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While Destiny 2 offers satisfying gameplay experiences, memorable story moments and a stellar presentation in terms of art direction and soundtrack, it unfortunately devolved into a “you had to be there”-kind of MMO, that is incredibly unwelcoming to newcomers: A baffling amount of removed content, time-limited story events and lots of microtransaction needed to access the “full game” should make you think twice about getting into Destiny 2.
I started my personal journey with the Destiny franchise all the way back in June of 2014, when the original Destiny released. I still remember firing up my PlayStation 4 on launch day, my excitement when joining many other players as newly awakened Guardians. After starting out in the Cosmodrome on Earth, I’d travel all over the solar system to fight for the fate of humanity in PvE encounters – or against fellow guardians in PvP matches (thank you, Hawkmoon). Since I was also playing through each of the four expansions when they released, I soon racked up way over 500h of playtime - and while the original Destiny definitely wasn’t a perfect experience in many ways, it gave me a lot of fond memories that I cherish to this day.
In 2017, Destiny 2 was released, although in a very different form compared to what the game is like today. First off, while the games only featured time-limited content in the form of special events before, tied to occurrences like Valentine’s Day or Halloween for example, the release of the Forsaken expansion in 2018 saw Destiny 2 introducing a seasonal model to the game: New additions to the game in terms of story and gameplay, that were releasing between the annual paid expansions, where now tied to “seasons” - with most of this new content apart from your claimed rewards being removed once a season ends. While other MMOs, like Final Fantasy XIV, keep their story (patch) content available forever, Destiny 2 was now requiring players to keep playing if they don’t want to miss out on how the still ongoing plot, that started with the original Destiny, develops. It was at this point that I stopped playing Destiny 2 frequently and only returned for a bit every time a new expansion released, as I didn’t want to be stuck to a game that puts an expiry date on its story content.
Unfortunately, in retrospective, this would only turn out to be the beginning of the horrid relationship that Destiny 2 has with its older content. After going free-to-play with the release of the Shadowkeep expansion in 2019, which didn’t mean much as you still had to pay for past and future expansions, the year 2020 and the Beyond Light expansion brought what many players consider to be most problematic change in the history of the entire game: The “vaulting” of Destiny 2 content.
To cut it short, over time Destiny 2 removed earlier campaign content from the game, which includes the original “Red War” campaign as well as those from the Curse of Osiris, Warmind and Forsaken expansion. Notably, this does not only include the campaign missions but entire locations like Mars, Mercury, Titan, etc. as well. They’re simply gone, with no way to currently experiencing them again apart from watching old playthroughs on YouTube. While they could potentially return one day, it hasn’t happened for the campaigns at this point, and I think it’s fair to say they never will. While the entirety of the original Destiny remains online and playable, there is no an incredibly large gap between the last events of the game and the currently playable events in Destiny 2 – not only in terms of the already time-limited seasonal content.
While the intro experience has been redesigned according with the “vaulting” of campaigns, frankly, even as a veteran like I am it’s a miserable experience trying to keep up the story, with so much content vital to the overall narrative removed. Sure, you could resort to dozens of YouTube videos to figure out the missing links, but this is something that a (new) player shouldn’t have to do – while Destiny 2 does offer a dedicated recap page with very brief descriptions in order to keep you in the loop, it obviously can’t replace the experience of playing through the content by yourself. As such, while the latest The Final Shape expansion might’ve concluded ten years of storytelling to a certain degree, it still feels like the last pages of a book that had entire chapters ripped out from, with the missing information only being available through second-hand reports from other readers.
That said, Destiny 2 sure likes to take money for the older content is hasn’t yet vaulted. While diving into details here would unfortunately take too long, I just want to point out that the “Legacy Collection” and even the biggest “Light & Darkness Collection” bundle doesn’t somehow include full access to all available content in Destiny 2 – as they’re missing the dungeons from the Witch Queen & Lightfall expansions. It also feels incredibly ironic to still sell the Forsaken expansion at a price of 19,99€, since much of the content in the expansion got vaulted, including the campaign – which means it’s just access to a few weapons, a dungeon and a raid now. Did I mention that seasons also offer a premium battle-pass for sale, including buyable tier skips?
While I haven’t yet talked about the absolute disaster that is the Destiny 2 PvP experience, which is incredibly punishing for new players, or the amount of pop-ups, intro-missions and cutscenes you receive when starting up the game for the first few times, by now it should be clear that Destiny 2 is almost outstandingly bad at introducing new players to the game – or at reintroducing players who have been absent for a longer time. This is especially infuriating because below all these aggressively unfriendly design decisions, there is an incredible game hiding.
I absolutely love the gunplay of the franchise for example, fighting against the various enemy factions is usually extremely satisfying. Some of the highest-rarity guns (“exotics”) have become my favourites across all the first-person shooters I have played, be it through their unique effects or great look. In general, the art direction and soundtrack of the franchise is incredible, which makes the ”vaulting” of old locations even more painful, as some beautiful sights are now lost to time. Finally, tackling even the toughest challenges with a group of friends can make for extremely memorable experiences – I still vividly remember the excitement after finishing my first raid, for example.
Still, despite all the greatness that Destiny 2 can offer – which it once again proved with its latest expansion - it’s unfortunately the type of MMO that’s best-described as a “you had to be there”-experience, since it’s painfully bad at allowing new players to catch-up with the long-playing veterans. While not impossible, getting into Destiny 2 requires a certain amount of work that’s understandably deterring to a lot of players – if I were to start out with the game as it is now, I probably would’ve quit the franchise after a few hours or so. Even while Destiny remains a good starting point if you got a PlayStation/Xbox available, the narrative gap that follows now is likely going to be too large for most players. Hopefully, the franchise can get a fresh start one day, with a Destiny 3 that is once again welcome to all kinds of players, old and new.