The Witch Queen expansion, Destiny 2's latest chapter, is the culmination of an approach to the game's story that developer Bungie has been honing for some time. Between the expansion and Destiny 2's recent seasonal offerings, the game's storytelling is the best it's ever been. But the seven-year history of Destiny and Destiny 2 also has its share of storytelling failures--and Bungie needed those failures to get to this point, the studio says.

In the past, Destiny 2 has seen its sprawling narrative of immortal heroes fighting god-like aliens divided into discrete chapters and mostly unrelated chunks. The Witch Queen, however, is something else--a conclusion of threads the developer has weaved throughout the game for years, and a story that was built up through developments in seasonal content episodes that have been coming to the game since Fall 2020.

Now entering its fifth year, the current Destiny 2 story feels strikingly different from what was on offer just one expansion earlier. Year 4's seasons were thematically linked, spinning stories that looked at distinct aspects and characters in the game world, but which were all ultimately pieces of a puzzle that was building toward The Witch Queen. Its story feels like one that's only possible as a live-service game or MMO, where the game world changes and evolves over time, and the story evolves along with it.