A Fated Ending
Well, that’s that then. Bungie has announced that Destiny 2’s next update will be its last, and the Shattered Cycle and The Alchemist expansions have been cancelled. It’s a shame, but I think most of us knew it would end like this. Destiny has been bleeding for a while, and the game taking a back seat to Marathon may have been the final nail in the coffin.
While all good things must come to an end, Destiny deserved to go out on its own terms. Hardcore players will no doubt be happy with a new Pantheon and the grand return of Sparrow Racing League, but it still feels like a whimpering end – a cobbled-together finale that does little to make up for the loss of multiple story questlines, a raid, and a dungeon.
To understand what may happen next, we need to look back at Bungie’s own words during the controversial announcement of the Destiny Content Vault in June 2020:
The unfortunate reality is that Destiny 3 should have entered pre-production following that announcement. Bungie should have begun concepting a Destiny game with stronger foundations, one where there’d be no need to vault content, while delivering the three additional Destiny 2 expansions it had announced.
The Final Shape was a poignant ending to Destiny 2 and a perfect off-point for players who had been managing their Guardians’ vault since 2017. Even if full production of a new game didn’t start until after TFS, there’d at least be something on the horizon. Yet even now, as Destiny 2 ends, no sequel is planned – not even at the concept phase. The only Destiny project Bungie had incubating, known internally as Payback, was scrapped back in 2024 in favour of Marathon.
A project like Destiny 3 is not something that can be cooked up overnight. With mass layoffs expected – Bungie’s third round since October 2023 – will anyone be left to pitch another Destiny game? Maybe I’m just being pessimistic, but I don’t think this is a “one door closes, another opens” situation. Alarm bells should be ringing.
Running a Marathon
I’m worried about Bungie’s future. It’s betting the house on turning Marathon’s fortunes around, and I just don’t see a way to make it a success. It’s a hardcore extraction shooter designed for a niche market – any potential player has probably already made up their mind about it.
Marathon is not an easy game to convert Destiny players to, either. Good luck convincing someone with a vault full of ten-year-old weapons that seasonal wipes are beneficial. I’m sure there’s decent crossover between Marathon and those who favour The Crucible, but for players more interested in Destiny’s PvE elements, there’s no guarantee you’ll end your session with good loot. Yes, that is the point of an extraction shooter, but it feels anti-Destiny.
I wouldn’t put money on Marathon working out in the long term, regardless of the odds. With Fairgam– sorry, Break In – on the horizon, PlayStation will have two live-service extraction games competing against each other. With the disaster of Concord still fresh in PlayStation’s mind, who knows what call will be made if both games fail to hit targets?
The situation is beyond grim. Unless Bungie can successfully travel back in time, I don’t know what it can do. It’s already committed to changes in Marathon’s forthcoming seasons that will introduce a heavier PvE emphasis, but will that be enough? Will we even see Marathon’s roadmap play out? Destiny 2 wasn’t given the courtesy to finish up, after all.
Realistically, what can be done to tempt back players who bounced off Marathon? The only thing I can think of is building a new pillar of the game that functions more like a looter shooter, with Destiny-style PvE missions. It’d be a drastic and costly move, but desperate times call for desperate measures. If Marathon remains purely an extraction shooter, I don’t think it’ll be long before it follows Destiny 2 into end-of-life mode.
I made my peace with Destiny a while ago, but I’m still gutted. I have great memories of exploring Sol, soloing dungeons, and getting carried through Raids. The finger should be pointed squarely at Bungie’s management. Since the studio earned its freedom from Activision in 2019, it has consistently let down its workforce and its community (who can forget Pete Parsons and his extravagant car collection?). We all deserved better.
The damage done to Bungie’s legacy over the past few years is bad enough; clipping the studio’s wings a third time may render it unrecognisable.
Fool Me Thrice
Right before the Destiny news, Infinity Ward broke its silence with a statement full of provocative words like VISCERAL, IMMERSIVE and RELENTLESS, alongside a COD Pod episode featuring co-studio heads Jack O’Hara and Mark Grigsby. The podcast is light on details, but it does confirm that the next Call of Duty is a Modern Warfare title. Shock horror!
It’s no secret that I’ve disagreed with Infinity Ward’s recent vision for Call of Duty. I am not interested in a quasi-Battlefield mil-sim experience. I wish the studio the best, but I cannot give it a free pass after experiencing the catastrophe that was Modern Warfare II. IW alienated a dedicated chunk of the Call of Duty playerbase by brushing off feedback from playtests and the beta, stubbornly sticking to its infamous “we do not want to punish players for firing their weapons” statement.
A Call of Duty game without Zombies is always a hard sell for me, but if Infinity Ward has truly moved on from Modern Warfare II and learned the right lessons, maybe I’ll end up interested. I’m going to need to see the difference, though, because words no longer cut it. The return of DMZ – another potential concern for Bungie and Marathon, by the way – is something I’m more likely to give a chance, given it’s a free-to-play mode. If there’s a pure PvE or Solo option, even better.
With many players experiencing Call of Duty fatigue, seeing the franchise go up against GTA VI will be an interesting spectacle. I expect it’ll do better than most anticipate: Modern Warfare is the most popular COD sub-franchise, and with the removal of day-and-date COD games on Game Pass, it will sell more copies than Black Ops 6 and 7.
If Modern Warfare 4 (or whatever it ends up being called) doesn’t impress me, I’m more than happy to stay on Black Ops 7 for another year or two. I love every pillar of the game, and there are plenty of weapon master prestiges to grind out, as well as camo grinds for Endgame and Multiplayer once I finish off Infestation.
Who cares about all that Modern Warfare riff raff, though? Treyarch season isn’t over yet. There are still two more Zombies maps left! I’ve got my good shorts on for this next one.
