Destiny 2’s Final Update Marks the End of a Journey That Lasted Half My Life

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Published Jul 12, 2026, 11:06 AM EDT

Usama Mehmood is a Senior Writer at DualShockers with more than five years of experience in the video game industry. He has been writing professionally since 2021 and covering games since 2022, with work spanning guides, lists, reviews, and features across action-adventure games, JRPGs, open-world titles, racing games, and narrative-driven releases.

Before joining DualShockers, Usama contributed to eXputer, where he worked as a Senior Writer and Editor for over three years, managing editorial teams while continuing to write guides, reviews, lists, and featured pieces. He also previously contributed to Phrasemaker and worked as a short-term media journalist for his university’s article outlet. Usama holds a Doctorate in Physiotherapy from the University of Lahore.

Growing up as my parents' only child was certainly one of the experiences of my life. On one hand, I was showered with attention from both my parents and family, but at the same time, I entered a stage of my life where my existing friendships began to fall apart or were left in the dust because of underlying yet growing social anxiety. Heck, the PS4 was the first console on which I truly experienced the peak of my online gaming culture, with my long sessions in GTA 5 Online helping to break that ice.

Then in January 2014, during my high school year, while randomly browsing the games my friends were playing on PSN, I came across Destiny. Saw all about it online, learned about a very cool YouTuber named Datto Does Destiny, and just a few days later, I bought the game along with the Dark Below DLC. Destiny would become the game I'd embark on an inexplicable odyssey with, from forming lifelong friendships to making innumerable memories, each with a different emotion or sentiment attached.

Destiny 2 would later prove to be the next chapter of my gaming adolescence, but even with the bumpy road it had and my two closest friends who played the first game with me leaving due to life getting in the way, the hardcore fan in me never faded away. I still avidly and wholeheartedly played every single DLC, almost every single raid and dungeon, all the way till the end.

And that's where we are right now. Fast-forward more than a decade, and I've almost graduated from university, changed jobs, met new people, and watched entire console generations come and go. Through all of it, Destiny somehow remained a constant.

Now, with its final update, saying goodbye feels strangely similar to closing a chapter of my own life. With the recent Monument of Triumph, Destiny 2 got its end-of-service notice. Most, if not all, of Bungie is turning its attention to Marathon's continued growth, and while debate on that is not my subject today, I will instead give you a retrospective on my journey with this franchise. Actually, call it a love letter.

Destiny Was More Than a Live-Service Game

Thankfully, I wasn't all a multiplayer-only junkie who'd people would assume has that toxic lust for competitiveness. WWE wrestler CM Punk's motto is that his addiction is wrestling; mine was single-player games, but I won't lie: I had a craving for that competitiveness and social-gathering atmosphere from all the time of playing games like Black Ops 3, Rainbow Six Siege, or even a mediocre F2P MMO like Skyforge. I did it all for the sake of enjoying and creating memories with my friends.

But Destiny was more than these games. It might sound dumb to others, but the ones who truly gave so much to this franchise will know that Destiny was much more than a live-service title. You lived within the game's general ecosystem, and it became a part of your life, in a sense. You can make those touch grass jokes all you want, but things like weekly resets becoming routine, looking forward to TWAB (This Week at Bungie) posts, and Clan nights with the boys as we ran back multiple raids—these rituals became habits.

Through all of it, Destiny somehow remained a constant.

I had the pleasure of experiencing Destiny 1 at a point where House of Wolves was just about to release. When it did, not only did I get a taste of the Prison of Elders arena mode, but getting that Lighthouse Victory run in Trials of Osiris became the only thing that eluded me for many years, right until the end of the Rise of Iron DLC's Age of Triumph update. And see, that's the beauty of this game, man.

The incentives were there for people, and for those who considered them a huge deal, showing off newly earned exotics, those sweet godrolls, and just any form of bragging rights became common among players. Even players who used to ride solo couldn't help but make new friends through random invites in the tower or LFG just so they could have a living, breathing space amongst known peers or just familiar people to run Nightfalls and other weekly activities.

Bungie Didn't Always Have a Perfect Vision

I won't make this entire piece sound like I'm wearing my rose-tinted nostalgia goggles because let's be real: Destiny was never perfect. And this can be traced back to the vanilla game from 2014, and it eventually hit its stride with the release of the Taken King DLC. We still had a massive drought after that, but this whole zigzag pattern of "we're so back" and "it's so over" was a continuous cycle throughout both Destiny 1 and 2.

Content fatigue was something many players felt with the first game, but with the release of Destiny 2, we had a whole new set of problems to worry about. And where do I even begin? Well, for one, the OG Destiny 2 endgame was so hideously bad that we were farming public events for exotics with a gameplay ecosystem that revolved around Bright Engrams, double primaries, and loot with static rolls, the latter of which was the nail in the coffin for any incentive to keep playing.

Destiny was never perfect.

Thankfully, Forsaken alleviated most, if not all, of these problems, but then we get to the notorious ones on the shelf. Destiny 2 was heavily plagued by sunsetting gear, throwing DLC content into the content vault and never making it back, as well as general seasonal fatigue. The shift to the Seasonal Model, after the Forsaken expansion, proved to be one of the most debated design choices the game has ever seen. Well, that and then you had the whole other debacle over the "overdelivery" mantra.

Even the OGs will remember the travesty that was the Curse of Osiris DLC that followed soon after the base game of Destiny 2. Thankfully, Warmind was damage control, but then you look at expansions like Lightfall and Edge of Fate, and nobody would accuse you of any wrongdoing for saying some rather colorful opinions about them.

However, despite my mentioning all these problems, you have to remember that many players ALWAYS kept coming back; no other game out there quite replicated the feeling Destiny offered. I mean that—the snappy, easy-to-pick-up gunplay, the brilliantly designed raids that you just wouldn't find in any other game with the same sauce, the beautifully composed OST from Salvatori and crew, the atmosphere in every single locale or level. Sometimes, people don't hop back because everything is great again—they return because it still feels like home and comfort food that you'll ALWAYS miss.

Expansions Becoming Timestamps for Aging

This is something I rarely see discussed, and it's just a small bit of reflective insight on my part. Many who started playing the game back in 2014, or even in 2017 with Destiny 2's launch, have experienced an unparalleled transition in their lives. I say this, evidently, when asking around among my clanmates in voice chat, as well as other mutuals I added over the years, whom I recently got back in touch with when returning to the game for one last ride.

Much like me, most of them were either teenagers or college freshmen just logging into Destiny as a hobby to lie back and chill. And today, a few of them are newly married, parents, or just people with far less free time and freedom. They weren't crazily addicted to the franchise per se, yet the game kept bringing them back countless times, logging a thousand hours across their individual profiles within the game's 10-year life cycle.

And that stems from the content creators as well. There are so many of these influential people that I got to know from Destiny, whether it was Datto, Sweatcicle, and Gladd from Clan Redeem, Aztecross, Rick Kackis, My Name is Byf, TrueVanguard... I sorta grew up with these guys.

I know a couple of them would shift to providing varied content to keep their content creation careers afloat, but the point is that they all had major involvement with Destiny in some form. Heck, I got to follow Datto long enough as an OG fan to see him settle down, get happily married, and live his best life. That whole video of him reacting to the game's end-of-service announcement still hits so hard, considering all that he's given to the franchise and the cult following that he's earned because of it.

And right now, you actually have some awesome and dedicated people like Evanf1997, who've documented some of the most historic moments and happenings throughout Destiny's lifespan, as well as host his Raid Zone streams with his friend and fellow streamer, CBGray. We won't get those anymore, but the fact that the community would always come together in some joint effort, even in the game's darkest or most depraved times, goes to show that these people and the whole player base truly adored what they experienced.

Saying Goodbye to Memories That Won't Get Sunsetted

My last spree in Destiny 2 this past month was spent grinding out the brand-new Pantheon 2.0, checking out SRL's welcoming inclusion again, slowly tackling anything I could in the Monument of Triumph, knocking out the campaign for both Edge of Fate and Renegades, as well as helping one of my closest IRL friends out in his New Light journey from scratch by playing every campaign with him in the collection. And honestly? This all proved to me that it was never really a goodbye to the game, but more so a farewell to a comfort universe that won't get any new facelifts or a proper curtain call, which is tragic.

There is so much, and I repeat, so much story depth that Destiny still has yet to explore with unfinished storylines and teased potential that'll all be swept under the rug and forgotten. It is extremely unfortunate how far the game fell into this hellscape post-Final Shape. I mean, I got my closure with that expansion, seeing as how we triumphed against The Witness in both the raid version and the glorious victory lap mission in Excision with 11 other players.

Whether it was the Activision split, the numerous layoffs over the years, expansions, delays, or the Sony Acquisition, along with the shift in focus to Marathon—Bungie changed almost as much as the game itself. A part of me, deep down, is still in disbelief, but hey, Sony's made a number of truly riveting business choices at this point, pretty much digging their own grave and shaving off any last smidge of goodwill left in them, so at least they're rightfully getting bashed for it.

I got to experience Destiny's highest highs, its most frustrating lows, and ultimately came back to see the story through to its conclusion. The game brought out a social trait in me that was otherwise always reserved, and, most of all, it gave me the gift of meeting various players and making friends, some of whom have now become my closest brothers-in-arms. It wasn't just about the loot, the raids, or chasing another weapon god roll. It was about growing up alongside a world that somehow always felt like home.

Goodbye, Destiny—and thank you to everyone at Bungie for giving me half a lifetime of memories that I'll reminisce on and cherish. Per Audacia Ad Astra.