Bungie's mantra was "I love playing Destiny. I hate that it’s not better" in the MMO's early years, says former lead

Destiny's Taken King expansion is officially 11 years old, and former Bungie studio vice president Mark Noseworthy marked the occasion by saying what many Destiny players have thought a million times: this game is so good, but it could be so much better.

In a post on Twitter, Noseworthy, who left Bungie in 2024 along with some other senior staff amidst layoffs, describes The Taken King as his personal pinnacle.

"Of all the parts of Destiny I’ve worked on, this remains my personal favorite as a player and the one I’m most proud of," he reflects. "We knew Destiny 1 was so close to great; it was just missing some ingredients and a different preparation. 'I love playing Destiny. I hate that it’s not better' was our mantra while making [The Taken King]."

The early days of Destiny were some of the series' messiest, with players and Bungie both unsure of what the game was meant to be. The Vault of Glass, the first raid, helped crystallize the vision and, frankly, resuscitate the game, but it was The Taken King – a blast of new content, an immeasurably stronger story, added buildcrafting options, and improved progression and endgame pursuits – that really pushed the game over the top. This is what Destiny can be.

The Taken King is still remembered as one of the best expansions in Destiny's history – to some, the best, though I personally put it behind The Witch Queen and, at the top, The Final Shape. (It's no coincidence that most of the best expansions are Hive-themed, as the Hive have the best lore.) It also cemented a pattern that would come to define much of Destiny's life, and a slightly meaner mantra that many players adopted: I hate Destiny, it's my favorite game.

Throughout its life, Destiny has often felt like it's about to turn the corner, with only its finest expansions actually delivering on everything expected or imagined, and avoiding systemic missteps that another expansion would have to fix.

Looking back, a lot of Destiny expansions really were fixers. Destiny 2's Forsaken, for example, was a near shot-for-shot replay of The Taken King: after a troubled launch, Bungie stepped in to correct a bunch of errors. That became my acid test for expansions: how much of this is fixing Destiny, and how much of this is celebrating or expanding it? Is the game great now, or could it be great later?

The final update for Destiny 2, stuck in stasis after Bungie ended active development and began to really prioritize digging Marathon out of its rut, left it in arguably the best place it's ever been, with FOMO removed, loot updated, and many events available. But with the end of development, the game also stopped chasing those new horizons. We'll never turn the corner now.

Bungie ends Marathon's seasonal schedule, delays a September update to December, and makes it more like Destiny 2.