Ever since the release of the Forsaken expansion in 2018, developer Bungie has been shifting its focus with Destiny 2, emphasizing building up its world and telling more character-driven stories that are important to that world's progress. I've only spent a couple of days with the Beyond Light expansion, but so far it demonstrates Bungie's new direction better than any content the developer has released to date. The campaign of Beyond Light in particular might be the best version of Destiny 2 storytelling, thanks to an emphasis on characters that makes its run-and-gun missions feel more meaningful than they have in past iterations.

Beyond Light continues the story of the arrival of the Darkness, a powerful, unknown enemy force, to the solar system. We've been hearing about the Darkness since the first days of Destiny, but now we finally know what it is. So far, it hasn't been an enemy so much as a seductive force, encouraging the people of the solar system to stray from the benevolent Traveler and the power it's granted players since the first game. We finally get to try this new power, but the story campaign of Beyond Light has characters constantly wondering if the risks are worth the benefits.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), we need those benefits, which manifest themselves in the form of a new icy power called Stasis. Eramis, the leader of one of Destiny's enemy groups, the Fallen, have discovered how to wield Stasis, making them some of the most powerful creatures in the solar system. To defeat them, we need to take on the power of Stasis as well, which alters the game significantly by introducing a host of new abilities in both player-vs.-environment and player-vs.-player activities.