Destiny’s 10th Anniversary Event Is Bittersweet

This week marks ten years since Destinationa game that accidentally became my entire personality when it launched in September 2014. I’ve loved it since the days of alpha testing and I still love it now, in the form of Lot 2. Sometimes it’s hard to love, whether it’s because of stumbling blocks in the live service offering or because of the reckless ownership that resulted in years of creative turbulence and constant revision. Perhaps the celebration of this great milestone has been somewhat muted in the wake of the mass layoffs earlier this year and these massive changes, but that hasn’t stopped me from diving into my bag about it anyway.

As part of the festivities, Bungie gave away a set of armor for all three players. Destination‘s subclasses that are pretty close to the first pieces of equipment we ever saw in the original game conceptual artMy Warlock, who has been with me since September 9, 2014, currently sports a look that has seemed annoyingly unattainable for ten years: he looks like I imagined him as a bright-eyed teenager.

Additionally, Bungie has added a new Title that can be earned in-game to compliment the opportunity. Players who complete a few perfectly reasonable tasks (and one annoying one) can equip the Legend moniker. I am no Title Hunter, having only earned one in the past, but given the ease of use and my love of DestinationI’ve started it. I should have it by the weekend. I’ll live up to the slogan of the first game all these years later: “Become a legend.”

The tasks to complete to earn the Legend title are, as expected, nostalgic. One of them has you fighting enemies and grinding for loot engrams in the Skywatch area of ​​the Cosmodrome, the very first destination in DestinationIt’s a place I know like the back of my hand, having worked hard for it in my youth, and it’s a place I rarely visit. Lot 2which is filled to the brim with more exciting locations with ongoing stories. In comparison, the Cosmodrome feels like a snapshot frozen in time. Jump in there and I’m suddenly back in my high school uniform, running home from last class to get back to the game that would rule my life for a decade. It’s good to be back.

As I queued up the weekly Nightfall strike (a mission designed to be enjoyed with a full fireteam that is otherwise made more difficult with modifiers) the location read “Cosmodrome” and I began to rack my brain to determine what level it could possibly be. Eventually, a gentle pang hit me as the realization dawned on me that I would be revisiting the Devil’s Lair, Destination‘s first strike, in a move that would be a hell of a coincidence if it wasn’t absolutely deliberate. Completing the Devil’s Lair back in TK was the moment when Destination clicked for me – we’ve been inseparable ever since. I know every last beat of that mission to the point where I’m on autopilot, and when I ran it for the first time this week, while still in my D1-inspired anniversary armor, I felt the size of my decades of history and relationship with the game crash over my body. I didn’t sob, but I did cry. It’s been such a long ride and I can’t believe we’re still here, ten years later, running the Devil’s Lair to death.

It all takes me back to a time when it felt like Destination had a million things to prove, and I believed in my ability to do it. I had nothing to go on back then but Bungie’s pedigree, and as a kid I ate that shit up. That feels significantly harder to do now that Bungie is in an increasingly precarious position, and the tide has turned against live-service games like Lot 2I keep hoping against hope that it can weather the storm, if only because despite everything, Destination still means the world to me. I don’t know if I’d be lost without it, but I also can’t imagine my life or career without it.

If Lot 2 tail in the course of a few more uncertain yearsAnd reinvents itself and its formulaI’m just glad I was here at all, that I fell for the mystique of the first game, that I explored the depths of the moon’s hell. That I’ve defeated countless Hive royals and gods, avenged characters who have risen above their simplistic caricatures, that I’ve encountered enemies once, that I’ve explored and wielded the darkness, and that I’ve made countless memories with beloved friends along the way. And that I’ve played a small part in this wild, unfathomable, and wildly inconsistent ride. This journey began ten years ago in this little pocket of Old Russia, and look where we’ve been since.