Destiny 2's Biggest Season/Story Issue MUST be addressed before Final Shape Releases. 

"The moment when Saint returns from the infinite forest" ... I never even saw the infinite forest...

I'd like to point out that I haven't played since Witch Queen, and that the only reason I'm aware of the general goings-on and state of the story in Destiny is because I watch you. My question is: are they allowing this "context" to disappear because they assume you and others will just fill in the blanks for those that haven't been playing and take for granted you all work hard to keep people caught up?

Bungie’s leadership needs to take accountability. “Oh we get paid the most because we are responsible for the biggest decisions” Okay, but what if you make bad ones. You need to be responsible for those too. The captain should go down with the ship, not throw the crew overboard.

Journey is regarded as one of Destiny's greatest tracks. That moment in Homecoming when you are marching through the Last City, destroyed and infested, is genuinely something I played over and over. Regardless of how well the rest of the Red War's story was received that specific moment is my favorite in Destiny. The drums started beating and it made everything real, I felt like a Guardian in that moment. Journey still plays every once in a while if you wait in orbit long enough, but there are so many people who will never get to experience that feeling, that rush down my spine as the music exploded with all of the pride and fury and loss that the Red War represented, that Destiny embodies...and that makes me sad.

To this day I cannot believe the Red War and Forsaken are still vaulted

Part of the problem is locking story quests behind the seasonal subscriptions. Right now, it's like paying for each chapter of the Lord of the Rings, but getting the climaxes of each book for free. For most live service games with season passes, the pass content is cosmetic: skins, emotes, exclusive gear, leveling resources. Bungie goes one step further by locking the s e a s o n a l s t o r y e v e n t s, literal chapters of Destiny's broad arc, behind that paywall. And what do those include? Key moments, like Crow entering the portal, the Witness' origins, or Eris banishing Xivu Arath. As in, the really important story bits. Even in games with subscription-exclusive events, the story and the events aren't necessarily intertwined. But for Destiny, with it's RPG elements and ever-evolving story, making story chapters subscription-exclusive takes that incredible, vast story and chops it into little inaccessible bits.

Defiance was also slapped together like Lightfall, I believe. The mission where you rescue Amanda has you enter a pyramid structure in the EDZ, but the cutscene you get when you save her is clearly onboard the cabal prison ship. The chaperone cutscene.

The biggest frustration of the Lightfall Campaign is EVERY SINGLE TIME Nimbus or Rohan starts trying to tell us about what the Veil, the Cloud Ark, or the Radial Maguffin are, Osiris would immediately butt in, screaming at us how it isn’t important and we just need to get to the veil and we’ll worry about it later…which leaves us with zero stakes at all.

Don’t worry Bungie will just put a few cutscenes into the timeline and pretend it’s a good replacement for actual story content

I’ll do you one better about the Amanda plotline: it made a whole lot more sense for it to be Hawthorne instead. In fact, outside of the romantic stuff between her and Crow, it all made more sense for Hawthorne.

Another thing often overlooked is that when The Final Shape comes out we are going to make our way through the campaign until the final mission, the climax of the entire light and darkness saga and then be stopped until after the raid is completed. Narratively if you are in it for the story it is in your best interest to NOT be there day one and that is a HUGE problem.

I was mucking around on Nessus last night and found myself thinking about back when that location actually mattered to the game. It got me thinking back on just how much content has been made for Destiny as a franchise over the past decade and just how little of it is still available. I understand limitations exist but it's so damn depressing to think about just what all is gone. I love this game. I loved D1. Even when they were both awkward and clunky, even at their lowest I still loved them. It sucks to know new players will never be able to experience what made me fall in love with the story and world of Destiny. I made a new character for the first time last year. I've been a warlock main since I started playing and never needed anything else, but found myself wanting to try a hunter. The process of going through the new light missions and getting up to speed was tedious at best and grating at worst. If that's what we have to offer to new players, I don't have much hope for growth moving forward, and that's before the utter lack of context Byf describes here. What would be the point of joining on for the Final Shape without knowing the decades worth of story that leads up to such an important moment? I'll still be here one way or another, but every time I find myself on an old planet or in a location I used to frequent with my friends, I'll spend a moment to remember what once was.

Bungie sure is lucky to have a lore keeper like Byf. Without him, millions of veteran players and New Lights, would be lost, and not know the story, and deeper lore of Destiny 1 & 2, as much as they should. Hopefully, his upcoming “Story of Destiny” video will be seen by plenty of fans, and catch everyone up with a four, narrated recap of the first saga. If it were up to me, Byf would be a lore-related NPC vendor in the game. To shed more light on the deeper stories of Destiny, for New Lights, and returning to players.

I think one problem that can’t be blamed on the execs is that even if they had to pad the game with an extra narrative/story, they didn’t have to go the creative route they did. Because it seems to me the biggest issue with Lightfall isn’t, “What is the explanation for these plot devices,” but “why should we care about Neomuna and cloudstriders at this point in the narrative?” Given that Final Shape is going to be primarily about what happens inside the Traveler, there was nothing preventing a Lightfall story centered around an invasion of the city we actually care about: The Last City. I think the real issue is somewhere in the middle: the execs wanted a longer runway (probably to give more time to get Marathon ready) and the devs wanted to use that to introduce something a little different.

This is why I started to like the first Destiny so much; I could go and replay all the major campaign chapters and get caught back up when it came to the storyline.

Another major mistake was removing the one off things too. Imagine if ONLY guardians with Forge weapons could find hidden messages with their scopes throughout content. It feels like Bungie never over lapped anything, then the vaulting idea popped up and removed any possibility of things even mattering.

I don't think Bungie ever will learn, their suits don't give a shit and only want to see $$$. Im gunna stick with Hell Divers 2 gotta protect Super Earth.

About that year leading up to the witch queen, during the campaign we find a crystal from Season of the Lost; Savathun’s prison. If you didn’t play that season before WQ, you would’ve had no idea why the crystal is significant. This is apparent everywhere in the game

As someone who's been playing since d1, I would be ok if destiny 2 became a 200gb download that includes Everything from red war onwards as long the accessible parts are in order with what is unlockable, have a story bit I'm final shape that all the planets came back corrupted and change their ambiance a bit. I want to be able to make a new character and plan the entire story of destiny 2, start to finish and earn loot accordingly

Imagine you love a tv-series and its tenth and final season is coming up. You're hyped up and try to get your friend to watch it, but you have to preface it with a "btw, you can only watch seasons 4, 5, 7 and 9, the other ones aren't available anymore". No one would want to watch that show. I find it absolutely mind boggling that someone at Bungie thought removing parts of an ongoing story was ever a good idea.

How is it only NOW that people are talking about this? This is something I picked up on, immediately upon starting the game back in Season of Plunder. I asked my friend who got me into the game why I couldn't play the original campaigns and he explained the content vault and the rotating out of seasonal content. I immediately knew it was stupid and would never work from a cohesive narrative perspective. And yet it just gets ignored forever until it finally "matters". It mattered all along.

All they had to do was delay lightfall and release older storylines and raids from the sunset vault until they finished the expansion. That would be amazing.

I play a lot of different games, but nothing has ever left me as hopeful yet simultaneously depressed as Destiny. Really hope one day that changes

There is just so much history to destiny it honestly gets me a little emotional thinking of it all. I think we all expect another cutscene with some brief replays as the intro to the final shape. But man. A proper long cutscene going over all those major hits with some narration from cayde and ikora and zavala would be honestly enough to get me as back into destiny 2 as i was at the start going through the red war excited to start a new journey with new powers and an endless road ahead.

I would like to see them add an "Archived" area in the game. A menu or something that contains all of the sunset areas, gear and events available to download but does not download with a fresh game install (something optional). Make the multiplayer events active again to people who have the archived areas downloaded or make them available for "offline ish" single player. I would love to relive the Red War campaign and even though not everyone does I have enough storage space to house every piece of this game and I would love to have it all.

The good news is that cutscene with The Witness's origins and the veil is going to stay in the timeline permanently. However, I really feel like moments like the endings to Splicer, Lost, Haunted, Seraph, Deep, Witch, and Wish need to stay in the game. Edit: I think Bungie also needs to give a small narrative blurb like what is in the Timeline Reflections so new players understand why these moments are important

Having neomuna as lightfall setting was a big mistake imo, it had too many factors to cover while taking away from the main conflict with the witness. It should have been aboard the witness’s ship keeping the fight focused against the witness, while the seasonal would be on earth. The narrative from this point would have focused on guardians racing to stop the witness from destroying the traveler. While calus attempts to stops guardians only to fail as we begin to learn strand due to the weird interaction of light and dark as the part of the pyramid begins to terraform. The radial mast could have been what was harvested from the tree in season of arrivals, and be destroyed midway through thinking we saved the traveler. Only to be revealed that it was a relay to the veil that now the witness has link to, and with it gone we cannot trace it back to the veil but we can use deep sight into the witness mind (play witness origins) Now desperate we assault the witness’s chamber only to be slowed by nightmares of nezarec in tormentors, and end with the fight against calus, only to be too late. The witness has established the link to the traveler through our presence on the ship, and now has the power to carve open the portal. Post campaign: RoN still happpens, to kill nezarec before he can regain his power and haunt sol. quest leads to recreate the link to the veil and it ends with Osiris following it back to the source, in the following season, back to Venus.

At this point we need Destiny 2: Extended Edition with all the sunset content coming back, like WoW did with WoW Classic.

26:52 Byf nails on the head EXACTLY what I’ve been clamoring for since we first got timeline reflections. What a freaking treat it would be if that’s what “Into the Light” ends up being.

“Cut at the knees” seems like a perfect phrase for what it feels like for anyone trying to get into the story of Destiny by playing, especially when considering the fact that many players for one reason or another didn’t keep up with the seasonal story for a while and are completely unable to even attempt to catch up due to content vaulting.

The fomo that drives destiny is also what’s killing it

i think a very simple solution could be introduced in a lore friendly way....just use the infinante forest as a way to "revisit" past experiences and use it to "learn from mistakes made" in essence jsut use it as a giant instance for old content

One thing I'm confused about the most (Since you brought up the Lightfall story) in the cutscene where we see The Witness talking to Calus through our Ghost, they directly tell Calus to see to it that the Veil is destroyed. But as we know now with what the Witness did, he needed the Veil to create that link with The Traveler. This leads me to think that Bungie themselves didn't really know what The Veil really was and came to a decision around Season Of The Deep.

I started playing during season of plunder. I had no idea what the story was or what was happening but that season was so much fun because I was a spade pirate. The action was incredible. I've since put 1000+ hours into the game and have watch dozens and dozens of lore videos to get caught up. I absolutely adore this game even though ive only played for the past 1.5 years. To see how this game is being treated now and what happened to the employees crushed my want to play the game. I'll be here for final shape and waiting in hopes of a good landing for the story but it's hard to watch the future of this games success be dangled so precariously between people remembering it for a bad ending or one that might actually be a banger. I hope for the best for this game I love.

24:55. That list. That gave me goosebumps of nostalgia along with despair of loss with the mention every single storyline. I truly want to be able to experience those again.

Well, it's a good thing channels like your exist, to make sure the important bits of the story live on forever and are always available to learn from.

I hear ya Byf. For me specifically, it was a tragedy that Season of the Haunted's content was vaulted. Heads-up, this is about to get really heavy. When I started playing Destiny, I had moved out to a new town I had never been to before to finish my education. And it was truly horrible. Moving with me was a sweep of emotions that came from traumas which I never had addressed properly; traumas that I ultimately did to myself from being such a short tempered, emotionally inept moron when I was a teen. During that time, I was a hateful, miserable, socially-awkward shell of a man who hated himself, hated everyone around him, and just wanted to watch the world burn in the hopes I would burn too. But then, I played Season of The Haunted. I got to see Crow. I got to see how Crow thought of himself after the revelation he received that he was Uldren in a past life. I got to see how Crow had a similar sense of self-hatred and how even in-spite of his then former best friend Amanda pretty much ending her friendship with him, how he found the courage to confront his past and come out better for it; to come to the revelation that "we all have parts of ourselves we wish weren't there. But acknowledging them can help make us stronger." In that moment, I felt seen. And from that, I found the courage myself to confront my own past through therapy. I'm not even going to begin to pretend I'm 100% better; I still have a flaming hot temper, motivation issues, and difficulties being around people for too long...but I've realized that I'm not a monster. That I am more than my past, and-as Rasputin later emphasized in Season of The Seraph-that no matter who I am, what I've said or done, I can choose to be something more. To this day, Haunted and Seraph are still some of my biggest inspirations for my own creative works. It tears me apart inside to see stories with such poignant messages be torn away, and that I can never experience them again except through RU-vid videos.

I definitely agree that the damage has been done. Every time they take away content, they're taking away important context and parts of the story that may not be easy to find. Channels like yours cover the missing pieces well, but it shouldn't be on your shoulders to be the only ones preserving those memories and moments. Hopefully Bungie will work on their sunsetting tactics and finally try something new

Byf u should definitely do a video or series of videos explaining this years seasonal storyline and key points would be great

I understand that some old content may be irrelevant but it’d be so awesome to have everything we’ve been given/ paid for at our disposal and play what we want, use what we want, when we want! I don’t understand how they just sunset things I paid for! Totally wild.

70% of story drops are no longer in the game. Once Final Shape releases, that number will jump to 82%. How many other games only have 18% of their content? Bungie should have ended Destiny 2 and made Destiny 3 long ago.

I can imagine them putting in a beefed up version the Speaker's D1 intro/prologue to start Final Shape. That would be quite poetic, I think. Of course, new players won't have any idea who's talking or what happened to him 😒

There are some things that are staying around that are key to the narrative like all of veil containment and associated cut-scenes as those where earmarked to be directly tied to and added as free content for Lightfall.

The cutscene with The Witness’ backstory from Deep WAS put into the game permanently in the Timeline feature from the Director, however I don’t think that’s enough. I honestly think every season needs a small cutscene going over the important elements that occurred and how it links to everything. It may take some effort but if we’re continuing to be in an era of seasons containing important story beats, then I think it’s necessary.

They introduced a new in-game lore nerd with Eido in season of the plunder and haven't used her at all. Having her supply and go into the story re-caps would be a great way to keep everyone up to speed on the in-universe goings-on prior to final shape.

Byf I hope you realise that this video is probably the reason why everyone, as of today 8th May 2024, have access to all seasonal content since the lightfall release. Yes this includes the season pass and all of the missions/quests linked to defiance, witch, deep, wish, etc. When I updated the game and hopped on I found all of this available to me for free. So I just wanted to say thank you as I am sure many others will and should be thanking you for this.

The solution is simple: when Lightfall launches, jampack the necessary older narratives into a series of missions. Make these missions optional for returning players. It could be a psionic training simulation for the new lights to prepare them to go to battle (aka the official new story).

Me and my mom used to play D1 on 360 together, she decided she didn't want to buy a new console to play D2, so asked me to keep her updated on the story. But as it progressed and I couldn't play some seasons, I couldn't fill her in on the story and we slowly just lost that interest in the game together. Which is most of my friends who were active D1-D2 players since the start. Keeping up and not being able to go back and catch up is definitely the worst thing about live service gaming. Only thanks to Byf have I've been able to enjoy the story that me and my mom loved so dearly.

I has this same issue when I came back to the game and tons of things were changed, like I never saw the revival of the traveler or many key points

I think the timeline on the director could really be expanded on as an archive almost. All cutscenes and pivotal story moments in one place that can be accessed by everyone. So that if you do miss something, there is something to look at in order to catch up.

I feel like the moment when Crow hopped into the portal to inside the Traveler should've involved more pomp and circumstance. Not ritual, but importance! It was just Crow, Mara, and Queens Wrath. Not even our own Gaurdian was there. I feel this was a monumental moment and it deserved more than just a 39 sec cutscene. Not to mention there was nothing on line for this moment. Like, we as players knew we would access the heart of the Traveler. Although we didn't exactly know how, this moment felt lack luster because we already knew Crow would succeed. Where is the suspension of disbelief? Why was there no climax, no thing to potentially lose? Ugh.... such missed opportunities seem so obvious now with D2 that I'm only tagging along because I started this 10 years ago and I'm not letting Bungee ruin it for me.

While not the best solution, it just blows my mind that seasonal cut scenes are not accessible in game in order and properly labeled. Why do they go away? Why do I have to go to RU-vid of all places to find cut scenes? It makes zero sense for an ongoing narrative. At the very least it fixes a few problems.

One idea ive mentioned to a few of my friends is either getting this content in there own stand alone games that you can download and play, like mass effect did allowing you to uninstall and reinstall the different games from its menu. Or to add in a monthly content rotater that you can play through the dlc's, seasons, and important moments for a month before it gets rotated out for something else that way people have something to look forward to.

I’ve actively played all these seasons, and I still don’t really know what’s going on, or how things are happening.

I think that the first one showing cinematic might already be happening in the way of old stuff being in the traveler meaning they can retell how we got here in the story of final shape

Said this to my buddy the other day. A cutscene leading up to final shape when it begins would be great for new lights to understand the story so far!

I like the idea of the long recap at the beginning of TFS but also have a section in triumphs to watch all the cutscenes from the prior seasons so you can get a full recap of that season in about 5 minutes per montage

the youtube channel The Phoenix has a ton of small cutscenes & voice lines from old seasons btw. dont think he's done it for last few seasons so youll have to scroll back, but that channel has been hugely helpful for me.

Agreed. The Sunsetting and cutting destinys story down to "the current thing" is a main reason i to this point have massive issues to jump back in after a year off.

Hey byf- would you mind if you would ever be able to do one major thread of JUST the need to know lore (like ~a hour) to catch me up for final shape? Like the main factions and events pretty much. Thanks!

I know my friend group has said this and is kinda wide spread in the community that had been talked about since the season leading to the light fall is there at least needs to be a well put together cinematic of all major events and info leading up to a expansion so when a new player or even a veteran who took a brake can watch and be caught up almost like a tv show when they do the “previously on (insert tv show here)” idk why all live service story games haven’t made that mandatory!!

I’m uncertain if this would help in any way, but I think they do have something present in the game to give a small synopsis of events that happened in between or during certain seasons? I’m probably completely wrong on this and I apologize if I am, but if I remember there’s like some kind of summary tab while viewing the destinations screen that gives a small way back machine for certain time frames in the game. However, it’s kinda a lackluster spark notes version from what I can remember and doesn’t give you every detail just a hey this happened and that’s that type of summary.

Watching this video made me realise how much I didn't even know I missed in terms of the story, being a player that for the past few years played the expansion and the season at that time and maybe dipping my toes in for the other three seasons of the year, some more than others, but never fully completing the entire season as it released, I have missed so many little things from the story which has added up to be a massive blank space in my knowledge for this game

I want everyone to imagine this amazing cutscene we never got. Caital holding the lines as we rush to the veil. Calus drops in and caital exclaims he has lost what it means to be cabal. They fight and its clear from the battle ensuing that Caital has the upper hand and that she is the superior cabal once again claiming she will rebuild the cabal as the greatest emporer in history. Calus mocks her goals and claims they all mean nothing and says he will win at any cost.. Calus activates darkness powers and overwhelms Caital mocks her again before sparing her Caital claims hes not true cabal if he doesnt have the stomach to finish her off. Calus spares her saying hes better than cabal and leaves to track us under the veil to the final battle. So caital is the superior cabal but calus still takes the power from the witness to become stronger WHY DIDNT WE GET THIS CUTSCENE

I think the biggest mistake Bungie made was not finding out a way to keep all sunset/removed content available somehow, like adding some way to un-install all the content you don't play anymore but if you want to, you can either re-install or keep it installed with maybe a warning like "Your load times, etc. will suffer if you have all this installed." similar (in a way) to the 'Master Chief Collection' where (if I remember right) it downloads all the relevant data for multiplayer, and if you want any campaign content you need to go into a menu and select what you want to download. To expand a little more on the idea, all the nodes in the Directory would be grayed out for content that isn't installed and give an option to download the related content, maybe even add a small node next to the tower that would open a menu for all sunset/removed content, while removing all pointless quest steps like "Play _____ mode 5 times" and pretty much only keep actual missions available. Granted it is a shame losing something like the Coil, even if I did get sick of it eventually the loot drops are fucking amazing.

I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating here. They need to take all that old content and make it into an offline set of games, about three years each, similar to Halo in narrative structure. Far too many people worked far too hard for far too long for all that content to be discarded and never seen again. The game MUST be preserved in some form.

I liked the idea of a story that was told over the entire year and really evolved and expanded upon the campaign of the expansion. When I finished Lightfall I knew that most of what was missing would be explained in the seasons. They could have definitely done some parts better. Pulling Veil Containment into Defiance would have been a huge help. Having one of the seasons be directly about investigating the Veil would have been ideal (ideally the first season). I think we had the nature of the Veil understood enough for the campaign, but then waiting 3 months to give more didn't work. Stuff like the Radial Mast never being explained was a definite issue with Lightfall though. Having Defiance actually be semi-relevant to the story would also have been necessary, to do it properly. However, I liked how it felt like throughout the rest of the year we were always working towards getting through the portal. All of that starting with Joxer dead at the beginning of Deep. Deep told a good story mostly, but had something missing I can't quite put my finger on. It led well into Witch, which was both a great story, and a fun season to play. And Witch led well into Wish. Wish definitely continued the story, but it felt a bit tangential to the goal of the portal. We basically knew everything about the portal (other than the 1 person thing) at the start of the season. If Riven didn't say no, it could have been over in the first cutscene, and been no different. You could say the same about Witch, if Savathun allowed herself to be resurrected, but I think that worked better because the season dealt a devastating blow to Xivu and took her out of the coming fight, which wouldn't have happened if Savathun were just resurrected immediately. The season instead focuses on the Ahamkara, which on its own is great, but as the last season before Final Shape, falls a little flat in its relation to the wider story. We didn't get a moment like we did in Seraph that truly felt like a strong lead up to the expansion (although there is one more mission, so fingers crossed). It did lead into it, but that lead in was much weaker than Seraph. I'd say Wish was a very good middle of the year season, but a average end of the year season. All of this is in theory a type of improvement upon the story telling of the year of Witch Queen. Witch Queen just had random events that happened 3 months apart and didn't lead into each other or into a wider story. Risen was sorta a continuation of Witch Queen, but as the first season of the year, fell a bit flat, as they tend to. Next thing we know the Leviathan comes back (this was somewhat connected because of Calus in Lightfall, but that's pretty weak, and it wasn't led up to at all). Then suddenly, we are fighting fallen pirates. 3 months later Ana finally finishes fixing Rasputin. Luckily that season led well into Lightfall. The leadup of the seasons into each other, and their wider connection to the story, I see as a good thing. It lets them tell a coherent story throughout the year, rather than having random events that serve as world building at best and filler at worst in between expansions, that told the entirety of the story. They've been doing this for a while with the last season of the year, like how Lost led to Witch Queen, but they need to expand it to all seasons (episodes now) throughout the year to have the game tell a overarching story. Execution wasn't perfect throughout this year, and with the exception of Witch, it arguably wasn't even a good exectuion, but I like the concept. I hope they do more of this overarching story in the future with Episodes, but learn from the mistakes of this year, and find a way to make that work with the transient nature of some of their content. I'm a little concerned Episodes will go back to the random events happening 4 months apart, but I understand that as the saga winds down, we may need to take some time away from large overarching stories. Just saying some sort of lead in and lead out to the episodes would be nice, and improve the story telling aspect of the game. Byf is right that this is an issue for returning players, and a solution should be found for that. The cutscenes will likely be included in the Journey thing, but they definitely do need a bit more. Including some old missions would be extremely helpful. A 'Previously on Destiny' would go a long way, but ideally there would be more. Ideally, in the future Episodes won't be transient, but I think that's a bit unlikely, given the technical issues involved. I don't expect them to nail it in time for Final Shape, but I hope they implement something as a bandaid to the issue they've created. And I hope hey look at their wider issue and find a way to address this in the future.

One of my favorite moments was watching the Almighty go down. I was couch hopping at the time and had my laptop that could run destiny. Sitting on my laptop on the couch with my headphones on and waiting the agonizing 2 and something hours just to pretty much talk with my tower chat is really something. Even now I play with someone who joined sometime during Season of Gambit and they remember better times during those days while I was reminiscing on D1 moments.

I think we should have access to the content vault and be able to download additional files if we decide we want to play old content. Kinda like what cod does with multilayer packs campaign etc. I know they need to keep the game under a certain size, but if we want, we should be able to play old content at the expense of our own personal storage. Now I'm no game dev, so I don't know if this would even be possible. But if it's a server issue, then make it to where there's no matchmaking for said content, and we would have to bring our own fire team. I wanted more vault space, and this was an idea I thought could work where if you wanted a bigger vault, you could store your guns on your own memory. But this might create issues with hackers/cheaters modifying files, etc.

I think extending the timeline to back before destiny 2 to see events from d1 would be nice. And having a recap for major events in a cutscene form for each season to catch players up on the basics of the story and previous events. Can have it so for each year there’s a cutscene explaining and the events that happened and everything. I dunno, just something easy and simple would be nice for the new lights.

As someone who was dropped at the very end of Shadowkeep, basically the beginning of beyond light. Trying to piece together what happened to even start this was extremely difficulty and to this day I have no idea and simultaneously trying to figure out what is so important about the darkeness, who is the exo stranger, why did we exactly need the darkness, how did we know variks before this and so on and so forth. It was honesty too much and half way through I just kinda stopped retaining the info and just kept going to where the story took me. Only now when the season when Saint 14 helped the Fallen I tried again to understand and then i took a long break from D2 just to come back at witch queen and to this day my confusion continues with me trying to cram everything from defiance to now and it sucks honesty because the story looks intresting but with no in game way to figure it out, it just makes it tedious.

I recently came back to play left at shadowkeep and i am having a really REALLY hard time piecing together what i missed Eramis came back? didn's she die in beyond light? is she good now where did amanda holiday go? why are there cabal and fallen in the tower? and just a ton more questions that i'm slowly piecing together but it's a really bad and unfun way that i have to dig around wikies and youtube videos and look for timelines

I've been saying this for years, I'm glad that people are finally talking about this because it feels like if you haven't played since 2014 and then logged in every week since shadowkeep (which I pretty much have) you're gonna miss out on HUGE story beats, that get oversimplified in a "highlight" mission. Beyond light has nothing to do with Witch Queen, and the seasonal story that set up Witch Queen left before it came out. The small bits that introduced us to Savathun outside of bungieNet Grimoires are all removed too (Savathun's Song strike, Forsaken's campaign)

Byf I think the witness/veil cutscene is available to view for all players in game ad infinitum

As new players, my girlfriend and I have finished Witch Queen and Lightfall and there was a very noticeable cut from Witch Queen to Lightfall. At the end of the Witch Queen campaign, we see Savathun's ghost disappearing and that was that, it was kind of left ambiguous. We then started Lightfall (as the game doesn't make it quite clear that there might have been cutscenes that we had to watch) and we were thrusted into the beginning cutscene, where we entered a ship, why we did, we were never explained until AFTER we were done with the Lightfall campaign, when we started watching some recaps on RU-vid. Hell, we had no idea what seasonal content even was, because to us, we connected seasons to just the rewards you get in the director. Our quest menu is also filled with all manners of quests and it's really difficult to distinguish between main and side missions, although I guess that might be because all missions ARE main missions in a way. I think another fundamental issue Destiny 2 has is that it does nothing to tell you that there is more story-relevant content to explore. The best example I can give is Final Fantasy 14, where the expansions are structured into basically 6 parts: First comes the expansion story, which is usually a long story arc with a connection to previous expansions. After you're done with that, you wait for and do the 5 patch stories, which are mandatory if you want to play the next expansion story. It requires you to play through the entirety of the story, yes, but it makes sure that you don't miss out on the important information that you need to stay attached to the story. Additional content like raids can expand the sides of the story but they don't contain content that you NEED to know for the story. As a contrast, Destiny 2 seemingly allows you to do any expansion story whenever you like (so far as it is still accessible) and even then, it is only the main story, no seasonal story content (which apparently often contains important story information). Coming out of Witch Queen, since I was used to Final Fantasy, I never bothered checking if there even WAS anything and now that we are done with Lightfall and are about to start the Season of the Wish story, looking back to find something is gonna cause nothing but confusion because the story would be so disjointed. We still love Destiny 2 and personally, I didn't think the Lightfall story was so bad. Yes, Witch Queen was VERY compelling (although a bit confusing at first, since we started into it having no idea what's going on), but Lightfall has its moments. Lastly, it's a little rude that the rest of the seasonal content for Lightfall is locked behind a paywall, considering we already paid for the expansion (why are we supposed to pay extra for being late to the party?) but in the grand scheme of things, this is just how it is. We won't pay money for the annual pass (nor will we for The Final Shape, given that the expansion + pass is 99€ per person, a price that you can buy almost 2 triple A games for!) so we will just play the seasonal content as it unlocks to keep on track. I wouldn't be opposed to instead pay monthlies for access to the game, if it entailed access to the past seasons of each expansion I own (similarly to Final Fantasy, where you pay a monthly + buy expansions and in turn get permanent access to everything) but I can see how some players wouldn't like that, it IS just my opinion though.

Yeah i agree, I don't know if Bugie can do anything about it at this point though. :(

I don't understand why the legacy tab is not a seasonal mission selector.

didnt bungie say that the origin of the witness cutscene and veil containment are going to remain in the game?

I have one issue and that is we got explicit confirmation that we would be up against the witness in the raid meaning we will most likely kill it or take it out of the picture. Given the first cutscene of Lightfall displaying the witness making short work of guardians how are they going to explain how we will be taking down what is essentially a god of darkness because this year has been focused on getting to the heart of the traveller but in no way have we been getting stronger to take the witness down

I remember when I first played destiny 4 years ago, and the amount of story I had to catch up on and features of the universe I had to understand was immense. I can't even begin to imagine the quanitity of narrative that they need to go through to even BEGIN to comprehend what is going on and why

Part of my Slight hope is Into The Light is that recap. It will be the best opportunity to do so. But I could be wrong.

Have we heard any new info on Destiny 2 "Into the Light"? Could this be a "catch up" campaign that helps top up your gear and game sense while feeding the overall story up to final shape?

I STILL don’t know what the Veil is and I’ve been lightly following since stoping playing after LightFall…

I'm gonna be real as someone who played red war at launch, left and didn't return until witch queen: I don't care about cayde, he was a somewhat fun character who just disapeared for me, the game has given me very little reason to care beyond telling me "oh you like him, it's so sad that he's dead"

New lights have had an issue knowing what is going on since Beyond light because the onboarding experience in game is remarkably bad. The fact that friends of mine ask if it is worth getting into destiny again and my response is usually "When did you stop playing?" cannot be healthy. However I would argue that the need for final shape to have context may not be accurate as we do not know what the next saga looks like and it may be a soft reset story wise allowing a fresh entry point. If that is how bungie resolves the issue however I feel like it would be a worse solution than leaving the context available in some form.

I would LOVE even as a mid way player (between veteran and newlight: I joined back during shadow keep, but had played a bit of D1 in the early days) to have a set of missions/strikes/cut sense that explain everything up to the Final Shape. I can take my current character in watch the sense to get reminded of stuff and be ready to go right away. But if Make a new character/account and I want to play completely new, I should be introduced to the world and story in the same way and have the option of playing some of the old content PvE wise to get the story so I can jump into the final shape missions/cut sense and have a good understanding like vets would.

I had originally thought the DCV was going to be a separate installation for the content removed from the "current game" if I remember correctly, that was how it was advertised, and it solves the major issues on space size, and content gaps

I just recently found out you can play the opening mission of Forsaken. It rallied me and gave me a decent bit of nostalgia. If Bungie decided to add a whole section that involved 1 or 2 missions from previous campaigns with Ikora doing a narrative bit they’d win so many players back. Do I want to play the whole campaign? Not really, but the core missions? I’d love to fight Gaul again on the traveler, or the city mission right before? That was one of the most entertaining missions!

My biggest issue about the timeline reflection is that it never covered the expansions before Forsaken skipped shadow keep and never addressed the seasons

Byf the cutscene of the origins of the Witness is staying, Bungie has said that, Veil Containment is staying (they do need to move the node for it though) also “only Lightfall” buddy Shadowkeep, The Witch Queen and Beyond Light will also be there

12-24 guardians vs. world boss, maybe once a day or once every 2 days. full armor and ALL weapons for each boss, exotic weapon is boss weapon.

I had only seen and done the viel containment mission litterly yesterday.

Any chance the revenant season touches on Clovis bray more since that’s what he’s called by Mara Sov? In the heist battleground she calls asks “what do we owe the presence of this revenant?”

I have over 500 hours on the game mostly from the base game. I have all the dlc and I have literally no idea what is going on with the story. I'm so lost but would love to know more.

13:10(Clap clap) Thank you. I couldn’t put words to but ‘distraction’ fits perfectly

They need to have optional modules you can download with vaulted content, I don’t care if it’s 200 gigs or something ridiculous. Then in the game there should be a timeline where you can replay all past story missions including seasonal ones (This includes those missions you could only play once per character). Basically you should be able to replay the highlights of the season without the grind. Seasonal activities such as Ketchcrash should be in an archive section but maybe add weekly rotator on matchmaking.

Btw, the witness origin cut scene is in the timeline

They did say the cut scenes explaining the veil would stay, despite sunsetting the season.

I do wonder what Into the Light will bring in terms of story.

As someone who started playing just about a month before witch queen was released, my friend who was teaching me and joining me along for the ride, helping me RUSH through the key elements of Tangled shore and Forsaken before it's removal whilst also catching up on the story that I could to prepare for Witch queen release. If it was not for him I would have had just about 0 clue about what was going on and even with his help I had to get a lot of what I was experiencing explained to me by him, I was still sort of lost. He informed me of your RU-vid channel and that's where I've found most of my knowledge about a game I wish I could experience the whole story of. Whilst I do love your videos and appreciate that they dive a lot deeper into it then I would on my own, I still wish I could've been there to play the story myself, and then watch your videos and it not all being new information to me. I feel somewhat punished for not finding the game earlier and therefore missing key elements of the story, and in a good game you should not have to watch RU-vid videos to even know the story, it's something you should watch because you wanted to dive deeper into it. Now I don't think Destiny is a bad game, I actually fell in love for the first time in a game that was shooter and that was sci-fi, whilst previously never been able to really stick with any similar game before. Destiny opened me up to shooting games in general a lot more. I saw a brief story of Cayde and he was instantly my favorite character and watching him die I bought all the expansions because I was going to avenge him. However a lot of his story I was forced to catch up on through RU-vid. I have had so much fun playing Destiny with my friends but this last year has really just drained my motivation, it has sprouted from time to time but ultimately, I NEED Final shape to be a goddamn bombshell of a DLC and I WANT it to be. Thank you for the videos you create, you've helped me be part of this story more than Destiny did, keep up the good work and hopefully, the next expansion will give you loads of good lore to cover.