Destiny 2 is Strongest in its Darkest Moments

Destiny has had a troubled history, there’s no way around it. The community has always been strong, but the games have always been consistently hit or miss. When Destiny first launched, many felt that it lacked a lot of content, and had a shallow end game with an incoherent story. These complaints, barring the narrative, largely persisted until The Taken King. Then, in Destiny 2, the launch was not as shallow as Destiny, but still lacked something that people wanted, and then the two follow-up DLCs were seen as some of the lowest points in the game, until Forsaken came along. Notice a trend?

 

Destiny and its universe is not kind. There are kind moments, kind people, but they exist in an unforgiving universe. However, Bungie has not always been outwardly good at showing this. In the Destiny vanilla campaign, things felt all over the place. Guardians awoke in the Cosmodrome, fought Fallen and Hive, travelled to the Moon to fight more Hive and some Fallen, and then travelled to Venus to meet with the Exo Stranger before hopping over to the Reef and then ultimately to Mars to conquer the Black Garden. All along that path, nothing made much sense.

Who was this Stranger? Who is Dr. Shim? Who are the Awoken? Why am I fighting these aliens? What happened to Earth and Humanity? What is the Light and the Darkness? It didn’t help Bungie that a lot of answers to these questions, as well as content posing more questions, were locked up within the Grimoire, a system of lore that was inaccessible in the game. This took a turn in December, with The Dark Below DLC.

The Dark Below DLC introduced Eris Morn, a former Guardian who had been nearly defeated by the Hive. Eris was the only survivor of a fireteam that had attempted to kill the Hive Prince Crota, who largely commanded the Hive in the Sol System. On the surface, this simple revenge story was far more coherent and enjoyable for Destiny players than the base campaign. However, those who looked found things much deeper. They found a story of revenge gone wrong, they found the extent of Hive torture, and they found that there was so much more to learn.

The Dark Below set up the peak of Destiny, and what many consider the peak of the franchise: The Taken King. Following Guardians’ interactions with the Awoken in wrangling the escapees of the Fallen House of Wolves and their Kell, Skolas, they returned the favor. With the arrival of Oryx’s Dreadnaught over Saturn, the Awoken launched a full scale assault, which was successful despite the catastrophic losses of their fleet.

The Taken King was, in Destiny 1 at least, the pinnacle of their storytelling. Players learned about the origins of the Hive and the Sword Logic through the Books of Sorrow. They learned of how the Hive arrived in Sol. Further than that, they witnessed what was, until recently, the most dire hour of Humanity since the Collapse. With the arrival of Oryx, the Taken began appearing en masse across the system, with the singular intent of avenging the death of Crota. Across all planets, everything was being torn apart by the Taken. 

Now, we are reaching what may well be the true peak of Destiny. The Darkness is no longer just a boogeyman, a vague thing we know is bad: The Darkness is here. There are Pyramids orbiting Io, Titan, Mars, and Mercury. Savathun and Nokris are attacking the Tree of Silver Wings to cut Guardians off from communications from the Pyramids. The universe is on the precipice of change, and we know what that change is. No longer will Guardians be solely warriors of the Traveler and warriors of the Light; they will walk the path of Light and Dark, working in shades of Grey.

Tyler Krasnai
Editor, NoobFeed
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