Destiny 2 composer reveals Paul McCartney's tunes are making a comeback

Paul McCartney singing to a Ghost in a Destiny music video.

(Image credit: Bungie)

Bungie composer Ella Feingold, who has been orchestrating Destiny since 2015, has posted an image on Instagram of a score sheet with a notable name on it: P. McCartney (spotted by VGC). The title of the composition has been obscured, while the orchestration is credited to Feingold and Jordan Cox, and lest there were any doubt, Feingold's caption reads "Yeah that P. McCartney. That's all I can say for now."

Paul McCartney is one of the most prolific and influential songwriters and performers of our time, and best-known for being the driving force of The Beatles. He composed several tracks and motifs that went into shaping the original Destiny's soundtrack, with credits on five of the eight tracks that feature in The Music of Destiny: Volume 1, and various other credits on the full OST. Most notably McCartney composed and performed Hope for the Future, released as a single, and seen by some as Destiny's theme.

Paul McCartney for Final Shape"

Unfortunately, Bungie and its longtime composer Marty O'Donnell had a major falling out in 2014, the repercussions of which have been ongoing and have resulted in O'Donnell's contributions to Destiny being sidelined. O'Donnell composed alongside McCartney for Destiny, with many of the tracks featuring credits for both (here's a great account of how it all came about). That may or may not have been a factor in this, but one thing is clear: Because of O'Donnell's dispute with Bungie, current Destiny players would be forgiven for not knowing that an actual fricking Beatle composed music for their game.

Well, some of them. Hope to the Future is actually in Destiny 2 as an easter egg, in the raid The Last Wish. This features a secret code wall that you can use to activate a bunch of different effects, and one of them just plays the song if you shoot the circles in the right order (here's how to trigger it).

Feingold's post could of course be interpreted in various ways, though it seems unlikely McCartney will be returning with any new compositions. The most likely implication of the tease is that Bungie's audio team has decided to revisit McCartneys compositions, many of which haven't been in Destiny since the first game. We'll probably find out in the run-up to The Final Shape, due early 2024 and trailed by Bungie as the conclusion to the long-running Light and Darkness saga.

Elsewhere in Destinyland, its players are distracting themselves from the endless loot-chasing by having fun with bots. After the WoW community tricked an AI bot into posting an article about a made-up character called Glorbo, everyone's favourite space wizards took up the mantle and invented their own secret boss with the same name. Yep, the bots fell for it.

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."