We had dialogue with Savathun, her Worm, Ikora, and more. We learned that the Traveler was more mercurial or at least more mysterious than we’d realized. It featured a major shift in the world of Destiny 2, with the Hive getting the Light. Speaking of Fynch, Witch Queen offered a multifarious environment to explore. And Rohan’s heroic sacrifice midway through the campaign? It fell flat, given how little we had gotten to know him beforehand. We dreaded every trip to the vendor - Nimbus is certainly no Fynch. Seven foot tall cyborg thembo is such a lay-up of a character and yet Lightfall stumbles here too. Talking in a combination of 90s surfer lingo and generic Marvel movie snark, they’re constantly making jokes that don’t land. Oh, and can we talk about the Cloudstriders? Our vendor point of contact for Lightfall is Nimbus, the rookie of the bunch. We lose because the Witness uses our Ghost to connect the Radial Mast to the Veil. At least, nothing’s changed in a way that’s explained. Even by the time the last cutscene plays, barely anything’s changed. For most of the campaign, it doesn’t feel like much of anything happens. 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. Neomuna can’t be a revelation since we already knew we were going there. The Lightfall campaign itself gives us precious little narrative payoff for most of its runtime. But then why not explain the Veil, the Radial Mast, Neomuna, or anything else? This makes sense if the intent is to recap players on who the major characters like Calus are. Now we run into the opposite issue of cutscenes and narration driving home points we already know. Then we get to Neomuna, and we start fighting Calus and his Shadow Legion. And we’re not even really given a clear explanation of how Neptune remained hidden for so long. If you didn’t play last season, you won’t have heard of it at all. But then we’re thrown into a quest for “The Veil” on Neomuna, without much explanation of what that is. Things begin with a bang, with the Witness attacking the Traveler directly. 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. The city area in the Scourge of the Past Raid felt much more interesting. 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. Flat textures and wide-open spaces make it feel like a multiplayer map in Overwatch rather than a lived-in world. Unfortunately, Lightfall fails to nail its aesthetic. 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.īut just because something is overdone doesn’t mean it can’t be done well. The 80s neon aesthetic has been done to death at this point. When Bungie laid out the concept for Lightfall, we were already a little nervous. 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. 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. Lightfall is here, and well… it’s kind of disappointing.
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