When I retired from playing Destiny 2 back in 2021, it was without regret. By then I’d spent over seven years raiding, competing, and grinding with my fireteam and had acquired a lifetime of memories with some of the best people I’ve ever known. A fireteam that started together during Destiny 1–Bungie’s first major release following their departure from the Halo franchise–when the game felt more like piecemeal held together by chewing gum and duct tape. But a game that was fun and, in many ways, addicting. We’d met purely by accident, through coincidental matchmaking during one of the game’s competitive modes. And the rest was history.
As it turned out, Bungie’s matchmaking system at the time was far more efficient than any of us realized. We soon discovered that all of us lived within an hour of each other, and a few of us had actually gone to the same university, attending at the exact same time. This led to in-person meet-ups, and eventually to attending each other’s weddings, even being there for the funerals of loved ones or showing up to take care of each other when we were sick. My fireteam is more than just some friends I made on the internet. They are my family. And even though we hadn’t played together in over 5 years, we were all very much still in touch and hanging out whenever we could.
And then came the announcement from Bungie that they were ending active development on Destiny 2.
For a game I hadn’t played in many years, I still found myself shocked and saddened. I’ve had my criticisms of the game pretty much throughout its entire lifecycle, from the lack of solid quality-of-life features to the terrible drop rates for desired loot and the overall frustrations of voicing feedback to a studio that felt like they were never listening. I didn’t stop playing Destiny 2 because I hate the game. I stopped playing because the grind got to be too repetitive, and each update felt like setting me back to square one and having to grind my characters to be able to play the new content. It was hard to get a guardian to a max light level. Seeing a new expansion come through and knowing I was going to be dropped at least 300 light levels was enough to finally send me into retirement. And after that, I didn’t think much about the game or really even follow it, aside from smiling when reminiscing on the good old days with my friends.
But something tugged at me when I heard that announcement. Not because I felt any inherent loyalty to Bungie, but the loyalty I felt to the Last City. To all my fellow guardians. To my fireteam. Destiny is more than just a shooter, it’s a living, breathing world with living, breathing people who commit themselves to greatness day in and day out. I was and am proud of that part of my gaming career, and I knew I couldn’t let the game conclude without logging in for one final swan song with my beloved fireteam.
So at around 4 pm on some random Tuesday, I opened up the group text and said, “You guys wanna play?”
And the beauty of a Destiny fireteam is the inherent loyalty, that burning fire to compete, grind, and fight for each other. Because the response was a resounding, “Hell yeah!”
Playing Destiny 2 again after such a long hiatus has been quite the culture shock. New faces in the Tower, new ranking systems, new features like being able to access your gear vault via your character screen instead of seeking out the one in the tower (LOVE this upgrade). It was a lot to take in, and the first few days of our return were marked with exploration, trial and error, and learning the ropes. A few geriatric guardians hobbling around in the social hubs, trying to figure out if our old gear was still worth using, certainly drew some stares from the young guns.
But the other fun thing about being a guardian is that picking up your favorite gun again feels just like riding a bike.
We found ourselves hopping into the Vault of Glass, one of Destiny’s most famous Raids (and the first one ever). A mutual friend who joined us on the Raid, who has been playing pretty consistently in recent years, admitted that he expected it to take a few hours while we all remembered the different roles and callouts. But as soon as I found myself standing on that familiar pillar awaiting the Templar and his army of Vex to purge us, it was like a lightbulb clicking on after being off for years. It shuddered briefly as everything came into focus, and then the muscle memory took over. I hit all my precision shots with my sniper and kept my eyes on the oracles as they spawned in, which was critical to ensure we all knew the order of their arrival. It felt like a drug, that sensation of working together as a team to achieve a goal and earn our victory in the Vault.
Since then, we’ve completed three additional Raids: Crota’s End, Garden of Salvation, and Vow of the Disciple, in addition to burning through Vault of Glass numerous times for different loot drops. We’re a well-oiled machine of guardians. Everyone has a role, leans hard into their role, and everyone keeps each other motivated when we find ourselves stalled by a difficult encounter.
And when we aren’t raiding, we are just running around the social areas doing mini objectives. Sometimes the idea of putting all your brain power into a raid sounds like a lot of effort. Sometimes you just need to shoot bad guys with your friends, and talk about your day, and laugh when your buddy accidentally jumps off a cliff (that buddy is me). In the last few weeks, we’ve shared countless hours together in our voice chat, each of us doing different in-game objectives, in absolute silence. Because it isn’t about doing every single activity together. It’s about the companionship, the presence, and the feeling of just having somebody there with you who gets it. Who has your back when you need it.
Maybe that’s the greatest loss that comes with the end of Destiny 2’s active development. Knowing that our once vibrant space, this social hub full of guardians from all walks of life, will begin to wither and decline. The Tower will slowly empty. The bounties will go unclaimed. The vaults will gather dust. A quietly tragic end for a decade’s worth of adventure amongst the stars. But for now, while the magic lingers, you can find me in the Tower, perusing the bounty list, and probably clearing out my vault for the tenth time. And I hope I feel this way for just a little bit longer.
