As we approach the end of the Xbox 360's life, it's easy to forget that the developer to which it owes its existence is nowhere to be seen. Having built its considerable reputation on Halo - still the archetypal console shooter - Bungie hasn't shown itself in public since the 2010 launch of Halo: Reach.
Now, first clues are starting to sneak out - some intentionally, others not - about its new game, Destiny: a new "sci-fantasy action shooter" that could be for the next Xbox what Halo was for its ancestor.
It'll be published by Activision as the studio's 'new universe', which doubtless means plentiful spinoffs similar to Halo's roster of comics, books, animated series - and probably more, given Activision's own toy success with Skylanders.
Activision's contract with Bungie lasts ten years, and recent filings during its lawsuit with CoD creator Infinity Ward revealed that Destiny will cover at least four games to be released every other year from 2013 - with the first being exclusive to Xbox for a year. In the gaps in between we're getting DLC to tide us over. This is currently codenamed 'Comet'. A theme emerges.
To infinity...
It's all but certain that Bungie plans to take us into space once more. Rumours about the game being an MMO lead the studio to explicitly deny it's going to be 'World of Warcraft in space,' but it's definitely going to have an online element and an ambitious one at that.
The phrase 'Per Audacia Ad Astra' - Latin for 'Boldly to the Stars' - keeps cropping up everywhere you turn. Then there's the Frankenstein's monster that is the Destiny Map, a jigsaw puzzle put together from images that Bungie has been drip-feeding recently.
Alongside that, Bungie employees have been seen wearing Destiny t-shirts featuring what are being referred to as 'faction' logos. It's thought they link to pieces of 2D art Bungie has already copyrighted, named things like 'Dead Orbit', 'Osiris' and 'Seven Seraphs' (all info that's been collected by diligent fans at destinypedia.net).
A senior graphics engineer said in an interview with Game Developer magazine that different areas of the game conform to a distinct design "depending on which faction they belong to". He also went into detail on how Bungie is working hard on rendering a believable dynamic world that responds to weather, time of day, and what the player does to their environment.
Whatever form the game takes, its 2013 launch and Xbox exclusivity mean it's all but certain to be one of the big, if not the biggest, launch titles for the next Xbox. Which makes perfect sense - what better developer to introduce it than the one who got the console off the ground in the first place?
For more about the MMO rumours in particular, check out Ed's original Destiny piece.
5 comments so far...
BlackhawkTenan on 3 Nov '12 said:
If it's as good as Halo i am in.
Bazingle on 3 Nov '12 said:
I can't wait to see MMOs come to console. All the better with Bungie behind it!
Worthies on 3 Nov '12 said:
Personally, I would of preferred to see this developer expanding into different genres and attempting to try new things, but hay ho, we don't know much about this new game, and it could be radically different to Halo.
RyanGowran on 4 Nov '12 said:
hmmm 720
might not even exist
Thos. on 5 Nov '12 said:
Interestingly, when Halo was still due to come out on Mac, before the Xbox existed, these are the exact aspirations they had for Halo.
The halo was planned to be a persistent, open-world, where you could travel to any point. Any changes to the environment would remain if you returned at a later point. In addition, combat would consist of specialisation. You could become a pilot, or sniper, and join teams with differently skilled players - bear in mind this was 1999 when these concepts were pretty original.
Obviously for the time this was hugely ambitious. It's interesting that Bungie may finally be able to realise their dreams.