Season of the Which? [10/12/23]
Lightfall has finally emerged from the post expansion dip and is on the upswing as we get closer to The Final Shape. Season of the deep started was a wild season lore wise, but the structure was wonky and overall the season heavily resembled what upset people about Lightfall. As the seasonal story ends for Season of the Witch, A lot of people seem to be more drawn to the season than it’s associated expansion and I think that’s a good direction. To follow up on the crowd’s opinion and my own, many youtubers are also drawing comparisons to Seasons of the Splicer or the Chosen.
Personally, I’m going to have to agree. For the first time since the Launch of Lightfall, we are getting gameplay and story content that are both performing well. In turn this also means that the lore and continues to succeed while players enjoy the most robust sandbox we’ve ever had.
Comparisons to past seasons aside, I’d like to point out that this season has quite literally brought several older storylines together for a lot of mimicking and irony. Eris’ entire plan for us this season has been to turn Xivu’s powers against her just as she had tried to trap us in her logic back in Season of the Seraph. Even by the end of the story, we have direct callbacks to both Witch Queen AND The Taken King being used as the main story drivers.
My favorite aspect of this three way war between the sisters and Eris is that both Xivu and Savathun really are treating Eris like a much younger sister who’s acting out trying to get involved with the adults. As grotesque as the Hive can be, they sure do value a good sibling hazing and as an only child; I think that’s really funny. I can’t say they finished the seasonal story as strong as they started it, but they certainly got the ball rolling towards The Final Shape.
Back to comparing things to old seasons, I really like this season’s setup for future iteration. In the wake of SotD’s stale reincarnation of The Menagerie, Savathun’s Spire and The Altars of Summoning were fantastic additions to this year’s sandbox. I really enjoy how they are playing with side paths/rewards in their straightforward missions and the way players interacted with their Decks of Whispers in Altars of Summoning.
Last season in the Deep Dive activity Bungie did redeem themselves quite a bit with their rogue-like experiments. This was really cool at the time and I think I might even go back to use it as a testing ground for builds until it’s gone. I would say the same about Altars of Summoning, but the card system is more of a simple novelty than an expansion of gameplay. I do also like how both activities had a way for players to decide as a group how hard the difficulty of the next wave would be, but I think Altars is better because new or unexperienced players don’t necessarily hold back the invested.
At the end of the day as the season winds down, I think it’s easy to say that this has been a good if not great season. The second good if not great season in a row, which is great news considering how Lightfall launched. We’re in the second half and the Final Shape gets closer every day. I’m going to spend a lot of time in Division 2 and World of Warcraft during the last few weeks of this season once I have level 100 on the SP, but I’m excited to keep grinding this season’s content to the end.
