think you’ve seen it in the vid doc, like, the single evolving world, we needed to focus on that."
Destiny 2 has already seen its fair share of extreme evolution since its conception in 2017. Now with Bungie's newfound independence, Shadowkeep aims not only to impress longstanding players but to draw in crowds of previous fans who ventured away from the series since the original. A constant beacon of communication with the fans, as evidenced by the posts on Bungie, only encourages a wider audience and intensifies the community as a whole, vastly separating the developer from many of its counterparts.
Get started today with Shadowkeep as a whole new era of both Destiny and Bungie unfolds.