Book Review: The Art of Destiny: Volume 3
April 1st 2025
Destiny 2 has been out for some time now and has had a lot of changes, including more content and expansions. After many years of the team at Bungie working away on the game, they are back with another artbook to showcase the talent of the artists involved.
The Art of Destiny: Volume 3 comes with the concept art for the game where Volume 2 left off in 2017, putting the added content in the spotlight. With a publication date of April 15th 2025, it’s been a good while since we have had another look at printed works for Destiny. It is again published by Insight Editions or Titan Books, depending on where you are located. My copy here in the UK came from Titan Books which arrived early, so I can jump in and present my thoughts of the artbook here.
As always my reviews cover the following points that I feel are important to fans and collectors; build quality, content, credits, use of space and value. Photos and a video preview are also featured below.
Build Quality
Like the previous entries, Volume 3 comes with a hardcover and dust jacket, as is the standard for Titan Books. As always it delivers solid binding, which it needs, because it has 272 pages and is a good size again too at 11 x 10 inches (27.8 x 25.4 cm). It also has a high print quality, so none of the details are ruined by dark or unclear images.
Content
As previously stated, this gives players a look at the additional content for the game, starting with Curse of Osiris and ending with The Final Shape. Chapters are divided up into expansions, with a look at the art that helped create them.
The book features concept art for characters, weapons, armour, environments and enemies for each expansion. There is a look at the seasonal content included too, as well as some storyboards, iconography and narrative art. There are different styles featured from the team, such as the storyboards/ narrative concept art, which use less fine detail and brighter colours to convey moments in the storytelling. The art included is from various stages of development, from early and unused designs, to the more developed ideas and key art as well, with some images covering an entire spread.
If you’re a fan of previous artbooks from Bungie, whether that be for Halo or Destiny, you know what you’re getting with the art, but that’s not a bad thing. I’m personally a fan of their work, particularly the environment pieces, and I was not disappointed here. The Europa concepts for Beyond Light in particular were a highlight for me. Though I don’t review the art itself, as it is subjective, I can say that Bungie delivered as they always do, so there is no disappointment for players here that enjoyed their previous releases. People that are picking this up as their first book from Bungie get a nice look at the range of work the team does.
There are insights placed throughout The Art of Destiny: Volume 3 as well. It’s not a deep dive into the making of the game, but there are instead small paragraphs of information that can be about the intention of the art, a description of a piece or some information with mentions of lore. Not every image gets one, but they can be found on most pages. They are short and concise, with some giving fans more interesting information than others, such as highlighting that the Cloudstriders from Lightfall were worked on with the potential of them having their own franchise. The last expansion chapter for The Final Shape gets slightly more detail in the way of insights, this may be as a result of its recency, where it is easier for the team to find and remember the details.
Overall I think the text does a good job of giving small snippets of information and was used where needed, as opposed to being on every page for the sake of being there. I do wish there was more though, they gave up some of the goods, but there is no doubt a lot more to say about the art.
Credits
Unfortunately for this book, the credits are not on each page, nor are the artists given page space at the front of back with a list of just their names. Instead, they opted to place the game credits at the back of the book in very small text. The names are separated by company and department, so even the individual roles are not given.
This is a shame as the artists do fantastic work, so it would be nice to see who was responsible for each image. Giving the artists their own credit space would also allow people to look them up online. It’s much less likely they will be discovered through a block paragraph of names under the title ‘Art’. Though there is a large number of people noted here, there are better ways of doing this, as seen in other books.
Use of Space
This book has a vey clean look, it’s well laid out and easy to read. The big problem here though is the sizing of the art and text. The margin size used around the edges of many pages are much bigger than necessary and that gives less space for the content, as it limits the print size. There are some gaps in pages too that could be used as space for more text, or again, larger images if they made adjustments.
There is a definitely an aesthetic they were going for here, but the amount of white space around the edges could have been used to allow the art to breathe more. There are pages though that do a much better job, with art reaching the page edge and very little empty space. It’s an odd inconsistency, but a lot of artwork is still included. The layouts are simple and effective, so nothing distracts you from the art. There are no issues with images overlapping or an overdesign background steal attention. Sometimes less is more and that is the case here.
Value
The RRP is £40/ $50, which is a standard price for an artbook and so there are no issues here. Of course, artbooks can often be found at lower prices, as is already the case in the UK. As seen on Amazon, where I compare prices for consistency, it is currently 8% off. In the US though, it is still at $49.99, but will unlikely stay that way. For 272 pages of art, I don’t see any issue with the pricing for fans and collectors.
Verdict
The Art of Destiny: Volume 3 delivers more stunning sci-fi art from the team at Bungie, giving players of Destiny 2 a look at the years of work that helped keep the FPS popular. Though there could be improvements with the use of space, there is still a lot of content here that comes as a great follow up to Volume 2. These books together paint the full picture of the Destiny 2, with concept art of the base game from 2017, to The Final Shape launch 7 years later. Even those that haven't played the game can enjoy the book for it's incredible art and design.
For those wanting to pre-order The Art of Destiny: Volume 3 for their shelf, you can do so here;
Tags;
Based On: #Destiny2 Series: #Destiny Publisher: #TitanBooks Studio: #Bungie
Thank you for the review!