Bungie, the creator of the acclaimed first-person shooter series Halo, has released the first official piece of artwork from its next game franchise Destiny (above).
Following the leak of some concept art and some details about the game's story on the website IGN, Bungie posted an official statement on its company blog.
"We weren't quite ready, but we will be soon, and we can’t wait to finally show you what we've really been up to," read the blog entry.
Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000, just before the launch of the original Xbox hardware and the first Halo. The developer negotiated a separation from its corporate parent in 2007, with Microsoft retaining the rights to create Halo games – the first non-Bungie game in that series, Halo 4, dropped earlier this month. In 2010, Bungie said it had entered into a 10-year publishing agreement with Activision Blizzard.
“The scope and the ambition of what we’re planning is much greater than the scope and the ambition of Halo,” Bungie design director Joseph Staten told Wired after the Activision announcement. The developer and publisher have kept a tight lid on the project since then.
Some details about the game were spilled in court filings related to the legal battle between Activision and the makers of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The documents first introduced the name "Destiny" and said that the game would be a massively-multiplayer one.
Earlier this month, gaming blog Kotaku posted a leak with information about an internal Destiny play test, purportedly from one of Bungie's development partners.
