Lightfall is here, and well… it’s kind of disappointing. It’s certainly no Witch Queen, and while that expansion set a high bar for future Destiny 2 content, Lightfall doesn’t come close in most respects. Yes, it introduces a new power set in Strand and adds a number of new mechanical features, but the campaign itself falls far short of the game’s last major release. Some spoilers ahead for Lightfall.
When Bungie laid out the concept for Lightfall, we were already a little nervous. The 80s neon aesthetic has been done to death at this point. America seems permanently fascinated with the 80s outside of the 20 year nostalgia cycle, and games like Blood Dragon were doing the neon-soaked action movie aesthetic a decade ago.
But just because something is overdone doesn’t mean it can’t be done well. Unfortunately, Lightfall fails to nail its aesthetic. Neomuna just feels bland and empty. Flat textures and wide-open spaces make it feel like a multiplayer map in Overwatch rather than a lived-in world. Sure, we get the excuse that the citizens have been evacuated into the CloudArk to explain why nobody’s around, but the place still feels barren. The city area in the Scourge of the Past Raid felt much more interesting.
We have to wonder whether Bungie started with the aesthetic inspiration rather than the narrative with the Lightfall campaign, because the story is uneven and confusing. Things begin with a bang, with the Witness attacking the Traveler directly. But then we’re thrown into a quest for “The Veil” on Neomuna, without much explanation of what that is. If you didn’t play last season, you won’t have heard of it at all. And we’re not even really given a clear explanation of how Neptune remained hidden for so long.
Then we get to Neomuna, and we start fighting Calus and his Shadow Legion. Now we run into the opposite issue of cutscenes and narration driving home points we already know. This makes sense if the intent is to recap players on who the major characters like Calus are. But then why not explain the Veil, the Radial Mast, Neomuna, or anything else?
The Lightfall campaign itself gives us precious little narrative payoff for most of its runtime. Neomuna can’t be a revelation since we already knew we were going there. We encounter Strand early on, use it in set-piece battles, and fight Calus and the Vex for a while without learning much of anything. For most of the campaign, it doesn’t feel like much of anything happens. Even by the time the last cutscene plays, barely anything’s changed. At least, nothing’s changed in a way that’s explained. We lose because the Witness uses our Ghost to connect the Radial Mast to the Veil. How did that help it achieve its goals?
Oh, and can we talk about the Cloudstriders? Our vendor point of contact for Lightfall is Nimbus, the rookie of the bunch. They are extremely annoying. Talking in a combination of 90s surfer lingo and generic Marvel movie snark, they’re constantly making jokes that don’t land. Seven foot tall cyborg thembo is such a lay-up of a character and yet Lightfall stumbles here too. We dreaded every trip to the vendor — Nimbus is certainly no Fynch. And Rohan’s heroic sacrifice midway through the campaign? It fell flat, given how little we had gotten to know him beforehand.
Speaking of Fynch, Witch Queen offered a multifarious environment to explore. It featured a major shift in the world of Destiny 2, with the Hive getting the Light. We learned that the Traveler was more mercurial or at least more mysterious than we’d realized. We had dialogue with Savathun, her Worm, Ikora, and more. And while that campaign too spent a while doing little to advance the story, we did get some pretty impactful revelations about the nature of the Hive.
Witch Queen didn’t give us a new power type to play around with (apart from Void 3.0), so maybe it needed stronger narrative legs. But the integration of Strand into the Lightfall campaign isn’t incredible, either. Of course, it’s unfair to compare Destiny 2 to a mobility-focused shooter like Titanfall 2, but that game integrated its movement options into the campaign in an organic, compelling way. The promise of soaring around the city like Spider-Man in Lightfall mostly just looks like launching yourself across gaps one grapple point at a time.
And while Witch Queen gave us the threat of a Light-wielding Savathun to contend with, Lightfall gives us Calus. We’ve already beaten Calus on several occasions in the past. He’s gone from being a fascinating, lascivious semi-benefactor to a disembodied, spectral force integrated into the Leviathan to a generic goon of the Witness. He doesn’t bring anything new to the table — his storyline should have ended in Season of the Haunted.
So what happened with Lightfall? Is it Bungie’s insistence on releasing a new expansion every twelve months? Are teams being moved onto the developer’s new, unannounced project? It’s hard to say from the outside. All we do is examine the results, and while Lightfall isn’t awful — in ways it’s better than Beyond Light — it does feel rushed, incomplete, and disappointing.
