Fan-made Unreal Engine 5 project of Destiny’s Last City, reflects on Destiny’s current game engine, discusses potential for new game concepts, and fantasizes about possible future directions for the franchise, both in games and other media.

Unreal Engine vs. Tiger Engine

• There is ongoing discussion among fans about upgrading Destiny from Bungie’s Tiger Engine to Unreal Engine.

• Unreal Engine 5 enables advanced graphics and capabilities, prompting some studios (like Halo’s) to switch.

• Bungie remains with Tiger Engine for Destiny 2 and is unlikely to change soon.

Fan Project: The Last City in Unreal Engine 5

• Hyang-Yong Jung created a detailed Unreal Engine 5 recreation of Destiny’s Last City as a portfolio project.

• Project modeling used 3DS Max and Substance Designer; scenes assembled in Unreal Engine 5, with post-processing in DaVinci Resolve.

• Assets are modular, dimensioned for efficient assembly, and were mostly created by the artist alone.

• Inspiration pulled from various cultures, reflecting the Last City’s multicultural lore.

• The city includes recognizable Destiny brands, signs, and industrial elements, making it feel authentic.

Game Design and Immersion

• Modular design enables rapid environment creation and variety in game design.

• The project makes the Last City feel truly lived-in and visually expansive, matching or exceeding Destiny’s official aesthetic.

Community Reactions and Aspirations

• Many fans, including the speaker, wish for more interactive elements in the Last City within Destiny.

• The project sparks ideas for new Destiny games—such as a mature, open-world RPG where players are non-guardians in the city.

• Possible game/storyline inspiration includes themes from Cyberpunk and The Boys, where the player opposes Guardians.

Media Spin-offs and Future Potential

• Unreal Engine is used in high-profile productions, suggesting potential for a Destiny movie or TV show with similar visuals.

• The speaker credits the artist, encourages checking out their work, and muses on how successful shows like Arcane set a high bar for adaptations.

Critique of Current State and Wishes

• While Destiny is already a visually beautiful game, the speaker questions if the Tiger Engine can support larger MMO ambitions.

• There is skepticism about Bungie ever moving away from their established engine but hope that a new engine could enable true MMO-scale features.

Questions / Follow-Ups

• Will Bungie ever transition Destiny to Unreal Engine or a more capable engine?

• Could a Destiny TV show or movie matching this level of visual quality ever be produced?

• Is a truly open-world, MMO-style Destiny experience possible with current technology?

Destiny 2 is in Unreal Engine 5. Not because Bungie switched game engines; an artist who now works at Nexon Games put together these renders of the Last City and The Traveler as a part of their portfolio. ‪@EvazeOfficial‬ has put together a video showcasing this amazing work! Do you believe Destiny should switch to Unreal Engine 5 instead of the Tiger Engine they've been using as far back as Halo? Let me know your thoughts! #destiny2 #bungie #unrealengine5

Destiny's Future and Engine Debate

Hold on, let me take a look at this. People are saying this is a hot video. The thing is, people have been saying that we need to do this whole Unreal Engine upgrade. But if it ain't noticeable, I don't think it should ever happen. I don't know.

Let's take a look. We called it The Traveler, and its arrival changed us forever. Yo, look at the weapon boundary popping out right there.

Yo! So Destiny looks pretty cool in Unreal Engine. Destiny is based on Bungie's own Tiger Engine, which clearly has had some issues over the years.

And we've seen the big changes to Unreal Engine 5, developers able to achieve some pretty incredible graphics and capabilities. We've seen game developers like 343 Industries, now Halo Studios, change engines completely. They're moving away from their Slipspace engine to Unreal 5, in the hopes that they can modernize their approach to making future Halo games and hopefully pump out content quicker. It would be nice if eventually Bungie did sort of the same thing, but for now it seems we're stuck with the Tiger engine, at least for Destiny 2. But I was browsing ArtStation as I often do to check out Destiny art and concepts. It's always cool to see the inspiration that devs pulled from and what we get in the game.

For example, here's some storyboard-type concepts from Dima Gorionov which turned into the vow of the Disciple Raid in Savathun's Throne World. That was so hot. So while searching through some new art, I came across some images of the Last City. And I thought at first that these were from the actual game.

Maybe concepts for cinematics during the Red War back in the day. Or maybe even the final shape. Studios like Blur, who's worked on tons of cutscenes for games, had similar concepts so I thought, hey, maybe that was a part of it.

Turns out this was a fan project started by Hyang-Yong Jung. And it took a very long time to create. Now I sent a message over and got permission to share these with you in this video. And I kinda just had to because imagine a Destiny movie or game with these graphics.

Or even in a completely different engine. So today we'll take a look at images and clips from this epic project. And be sure to check out the link in the description to view the images in all their glory. Jian says this project was started about 20 months ago and was a project for their portfolio. Hopefully looking to get a job from it.

The ArtStation page says that Jian works at Nexon Games. So I'm not sure if he was there previously while working on this project, but if not, it seems like The Last City may have helped in his job search. John is currently working as a 3D game environment artist specializing in textures. Now Nexon is a Korean game dev company that has many games under their belt. The First Ascendant is one among them, you may know.

• Yep. - As for The Last City project here, it was modeled in 3DS Max. Texturing was done in Substance Designer, using many trim sheets to save time and usability. You can see some of those here. John says that most of the assets were made entirely by him, as we can see many of them are modular and dimensioned for easy assembly.

Modular pieces are kind of big when it comes to game design. You can snap things together when needed, create different environments, buildings, and kind of rapidly iterate on different play spaces and layouts. But if you pulled this up and said this was from Destiny, I'd believe you. Except the thing is, one developer made this. Took a lot of time, but it still looks beautiful.

From the pipes and pavement textures, to Omelon crates, and even a city that looks heavily populated with these textures and techniques. The scenes were assembled in Unreal Engine 5, while post-processing and editing was achieved with DaVinci Resolve. I was told the inspiration was drawn from many different cultures: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Moroccan, and Mediterranean to name a few.

And the thing is, this fits perfectly in universe. The last city is literally a melting pot. People from across earth came here to live. Did that just say beyond light down there on that sign?

Thing is, this fits perfectly. Beyond light? Bizarre district?

I can't read this other one. Lol. The last city is literally a melting pot. People from across earth came here to live together. So there are tons of languages, different foods and activities to find in the streets.

Something most people forget about, especially if you only speak one language. here's a look at some of the dude this honestly just makes me wish i just wish we could like interact with the last city it's like right now you come into the tower you get your stuff and i think destiny is a beautiful i do think destiny is a very beautiful game but man i wish i could just go down in this place interact with the people maybe uh over there you have a i don't know make a mall a park it's It's a little smoggy around here. Maybe a red light district somewhere over there. You know what I'm saying?

I'm just saying it'd be nice to interact with the city. Earth came here to live together, so there are tons of languages, different foods, and activities to find in the streets. Something most people forget about, especially if you only speak one language.

Here's a look at some of the industrial assets, things you'd see on the top of buildings. Generators, walkways, pipes leading to different locations. Even giant defense cannons like you've seen on Crucible maps. You literally see the same designs and vents and things if you overlook the tower.

Look up towards the old tower and you'll just see what I'm talking about. These assets fit perfectly for things like that and also in a giant hangar area. We're also used to things like giant yellow cranes repairing our old tower.

I miss the old tower. As if you could try. Thank you so much for the two gifted subs, brother.

And he didn't just recreate the tower we walk around in almost every day. The entire city in Traveler is there too. From a sort of skybox perspective or, you know, far away distance, you see assets like these. Giant skyscrapers that make the city down below feel like it's a real place, that people actually live there. Even the, I'm assuming, textures here that are scrolling by that look like cars and vehicles.

And you can really see the scale when you compare the buildings to the alien traveler itself. And as we see a character model standing out looking over the city, it looks like some cyberpunk haven. Tons of people live down there and the graphics and water are just amazing.

You know, honestly, part of me would love an open-world, cyberpunk-esque game in the Destiny universe. But you're not a guardian. You actually hate guardians. Maybe you're like just some like low-life thug in the last city.

And these damn guardians, every now and then a guardian just kind of f***s up your day. You know what I'm coming from? And you just go, you just go bad, bad.

And you figure out how to kill a guardian. You know what I mean? And that's like...

That's like, oh, shit. But like, you know, there's like, you know, who knows how you could spin? I would play that kind of game where it's like almost like it would be essentially cyberpunk, but in the Destiny universe.

But the bad guys or or the at least the opposing side here would be the Guardians themselves. The boys storyline. Essentially, yeah. The boys storyline mixed with cyberpunk in Destiny's universe.

Oh. Well the artists obviously worked very very hard on this. Shinran with the sub, MFAM with the sub, TakeGills with the sub. And that's from a distance. We also have close-up designs of these building models as well.

Once again inspired by those different cultures. You see many of the Destiny signs and I guess brands you are used to. Things like Hake, Spicy Ramen, Eververse is there and even some of the old factions.

Mm-hmm. Dude, no lie, like, faction quests could have been... I'm just thinking of this game here, guys.

It's in my brain right now. You're not a guardian. You actually hate guardians.

And you do all these... You can actually... Almost like the Thieves Guild.

You could join the factions where a future world called New Monarchy dead orbits. And it all just means to get you to a point to allow you to kill a guardian. Oh, my God.

That would be so hard, dude. That would be so hard. no no no no no you can literally take the boy's storyline guys you're chilling with your girl and you're like you know life is good you're in the last city things are coming together and then it could be like at the end of final shape some tormentor show up and some guardian pops his thunder crash and he kills the tormentor but at the same time he completely obliterates your girlfriend and you're sitting there just like in the boys you're sitting there holding her her corpse or whatever's left of it. And you're like, no. And the guardian gets up and he's like, my bad, man.

And walks off. And then now all of a sudden, your character who just lost his girl, you are committed. You're like, these guardians. I'm gonna kill every one of them. And then that's the story, baby.

There you go. You join up. You join these different factions.

You do little jobs. You get a little bit stronger. You do everything you can to possibly get you to a point where you could take down an immortal.

You eventually, I don't know, link up with Lakshmi. Teaches you. You just gotta kill the right guardians.

I know this right here is about Unreal Engine 5, which let me just say, I don't think Bungie's ever going to leave the Tiger Engine. I just, you know where I'm coming from? I could be wrong.

Bungie's been using Tiger Engine now since fucking 1991. They're not going to abandon that shit as much as we may want them to. Bungie making more games was got us in these layouts first. Chill.

I don't know if you cared about gummy bears, but with a name like gummy bears, I'm not exactly excited. This right here, this would pop. Opening scene.

Girlfriend gets accidentally thundercrashed. There we go. We got a mission.

I'm ready. Dude, the guardians. I'm with you, brother.

Oh my God. And like make this super mature. It doesn't need to be E for everyone or whatever the hell this is, right?

It needs to be mature. It needs to be like buying a guardian, taking a shit and, you know, fucking strap a bomb up under the shit and like mutilating ghosts and stuff like that. You know, all kinds of stuff.

This needs to be like Deadpool levels of fucking R-rated. So there are way too many images for me to just keep blabbing over it, so I slowed down some clips and also have the images to show you if you'd like to keep watching. If Bungie ever decided to change their engine or work on a future Destiny game beyond Destiny 2, could it look something like this? We know Sony clearly owns Bungie, so there's always the option for some type of movie or spin-off show too. And with Unreal Engine even being used in production for shows like The Mandalorian and others, this could be a route Sony could go down.

And a Destiny show could very well look like the images you see here on screen. I'd like to thank John for allowing me to share this with you and again make sure to check out his ArtStation linked down below. And if you'd like to see some more Destiny news, lore and mysteries just like this video, please be sure to subscribe to the channel.

I thank you very much for watching and I'll catch you all in the next video. No lie, a show delivered well in this universe with like the people who wrote Arkane would f*ck so hard. Arkane was such an interesting thing because it was like they just let them cook and they paid so much money for it. But it was so worth it. Arcane was so good that it almost made me redownload League of Legends.

Edge Runners, Arcane, you do that type of level where Destiny would pop. The only issue is they saw no return with that show. Yeah, didn't they lose money on that show? God, dude, that is beautiful, though. That is a beautiful set right there.

I've never seen the last city, guys. This looks so much sexier to me. This looks way sexier. This I would defend.

This... I mean, look, I'm just saying they got some huge-ass fing potholes out here. It's so sy the traveler left. You know what I mean?

He f***ing moved. I think this is hot. This is really, really hot right here.

I mean, I can get behind this s***. Now, it doesn't really matter. Bungie's not going to leave the Tiger Engine, guys. It ain't going to happen, dude. I wish it would.

I wish it could. I know Bungie won't leave the Tiger Engine. Maybe Sony might. Now, here's the other thing, though.

I do think that Destiny is a very beautiful game. It's not just the graphical overhauls, because I do think Destiny is a good-looking game. It's more of like the engine upgrades. Can we ever see a world in which we have...

huge world bosses you know 20 30 Guardians taking down this world boss a true MMO experience where it's like that that open open MMO encounter random Guardians out in the wild I just don't know if that's ever going to be possible for the tiger engine and my question is is would Unreal give us that I don't know. If anything, I feel like we're getting pulled back away from the whole... Like, I feel like Bungie's kind of, like, pulling back on the MMO side of things, you know? Slap that like button like your mama told you, right?