‘Destiny 2’ Development Adds Vicarious Visions, Which Points To PC Port

With less than a year to go before Destiny 2 is released to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Bungie announced that Vicarious Visions has joined the project. The addition of a third studio also points to the likelihood that the console shooter will be making the jump to PC as well.

Vicarious Visions’ addition to the Destiny 2 team came via the developer’s Facebook page. No details were shared aside from the following image just confirming the studio’s involvement.

Those that follow the Skylanders franchise are perhaps the most familiar with the Vicarious Visions name. The studio has worked on the toys-to-life game across multiple platforms since 2011 and served as the lead developer on Swap Force and last year’s SuperChargers.

Visions Visions was primarily responsible for porting Activision releases to handheld consoles prior to its run on Skylanders. However, it did lead the development on games like Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 for the PS3 and Xbox 360, and helped with this year’s Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.

This confirms previous rumors of Vicarious Visions’ involvement, along with Transformers: War for Cybertron developer, High Moon Studios. While details on what the Activision-owned studio is contributing to the project are unknown at this time, it is likely they are helping with content creation.

Destiny 2 is being set up as one of the two huge releases for Activision in 2017, with the annual Call of Duty release being the other. The creation of content is always one of the most time-consuming parts of game development and it is not uncommon to throw many bodies at the task to meet deadlines.

Two job postings from Vicarious Visions for Destiny 2 were discovered on LinkedIn following the announcement, one for a Tools Engineer and the second for a Software Engineer. The second provides the latest clue of the sequel going fully multi-platform by asking for “Experience with current and next gen platforms: Xbox, PS, PC.”

Again, previous rumors pointed to this happening, while the Vicarious Visions announcement and job listing are the latest stepping stone to an official confirmation. That shouldn’t keep fans speculating on whether Destiny 2 will support cross-play between two or more platforms.

While there is no official information on Destiny 2 yet, rumors suggest much of the action will be moved to Saturn with a major focus on the Cabal. The Saturn setting is reportedly larger than all the current spaces combined and will be implemented in a more open world manner versus the hardline zones that Destiny currently employs. This should could mean the end of going to orbit to hop from activity to activity.

The new play areas will be populated with “towns, outposts, and quests” to replace the current patrol missions and social areas. This will treat the game more like World of Warcraft, for example, rather than what PS4 and Xbox One owners saw in the original.

The changes in game structure possibly come with some consequences though. The promise of being able to transfer existing Destiny characters to the sequel does not look as promising. Additionally, existing content such as Strikes and Raids will likely not make the trek over, but could appear as completely upgraded content for players to enjoy.

While Destiny 2 is far off into next year, existing Destiny players have some new content to look forward to. Bungie is adding Sparrow Racing and Strike Scoring to the game next via The Dawning event. The latter will become a permanent fixture once the event ends, but Sparrow Racing will be relegated to private Crucible matches.

Additionally, The Dawning event update will bring three remixed Strikes. The Will of Crota and Shadow Thief Strikes will gain Siva variations while The Nexus will get a Taken look. Fans of the Ice Breaker will also be able to earn the classic Exotic Sniper Rifle from a new Nightfall bounty given by Commander Zavala in the Tower.

[Featured Image by Bungie/Activision]