One year after the SIVA Crisis, Cabal forces of the Red Legion launch an aerial assault on the Last City, destroying the main portion of the Tower, the headquarters of the Guardians. The player's Guardian and their Ghost respond by assisting the Vanguard in assaulting the Red Legion command ship. As they confront the Red Legion's commander, Dominus Ghaul, his forces attach a device to the Traveler and begin draining it of the Light, the power used by the Guardians. The Guardian loses their powers and is nearly killed by Ghaul.

Waking up two days after the attack, the Guardian locates their Ghost, who can still heal the Guardian but can no longer resurrect them. They find a haven known as "the Farm" in the European Dead Zone (EDZ) with the assistance of Suraya Hawthorne, a non-Guardian human from the outskirts of the Last City. The Guardian follows a vision to encounter a shard of the Traveler hidden in a forest within the EDZ. Ghost interfaces with the shard and both it and the Guardian's connection to the Light are restored. After restoring long-range communications, Hawthorne intercepts a distress call from Commander Zavala, urging surviving Guardians to travel to Saturn's moon Titan to assist in preparing to mount a counter-offensive.

Against Hawthorne's objections, the Guardian travels to Titan, which has been overrun by the Hive. With assistance from Deputy Commander Sloane, they learn that the Red Legion was dispatched to the Milky Way in response to a distress call sent during the Taken War two years prior, and that Ghaul possesses a superweapon known as the Almighty, a space station capable of destroying stars. Resistance to Cabal rule has resulted in entire star systems being destroyed. The intelligence also reveals that the Almighty is positioned near the Sun, breaking up the planet Mercury as fuel. Zavala tasks the Guardian to find Ikora Rey and Cayde-6 to assist in a counterattack to retake the Last City.

During this time, it is shown that Ghaul, aided by his mentor, the Consul, overthrew and exiled Emperor Calus and took control of the Cabal, and has been studying the Traveler in order to learn how to utilise the Light. The Guardian locates Cayde-6 on the centaur Nessus, which has almost been completely transformed by the Vex. With the aid of Failsafe, an AI from the crashed colony ship Exodus Black, the Guardian frees Cayde from a Vex portal loop and claims a teleporter for use in taking back the city. Cayde directs the Guardian to find Ikora on the Jovian moon of Io (which the Traveler had partially terraformed until the Darkness arrived), where she had gone to find answers about the Traveler.

Ikora and Io researcher Asher Mir direct the Guardian to locate a Warmind, an ancient defensive AI, for intelligence on the Almighty. This intelligence reveals that simply destroying the Almighty will take the sun down with it. Afterwards, the Vanguard reunites at the Farm and conclude that the only way to retake the Last City and save the Traveler is to shut down the Almighty first, eliminating the possibility of it destroying the Sun. The Guardian boards the Almighty using a stolen Cabal ship and disables the weapon, signaling Zavala to begin the counterattack.

As the Vanguard begins the assault, the Consul admonishes Ghaul for his obsession with the Traveler, and urges him to simply take the Light by force, rather than trying to earn it; Ghaul is reluctant until the Consul kills the Speaker, whom Ghaul had captured and tortured to try and learn more about the Traveler. Ghaul then proclaims that he will take the Light, and strangles the Consul in a fit of rage. The Guardian returns to Earth to assist in the counterattack and infiltrates Ghaul's command ship, using Cayde's Vex teleporter, alone to save the Traveler.

Ghaul forcibly takes the Light and uses its power against the Guardian, but the Guardian is successful in defeating Ghaul. Ghaul reemerges as a massive ethereal figure who then speaks to the Traveler directly. In response, the Traveler wakes from its apparent long sleep, destroying the device that was harvesting its power and killing Ghaul. It sends a massive shockwave throughout Sol, restoring the Light to all Guardians and decimating the Red Legion's forces.

The game ends with a posthumous voiceover from the Speaker, reminding all that the Light can never be stopped. The Guardian and Ghost convene with Zavala, Ikora, Cayde, and Hawthorne at an undamaged portion of the Tower, with the Vanguard returning to their old duties and Hawthorne assuming a new post there. In a post-credits scene, the shockwave sent by the Traveler is shown coursing through the entire system. The wave of Light then extends beyond the solar system and spreads beyond the Milky Way, before panning across a fleet of dark, mysterious Pyramid-shaped ships sitting some distance away in extragalactic space.

The ships activate and begin moving toward Earth. Following Ghaul's defeat, a massive Cabal ship called the Leviathan appears in orbit of Nessus (which it slowly begins to consume), under the control of the exiled Emperor Calus. Calus invites Guardians to complete a series of challenges before reaching his throne ("Leviathan" raid). A fireteam of Guardians complete his challenges before facing Calus himself; however, after overcoming his strange powers and defeating him, they discover that they were fighting a mechanical doppelganger.

The real Calus speaks through the machine, claiming that what they know is a lie and that there is a truth beyond what the Speaker had told them. With the release of the free-to-play New Light version of Destiny 2 in October 2019, Bungie changed the beginning of the game for new players, reintroducing the first mission from the original Destiny as the introductory mission for new players. Upon completing this brief mission, which ended with the player finding a jumpship, the player was taken to the Tower, where they met the various NPCs and could begin the Destiny 2 campaign (The Red War), as well as the Curse of Osiris and Warmind campaigns, after talking to Amanda Holliday in the Tower Hangar.

Returning players could play this opening mission by creating a new character. 2020 update [edit] With the release of the Beyond Light expansion in November 2020, Destiny 2's original base campaign (The Red War), as well as all of the content from Curse of Osiris and Warmind were removed from the game and placed into the Destiny Content Vault and are no longer accessible (though Bungie may unvault the associated destinations and activities in the future). In game, part of the content removal is explained through planets being taken over and removed from normal space by the forces of Darkness.

As a result, Bungie introduced a new player experience to introduce new players to the world of Destiny. It features roughly the same opening as the 2019 New Light, but takes players on a quest further into the Cosmodrome to learn more about the Destiny universe, giving new players' Guardians a more fleshed out origin story. A new NPC for the Cosmodrome was also introduced, who acts as a guide for the new player quest. Veteran players can play through this new player questline by visiting the abandoned quest kiosk that was added to the Tower and H.E.L.M. social spaces with the update.

Like the original Destiny, an opening cinematic is shown where a landing pod lands on Mars' surface in present day. Three astronauts leave the pod to explore the surface of Mars and find an enormous spherical object hovering in the sky. A narration begins, giving a brief history of the Traveler, the Darkness, and the Golden Age of humanity and the first Collapse caused by the Darkness. The game then begins as Ghost is searching among the detritus of Old Russia in the Cosmodrome until it finds and resurrects the player's Guardian, who had died in an undefined moment of the past—upon resurrection, Guardians have no memories of their past life from before becoming a Guardian.

Ghost then guides the Guardian, battling Fallen enemies along the way, until they encounter a Vanguard Operative, a Hunter named Shaw Han, who is in search of his fireteam members, Cas and Maeve. Han initially tells the Guardian to stay behind and he would get them to the Last City after he finds his fireteam, but the Guardian and Ghost convince Han to allow them to assist him on his mission. Han has the Guardian go in search of Maeve while he searches for Cas. However, the Guardian is too late, as Maeve was killed by a Hive Wizard called Navôta, Eir Spawn, who also destroyed Maeve's Ghost, preventing Maeve from being resurrected; Han reports that he was also too late in saving Cas.

They then meet up back at Han's camp, where Han says to honor his fireteam's loss, they should finish their mission; Han and his fireteam were in search of a Golden Age relic called a superconductor which the Vanguard believe can be used to create a powerful weapon, however, the superconductor is sealed within a chamber and is overloading the building with deadly Arc energy. The Guardian then goes and collects data from defeated Fallen to figure out a plan to get past the Arc energy. From the data, they learn the location of an ancient array that they need to get operational to balance the power grid to keep the Arc energy from overloading.

After successfully raising the array, Han has the Guardian meet him back at camp so they can regroup and then go collect the superconductor. Upon arriving at the camp, however, the Guardian and Ghost find an audio message that Han went on the mission alone, taking the only access key to the superconductor's chamber, and left the Guardian a Sparrow so they could make their way to the Last City. Guardian and Ghost find this unacceptable and Ghost ponders that there has to be another access key and scans Han's archived data, leading them to the Cosmodrome's Forgotten Shore. After searching through some old caches and boosting Ghost's signal, Ghost is able to piece together encrypted data to create a new key.

They then head towards the chamber where they encounter Navôta and her swarm of Hive. The Guardian fights off the Hive, forcing Navôta to retreat and they save Han, who apologizes for leaving them behind, stating that he was afraid to lose another Guardian. They then retrieve the superconductor and meet back at Han's camp. With the mission to retrieve the superconductor complete, Han says that Commander Zavala, the leader of the Vanguard, has ordered him to keep post in the Cosmodrome.

Han then gives the Guardian Maeve's jumpship, and they use it to fly to the Tower to meet Zavala and deliver the superconductor. In flight to the Tower, Ghost explains that he revived the Guardian to help protect humanity and reclaim lost worlds. After arriving in the Tower, Ghost tells the Guardian that the spherical object in the sky is the Traveler, which is where Ghost and their Light—their power—comes from. The Guardian then delivers the superconductor to Vanguard Commander Zavala, who praises them for their work as a new Guardian and instructs them to meet the rest of the Vanguard and other allies.

After meeting the Warlock Vanguard Ikora Rey, Ghost explains that there was no Hunter Vanguard as after the death of the former one, Cayde-6, no Hunter wanted to take his place (he would later be succeeded by Crow after the events of The Final Shape). They then meet a few other important core activity characters, such as the Drifter and Lord Shaxx, before returning to Zavala, who gives the Guardian their first official assignment; Han has tracked down Navôta and Zavala wants the Guardian in on the mission to take her out. The Guardian returns to the Cosmodrome to hunt down Navôta one last time, where they eliminate the Hive Wizard.

With that success, the Guardian returns to Zavala, who congratulates them and informs them that after analyzing the superconductor, they can create the exotic submachine gun Riskrunner. Thus, the Guardian has begun their journey to become legend.

While Destiny 2's expansions have continued to expand the story, Bungie began a larger narrative epic with its seasonal content starting in Shadowkeep. During Shadowkeep, Eris Morn discovers a Pyramid ship buried beneath the Moon's surface. The Guardian encounters a Voice from the Darkness, warning them of the fleet's imminient arrival within the system. The Vanguard deal with new threats from Hive and Vex forces loyal to the Darkness as the Pyramid fleet arrives, taking positions above Io, Titan, Mercury, and Mars. The Darkness attempts to communicate with Eris, but is blocked by Savathûn.

The Guardians defeat Savathûn's forces, giving the Darkness the opportunity to alert them to a new power awaiting them on Europa. Meanwhile, the Vanguard evacuate their forces from those planets occupied by the Darkness before they are abducted by a strange force. Deputy Commander Sloane, Asher Mir, & Brother Vance elect to stay behind on the planets as they vanish. As the planets began to disappear from space, the Traveler started gathering Light, exhibiting unfamiliar behavior.

A Vanguard command is given out to all Guardians across the solar system to return to the Last City, and they witness the Traveler repairing its broken shell in a burst of Light. In Beyond Light, the Vanguard find signs of the Darkness pyramids across the system. On Europa, the Guardians accept the power of Stasis from the Darkness to defeat a new Fallen House that also learned to use Stasis. Zavala and other members of the Vanguard are concerned about the use of the powers of Darkness.

However, they recognize that its effectiveness against the oppositional forces of humanity. The Vanguard make alliances with the Cabal and one of the Fallen Houses, as they recognize they face common threats. It is revealed that Savathûn is impersonating Osiris, the former Warlock Vanguard, possibly to manipulate the current Vanguard. She is willingly held in a crystal encasement by Mara Sov, having made a deal to return the real Osiris if Mara agrees to exorcise her worm.

After the Guardians rescue Techeuns lost in the Ascendant Realm, Savathûn's worm is exorcised, and Mara Sov aims to kill her in her weakened state. However, Savathûn escapes in the aftermath, leaving behind a comatose Osiris, fulfilling the bargain. The Witch Queen focuses on the Hive God Savathûn, who has obtained the power of the Light and gifted it to her soldiers (known as the Lucent Brood). Taking place in Savathûn's Throne World, Guardians fight off the Hive to take back the Light.

As the story progresses, it's revealed that the Traveler itself resurrected Savathûn, who died post-exorcism, and granted her brood the Light. This caused confusion among the Vanguard on why the Traveler helped humanity's enemy.[24] As the Guardians fight off the Lucent Brood, they find and meet Fynch, a Lucent Ghost that allies with them in defeating Savathûn. They also learn from objects associated with Savathûn's past that her homeworld Fundament was visited by the Traveler.

However, before the Traveler could gift them with a Golden Age, an entity called the Witness tricked Sathona, Savathûn's pre-Hive name, into believing that an incoming cataclysm would strike Fundament, caused by the Traveler. Her and her siblings were tricked into dealing with the Worm Gods in order to prevent the calamity, creating the Hive & turning the Hive away from the Traveler. Savathûn, stunned and angered by this revelation, unleashed her anger at the Guardians while trying to steal the Traveler "for its protection".

The Guardians kill Savathûn, though her ghost Immaru escapes. Elsewhere, the Witness prepares for a final assault of the Pyramid fleet against the Traveler. Lightfall, released in February 2023, features the return of Emperor Calus, a new Disciple of the Witness, and has established a new player destination on Neptune.

Before being defeated, Calus helps the Witness acquire access to an object called the Veil, allowing the Witness to pierce the Traveler's shell and enter it, to the shock of the Vanguard. In the subsequent seasons, the Vanguard sought ways to follow the Witness, eventually learning from a resurrected Savathûn that she has crafted a wish with Riven that will allow one person to enter the Traveler. Crow offers to go, as his connection with Mara Sav would let the Vanguard follow after he establishes a point of safety within. The Final Shape was initially expected to release in February 2024, but due to quality concerns for the project in general in October 2023, the release was pushed to June 2024.

To cover the delay period, Bungie released a free update called Into the Light in April 2024, adding new activities and weapons to prepare for The Final Shape.

The Final Shape sees events taking place in the Pale Heart, a space within the Traveler opened by the Witness, and includes the return of Cayde-6 (with Nathan Fillion reprising this role). This expansion has been stated by Bungie to be the culmination of the ten years of Destiny's first saga, the "Light and Darkness Saga". Following The Final Shape, Bungie plans to change their release model from a large expansion with smaller seasons, to two moderate sized expansions per year, starting mid 2025 with "Codename Apollo", followed by "Codename Behemoth" in early 2026.