Destiny 2 newcomers are struggling with the looter shooter’s onboarding experience, being left confused by who the characters are and what its story is even about.
Bungie’s looter shooter has an incredible amount of lore and narrative for players to get invested in. However, a lot of that story cannot be played in the live game. In fact, only five of the shooter’s nine expansions are currently accessible.
For the longest time, Destiny 2 deleted its older content in a controversial process called vaulting. This was done to keep the game reasonably sized for updating and maintenance purposes. The practice was discontinued in 2022.
However, the damage has already been done with several expansions being removed from Destiny 2, and it’s left newcomers completely lost.
Vaulting has left Destiny 2 newbies baffled by the narrative
A new player who just started Destiny 2 asked veterans why their opening experience with the game’s campaign had been so confusing.
The enquiring post reads: “Picked up the game yesterday with what I hoped would be the latest expansion. But it’s really different than any game I’ve played, just got a series of cinematics with characters I don’t know with little to no context. It seems like I’m skipping all the story. Did I do something wrong?”
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Looking to offer an explanation, one player responded: “To answer your question, Destiny is a 7-year-old game and LIghtfall is only part of the story. You can just listen to YouTube videos in your off time to learn about the rest. Think of Destiny like Marvel Avengers and Lightfall is you watching Age of Ultron as your first movie.”
Another fan elaborated: “Bungie removed all of the story content from the game. The earliest the game has is the Shadowkeep expansion, with the vanilla campaign and Forsaken expansion no longer playable. If you want to know what’s going on in the story, you’ve pretty much got to just go find a Youtube video.”
Others took the chance to criticize Destiny 2’s onboarding process: “Literally the least beginner-friendly game I’ve ever played. I picked it up last month and if I didn’t have someone who’s played since D1 holding my hand the entire way, I would never even know a quarter of the mechanics of the game.”
Destiny 2’s complex build crafting and missing content can make it a challenging experience for newcomers. Thankfully, Bungie has confirmed plans to innovate the story with the arrival of The Final Shape which could help.