Last year, with the launch of Destiny: The Witch Queen, Bungie delivered one of the best FPS campaigns we’ve seen in years. Offering some incredible challenges, a renewed focus on layered storytelling, and giving players more agency in the cosmic sandbox that Destiny calls home, The Witch Queen feels like a service shooter renaissance – a Statement extensions that set intent for months, and years, into the future.
Now, the Witch Queen is dead. Intellectually and spiritually. With one final quest stuck at the end of Seraph season, Bungie puts a bullet in the crowned head of the Hive Queen and clears the stage for Destiny’s fabled next big bad: The Witness. The arrival of the Pyramid fleet, which has been teased since Destiny 2’s vanilla launch, The Witness — and the entire Lightfall expansion — feels like the culmination of a story Destiny has been telling for nearly a decade.
Let’s go back to about two weeks. Two weeks ago, Bungie added the final quest to the Witch Queen campaign; an absolute proponent of quests with huge planetary implications for future story and gameplay. I won’t spoil things here, but the final Dawn mission (and the actions of Warmind Rasputin) are some of Destiny’s best moments – dramatic, explosive, and unpredictable. A right home run in a game that’s been running for six years, is a beacon for all other live services to show you how it’s done.
It perfectly sets the scene for Lightfall. I think The Witch Queen is already pretty difficult, and this difficulty really reveals how tightly all the mechanics and systems in Destiny 2 work. According to the developers themselves, Lightfall will be much more difficult. The Final Dawn encounter, with all the space bombing, Hive and Fallen teaming up, and tight combat design, feels like a Lightfall entree: hardcore, challenging, sadistic. Infuse it into my veins.
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A bit of lore and chat later, and you’ll learn that there’s a hidden city on Neptune called Neomuna, which heralds the launch of the Lightfall expansion, coming on February 28th. We just recovered and destroyed a key character, we’re about to witness the biggest showdown in Destiny history since Cayde-6 and Uldren Sov, and a whole new force and subclass is on the horizon. Destiny 2 is ready for a revival of all things revival, and I couldn’t be happier.
In addition, I am the main warlock. Space magic is in the blood, baby. Now, Lightfall finally looks like it might actually give us cosmic wizards the powers we’ve been craving for a decade. Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansion pack will give my Warlock-armed Sage and I the unique experience of being an explosive swarm summoner thanks to the new Strand power. Warlocks — more so than their Tiny Titan and Hunter counterparts — will be able to summon Threadlings. Woven from Strand matter, these explosive minions can overtake enemies and explode. Add to that the new Exotic assault rifle, which fires grenades at enemies when you shoot them (or something like the Striga, which is live locust bullets), and you can turn yourself into some grim Brood Mother: a summoned Pinnacle, an awakened Hive.
Of course, there are still some problems to overcome. I’m a weathered destiny veteran who’s been plagued by solar winds and void wormholes since the 2014 alpha, and I still wonder at least once a year that blink and confusion come back to the game, surrounded by about a million blinking icons and ugliness The UI clutter blinds the eyes. We’ve discussed at length recently how Destiny needs to rethink its onboarding and signposts, and Lightfall gives Bungie’s navigator plenty of room to do just that. Let’s just hope the developers do a better job addressing the game’s weight and its sprawling young legacy, and use that momentum to push Lightfall to a crescendo, crash – rather than just capsize and succumb to the pressure.
Still, if Bungie has taught us anything in its illustrious 30-year career, it’s that it knows how to stick to the landing. Check out Halo: Reach. I think our journey is going well, Guardian.
