Destiny 2 whiffed its Infinity War moment with Lightfall. Bungie was in the ideal position to capitalise on years of narrative expectation with the beginning of a galactic war fans have been waiting forever to unfold. But aside from a stellar opening cutscene and a handful of standout missions, the campaign boiled down to a glorified Strand tutorial rotten with clumsy exposition. We spend several hours seeking out The Veil on Neptune, and I still have no clue what the bloody thing is. It’s bad apparently, with The Witness quickly using it to open up the Traveler before taking it away from Earth for the first time in centuries.
For context, this is my first time returning to Destiny since the underwhelming release of Shadowkeep, and I’m already deep into the grind and hoping to tackle my very first raid when it comes around. I doubt it will save Lightfall, but hopefully it can at least provide some narrative satisfaction after not caring about character deaths and wondering why Vex are vibing on Neomuna in the first place. Fans have a lot of questions, and none of them have bothered to have been answered, which makes the long wait for resolution all the more frustrating.
Even away from the mediocre storytelling, Lightfall’s fluorescent neon aesthetic is a stylistic direction that clashes awkwardly with the intended tone and atmosphere. We are apparently on the backfoot, ending up on Neptune in a desperate attempt to stop our foes from making everything so much worse. We are isolated with few allies to turn to, yet this is a symptom of glaring plot holes and awkward pacing far more than Lightfall wanting us to feel alone and vulnerable.
Instead, it basically feels like nobody really gives a shit. The opening scene has Zavala, Ikora, and many of the other big names seek shelter in their ship by pulling the window shutters down to wait things out. They don’t return until the very last cinematic, where they break cover before calling you back to The Tower to have a big moan about things.
What a wasted opportunity. Bungie decided to pull us away from allies in the laziest way possible. Figures who should be deciding factors in the emergent conflict but are written out of proceedings altogether because Lightfall doesn’t know what to do with them. The fact you don’t hear from any of them at any moment throughout the campaign is bewildering, not to mention how it makes no sense to see characters, who in past events have shown tangible emotion towards threats like this, now have nothing to say. Ikora was ready to destroy entire races when The Red Army took control of the Traveler during the base campaign, and here she doesn’t care at all. Lacking consequence also diminishes the world building Bungie tries so hard to convey throughout Neomuna. It feels empty.
My hope for Lightfall was a modern imagining of Halo 3: ODST. Bungie was behind that masterful shooter too, using epic events of the third instalment to tell a smaller and more intimate story amidst a group of drop troopers who didn’t have the superhuman skills and abilities of Master Chief, nor the military might of the UNSC.
The cast was left abandoned in a ruined city its superiors had no intention of returning to, and uncovering its melancholic streets under the cover of darkness expressed a feeling of loneliness I’m not sure has ever been replicated. But Lightfall had all the ingredients to build upon it. Imagine if Neomuna was haunting and lonely and not neon-drenched and gaudy.
ODST becomes a more traditional Halo campaign in the final act, but ahead of reuniting with your squad, several hours are spent slowly trailing clues across New Mombasa in the faint hope that your friends are still alive. The protagonist is silent, a rookie who slowly fills the role of a reliant ally capable of bringing them all back together. You felt lost, each fight with patrolling brutes and grunts akin to a final pursuit of life in the face of insurmountable odds.
You felt weaker too, far less able to take enemies down and navigate locales than Chief ever was. Audio logs and similar nuggets of lore found dotted across the empty metropolis emphasise how quickly things fell apart, and how many millions likely died as the war erupted before coming to an end in a matter of hours. You’re no soldier anymore, merely another survivor figuring out what went wrong and how exactly to salvage things.
Neomuna would have been infinitely more immersive if our arrival was effectively framed in the aftermath of The Witness’ onslaught. Make it clear that we’re losing, or already lost as communication with our once powerful allies is cut off as we’re required to forge new alliances and uncover a new power that presents an actual chance of fighting back. Our pilgrimage across the ghost-ridden streets could have meant something, no longer held back by nonsensical exposition and an obtuse conflict.
Lightfall’s storytelling is so poor that Neomuna has no sense of place, nor a reason for us to care about the fate of its citizens or the new friends we meet along the way. Fun combat and cool new abilities mean nothing when the context behind them isn’t there, like Bungie was pointing at specific moments and demanding we feel emotion in order to move things forward with zero investment. It sucks to know that with the right execution on atmosphere and tone, Lightfall could have said so much more by saying nothing at all.
ODST thrived on silence to drive its world building, with fragmented relationships and flashbacks helping to piece together windows of time we weren’t present to witness. Following instructions and drilling through missions with the same tired objectives over and over again was a tragic experience to have when I know Bungie is capable of so much more. For the rest of my raid grinding, I’m going to throw the game on mute and get up a playlist of sad ODST music to somehow convince myself I’m playing a different game.