Lightfall is the fifth annual expansion for Destiny 2, and marks the beginning of the ninth year since the series began. Destiny has grown immeasurably over that time, and so much has changed since we first awoke with the Traveler’s Light. All of those years of additions and revisions have made Destiny 2 a behemoth of a game, while the occasional sacrifice of older content has fractured the story such that a new player will never be able to experience the story in its totality🔯. Bungie has made some efforts to smooth out the new player experience over the years, including the New Light campaign in 2020, and the Guardian Rank system, new to Lightfall. Features Editors Eric Sw🙈itzer and Tessa Kaur sat down to talk about playing Destiny 2 from two different perspectives: Eric has been there since day one, and Tessa is a brand new player starting in Lightfall.
Eric: As someone who’s spent the better part of a decade playing thousands of hours of Destiജny, it’s exciting to talk to someone about their first experience with the game. Your perspective is one I can never have myself and it’s always difficult to assess what the new player experience is really like. So as a veteran Guardian to a Blueberry (that’s you), let’s chat. First, can you tell me what you knew about Destiny before starting, what got you interested in trying it, and what your expectations were?
Tessa: I knew next to nothing. I knew that it was set mostly in space, though for some reason I thought there would be ship-based battle and resource management involved. But I do have some friends that play it and I’m generally willing to give anything a shot. 𒊎I also really like sci-fi and fantasy games, so that was a plus for me. I don’t play a lot of MMOs so I don’t think I expected story to be so important to the game, but from what I’ve learned reading your work and clicking around on the internet, the characters and overall narrative are big parts of why people love Destiny.
Eric: That ha𒐪s always been the main thing that keeps me invested in Destiny. Part of what makes it such a unique game is the way the world and its characters have developed over time. Unfortunately, so much of that story will be inaccessible to you, which is something many critics of the ‘Destiny Content Vault’ - the routine removal of older content throughout the years - have always complained about. The New Light campaign you’ve been playing was introduced two years ago to help smooth out the onboarding for new players. What are your impressions so far? Are you as supremely confused as I expect you would be?
Tessa: I am so very confused. I think that confusion actually made me bounce off the game pretty quickly, because I wanted to understand what everybody loved ♕about the game and it just wasn’t in reach for me. The New Light campaign is relatively friendly in terms of laying out what you need to do and who you need to speak to, but being introduced to all these people means nothing to me. I don’t know why they’re important and I don’t know anything about them, I only know what they mechanically provide to me within the game. I also played a little of the Lightfall campaign and the plot made absolutely no sense to me. I didn’t have a clue who any of these people were or why they were a threat. Maybe it would have helped if I finished the New Light campaign first.
Eric: I don’t think so, unfortunately. In fact, I’m not sure if you can put the pieces together to make sense of Lightfall unless you’ve been along for the ride for at least a couple of years. The original Destiny 2 campaign, called the Red War, put the wheels in motion fo🍸r the battles we face in Lightfall, but the last three expansions in particular, Shadowkeep, Beyond Light, and The Witch Queen are essential to what’s happening. The problem is that even if you played those expansions, you no longer have access to the seasonal storylines tha✱t connect one expansion to the next. So for example when The Witch Queen ends you’ll miss out on all the seasonal story beats that lead up to Lightfall. The way most people get around it is by watching lore videos on YouTube. There’s a few really great YouTube full-time Destiny historians that can help you make sense of all the moving pieces, but that’s a pretty big ask for someone just dipping their toe into a new game.
Tessa: Yeah, that sounds like a lot of work for me to put into a game that ostensibly is trying to draw new players in. Considering the big draw of Destiny is its storytelling (I heard great things about The Witch Queen’s writing when it was first released), it seems like there’s a really big wall between current players and new players in this 🎃sense. I know Destiny has a timeline or something in-game that’s supposed to help explain lore, but also, there’s no way I’m going to be able to parse all of that just through reading about it. It’s a major obstacle for me, and I actually think the game is cool, there just isn’t enough of a draw for me because of that disconnect between new players and the game’s narrative.
Eric: I’m not sure if this is something Bungie can realistically address. Every year one of the YouTube Lore Masters makes a video about the complete history of Destiny to help people get caught up, and they’re always four hours long. I think a new player needs to get invested in the gameplay first to be motivated enough to dive into the lore, so tell me about what it’s like to actually learn how to play Destiny. Did you run into any barriers or c🎀onfusing things?
Tessa: For sure, and I feel they could have been avoided with better direction, but I also can&🧸rsquo;t tell if I just missed something important earlier in the game. For example, during the New Light Campaign, there’s a jump puzzle you need to do to get to a stash, and I couldn’t for the life of me get past one particular jump. I tried for 20 minutes, then Googled it, and found out I need to mid-air jump to do it, and I don’t know how to do that. So I went back to Ikora and got every jump mod she had, so that I could try them all and hopefully figure it out myself, but I couldn’t, so not only is my problem not solved, but I got sent back to the start of the mission. There were some other moments of brief confusion as I was learning to play – I didn’t know what an ‘arc charge’ was so I started using it as a weapon instead of putting it in the thing I was supposed to put it in, and I couldn’t understand why my super wasn’t working until I realised that there were two different UI features showing whether it could be used or not, instead of one. The game doesn’t hold your hand through these growing pains, but these were things I still managed to figure out on my own over time.
Eric: T🉐he subclass builds and loadout system are one of Destiny’s best qualities because they allow you so much customization over your character whenever you want, but I can imagine that wrapping your mind around all those systems can be overwhelming. Did you get into things like Aspects and Fragments, Armor Mods, or Artifact Mods? Or were you just runnin’-and-gunnin’?
Tessa: The game did start to get me into Aspects and Fragments, and I found it a really appealing part of the game with a lot of potential for cool builds. I did still find it a little confusing just because of the sheer number of options. I don’t think I’ve come across Arm꧋or Mods or Artifact Mods yet, but that could be because I didn&ജrsquo;t get far enough in the game before bouncing off. I’d say because of the long cooldown periods for what I did have access to, I didn’t rely on my warlock’s abilities as much as I would have liked to.
Eric: New this year is Guardian Ranks, which are meant to give you a guided path through the game until you can be more self-sufficient with your goals. Were you directed towards that system and did you get an impression of it? I think a big part of including that was to h♎elp folks like you get your bearings, but I’m not sure how helpful it actually is.
Tessa: I think it helped. The game was clear on what steps I could take to achieve the next rank, bu🥃t I don’t think it really incentivised me to rank up – it wasn’t clear that I hadn’t unlocked everything the game had to offer, and that I had to keep moving through the game in order to do that. But it definitely gave me a sense of direction inste🌜ad of letting me loose in the game with no idea how to do a thing.
Eric: It sounds like ultimately you still have to be self-motivated enough to push through the intro, learn the system, and get invested in the story on your own. Was the moment to moment gameplay enough to make you want to go deeper? Was there anything in the New Light campaign🤡 you felt like you could connect to?
Tessa: I don’t think it was the New Light campaign specifically that appealed to me, but more of how atmospheric the game was. I was surprised at how beautiful the introductory cutscene was where you first see the Traveller, which I found awe-inspiring. The art design of the game is gorgeous, right down to the maps. The sound design is so immersive that I had to take off my headphones several times because I was getting too freaked out by the ambient noises of my character’s surroundings. I wasn’t that sold on combat, but I don’t usဣually play combat-heavy games anyway, so that’s more a personal issue than anything. The game is fun, but I’m not sure it’s enough to sell me on the game as a whole, because of how locked away much of the story is for me, and that I, as a player, consider story a prime factor in how much I want to play a game.
Eric: And knowing that about you, I so badly wanted you to like Destiny. I think Destiny has one of the most immersive and fleshed-out worlds in any kind of fiction, and I’d love to bring more people into this world so they can fall in love with the characters and get invested in the conflict the way I have. I think it is possible to become a Destiny player today, but I also think Bungie’s choice has made it incredibly impenetrable, as you’ve alluded to. Any chance I can sell you on a four-hour YouTube video, as a las꧃t ditch effort?
Tessa: Honestly, I think I might still go back and keep leveling up on Guardian Ranks to see if the game clicks with🐭 me – I really want to love Destiny too! As to a four-hour video… we’ll see. I’m not writing that off just yet.
