Bungie confirms secret projects with PlayStation manufacturer Sony

earthpressnews
Leksand extended the winning streak beat AIK

After Destiny 2 in 2022 in a legendary deal from PlayStation manufacturer Sony was taken over, many hoped that new projects would also emerge with it. And yes, this has now been confirmed by a developer. MeinMMO tells you everything that is currently known about it and also what you probably won’t like.

What kind of deal is it? In 2022, Bungie, the developer and inventor of Destiny 2, was bought by PlayStation maker Sony for $3.6 billion. Bungie has deliberately retained its independence and creative freedom with this deal.

As Sony announced at the time, Bungie’s new path as an independent sub-company will result in a “multi-platform studio” with the option to self-publish games.

In the minds of the players, however, the merger immediately gave rise to hope for a large Destiny universe, in which there are other multiplayer games from Bungie for all platforms in addition to Destiny 2 and finally a Destiny series or a film.

But that was all just speculation so far, as it has never been confirmed that other projects are actually planned in addition to the continuation of Destiny 2 in the DLCs “Lightfall” and “The Final Shape”. This has changed now.

Speaking of “Lightfall”: At the Game Awards 2022, Bungie presented a new gameplay trailer for the new darkness ability “Strong”:

Destiny 2: Trailer for Lightfall shows new race – Guardians get cool lasso, swing like Spider-Man

Developer confirms several projects at once: Until recently, there were only a few job descriptions from Bungie that suggested plans for new projects were already in the background.

But now Bungie’s Senior Design Lead Tom Farnsworth has officially confirmed this on Twitter, saying that they are “working on a number of unannounced projects with the support of Sony”.

Recommended Editorial Content

At this point you will find external content from Twitter that complements the article.

Show Twitter content

I consent to external content being displayed to me. Personal data can be transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy.

Bungie is implementing several unannounced projects.

Could be comedic, whimsical to visually inspired

This is currently known: It’s definitely known that Bungie wants to expand beyond the Destiny franchise to solidify its position in the global marketplace. There is more and more talk of a “Destiny universe”, which one also wants to establish with the help of PlayStation manufacturer Sony.

The AAA studio wants to expand the portfolio of its game titles in order to be able to offer the community new stories and experiences in the future (statement via bungie.com). However, it was always emphasized that it is not planned to neglect Destiny for this in the foreseeable future.

This is all leaked so far:

  • Partnership with NetEase
  • There is a $100 million partnership with NetEase, the developer of Revelation Online. At that time it was said that they wanted to “become an entertainment company that supports many worlds at the same time”. NetEase is an expert in MMOs as well as mobile games.
  • Matter patent
  • Bungie patented a patent application for computer game software and online entertainment services in 2018 under the name “Matter”.
  • comedic game?
  • Several job postings revealed that the developer is also looking for game leaders, or an “incubation gameplay lead,” for a game with “comedic, light-hearted, and whimsical characters” (via pcgamesn.com).
  • Extraction shooters like Escape from Tarkov
  • Then, in October 2022, industry insiders Tom Henderson and Jeff Grubb leaked that Bungie might be relaunching its legacy Marathon IP as an extraction-based FPS game with a PvPvE experience. However, neither of the two provided concrete evidence of this.
  • Another Free2Play game with live service
  • Further job postings then said that the company was probably working on a game that would once again combine live service and Free2Play. This seems to agree with the Marathon rumors at least.
  • Third person action
  • Instead of first-person, as in Destiny 2, a third-person game in a new genre was last mentioned. As one of the tenders states, “Are you excited to help build a brand new third-person action game and expand Bungie’s world-class gameplay into a new genre?”
    • Lightfall is the beginning of the end for the Light and Darkness saga

    New game on old engine

    Destiny fans might not like this: However, one thing could dampen the anticipation of longtime Destiny fans and players for Bungie’s new projects. The job postings also made it clear that Destiny 2’s proprietary Tiger engine could continue to be the basis for future titles.

    What is Bungie’s Tiger Engine? The Tiger Engine is the name of the game engine for the Destiny series. Created by Bungie after they became independent from Microsoft, it is a remastered version of the Blam! engine used for the Halo series.

    It allows for multi-threading and cross-platform, and provides layering of the codebase to decouple engine functionality from game logic. According to its own statement, the engine also supports all the advanced technologies that Bungie ever wants to develop. So also the future planned projects of the AAA studios.

    This information about the Tiger engine comes from TheGamePost, which recently captured a screenshot of a bid promoting “the creation and maintenance of connected gameplay systems, workflows, and tools in Bungie’s Tiger engine.”

    It goes on to say the “ability to direct, at a senior engineer level, activities, gameplay, bugs and workflows in Bungie’s Tiger engine.”

    Some players blame Destiny’s supposedly “old” engine for bizarre bugs

    However, many players are currently anything but satisfied with the engine. The system is blamed for many legacy issues, bugs and problems in the game. And Bungie has also admitted in the past that the aging Tiger engine has blocked the development of the game in some places and led to problems that then take longer to solve.

    However, a new engine makes little sense: But a switch to a completely new engine is not so easy to do. The reason for this is simple: over the years, Bungie’s developers have gained tremendous expertise on this development platform.

    So instead of retraining all the developers involved on how to work in a new engine, they instead invest in an improved version of the known system.

    This is exactly what Bungie has already implemented in recent months. As was announced prior to the release of the Witch Queen DLC, the system under the hood has been constantly updated to keep up with the new features and systems.

  • An attempt was made to dispose of much of the old “spaghetti code”.
  • Update times have become significantly shorter, often just 15 minutes. In addition, the servers no longer always have to go offline for an update.

    • The optics also got better for Witch-Queen: When the “The Witch Queen” DLC went live, you could also visually see that a lot had changed in Destiny 2. It was also visible that there was a lot of screwing going on in the background.

    For example, the fire effects in the taunt changed into more realistic “lava blobs”, environments got sharper, better details and in many places much nicer lighting effects were integrated.

    When could one of the projects go online? Bungie CEO Pete Parsons stated in a 2019 interview with IGN that the company plans to release a new non-Destiny game by 2025. And not only that. They also plan “to become one of the world’s best entertainment companies by 2025,” as Parson emphasized at the time.

    Partner Sony has already hit the drum. They want to release 10 service games by 2026 and Bungie should help with that.

    Are you curious if Bungie is able to put their ambitious plans into action? And what would you be more interested in? The future of Destiny 2 or a completely new MMO from Bungie? Write it to us in the comments.

    By the way, Destiny fans can watch the first part of the fan-made mini-series “Ace” since yesterday:

    YouTuber Raises Over €56,000 to Launch Destiny 2 Fan-Created TV Series “Ace” – Out January 4th, 2023

    mmod-game