Lightfall is not a very good Destiny 2 campaign. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:That’s not just my opinion, but that of the entire community. Player review scores on Metacritic and Steam, where Lightfall has the lowest approval rating of any expansion in Destiny history, paint a picture of a confusing, lackluster story that doesn’t live up to t𓆉he expectations set by the previous expansion, The Witch Queen. Lightfall is an incredibly disappointing campaign that fails to make an impact at what should have been a crucial moment for the game. As we now gear up for the big finale to Destiny’s decade-long story next year, my trust in Bungie’s ability to stick the landing has been massively shaken.
But the story of the story isn’t the whole story of Lightfall. Outside of the campaign, there’s so much more to the expansion that’s getting swept up in the campaign discourse. Neomuna is a massive new patrol zone to explore filled with secrets, public events, and Exotic weapon quests; the overhaul to armor mods streamlines a complex system into something manageable that still has plenty of depth; there’s a new seasonal activity and War Table to power up, new Exotic armor to create builds around, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a new rank system, big changes to the difficulty curve of practically every activity, and an upcoming raid that, if everything works out, will finally pay off a storyline that began all the way back in Shadowkeep. There’s so much🍸 more to Lightfall than the eight missions that make up the campaign, and most of it seems to be well-received.
But unless you're deep into Destiny yourself, you’re probably only hearing about what a stinker the campaign is. All of the positive qualities of Lightfall are being outweighed by how betrayed players feel by the narrative, which promises so much more than it's able to deliver. I hated the campaign, and I’m even more disappointed to see my favorite game getting dragged this way, but if there’s a silver lining to be found it’s the fact that Destiny players are incredibly passionate about the story. Lightfall is a solid game with a lackluster narrative, and I have a hard time believing any other game would foster this kind of negative response for that.
Video games have terrible writing. It’s not a universal fact, but an overwhelming amount of games that come out every year treat their own narratives like obligations. In the earliest days all you needed was a guy with a gun and some Nazis to shoot, and it doesn’t feel like we’ve moved much further than that. Gamers seem to think dialogue and plot aren’t essential components of a game, and they’ll handwave bad writing as long as the game is ‘fun’. Story is treated like a tool to support the gameplay, and that’s all people expect🌺 from it.
If Destiny were any other game, Lightfall’s story would be considered weak, but serviceable. But because Bungie has worked so hard to develop complex characters, rich themes, and a plot that has slowly unfolded over so many years, Destiny players expect so much more from it. All of Lightfall’s problems are the things that other games’ narratives have made routine. It has an expendable character whose death is used to give another character motivation, it has a McGuffin that lacks a strong🀅 payoff, and the entire plot is centered around a fancy new gameplay mechanic. These are things that video games do, but for Lightfall it simply isn’t enough.
I feel for the Bungie developers today, because it feels like Lightfall has been painted for far too wide a brush. They may even think it's unfair that the community is rallying against it for doing all of the things that video games do all the time. But in this failure, there is something to be proud of. Destiny players would not be this upset if Bungie hadn’t been telling an exceptional story up until this point. Lightfall did not live up to The Witch Queen’s standard, but it is worth recognizing how high the bar was set, and it’s worth celebrating the fact that Destiny’s story is even capable of letting us down.