How And Where To Start ‘Destiny 2’ In 2023 (Or 2024)

For years, people have been asking me a question. How would you recommend they or a friend get into Destiny 2? Where would you start?

It’s a hard question, one I have not really had an answer to despite 3,000 hours into the game, a daily Destiny column and a Destiny YouTube channel. That’s…clearly a problem. You can’t say “start at the beginning” because Bungie, in its infinite wisdom, deleted the first two years of content from the game. So, what’s the alternative? I didn’t have a solution, but at long last, I’ve made up my mind.

This was sparked by the fact that Bungie and Epic have launched a promotion where the Destiny 2 “Legacy Pack” is free for a week, until next Wednesday. This includes three of four non-deleted expansions for the game, Shadowkeep, Beyond Light and The Witch Queen. Lightfall, the most recent expansion, is still being sold alongside the three subsequent seasons, the third of which we are current in. The Final Shape, the next expansion, is in pre-sales and has just been delayed until June of 2024. So you have some time to catch up, as it were.

But where to start? I’ve made my decision, and the answer is The Witch Queen, the game’s fourth expansion. That may sound weird, but let me explain.

In a perfect world, I would have advised players to start with, obviously, the Red War campaign, the campaign Destiny 2 launched with. Even without Destiny 1 as a background it was still a solid intro. My next choice would have been Forsaken, arguably the series’ best expansion in terms of its total volume of content. But that campaign has also been deleted from the game. Fantastic.

So, my third and final choice is The Witch Queen, which I would consider a top Destiny expansion, and probably the one with the best story campaign out of them all. But why start there?

Even if in chronological order, Shadowkeep is the oldest expansion you can play, and therefore the “first,” it also happens to be the worst expansion Destiny has made. Yes, worse than Lightfall, perhaps not from a story/dialogue perspective, but its missions are barebones, more or less about assembling a suit of armor to go inside a pyramid ship for two minutes. It’s not a good place to start even as Bungie proclaims it to be the “beginning of the Light and Darkness saga.” It isn’t. That’s just something they said to make it seem like erasing Red War and Forsaken wasn’t a big deal.

Beyond Light is a better expansion, and gaining access to the Stasis subclass is going to be worth it eventually, even if it is consistently the most ignored subclass by Bungie in terms of balance and buffs. It is neither amazing nor terrible, and I’d recommend you play it. But not first.

Rather, The Witch Queen. The main reason is the story campaign, which is both A) an excellent tale, albeit better with more backstory leading up to it, which new players won’t have and B) one with very well designed missions, and the only campaign of these three with a legendary difficulty setting which veteran shooter players should enjoy. It’s something that I believe would make a good first impression. More than Shadowkeep, a bad expansion. More than Lightfall, the most recent expansions, with a series-worst story (though gameplay-wise, the campaign is pretty good). And more than jumping into the current season.

You also have to realize that even though Witch Queen is jumping into the middle of the story, any of these options would be jumping into the middle of the story, given what Bungie has deleted, and it honestly doesn’t matter what order you play them in, narratively. Plus you have lost all the connecting threads too with say, the very important three seasons leading up to any of these expansions (especially Witch Queen, which is a shame).

The fact is the way this series is designed you are really screwed on the story at this point short of watching hours worth of lore videos from Destiny content creators. Which I think is worthwhile, but yes, that genuinely is your only real option, unless you are content with the cliff notes and carved out bits and pieces from the game, which will mostly be incoherent.

I do think everyone should start with the free-to-play New Light quest before doing anything else, as it’s an introduction to basics you will need to know. But in terms of actually “starting” starting? Witch Queen. But prepare to do a whole lot of Googling to understand a hundred other elements of the game.

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