A rumor popped up a couple of weeks ago that Bungie Studios, the architect of the Halo franchise, was working on an outer space-set massively multiplayer online first-person shooter with new publishing partner Activision Blizzard. The in-development game was said to feature role-playing aspects and was likened to being “[World of Warcraft] in space.”
Now at least some of that information is confirmed thanks to Bungie lead network engineer David Aldridge speaking at his 2011 Game Developer’s Conference talk “I Shot You First: Networking the Gameplay of Halo: Reach” [via IGN]. He called the project a “massively multiplayer action game” and added that it is not “WoW in space.”
The previous rumor pegged the new game’s title as “Destiny.” It will be the first project created under Bungie’s 10-year multiplatform publishing deal with Activision, which was announced last year.
Bungie wrapped up work on the Halo franchise last year with the release of Halo: Reach after announcing in 2007 that it would split from parent company Microsoft to establish itself as a privately-owned company. Since 2001, the studio oversaw six Halo releases, including the core trilogy, Reach, 2009’s Halo: ODST and the real-time strategy game Halo Wars, which was developed by the now-defunct Ensemble Studios. “Destiny” (or whatever it ends up being called) will be the first release in Bungie’s post-Halo existence, assuming nothing with a shorter development time is announced before then of course.
