Bungie just spent a whole lot of time talking through its upcoming Renegades expansion for Destiny 2, out next week on December 2. There was a stream, a Vidoc and a trailer, and the vibes have generally been positive for the heavily Star Wars-influenced expansion that was made in partnership with Lucasfilm itself. But now, two separate news items have thrown the community for a loop.
The first is a report by several Bungie leakers that there’s a Destiny 3 in “extremely early development.” This would be news to the community, as it has not seemed like that is in the cards, and if it is happening, would be years away.
The second is an accusation, mainly from @MGecko117, that Bungie used AI to create concept art they have just shared of Dredgen Bael, the main villain from the Renegades expansion. Gecko goes through a dozen or so bits and pieces of the art which he firmly believes is AI, and his posts alone have gotten a half a million views on Twitter, with many more coming from quote tweets on the issue.
Destiny concept art
Bungie
So, my takes:
Destiny 3 – It would be somewhat surprising if that was not at least being discussed at Bungie, as that’s what “extremely early development” can mean. The question, however, is if Bungie’s current titles will perform well enough to potentially make that happen.
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The upcoming release of Marathon is absolutely huge for Bungie, as if it’s a disaster, the fate of the entire studio could be at risk. If not, well, that’s a lot more room for the future.
Destiny 2 itself, solid Star Wars expansion or not, shows little signs of being able to reverse its playercount, and the community largely agrees that the only thing that could rebound the franchise is a sequel. But yes, making a true sequel to a game like Destiny would take the better part of five years, most likely, and thinking that far ahead for Bungie right now is theoretical at best. Do not expect Bungie to comment on this at all.
The AI accusations – I don’t buy it, to be honest. This is early concept art, and if you’ve been following Destiny for a decade, you will see a lot of concept art in this style. It’s just that back then, people weren’t throwing around AI accusations at a thousand miles per hour, as you see this daily with talented artists, even famous ones, being accused of using AI.
For something like concept art, none of these “AI”-ish details seem all that out of the ordinary. For instance, there’s a lightsaber without a hilt coming out of Bael’s hand. I mean, that absolutely seems to me like a proof of concept of someone slapping a PNG of a lightsaber blade on there to see how it looked. I mean AI could convincingly show someone holding a lightsaber at this point. There are a number of explanations here, from old practices like photobashing to, at worst, some sort of AI upscaling, which is not the same as genAI.
That said, it does not help that Bungie is approaching half a dozen plagiarism scandals over the years, most recently with Marathon, so their art department is pretty distrusted at this point. Still, plagiarism and genAI are different sorts of scandals. I just…don’t think that’s what happened here, but a definitive statement from Bungie would certainly help. I do not imagine they want to be doing that the day a bunch of creator Renegades videos and articles go live, but it’s about and well, best deal with it now.
Will we escape today with no further scandals? Well, it’s 9 AM, so I guess we’ll see.
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