Destiny 2 Light Currently in “mostly negative” status on Steam. Twitter and Reddit have been flooded with complaints, highlights of problems, and posts blatantly mocking the latest expansion. Even MyNameIsByf, a longtime Destiny loyalist with a keen eye for criticism and commentary, expressed his deep disappointment with Lightfall and the future it set for Bungie.
But, all that aside, Lightfall isn’t all bad. In fact, in my opinion, I think the mission design of the Legendary campaign reflects one of the best Destiny experiences I’ve had in years: challenging, well-planned, climactic, and creative. A very strong way to reintroduce lost players back into the game, and a timely irritant for those who feel too comfortable with their end game gear. Sadly, there’s very little to rave about beyond that.
This is the penultimate story before Destiny’s long-awaited, highly anticipated climax of light and dark. It’s the 10-year finale, and when done right, it has the power to deliver one of the most cathartic and impressive gameplay/story combinations in gaming. This is probably the kind of thing developers, gamers, and business executives will be referring to in the next few years: the pinnacle of service game design, a bastion of developers looking to prove that long-term crowd-focused games can actually deliver.
But right now, most fans of the game (yes, even hardcore alpha veterans like you) don’t think Bungie is capable of delivering on this decade-long promise. Let’s take a look at why — starting with a little compliment where it’s due.
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legendary campaign: I’ve already mentioned this above, but the difficulty of the legendary campaign is hard – and better for it. It all begins unhurriedly: Witnesses reveal its true nature, we’re taken on a dangerous smuggling mission, and we’re separated from our fellow Earthlings. Story aside, the campaign is pretty good: some genuine halo-like moments, some good intentions to keep you playing, and the last few missions of Roar (not you, though, Calus) are really something I miss’ A classic Halo’ encounter crafted by the masterminds at Bungie.
Some missions feel like baby’s raid encounters: a wonderful gauntlet and testing ground designed to show new or failed players how to properly play these end-game, high-level encounters. Others… are less encouraging, but we’ll get to those in a moment.
new exotic: Full disclosure here, I’m writing this after a few hours of toying with a new bow and my lovely warlock boots, basically spending a few days with Quicksilver Storm. You can see why this gun is the headliner this season: it’s versatile enough to easily control hordes of mobs with the built-in missile launcher, and hot-swapping to the grenade launcher can do some serious damage to bosses. It can be difficult to use, but in skilled hands it feels remarkably powerful—the infamous line of fate between power and risk is wielded to stunning effect. This is the best Exotic weapon since Osteo Striga – and that’s saying something, if you ask me.
chain subclass: I’ll start this section by saying that I play Warlock, so donning my special loot, getting the catalyst for Quicksilver Storm, and being a scary green female dragon feels pretty special. Without much effort, I was able to craft a build that would power my fireteam, control crowds with ease, and restore my abilities quickly and easily. For me, it feels good – I’ve removed the Grapple and replaced it with the grenade that makes Threadlings. My Rift generates Threadlings. Popping any Thread Tangles I see gives me Threadlings. I made a build that kills everything around me, turning my character into its own concrete version of Osteo Striga.
I have feelings for Titans: Strand has some nice utility, but popping some nasty Wolverine claws for your Super isn’t amazing, and stays away from shields and buffs from your other subclasses – just being melee-centric Replacing subclasses with appalling tracking – kind of stupid. From what I’ve heard from my hunter friends, hunters are happy because they can pop the flail and go brrrrrr – and still have a fair amount of utility. I think Strand is pretty good (once you get rid of the appalling Grapple cooldown, what was Bungie thinking?!) but it takes a while to get used to it’s best. Hey, at least we now have Strand shielded enemies… I wonder when/if Stasis will get that…
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Final Boss (and Vex Washer): What the hell are you thinking, Bungie? The first half of this boss encounter is actually quite engrossing: clever, gritty, and filled with enough randomness to keep you on your toes and get your heart racing in your throat. Having played on Legend (and honestly, it feels like a big deal), the second phase of combat is one of the most misguided attempts at difficulty I’ve seen in Destiny in the last nine years…and we know there’s a long list List it to the top, there.
Strand Grapple doesn’t feel very good in the middle of a fight, and you haven’t had much chance to test it out until now. Yes, there’s been the dreaded Strand Fighting/Washing Machine level before, but this feels more like a hopeless amateur Spider-Man snuff movie than a cool activation of new powers in a AAA video game. The quirky off-mat training montage doesn’t count, either. So, without a chance to really get to know Strand, you’re supposed to defeat a super hard final boss – with bullet sponge mode activated – while trying to save your ass from his awfulness by unleashing a shit grapple The sound of death glitches 50% of the time? Is this how you want us to see the campaign end, Bungie? Frustrated and dissatisfied with our new abilities? Unbelievable.
New characters (and Osiris): Imagine if Otto from The Simpsons was the Phantom Man from Mass Effect. Imagine Iggy Pop replacing Bruce Willis in Armageddon. Think of the bright-eyed, young (and deranged) Owen Wilson who replaced Sandra Bullock in Gravity. That’s what Bungie did with vendor newcomer and all-around dork Nimbus in Lightfall. The budget Silver Surfer is the defender of a new location, Neomuna, and your point of contact on this otherwise lifeless planet (more on that later). They’re annoying, playful, and decidedly uninteresting – and paired with Rohan, the “someday I’ll retire” trope machine. These two are scary, paper-thin characters who exist purely so that Bungie can rip out the emotional story beats from them…but combined with Osiris’ character assassination, they’re nothing.
A miserable, misanthropic being with declining mental health and a narcissistic desire to over-explain concepts that he himself knows little about…it just doesn’t fit with what we know of Osiris so far. He’s always been eccentric—a life spent in the Infinite Forest is what it looks like to you—but his single-minded and “off” obsession with the Strand ruins a lot of good character development in Lightfall, and manages to make the He becomes one of the most annoying people to have on your radio in the entire Destiny experience. I’m sorry you lost your ghost, man, but can you stop taking it out on me?
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tell a story: So… not important? This whole thing follows on the heels of The Witch Queen and some of the most dangerous moments in Destiny lore so far – we’re drawn into a war on two fronts, we’re told the universe is under threat, and there we see the Traveler’s heart being Ripped! – being randomly dumped when we hop on Neptune to run errands for the California Surf Brothers, while all our friends on the tower are fighting for their lives? What? A puzzling decision, poorly executed and poorly explained.
Adding insult to injury is the way the story is told. There is a macguffin – the veil – which is apparently some improbable and impossible source of supracausal power, which is crucial to the Witness (big bad, if you follow) and their plans to cancel the Voyager (the corresponding big good) . At no point in the game are we told what The Veil is. We have no idea why it matters so much. Even the flyer I give you is not just the information you get in the game. If you want to have some real fun, snap a photo every time a character says “radial mast”—another contraption you don’t know much about. You can die from alcohol poisoning on a mission.
I’ve said before that Destiny is one of the best sci-fi stories in gaming, but it’s told in the most frustrating and irresponsible way. The Witch Queen set out to fix some of these elements, and Lightfall significantly reduced them. That doesn’t bode well for Final Form and what’s to come.
new muna: The big new location we’re supposed to be pumped to explore is promised to be this gigantic cyberpunk city in the sky—a cloud-surrounded utopia to which a group of superintelligent superhumans fled when the solar system collapsed and ripped apart. What we got was an abandoned tech demo of a level where the lights were on but no one was home. Canary Wharf running on PlayStation 3. A network of straight streets and hostile cupboards, there’s very little that’s interesting about it. Strand’s energy leaks out of the floor like stinky lines of visible sewage, and the whole place feels weird – and Strand thinks it’s all thumbs, this energy was apparently once designed for Mara Sov or Savathun, but for Appease content while arguing to fit the Neptune pipeline.
Combine that with the aforementioned goofy characters and a slew of hateful NPCs who babble at you via patrolling walkie-talkie, and you’ll be spending most of your downtime on Neptune wishing you were really anywhere else. Even dealing with the world of Thrones and its repressive gothic grimness is more exhilarating than any tonal migraine Neptune ends up being. The whole place feels like a nod to the worst part of the MCU: an absolutely abominable concept, because those simple action scenes are themselves copiers for copiers.
I came to Lightfall from a frustrated place: I loved Destiny 2, and I currently have over 600 hours in the series. I know Bungie can be the best: look at how Legendary campaigns work at full throttle. See how awesome the Witch Queen is. Pick up any exotic – or listen to the sound of any gun firing in the game – and tell me a better title. A very well-known developer at a large AAA studio told me this week that they and their team refer to Destiny when they need to work on making their guns feel good. That says a lot about the state of the game.
If — what an “if” — Bungie can get their act together and actually come up with something special for The Last Shape, which launches in 2024, I think it’s going to be the most impactful and impressive event we’ve ever seen One of gambling. Even in the worst cases, in the past (Wolf House, D2 Release, Warmind), I think Destiny can still pull it all together and make the final big beat.
As it stands, I don’t think it can. I hope Bungie proves me wrong.
