Update 2: Show producer Geoff Keighley said Bungie will also host a panel titled "The Future of Bungie and Destiny 2" on Tuesday, June 11 during E3. This panel will likely expand on whatever is shown during the stream on June 6. Hopefully it also explores Bungie's future as an independent studio.
Update: Bungie recently teased a "new era" of Destiny 2 - the next big step after its separation from Activision - and it seems we're going to find out what that means sooner than expected. In a tweet posted today, Bungie said "the next chapter of Destiny 2" will be unveiled next week on Thursday, June 6 through a live stream starting at 10 am PT / 1 pm ET / 6 pm BT. Specifics haven't been announced, but the stream will presumably be on Bungie's Twitch channel. That's just two days after the start of the Destiny 2 Season of Opulence, the first day of which will see a new raid, so it's going to be a busy week for Guardians.
Original story:
When Activision and Bungie split up in January, Bungie affirmed that it would finish off the three-part Annual Pass it previously announced. The final piece of the Annual Pass, Destiny 2 Season of Opulence, is scheduled to release on June 4 and continue for about three months. Once it's over, Bungie will officially be creating and releasing Destiny content entirely of its own volition. It's unclear what post-Activision Destiny will look like, but Bungie is certainly gung-ho about it.
In the latest This Week at Bungie blog post, Destiny community manager David 'Deej' Dague said, "Right now, our focus is on Opulence. But after the Season has launched and Raid belts have been awarded, we’ll be looking deeper into the future, and sharing with you more about a new era for Bungie and Destiny 2. Buckle up and stay tuned."
By the time the Season of Opulence is over, around eight months will have passed since Bungie announced its separation from Activision. I won't pretend to know the particulars, but I imagine Bungie's been using that time to finalize the separation, take stock of its newfound island, and get some internal housekeeping done (several design leads have left or moved around Bungie in the past few months, for instance). It sounds like most of that will be out of the way soon so the studio will be ready to talk about what comes next - hopefully by the end of 2019.
This lines up with Bungie's previous comments regarding its separation from Activision. In a January 2019 blog post, game director Luke Smith said, "We're thinking about what it means to be truly independent, what it means to self-publish, and crucially, what Destiny's future can now look like for our players. It was a busy Fall, and it is going to be a busy year. When I look ahead and think about Destiny and where it could go, I see a bright future, with roots in a memorable past."
Likewise, in the Season of the Drifter ViDoc released in February 2019, Smith said "We're starting to figure out the roadmap for what a Bungie-controlled Destiny looks like. This is just the beginning of a conversation that we're gonna have about where Destiny can go."
In the same video, design lead Ryan Paradis added that, "This is one of the most exciting times. We're beginning to form up the muscles to make Destiny a quick-reacting live game, and I can only see it getting better from here."
An unconfirmed but not-unbelievable rumor suggests that Destiny 2's current Annual Pass will be followed by another, more ambitious Annual Pass which will reportedly kick off with a bigger content drop. The word is that the first release in this Annual Pass will rival Forsaken in terms of scale, but not quite equal it. Many players agree that Destiny 2 needs regular updates like Black Armory and Joker's Wild in addition to major reinvigorations like Forsaken, so this could be a healthy direction for the game - again, assuming there's any truth to this rumor.
In any case, it's encouraging that Bungie is openly talking about the long-term future of Destiny once again. We'll have to wait a while before we get to play it for ourselves, but we should learn more about Destiny 2's next content cycle before too terribly long.
From rumors to our personal wish list, here's everything we have on Destiny 3.
