It might be one among the most influential and broadly performed on-line video games, however Destiny 2 has been experiencing a tough patch as of late. And developer Bungie is aware of it.
“For years now, Destiny has been on this regular hardening of the core [audience],” explains recreation director Tyson Inexperienced. “An increasing number of core gamers are staying and taking part in the recreation, however comparatively few [new] individuals come into the recreation. There’s a tightening and contraction, and this presents issues for a recreation that you simply’re making an attempt to keep up as a stay service, particularly whenever you wish to hold serving these core gamers with nice, compelling expansions.”
Following the launch of The Fringe of Destiny enlargement in July, Destiny 2 noticed a droop in participant exercise. Not essential as a consequence of the imaginative and prescient of its new storyline, however reasonably in the way it redesigned the circulation of energy development to see the marketing campaign by. Since then, Bungie has been steadily working to make modifications to construct up its viewers once more, and the upcoming enlargement, the Star Wars-themed Renegades, will mark the developer’s subsequent effort to put a higher path ahead for its evolving universe.
For a lot of builders working on on-line video games with live-service components, calcifying participant numbers has been a recurring impediment. Usually this may be merely a matter of time – Destiny 2 has been operating for practically 10 years now, and it’s inevitable that solely the most devoted will keep for the total journey. However one among Destiny’s most up-to-date hurdles is one among its personal making: Bungie wrote an finish to the story.
Since the first Destiny arrived in 2014, every new enlargement and replace has fashioned chapters of the Gentle and Darkness saga, a decade-spanning, lore-dense story. However with the 2024 enlargement, The Remaining Form, Bungie introduced that saga to a end. It did, after all, set the stage for what’s subsequent – one other multi-year storyline with a model new focus. Nevertheless, very similar to the present state of the post-Endgame Marvel Cinematic Universe, this offered a problem for Destiny 2, the place many long-time and informal gamers noticed it as a pure end-point to their journey. As you may think about, this has made additional adventures a little bit of a problem to current as must-see experiences.
“The Remaining Form introduced issues to a crescendo, the place it is like a improbable ending that tied off a lot of the threads,” says Inexperienced. “Individuals had been happy and happy with what they performed, after which the large [downwards] spike in inhabitants [came after]. That occurred as a result of we ended the saga. So that you get what you pay for, proper?”
“That wasn’t the plan from the enterprise perspective,” Inexperienced continues. “We nonetheless wish to hold making Destiny; we nonetheless have many tales to inform on this universe. There are nonetheless a number of issues to do, and we now have to maintain constructing the recreation. Sadly, it was not gracefully managed, however we needed to strive one thing.”
The primary steps towards offering a compelling cause to return to Destiny following the finish of the Gentle and Darkness saga arrived in July’s The Fringe of Destiny enlargement, through which Bungie laid the groundwork for its subsequent main storyline, titled the “Destiny saga”. It transported gamers to a new area of area, the place they got here into battle with the enigmatic 9 faction. This new marketing campaign launched new story threads and twists that shook up the lore of the collection, and was an intriguing setup for the subsequent section of Destiny 2. Nevertheless, the enlargement obtained combined responses from devoted gamers – and struggled to usher in new ones. Essentially the most controversial change was the refreshed energy ranges and a steeper grind that made development extra daunting than meant, creating hurdles for reaching higher-end actions.
Inexperienced is frank in his evaluation of The Fringe of Destiny. He recognises that the enlargement did not ship a extra satisfying method for gamers to advance their characters – a onerous, however essential lesson for the improvement staff to soak up.
“We checked out the downside that we had [after The Final Shape], and we mentioned, ‘We expect there’s a route right here,’ which is leaning into extra programs of pursuit, getting new tiers of drugs, armor units, and energy development, and issues like problem customization,” Inexperienced mentioned. “This stuff that may permit a core viewers of gamers to actually say, like, ‘I am actually gonna take this recreation and put it by its paces, and get good rewards for it.’
“It sounds nice on paper, but it surely did not work,” he admits. “I believe we have been taught a bunch of onerous classes about what our gamers need, and there are actually two sorts of stay video games: those who take heed to the gamers and reply, and those who do not. And we do not wish to be a useless stay recreation, we wish to hold constructing Destiny. So we’re listening to our gamers, and what our gamers are telling us is that they do not wish to chase a easy quantity that goes up, they need actual rewards.”
Following The Remaining Form’s launch, Bungie introduced a change to its launch plans for main expansions. As a substitute of a single annual launch, the developer would ship two mid-sized expansions per yr, every with seasonal occasions. With the upcoming Renegades enlargement, Bungie has a possibility to showcase its realigned energy development, which has been steadily constructed over current updates, whereas additionally delivering a new marketing campaign that celebrates Star Wars and the Destiny universe.
In line with Inexperienced, the new launch mannequin has allowed the staff to be extra versatile with adapting to suggestions, which has aided the improvement of Renegades. This new enlargement not solely re-evaluates the present recreation circulation and the controversial system modifications made earlier in 2025, but additionally presents a new marketing campaign that hits at the identical tone of the 2018 enlargement, Forsaken, and a darker-edged Star Wars story that is full of blaster weapons and lightsabers to accumulate.
“Considered one of the benefits that the new launch mannequin gave us, which is 2 expansions a yr, means you may experiment extra inside these particular person expansions – you may strive various things,” Inexperienced mentioned. “So we noticed what we wished to do with a ‘area western’ revenge story, and we figured, let’s do it in that one, let’s intention for this. So we took the concept of Star Wars as complete inspiration and constructed a Destiny enlargement round it; that is type of how we at all times do it. On this case, I believe it comes by far more richly, as a result of it is being extra deliberate with its influences and magnificence, but it surely’s nonetheless basically a Destiny enlargement.”
From my hands-on time with Renegades, it’s clear that Bungie took away useful classes from The Fringe of Destiny’s launch and post-launch content material. I discovered the new marketing campaign to be extra direct in its goals and supplied a pretty beneficiant energy grind that centered extra on participating with new actions than on grinding for uncommon gear to maneuver energy ranges up by a tick. It additionally touches upon basic Destiny by reintroducing a extra developed model of the faction system. Many considerate modifications actually invigorate the Destiny 2 expertise, however the query stays whether or not it will carry again gamers in droves.
It is a kind of problem that has develop into quite common for live-service video games in 2025. And whereas the Destiny collection has been influential on different video games, it is now in a comparable place to a lot of its imitators. Nonetheless, Bungie sees this as a possibility to reassess what Destiny 2 may be. When reflecting on Destiny 2’s present state, core inventive director Ben Womack is assured in the present roadmap, and believes that, by re-thinking the guidelines, it should construct a new future for the recreation going ahead.
“Once you’re making one thing new, you typically have a bunch of conventions and limits that you must contemplate, particularly for video games which have been round for a very long time like Destiny,” he mentioned. “It is tempting to stay to these conventions as being the boundaries of the guidelines, however the fact is that it’s good to re-examine all of them each single time when making an attempt to actually create one thing particular and make a splash. That is very true when working with Lucasfilm.
“We checked out how we made the sandbox stuff we have executed, we now have blaster weapons that can stick with us going ahead, seeing how the [lightsaber-like] Praxic Blade turned out, and we now have the numerous new syndicates that turned out properly. There are issues that we undoubtedly would not have executed, however we needed to settle for and push previous these typical boundaries to do this stuff, and so long as it is nonetheless enjoyable and persons are responding to it, and the really feel is there, then it is the proper choice.”