Destiny 2‘s biggest lore creator, My name is Byf, says Ash & Iron missed the mark by bringing back the Plaguelands without SIVA, arguing Bungie “failed to utilize” a crowd-pleasing story hook at a time when the game needs good news.
Last month, Bungie released the first major update in Destiny 2 called Ash & Iron. It promised the return to the Plaguelands, a fan-favorite location not seen since Rise of Iron. Many players took that as a sign that SIVA might finally make a proper comeback.
Instead, once the update landed, it became clear SIVA wasn’t the focus. The story centers on Maya Sundaresh (The Conductor) looking for Golden Age tech with SIVA mostly treated as dead or background dressing.
As many players put it, the Plaguelands without the plague just feel like… lands. The whole identity of that location was built around SIVA’s red glow and the sense that everything there was infected. Without it, the area comes off as a hollow throwback.
Now, Destiny 2’s biggest lore YouTuber, My name is Byf, has weighed in, and he didn’t hold back.
Destiny 2 Ash & Iron Ignored the “Elephant in the Room”
In a new 17-minute video, Byf breaks down why he feels Ash & Iron missed the mark. He says bringing the Plaguelands back without any real focus on SIVA is a massive storytelling failure, and a moment where Bungie could’ve easily thrown longtime fans a bone.
“Not bringing back SIVA, whilst also bringing back the Plaguelands, is a massive miss,” he said. “I really don’t want to be rude, but I think it needs to be said as well that it feels really quite tone-deaf doing this. SIVA has been a point of interest for Destiny players for years.”
Byf compares Bungie’s choice to revisit the Plaguelands without SIVA to the idea of setting a story on Oryx’s Dreadnaught and never mentioning the Taken King himself. “Doing something in the Plaguelands without mentioning SIVA would be like doing something on board the Dreadnaught without mentioning Oryx. The actual location and the thing that made it the way it is are narratively and thematically baked together. You cannot unbake the metaphorical cake. Especially, when the place is literally called the Plaguelands.”
Byf points out that Bungie could’ve told Maya’s story almost anywhere else, Titan, Mars, Venus, even the Cosmodrome, and avoided the baggage. Choosing the Plaguelands without SIVA only heightened expectations that were never met. “The location had baggage,” he says, “and that baggage seemed to imply awesome things as far as SIVA’s narrative moving forward was concerned.”
“But doing this here in the Plaguelands and looking for Golden Age tech feels like looking for silver in a gold mine. I mean, yeah, there might be other veins of precious metals in here, and we should care about them too. But we’re missing the obvious thing down here, aren’t we? The gold? The SIVA? The plague of the Plaguelands?”
“SIVA is dead” isn’t a good enough excuse
Bungie has long maintained that SIVA is gone for good—wiped out with Rasputin’s death and the destruction of the Replicator back in Rise of Iron. But as Byf points out, that’s a creative decision, not a hard rule. He argues that Bungie has already broken its own rules to bring back major figures like Cayde-6 in The Final Shape and Oryx in Episode Heresy, both handled well.
“Here’s the thing: adhering to those rules is very much a choice, and it’s not always the right one. I mean, The Final Shape would have been nothing without Cayde-6. Cayde-6 was also dead, and whilst bringing him back was a risk, it was actually handled really well in The Final Shape.
“Hell, I’d say that despite the way that some people received Heresy’s ending, it was handled well in Heresy with Oryx as well. To put it really bluntly, Bungie’s narrative team has shown that they’re really good at bringing characters back in a respectful way. And sure, SIVA isn’t a character. It’s a concept. It’s a thing. But narratively speaking, yeah, I trust them to bring back something like SIVA. It’s weird sitting there and not seeing that done. So, yeah, why not bring it back?”
Byf closes his critique, arguing that Bungie completely missed a clear opportunity to deliver something fans have wanted for years. “I feel like this is a moment where Bungie failed to utilize a potential element of the world that the community would have really loved. And in a time when we need good news, we need to change the entire narrative around the game and how things generally are being received by the community.”
Now that the Heliostat exotic mission has dropped and Ash & Iron is pretty much wrapped, many players are hoping Bungie can turn things around when the Star Wars-inspired expansion Renegades arrives on December 2, 2025.
Watch the full video below.
What do you think? Should Bungie have brought SIVA back to the Plaguelands? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
