I'm five minutes in and I'm already struck by how superior the opening sequence is to the actual game. Character dialogue was minimal originally, possibly justified by some rationale that the guardian was Master-Chief-esque, and should be a blank slate as much as possible (I'm sure it wasn't a priority during the trouble development either). You can see with this, however, just how much allowing for real dialogue in-game led to much more natural exposition and world-building than in the original.

I’m not sure what’s confusing. It seems pretty straightforward.

I think saying it’s not “true gameplay” just means it’s not a let’s play. It’s edited footage (both in terms of the voice acting and writing, and the screen overlay effects that show up later). And that it’s presenting an original story (or at least a personalized one, following this character), rather than just recording a straight gameplay session.

That is pretty awesome. Look forward to watching the rest of this.

On the downside, the way Destiny functions I think almost creates a need, or at least a desire, for this sort of content.

D1 at least let you repeat story content. D2 practically does. Replaying the beginning like this essentially requires creating a new character in D1, and in D2 is... currently not possible since that portion of the game is literally no longer present.