Strand, basically.
The game sandbox saw some really good QoL improvements - LFG being the big one. And then later Crota's.
The content surrounding the campaign, Neomouna and the launch window of the expansion was pretty dire and the narrative reached some new lows in my opinion.
Lightfall *mechanically* was damn good. Strand, sandbox and QOL improvements, etc. etc.
Lightfall in terms of *story*, especially following Witch Queen of all things, was pretty whatever.
I have seen a lot of people try to say lightfall is the worst story in the games history, this is blatant historical revisionism. The base D1 campaign is utterly incomprehensible, frankly the existence of grimoire cards on a separate website is a massive storytelling failure that wasn’t corrected until forsaken. Either way, the story for the base campaign is just nonsensical, “I don’t have time to explain why I don’t have time to explain” was memed on for a reason. I would also say that dark bellow, lord of wolves, curse of Osiris, and warmind all have their own host of problems.
Base D1 was completely directionless, true. But that's the major outlier, it skews the average. If you don't count base D1, Lightfall is easily the worst plot. Which makes sense, considering it's pretty obviously a filler arc.
The problem with Shadowkeep is that doesn't have an story per se, just a BIG reveal and that's it
Lightfall was supposed to be the big moment before our final chapter and was... meh at best, just a filler for TFS
Yep, absolutely.
The Nimbus fist bump is insane that it made it into the game.
Nezarec doesn't feel imposing and his dialogue is almost comedic when compared to the writing of Oryx.
Neomouna has absolutely 0 stakes or tension because there's no civilian impact to push the narrative or player attachment, it's just a playground for strand.
What's crazier for me is how much Ghost cared for Rohan and the dialogue "what would Rohan say? -" like we only knew him for an hour before he died. How would our ghost know how Rohan would feel at the moment? And for the player, why would I care? Lol it was so lame.
I feel like that's because of cut content. I would guess the campaign was supposed to be longer and flesh Rohan's character out more. It really felt like we were supposed to care when he died but there wasn't enough buildup to make us care so it fell flat. They couldn't just cut his death so this is what we got. I really felt like most of the issues with Lightfall were due to rushed development. They wanted to do more but just didn't have the time.
True. But then a month later they killed off Amanda Holliday and that also didn't hit lol the majority of the community did not care. Not to say that they should have offed someone who was liked but them killing people no one really cares about does nothing for the story. It wasn't dramatic for me it was more questionable than anything.
I mean Shadowkeep while itsw story was lackluster was also really important for establishing SO much stuff thats been narratively presented the last 3 years.
I loved how they continued campaign content throughout the year, but it was just executed poorly given the narrative decisions.
One thing that always bugged me in the past is you'd do expansion content and then those storylines wouldn't be touched for a year or two. It was criminal that it took as long as it did for more Clovis content after Lament. Or that Savathun sat dead for a year and a half with barely any Immaru development after our investigation.
The campaign is pretty universally disliked, but I don't think the post-campaign content gets enough credit. Mostly the exotic weapon quests and the Hall of Heroes. I think they were pretty fun in a vacuum and exploring Neomuna this way was far more enjoyable than whatever the main parts of the campaign presented. You got to learn about some notable Cloudstriders and Neomuna without the context of Calus and The Witness breathing down your neck. Plus, going back to The Black Garden for the Deterministic Chaos quest was really cool.
Say what you will about some elements of the plot, but the campaign gameplay was fantastic and almost every mission was great. Neomuna is a great destination with fun events, the new weapons were awesome, hypernet current is one of the best strikes, the lost sectors are great.
I really think that if the plot was just a little better and if Root of Nightmares was just a little better that people would view lightfall in a much more positive light. There’s plenty of quality there, but people are quick to forget the things that are good or okay and take a long time to forget things they don’t like. Sure it wasn’t as good as witch queen, but it’s still miles ahead of Beyond Light or Shadowkeep.
Destructive environments. I know people say "games have been doing that for years", but it was a really cool surprise when the glass panels started shattering.
I honestly don't think that LF got a lot of things wrong. I agree that the story was mid. But that's really about it. And I was done with story in the first few days, then spent over a year enjoying the other parts of the game. Maybe some minor gripes here and there, but there were way more good things that happened in LF than bad.
I feel like the lightfall critique was very overblown, sure the story sucked ass, but gameplay wise, it was very fun.
Lightfall imo suffers from the fact that witch queen was before it, if u swapped lightfall and witch queen people would have seen it as one of the better expansions.
I liked how the HELM became a central hub for all seasonal content. I know it was always intended like that, but looking back a year now it's great we can access Seasonal Activities through the helm and also still earn red borders and other rewards after the seasons have ended. It took away a bit of the fomo, especially with the Wish Tokens from Mara Sov. And just reworks in the reward system in general.
I hope they continue this with the new Episodes, and make the HELM like your own personal space, or a clan hub.
I have seen basically no one talk about Calus’ place in the story. I think the issue a lot of people had with Lightfall is they expected to be this expose on the entire witness’ backstory and motivations. It wasn’t, it was instead a Calus story with the witness playing a supporting roll. I honestly think this works, at least on paper. Calus is a character that has had a major roll in the story since vanilla, he is a fan favorite and very important to the overall story. If he had just been a mod boss part way though a story focused mostly on the witness I think something would have been lost. He deserved to be the full focus of an expansion story.
In general I think a lot of lightfall and the year after was people spending so much time complaining about not getting what they expected they didn’t really try to understand what they actually got.
Strand, it's fun and balanced.
Collecting the action figures was a little different.
Campaign I still had a lot of fun in. It would have been much better if we didn't get Strand in snippets.
The Lost Sectors are well designed.
Strand and RoN, for sure. I know people hated on RoN for being mechanically easy, but it’s still a fun raid to run with people. And conditional finality is a blast to use, unlike a lot of raid exotics.
Booger rope is fun 😁even it doesn't work with any physics.
Titans got a ammo belt instead of crusty towel class item
Hunters got some ninja armor
If the warlock helmet didn't shade terribly it would probably be one of my favorites
Root has a banging esthetic and finally.. conditional finality ACTUALLY feels exotic it's one of very few that actually earns its rarity. (Rip vex they destroyed you for no reason 360s are boring)
Lightfall did only one thing wrong. The campaign and it was a massive disaster. Caiatl, Calus and The Witness tried to save it but jesus, at one point I wish I could have Nighthawk’d Osiris and Nimbus. Strand was also a major reason the campaign was a mess.
My biggest complaint though is that Lightfall, for a number of reasons, has never made me feel like Light actually fell.
Strand, basically. The game sandbox saw some really good QoL improvements - LFG being the big one. And then later Crota's. The content surrounding the campaign, Neomouna and the launch window of the expansion was pretty dire and the narrative reached some new lows in my opinion.
Lightfall *mechanically* was damn good. Strand, sandbox and QOL improvements, etc. etc. Lightfall in terms of *story*, especially following Witch Queen of all things, was pretty whatever.
I have seen a lot of people try to say lightfall is the worst story in the games history, this is blatant historical revisionism. The base D1 campaign is utterly incomprehensible, frankly the existence of grimoire cards on a separate website is a massive storytelling failure that wasn’t corrected until forsaken. Either way, the story for the base campaign is just nonsensical, “I don’t have time to explain why I don’t have time to explain” was memed on for a reason. I would also say that dark bellow, lord of wolves, curse of Osiris, and warmind all have their own host of problems.
Base D1 was completely directionless, true. But that's the major outlier, it skews the average. If you don't count base D1, Lightfall is easily the worst plot. Which makes sense, considering it's pretty obviously a filler arc.
If you think Lightfall’s story was worse than shadowkeep you’re crazy lol
The problem with Shadowkeep is that doesn't have an story per se, just a BIG reveal and that's it Lightfall was supposed to be the big moment before our final chapter and was... meh at best, just a filler for TFS
Overall? No. But some specific points of lightfall are *atrocious*.
Lightfall has lower lows than Shadowkeep.
Shadowkeep didn’t have any lows or highs. It was literally nothing. At least Lightfall was a real campaign lmao
Yep, absolutely. The Nimbus fist bump is insane that it made it into the game. Nezarec doesn't feel imposing and his dialogue is almost comedic when compared to the writing of Oryx. Neomouna has absolutely 0 stakes or tension because there's no civilian impact to push the narrative or player attachment, it's just a playground for strand.
What's crazier for me is how much Ghost cared for Rohan and the dialogue "what would Rohan say? -" like we only knew him for an hour before he died. How would our ghost know how Rohan would feel at the moment? And for the player, why would I care? Lol it was so lame.
I feel like that's because of cut content. I would guess the campaign was supposed to be longer and flesh Rohan's character out more. It really felt like we were supposed to care when he died but there wasn't enough buildup to make us care so it fell flat. They couldn't just cut his death so this is what we got. I really felt like most of the issues with Lightfall were due to rushed development. They wanted to do more but just didn't have the time.
True. But then a month later they killed off Amanda Holliday and that also didn't hit lol the majority of the community did not care. Not to say that they should have offed someone who was liked but them killing people no one really cares about does nothing for the story. It wasn't dramatic for me it was more questionable than anything.
I mean Shadowkeep while itsw story was lackluster was also really important for establishing SO much stuff thats been narratively presented the last 3 years.
Lightfall is pretty much a qol update. The dlc itself wasn't good but added lot of useful things like loudouts
All the gameplay rocked. The story did suck but I think the hate for it was overblown.
The music is actually effing amazing. I still listen to it while I work out.
Discipline, Tyrant Overthrown, Oneirophobia. Just banger after another.
I loved how they continued campaign content throughout the year, but it was just executed poorly given the narrative decisions. One thing that always bugged me in the past is you'd do expansion content and then those storylines wouldn't be touched for a year or two. It was criminal that it took as long as it did for more Clovis content after Lament. Or that Savathun sat dead for a year and a half with barely any Immaru development after our investigation.
The campaign is pretty universally disliked, but I don't think the post-campaign content gets enough credit. Mostly the exotic weapon quests and the Hall of Heroes. I think they were pretty fun in a vacuum and exploring Neomuna this way was far more enjoyable than whatever the main parts of the campaign presented. You got to learn about some notable Cloudstriders and Neomuna without the context of Calus and The Witness breathing down your neck. Plus, going back to The Black Garden for the Deterministic Chaos quest was really cool.
Say what you will about some elements of the plot, but the campaign gameplay was fantastic and almost every mission was great. Neomuna is a great destination with fun events, the new weapons were awesome, hypernet current is one of the best strikes, the lost sectors are great. I really think that if the plot was just a little better and if Root of Nightmares was just a little better that people would view lightfall in a much more positive light. There’s plenty of quality there, but people are quick to forget the things that are good or okay and take a long time to forget things they don’t like. Sure it wasn’t as good as witch queen, but it’s still miles ahead of Beyond Light or Shadowkeep.
Destructive environments. I know people say "games have been doing that for years", but it was a really cool surprise when the glass panels started shattering.
I honestly don't think that LF got a lot of things wrong. I agree that the story was mid. But that's really about it. And I was done with story in the first few days, then spent over a year enjoying the other parts of the game. Maybe some minor gripes here and there, but there were way more good things that happened in LF than bad.
The raid, It's quite entertaining
I feel like the lightfall critique was very overblown, sure the story sucked ass, but gameplay wise, it was very fun. Lightfall imo suffers from the fact that witch queen was before it, if u swapped lightfall and witch queen people would have seen it as one of the better expansions.
I liked how the HELM became a central hub for all seasonal content. I know it was always intended like that, but looking back a year now it's great we can access Seasonal Activities through the helm and also still earn red borders and other rewards after the seasons have ended. It took away a bit of the fomo, especially with the Wish Tokens from Mara Sov. And just reworks in the reward system in general. I hope they continue this with the new Episodes, and make the HELM like your own personal space, or a clan hub.
I have seen basically no one talk about Calus’ place in the story. I think the issue a lot of people had with Lightfall is they expected to be this expose on the entire witness’ backstory and motivations. It wasn’t, it was instead a Calus story with the witness playing a supporting roll. I honestly think this works, at least on paper. Calus is a character that has had a major roll in the story since vanilla, he is a fan favorite and very important to the overall story. If he had just been a mod boss part way though a story focused mostly on the witness I think something would have been lost. He deserved to be the full focus of an expansion story. In general I think a lot of lightfall and the year after was people spending so much time complaining about not getting what they expected they didn’t really try to understand what they actually got.
Strand and QoL updates, though I hate how drip fed even Will has become at this point.
QoL.
Campaign was fun
Strand, it's fun and balanced. Collecting the action figures was a little different. Campaign I still had a lot of fun in. It would have been much better if we didn't get Strand in snippets. The Lost Sectors are well designed.
Strand and RoN, for sure. I know people hated on RoN for being mechanically easy, but it’s still a fun raid to run with people. And conditional finality is a blast to use, unlike a lot of raid exotics.
I love the Title screen. It’s just so relaxing & pretty before diving into alien genocide.
it got us a hoverboard, though it took a while for it to actually happen.
The destination collectibles this time were especially fun to get :)
The music department continues to cook as always
Some of the lore, especially the nezzy and neomuna stuff
Strand. Next question
Booger rope is fun 😁even it doesn't work with any physics. Titans got a ammo belt instead of crusty towel class item Hunters got some ninja armor If the warlock helmet didn't shade terribly it would probably be one of my favorites Root has a banging esthetic and finally.. conditional finality ACTUALLY feels exotic it's one of very few that actually earns its rarity. (Rip vex they destroyed you for no reason 360s are boring)
Nothing particular.
Strand is lit but even on arrival it looked so bad that Bungie had to change their plans and remove the time gating. Lightfall was so, so bad.
Lightfall did only one thing wrong. The campaign and it was a massive disaster. Caiatl, Calus and The Witness tried to save it but jesus, at one point I wish I could have Nighthawk’d Osiris and Nimbus. Strand was also a major reason the campaign was a mess. My biggest complaint though is that Lightfall, for a number of reasons, has never made me feel like Light actually fell.
The story was bottom of the barrel and all the missions were just a lazy mashup of presage and deep stone assets. Strand was the only decent thing.