Marking its 10th anniversary today, September 15, 2025, Destiny: The Taken King stands as a pivotal moment. This article explores how this expansion shaped not only the future of Destiny but also the broader landscape of live-service gaming for years to come.
A decade ago, Bungie, the renowned studio, achieved something extraordinary with The Taken King. Yet, this triumph also cast a long shadow, setting an almost impossible standard for the game’s future.
When Bungie, creators of the iconic Halo series, launched Destiny in 2014, it aimed to fuse thrilling single-player narratives and intense multiplayer combat with the expansive, community-driven elements of MMOs. Despite initial excitement, the game struggled, feeling unfinished and lacking direction. However, a dedicated player base persevered through a series of modest DLCs, all leading up to The Taken King—Destiny’s first major expansion and, arguably, its salvation.
Released on September 15, 2015, The Taken King didn’t just improve Destiny; it completely transformed a game that, until then, felt adrift. Prior to its arrival, Destiny‘s vast and visually stunning worlds felt eerily empty, its characters lacked cohesion, and its narrative was undeniably sparse. While Destiny always shone in its superb gunplay, unique sci-fi fantasy aesthetic, and exceptional strike and raid designs, these strengths felt wasted without a compelling purpose. The Taken King provided that purpose, fundamentally reshaping the experience.
From its gripping opening mission to the exhilarating conclusion of its raid, The Taken King delivered a level of polish and intensity that the original Destiny could only aspire to. Even a decade later, the expansion’s initial level—a desperate defense of a besieged Phobos base—stands out for its vibrant atmosphere, far surpassing anything seen in Destiny during its first year. Subtle details, such as an enemy ship appearing over a ridge with its spotlight sweeping across the player, and the distant echoes of explosions, finally shattered the stagnant stillness that had characterized Destiny‘s environments. It was a jolt of life, a splash in still waters.
Watch the intro cinematic for Destiny: The Taken King below:
Crucially, The Taken King introduced Oryx, a formidable and significant antagonist whose influence and Taken forces continue to impact Destiny‘s narrative. It revitalized previously underdeveloped characters like Eris Morn and filled the massive Dreadnaught with captivating secrets. It even brought the much-needed addition of a quest log! It’s hard to overstate how much Destiny lacked definition before this expansion; its arrival transformed the game into something vibrant and expansive. Players finally felt truly immersed in the grand struggle between light and darkness, traversing the cosmos with incredible powers and weapons, fulfilling the epic adventures they had long imagined.
By all accounts, Destiny had successfully staged its much-needed comeback. With a renewed sense of narrative purpose and newfound player goodwill, it appeared poised for a sustained rise. But what “curse” could possibly follow such a triumph?
The perpetual challenge for Destiny has been its recurring need for rescue. Fans of the series will recognize the tumultuous journey both the games and their developer have endured. For every monumental success—expansions like The Taken King or Forsaken, which arrived at crucial junctures in Destiny 2’s lifecycle—there have been equally memorable downturns. Destiny’s narrative is one of repeated comebacks, but also of deep valleys caused by constant retooling and reinvention that frequently undermined its stability. While games like Rainbow Six Siege and No Man’s Sky demonstrated the potential for live-service titles to recover, Destiny served as a stark example of just how volatile and unpredictable these ongoing experiences can be, embodying the often brutal highs and lows of the model.
True stability always eluded Destiny. Despite Bungie’s efforts to chart a course for its ambitious franchise, the game often faced content droughts that alienated its player base. To counteract this, Bungie established a structured release schedule of expansions, title updates, and seasonal events—a constant flow of content designed to sustain the community and fuel the relentless demands of the live-service model.
While the “live-service treadmill” is frequently discussed from the player’s perspective, highlighting its impact and potential pitfalls, less attention is given to the immense toll it takes on the developers creating content for these endlessly evolving games. Not every studio has the vast resources of an Epic Games, capable of deploying massive teams to continuously refresh titles like Fortnite.
The relentless release schedule for Destiny has evidently strained its development teams, exacerbated by the continuous pressure for each new addition to the game to be grander and more refined than the last. Yet, the live-service model isn’t the sole challenge. The studio’s instability is also deeply rooted in past mismanagement, a reported toxic workplace culture, and frequent cycles of layoffs and strategic overhauls—some effective, others less so.
While sometimes this consistent content pipeline delivered transformative updates akin to The Taken King, revitalizing the game, it just as often exposed the brutal realities of large-scale expansion development. Certain releases, such as Rise of Iron or Beyond Light, despite good intentions, felt unfinished. The introduction of seasons in Destiny 2 initially helped mitigate storytelling and content shortages but eventually led to new issues, including repetitive activities and the contentious removal of seasonal content. Some core system reworks, like class adjustments, were well-received, while other features, such as “The Portal,” were not. The inconsistent quality between Destiny releases frequently disappointed players, creating a pattern where for every two steps forward, the game seemed to take one step back.
So, where does The Taken King fit into this complex history? It undeniably set an incredibly high benchmark for future Destiny content. While Bungie has occasionally matched that ambition over the past decade, these lofty goals have unfortunately resulted in as many shortcomings as they have successes.
This pattern created an unsettling cycle for Bungie: rectifying past mistakes, demonstrating immense creative power, only to then falter, proving how easily ambition could become self-sabotage. For over ten years, Bungie has seemingly stumbled, recovered stronger than ever, and then, through its own actions, disrupted Destiny‘s equilibrium once more, falling into yet another series of pitfalls.
It would be unfair to attribute Destiny‘s inconsistent trajectory solely to one of its earliest and most beloved expansions. Such a view would misrepresent the DLC and its original purpose. The Taken King is hardly a blemish on Destiny‘s legacy simply for being too exceptional—that’s an absurd notion. However, it undeniably launched the game and its development team onto a path that, in hindsight, proved unsustainable for the studio and detrimental to the game’s long-term stability.
Therefore, despite The Taken King‘s initial triumph in saving Destiny, it undeniably created an incredibly difficult act to follow. The relentless pursuit of matching its brilliance has left an enduring impact on the studio. This expansion simultaneously represents the pinnacle of Destiny‘s potential and foreshadowed the deep troughs of instability from which the game would frequently need to recover.