Destiny 2 has me back in its clutches... but it has a weak grip. The Lightfall expansion isn’t everything fans were hoping it would be. Given that it’s the penultimate chapter in the battle of Light versus Darkness, you’d expect the narrative to be a riveting journey of twists and turns, but at best it’s a meandering labyrinth of unearned character motivations and events that make almost no sense to even hardened fans. You spend loads of missions getting Spider-Man powers and then it just sorta ends. No big battle. No big twists. No developments. What a bummer.
Lightfall might be a stinker, but after so much time away I’m finding moment-to-moment action in Destiny hypnotic. Aside from my seasonal dedication to Fortnite, I haven’t gotten into a live service game since swearing off Genshin Impact two years ago. Mihoyo’s weeaboo slot machine preyed on my addictive personality and sucked money out of me in ways I knew would ruin me if I stuck around, so I uninstalled it and haven’t gone back since. Destiny on the other hand, I left behind after the underwhelming reception to Shadowkeep.
As TheGamer’s Eric Switzer has told me before, there is no better time to pick up Destiny than with the arrival of a new expansion. The Witch Queen was amazing though, and had Bungie firing on all cylinders with storytelling, level design, and mechanics we hadn’t seen before. After years of toying with the rollout of its live service shooter, the developer seemed to have finally nailed it. Fast-forward a year and Lightfall shits the bed so perfectly that fans are now panicked that the resolution to come in 2024 will be equally terrible.
All the excitement and fervor I was promised in the weeks following a new expansion has been swallowed up by angry and confused fans trying to figure out how things went so badly. There seems to plentiful praise out there for the new setting of Neomuna alongside its implementation of new raids and loot, but these additions are meaningless if the narrative responsible for making them matter is nowhere to be seen.
In my absence I came to naively assume that Destiny was all about the sick loot and climbing numbies, when in reality fans have fallen in love with the unfolding story, empathetic characters, and personal stakes that have been steadily climbing in the background. To have the precluding climax screw things up so badly means most of the community is now figuring out whether its worth sticking around.
My silly ass only just rolled up to take in all the sights, so it’s a huge bummer to have the wider enthusiasm sizzle out into an indifferent whimper as I’m rearing to experience older campaigns and prepare for the raid. My first one ever it turns out, so please be nice if I end up in your squad.
I’m in a strange place right now, since I’m far from a Destiny amateur, yet I’ve been away from the battle long enough that almost everything has changed. The act of equipping loot and upgrades are streamlined and easier to digest and customise, while a bunch of new planets and subclasses are calling my name even if I have to waste hours as I figure out how to use them. It kicks ass, there’s so much content, but it feels like a subdued tone amidst my friends and colleagues will slowly but surely strip away at my eager attitude.
I’m hoping that once I clear the Lightfall campaign I can have friends carry me through the raid ahead of Bungie delivering seasonal updates that somehow salvage the mediocre bits of narrative it saw fit to bless us with throughout the expansion. If not, I suppose I can wait until The Final Shape and pray things don’t end with players burning Destiny to the ground.