There are many facets of the Destiny community, from the insane PVE players, to the sweaty PVP legends, and even an entire clan of dads that play Destiny. One of the most fascinating sides of this community is the lore scholars, people who love digging into the incredibly deep and expansive lore that fills the Destiny universe. I know, one of the biggest jokes around Destiny is about how the game has no story, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
With a bunch of new players set to join the Guardian ranks when Destiny 2: New Light goes free-to-play on October 1, as well as a ton of returning Guardians coming back for Shadowkeep, the next major expansion, it’s the perfect time to catch up on this massive web of events that spans the system and brought players to where we are today. The well regarded My Name is Byf is a pillar of the lore community for Destiny, and has created a nearly 4-hour video recounting the full story of Destiny to date. Featuring artwork by Brian Moncus, this video covers everything starting with the Books of Sorrow and Hive history, leading into the discovery of the Traveler on Mars, the Golden Age, and the Collapse, and tracing the lines of pretty much every story thread that Destiny has ever laid in its five-year history.
If you’ve got a few hours, give it a watch below:
Byf has also kindly timestamped multiple parts of the story in his video so that you can jump right to certain elements of the story if you want to know more. The pre-Destiny 1 setup alone takes more than two hours to cover, going over the history of the many races and enemy factions in the game and laying the groundwork for us Guardians to first be raised by our Ghosts.
Even as a someone who has put more than 3000 hours into Destiny over the last five years, and has been constantly fascinated by this lore, Byf’s extensive and deep complete story still connects many elements and tells of events that I wasn’t entirely clear on.
Forbes’ Paul Tassi spoke to Byf about the premiere of this massive video, uncovering some interesting details about its creation. It took three people two months to produce (not to mention the years of studying the lore). The script is 28, 500 words, and it took four days to record and another ten days to edit.
If you have even a mild interest in Destiny’s lore and stories, it’s worth giving this one a watch. It’s broken up effectively enough that you can either watch it in chunks over time, or marathon the entire thing in one sitting. With Destiny 2 undergoing 24-hour maintenance on Monday, that’d be the perfect opportunity to queue this up while we all wait for Shadowkeep to release.