Destiny 3 Could Be A Much Darker Game

When it comes to telling stories, video games oftentimes try to veer toward a more upbeat tone, even in dark, gritty, depressing games. It's rare that a video game goes dark and stays dark with its story, but Destiny 3 could be one such game, according to the latest rumors surrounding the unannounced title.

According to Comicbook.com, there was supposedly a leak for an upcoming Destiny title in the works by Bungie. According to said leak, the third game in what will soon become a trilogy will follow a "much darker" path for the heroes.

The game is rumored to be headed up by Chris Barrett, who will be fulfilling the role of game director, while Luke Smith will still have a big role.

The article states that the third game would be focused on fixing past mistakes. And by fixing past mistakes, I'm sure they're referring to the first game being somewhat circular and sparse in story content, which was fixed in the sequel with a lot more story content, but failed to really deliver on the RPG-scaling by having weak end-game content and more circular loops that stalled pretty heavily once you peaked out your Light.

What's interesting is that the so-called leaker has stated that the third game will start from a much darker place regarding the the state of the Guardians. In a way, I feel like this already sounds like a repeat of Destiny 2, which also started in a pretty dark place for the Guardians. The entire first hour or so of the game is just the Guardians getting destroyed, the player-character getting defeated by the main villain and losing their powers, and then spending the remainder of the game attempting to regain their power and get strong enough to defeat the main villain.

The start of the story was already pretty dark for Destiny 2, but it eventually did the turnaround late in the game as the player-character began to recover their powers. It was definitely a fighting-from-the-bottom underdog tale. The resolution seemed to come a little quick, and the main boss didn't feel anywhere near as utilized as he should have been, but it was what it was.

If Destiny 3 repeats this process then it sounds like it will be a lot like Destiny 2 again in terms of how the story unfolds. Hopefully it's not an exact retread, but something unique. The ComicBook article states that players will be able to flirt with "Darkness" this time around by utilizing it as a power, so maybe that will be the hook to make it unique?

I think for the first three Halo games Bungie managed to mix things up quite a bit, with the first game seeing players starting off as the underdog survivalist, and the second game seeing them take the fight to the Covenant in a big way, and the third game featuring a more all-out battle for the galaxy. That freshness really helped give the Halo series some plot diversity in its early lifespan as a franchise.

The article states that the leaker claimed that Destiny 3 won't be teased until 2019, so we'll have to wait until next year to find out if the rumors hold any weight. Until then, obviously, take them with a grain of salt.