In 2021, Destiny 2 figured out what it wanted to be.

True, this wasn't a year of the biggest content releases for Bungie's MMO shooter--the Beyond Light expansion was late 2020 and The Witch Queen is due to hit the game in 2022. Destiny 2 last year mostly subsisted on seasonal content, with new activities popping up and stories told in serialized fashion across weeks. The year saw a new raid come to Destiny 2, but it was a refreshed version of Destiny 1's Vault of Glass. The biggest influx of new stuff came with the 30th Anniversary content, with its hilarious Grasp of Avarice dungeon and Dares of Eternity event, but even that amounted to a fraction of what players are used to seeing when Bungie goes all-out with a new expansion for the game.

But in 2021, Bungie discovered how to go beyond just being a series of new content drops and expansions. The developer refined the approach it had been working on since the launch of the Forsaken expansion, and for the first time, Destiny started to feel like a contiguous, connected world. The vision for Destiny 2 finally started to match the reality of Destiny 2, and the game has been more compelling, at least for me, than ever before.