So I'm going to be 100% honest here. 10 Year player. My wife and I have played literally everything in the game together (except the new raid, we didn't have the motivation to play it.) We closely followed the story over the years, would listen to multiple hour videos of lore on car rides and have invested a lot of time into this game. We have bought stuff from the bungie store, bought 3d printed thorn and malfeasance from an awesome seller in Belgium, and have had many nights of speculating lore on our patio on weekends. Now that you kind of get our love of the game, here is the feedback. Shout out to the map designers and the artists who made the various locations and mission environments, they did a phenomenal job. Weapon designers and the folks involved in bringing us the new weapons this season, great job you really killed it! I especially love the new stasis grenade launcher that is a legendary version of wither hoard. So cool. Now.... this is probably going to sting.... if someone in the story team reads this, not that I'm expecting them to... But this was by far the worst story of any expansion, season, or update that we have seen. Let me start with this... we play this game to have fun. We play the game to be insanely powerful space wizards who decimate enemies after a long day at work. We absolutely do not play this game to have the writers desperately try to siphon empathy and compassion from us, we have real life to worry about that. I don't even know where to begin. So I guess lets start with Saint and Osiris. These two were legendary badasses in D1. There was so much mystique and intrigue revolving around these guys. Saint was this fearless ridiculously powerful Titan, and Osiris was this all powerful warlock who got a little too close to the truth for the vanguard to handle and was outcasted. Now? Saint is treated like a toddler with zero ability to handle emotional problems.... like... WHAT? He's supposed to be this epic example of what a titan can be but yet, he gets turned into a melted pile of emotions when Mrs. baddie of the week tells him he's not real?...… Please. Who wrote this? Osiris has been reduced from a legendary badass that taught Ikora everything she knows... down to an overly empathetic and emotional human that apparently has to hide atrocities from Saint so that he doesn't have to FEEL bad? What? Saint should be on the front lines obliterating bad guys with a blind righteous rage screaming in a Russian accent to keep them coming. We all knew Saint had a soft side, with the pigeons and the ribbon he wears. But constantly shoving that side of him into our faces instead of having him be the strong male figure that fights relentlessly for the good of the people felt completely unnatural. The writers already did a great job of emasculating Zavala over the last couple years, turning him into an almost whiny shell of what we all thought the COMMANDER would be when -blam!- actually hit the fan... but I digress. Point is, whoever wrote this has no idea what created the intrigue around these two. Now it's just an overly emotional gay love story. I'm sorry if someone gets offended by this, but it's incredibly cringe. At least Mara and Sjur Eido had a really cool dynamic and Sjur was a total badass while Mara was equally so in her own right, having lived through MANY timelines afraid to mess up and keeping her knowledge close to her chest so that she could try and control the outcomes despite failing every time. THAT's good intriguing writing. Both my wife and I ended up walking away from the computers during the cringe dialogue between Saint and Osiris especially during various points at the beginning of the season. "Saint.... you're real to me..." give me a break. Now onto Maya. You mean to tell me that we could have thrown a nova bomb and a sentinel shield at her when we first saw her and that's all it would have taken? No epic boss fight? Just another.... Hydra. You guys PUT a character model of her in the game? And yet.. nothing. Just a Clovis 2.0 story between 2 (yet again) gay characters that ended with us fighting.... the same enemy type? Whoever is writing this stuff is severely disconnected with what made this universe amazing. My wife (who loved the story up until TFS more than I did) even said that this was a depressing example of what's to come. Personally... I've taken quite a break from this game due to the massive shift in direction in it's writing and characters. After going back to play the Halo games, Gears, Space marine 2, Starcraft, Warcraft, Helldivers, Elden ring, Dark souls, and various others over the last couple months.... I can't help but like the game I once loved above all else has turned into an ABC's book for adults with bright colors, rainbows, and a focus on how to get caught up in nonsense emotional whirlwinds instead of making logical decisions in the face of total extinction. We're holding out hope for the next season. But man. There's a reason people are getting tired of the game. Please start focusing on what made the game what it is. The taken king wouldn't have hit the same if there was constant dialogue between two overly emotional lovers that has nothing to do with saving humanity. Sorry, but it's the truth. It was about a Hive king that thought he was tough -blam!- until we absolutely obliterated him and his relatives then turned his soul into a gun.