TL;DR: Renegades borrows a whole lot of Star Wars energy, fumbles its story pacing, but absolutely nails the gameplay—especially its new weapons and Frontier activities. It’s fun, flawed, fast, and worth diving into if you’ve been waiting for Destiny to feel alive again.

There’s a particular flavor of déjà vu that only Destiny can conjure. It’s that feeling of logging in after an expansion drops, blinking into a new social space, and immediately wondering two things: What broke? and How soon until I start caring again? Destiny 2: Renegades arrives in this strange, skeletal era of the game—an era without the luxurious seasonal arcs that once carried us from beat to beat. Bungie is now dealing in single-serve expansions, microwave-ready slices of story, gameplay, and loot meant to keep a decade-old shooter breathing. And somehow, against a backdrop of cut resources and existential uncertainty, Renegades manages to land with surprising charm.

As someone who has spent far too many nights arguing about Destiny lore like it’s a college course I paid for, I approached Renegades with a mix of dread and curiosity. The big discourse topic—its not-Star-Wars-but-definitely-Star-Wars aesthetic—felt like the kind of thing I’d roll my eyes at before immediately buying the Collector’s Edition. And honestly? Playing a licensed but not licensed Star Wars-adjacent Destiny expansion feels like slipping into a cosplay outfit you’d swear you never bought. It shouldn’t work. It does anyway.

The story setup in Renegades leans into the galactic opera energy so hard that my inner lore nerd kept looking over its shoulder, expecting the Lucasfilm police to kick down the door. Drifter and Eris Morn—Destiny’s favorite on-again, off-again chaos couple—steer the narrative with the help of Eido and the newest addition, Aunor, who might as well have her Jedi Union membership revoked for moonlighting in a game filled with gun-toting space wizards. The villains, meanwhile, swagger around in outfits that scream “Stormtrooper but make it Cabal-core,” and the big bad, Dredgen Bael, is such a precise fusion of Revan and Kylo Ren that I half expected him to complain about his helmet’s ventilation system.

It’s campy. It’s derivative. It’s…honestly pretty fun.

But the pacing? That’s where Destiny 2: Renegades shows its seams. The campaign feels like it lost a few episodes in the editing room—important beats flicker past with hyperspace efficiency, and emotional arcs barely have time to breathe. I kept waiting for the moment where the story dropped into gear, only to find the mission complete screen instead. It’s the downside of Destiny’s new “bite-sized expansion” model: you can taste the flavor, but the meal never truly fills you up.

Yet even as the narrative sputters, the gameplay reminds me why—year after year—I keep drifting back like a Guardian with a questionable sense of boundaries. Renegades delivers the kind of bombastic, lovingly crafted set-piece missions that used to define Destiny’s golden expansions. And the new toys? I haven’t had this much fun with a weapon subclass since Stasis ruined Crucible for six straight months.

Blasters slot into Destiny’s sandbox like they’ve been hiding behind the vault door the whole time, radiating pure “space outlaw energy.” They’re punchy, flexible, and immediately satisfying. And the Praxic Blade—let’s be real, the lightsaber—is both wonderfully overpowered and deeply silly in that way only Destiny can pull off. Throwing it like some celestial boomerang, reflecting projectiles, chasing down cosmetic blade colors like a kid trading holo stickers at recess—it’s indulgent in the best way. Renegades knows exactly what it’s doing, and it’s doing it with a grin.

The real surprise of my Destiny 2 Renegades review journey came not from the campaign but from the Lawless Frontier activities. These multi-planet missions mix factions, modifiers, enemy races, and delightfully absurd “destination powers” into a build-crafting playground. Calling down Cabal drop pods like orbital lawn darts? Summoning healing drones like you’re speed-dialing customer support? Ordering an AT-ST equivalent to march into battle like your personally rented war mech? It’s messy, chaotic, and genuinely refreshing.

Even the PvEvP invasion mechanic—a spiritual cousin of Gambit’s more dramatic moments—feels like a clever remix. Watching an invader panic when your squad pulls a full suite of supers out of nowhere never stops being funny. Watching your team wipe instantly to an overconfident Golden Gun does, but that’s Destiny. It equal-opportunity humiliates.

And yet…even after all the thrills, Renegades ends with a whisper instead of a crescendo. Once the campaign curtain falls, there’s a sudden vacuum. No seasonal arcs waiting. No weekly lore drops. Just the familiar grind humming underneath, daring you to keep going because you love the game, not because the game is currently loving you back.

Still, here’s the thing: I walked away from the Destiny 2 Renegades expansion feeling surprisingly optimistic. Not exuberant, not bowled over—just quietly glad that Destiny still has enough gas in the tank to try creative swings, even weird licensed-adjacent ones that should never have worked on paper.

Renegades works more than it doesn’t. And in 2025? That’s practically heroic.

Verdict

Destiny 2: Renegades is a strange, scrappy, uneven little expansion that leans so hard into its space-opera inspirations that it probably leaves dents. The story is rushed, the ending is abrupt, and the new Destiny release model continues to feel like a ghost of what came before. But the moment-to-moment gameplay? The blasters, the lightsaber-that-isn’t, the chaotic Lawless Frontier sandbox? They deliver the kind of spark that reminds me why Destiny still matters. It won’t convert skeptics, but lapsed Guardians and lore-hungry diehards will find more joy here than they expect.