Destiny 2’s new Timeline feature is an educational storefront

Destiny 2’s new Season of the Lost offers the biggest patch of the year. Some of those major changes are large, like a suite of new seasonal activities, weapons, and Exotics. But one of my favorite changes is so small that you might miss it entirely: the Timeline.

Billed in the patch notes for Season of the Lost as a way for players to see what expansions and seasons they own — and purchase any outliers, if they desire — the Timeline is much more than a store. It’s a visual representation of everything that’s happened in Destiny 2 since it launched in 2017. And for new players, it’s a great place to learn what the hell is going on with the baseline story before watching your way into a YouTube hole.

Located in the top-right screen of the Director, the Timeline starts with the Traveler — the big, still-mysterious orb. It describes what happened at the start of Destiny 2 in the non-removed Red War campaign. The timeline moves through launch, into the early releases — Curse of Osiris and Warmind — into Forsaken and the more modern Destiny era.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Each blip of the timeline contextualizes the story, and once you get into the game’s seasons, it starts to break down the threads that first appeared during each drop. It keeps that same model — big expansion blurb with seasons attached to it — through the timeline’s second page.

The third and final page is the most mysterious and therefore the most exciting. It starts with Bungie’s 30th anniversary celebration — there’ll be a party, complete with a new dungeon, in-game on Dec. 7 to celebrate — and moves onto The Witch Queen. After that players can see four blips for new seasons. It’s the future of Destiny 2, sitting on the timeline, waiting for players to discover it.

The Timeline partially exists to upsell players on content they don’t own yet. But as someone who’s experienced all those releases (and tried to summarize the stories to friends) it’s a walk down memory lane that I wasn’t expecting.