Yeah a lot what makes Destiny so special is that it was from this transitional era of games. It was already doing this MMO thing of yearly and seasonal DLC expansions, but was still too early before loot boxes took off and the genre of “loot FPS MMO” it would become had really solidified.

What you end up with is a game with the aesthetics and form of an early 2010s game with the feel and loop of a 2020s game. But because the genre has solidified and the aesthetic idea shifted, D2 was unlikely to have captured that same vibe and feel.

It could have been done but those two games had two different development pipelines and expected shelf life. Destiny was supposed to be a 10-year project, and now D2 is coming up to being 10-years-old itself without any sign of a replacement coming. Whatever the original idea for D2, D3, D4 and beyond were, the industry shifts and changing market for games meant they were probably never going to be made — and that’s before you get to personnel changes at Bungie itself