Alex Birlo on August 1, 2023
I was playing “Destiny” since the early days of the first game. And it certainly had its ups and downs, major reworks and the likes. And unfortunately, with this DLC we hit another “hiccup” so to say.
“Lightfall” would be one of these DLCs I usually would recommend to wait and get for a discount – if not for the excellent new subclass it introduces.
So let me elaborate more on the whole experience.
Ask any Destiny player that already played the DLC, and they will almost unanimously say that the story is pretty garbage.
In recent years, we all grew to expect Bungie to have some sort of master-plan in mind. They found their own “rhythm”. And all the expansions they released were great spectacles, that answered old questions, while bringing new ones into perspective.
And even almost all the “seasons” had great lore bits that would expand on the happenings between every major expansion.
That is exactly why so many, including me, were so upset with Lightfall.
To be completely honest, I played it right at release. I remember the servers crushing as everyone were hyped to enter the game. But for reasons in my personal life, I could not get around to share my thoughts.
So here we are, two seasons in at the time of me writing this. And with “Season of the Deep” a lot of the holes were close, and the story is sort of back on track again.
But at release, I was baffled when I reached the end. You can LITERALLY play the start and end cinematics back to back, and you will essentially know everything there is to know about what happened in this DLC.
It starts in a very epic manner. Something we would expect from such an important chapter in the story. A battle in Earth’s orbit, where the Traveler confronts the Witness.
Then we actually fly in the opposite direction, to Neptune, on some kind of side-quest. Osiris, out of the blue (almost), starts talking about something called “The Veil” and the Witness wants it, so we have to get to it first – that is the entire plot hook.
No spoilers, but by the end of the campaign you will still have no idea what is the Veil, and what just happened in that final moment.
Perhaps my biggest WTF moment in all of Destiny.
But the fact that this expansion’s story was a total filler – its gameplay and the new location on par with what we are used to and some more.
With the previous seasons and expansions, leading up to Lightfall, we saw an increasing trend with Bungie trying to diversify missions and environments.
From being power fantasy shooting galleries, to some more complex platforming, puzzles and maze-like environments to navigate.
In Lightfall it is all present and the attention to these details is apparent.
The city of Neomuna, introduced as the new open world location on Neptune, perhaps might seem a bit generic at the beginning. But the more you sink your teeth into it, the more you realize how much design details went into it.
Every secret chest takes time to reach in some original way. For example, there was one I could see right there through the glass, but could not reach. And then a random player showed me that there was a hole in the glass of the gym a bit farther down. From the gym, I could use a vent to get into the room with the chest.
Every lost sector on Neomuna is now fully voiced like a mission. With an objective, and explanation what is exactly the area that you are going into. They are no longer nameless caves or random buildings, they have purpose within the general are of the map.
The DLC also utilizes both familiar elements like tank driving, to the new grappling ability of the Strand subclass to mix up combat scenarios and platforming sections.
And the introduction of a new enemy type called the “Tormentor” adds a little intensity, into an otherwise easy gameplay loop, where players have become too overpowered and are breezing through content with little resistance.
Tormentors can enter an enraged state, after losing a certain portion of their health, and begin to chase after whoever deals the most damage. They are aggressive, have ranged attacks that require you to take cover and a lengthy “fatality” style grabbing animation, that deals massive damage.
All these elements clearly demonstrate the desire of the studio to change things up, and break from the routine that we became so familiar with over all these long years of playing Destiny.
Which brings me to one other thing that really frustrated a lot of people.
Now, this is a very touchy subject for the community, ever since the release of the DLC.
For a long time now, Destiny stopped being challenging – for the hardcore players at least.
Those who have farmed exotics and got lucky, created crazy builds for themselves that melt enemies and bosses in seconds. For them the game was too easy and this was an issue Bungie had to address sooner or later.
But by the same extent, for the casual player, Destiny was a “Power Fantasy” where part of the fun was in that exact ability to make your character overpowered with a good build and obliterate any obstacle.
So the issue of difficulty is one that is hard to fix in this game, and I myself am not entirely sure I would have any better solution within the current progression system. But the way Bungie tried to handle it now, brought more chaos than restructuring.
A lot of back and forth between the community and the developers happened since, but the short of it is that, besides some other changes, the enemies on the new location of Neptune and activities related to it, were purposefully locked at 15 power levels above the player, even if at max possible power.
That meant, that no matter how high your power is, the enemies will always be at least 15 levels above you. Which, in turn, turned the difficulty of the new content into nightfall level difficulty.
And this did not sit right with many people, including me.
As someone who played Destiny on and off since the first game in 2014, I of course know the game well and have good builds and follow the meta.
I could handle the new challenge well enough. And for the first time in a very long time, my palms were “sweaty” after a Destiny mission. It was fun, using a crazy combo of high-end gear, to overcome the ridiculous onslaught of stronger enemies solo.
But on the other hand, I have a very good friend that I play Destiny with. I was the one that got him hooked to Destiny.
But he is a casual player! He hops in only to play the seasonal story content and the story content of the expansions.
So when Lightfall released, for the first time in a year, he just quit it for a couple of months. We had no desire to go in and run a couple missions. The game was just way above his skill and gear level.
And without being able to farm exotics adequately, he had no way of creating a strong enough build.
So at the end of the day, Bungie partially satisfied veterans by making enemies more bullet-spongy – which is also not a good long-term solution.
But they also locked out a lot of the more casual players.
So they started introducing some convoluted patches. These would increase the damage of certain weapon types to different enemy categories, by a certain percentage here and there.
And now, for me at least, the game just returned to being what it was. The enemy levels remained at 15 above max player level, but the damage buffs simply negate it – so what was the point?
But judging from the situation, it appears that Bungie is preparing to completely rework progression, exotic farm, and game difficulty in the coming seasons.
So we will just have to wait and see.
Last, but definitely not least, I would like to quickly mention the new subclass. I see it as the only reason that makes this DLC a “must buy”.
Aside from the fact that the new darkness subclass boasts an absolutely killer green threads esthetic, it is also an extremely powerful tool in the arsenal, that poses a unique and very dynamic way of playing.
The main effects of this class are “Unravel” and “Woven Mail”. The former effect providing damage dealing and the latter potent defense.
When you unravel an enemy by killing them with strand damage, they can leave behind a ball of “interdimensional yarn” I call it.
You can either use the new grappling ability without consuming its ability charge – which provides amazing mobility, and when combined with a charged melee it creates a powerful blast that compensates for the grenade slot this ability replaces.
Or, you can destroy that ball of yarn. Either by shooting it, or picking it up and throwing. Which triggers a series of pulsing explosions that deal damage in a wide area. It can also, with the correct fragments, provide you with woven mail, that drastically increases your defense for a period of time.
In addition to all of that, one of the coolest effects of this subclass, is that each class has ways to use Strand to suspend most enemy types in the air with those threads. Completely immobilizing groups of enemies, and making them more vulnerable to damage, while giving much needed breathing room for the team to restore health.
Just from these descriptions, I am sure it is very easy to see how fun and useful this new subclass is.
So by now, I am sure you can understand why I titled my review the way I did.
This DLC Introduces a great new subclass in addition to some fun and varied mission scenarios.
But by the same extent, its story is a total filler, with no substance or clear stakes. Just to simply fill up an entire year and build up to the next DLC “The Final Shape”.
