The Return of Rasputin and his Merry Seraphs (Season 19 First Impressions)[12/30/22]

Ra Ra Rasputin, Warmind of the best seasons. My heart’s so full and I wish I could flyyy.

Memes aside, I have a very pleasant history with Warmind based seasons and this time around we might actually get some story and lore that live up to the legacy of Rasputin and all that he’s done to and with our guardians. Back in season of the Worthy, I was rather frustrated, not because of the seasons’ offerings but because the community response to it was so negative that even when I was having fun, it was rather annoying to even play the game.

Back in the Warmind Expansion, the story wasn’t even about Rasputin or Ana Bray, but about Xol and Nokris. Now a lot of people will also tell you that Warmind was the turning point when we knew that Bungie was working to fix the problems created by D2 on launch, and Worthy was a season that completely one-upped and redefined what kind of story and lore concepts we have come to love in seasons ever since.

Now to get the story talk out of the way, the introductory Lore drops are as mysteriously impactful as ever, but there is a pretty weird amount of “find Neomuna” which is absolutely a miss on Bungie’s side since we learned of Neomuna like four months ago. before we we’re even halfway done with this years’ content. I could go on forever about how they dropped their marketing campaign for Lightfall a bit early but hey.

The core of the situation has The Player, Ana Bray, and Osiris are rebuilding Rasputin as an exo with help from Clovis Bray and opposed by Xivu Arath’s forces bolstered by Wrathborn originating from House Salvation members. I do find it pretty cool that they are pulling together a lot of characters that were left alone after Beyond  Light. But I also think we should be looking at a cumulative effort from characters we've worked with this expansion not last expansion. I do really worry that Bungie might be digging a bit deep with the size of the cast before we go into Light Fall, but as always I’m optimistic that they will continue to tell good stories.

Gameplay wise, we have heist battlegrounds this season, very similarly to the mindscape missions from season of the risen. This time however; the enemies are always 5 power higher than you, AND the Legend version of the mode is already available and is only 10 levels above as well as matchmake-able. I have yet to do the Legend Mode yet but I’m really excited to see some more casual content that isn’t just a total pushover.

I’ve been really excited about all of Bungie’s pushes for bits of harder content mixed into the more casual content loops ever since Witch Queen came out. Every season this year has had some sort of harder endgame content, and now even the casual content can be scaled up more conveniently. I hope that Lightfall continues leaning into more forms of difficulty.

Not necessarily on the difficulty side, but I’d like to make one last note celebrating the addition of an official Ranked playlist for crucible. I used to absolutely love wasting away with some good sweaty play in Apex, but ever since I lost my group to play that with; I’ve been waiting for Destiny to step up and finally give me a way to get lost in the competition. I will most likely be writing a retrospective on this first season, but I’m really excited so far and I’m hoping that the LFG tools being added in Lightfall are going to enhance this further.

At this point, I’ve seen many people in the community claiming this to be the best season of the year. I can’t say I disagree, and this year kept me around better than last. I still don’t think that the bar was set all that high purely because of how consistent the seasons have been this year.

The season of hype is upon us as Bungie reveals the last of the Lore details we will have going into Lightfall, and I’m having an absolute blast. Somehow this game is still retaining my attention even when I’m also levelling in the new WoW expansion, and somehow I don’t think that’s going to be changing any time soon. I think we’re in for a really fun new year from the Destiny team.