Destiny 2 has recently made it easier for new players to get started. However, since then, it has become almost impossible for freshly minted Guardians to understand the extensive overall story of the game with its many details and threads.
Not long in the game? This could become problematic: The 13th Season of Destiny 2 is on the horizon. As part of the seasonal story, the Cabal Empress Caiatl appears to be a new, powerful enemy in the game.
- But who is this mysterious Cabal Warlord?
- How does she fit into the setting?
- What was so important about Cayde-6 and who is he anyway?
- Or the Wanderer? Or Ikora – the nice lady who just stands in the Tower and never does or says anything?
- What has the guy named Crow done that is so bad?
While long-time Destiny players still manage to keep at least a rough overview, such details can be quite hard to grasp for new Guardians who have just recently started with Destiny 2 or are about to begin.
Even though Bungie has specially given the game a revamped beginning for freshly minted Guardians, many story branches, important connections, and whole fates are now harder to follow for newcomers than they have ever been before.
Overall story hard to understand for newcomers – Why is that?
That is different: With the release of the latest expansion “Beyond Light” and the start of Season 12, Destiny 2 brought new content to the game, and the story was finally pushed forward in a more substantial way.
However, according to Bungie, Destiny 2 cannot grow indefinitely, and so, alongside the release of new content in November 2020, many contents from the game were vaulted – into the so-called Destiny Content Vault. Among them were:
- the entire campaign from the base game
- content from the first two DLCs “Curse of Osiris” and “Warmind”
- numerous locations along with their respective content and activities – including quests, stories, and some characters
What is the problem? The issue is that with the removal of many contents, important storylines have been cut or whole pillars have essentially disappeared from the game. As a result, the overall picture is now hard to grasp – at least in its full complexity.
Thus, the campaign of the base game introduced new Guardians to the world as well as many important events and characters. Without this foundation, it is hard to understand why, for example, the death of Cayde-6 had such significance and why the Crow, meaning Uldren, is now experiencing such a harsh fate. Or who the Emperor Calus was, who is closely connected to the main antagonist of the new Season 13. Or what event ultimately brought the Fleet of Darkness to us.
Yes, this knowledge is not important for everyone, many find the game enjoyable even without deeper knowledge of the background. And this knowledge is not completely lost. You can always check out YouTube for good and compact story summaries.
That is a shame: The story has never been considered Destiny’s strong point – at least not in the game itself. However, Bungie has been working over the years to better tell the story in-game, to fill in important story gaps, and to finally answer open questions from the last years – and this has also worked better recently, especially in Beyond Light.
However, with the vaulting of content, this old problem is resurfacing for new players. Bungie has created a huge world with great stories, but some of these stories are now hardly comprehensible for new Guardians – at least not in their full glory, not in their full extent. And that also makes it harder to spark interest in new stories, which often build on old events.
This was supposed to improve the situation
The entry for new players was already made more difficult and confusing with the transition to Free-to-Play. At that time, the Free-to-Play version Destiny 2: New Light still offered a very large scope, but there was no red thread to guide new players through the playable contents in the correct order.
Therefore, Bungie has revamped the onboarding in the game and given Destiny 2 a new beginning. After all, with the base campaign, almost the entire introduction to Destiny 2 has been removed.
And yes, he does lead new players into the game much better now – at least mechanically.
- There is a noticeable red thread that gradually introduces newcomers to the principles of being a Guardian and presents the most important mechanics of Destiny 2.
- There is also a good, compact introduction story-wise – however, it is very rudimentary and practically hardly goes beyond a somewhat inflated good versus evil.
Story-wise, Destiny 2 is now a patchwork for newcomers, and in many places, it is hard to know exactly what one is fighting against – one just does it for the loot.
That’s why there’s hope: Even though much content has now fallen away – the new content since Beyond Light relies on a much more direct story. Bungie integrates much of the story via cutscenes or dialogues during seasonal quests directly into the game. At least the rough overarching plot established in 2020, which then leads to 2022 in the DLC Lightfall, should also be easily understandable for new Guardians.
We can hope that they will pick up the old, unfortunately somewhat convoluted story strands again and finally connect their now loose ends or branches into a coherent thread. Whether this approach will succeed will be seen first in part in Season 13, when we (hopefully) learn more about the motivations of the Cabal, the daughter of Emperor Calus, and the Darkness.
If this connection is well done, it could very well help to close the knowledge gaps of new Guardians and make the overall picture understandable – at least for this story strand.
What do you think? Do you generally switch off when it comes to the Destiny story, or would you like to know why and whom you are actually shooting at? How do fresh players see it? Does the game make it too difficult for you to understand the big story surrounding Destiny?
