Destiny

You know, for a expansion with the name of Lightfall and the implications that we're about to take a big loss against the Witness, you'd anticipate the series to adapt a more grimdark approach. But instead? We're traveling to a mysterious city floating above Neptune, and the vibe is all futuristic skyscrapers and neon-punk. Heck, if you told me that this was Illium from Mass Effect, I'd believe you.

And the next season's aesthetic? PIRATES!

...I am seriously considering about joining up for a bit again, this stuff looks neato.

Eramis is doing a bit of a step down though xD Going from trying to avenge the Eliksni by making use of Stasis to...pirates.

No there's waaaaaay too much color here to be mistaken for any part of ME 2's awful piss palette

I'll admit with both the Lightfall reveal and Season of Plunder that Destiny is experimenting with a broader tone than they have before. The 30th Anniversary is already a bit out there, but since there is no real story it can be brushed off easier. And one thing Destiny has not been very good at is making the various destinations feel genuinely lived in rather than a series of hallways to clear of enemies, we know practically nothing about the culture of the Last City because we spend all our time in the Tower. So I'm cautious about the reveal of Neoluna, and actually following through with the implications of a Pyramid Ship invading it.

^^ To be honest, I felt Eramis was the weakest part of the Beyond Light campaign. There is some fascinating lore around her that develops the Eliksni but she does practically nothing to live up to the threat Stasis should have been. She encapsulates an issue with a number of Destiny villains where they can't leave a lasting impact on the setting, as the Guardians using stasis for themselves is considered the bigger issue than anything she does (she mentions using Stasis to attack the Last City and the Traveller, a boring but consistent idea, but she never gets a foothold off Europa). So the idea she was broken out of her crystal prison to serve the Witness may pan out to something interesting, much like what has happened with Calus.

The Grimoire does a good job of painting everyday life in The Last City, but again... it's hidden amongst piles and piles of sometimes overly vague and dull text. It's almost all "Tell" instead of "Show," with the exception of those moments where you get to run around the streets of the city.

Heck, we STILL don't know what zero day for the invasion of Earth by the Darkness looked like.

Season of the Seraph has begun. Time to rebuild Rasputin as an Exo!

The season will run from Dec 6th to Feb 23rd.

Edited by SgtRicko on Dec 8th 2022 at 10:55:25 PM

New Lightfall trailer, mostly showcasing Strand combat.

• You can tag a Thundercrash Titan and follow along the trajectory.
• A space battle is seen, with the guardian hitching a ride on another ship going into hyperdrive.
• A figure that resembles Rhulk, probably another Pyramid ship entity, is holding what looks to be a Guardian and appears to palm blast him right in the face.
• The Witness appears to open a portal of some sort, releasing unusual vegetation wqith white roots and red foliage. It resembles both the Black Garden and Savathun's light-influenced section of Throne World.

Vidoc on Lightfall:

• Cinematics show the Black Fleet in orbit around Earth near the Traveler. This is a story literally ten years in the making.
• They are being more open about events on the horizon, naming "Season of Defiance" earlier than normal. This focuses on the homefront war on Earth, with Devrim Kay doing more than just being the EDZ vendor.
• Tormentors are new boss enemies, or Boss in Mook's Clothing, who appear to have access to light powers and may be the expansions version of the Lucent Hive lightbearers. They can grapple you and appear to do some sort of harm to you. If it's just a one-hit-kill that would be annoying, but if it does something like handicap your ability charge that might be tolerable.
• Massive overhaul to the UI and build crafting options.
  • You can save personal builds based around certain subclasses, allowing quick build changes instead of a more garbled struggle to remember which armor and associated mods go together.
  • The ranking system has changed to reflect actual gameplay accomplishments instead of just hours of grinding. This appears to be more like Triumphs and Guilded Triumphs, but on a seasonal level.
  • More details are offered in match completions, being able to send commendations to other players. One tab shown but not explained says "Full Results" which might be more comprehensive breakdowns of a raid/strike/dungeon in what player did what and how much damage for each encounter.

Destiny 2: Lightfall - IGN Review in Progress - "One of the biggest disappointments for Destiny in a long time"

I've played the campaign and about half the post-campaign content. The backlash to the expansion is legitimate, though exaggerated.

The Good:

• Art design is top tier, as expected for Bungie. The skybox is one of the coolest they have done with the swirling thunderclouds of Neptune, and the three patrol spaces feel well defined by a town square, beach front and ground zero (Savathun's throne world was underwhelming for me because the three patrol spaces felt interchangeable, mixing swamp and porcelain castle architecture).
• Cinematics are very well crafted, while nothing will top Cayde's last stand in Forsaken this at least approaches The Taken King in terms of scale and tone.
• The basic story is fine, a solid beginning, middle and end. There is other issues to discuss on that front but when I take into consideration everything that happens it is serviceable.
• Strand is underwhelming at first, suffering from Beyond Light's approach to Stasis by giving you a supercharge version of the powers in the campaign before unlocking the actual subclass afterwards. But most people when they understood the options presented in the subclass made for a very unique powerset.
• Caiatl is brought to the forefront as she faces against Calus, which is probably the strongest aspect of the story.

The Bad:

• Neomuna suffers from what I expected, there is a lack of feeling genuinely lived in because of the lack of actual NPC's ( the citizens were apparently digitized into a "Cloud Ark" and communicate as Cortana-esque holograms) and the environment is a familiar three patrol spaces separated by buffering tunnels.
• Multiple times during the story I was wondering if the game glitched and missed some vital introductory cutscene or in-game event to help ease various transitions. You are teased with an ODST style drop-pod introduction to Neomuna but other than a lot of shaking you are blind inside the pod, crash and then spawn into the next mission with the city in front of you. Likewise your first introduction to Strand is just finding a node and going to town on enemies with no narrative buildup.
• Major Sequel Hook that makes the game feel like filler. The events on Neomuna are heavily isolated from the events on Earth, but there is a major disconnect on the passage of time. The opening and concluding cutscene feel like they can be placed back-to-back as one continuous short film while disregarding the entirety of the campaign.
• The Cloud Striders are very weakly defined, at least in the campaign but that is where they have the best opportunity to make an impression. We don't fight alongside them at all, they serve as yet another Voice with an Internet Connection. Coupled with Osiris having lost much of his mystique since he returned from the Infinite Forest, you're not exactly in the company of fan favorites.

The Ugly:

• The tone is very indecisive to a fault, and much of it surrounds Nimbus and what is being called the MCU-ifying of the dialogue. After Rohan the Cloustrider sacrifices himself to destroy the Radial Mast Nimbus has dialogue literally going "You were so awesome! It was like phhhrye shhhhooooom wooooosh." He gets better in the post-campaign but in the middle of an apocalyptic event it was NOT a good look.
• We have a contender for "I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain" when it comes to refusing to offer any answers to the world building questions. Nimbus even has an MCU-esque joke about Osiris using a lot of proper nouns, which only makes it worse. The theory is that the next year will expand on what the Veil is and the origins of the Witness, but this should have been the moment we actually get answers and instead only left with more questions.

I agree with all of those points. We have one more year to the Light-Darkness saga, and this expansion felt like a Filler Arc that put forward the worst elements of what was supposed to be the actual final chapter (IIRC, Lightfall and The Final Shape were meant to be both parts of the same, huge final expansion of the saga). That's a step down from The Witch Queen, where a lot of our questions regarding Savathûn were answered; here, we're left scratching our heads at what just happened at the end, and we don't even get an upfront explanation as for what the Veil is.

My main gripe with the expansion, however, is the Difficulty Spike they added across the board for endgame activities, as several primary archetypes went back to hitting like wet noodles. It's also annoying to wail at the patrol bosses on Neomuna for several minutes while they take a chunk out of your health with every hit. This is more than likely to induce content burnout faster than any other season.

This week's Nightfall, a reprise of last season's Heist Battleground: Mars, is clearly overtuned, because the infinite enemy spawns and extreme mob density is far more than your typical Nightfall experience. So, in a sense, It's Hard, So It Sucks!. I don't look forward to this one on Grandmaster.

Lance Reddick has suddenly passed away today. This means all of the three original Vanguard VAs are no longer working on the game (Nathan Fillion was replaced by Nolan North for the short time Cayde-6 lives in Forsaken, and Gina Torres has been replaced by Mara Junot for Ikora come Season of the Splicer).

I doubt they’ll kill off Zavala’s character anytime soon, but going into the future I suspect they’ll seek to reduce his appearances.

But still…. such a sudden, unexpected death. I’m gonna miss his take on Zavala.

Players are giving Zavala a constant vigil in respect to Reddick.

Reddick was someone who always stood out from his voice to his appearance to his demeanor. I've never seen a lesser performance from him even in lesser movies.

Not to mention he was probably the one most into the game; he played it regularly and even at one point did a video where he referenced Zavala's Valus Ta'aurc speech.

Never forget this fan script read as Zavala. "All I've have to do is tell my Guardians you have a fancy new gun, or that Eris can make you into one."

Season of the Deep

Ocean/nautical themed so feels a little similar to Season of Plunder, but has a distinctly more solemn tone upfront instead of trying to be extra silly.

Titan is back, but unlike Mars implying Savathun or The Witness caused it I'm not sure how it came back other than the plot needs it to be. Sloane was a fairly bland character before but it's nice to see the game actually deliver on some plot hints. Though she's part Taken now similar to Asher being part Vex, in addition to killing another Titan guardian in the opening cutscene I'm wondering if they are getting too set in a pattern.

And a teaser trailer for The Final Shape. Not much, but one hell of a reveal. Cayde 6 is back, seemingly infused with light directly.

What the hell is happening...?

Bungie is coming under fire for plagiarizing an artwork from 2 years ago following the reveal of the Witness's origins. That said, under Bungie's legal terms, the artist's submission meant that Bungie had free reign over that artwork. Scummy, but it is what it is with that ToS.

Side note: I just up and abandoned the game, seeing how most of this season's loot is total garbage. The Last Wish weapons are great and all, but with so many viable options now, they're just a drop in the ocean. Same goes for the dungeon's weapons. I'd make an entry for That One Level and That One Boss since I used to manage the pages, but I won't be editing anytime soon.

As someone who was committed to chasing max triumphs until now, this was a hard decision, and I regret not having done it any sooner; I should've picked up the clue when Lightfall dropped and turned out to be the worst expansion since Curse of Osiris. The only thing I saw worth chasing was the revamped Randy's Throwing Knife, but I hate PvP despite being above average and resetting ranks twice and over every season.

Edited by AnoBakaDesu on Jun 21st 2023 at 6:43:35 AM

At least we got to finally learn the origins of The Witness and the Pyramid ships today.

You would hope Bungie would at least give credit for fan submitted work, terms of service or not. Still, you have to admit the art itself is blending existing iconography of the game so the original artist didn't exactly create it whole stock (it's the placement of the Pyramids in the background that affirm the original was the foundation of the new image, otherwise there are some differences between them and similar imagery has been used in the games plenty of times already).

The cutscene was pretty cool, but the sentiment I've seen is that this needed to be a part of the Lightfall endgame and not a mid-season drop. I will say that after ten years and being vague on near everything about the light and darkness conflict, this does a decent job of answering some things. The Witness and the Black Fleet were the first civilization the Traveler visited (and did not leave of its own accord), and they became so paranoid of the power of the light and the inscrutable nature of the Traveler they sought the Darkness from the Veil to control it which incited the Traveler to flee. Rather than The Witness being a ying/yang concept it reaffirms the ambiguity of the Travelers motives and the Fusion Dance of the Witness explains their power.

Keith David will be voicing Zavala for The Final Shape and beyond, as per Bungie's announcement

That sort of thing also puts paid to the Darkness's philosophy of "the Winnower" versus "the Gardener", though. Because the Traveler fled due to the Witness's civilization wanting to try and enslave it, especially considering their whole thing is "Survival of the fittest" until you get to a shape that's the most optimal in the universe. Unless I'm just accidentally conflating it with Sword Logic.

Edited by theLibrarian on Aug 11th 2023 at 9:11:25 AM

Most of the information about the Hive in the Book of Sorrows has since proven to be unverified legends or outright fabrications, and I believe it is Hive lore surrounding the Darkness that supplied the information about the Gardener and the Winnower. So the revealed information never had to fit perfectly into a certain premise because characters like The Witness appeared to just make up their own stories to pass down.

That said, one curious thing I felt about Lightfall was some discussion that Neomunians (Neomunans?) had developed some of their own cultural legends and stories, and leaning to flow down a river was a vital clue to mastering strand. Given that Darkness has long been established as aspects of intelligence, thought and consciousness, in contrast to the Light being aspects of the physical plane, it makes me wonder if proximity to the Veil had subtly been rewriting the conscious and subconscious process of the citizens.