-Spoilers, obviously- First impressions for this campaign were incredible. The moments of triumph slideshow at the outset was a great touch for a long time player such as myself. The opening campaign missions and cinematics were exactly what I expected, and set the game up nicely. Leaving through the last city and wandering the outskirts and through the mountains was a beautiful sequence, start to finish. We reconnect with a resistance led by Hawthorne. She seems a decent character, has a bit of a bias against Guardians and "city-folk". It's an interesting perspective and a unique character type we have yet to see in the Destiny universe. Up next is the farm, and the world building is spot on this time. The environment feels lived in, this is a believable location and look for a last bastion of humanity on Earth. We go to the EDZ, meet Devrim Kay, (favorite character btw, still waiting on that tea tho), and learn about the new open world mechanics. And here's where the problems start. We had this "vision" from beforehand where we saw a number of things, some cryptic, some easier to understand. It ends on the shard of the Traveller. We're never explained directly that this is a vision we personally have , until Ghost says something about it in passing in a later cutscene. This is the entire context as to why we're headed to the EDZ in the first place, and yet, the narrative feels disjointed and unfocused. But we go, and to no ones surprise we claim our light totally back from a corrupted shard of the Traveller with minimum effort. No reason is given as to how or why, except that we're the "chosen one", apparently (again it's not directly explained). With this new found power, we reconnect with Zavala on Titan, and let him know we've reclaimed our light. Now while his first response should be "[i]Gucci[/i] (totally within his vernacular), how can we get every Guardian they're light back as well?", His response is more akin to, "[b][i]Sick[/i][/b] (verbatim), so you got this from here right?". And this is where the narrative starts to totally unravel. This shard of the traveller, this incredibly convenient plot point, is never, EVER, mentioned again. Oh sure, we go back to another shard that "calls to us" (again never explained directly) for our other subclasses, but outside of that, no one else ever asks how we got our powers back. Even Ikora, who for a split second in the story shows some depth by worrying about dying her final death, is totally disinterested with how you got your light back. Someone who you would think [i]would absolutely, and in every conceivable scenario be interested in at least understanding how you reclaimed the light, [/i] does not even raise an eyebrow. She just rolls with it, and tasks you to do everything yourself. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The campaign has you reclaim each vanguard leader. You go to a new location for each leader. Up to this point, the campaign in its structure has been pretty good, with separate setpieces outside of the open world, and great moments of world building and story. But. As the campaign drags on, things start to seem... rushed. The places we go to seemed less important, less and less is explained, and with each planet the mission types slowly devolve back into wave defense and "protect ghost" missions. By the time we make it to IO, I've become irritably bored by the mission design. Ironically, IO was the planet I was most looking forward to. The concept art made it seem like a place of mystery, of old stone buildings riddled with lore about the last place to be touched by the Traveller. This is apparently a pilgrimage sight for all warlocks, my main class that I love dearly (H8 me l8r), perhaps I'll get to learn more about my class? Learn new things about the light, or warlock arcana? [b][i]I must've forgotten what I was playing[/i][/b]. Thankfully the location is able to suplex me back into reality, as the the beautiful concept art that teased this place only appears in the skybox, and IO turns into what I could only describe as "discount Mars" with an obnoxious focus on the Taken for seemingly no reason. Finally things pick back up with the campaign, albeit momentarily, as the cinematics are far more interesting than anything you actually do in-game. You go to the EDZ, fight through a forced vehicle section, and steal a ship of a high ranking officer. Thankfully the Cabal somehow forget they can communicate within their ranks and worn the Almighty crew of our imposter approach. Granted, this final section of the story is arguably the strongest, with great set pieces and a real feeling of urgency and impact. Even if the Almighty, a weapon that is actively destabilizing our sun, goes down as easy as you would expect a Death Star ripoff to go down. You could even make the argument that I'm a lone farm-boy, thanks to the social space! (I'll slap myself for that one later.) But then you make it to the end, and kill Ghaul, .....to no ones surprise. I don't even think Ghaul is surprised if I'm honest. [i]Wait a second, is this really already the ending?[/i] The Traveller wakes up, which gets you really excited at first, until it literally serves no major purpose afterwards. The speaker is apparently dead? (RIP) And the city is already back on its feet. (Good thing we don't get to enjoy watching every Guardian get their light back at once and roflstomp the Cabal out of our home. Wouldn't want to inject any life, or payoff into this narrative). We conclude with us finishing in the exact same place we started, with next to no real consequences suffered. All of the main "characters" show up to gaze longingly off of a balcony, Cayde throws us finger guns as we take center stage to a final scene that needed way more context and buildup to be as satisfying as it should have been. To summarize, the story starts off great. But this really feels like Bungie lost to the clock again. So much feels rushed and thrown together. So much is disjointed and the pacing is all over the place. It's a damn shame that Bungie can't take this incredible world hand-crafted (stolen) for them by (from) Staten, and make something genuinely inspiring. It's almost as if you were to put the entire Sistine chapel on a coloring page and give it to a child that still can't color within the lines. You admire them for the effort, tell yourself they're trying, and then hope someday they learn to take art seriously. But hey, we have 2 DLCs to come that will fix everything! So no worries ;)