- Destiny 2’s game director, Joe Blackburn has announced he will be leaving Bungie.
- In his stead, Tyson Green will take over as game director for Destiny 2 bringing with him a wealth of experience.
- Blackburn will start handing over to Green next month when testing for Destiny 2: The Final Shape begins.
Arguably one of Destiny 2’s biggest assets, game director Joe Blackburn has announced that he will be leaving Bungie.
The game director announced the news in a thread on X, formerly Twitter.
Blackburn dropped the bomb while explaining that The Final Shape would be entering its End-to-End test next month. In this test, the game is played internally for multiple days as a way to garner feedback. As any Destiny player who has seen a Cheese Forever video can attest to, finding bugs and exploits in Destiny is simply a matter of playing the game for a while and testing things out.
“Heading into this milestone, I’ve gotten to play 100s of hours of The Final Shape, and what the world-class talent here at Bungie has created has quickly become of the things I’m most proud to have worked on throughout my career. This ritual will be especially meaningful to me personally, as it will also serve as a moment to pass the torch of Destiny 2 Game Director to the next era of leadership as I head on a new adventure outside the walls of Bungie,” Blackburn wrote.
The outgoing game director says that Bungie stalwart Tyson Green will be taking over his position. As reported by Dot Esports, Green worked on Myth II as well as Halo, Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3 and Halo: Reach. According to Blackburn, Green was also the person who introduced the concept of Exotics, an integral part of Destiny’s gameplay.
The process of Blackburn’s exit will seemingly begin next month although we’re sure there has been work in this regard for a while already. It doesn’t look like Blackburn will be around to celebrate the launch of The Final Shape, at least not as the game director.
What exactly his plans are for the future is unclear but given the state of the gaming industry and the unending series of layoffs, we wouldn’t be surprised if Blackburn were to ply his talents in another field.
Despite the abysmal response to Lightfall, Blackburn had a positive impact on the game. Sunsetting, a concept developed under Luke Smith’s leadership where content would just disappear or become useless, was retired. Legacy Raids from Destiny were ported into Destiny 2, the FOMO aspect of the game was reduced significantly and the story hit some incredible beats. However, Destiny 2 has just gone through its worst year with multiple layoffs negatively impacting public sentiment and the state of the game being the worst it has since Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris.
We hope that Tyson Green can breathe some new life into Destiny 2. While The Final Shape is the finale in the Light versus Darkness saga, the game will continue through Episodes and maybe, just maybe, Green can keep players returning every day, long after the story has wrapped.
