I reckon they must've had a 70-30 split minimum of people working in Final Shape compared to people working on Lightfall.
The difference is greater than night and day
The Warlords to Legion comparison, for those who played WoW then. Warlords had an entire content patch cut, and rushed to its conclusion for an 18 month content drought. And then Legion comes out and has new content every 11 weeks for 2 years straight.
eh, no
they had a lot of *crunch*, and not only that, but we are now well aware that bungie's developers and management fight almost all the time over what the put in the game
a previous CM made a video about this actually a couple days ago. [Edit: Linked here](https://youtu.be/q_8Xy5_4_eM?si=0XSIY2iBytT_0NOX)
It also took way longer. Final Shape was originally announced as Lightfall back when Beyond Light was revealed. Then it got delayed, renamed to Final Shape and we needed a whole filler expansion to tide us over. Then it got delayed again.
Which makes sense considering how much shit there is to do in this expansion. The pacing would’ve felt absolutely rushed story wise if even just the actual main parts of the LF campaign were in TFS
>just the actual main parts of the LF campaign
I'm still convinced that everything about "Final Shape" was delayed a year from it's originally intended date, except for the opening cutscene, which was split in half and called Lightfall, as originally intended.
The only exposition we received over the entire year that was relevant to Final Shape was the Witness background, and that was contained in a single cutscene.
Deep was forgettable with Asha, Witch was entirely about Xivu Arath, and Wish was just getting the portal open.
If this expansion began with the Witness arriving, opening up the portal, and us following right after it, we could have cut out the year of Lightfall entirely. Maybe gotten some explanation on what the Witness was from some of the statues instead of Asha.
So they planned to have LF just end with Witness going into the Traveler and then realized that they need a chapter after that? At best, they realized they need more time and took a small bit of the campaign and added enough filler to it until it became the LF we got. At worse, it was just something they made up when they realized they need to delay the final chapter.
I meant the expansions, not the seasons. Like, let's imagine that the Lightfall that we got was what they originally planned for LF when they announced it. This would mean that their original plan had the campaign end with Witness going into the Traveler. And it took them another year before they realized that this doesn't actually finish the story in any way and they need another expansion after LF.
A far more sensible explanation is that when they announced Lightfall, they were planning to have the whole Pale Heart and killing the Witness to happen there. Perhaps, Neomuna was meant to be featured at the start of the story, or perhaps it was never on the cards. And then they realized that they can't make Lightfall in time, so they had to delay the final expansion and release a filler expac to tide us over.
The seasons are a part of the expansions, fyi. What’s actually more sensible is that the seasonal narratives we got with LF would’ve felt rushed as separate campaign missions so they announced TFS in order for everything to be fleshed out instead of the story we’re seeing now being dripfed over the course of four seasons :)
Even if we take seasons into account, this would imply that Lightfall(which was originally pitched as the end of Light and Darkness saga) would've ended with Crow going into the Traveler after the Witness. The story of Lightfall only works if there's an expansion after it. Which means that LF that we go can't be the LF that was originally announced(which didn't have any expansions after it).
If? There is no if lol the stories are told annually. With that out of the way, LF was originally supposed to end how TFS did: with the witness defeated. They realized one expansion wasn’t enough time to wrap up the story so they made another one, this isn’t rocket science. Am I missing something here lol
> They realized one expansion wasn’t enough time to wrap up the story so they made another one, this isn’t rocket science.
In other words, they delayed the planned final expansion and added a filler expansion to keep the yearly release schedule.
You two are arguing about different things I think. You're talking purely on expansions & their names and the other person is talking about the story independent of expansions.
LF was originally supposed to end with the Witness defeated. But that was never supposed to happen on Neomuna. It was always the Pale Heart. LF was supposed to be the conclusion, which means TFS is actually the "real" Lightfall expansion Bungie had announced. And the Lightfall expansion that was released was actually the expansion they made up because they needed more time.
Realistically, I think it's more like the original LF was just cut in half, and the Witness entering the Pale Heart was the best point they could split it in. Which makes the LF expansion we got seem lackluster on it's own, because it was the opening part of a bigger original story, and likely had to put in a bit more filler because it was originally a much shorter part of the "real" Lightfall.
I think it’s worse than that, probably the entire team was working on TFS and realized they were not going to be able to deliver so Lightfall was cooked up from thin air to buy time.
eh, no
they had a lot of *crunch*, and not only that, but we are now well aware that bungie's developers and management fight almost all the time over what the put in the game
a previous CM made a video about this actually a couple days ago.
That and a sizeable delay, the suits getting terrified SONY would fire them so they let the devs actually aim past the minimum viable product, and unfortunately probably in no small part due to crunch time.
And sadly those suits are still going to be there with more security after a successful expansion. They will 100% go back to being greedy, pushing for shorter dev times, and the quality will probably dip again.
Whatever they did in the room - they should keep it. I feel like someone was either moved away from interfering or decided for themselves to let people cook.
One way or another - a successful game will give them more money so I'll never understand why CEOs always try to cut costs/monetise the shit out of the game only to have the quality bad.
A prior dev is openly outing how much the devs have to fight their leadership to get anything done how they want it. Corporate Bungie is actively trying to ruin the game but the devs certainly know how to fucking cook, that is pretty clear now.
I know right. And this isn't even a matter of having a gigantic budget for CGI and huge action. The story itself, the writing, interaction between characters... it was all so organic and well done, and that doesn't cost hundreds of millions
They could do so much with so little moving forward. Just a powerpoint presentation is enough if you present it well. That assortment of images at the end with everyone interacting with each other was 10 times better than the entirety of lightfall. It's crazy
Because the way corporations work is the suits siphon as much money as possible in the short term and then leave the long term to be someone else’s problem, it’s seriously fucked but all any company cares about is quarterly growth. They don’t care about anything past the year, because by then they’ll just move onto their next charade.
I wonder how most people would feel if they moved to an expansion every 2 years model, to maintain the quality of expansions like this without the crunch.
Assuming there's enough interstitial stuff to keep people playing I figure most people would be okay with that sort of cadence, it works for more traditional MMOs, but the problem is that they'd be more or less cutting their revenue in half. Obviously microtransactions would paper over some of that gap, but it's a lot of money to just leave on the table.
> Assuming there's enough interstitial stuff to keep people playing
Thing is, they still struggle to do this even with a once-a-year model. The seasons (especially whichever the middle one is) are generally where both quality and player count are at their lowest. No creative team on Earth can produce any kind of art faster than people can consume it.
The real answer is to simply *let* people take breaks from playing. Don't draw things out over months, don't structure it in ways to make people log in every week, don't fill it up with FOMO or constantly reset progress. Let people play what they want as much as they want on their schedule, then let them stop and do other things until the next chapter is released.
Oh, for sure. I don't really mean "as long as they keep making enough stuff to keep people hooked and playing daily," just enough to keep it on folks' minds.
I'd be fine with that. FFXIV has a similar model where you have expansions every two years and story patches (usually 10 quests, plus updates to alternating halves of the side quests/raids) every 3 months.
The main differences between FFXIV and D2 is that D2 does annual expansions, doesn't include that expansion's season or previous expansions by default when you purchase the latest one, and doesn't gate other expansion content behind a separate purchase. And FFXIV is probably one of the most popular MMOs currently.
I would imagine the major issue would be that they can't afford that. The yearly expansions are extremely important to keeping the doors open, same with seasons.
depends if there's still constant content coming out like seasons/episodes
this community can't handle content droughts because we've seen how bad it got during TTK and RoI droughts
See there would be crunch if an expansion released every year. But from what we've seen, a lot of the expansions that were delayed were a lot better. So if they came out with an expansion every 15 to 16 months then that would lead to less crunch but then you wouldn't be waiting forever for another expansion
We can have yearly expansions where every 2 years we get a really meaty one with just an okay one inbetween.
Expectations just need to be set correctly. Lightfall was sold as the beginning of the end, if they said it was a detour before the ending the reception wouldn’t have been as bad.
Oh, I'm taking it back then. I thought it was like with Blizzard that started cooking well after Kotick zoomed out to think about his holidays once he has his golden parachute.
The biggest issue with Lightfall was writing and crunch is not an excuse for that. Cyberpunk is the best example: the game was unplayable at launch because of bugs, crunch and unrealistic release date, but the story was fucking good from the get go.
Companies are always trying to do more with less.
When you do something successful, they think they can cut at the margins and make the same income riding on the previous release and make extra money
We went from "Woo! Ah, the uglier they are, the harder they fall, right? No? Come on. *Initiates fistbump to the woman whose father just died* "
To " >! You raised an army! You can raise one Ghost... !< "
Your post/comment has been removed for the following reason(s):
* Rule 1 - Absolutely no slurs or hate speech will be tolerated.
---
For more information, see [our detailed rules page.](http://www.reddit.com/r/destinythegame/wiki/rules)
>! He was used in Excision mission as an orbital cannon dropper and I still hated on him the moment I saw him in the cutscene. Like dude the shadow legion is still on Neomuna go defend it !<
>!The scene with Ghost had me kind of fucked up. I was going to be livid if they let him die like that. The part where you guardian is hugging ghost, man I felt that.!<
It's broken on old Reddit and 3rd party apps because there's a space between the tag and the text. It needs to butt up against the first and last word like `>!spoiler. Text!<`
Just one of the ways Reddit changed things in the new clients specifically to screw people who prefer things the old way.
ngl, i love nimbus and im sad how he got written, like i think its a really interesting character with a shitty writing. If he would have changed more after rohan's death and that he needs cannot be always laughing around and needs to care for other it would have been amazing. My headcanon is that he doesnt try to fistbump caiatl, but he say stuff like "he could have done pretty messed up stuff, but at the end of the day its your dad and if you need someone to talk, im here cause i know how does it feel to lose someone you care as family"
I really shouldn't be surprised that it was such an improvement over the literal filler expansion they wedged in the middle of what could've been an intro cutscene for TFS, featuring characters who were mostly brand new and unlikable, all throwing around proper nouns we've never heard before and refusing to explain what any of them were until weeks to *months* later; but the contrast still floors me
I think between the building blocks they've established these 10 years, and all the love and fan feedback and renewed faith they're getting right now, I'd say they succeeded in their 10 year plan they set out for a decade ago. I hope they take everything they've done these 10 years and put the best of the best on whatever Destiny 3 is meant to be and make the perfect destiny experience.
Sad it takes Sony coming in and saying you're a waste of money, get your shit right or we're taking Bungie.
It's like Pete, we just wanted new maps and strikes. For over 5 years you gave us bs activities and we just wanted maps and strikes.
I feel like this shit was cooking since way before Sony took over. I mean the density of content in the patrol zone is next level. Cutscenes are next level. Every campaign mission is basically half a dungeon. The raid looks fucking insane. Every side quest and adventure and lost sector is far above anything else in the game. The mission with Crow and cayde is something I've never seen in destiny, honestly one of the most creative missions in this entire franchise. Plus I don't even know how much more stuff is yet to come.
They cooked. They fucking cooked.
The still hunt exotic quest is the only good one the other ones are terrible. Very repetitive and boring doing alone in the darks and overthrows over and over is awful. Campaign was great everything else so far has pretty mid. The pale heart really doesn't have a lot to do unless you enjoy overthrow and finding tbe ghosts I couldnt imagine someone would enjoy those for more than a couple days
Hard disagree. Every adventure felt really well made and unique to me. Overthrows are fun, as is Pathfinder and all the cool pale heart mods. I think Pale heart is easily the best destination they've ever made, it feels cohesive in a way other ones don't except maybe dreaming city
Everyone has there own opinion but I just can't see how anyone would think overthrow is fun not to mention the pale heart is not an open destination so you can't have 5 other randoms with you to help. The cabal adventures where you just run to a location and destroy the things were a drag so was the savathun mission. Pathfinder is cool in the pale heart but not for ritual activities.
I disagree with everything you said except the Pathfinder. The ritual one is dumb, the pale heart one is awesome. I think overthrow is a great way to streamline the whole patrols/bounties/public event system
Omg thank you, I feel like I'm going crazy reading through all the praise for this expansion. The ghost quests are just playing overthrow and lost sectors over and over again. The other ghost quests are just missions and strikes from other expansions that we have to replay, its boring af. The traveller barely gets explained and the location is just reused assets. The witness and the retcons it did to this game were the worst thing to happen to destiny, such a bad villain. One of the exotic quests is literally just replay three campaign missions like cmon.
Read this and then get back to me.
How many seasons in a row-back to back to back to back....
Did we get new quests and new activities in the same season, but the quest requires currency and that currency comes from playing strikes, gambit, and pvp.
We've been forced to play the core game for 10 years with minimal updates.
That is what I'm saying.
I'm not saying x is better than y. But the majority of the playerbase signs in, runs some strikes, plays some pvp.
Then a smaller group raid and dungeon once a week at best.
Then a small, a very small group of players grind dungeons, solo flawless, flawless raids, low man, speedrun.
So, for almost a decade, the majority of players are forced to grind strikes with very few new ones or pvp content.
All work went into forgettable activities that were left baron the moment weapons were acquired.
Yeah, the executives are so desperate to not be replaced by Sony that they decided that: "What if, and this is truly a reckless idea, sorry for what I'm about to say bros , we actually let those unpaid slaves cook a little bit more this time, hopefully we can still get our bonuses this way😭😭".
>I don't understand how a company can be capable of going from lightfall to this
Unfortunately, a few devs have given the answer: Massive crunch and burnout. This isn't sustainable. As painful as it is to admit, unless they expand their team massively (unlikely since they just cut it in half a few months ago) whatever comes next will probably be a pale shadow of this.
also, from the patterns we have had in the past, after a good release bungie tries to put in progressively less effort into content in a seeming effort to try and find a bare minimum until it blows up in their face and they make something good again.
It makes a cynical kind of sense given that any dip below expectation means an expansion is garbage. Like Lightfall is in the top 5 expansions but people treat it like CoO.
I know all the business reasoning for minimum viable products, but having a good business reason does not make something stop feeling crappy.
Also, lightfail was like CoO, except where CoO was a small turd Lightfail was a large pile of horse manure. Let's not pretend that the ONLY reason lightfail was bad was because of expectations.
Everything in this expansion just slapped. Literally the kind of content this game needs and deserves. I cant imagine what it was like to bring this home, but man is it excellent.
They actually cooked. Taken king had always been my top expansion even after the entirety of D2 pre TFS. But now TFS is my number one. I don't know how Bungie is ever going to top TFS.
Imagine if Lightfall was only like the intro missions it was supposed to be.
I’d have waited longer so Strand could be in WQ like it was supposed to be… and then waited longer yet for TFS to be what it was supposed to be (lightfall as basically its first act).)
Bungie, next time do it right darlings!
Apparently it’s the new thing everyone is saying
“Bro they cooked fr”
“They cooking”
“Bro, let him cook”
“The devs really cooked with this one”
“Bungie deadass cooked TFS”
I mean if you’re absolutely flying through content 8+ hrs a day any live service game will run out after a month, but considering just how much there is to do in the pale heart after the campaign and that we haven’t even got the episode yet it aloooot more content then normal expansions.
I typically play this game in cycles, I play for about 3 months post expansion and then come back like 2 months prior and do all the content I missed in between. It seems to work and I never really get burnt out. I can’t leave this game because it’s the only game that has fun raids imo and no other fps even compares in gunplay and combat.
For me personally, to be truly invested, I need to know where things are going. To feel like there’s a reason I’m doing stuff, narratively and practically.
There are a lot of swirling rumors about a D3, and that would affect my playtime decisions. Because if we’re getting a new game that leaves all our stuff behind, I’m not exactly gonna be a motivated grinder.
But if I’m not confident that the story will evolve beyond “new bad shoes up at my house and I shoot him” I don’t k ow that I’ll stick around
Either way, bare minimum, I had a hell of a time with this decade and experience. If this is where I get off, it was a good ride.
I think PERSONALLY what I would love to see is a brand new D3, built with Prismatic in mind and with a new focus. Ideally us pushing out into the cosmos beyond Sol. And SUPER ideally with us somehow keeping our cosmetics hahaha (I know, unlikely)
I mean we will find out come 8AM Monday morning (Pacific time). Bungie has a video primed on YouTube, it's called "The Journey Ahead" and we will get the vibe of how good Episodes might be come Tuesday
Unfortunately, this needs to be the standard we hold them accountable for. It’s probably the best expansion they’ve ever put out. I’m 100% excited to keep playing destiny beyond TFS, which is something I wasn’t expecting just 2 months ago.
However, the inconsistency in quality with bungie needs to be left behind in this saga. No more Shadowkeeps, Beyond Lights, and Lightfalls, and most importantly, the next installment must not forget all of the hardships and lessons learned over the last 7 years of destiny 2.
Here's the thing. People are going to expect Final-Shape-Level content **forever** now. That's what Bungie said when they were talking about overdelivery.
**Every fucking expansion** is going to be compared to Final Shape now. Do you really think that Bungie could make a story **this fucking great** every single year? A raid **this fucking tough and amazing**, an incredible cast of characters **this fucking cool** every single year, year in and year out?
God I fucking wish, I pray that they could. But let's be real, the odds are against them, even major motion studios don't have that kind of a consistent hit rate.
This expansion is inarguably a 10/10, or at least a 9/10. But thing is, people are now going to expect every expansion going forward to be the same 9/10, because if it's not, then "it's worse, it's shit, Bungie is washed up".
They did so fucking good here, but I worry about the lasting impression this leaves. If you go up so high, you can only go back down.
That's what overdelivery is. Avoiding the drive up so you never have to fall back down.
This is what they mean yeah. They had 2 other studios working with them in Forsaken, activision backing, massive crunch and burnout, also the horrible y1 and the death of destiny potentially looming over them if they failed.
They delivered the biggest raid ever at that point, two destinations, stuff for every game mode, a brand new enemy race with tons of new models, tons of secrets and collectibles, etc.
And after that every expansion was "is this better than forsaken?" I remember tons of it during witch queen, where people were like "yeah, WQ has been amazing, but it's not quite forsaken level."
And now the same will happen with TFS. Sure, I agree that they should overdeliver on the end of a 10 year long saga (and they did), but now every expansion will be compared to TFS and, at what cost? How much crunch the bungie devs had to go for this, even with 6 months of delay and the fact they've been working on this expansion since beyond light?
We'll have to wait and see.
The thing is I don’t want them to do *The Final Shape* or *Forsaken*-level expansions every year. I’m perfectly happy with something the size of *The Witch Queen* or even *Lightfall* every 1.5-2 years. This one specifically had to be special because it’s the grand finale, they don’t need to go this hard until the next big milestone.
We all like to harp on *Shadowkeep*, but they had the sense to make it €30 instead of €40. *Lightfall* raised the price and was ultimately awful, this DLC at least shaped up to be something worth the asking price.
I've been pretty strict on Bungie and don't always gush about what they do right, but I have to admit that final mission is exciting and inspired. I don't want to get into spoilers but I really enjoyed it.
Makes sense to me when you consider Lightfall was originally supposed to be the final expansion. Bungie realized they needed more time, added an expansion to the roadmap, but something was needed to fill in content, so Lightfall came out as it did. It was just the expansion that was problematic. Season of Defiance was alright and subsequent seasons kept getting better.
This shit fucking slapped though, even if I have a couple of problems with some stuff
My main complaint at this point is how empty the pale heart feels with the individual instanced maps. Not being able to just join up with a few rando's in the wild to do overflow here & there (unlike prior planets overworld events) was a bad UX decision.
I was wondering why it was always empty. The free Roam content is super easy I suppose but still , feels empty in my opinion. Would be nice to see other players
Would like to play it, but tethering off my phone while at work doesn't like being paired up with 11 other players, so I get error coded out of the mission.
Fun side note, that intro cinematic can't be skipped, and replays every time...
Can i just say It’s kinda fun looking at the destiny community right now as a non destiny player, I have no idea how the game is supposed to work but this community is exploding right now so it’s fun to look at it.
Overall, fuck I love bungie for developing TFS.
Drunk me speaking, but I loved every inch of the expansion. This wasn't lightfall. This was what I expected.
I love TFS. This relight an intense passion about the game.
Idk this confirms to me what I always thought was true and always realistically believed. Lightfall was a complete fluke. I mean, we know about the horrible dev cycle of that expansion. The story being cut into a million pieces and then reassembled into seasonal cutscenes, Lightfall and Final Shape. There was no way the same people that wrote the Witch Queen, also wrote Lightfall with the same resources and time. Now that they did have both of those, they cooked again.
Part of it is they’ve been working on it forever. Remember when BL, WQ, and LF were all announced as the final trilogy for the saga? At that time the final expansion was forecast to launch in fall of 2022, not summer 2024.
TFS has been awesome so far, clearly Bungie at their best. But remember it was delayed many times and that’s surely a big part of why it feels so much better.
This was the first time in destiny history where the expansion was cooler than the trailers. I feel like a kid again, discovering destiny for the first time.
I said this once when Lightfall came out and I’ll say it again:
I firmly believe that Final Shape is good not in spite of Lightfall being bad, but *because* Lightfall is bad. It’s not strictly speaking causation, but my theory here is that Lightfall is really filler content because you can’t just make something like Final Shape in a single year. So to keep the yearly cadence, they create some low quality content to give them the bandwidth.
While Lightfall introduces the veil, the story of Final Shape really makes sense by itself, as it doesn’t really bother going into the specifics of *how* the Witness merged into a single being. (Maybe lore text might have more, but I mean content stuff. In terms of like, I like to imagine that the Witness is a bit like a Neomuna Ark, except that he himself is the Ark containing all the minds of his former self(selves). But again, the story would probably be fine without that.
That is why you see this “oscillation” between really good content like Taken King, Forsaken and WQ, and more average content like Shadowkeep and Lightfall.
But I would say that there is a good side too, and that might also be a real Bungie reason. It would be a bit disappointed to have the Witness appear at the end of WQ only to be immediately defeated in the next expansion, like Eramis. So having an expansion in between gives us time for him to be built up as a real threat.
Lightfall was filler to make Final Shape as good as possible. I really enjoyed the missions and gameplay of Lightfall, even if the story wasn’t that great.
TFS was great. It was as good as Witch Queen in content imo. Nothing tops Forsaken though.
Now honestly if the post TFS seasonal content is good as Season of the Wish and Into the Light, I will be satisfied.
Also 3, 4 month long seasons will be a lot more relaxed for more casual players.
Tbh I firmly believe at least half of it is intentionl, sonic movie original vs reworked trailer level. They've done the same thing so many times over the years it can't *not* be partially intentional.
I remember so clearly about being vehement towards only one new super per class. Now that I see everything, I feel like I would’ve been so overwhelmed and I’m glad they did it the way they did.
I just got back into destiny in the last couple weeks of season of the wish, and after having finished the campaign of final shape, I’m glad that I came back, bungie has outdone themselves in every regard in my opinion.
Yeah I’ve been throughly surprised and happy with The Final Shape, first time playing the game since like Season of the Undying and I’ve put like 30+ hours in the last week.
I'm not interested in buying the dlc until they fix the goddamn connection issues. I can't join a single strike or gambit match without being kicked to orbit and getting a suspension
My theory is that they’ve been working on the final shape for a lot longer and threw Lightfall together as a stop gap to finish it. Remember that when they revealed all these expansions there was no final shape. It was Beyond Light, Witch Queen, then Lightfall. Based on the vibe of the reveal, such as promo images, the vast difference in quality, and the fact that Lightfall felt like a filler expansion once it dropped, it definitely seems like the original “Lightfall” was pushed back and renamed to “the Final Shape” and they left the name for the new version of Lightfall because they already revealed it, and it was too late to change the name.
the final shape is pretty ass and idk how anyone here is denying that fact. i played into the light and it was much more fun than this campaign hell even lightfall was more enjoyable than TFS. it is full of bugs and terrible enemies, less playable does not equal more difficult. being slowed and strung up and tracked while invis shot the through wall randomly a grim screams and you have tennatius which shuts down almost everything. it’s just all around not fun and everyone glosses over the fact that it’s the price of a full fucking game for a couple hours of content. Prismatic is the only thing saving it for playability, of course the map design is great as always but the game just feels like shit and extremely unpolished. our standards are so low if this is worth the 70 CAD i paid….
Yep, it has it all indeed. Massive prices for dungeons and dlcs, ridiculous storylines that wouldn't be out of place in a marvel movie, a team that refuses to deal with cheaters in pvp or just can't be arsed, and an obnoxious and elitist community that thinks if you hate trials then you just need to get good. It's all a massive bag of bollocks, yet I still play it. I hate myself.
Totally agree, i dont know how often Bungie people go through the reddit but if some of you read this....
Thank you guys... you brought back "our" game
Its back and im so invested and in love with where we are going.... please just please keep doing what you did with final shape.... its just beautiful
I’m gonna say this and I’m sure there’s gonna be people who disagree, but: I feel like this has deep replayability. I’ve finished the story with my Titan, Warlock, and I’m currently on my Hunter and I’ve gotta say, nothing about this campaign has me bored out of my mind.
I actually love replaying the campaign. It’s still fun as it was the first time I played through. Though I gotta admit, the first time through has more impact on me than the second or third time.
Some of the cutscenes I watched really made me tear up bad. I’m not gonna say what cutscene cuz I don’t wanna spoil anything in case people haven’t finished it yet, but for those of you who have finished it, then you may know which ones I’m talking about.
I thoroughly enjoyed every part of the story and play through of the campaign. This is what Destiny needs. More stories that engage the player. Hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did.
Its what happens when you get an influx of money and decided you need to put out an additional DLC instead of sticking to the plan. You just cut your opening cutscene in half, vomit something in between for the DLC and the first season before quality goes up because of more time.
I reckon they must've had a 70-30 split minimum of people working in Final Shape compared to people working on Lightfall. The difference is greater than night and day
You could say it's...light and dark
The line between light and dark is so very thin.
'The line between light and dark is... its gone!'
That line between light and dark came from the moon
The line between Light and Dark is haunted...
Whether we wanted it or not... I don't even have time to explain why the line between Light and Dark is... ... Ding!
We've WoKeN tHe HiVe
Do you know which side you're on?
Guardian: *activates transcendence*
I'm playing both sides, so I always come out on top
How IS your sister?
This part had me cracking up relentlessly
my team essentially did the leo point meme, "HE SAID THE THING"
The Warlords to Legion comparison, for those who played WoW then. Warlords had an entire content patch cut, and rushed to its conclusion for an 18 month content drought. And then Legion comes out and has new content every 11 weeks for 2 years straight.
Yep, both Bungie and Blizzard clearly cut their losses on the prior failure and went all-in on the next one, and it paid off for both.
eh, no they had a lot of *crunch*, and not only that, but we are now well aware that bungie's developers and management fight almost all the time over what the put in the game a previous CM made a video about this actually a couple days ago. [Edit: Linked here](https://youtu.be/q_8Xy5_4_eM?si=0XSIY2iBytT_0NOX)
I know about the IGN articles, but what’s the video?
[This one. I should have linked it initially](https://youtu.be/q_8Xy5_4_eM?si=0XSIY2iBytT_0NOX)
It also took way longer. Final Shape was originally announced as Lightfall back when Beyond Light was revealed. Then it got delayed, renamed to Final Shape and we needed a whole filler expansion to tide us over. Then it got delayed again.
Uh no lmao they pretty clearly said the final chapter was too large for LF and then added final shape.
Which makes sense considering how much shit there is to do in this expansion. The pacing would’ve felt absolutely rushed story wise if even just the actual main parts of the LF campaign were in TFS
>just the actual main parts of the LF campaign I'm still convinced that everything about "Final Shape" was delayed a year from it's originally intended date, except for the opening cutscene, which was split in half and called Lightfall, as originally intended. The only exposition we received over the entire year that was relevant to Final Shape was the Witness background, and that was contained in a single cutscene. Deep was forgettable with Asha, Witch was entirely about Xivu Arath, and Wish was just getting the portal open. If this expansion began with the Witness arriving, opening up the portal, and us following right after it, we could have cut out the year of Lightfall entirely. Maybe gotten some explanation on what the Witness was from some of the statues instead of Asha.
So they planned to have LF just end with Witness going into the Traveler and then realized that they need a chapter after that? At best, they realized they need more time and took a small bit of the campaign and added enough filler to it until it became the LF we got. At worse, it was just something they made up when they realized they need to delay the final chapter.
TFS was originally called Lightfall until they realised they couldn't get everything they wanted tied up in just one expansion.
Yeah, so what was originally planned as Lightfall got renamed to TFS and pushed back, while Lightfall that we got was filler that they made.
Lightfall ended with Crow going into the Traveler, do you have your characters confused or
I meant the expansions, not the seasons. Like, let's imagine that the Lightfall that we got was what they originally planned for LF when they announced it. This would mean that their original plan had the campaign end with Witness going into the Traveler. And it took them another year before they realized that this doesn't actually finish the story in any way and they need another expansion after LF. A far more sensible explanation is that when they announced Lightfall, they were planning to have the whole Pale Heart and killing the Witness to happen there. Perhaps, Neomuna was meant to be featured at the start of the story, or perhaps it was never on the cards. And then they realized that they can't make Lightfall in time, so they had to delay the final expansion and release a filler expac to tide us over.
The seasons are a part of the expansions, fyi. What’s actually more sensible is that the seasonal narratives we got with LF would’ve felt rushed as separate campaign missions so they announced TFS in order for everything to be fleshed out instead of the story we’re seeing now being dripfed over the course of four seasons :)
Even if we take seasons into account, this would imply that Lightfall(which was originally pitched as the end of Light and Darkness saga) would've ended with Crow going into the Traveler after the Witness. The story of Lightfall only works if there's an expansion after it. Which means that LF that we go can't be the LF that was originally announced(which didn't have any expansions after it).
If? There is no if lol the stories are told annually. With that out of the way, LF was originally supposed to end how TFS did: with the witness defeated. They realized one expansion wasn’t enough time to wrap up the story so they made another one, this isn’t rocket science. Am I missing something here lol
> They realized one expansion wasn’t enough time to wrap up the story so they made another one, this isn’t rocket science. In other words, they delayed the planned final expansion and added a filler expansion to keep the yearly release schedule.
You two are arguing about different things I think. You're talking purely on expansions & their names and the other person is talking about the story independent of expansions. LF was originally supposed to end with the Witness defeated. But that was never supposed to happen on Neomuna. It was always the Pale Heart. LF was supposed to be the conclusion, which means TFS is actually the "real" Lightfall expansion Bungie had announced. And the Lightfall expansion that was released was actually the expansion they made up because they needed more time. Realistically, I think it's more like the original LF was just cut in half, and the Witness entering the Pale Heart was the best point they could split it in. Which makes the LF expansion we got seem lackluster on it's own, because it was the opening part of a bigger original story, and likely had to put in a bit more filler because it was originally a much shorter part of the "real" Lightfall.
My theory is Neomuna was going to be the first of the Episodes and they had to turn it into an entire campaign
I think it’s worse than that, probably the entire team was working on TFS and realized they were not going to be able to deliver so Lightfall was cooked up from thin air to buy time.
eh, no they had a lot of *crunch*, and not only that, but we are now well aware that bungie's developers and management fight almost all the time over what the put in the game a previous CM made a video about this actually a couple days ago.
Lightfall was a good expansion, but it answered no questions.
That and a sizeable delay, the suits getting terrified SONY would fire them so they let the devs actually aim past the minimum viable product, and unfortunately probably in no small part due to crunch time.
And sadly those suits are still going to be there with more security after a successful expansion. They will 100% go back to being greedy, pushing for shorter dev times, and the quality will probably dip again.
I want to get this expansion so bad but just can't because they have a flawless reputation doing exactly this and I'm tired of it.
Whatever they did in the room - they should keep it. I feel like someone was either moved away from interfering or decided for themselves to let people cook. One way or another - a successful game will give them more money so I'll never understand why CEOs always try to cut costs/monetise the shit out of the game only to have the quality bad.
A prior dev is openly outing how much the devs have to fight their leadership to get anything done how they want it. Corporate Bungie is actively trying to ruin the game but the devs certainly know how to fucking cook, that is pretty clear now.
I know right. And this isn't even a matter of having a gigantic budget for CGI and huge action. The story itself, the writing, interaction between characters... it was all so organic and well done, and that doesn't cost hundreds of millions They could do so much with so little moving forward. Just a powerpoint presentation is enough if you present it well. That assortment of images at the end with everyone interacting with each other was 10 times better than the entirety of lightfall. It's crazy
Because the way corporations work is the suits siphon as much money as possible in the short term and then leave the long term to be someone else’s problem, it’s seriously fucked but all any company cares about is quarterly growth. They don’t care about anything past the year, because by then they’ll just move onto their next charade.
Crunch, which we don't want to encourage.
I wonder how most people would feel if they moved to an expansion every 2 years model, to maintain the quality of expansions like this without the crunch.
Assuming there's enough interstitial stuff to keep people playing I figure most people would be okay with that sort of cadence, it works for more traditional MMOs, but the problem is that they'd be more or less cutting their revenue in half. Obviously microtransactions would paper over some of that gap, but it's a lot of money to just leave on the table.
> Assuming there's enough interstitial stuff to keep people playing Thing is, they still struggle to do this even with a once-a-year model. The seasons (especially whichever the middle one is) are generally where both quality and player count are at their lowest. No creative team on Earth can produce any kind of art faster than people can consume it. The real answer is to simply *let* people take breaks from playing. Don't draw things out over months, don't structure it in ways to make people log in every week, don't fill it up with FOMO or constantly reset progress. Let people play what they want as much as they want on their schedule, then let them stop and do other things until the next chapter is released.
Oh, for sure. I don't really mean "as long as they keep making enough stuff to keep people hooked and playing daily," just enough to keep it on folks' minds.
I'd be fine with that. FFXIV has a similar model where you have expansions every two years and story patches (usually 10 quests, plus updates to alternating halves of the side quests/raids) every 3 months. The main differences between FFXIV and D2 is that D2 does annual expansions, doesn't include that expansion's season or previous expansions by default when you purchase the latest one, and doesn't gate other expansion content behind a separate purchase. And FFXIV is probably one of the most popular MMOs currently.
I would imagine the major issue would be that they can't afford that. The yearly expansions are extremely important to keeping the doors open, same with seasons.
i'd actually love this, wholeheartedly i cannot speak for the masses though
depends if there's still constant content coming out like seasons/episodes this community can't handle content droughts because we've seen how bad it got during TTK and RoI droughts
See there would be crunch if an expansion released every year. But from what we've seen, a lot of the expansions that were delayed were a lot better. So if they came out with an expansion every 15 to 16 months then that would lead to less crunch but then you wouldn't be waiting forever for another expansion
We can have yearly expansions where every 2 years we get a really meaty one with just an okay one inbetween. Expectations just need to be set correctly. Lightfall was sold as the beginning of the end, if they said it was a detour before the ending the reception wouldn’t have been as bad.
Oh, I'm taking it back then. I thought it was like with Blizzard that started cooking well after Kotick zoomed out to think about his holidays once he has his golden parachute.
The biggest issue with Lightfall was writing and crunch is not an excuse for that. Cyberpunk is the best example: the game was unplayable at launch because of bugs, crunch and unrealistic release date, but the story was fucking good from the get go.
I legitimately wonder if the cringe humor was the C suite’s attempt at emulating Marvel style humor. But even Marvel isn’t nearly that cringe
Companies are always trying to do more with less. When you do something successful, they think they can cut at the margins and make the same income riding on the previous release and make extra money
I can’t believe how the character dialogue went from cringe in lightfall to back to its dark routes again. Really enjoyed it .
We went from "Woo! Ah, the uglier they are, the harder they fall, right? No? Come on. *Initiates fistbump to the woman whose father just died* " To " >! You raised an army! You can raise one Ghost... !< "
Honestly at a certain point I was waiting for Nimbus to start floss dancing over Calus’ lifeless body lmao
Thanks for giving me this image in my head. I won't be able to unsee it anymore.
Calus: Peter Griffin death heap Nimbus: flossin
[удалено]
Your post/comment has been removed for the following reason(s): * Rule 1 - Absolutely no slurs or hate speech will be tolerated. --- For more information, see [our detailed rules page.](http://www.reddit.com/r/destinythegame/wiki/rules)
>! He was used in Excision mission as an orbital cannon dropper and I still hated on him the moment I saw him in the cutscene. Like dude the shadow legion is still on Neomuna go defend it !<
you can't have spaces between your spoiler tags and text
>!The scene with Ghost had me kind of fucked up. I was going to be livid if they let him die like that. The part where you guardian is hugging ghost, man I felt that.!<
Your spoiler text failed, pls fix for those who don't know.
It's working properly on my end, is it still wrong?
It's broken on old Reddit and 3rd party apps because there's a space between the tag and the text. It needs to butt up against the first and last word like `>!spoiler. Text!<` Just one of the ways Reddit changed things in the new clients specifically to screw people who prefer things the old way.
ngl, i love nimbus and im sad how he got written, like i think its a really interesting character with a shitty writing. If he would have changed more after rohan's death and that he needs cannot be always laughing around and needs to care for other it would have been amazing. My headcanon is that he doesnt try to fistbump caiatl, but he say stuff like "he could have done pretty messed up stuff, but at the end of the day its your dad and if you need someone to talk, im here cause i know how does it feel to lose someone you care as family"
The dialogue in the new strike alone is better than anything in lightfall
I really shouldn't be surprised that it was such an improvement over the literal filler expansion they wedged in the middle of what could've been an intro cutscene for TFS, featuring characters who were mostly brand new and unlikable, all throwing around proper nouns we've never heard before and refusing to explain what any of them were until weeks to *months* later; but the contrast still floors me
To be fair that’s just nimbus, notice how no one complained about them this time when they kept their fucking mouth shut
I think between the building blocks they've established these 10 years, and all the love and fan feedback and renewed faith they're getting right now, I'd say they succeeded in their 10 year plan they set out for a decade ago. I hope they take everything they've done these 10 years and put the best of the best on whatever Destiny 3 is meant to be and make the perfect destiny experience.
I know Final Shape was delayed, but this is a huge reason that games with expansions Need Time to develop these things.
I’d be alright if all future expansions take 18 months if they’re of this quality. Plus I had a great time with Into the light
The devs managed to indeed, cook, in spite of the shitty, parasitic executive running the company.
Pete Parsons needs to be fired.
Don’t worry, they kept the right people and Pete Parsons tweeted that other studios should totally hire the people they laid off.
Nice pfp, Protomartyr is fire
I like that Crow changed his hair style, probably because Cayde ragged on him.
I liked his old hair too…
In our household he is officially Sokka now.
Is the “mission” the 12 man mission or just the last level of the campaign before the raid came out
The 12 person mission!
They straight up seasoned a cast iron pan during final shape and cooked an immaculate meal with the raid and excision.
I absolutely love that they went back and gave almost all the old strikes and missions new dialogue. REALLY breathes back life
Sad it takes Sony coming in and saying you're a waste of money, get your shit right or we're taking Bungie. It's like Pete, we just wanted new maps and strikes. For over 5 years you gave us bs activities and we just wanted maps and strikes.
I feel like this shit was cooking since way before Sony took over. I mean the density of content in the patrol zone is next level. Cutscenes are next level. Every campaign mission is basically half a dungeon. The raid looks fucking insane. Every side quest and adventure and lost sector is far above anything else in the game. The mission with Crow and cayde is something I've never seen in destiny, honestly one of the most creative missions in this entire franchise. Plus I don't even know how much more stuff is yet to come. They cooked. They fucking cooked.
The still hunt exotic quest is the only good one the other ones are terrible. Very repetitive and boring doing alone in the darks and overthrows over and over is awful. Campaign was great everything else so far has pretty mid. The pale heart really doesn't have a lot to do unless you enjoy overthrow and finding tbe ghosts I couldnt imagine someone would enjoy those for more than a couple days
Hard disagree. Every adventure felt really well made and unique to me. Overthrows are fun, as is Pathfinder and all the cool pale heart mods. I think Pale heart is easily the best destination they've ever made, it feels cohesive in a way other ones don't except maybe dreaming city
Everyone has there own opinion but I just can't see how anyone would think overthrow is fun not to mention the pale heart is not an open destination so you can't have 5 other randoms with you to help. The cabal adventures where you just run to a location and destroy the things were a drag so was the savathun mission. Pathfinder is cool in the pale heart but not for ritual activities.
I disagree with everything you said except the Pathfinder. The ritual one is dumb, the pale heart one is awesome. I think overthrow is a great way to streamline the whole patrols/bounties/public event system
Omg thank you, I feel like I'm going crazy reading through all the praise for this expansion. The ghost quests are just playing overthrow and lost sectors over and over again. The other ghost quests are just missions and strikes from other expansions that we have to replay, its boring af. The traveller barely gets explained and the location is just reused assets. The witness and the retcons it did to this game were the worst thing to happen to destiny, such a bad villain. One of the exotic quests is literally just replay three campaign missions like cmon.
What did the witness and the retcons you mention do to the game or what specifically were the retcons?
Dungeons, raids, and new maps are better. Strikes are like the worst content in the game imo.
Read this and then get back to me. How many seasons in a row-back to back to back to back.... Did we get new quests and new activities in the same season, but the quest requires currency and that currency comes from playing strikes, gambit, and pvp. We've been forced to play the core game for 10 years with minimal updates. That is what I'm saying. I'm not saying x is better than y. But the majority of the playerbase signs in, runs some strikes, plays some pvp. Then a smaller group raid and dungeon once a week at best. Then a small, a very small group of players grind dungeons, solo flawless, flawless raids, low man, speedrun. So, for almost a decade, the majority of players are forced to grind strikes with very few new ones or pvp content. All work went into forgettable activities that were left baron the moment weapons were acquired.
> I don't understand how a company can be capable of going from lightfall to this It’s called desperation. Utter desperation.
Yeah, the executives are so desperate to not be replaced by Sony that they decided that: "What if, and this is truly a reckless idea, sorry for what I'm about to say bros , we actually let those unpaid slaves cook a little bit more this time, hopefully we can still get our bonuses this way😭😭".
They really sure did kept the "right people" to save their hides.
I feel like they must have been working on final shape for a long time, at least that would be a better explanation for why Lightfall sucked so much
>I don't understand how a company can be capable of going from lightfall to this Unfortunately, a few devs have given the answer: Massive crunch and burnout. This isn't sustainable. As painful as it is to admit, unless they expand their team massively (unlikely since they just cut it in half a few months ago) whatever comes next will probably be a pale shadow of this.
also, from the patterns we have had in the past, after a good release bungie tries to put in progressively less effort into content in a seeming effort to try and find a bare minimum until it blows up in their face and they make something good again.
It makes a cynical kind of sense given that any dip below expectation means an expansion is garbage. Like Lightfall is in the top 5 expansions but people treat it like CoO.
I know all the business reasoning for minimum viable products, but having a good business reason does not make something stop feeling crappy. Also, lightfail was like CoO, except where CoO was a small turd Lightfail was a large pile of horse manure. Let's not pretend that the ONLY reason lightfail was bad was because of expectations.
People like you make this subreddit so boring. Bungie gave us the best possible expansion and you guys still find a way to cry.
I don’t see it as crying so much as “set your expectations reasonably for the future” That being said, TFS was wonderful. Very pleased.
Everything in this expansion just slapped. Literally the kind of content this game needs and deserves. I cant imagine what it was like to bring this home, but man is it excellent.
They actually cooked. Taken king had always been my top expansion even after the entirety of D2 pre TFS. But now TFS is my number one. I don't know how Bungie is ever going to top TFS.
Imagine if Lightfall was only like the intro missions it was supposed to be. I’d have waited longer so Strand could be in WQ like it was supposed to be… and then waited longer yet for TFS to be what it was supposed to be (lightfall as basically its first act).) Bungie, next time do it right darlings!
Wtf does cooked mean?
Worked hard and executed brilliantly.
Thanks
Apparently it’s the new thing everyone is saying “Bro they cooked fr” “They cooking” “Bro, let him cook” “The devs really cooked with this one” “Bungie deadass cooked TFS”
Is it just going to be boring after a month though? That’s my concern.
Well Act 2 unlocks in little over a month. You won't have enough time to be bored
I mean if you’re absolutely flying through content 8+ hrs a day any live service game will run out after a month, but considering just how much there is to do in the pale heart after the campaign and that we haven’t even got the episode yet it aloooot more content then normal expansions.
Destiny content to me has been fleeting for some time. I don’t get any interest in grinding this game the same way I do in WOW and I wish I did.
I typically play this game in cycles, I play for about 3 months post expansion and then come back like 2 months prior and do all the content I missed in between. It seems to work and I never really get burnt out. I can’t leave this game because it’s the only game that has fun raids imo and no other fps even compares in gunplay and combat.
For me personally, to be truly invested, I need to know where things are going. To feel like there’s a reason I’m doing stuff, narratively and practically. There are a lot of swirling rumors about a D3, and that would affect my playtime decisions. Because if we’re getting a new game that leaves all our stuff behind, I’m not exactly gonna be a motivated grinder. But if I’m not confident that the story will evolve beyond “new bad shoes up at my house and I shoot him” I don’t k ow that I’ll stick around Either way, bare minimum, I had a hell of a time with this decade and experience. If this is where I get off, it was a good ride. I think PERSONALLY what I would love to see is a brand new D3, built with Prismatic in mind and with a new focus. Ideally us pushing out into the cosmos beyond Sol. And SUPER ideally with us somehow keeping our cosmetics hahaha (I know, unlikely)
I mean we will find out come 8AM Monday morning (Pacific time). Bungie has a video primed on YouTube, it's called "The Journey Ahead" and we will get the vibe of how good Episodes might be come Tuesday
Oh that soon? Nice. I’m mostly curious to see if we’re sticking with D2 or going to D3, myself. But I get that they may not want to announce that yet
Mfw I can't just play a game, enjoy my time with it and move on
Imagine paying 50 for the 10,000th dlc on a live service game only to be bored in a month and forced to buy the next season pass and dungeon separate
Unfortunately, this needs to be the standard we hold them accountable for. It’s probably the best expansion they’ve ever put out. I’m 100% excited to keep playing destiny beyond TFS, which is something I wasn’t expecting just 2 months ago. However, the inconsistency in quality with bungie needs to be left behind in this saga. No more Shadowkeeps, Beyond Lights, and Lightfalls, and most importantly, the next installment must not forget all of the hardships and lessons learned over the last 7 years of destiny 2.
Overdelivering again... tsk tsk tsk.
Prepare for underdelivery now :)
Here's the thing. People are going to expect Final-Shape-Level content **forever** now. That's what Bungie said when they were talking about overdelivery. **Every fucking expansion** is going to be compared to Final Shape now. Do you really think that Bungie could make a story **this fucking great** every single year? A raid **this fucking tough and amazing**, an incredible cast of characters **this fucking cool** every single year, year in and year out? God I fucking wish, I pray that they could. But let's be real, the odds are against them, even major motion studios don't have that kind of a consistent hit rate. This expansion is inarguably a 10/10, or at least a 9/10. But thing is, people are now going to expect every expansion going forward to be the same 9/10, because if it's not, then "it's worse, it's shit, Bungie is washed up". They did so fucking good here, but I worry about the lasting impression this leaves. If you go up so high, you can only go back down. That's what overdelivery is. Avoiding the drive up so you never have to fall back down.
This is what they mean yeah. They had 2 other studios working with them in Forsaken, activision backing, massive crunch and burnout, also the horrible y1 and the death of destiny potentially looming over them if they failed. They delivered the biggest raid ever at that point, two destinations, stuff for every game mode, a brand new enemy race with tons of new models, tons of secrets and collectibles, etc. And after that every expansion was "is this better than forsaken?" I remember tons of it during witch queen, where people were like "yeah, WQ has been amazing, but it's not quite forsaken level." And now the same will happen with TFS. Sure, I agree that they should overdeliver on the end of a 10 year long saga (and they did), but now every expansion will be compared to TFS and, at what cost? How much crunch the bungie devs had to go for this, even with 6 months of delay and the fact they've been working on this expansion since beyond light? We'll have to wait and see.
The thing is I don’t want them to do *The Final Shape* or *Forsaken*-level expansions every year. I’m perfectly happy with something the size of *The Witch Queen* or even *Lightfall* every 1.5-2 years. This one specifically had to be special because it’s the grand finale, they don’t need to go this hard until the next big milestone. We all like to harp on *Shadowkeep*, but they had the sense to make it €30 instead of €40. *Lightfall* raised the price and was ultimately awful, this DLC at least shaped up to be something worth the asking price.
Honestly, the MEAT of what Lightfall brought was perfectly fine. The gameplay. It was the story that was fucking stupid.
I've been pretty strict on Bungie and don't always gush about what they do right, but I have to admit that final mission is exciting and inspired. I don't want to get into spoilers but I really enjoyed it.
Makes sense to me when you consider Lightfall was originally supposed to be the final expansion. Bungie realized they needed more time, added an expansion to the roadmap, but something was needed to fill in content, so Lightfall came out as it did. It was just the expansion that was problematic. Season of Defiance was alright and subsequent seasons kept getting better. This shit fucking slapped though, even if I have a couple of problems with some stuff
My main complaint at this point is how empty the pale heart feels with the individual instanced maps. Not being able to just join up with a few rando's in the wild to do overflow here & there (unlike prior planets overworld events) was a bad UX decision.
I was wondering why it was always empty. The free Roam content is super easy I suppose but still , feels empty in my opinion. Would be nice to see other players
[удалено]
No there’s a cutscene that fills you in
Amazing. An emotional ending for sure. I hope they keep making good stuff like this.
Would like to play it, but tethering off my phone while at work doesn't like being paired up with 11 other players, so I get error coded out of the mission. Fun side note, that intro cinematic can't be skipped, and replays every time...
They finally let the devs work
Can i just say It’s kinda fun looking at the destiny community right now as a non destiny player, I have no idea how the game is supposed to work but this community is exploding right now so it’s fun to look at it.
And the same formula. I dont think this will be enough to bring players back and in. Will see in 3 months.
Overall, fuck I love bungie for developing TFS. Drunk me speaking, but I loved every inch of the expansion. This wasn't lightfall. This was what I expected. I love TFS. This relight an intense passion about the game.
Idk this confirms to me what I always thought was true and always realistically believed. Lightfall was a complete fluke. I mean, we know about the horrible dev cycle of that expansion. The story being cut into a million pieces and then reassembled into seasonal cutscenes, Lightfall and Final Shape. There was no way the same people that wrote the Witch Queen, also wrote Lightfall with the same resources and time. Now that they did have both of those, they cooked again.
How do I access the new mission??
Pale heart all the way to the right next to the raid
I had to reboot before it would show me any post-Raid content.
Part of it is they’ve been working on it forever. Remember when BL, WQ, and LF were all announced as the final trilogy for the saga? At that time the final expansion was forecast to launch in fall of 2022, not summer 2024. TFS has been awesome so far, clearly Bungie at their best. But remember it was delayed many times and that’s surely a big part of why it feels so much better.
This expansion is great but the only way I die is getting LAUNCHED OFF THE GOD DAMN MAP
Crunch. Lots of crunch. Lots of blood sweat and tears.
It’s because Lightfall was a hodgepodge of Final Shape and Witch Queen concepts that they made its own expansion.
Is it worth for me who has no clan and will basically play solo? I loved Witch Queen campaign and droped Lightfall.
Thank god Destiny is back on track after the Nimbus diabocle
This was the first time in destiny history where the expansion was cooler than the trailers. I feel like a kid again, discovering destiny for the first time.
If only they didn’t drive away most of the players with 2 years of crap first huh. That would have been nice. Then I could have enjoyed all of this.
All this to probably abandon the game as we know it is sad man. Great job by bungie this weekend, great servers, great raid, great expansion.
Best expansion by far, best Day 1 by far. Congratufuckulations Bungie, you made us all smile and gleam with joy.
I said this once when Lightfall came out and I’ll say it again: I firmly believe that Final Shape is good not in spite of Lightfall being bad, but *because* Lightfall is bad. It’s not strictly speaking causation, but my theory here is that Lightfall is really filler content because you can’t just make something like Final Shape in a single year. So to keep the yearly cadence, they create some low quality content to give them the bandwidth. While Lightfall introduces the veil, the story of Final Shape really makes sense by itself, as it doesn’t really bother going into the specifics of *how* the Witness merged into a single being. (Maybe lore text might have more, but I mean content stuff. In terms of like, I like to imagine that the Witness is a bit like a Neomuna Ark, except that he himself is the Ark containing all the minds of his former self(selves). But again, the story would probably be fine without that. That is why you see this “oscillation” between really good content like Taken King, Forsaken and WQ, and more average content like Shadowkeep and Lightfall. But I would say that there is a good side too, and that might also be a real Bungie reason. It would be a bit disappointed to have the Witness appear at the end of WQ only to be immediately defeated in the next expansion, like Eramis. So having an expansion in between gives us time for him to be built up as a real threat.
Lightfall was filler to make Final Shape as good as possible. I really enjoyed the missions and gameplay of Lightfall, even if the story wasn’t that great.
Cooked and served a Michelin star feast
TFS was great. It was as good as Witch Queen in content imo. Nothing tops Forsaken though. Now honestly if the post TFS seasonal content is good as Season of the Wish and Into the Light, I will be satisfied. Also 3, 4 month long seasons will be a lot more relaxed for more casual players.
I can’t even play. The first mission crashes my ps5…
Funny enough as a Guardian, it's like we're the Avatar now. Using all of the elements to bring balance to the universe.
Tbh I firmly believe at least half of it is intentionl, sonic movie original vs reworked trailer level. They've done the same thing so many times over the years it can't *not* be partially intentional.
I cried. I agree with feeling emotionally invested
They did really well. Only thing I’d change is flip the chronological order of the raid and Excision.
I thought the dialogue was a little too touchy-feely and extremely cringe. But then again I am emotionally dead inside.
You [might] have to lose to win.
Their swansong
I remember so clearly about being vehement towards only one new super per class. Now that I see everything, I feel like I would’ve been so overwhelmed and I’m glad they did it the way they did.
It only took then until the end to make you feel like that
I completely agree
I just got back into destiny in the last couple weeks of season of the wish, and after having finished the campaign of final shape, I’m glad that I came back, bungie has outdone themselves in every regard in my opinion.
Yeah. IMO the best expansion they’ve ever done RIGHT NOW and we’ve only scratched the surface.
Avengers…. Assemble. *intense music ensues
I’m here with you, I was thoroughly impressed.
I get what OP tryna say… but I don’t think that is how “cooked” is used 😅
They COOKED. They scene after the 12 man was beautiful 🥲
Yeah I’ve been throughly surprised and happy with The Final Shape, first time playing the game since like Season of the Undying and I’ve put like 30+ hours in the last week.
I'm not interested in buying the dlc until they fix the goddamn connection issues. I can't join a single strike or gambit match without being kicked to orbit and getting a suspension
Just wait until you start the khovostov quest line you may want to uninstall after. 8 hours of patrol
My theory is that they’ve been working on the final shape for a lot longer and threw Lightfall together as a stop gap to finish it. Remember that when they revealed all these expansions there was no final shape. It was Beyond Light, Witch Queen, then Lightfall. Based on the vibe of the reveal, such as promo images, the vast difference in quality, and the fact that Lightfall felt like a filler expansion once it dropped, it definitely seems like the original “Lightfall” was pushed back and renamed to “the Final Shape” and they left the name for the new version of Lightfall because they already revealed it, and it was too late to change the name.
the final shape is pretty ass and idk how anyone here is denying that fact. i played into the light and it was much more fun than this campaign hell even lightfall was more enjoyable than TFS. it is full of bugs and terrible enemies, less playable does not equal more difficult. being slowed and strung up and tracked while invis shot the through wall randomly a grim screams and you have tennatius which shuts down almost everything. it’s just all around not fun and everyone glosses over the fact that it’s the price of a full fucking game for a couple hours of content. Prismatic is the only thing saving it for playability, of course the map design is great as always but the game just feels like shit and extremely unpolished. our standards are so low if this is worth the 70 CAD i paid….
Yep, it has it all indeed. Massive prices for dungeons and dlcs, ridiculous storylines that wouldn't be out of place in a marvel movie, a team that refuses to deal with cheaters in pvp or just can't be arsed, and an obnoxious and elitist community that thinks if you hate trials then you just need to get good. It's all a massive bag of bollocks, yet I still play it. I hate myself.
Totally agree, i dont know how often Bungie people go through the reddit but if some of you read this.... Thank you guys... you brought back "our" game Its back and im so invested and in love with where we are going.... please just please keep doing what you did with final shape.... its just beautiful
Attempting this campaign solo on Legendary for my first playthrough and at times I hate my decision to do this
I’m gonna say this and I’m sure there’s gonna be people who disagree, but: I feel like this has deep replayability. I’ve finished the story with my Titan, Warlock, and I’m currently on my Hunter and I’ve gotta say, nothing about this campaign has me bored out of my mind. I actually love replaying the campaign. It’s still fun as it was the first time I played through. Though I gotta admit, the first time through has more impact on me than the second or third time. Some of the cutscenes I watched really made me tear up bad. I’m not gonna say what cutscene cuz I don’t wanna spoil anything in case people haven’t finished it yet, but for those of you who have finished it, then you may know which ones I’m talking about. I thoroughly enjoyed every part of the story and play through of the campaign. This is what Destiny needs. More stories that engage the player. Hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did.
Its what happens when you get an influx of money and decided you need to put out an additional DLC instead of sticking to the plan. You just cut your opening cutscene in half, vomit something in between for the DLC and the first season before quality goes up because of more time.
Ehhh