Bungie Needs to Put Its All into Destiny 3 | Game Rant
It is unclear what Destiny 2's community will look like beyond Year 3. While there is no known time frame for a Destiny 3 reveal or release, nor any official confirmation it exists yet, it is clear that Bungie will need to put all the effort it has into Destiny 3 to future-proof a long life-cycle ahead of the future competition. With titles like Borderlands 3 coming out now and other epic and similar titles like Godfall and Starfield on the horizon, Destiny 3 will likely need to stand-out and maintain a dominant foothold.
Destiny franchise director Luke Smith stated that Bungie has a "five-year vision" for Destiny 2, confirming the game still has a couple years left in it at the very least, depending how that is interpreted. And a lot can change by then when it comes to Destiny 2, its seasonal events, its major story expansions, and its eventual sequel, so learning and testing the waters now is likely a good thing.
At the present moment, Destiny 2's easier difficulty in recent times has been a point of contention among fans. While it has the potential to attract more casual fans, especially given its newer free-to-play model, many of its hardcore fans appear to be turned off by the easier difficulty. Many feel as if it does a disservice to those who put lots of hours into the game to earn better equipment and develop skill-levels that can better confront the necessary challenges the game's quests present.
While these details may seem minuscule, there are clearly problems with Destiny's formula that will put it at a disadvantage with current and future looter-shooters. Currently, Borderlands 3 is taking the looter-shooter sub-genre by storm (despite its own problems), with plenty of content and drops that make it stand out in its field. While addressing fan concerns and making the necessary improvements are obvious design choices Destiny 3 must address, this only scratches the surface for what the game must present itself as overall.
To see both successes at launch and sustainability for many years thereafter, Destiny 3 not only has to solidify a winning formula, but the franchise has to ready itself for the tough competition on the horizon, such as the looter-slasher known as Godfall. It is important to go back and recall the original reveal of the first Destiny game and how its initial launch was mired in controversy and much disappointment among many fans who had heightened expectations. When the first Destiny was originally revealed, fans expected a gigantic universe to explore, more akin to Skyrim's epic open-world proportions and size, with a story of grandeur, and a fully fleshed out MMORPG experience utilizing high-production shooting mechanics.
When Destiny was finally released, the game simply did not meet the expectations many fans had. First, the maps for each planet, while rich and packed to a degree, were by no means epic in scale to those seen in other open world games such as Skyrim. Destiny's instanced zones, with a limited number of players at a time, were teased by some gamers referring to it using the phrase "MMO lite." And Destiny's bare bones story telling was perhaps its biggest disappointment overall, as many fans expected a drawn out space opera.
Perhaps Destiny 2's saving grace was in its improvements upon all those elements to a limited degree, coupled with the fact that fans had a more clear vision of what to expect the second time around. Despite vast improvements over the original, Destiny 2 was still nowhere near the scale of the original vision fans had in mind for this franchise, being a giant universe for them to explore at their fingertips. This would be accomplished by other games.
No Man's Sky, despite having its own shortcomings, still captivated many gamers' imaginations and demonstrated what an exploratory interplanetary open-world game could be in terms of technology and raised the bar for Sci-Fi. In addition, Ubisoft is shaping up to a science fiction game world in Beyond Good and Evil 2, allowing players to travel from micro-level indoor environments seamlessly into gigantic open-world environments and full planets with no load times. Bethesda is also hard at work with Starfield, a game that is all but expected by fans capture the deep and intricate lore, storytelling, and size of an Elder Scrolls game set in space and on different planets.
Some may argue that Destiny is a different type of game, that should only be comparable within the spectrum of the looter-shooter, but even there, Destiny 3 has lots of work to do in consolidating a winning formula. The competition in Borderlands 3, Godfall, and others is simply a whole new landscape for the franchise.
Destiny 3 truly needs to shine not just by offering the necessary itch for those fans having a craving for a looter-shooter, but rather, Destiny 3 needs to stand out by expanding the franchise outside of the basic genre. Destiny 3 should also be accessible to both PC and console players, and ship itself as something brand new for everyone.
Bungie should not merely view Godfall, Borderlands, The Division, and other similar types of games as its sole competition. As the franchise which essentially established the looter-shooter genre in its current conception, Destiny 3 needs to re-invent this structure once again and redefine what this genre is by expanding it and looking at other Sci-Fi role-play games. It will take more than merely a winning formula in regards to the looter-shooter's current elements.
Destiny 3 needs to offer storytelling that can attract players who desire a deep plot. It does not necessarily need to be on the scale of Mass Effect, but given that Godfall's literary inspirations tease a fairly intricate plot, Destiny 3 must set the bar very high. While Destiny 2's story was an improvement over the first game, with a less cryptic plot and more direct storytelling, it still was not enough to attract players whose first priority may be in looking for a space opera.
In regards to storytelling, to start, Bungie should offer a plot that will strongly move Destiny's narrative forward into the future, without its focus being too heavy on lore and in the past. After all, lore is normally an optional essence most enjoyed by more hardcore fans who are driven to understand every nuance of a game's universe.
While few would expect Destiny 3 to copy the procedural generation of No Man's Sky in creating planet-sized open-world maps to explore, the game's settings could still use some work. Many of Destiny's hardcore players do not mind the grind and repetition of replaying missions multiple times to collect the best loot, yet most can also agree that more unique areas to explore and less time replaying the same areas is a more enjoyable experience.
Furthermore, there are certain types of fans who are automatically turned off by heavy grinding and farming and wish to only play through missions or areas once, then move on to the next area. There are those who don't mind it at all, but the overall structure still leads to burn out. Destiny 3's universe should at least be large enough to allow players to obtain enough unique hours of gameplay and progress that they can complete the game to some degree without needing to farm particular areas over again repeatedly.
Overall, there are a decent amount of gamers out there who simply want the next large, epic and vivid open-world to explore, whichever developer may offer it. And Destiny 3 can easily check off this goal by providing fans an engaging and fully fleshed out world to explore which takes no shortcuts, all while enjoying the fast paced action that comes in the looter-shooter package within it.
Bungie needs to put everything it has into Destiny 3 to create the ultimate online looter-shooter. Its competition will be stiff, and it will not merely be other looter games that stand in its path to success. Destiny 3 needs to bring to fruition the more expansive vision many fans had come to expect of the Destiny franchise a great many years ago, and finally see it through, while establishing a winning and innovative looter-shooter formula within this much larger package.
Destiny 3 is not confirmed to be in development.
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