Back in 2018, Bungie released Destiny 2's equivalent of the first game's Taken King expansion - Forsaken. An excellent expansion, Forsaken also kicked off a series of seasonal passes.
These added a new seasonal activity with each pass, but always felt shallow and malformed. One focused on the Black Armory with a pretty uncompelling Forge activity, while another focused on Gambit, diluting that activity considerably.
In fact, the only one that felt worth returning to was Season of Opulence which added the Menagerie, and after that, Bungie continued to roll out seasons with an annual pass for Shadowkeep.
Aside from the long-awaited return of Trials of Osiris in Season of the Worthy back in March of 2020, each season has felt more disposable than the last in the grand scheme of things - until Beyond Light.
Destiny 2: Bungie Is Nailing Seasonal Content, Finally
Beyond Light bled into the Season of the Hunt, and while hunting Wrathborn was essentially a small, self-contained series of boss fights, it did begin to tease out story details.
Crow appeared, the former Prince Uldren, acting as Spider's enforcer until we claimed his freedom after slaying the High Celebrant. Osiris' ghost, Sagira, was killed, meaning he became an advisor to the Vanguard, prevented from being able to tinker with time and space as he had before.
All of this brings previously disparate personalities into cahoots and conflict with one another.
Early in the excellent Season of the Chosen, Lord Saladin and Osiris bicker over the Red War, and why the former didn't fight. Aside from not really knowing where Osiris was during the game's base campaign, it's great to see experience Guardians lock horns.
Continued references to Shaxx's overenthusiasm, Saint's wry wit, and Ikora's lethality in the Crucible, all spun through in-game dialogue throughout various activities, feels like Destiny's world finally falling into place.
We're finally getting payoffs for plot threads that began in Destiny 2, and even the first game.
That's helped by Bungie's commitment to revealing new story details with each weekly reset, either through dialogue in the new H.E.L.M. social space or through gorgeous cutscenes and animations.
For the last few years, Destiny's storyline has felt like a complex mess of proper nouns and made-up words, but for the first time since 2014, it feels as though Bungie has a path.