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.

It sets the scene for Lightfall perfectly. I thought The Witch Queen was already pretty hard, and that difficulty really shone a light how tightly all the mechanics and systems in Destiny 2 work. Lightfall, per the developer itself, is going to be even harder. The Final Dawn encounter, what with all its space bombardment, Hive and Fallen team-ups, and tight combat design, feels like an entree for Lightfall: hardcore, challenging, sadistic. Pump it into my veins.

Some lore and chatting later, and you’re made aware of a hidden city called Neomuna, on Neptune, which teases the launch of the Lightfall expansion which arrives on February 28. We’ve just restored and destroyed a key character, we’re about to see the biggest face-off in Destiny history since Cayde-6 and Uldren Sov, and there’s a whole new power and subclass to come. Destiny 2 is primed to have the renaissance of all renaissances, and I could not be happier.

Also, I am a Warlock main. Space magic is in the blood, baby. And Lightfall looks set to finally really give us cosmic wizards the power we’ve been craving for the better part of a decade, now. Destiny 2's Lightfall expansion will grant my Warlock sages-in-arms and I the unique experience of being an explosive swarm summoner, thanks to the new Strand powers. Warlocks – more so than their lesser Titan and Hunter counterparts – will be able to summon Threadlings. These are explosive minions are woven from Strand matter and can be overrun enemies and explode. Compounding this with the new Exotic assault rifle that peppers enemies with grenades as you shoot (or something altogether grizzlier like the Striga and it’s living locust bullets) and you can turn yourself into some grim Brood Mother: a pinnacle of summons, a woken Hive.

Of course, there are some problems to overcome. I am a weathered Destiny veteran, battered by solar winds and void wormholes since the 2014 alphas, and I still wonder blinking and confused back into the game at least once per year, blinded by about 1 million flashing icons and ugly UI clutter. We recently spoke at length about how Destiny needs to rethink its onboarding and signposting, and Lightfall gives the navigators at Bungie ample space to do that. Let’s just hope the developers can wrangle the weight of the game and its huge, young legacy for the better and use that momentum to bring Lightfall to a climactic, crashing close – and not just capsize and buckle under the pressure.

If Bungie has taught us anything in its storied 30-year strong career, though, it’s that it knows how to stick the landing. Just look at Halo: Reach. I think we’re in for a good ride, Guardians.