I started playing when D2 was on Battle net, completed red war, stopped playing for a long while and came back at the tail end of Season 21.
I don't know even a quarter of the things that have happened since. Even with the expansions I own, The First Campaign and All of those very many seasons content are all lost.
We should not have to resort to watching a 4 hour youtube video to know what happened, who this person is, how this person died, etc.
If I had to guess lots of people playing The Final Shape don't even know who Cayde-6 is other than this dude who died, let alone have an emotional connection.
Does anyone know if Bungie has ever said anything about the new player experience or story?
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They actually introduced a feature for that a while ago, as part of New Light quests. If you click the Timeline on the top right of the destination screen, you can actually see all the important cinematics summing up the plot so far, and even replay a snippet from a few expansions just to catch up.