November 28, 2024

Listing Suggests Bungie’s New ‘Multiplayer Action Game’ Is A Hero Shooter

Multiplayer #Multiplayer

Destiny 2

Bungie

Everyone is dying to figure out exactly what Bungie is working on across multiple incubation projects it has in the works besides Destiny, as the studio continues to expand. The most commonly known one is codenamed Matter, under Christopher Barrett, but there are a number of projects in the works, and when new listings pop up, it’s unclear if they’re about Matter or another project.

This time around, there’s a new listing for a job working on a “multiplayer action game” currently in incubation, and from the sound of it, it sure seems like something in the vein of Apex Legends, Overwatch or Valorant. In short, a hero shooter. This is listed among the requirements:

“Experience working on character-focused action games.”

There’s also this, which again, sounds very Overwatch:

“Do you spend your time thinking about how different game mechanics can come together to create amazing teamplay moments?”

I suppose there are other character-focused action game types out there, and I am leaping to shooter because well, Bungie makes shooters, but technically that includes something like DOTA or League of Legends.

The listing also mentions it would be nice to have “familiarity with the competitive gaming landscape/esports.”

There has been a long-running theory in the Destiny community that Bungie has been neglecting PvP in that game because it has its Crucible team mostly assigned to other projects, and that one of its upcoming games is going to be a heavily PvP focused title. Hence why Destiny just crossed the 600 day mark without a new Crucible map, and why an entire new subclass was developed seemingly without PvP in mind at all (Stasis).

There have been enough of these listings where yes, it’s pretty clear that Bungie is indeed working on a competitive shooter PvP-type game, though the exact nature of that remains unknown. This is the first listing I can remember seeing with the “character-focused” descriptor, which would point to something not like Destiny or Halo multiplayer, and something more in the vein of recent hero-based trends. Destiny’s combat is loosely based on this concept. There are different classes and subclasses so it’s not a flat plane like Halo used to be, and yet there are not dedicated “hero” characters either.

Overwatch 2

Blizzard

I just had a wild idea of Bungie doing a hero shooter set in the Destiny universe, where you could control characters like Zavala, Ikora, Saladin, Ana Bray, Mithrax, Caiatl, Shaxx, Eris, Drifter, Mara Sov, Crow and more, each with their own “kits” of light and darkness powers, and specialized weapons pulled from the Destiny universe. The community would simultaneously hate that and love that, I’m sure. An article for another day, perhaps…

In any case, Destiny PvP players still feel overlooked and until Bungie shares more about these other projects, they’re not going to have a firm idea about why, but everyone has their pretty clear theories at this point. At least one new dedicated PvP game is coming, in some form, and for now we’ll just keep checking listings like these for clues.

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