By now I assume everyone has seen the leaked screenshots of what purports to be the upcoming content for Destiny. If not, Kotaku has a good post about it. And if you're worried about spoilers, come on. It's not like Destiny's story makes any sense anyway. In fact, that's the whole point of what I'm about to say. A lot of people have postulated (Reddit, of course) that a large portion (if not the whole damn enchilada) of Destiny's story was gutted once writer Joe Staten left, and dumped into the grimoire cards. That's not too hard to believe, given the state (or lack thereof) of Destiny's story in its current form. Obviously Bungie would like to address that, but in looking these leaked screenshots, it sure doesn't look like they have any plans to fix the story anytime soon. Every single one of those new missions listed are either strikes or raids. Now, that by itself doesn't mean they won't be interesting gameplay-wise (though I haven't yet run the currently available raid, Vault of Glass, I hear that it changes up your expectations pretty well), I kind of doubt that there will be much of anything important happening story-wise. Think back on the strikes that appear in the game. The only story to speak of is just thinly-drawn exposition dump by Dinklebot that ultimately only tells you who you're going to be fighting at the end. That's it. Since these are explicitly designed as multiplayer events, I imagine that Bungie didn't want people to have to worry about other people fucking up the story by running ahead of everyone else, triggering events no one else is ready for. For example, try playing any of the Gears of War games co-op with randoms and see how many of them will actually watch the cutscenes without skipping ahead. (Yes, the story in Gears isn't anything special, but it's got a leg up on Destiny, since it, you know, exists.) I don't see it being any different with these new missions.

Now, let me back up a bit. In other games, especially loot-driven games like Diablo and their ilk, I don't particularly care about the story. Diablo 3's is only so much nonsense that only serves to set up the fiction and setting. And I'm totally okay with that! USUALLY. Destiny's lack of a story is a problem because of both Bungie's pedigree and because the game that most closely resembles what Destiny is trying to do is Borderlands, which just oozes personality and back story (if anything, Borderlands 2 is a little too long, but that's beside the point). I want to know more about the world of Destiny, but I have to fight for every single scrap of it because there's so little in the actual game. It's story by inference, at best. I love the Halo games and their fiction, which has been fleshed out like crazy in all sorts of other media. But those works only ever got made because the games told a story first that people found interesting. If this is all we have to go on with Destiny, that kind of backstory is never going to happen, because no one will give a shit.

So, what is Bungie to do? I honestly don't know. If I did, I'd be working there, making it happen. But I have a few ideas:

1. Make those new missions be actual story missions that people can do solo. Make them interesting, and for God's sake, use the characters that you paid all those actors to provide the voices for. I mean, you're really going to go out and get Peter Dinklage, Lance Reddick, Gina Torres, James Remar, Peter Stormare, Bill Nighy, and Nathan Fucking Fillion and give them the most boring, half-assed, throwaway lines to give you boring, generic side quests with? What gives? Make that world breathe, give it personality, give it life. The NPCs in Borderlands might not all be great, but at least they're memorable. Everyone in Destiny besides the Queen is a cipher, with the possible exception of her brother (who doesn't even have a name! He's just "the Queen's brother"!).
2. Reboot the whole damn thing with Destiny 2, á la Final Fantasy 14. If you recall, FF14 was a steaming pile of garbage when it came out. Square Enix retooled the whole thing and rereleased it last year, and now a lot of people consider it one of the better MMOs of the last few years. On some level, I don't really see any other option. It would be too hard to overhaul the structure of Destiny as it currently stands to accomodate this change, so a total reboot is in order.

All of this criticism comes from a place of love and respect. Halo is one of my favorite series, and I really like a lot of what Destiny offers. I have put a ton of time into it, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. But between what I've enumerated here and their fuck-up with how loot works (which, to their credit, they're fixing), it might be hard to keep playing this after a few months. I really hope that changes.