Darker Days (A Lightfall Launch Retrospective)[4/30/23]

Two months into Lightfall and I think it’s safe to say that this expansion is basically a filibuster. Flashy and a little scandalous, this expansion is providing some top tier entertainment at the cost of the narrative. In some ways; Lightfall is a great showcase of what Bungie is doing to setup The Final Shape. In other ways; they’ve shown us yet again that their ability to stay consistent with quality is as unpredictable as it has ever been.

The new element Strand is a perfect example. Once a player has unlocked all of the aspects, Strand is a wild experience that can handle all forms of Champions. However this is all locked behind a short yet strange currency grind post campaign that leaves players feeling more naked than Stasis did on launch. I’m really glad that they used the new sandbox of this expansions to further showcase how cool Strand can be, but it just does not make sense until it’s played with enough.

As with most Destiny expansions; we may not get off on the right foot, but we always catch our stride. The campaign story is not good, but the post-campaign stories are very good! The Legendary Campaign gameplay experience was great, but the Raid was surprisingly easy even on day one. The overall lore is intense and presents a lot of great questions, but the seasonal story is more emotionally impactful and distracts from the post-campaign content.

This last point I just made is a weird one that’s popped up over just the last expansion or two, even with how good the Witch Queen story  was. The seasonal story has this weird way of stealing the show fairly early on in the expansion’s launch cycle. Especially when the expansion’s story is as confusingly disjointed as Light Fall’s is. Season of Defiance’s story ended up being less interesting than it led on to be, but it was a great add in to the post campaign content.

Bungie has spoken a couple times about how they are going to use at least the next 2 seasons to start switching up the monotony of Destiny 2 seasons. I’m very excited to see how this goes as I’m planning on coasting each season to get BP Rank 100 and Guardian Rank 8 minimum while I reinvest in WoW and FF14 as they hit their mid expansions strides. I understand that some people might be upset with their initial Light Fall impressions but I can’t find a single person still playing who isn’t just having a ball. Seasonal burnout be damned.