Welcome to the Bakery!

If you google “Destiny 2” this is what pops up:

(Oh hey google, no one wants your AI slop results, BTW.)

By no means am I shocked. It’s a search engine after all. And to many people its simply a game. Again, sure, I’ll give you that, but any one who knows…well, knows.

The announcement on that random Thursday that feels both ages ago and not unlike a fresh wound was cold, expected from a desk of someone where Destiny was simply a line on a budget. Callous maybe, but I’ve described that day being akin to coming home from school and having my parents tell me “well you know the dog was getting old, so we just took him out back.”

(For context, my parents never did this nor would ever.)

There was never a way to end Destiny without it hurting. Even if the game, the devs, the voice actors, the players; even if we got a triumphant ending – all storylines wrapped up with a bow…

Saint and Osiris getting to explore the universe hand-in-hand.

Crow and Amanda, not really dead, getting their first kiss.

Drifter and Eris doing whatever weird spooky shit they like to get into.

Zavala getting to rest finally, the weight of it all no longer resting on his pauldrons.

Ikora getting to know herself, her daughter – perhaps the greatest secret The Hidden could never uncover.

And finally Lodi, someone who can be nerdy and wear glasses and still be a badass…Brian, if you read this I want you to know this:

I joined Destiny 2 as a player “late” in 2022. I sometimes feel like I don’t belong because I wasn’t there since day one. And while our interactions with the game are obviously vastly different, I know what its like to feel as if you’re smashing your face against the glass from the outside. I speak only for me (but will go out on a limb to say I fully believe I am not the only one who feels this way) – you belong here. You have as much right as anyone else to sit in this weird grief we have all found ourselves in. We were late to the party, but damn if we didn’t get to enjoy it just a little bit before the lights were cut on. You are loved. You are apart of us forever. Also, we’ve claimed you so, you’re kinda stuck with us. I hope that’s alright with you.

Of course, I could go on…but even if everyone got a happy ending, having to say goodbye would never be easy. We all lived with Destiny as an integral part of who we are. I’ve shared my father’s story and how I got into Destiny because of him many times. But there were also days where things were exceedingly dark for me – I do struggle with depression among other things – where the only thing I would look forward to was logging in. No longer was I Jamie and all of her problems, struggling with a brain that doesn’t work how it should – I was a Guardian. I was powerful. And perhaps best of all, I was never alone.

Sure, I play solo a good bit. I enjoy it. But from day one, there was my dad and my then partner. And Destiny was such magic, I decided to resurrect my old twitter account – an account I’d made in my high school computer lab not unlike my facebook because my friends told me I “had to have one”. I needed to talk about Destiny with anyone who’d talk with me. It was too large to live within just me. I had to share it.

And I did.

I found community in streams, streamers who from day one welcomed me and didn’t care that I was new. I found people who wanted to help me through my first raids and GMs, helped me get to the Lighthouse, and earn title after title. And those people weren’t just “username#1234”. These people became my friends – the people I’d reach out to when life, in real life, was kicking my ass. Once a username on twitter, were now contacts in my phone. We no longer just shared Destiny together. We shared our lives. The closest people in my life now were once people I was afraid to sound stupid “in front of” in voice chat.

I still fully intend to go deeper into what Destiny means to me, but I’m already crying in the club….well, the airport actually. And I’m sitting in the airport because I’m heading home from GCX 2026. My first.

(Hey Brian, if you’re still here, I’d like you to notice I’m nothing if not consistent – what a first GCX, huh?)

GCX was the dream since I discovered what it was. In fact, I had many dreams within Destiny 2 that never came to fruition. I do accept responsibility for getting in my own way. Even still, four years later I’ve made it finally. I’m not going to say anything that anyone that has gone doesn’t already know, but here goes….

I said this many times throughout the weekend – it really felt like I opened twitter, shook my phone, and all the cool people that live in there just fell out. People who I’ve talked with for months to years, shared stories and art with, played with, made jokes with….just there for me to hug in real life. To every single person who I spoke with and hugged, thank you. I’m just a guy on twitter dot com the website looking for community…and I’ve found it. And to everyone I didn’t get a chance to hug and say hello too….I wish we’d had the chance but you’re no less community and hell, family. I love all of you. Be it Guardians or Runners or both – we are apart of something incredibly cool. Something much larger than us. And something that can never be taken from us.

Sitting in the Destiny Retrospective panel, I did my best to keep it together. The days after the announcement that Destiny 2 would no longer receive new content I couldn’t even talk about it without crying. (I’m sitting on the floor of MCO with tears in my eyes as I write this.) The pain hits at weird times. Suddenly the screen blurs after a raid with friends. Other times, I’m out running (I both run Marathons and run IN Marathon) and my playlist offers up a track from a Destiny OST and all of a sudden I’m in denial once more.

As I sat there and listened to the incredible stories from Mara (Ikora), Brandon (Crow/Uldren), and Brian (Lodi) I kept hearing Savathun in my head. The immeasurably talented Debra Wilson just repeating on loop “Wouldn’t it be clever of you… if after everything, you simply let me die?” Surrounded by so much love, memories, pain, joy, everything that makes us human, and Guardians, and knowing that it’s just over. That it was just some announcement casually made on a Thursday (my favorite day of the week – how DARE you). To just be “homeless” in a way many of us have not been in over a decade. And worst of all, to have no control over any of it.

I got four years of stories and it’ll never be enough. I, of course, will play Destiny until I no longer am able. But its bittersweet. There has simply been nothing like taking an entire week off of work for a new DLC. Sitting in front of my computer with my dad sitting in front of his TV, miles apart, but together. Racing to see who could get in first as we fought the first boss of every DLC – the servers. Whoever got in first would not do a SINGLE thing except go to the Tower and wait for the rest of the team to load in.

I remember the unique ache of hanging out on Tangled Shore until the servers booted us and it was wiped from the game, my first experience of “content vaulting”. The sadness in my dad’s voice as he’d been through this before many times starting with Destiny 1.

I’ve read that grief is simply love with nowhere to go. It’s pretty, could fit nicely on a t-shirt or a pillow. But grief is not. Pretty that is. Grief is normal. We are finite beings. Everything ends and we live knowing this. But yet we forge on, creating memories and routines and little lives that we all will leave behind. And that’s how we live on – in the lives we’ve touched, the moments we’ve shared with others, the paths we walk together.

Destiny 2 will live on in us. For many of us, Destiny 2, just a silly game, has caused our lives to take trajectories we never would’ve been on had we never played. Sitting in that room at GCX, walking the halls, yelling out superhero names (Rez, that one is for you), hugs and photos and words shared….there’s so much love here. And grief being what it is can turn ugly. Let’s not let this become ugly. We can cry. We can be angry. We can refuse to accept the ending we got. But we have to lead with love. Destiny 2 may legally belong to Bungie or Sony (or however that works), but its ours. They can never take it away from us fully.

To any hand that’s ever played a part in making Destiny (except the guy with too many cars), I love you. Truly. Thank you. You saved my life, my father’s, and many more. You built a world I got to live 5000 hours in. You built a place for us to find friends, love, safety, community. Destiny will leave behind it a black hole that no game will ever fill. There’s just nothing like it (insert plea for Destiny 3 here).

To the players, don’t let them take this from us. And no, I am not urging action. I am simply begging to not let how it ended become its legacy. Destiny has given us so much. Let’s give back by carrying it with the love it deserves. It’s our favorite game we love to hate because we LOVE it. Destiny truly dies when we let it.

And don’t forget:

“A thousand years ago is also right now, and in this infinite heartbeat, his loved ones are dead, and they are also alive. ‘Time is not linear,’ sing Louis’s electrons. ‘You will always be with your family on a patio in July.’”

– Third Iteration, Lore Entry. (Courtesy of https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/third-iteration)