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9/6/2023 2:41:45 AM
28
Lightfall wasn't dark enough
Major Spoilers for Lightfall, obviously
In terms of gameplay, I enjoyed Lightfall and the new Strand subclass. The story, however, was another matter. More specifically, the vibe of game.
For those of you with memories longer than the average Tiktok, you may recall the start of the Red War. The Red Legion walked throughout at least the tower, killing frames, citizens, Guardians, and probably family pets. For the first time, an enemy showed us they were a direct threat to the city, not some imaginary distant threat setting up a road block on Mars. Earth was in danger. The city was in danger. No enemy was able to get under our skin until probably Forsaken. Even then, the Awoken were being directly killed by the enemy.
For the most part, throughout Destiny, one of my problems with the narrative is that the stakes never feel like they are there. The Hive on Luna have seemed like the most conventional obvious threat, with the ability to launch ships down and invade the Earth, not that they ever did anything with that. Here we are approaching the end, and did Lightfall give me any sense of dread? Was I shocked by the brutality of our enemy? No.
The Shadow Legion come across as more of a mild inconvenience than an actual danger to the people of Neomuna. None of the Neomuni dialogue expresses anything other than the frustration over property damage or the mild inconvenience to their lives. The Shadow Legion show up and lay siege to the city, losing thousands of their soldiers and killing a total of one Cloudstrider -blam!- was a heart attack away from death anyway.
I didn't care about the people of Neomuna, and I don't think anyone else did. Why would we care? They didn't really seem to be in any danger at all. Even the big "Lightfall" of the Witness creating the link at the end really didn't come across as tragic, mostly because nobody knew what the Veil even was. I had an idea because I actually played Season of the Deep first but I can see anyone playing at launch being completely disconnected and lost. Which I'd like to point out here the inconsistency in the narrative: at the beginning, we are trying to stop Calus from DESTROYING the Veil. At the end of the campaign the Witness links the Veil to the Traveller, which, according to the season of the Deep, was the Witness' goal all along. So why are we told Calus is trying to destroy the Veil at all?
Moments in Lightfall slightly reminded me of Halo: ODST. Though for what similarities I could see, the most obvious difference was tone. ODST was a compelling story with a general dark vibe you are constantly reminded of as you explore the city and come across scenes of massacres. The game keeps hitting you in the face: humanity is losing.
At the most, the Cabal kill the Vex which is arguably helping the people of Neomuna who often seem more bothered by the Vex than the Cabal anyways.
Sadly, I feel like story and vibe have become an afterthought. Lighfall came across as too light-hearted and I feel if the game continues with this tone, it's really not going to sell the finale.
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LF campaign was sooooo bad. 3 things I learned: 1. Radial Mast 2. Nimbus is “we have Cayde-6 at home” 3. Radial Mast I didnt care at all when Rohan died. Like at all. He was so useless. And Nimbus with his cringy Confucius say, “go with flow.” I have no idea what we were even doing in that campaign. I still don’t know what the radial mast was. I don’t know what the veil is. I don’t know why there was Strand on -blam!- Neptune. And there was absolutely no feeling of danger at all. The Cabal were nuking the city and crap. Not that it mattered cuz the entire population lives in the Elon Musk Cloud. And the only direct “threat” to the Cloud Arc was the vex. Which also didn’t feel like much of a threat considering Nimbus was just like “Oh look at that. There’s a couple of Vex over there. Huh. Looks like they’re hacking the Cloud that the entire population lives in. Well I guess we should probably stop them.” Like there was no rush or anything to it. Strand felt/feels absolutely lackluster. When I do the weekly legendary mission I refuse to pick up strand. Because it’s literally so bad. I hated LF and I think it is almost on par with Shadowkeep in terms of absolutely garbage dialogue and abysmal storytelling.
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1 ReplyEdited by Ghostfire239: 9/10/2023 4:09:14 AMThe moment I saw the new version of the title card, and saw all the neon stuff I knew this wasn’t gonna be dark at all. Red war was only “dark” in the first mission. Everything else was just some campy stuff. I want to see an actual dark story, but I doubt we’ll ever see that. We get mildly serious moments at best unfortunately. The T rating doesn’t help either. Unfortunately Destiny’s in game story is rarely good. Cool lore that never really carries that coolness over to the in game story.
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11 RepliesI kinda like the set pieces and I think it had potential, it was the lazy corner cutting that ruined it. My main gripe is the cloud ark. All the civilians being in the cloud ark completely removed any and all stakes. Why should they even care if the city is levelled since they’re all in the ark now? No harm can come to them and it makes the city feel dead and not in a ghostly way but just an unfinished way. The neon signs that move and flash are cool but feel entirely pointless since they’re just random patterns instead of the usual hyper-capitalist trope of advertising which at least adds life and depth to the world. Destiny has always struggled to make the environments feel like anything other than sandboxes which is a shame since they are always so pretty to look at, they’re just ultimately devoid of environmental storytelling.
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2 RepliesMy biggest problem with Lightfall is that in the end we would have been better off doing nothing. Rohan would still be alive, and Calus would have been just as easy to kill later as he was at the veil. What's the worst that might have happened? The people of Neomuna die? would anyone care, were they doing anything other than hiding like cowards? And they seem to be fine after the Witness connected to the veil anyways. We take longer to learn to use strand? Does that matter, its not like it was anything more than a gimmick in the the story, I didn't even use it to kill Calus until I learned the cheese strategy for my 2nd/3rd characters The story was supposed to be about our failure and how we cope with the consequences from that, but nothing is different then if we had done nothing.
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1 ReplyLightfall had one death of an anticlimactic uninteresting character whom was less interesting than the Neomuni, and we can't even see the dam Neomuni. The Cloud-Ark is just a lazy way of saying we don't want to or know how to make interesting NPC's or a filled city with 100s of individual people. Lightfall is literally Red War but with Tormentors and Spiderman, except Spiderman gets an idiot for a mentor. [i]Spiderfall[/i] also contains a cameo of the Silver Surfer, only this time Silver Surfer is a clown that has the corniest lines a five year old wrote and got stuck in the disco era with neon. We need more blood, death, sacrifice, and war.
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Yeah I think the whole vibe from Lightfall was really crap.If I remember correctly Bungie said that Lightfall was themed around an 80's action movie vibe(I may be wrong) which did not fit the tone of the actual overall story at all in my opinion.It felt like there was no real threat that we needed to fear,Even the Shadow Legion was a huge fail to me considering Bungie said that they had been enhanced with Pyramid tech but that just turned out to just be an overshield.The only things from Lightfall that I like and that somewhat lived up to the hype(to me at least) is the warlock Strand subclass and the Tormenters,Everything else was crap.
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3 RepliesI've lost faith in the people who write the campaigns. Lightfall needed to be dark, we are in the next to last chapter. Now is the time to go deadly serious, so that victory will be all the sweeter.
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3 Replieslol hard to have a dark story when you've got Nimbus with the mental capactiy of an ADHD-riddled ten year old chiming in every five seconds.
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2 RepliesThe biggest mistake of Lightfall is that fact that it simply refused to actually establish stakes. At the very least we should’ve learned what the Witness intended to do and how the Veil fit into that plan, so that when that final cutscene happens we get the same feeling of dread as the characters. Instead we only learned about the Witness’s origins in a cutscene not even tied to the seasonal story it was released in and learned about its goal from the TFS showcase. The -blam!- chapter of your big story isn’t the time to introduce new characters and a new setting like Neomuna, while diluting the story with too much focus on the new subclass. Ironically enough Stasis was better implemented in Beyond Light, because the point is that it’s simply a tool. We know Eramis wants to take revenge on the Traveler and we’re shown how effectively the House of Salvation wields it. Even Calus suffered from it, with only two interactions with his daughter he hasn’t seen since he was exiled. Caiatl remains outside the complex to try and delay her father and we get NOTHING from that. The fact she survived betrays some remnant of love on the part of her father, but we don’t get to see that! Could’ve easily had a Tormentor go to kill her but have Calus order it not to, because the Veil is all that matters. You could have Caiatl realising that her father is less allied with the Witness and more so being compelled by sheer fear of the God he has shackled himself to. Which continues that degradation of Calus we see throughout the campaign. It’s absolutely heartbreaking that’s how he went out.
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1 Reply"We just killed your dad high five gurl" MCU writing.
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2 RepliesNot to mention we had beach boy Nimrod the entire time cracking lame jokes even after his master died. Then Bungie goes and ruins Calus. All that build up over many seasons and then…. nothing.
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I love one of the major funny plot holes early in the campaign. wwe hear a news broadcast saying something along the lines of all civilians are required to participate in public defense, yet they're all inside the Cloud Ark. Putting the civilians into cryogenic stasis pods and having them floating around inside virtual reality may have solved the logistics of having to deal with civilian casualties, but civilian casualties often help bring emotions into the narrative. Seeing the fear and struggle of regular people against an alien force definitely helps set the stage and stakes, which it certainly did during the first Red War mission. Walking through the collasped halls of the old D1 tower, walking past the injured civilians as Shaxx was leading them safety really illustrated the direness of the situation. I was flabbergasted that Bungie didn't seem to retain that lesson. We know Bungie can tell dark, gruesome, and gorery stories, yet its like they've completely stepped back from it. Idk why, but in more recent years, it's like Bungie has stepped back from putting background characters (civilians) in positions of peril. Currently, the whole universe is supposed to be at stake, but it just doesn't feel like it.
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2 RepliesI mean yeah - we've spent nearly two years building up to the Witness and his plan, gathering friends from different races to prepare for some massive battle, just to be slung into, "hey guys, the Witness is here! We have 0 idea of his plan with this artifact that we keep telling you is important, but we actually do know his plan. Stop him, before it's to late!". I hate dlcs that tie into some new game mechanic. Strand and Stasis BLEED this. Both of them completely overtake the narrative they were made to sell, and leaves the narrative with absolutely no development. We knew Eramis was evil, thats about it; use stasis to stop her. Training arc to control new power. We knew Calus was evil, thats about it: use strand to stop him. Training arc to control new power. Witch Queen was such a success because they spent time to build into the narrative, and then set the stakes of what was happening. No brand new mechanical element to learn, just things expanded upon. The Final Shape is setting the same bar that Witch Queen did, so hopefully something pulls through, but I doubt it.
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3 RepliesJust say Lightfall sucked. It’s not lying. Neomuna is a literal and metaphorical ghost town. Its hero was goofy, uninspiring, and there hasn’t been any teeth to many of the threats since Ghaul punched us in the mouth. A lot of this is due choosing lore books over writing and acting in my opinion. The only visual spectacle comes from raids and dungeon. Everything else is told through lore books, standing NPC text, holoscreens, and Tower interactions. I learned from a lore junky the origin of that giant femur bone on Rhulk’s ship. Ripped it from a fish monster or some crap. Never seen in game…
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4 RepliesFor something that was meant to evoke an 1980's blockbuster action movie, it didn't. It's barely 'cyberpunk'. It comes off as if the devs are too young to know what one of this were. They were clear cut, one side good, other side bad. Good guys defeat bad guys and there are way too many explosions. And that's why we liked it. You know what most people don't realize? Our characters still don't know who or what the Witness is. They've never seen it in person.
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1 ReplyI'd say one of the biggest problems is it felt like it was only 3-4 actual campaign missions and then 4-5 adventures thrown in to introduce strand and increase the length of the game. Also, there is the whole raiders of the lost ark problem, where had we not done anything, either the same outcome would have occurred, or more likely, a better outcome would have occurred. Despite how much we hate nimbus, both hom and Rohan could have easily taken calus and his army. Remember, the bulk of his defense was light suppression tech, and it would have had no effect on cloudstriders.
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1 ReplyMilks Proposal For Super Serious Destiny Zavala looks on at the hoards of guardians dying brutal, bloody deaths to The Witnesses forces. Skulls and blood fly everywhere and it's super violent. Zavala: Sometimes It's darkest just before dawn. Everyone scowls and looks super tough Ikora comes up to see The Witness: Ikora: I'm getting too old for this... Cool Explosion happens and people just start swearing at each other.
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1 ReplyEdited by Kiro - 13: 9/7/2023 2:37:18 AMShadow Keep felt like a stab at making the game more dark. Such as the specters of guardians on the moon talking about the horrors as they died or what they lamented most before passing(such as the phantom of Josef speaking about how the hive killed his dog Luna). After that though they made a swing back to guardians some how being this flawless race of supermen. Sure a few pieces of lore paint a dark tail of bad guardians such as Aisha, but you really have to dig for the more gritty storys. I think its more the corporate overlords as to why the story is so vanilla, they want to maintain that "TEEN" rating for a larger target audience. But I think thats a failure on Bungies end for not realizing who their demographic is. To me it seems like the majority who play Destiny 2 are in their 20s-30s mostly and that group would most certainly love a darker story.
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2 Replies[quote]Lightfall wasn't dark enough[/quote] [b]No F###ing S###![/b] The Revised Title is what and Reveal gave me my First Suspicion that LightFail was a Lie and Failure. Thru Season of the Plunder i began to see the Stroy was Degrading, and PVP was dying. I guess i was right. I prefered the Original LightFall announcement as it gave that Dark Tone. Luke Smith was right to end Destiny a Year Early, because after that Little reveal of Finale Shape..oh im sorry Finale Paste..oh thats not it..[b]Finale Recycle[/b].
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1 Reply
Insanityunknown - old
Turn down your brightness in settings :) -
1 Reply
Guardian,Archon Of LightBlade Of The Traveler - old
I agree, alot of NPCs should have died, and the city should have wiped by a hoard of Hive, Scorn and Taken With Xivu Arath claiming the Tower has her new throne -
3 RepliesEdited by A_mo: 9/6/2023 2:56:04 PMI'm liking lightfall and I feel that as a release it shouldn't rank as low as some people might want to rank it. But the overall tone of the game does seem to have gotten too light hearted sometimes. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting that end of the empire strikes back feel in Destiny and having a period that really feels like we're losing. With where the game is now the lighter story can contribute to making the narrative feel completionist like the game playing part. You just know that when guardians go here and do this or that they win. Even with the game difficulty that makes you restart after one death. Even in the pvp if you go in and do this or that you'll be guaranteed the Max amount of wins the traveler could possibly provide you. I will say that Neomuna and seasonal activity difficulty have definitely helped make the stakes feel higher or like they're being raised. I also am loving Neomuna as a location so I'm torn. Neomuna and strand is just a blast together. So that's what's most important.
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If you look at the whole year as Lightfall, yea its pretty dark. But the campaign isolated was a fail.
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One of my issues with Neomuna is that it just feels like just another empty patrol zone, just with everything 15 above your light because...artificial difficulty. It could have been a great time to introduce something new to the patrol zone. We could have been helping Cloud Strikers push back the Shadow Legion and Vex, protect citizens, help in assaults, etc. And I do agree that outside of vanilla Destiny, there hasn't been any real risk/stake to the Last City in general.
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2 RepliesWe aren't losing remotely. If our enemies haven't put us down by now, and they've had hundreds of years, then they are inept. Even with the Traveller, every non light human should be dust by now
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Well you could some all of this up by simply pointing at Nimbus. A literal -blam!- ing clown 🤡 hosting the middle of what is supposed to be "the biggest threat of danger we faced"
