It’s 2023 and I’ve once again fallen under Destiny 2's spell – and you’re going to, too

Last year, Bungie delivered one of the best FPS campaigns we’ve seen in years with the launch of Destiny: The Witch Queen. Providing some incredible challenge, a renewed focus on layered storytelling, and giving players much more agency in the cosmic sandbox Destiny calls home, The Witch Queen felt like a revival of the service shooter – a statement expansion that set the intent for the months, and years, to come.

Now, The Witch Queen is dead. In lore, and in spirit. With one final mission glued onto the end of Season of the Seraph, Bungie planted a bullet in the Hive queen’s crowned head and cleared the stage for the next big bad in Destiny lore: The Witness. Arriving with a fleet of pyramidion ships that have been teased since the launch of Destiny 2 vanilla, The Witness – and the Lightfall expansion at large – feels like a climax to a story Destiny has been telling for nearly a decade.

Let’s go back about two weeks. A fortnight ago, Bungie slid a final mission into The Witch Queen campaign; an absolute belter of a mission that has massive, planetary implications for story and gameplay to come. I won’t spoil things here, but the Final Dawn mission (and the actions of the Warmind, Rasputin) are some of Destiny’s best moments – high-drama, explosive, and unpredictable. A proper homerun inside a game that’s been operating for six years, a beacon to all the other live service slogs out there, showing you how it’s done.