Spoilers for the campaign
I went into Destiny 2: Lightfall incredibly hyped. There were more good than bad seasons during The Witch Queen year of the game and that’s not even mentioning how good the campaign for The Witch Queen was. The weeks heading up to the release of Lightfall were filled with changes coming to the game. There were several changes announced including changes in difficulty across the board and another reworking of the armor system. I’m not here to talk about the changes to the game as a whole. The problems with Destiny 2 have never been with the gameplay, its been with systems around the gameplay as well as the narrative.
The campaign for Lightfall isn’t great. The opening cinematic is amazing but after that it doesn’t really go anywhere. The story feels like filler with almost nothing of consequence happening during it. Its centered-on Calus and his hunt for The Veil. We never really learn what The Veil is, even though characters speak about it like they do. The new characters don’t really get to do much and they made the death of one telegraphed. We do finally get rid of Calus at the end of the campaign, after being around for the entirety of Destiny 2. The cinematics between Calus and The Witness are a highpoint and do more to move what little story beats there are forward. The Witness is a nonfactor in the story except for the beginning and ending cinematics for the campaign.
The ending is so weird. The previously used link between The Witness and Ghost is used again, we don’t know why that connection is still a thing. That’s something that we need to have established because it’s a mystery that might help make everything that’s happened make more sense. The rest of the character’s reactions to what happens in the final cinematic underplays what happens. They act nonchalantly about The Witness doing whatever it did to The Traveler.
The post campaign stuff gives the stuff on Neomuna more weight. One of the missions for an exotic weapon feels like it should have been included in the actual story, so that it could give Rohan’s death more weight. Which also tries to retcon the main story for Destiny, with them trying to connect the Heart of the Black Garden to The Veil.
The new subclass felt like it was made too much of the focus. Strand was made the focus of several missions and it felt really good in those missions. The changes made to cooldown times was definitely felt in the after-campaign stuff since whenever Strand was used in the campaign it was empowered. That can be played around with using armor mods, but its still very different than when it was empowered.
I’m not even going to mention any of the seasonal stuff since it’s still getting started and so far it feels pretty good. I really hope that the shortcomings of the Lightfall campaign are improved upon in the seasonal stories going forward. That’s really the only thing that I can think of that will even possibly save this story. I had seen people talking about this story as the Infinity War moment for the Destiny universe, which I never got. That was before it was actually released. I’m not even going to rate this but the story definitely feels like its in a holding position rather than moving anywhere.