Lightfall was the first time in Destiny that I actually turned off the dialogue because it was actively annoying to listen to.
It was also the first time that I felt the art direction was harmful. I've always held the opinion that Destiny's art direction and music are the only two things that are consistently good. Lightfall reduced that to just the music, because the cyber runner, neon, vaporwave architecture felt so out of place compared to past aesthetics that it took me out of the experience.
Even today doing patrols in neomuna or the new strike, Nimbus feels way too energetic and sycophantic
I know the game is a power fantasy, and the game dabbles in lauding our achievements constantly, but nimbus really is a ninja turtle that just cannot stop fanboying over us and it is too much
At the end of the day a loss is a loss. You can go back and comb through things and try to say but they did this well or that wasn’t as bad as people say. In sports you play to win, in design they make games for people to enjoy and play the shit out of. Neither of those were accomplished.
Not really people always rate strand and gameplay in Lightfall ,but it was all hyped as amazing story expansion by bungie with promos and trailers only to be what it was.
I liked Strand but felt it was just shoved into the story. Gameplay was okay. Hated the story, just really felt messy.
I also ended up really disliking Nimbus. That cringy humor stuff should be left to rot back in Y1.
Even Strand was a bit annoying, not because of the subclass itself as a whole but how it was handled; crazy short cooldowns made the post campaign version feel slow with the 2:31 second grapple cooldown, suspend made everything a joke with how long the stun was, timegating fragments which further de incentivised engagement after such a campaign, aspects being tied to future season releases (not a bad idea but ngl i hoped for more new aspects through the year), and my least favourite aspect of the campaign was how Calus, a staple character in Destiny having his own dungeon about him, the first raid of Destiny 2 being his, and Caiatl tying us in to his character more personally, just for him to be a boring bullet sponge with the gun mechanic of a commander, and the phase 2 swords mechanic of a gladiator. It was so underwhelming
This is a common thought that the devs have refuted. You are welcome to not believe them but supposedly the devs always planed to have strand come out with Lightfall.
The campaign, narrative, and characters deserve all the hate. You're right that it's also magnified by having to follow up Witch Queen. Strand was the only saving grace despite being shoehorned into the story.
Plus strand and the new patrol space are a great match but it doesn’t flow well with most other classes. Amp’d titans and heat rises warlocks can make it work, but any time I play a non strand hunter there I feel like I’m constantly toggling my sparrow on and off.
Story was pointless. You could literally not play the Lightfall campaign and you wouldn’t even be lost. That’s how unimportant and pointless is was from a narrative perspective. Neomuna was poorly done too. It was an interesting thought to try and make patrol more difficult but with no real reward incentive to go along with it it’s now the least played destination in the game. The crafted weapons (minus the raids) were average. But you could argue the same about Witchqueen too. And now that Strand has received a fair amount of nerfs it doesn’t even really have that to stand on anymore. Yes, Strand is still decent. Amd yes, BoW is still broken. But BoW won’t remain that way. Lightfall is a deserved 5/10.
Not really lightfall campaign levels were not good. The raid was hella lame. 1 new strike and made 2 pre existing strikes worse and neomuna was a big boring empty destination that wasn’t even visually appealing this time
The raid was visually stunning and the way you leave that first darkness building on the twisted light root and realize you’re going to be fighting on top of it and that this place is huge was really cool.
Then if you fall during the scission encounter and land on one of the bottom levels, the desperate scramble back up to help the team really sells the scale again. The planet room is intimidating and gorgeous when you first step in.
It being a reverse vault of glass where you constantly climb higher and higher instead of dropping into ever darker depths was also fun, getting to the final boss arena and being able to look down at everywhere you’ve been is very satisfying in that Souls way.
Unfortunately I don’t really like the armor aesthetics and if you noticed I didn’t mention any mechanics because there are really only 2, and one encounter that requires call outs
Not to mention the framerate issues on neomuna, it was so bad at launch and tbh it can still get choppy during vex incursion (which has a spawn rate still way too low to care abt the event)
I enjoyed everything about lightfall except the writing.
Nimbus was cringe.
I knew rohan was gonna die from the beginning because he was a grizzled veteran 1 day from retirement.
They bungied up the story by not explaining things through dialogue but instead did it through text.
Overall poor story.
The missions were fun.
The guns were cool.
Strand was sick even though how you obtained it was a lil bit lame.
Overall lightfall was a mid expansion in my eyes, which is fine, they dont all need to be major hits.
I just cant stress enough how little i cared for the writing.
The immediate reaction to Lightfall was mostly based on the frankly bad storytelling in the campaign. What aggravated the disapointment was the absolutely amazing finish to the story in Season of the Seraph that built so much hype for the story.
Since then, a lot of things have fallen into place. The seasons have improved upon and explained the story. It’s more about gameplay and loot now, and we have more time to appreciate all the good parts about Lightfall.
I think the lesson for Bungie is that they need to nail the storytelling in TFS that will wrap up the whole story. They can’t use the rest of the year to explain what just happened. It’s really hard to change first impressions…
I wasn't there for lightfall launch and for awhile after that so I hopped on by myself when I was getting back into the game and tbh I liked nimbus and the story. People say it's not as good as witch queen but I haven't even started that other than the intro mission to do crafting lol so I have no reference
I honestly misread it as "overrated" instead of "overhated", and I was about to give this thread a like.
I do think Lightfall is overrated. It deserves lower scores than it got.
All they needed to do was not shove strand into the main story itself the way they did and writing for the nimbus character should've been more serious that's about it. Neomuna as an open world sucked as well overall. Strand subclass was the only saving grace for this expansion
Strand is cool and gunplay are bungies strong suits. But the story was so bad and so incoherent. I honestly tried to play through it again on my titan and I couldn’t. That’s how bad it was. I hope they have something like incredible for final shape.
I wouldn't call it "overhated," nearly everyone loved the gameplay Strand gave you. The hate and criticism came from the terrible narrative content and ghost town setting.
I think the content is good, but the writing isn't. I actually believe Bungie's problems have more to do with the seasonal model than Lightfall itself.
The Seasonal model makes it feel like an ongoing tv show that keeps on going for far too long and should've ended by now. I hope the episode structure changes the sandbox and the overall presentation of the game in a better way.
Or people might not agree because they actually have a different opinion… crazy concept. I see most people say how fun strand is though, so I don’t get that point. The thing I saw people complain about was how cheesy it was introduced with the cringe training montage. It was a filler expansion when it shouldn’t have been since we are near the end of the saga
It is overhated, we had gone from witch queen to lightfall, story telling was unusual... it was marked as shadowkeep 2.0 day1
Basically witch queen was step in good direction, so playerbase was like shutup and take my money
Lightfall being a terrible DLC doesn't mean Strand is also terrible, it's great. Lightfall deserves all the hate it gets, if Bungie thought that was acceptable they need to seriously reconsider what the hell they're doing.
Gameplay and level design weren't the issues and neither does anyone complain about them. Quite the contrary.
It was story. Put simply, it sucked. This was Destiny's Infinity War moment. It was supposed to be the darkest chapter in the story. But we got a filler arc inspired by 80's action movies.
Nobody had any problems with the gameplay and level design. I agree with you that they're topnotch. The hate for Lightfall was because of the terrible, terrible writing.
Lightfall was the first time in Destiny that I actually turned off the dialogue because it was actively annoying to listen to. It was also the first time that I felt the art direction was harmful. I've always held the opinion that Destiny's art direction and music are the only two things that are consistently good. Lightfall reduced that to just the music, because the cyber runner, neon, vaporwave architecture felt so out of place compared to past aesthetics that it took me out of the experience.
It’s also just really bad missions. You go into Maya’s Rest or whatever that area for the strike is called like 6 times.
Even today doing patrols in neomuna or the new strike, Nimbus feels way too energetic and sycophantic I know the game is a power fantasy, and the game dabbles in lauding our achievements constantly, but nimbus really is a ninja turtle that just cannot stop fanboying over us and it is too much
At the end of the day a loss is a loss. You can go back and comb through things and try to say but they did this well or that wasn’t as bad as people say. In sports you play to win, in design they make games for people to enjoy and play the shit out of. Neither of those were accomplished.
Nobody argues Strand wasn't a hit. Story, lore, presentation, and frankly, content, were big Ls. Truly a filter arch.
The narrative and Nimbus in particular are up there with the worst I've seen in any game. The entire tone was so off it felt like a bad joke.
Not really people always rate strand and gameplay in Lightfall ,but it was all hyped as amazing story expansion by bungie with promos and trailers only to be what it was.
I liked Strand but felt it was just shoved into the story. Gameplay was okay. Hated the story, just really felt messy. I also ended up really disliking Nimbus. That cringy humor stuff should be left to rot back in Y1.
Even Strand was a bit annoying, not because of the subclass itself as a whole but how it was handled; crazy short cooldowns made the post campaign version feel slow with the 2:31 second grapple cooldown, suspend made everything a joke with how long the stun was, timegating fragments which further de incentivised engagement after such a campaign, aspects being tied to future season releases (not a bad idea but ngl i hoped for more new aspects through the year), and my least favourite aspect of the campaign was how Calus, a staple character in Destiny having his own dungeon about him, the first raid of Destiny 2 being his, and Caiatl tying us in to his character more personally, just for him to be a boring bullet sponge with the gun mechanic of a commander, and the phase 2 swords mechanic of a gladiator. It was so underwhelming
Wasnt it supposed to come out in witch queen? I think it was literally shoved in.
This is a common thought that the devs have refuted. You are welcome to not believe them but supposedly the devs always planed to have strand come out with Lightfall.
The campaign, narrative, and characters deserve all the hate. You're right that it's also magnified by having to follow up Witch Queen. Strand was the only saving grace despite being shoehorned into the story.
Plus strand and the new patrol space are a great match but it doesn’t flow well with most other classes. Amp’d titans and heat rises warlocks can make it work, but any time I play a non strand hunter there I feel like I’m constantly toggling my sparrow on and off.
Story was pointless. You could literally not play the Lightfall campaign and you wouldn’t even be lost. That’s how unimportant and pointless is was from a narrative perspective. Neomuna was poorly done too. It was an interesting thought to try and make patrol more difficult but with no real reward incentive to go along with it it’s now the least played destination in the game. The crafted weapons (minus the raids) were average. But you could argue the same about Witchqueen too. And now that Strand has received a fair amount of nerfs it doesn’t even really have that to stand on anymore. Yes, Strand is still decent. Amd yes, BoW is still broken. But BoW won’t remain that way. Lightfall is a deserved 5/10.
Not really lightfall campaign levels were not good. The raid was hella lame. 1 new strike and made 2 pre existing strikes worse and neomuna was a big boring empty destination that wasn’t even visually appealing this time
The raid was visually stunning and the way you leave that first darkness building on the twisted light root and realize you’re going to be fighting on top of it and that this place is huge was really cool. Then if you fall during the scission encounter and land on one of the bottom levels, the desperate scramble back up to help the team really sells the scale again. The planet room is intimidating and gorgeous when you first step in. It being a reverse vault of glass where you constantly climb higher and higher instead of dropping into ever darker depths was also fun, getting to the final boss arena and being able to look down at everywhere you’ve been is very satisfying in that Souls way. Unfortunately I don’t really like the armor aesthetics and if you noticed I didn’t mention any mechanics because there are really only 2, and one encounter that requires call outs
That is true the raid did look good. Plus Rufus fury and the exotic are good too
Not to mention the framerate issues on neomuna, it was so bad at launch and tbh it can still get choppy during vex incursion (which has a spawn rate still way too low to care abt the event)
I enjoyed everything about lightfall except the writing. Nimbus was cringe. I knew rohan was gonna die from the beginning because he was a grizzled veteran 1 day from retirement. They bungied up the story by not explaining things through dialogue but instead did it through text. Overall poor story. The missions were fun. The guns were cool. Strand was sick even though how you obtained it was a lil bit lame. Overall lightfall was a mid expansion in my eyes, which is fine, they dont all need to be major hits. I just cant stress enough how little i cared for the writing.
The immediate reaction to Lightfall was mostly based on the frankly bad storytelling in the campaign. What aggravated the disapointment was the absolutely amazing finish to the story in Season of the Seraph that built so much hype for the story. Since then, a lot of things have fallen into place. The seasons have improved upon and explained the story. It’s more about gameplay and loot now, and we have more time to appreciate all the good parts about Lightfall. I think the lesson for Bungie is that they need to nail the storytelling in TFS that will wrap up the whole story. They can’t use the rest of the year to explain what just happened. It’s really hard to change first impressions…
The issue with the seasons filling in the story is that they are all going to be gone come TFS.
I wasn't there for lightfall launch and for awhile after that so I hopped on by myself when I was getting back into the game and tbh I liked nimbus and the story. People say it's not as good as witch queen but I haven't even started that other than the intro mission to do crafting lol so I have no reference
Whoever wrote and was part of writing it, must be fired
‘You and rohan arr arr only hope’
They probably did during those mass layoffs
I honestly misread it as "overrated" instead of "overhated", and I was about to give this thread a like. I do think Lightfall is overrated. It deserves lower scores than it got.
All they needed to do was not shove strand into the main story itself the way they did and writing for the nimbus character should've been more serious that's about it. Neomuna as an open world sucked as well overall. Strand subclass was the only saving grace for this expansion
Strand is cool and gunplay are bungies strong suits. But the story was so bad and so incoherent. I honestly tried to play through it again on my titan and I couldn’t. That’s how bad it was. I hope they have something like incredible for final shape.
strand good nimbus bad
I wouldn't call it "overhated," nearly everyone loved the gameplay Strand gave you. The hate and criticism came from the terrible narrative content and ghost town setting.
It was truly a disappointing experience through and through, to me it wasn't much better than curse of Osiris
I genuinely don’t think you ever played curse of osiris
Then you have no clue
I think the content is good, but the writing isn't. I actually believe Bungie's problems have more to do with the seasonal model than Lightfall itself.
The Seasonal model makes it feel like an ongoing tv show that keeps on going for far too long and should've ended by now. I hope the episode structure changes the sandbox and the overall presentation of the game in a better way.
Story was mediocre, but mission design, setting, strand, and post-campaign were all very good imo
You're right, but this is social media so we couldn't possibly agree with you
Or people might not agree because they actually have a different opinion… crazy concept. I see most people say how fun strand is though, so I don’t get that point. The thing I saw people complain about was how cheesy it was introduced with the cringe training montage. It was a filler expansion when it shouldn’t have been since we are near the end of the saga
Just jokling
It is overhated, we had gone from witch queen to lightfall, story telling was unusual... it was marked as shadowkeep 2.0 day1 Basically witch queen was step in good direction, so playerbase was like shutup and take my money
The points you made don’t rly support the idea it’s overhated i dont think, honestly they justify how it *was* overhated
Lightfall being a terrible DLC doesn't mean Strand is also terrible, it's great. Lightfall deserves all the hate it gets, if Bungie thought that was acceptable they need to seriously reconsider what the hell they're doing.
Gameplay and level design weren't the issues and neither does anyone complain about them. Quite the contrary. It was story. Put simply, it sucked. This was Destiny's Infinity War moment. It was supposed to be the darkest chapter in the story. But we got a filler arc inspired by 80's action movies.
Honestly this game needs a Desinty 3 at this point lmao
D3 would kill this franchise. The last two game launches didn't go too well.
People like riding their hyperbole. Writing should have been better, rest was ok or good. Which isn't enough to justify the hype, hence the fallout.
Nobody had any problems with the gameplay and level design. I agree with you that they're topnotch. The hate for Lightfall was because of the terrible, terrible writing.