Since Bungie officially announced Thursday that live-service development of Destiny 2 was coming to an end in a few weeks, like many longtime players I find myself reminiscing about the good old days and dreaming of what could have been. In light of a Bloomberg report indicating that Destiny 3 is not in development — and reports that Bungie is planning for a significant number of layoffs — some of the franchise’s most interesting plot threads may never get resolved. Among them is all the narrative build-up surrounding Xivu Arath, the Hive god of war, which might never amount to anything.
Responding to a post on X about the Bloomberg report, one user suggested that Destiny 3 should begin with a “campaign and massive raid featuring Xivu Arath,” arguing that it would be a “slam dunk massive hit.” Someone replied “you’d be surprised how many times this was pitched for D2.” That someone was Robert Brookes, the former senior narrative designer on the game. He’s credited with working on every update and season, starting with 2020’s Beyond Light all the way through The Final Shape and Revenant before his departure in 2024.
While the first Destiny explored Hive lore a great deal, particularly with the excellent The Taken King expansion focused on the Hive god Oryx, Brookes is partially responsible for much of the interesting Hive-focused narratives that Destiny 2 has delivered in recent years.
In a 2023 interview with Shacknews, Brookes explained that part of his process involved digging around into the lore surrounding stories, destinations, and various ideas that the narrative team could explore. “I will select the stuff that is most directly relevant to what we’re doing or has the most connective tissue going inwards and then I start building the stories I’m going to write based on what’s already there,” Robert said. “Then I’ll start creating something new from the inside of the pre-existing lore that we’ve already established.”
While Oryx got his spotlight in The Taken King and his sister Savathûn became a huge focus in Witch Queen — which Brookes was heavily involved with — Xivu Arath never got the same treatment. But it’s said in the lore that she is present wherever armed conflict takes place, which is pretty much everywhere in Destiny. In a 2022 interview with Turtle Beach, Brookes spoke about how the team settled on the idea that it was Xivu Arath who invaded the Cabal capital world of Torobatl, driving out Empress Caiatl, who became one of humanity’s closest alien allies.
That decision transformed Xivu Arath from a distant lore figure into one of Destiny 2’s most important off-screen antagonists. Over the next several years, her influence spread through the game’s seasonal storytelling. She corrupted enemies into Wrathborn during Season of the Hunt. Her armies and rituals destabilized entire worlds. Characters repeatedly described her less as a conventional villain and more as an inevitability — a Hive god empowered by conflict itself.
By the time Season of the Deep arrived in 2023, Bungie finally began bringing Xivu into the foreground. Brookes himself described working through the challenge of defining her voice and personality after years of buildup.
“These were some of the first things I wrote for this season, actually,” Brookes told Press Start in 2023, while discussing Xivu Arath’s characterization. “We were still trying to figure out what Xivu Arath’s voice would sound like.”
Rather than portraying Xivu purely as a screaming war god, Season of the Deep emphasized her grief, insecurity, and collapsing faith in the Sword Logic after the deaths of both Oryx and Savathûn. (An oversimplification here, but Sword Logic is a core tenet of the Hive religious framework, through which power is literally gained by defeating those weaker than you.) Brookes explained that he wanted to humanize Xivu Arath, while still portraying her as irredeemable.
That narrative escalation continued into Season of the Witch, which felt at the time like an obvious setup for a future Xivu Arath expansion. The Witness had breached the Traveler, setting the stage for The Final Shape. Xivu Arath was offscreen hunting down Savathûn’s remaining brood after you’d defeated her in The Witch Queen. The deal was deceptively simple: stop Xivu Arath and Savathûn would reveal the secret to following the Witness.
Eris Morn leveraged Sword Logic and Hive tithing rituals to temporarily transform herself into a Hive god and used that power to sever Xivu Arath from her throne world in the season finale, essentially rendering the immortal god of war vulnerable for the first time. Then, in the first half of 2025 during the Episode: Heresy storyline, Xivu Arath was brought back into the spotlight, but largely as a looming existential force manipulating events from the shadows rather than any kind of centerpiece antagonist. Though she did briefly manifest, revealing her true form for the first time.
It felt like Bungie was positioning Xivu Arath to become Destiny 2’s next major villain, planting the seeds early for events after The Final Shape. Instead, Xivu remained sidelined. Instead of paying off years of mounting Hive-war tension, July 2025’s The Edge of Fate pivoted toward a smaller and more abstract storyline that lacked a clear antagonist. That was followed up by Renegades in December, which feels more like playable Star Wars fan-fiction than anything else.
If we were to reflect on the how and why of Destiny 2’s demise, there are so many factors at play. But part of why players lost interest has a lot to do with Bungie losing the plot. Why plant such rich narrative seeds, only to veer off in totally different directions?
That’s why Brookes’ recent comment resonates so strongly. It validates the lingering sense that Destiny 2 spent years constructing Xivu Arath as one of the franchise’s ultimate threats without ever fully cashing in on that promise. Now, the conflict might forever remain unresolved. Yet at the same time, she’ll be present every time a Guardian fires a weapon or destroys an enemy with their super. It just won’t mean anything anymore.
It’s the end of an era for Destiny 2 as Bungie ends development
Bungie announced the game’s final live-service update
