For real! That was the scale I was expecting throughout the course of the campaign. Obviously it hit that in certain points of the campaign but from a “moment” perspective that was the highlight and what I wished more of the campaign had.
The issue with Lightfall is that the majority of the story will be coming during the seasons... this is not what was really advertised and I think people just feel played to spend more money. This was the 'beginning of the end' but this only happened at the end of the lightfall story. We know nothing more about the Witness than we did at the start.
If Bungie gave us Strand from the start this would have been a FAR better campaign, always looking for new ways to use it. They could have made more encounters where we have the freedom and choice to fight how we liked.
Must also say that Destiny suffers from WoW-desease... they are a victim of their own success and the community will only be satisfied if new content is as good or better than pervious content. Mainly due to how much people feel invested in the franchise.
Not only that but seasonal content gets vaulted, so anyone who plays after all the seasonal stuff, or doesn't get any of the season passes this time around, is going to be missing out on very important lore. They should've just included it in the campaign.
I honestly dont think bungie has an insane twist or anything lined up for the upcoming seasons, ill go ahead and assume tfs isn't going to be anything too
@@laurenwoods4199 omg so true! I will say, this season is one of the best Bungie has ever made... it was a mistake not including it inside the main expansion.
I wonder what the difference in reception to the Lightfall story would be if the characters therein shared our level of ignorance and curiosity as to what the Veil is. Something small, like Osiris asking Rohan what it is and Rohan responding that all records were mysteriously expunged. Something that allows us to hang on to narrative threads like "the Veil is paracausal in nature" with anticipation and intrigue instead of disappointment. I think the characters' perceptions of the Veil set an expectation that the player would come to understand it as they do. We, as the community, see the discrepancy as the story not explaining what the Veil is but I think it is far more likely that the discrepancy is that the characters act like they know what the Veil is when they're not supposed to. In this explanation, the quest coming in Season of the Deep makes sense for it to be there instead of part of Lightfall.
I think that is the reason nobody really questioned that the black heart remained a mystery for such a long while even though it had a similar story to Lightfall where we had to chase after it and interact(actually destroy, but still) with it as our mission. The only difference was the fact that nobody in game knew what it was either, both them and we, the players, only knew that it had to be destroyed. So maybe you're right. If the other characters didn't really know what the Veil was either, maybe the story could've had a way better reception.
it would be still horrible. the veil isn't the end all be all centerpiece of issue with Lightfall. LF is the penultimate major chapter of this 10 year saga - it should have been a top of the crescendo, climactic high point, where the main villain took center stage, we dealt with them directly, all characters had a part to play and develop (and maybe some die), and our Guardian had dialogue and challenge with what is pretty much the most powerful being in the universe of the game - it shoulda been big, and we shoulda gotten crushed, our asses whooped, and it would set up everything we would need to do to eventually win in The Final Shape any good media - show, movie, game - sets up the final battle (ie in this case The Final Shape) with high stakes and lots of meaning - no matter if we knew what the Veil was, LF failed to do this massively
@@4newestaccoun It failed because there were too many inconsistencies that throw you out of the story. @Viperidae IV had a very good point in that the characters acted like they knew what it was, but didn't (and couldn't!) actually know. The cut scene with the space battle starts the campaign out, then at the end of the campaign, you have the SAME cutscene continue. It's _obviously_ the same cutscene and there's no explanation for why the entire campaign took only a few minutes AT MOST. It's inconsistencies like this that kick you out of immersion and leave you with the feeling that it was strung together by several teams that didn't bother to talk to each other so you have a dozen versions of the script and none of them quite match. Bungie put a lot of effort into it, but they should have brought in someone who hadn't been buried in the story for months on end to look at it from a story standpoint. Writers give their work to beta readers for that very reason. Not to look for the grammar or spelling errors, but to find the story faults & inconsistencies, and give feedback about what works and what doesn't. Bungie needs the equivalent of beta readers. Not to test for errors or check the lore, but to review the story.
@KeyClavis It's so odd to me that so many people claim they're the same cutscene. The shot composition in them is quite different. Plus, the Vanguard is on the Helm, a command vessel, which got locked down because of the resonance pulse, which also took out our entire fleet. They had almost no option to stay there and wait it out, especially when a whole fireteam of guardians got effectively cheese-wired.
Something that really rubbed me the wrong way was that moment where ghost was like 'I'm confused about what the CloudArk is' and Nimbus was like 'glad you asked, the CloudArk is x, y and z' amidst not doing the same thing for the Veil.
I don't think the neomuni really understand what the veil is either. They know it powers their entire city and the cloudark, it's life support for their entire population, hence why it's so important to them. But they don't know its true nature any more than us.
The veil seems to connect souls/consciousness. Including the Witness which is why we see the Ghost connecting many times across the series to the Witness since arrivals
Its probably like a more advanced modern day internet except it can have peoples consciousness and is connected to their infrastructure (security systems and whatnot)
The approach of adding new quests in later seasons that expand on the story of the base campaign of Lightfall is equivalent to buying and reading a new book, realizing there are chapters missing that contain context crucial to understanding the grander narrative, and then the bookstore shipped those chapters to you over the course of the next year.
And the sun setting them is the equivalent of just not allowing the new or returning customers to have access to chapters that came out anytime in the last 9 months
No, it's really not. It's more equivalent to a series like The Expanse releasing novellas to shed extra light on things that are relevant but not essential to the main narrative. Destiny has ALWAYS delivered narrative in this way, that's WHY we have lore in the first place for people like Byf to build themselves a base of followers
@@dmc1288 fr. I'm not sure what parallel universe these people have come from where they're expecting a coherent narrative to be delivered in a good way from Bungie. Even WQ (the best story in their opinion) is held up by a lore book you can only read online and a whole prior season that is no longer in the game.
@@underscore_5450 right? For me, I can't believe the uproar about not having the veil immediately and completely explained when it's been eight years and we still don't even know what the Traveller is 😂😂
Two things. First, thank you Byf for being a voice of reason, compromise, and hope. You're a lot more than just Lore Daddy, you're one of the best and most mature voices in any fandom I've been in. Second: I would really love, at some point, to learn about the process of the narrative development for Lightfall. I really don't think that what we got was the result of the team not caring enough, or not wanting it badly enough, or anything like that. I suspect that they ran out of something: time, or money, or personnel. Somewhere, I think, there was a fumble, and what we got with Lightfall was the best recovery the team could manage following that fumble. I think this partly because I choose to be charitable, but partly because, just like with the D1 vanilla game, there are moments of genius and glory in Lightfall's campaign that don't feel accidental. My hope is that, like D1 vanilla, and all the other examples Byf mentioned of the narrative team not living up to expectations, those moments of greatness will stick with some new players, and maybe they don't really GET what's going on right now or why any of it matters... but they still *want* to find out. That we didn't lose them all. Because this really is a fun game, with a good story, and I think there's enough of that DNA, even in Lightfall, that some people can sense it.
This has got to the best way to put what happened with Lightfall. While playing the game you can see where they put in the work and effort but there are other moments where it just kind of... falls short. The mechanics and new subclass are very enjoyable but when it comes to the story its like someone poked a bunch of holes in a water balloon and now everything is leaking out. Like you said, it seems as if this is the result of a scrambled recovery effort. I really do hope we get to see what really happened behind the scenes when it comes to Lightfall's story development
100% agree. Ironically the Destiny community is a delicately balance dichotomy as much as any of those in the game itself: dark vs light, sword logic vs bomb logic, Asher Mir vs CABAL AGAIN!? - There's the positive half that accept what we get and attempt to justify any disapointments, and there's the rabid sweatbags who flip tables at any minor inconvenience. You see it with LFG too, groups that will happily handhold you through a raid you've not done before, no matter how many times you fail to grasp the mechanic and get wipe, then there's the groups that will kick you if you don't have exactly the right loadouts.
I don't expect we'll get a full explanation of what went wrong with the time line, but seems that strand should have been in witch queen. Witch Queen was pushed back and eventually came without strand, so maybe that was the main issue and squeezing that into lightfall messed with everything else, but as you say there's probably some corporate bullshit going on too and lead to some sort of issue with money/personnel/time that they're inlikely to want to reveal
@@JohnKerans Something that bugs me about the focus on Strand in Lightfall's campaign (tbc, I love the subclass itself) is that even right down to the color palette, it FEELS like Witch Queen, and so the Strand focus felt like we were having the expansion campaign that we *already played* overshadowing the expansion that we were hoping to get. So I think you're spot-on with drawing that connection (ironically, because, you know... Strand :D )
Marco made a great video expanding on this, theorising that Lightfall was made within one year which if true it explains a lot of the big issues with Lightfall
I feel that for stuff regarding the Veil and the CloudArk, we should have had a Lightfall's version of "Altar of Reflection" interludes. These interludes being the Vex attempting to breach the CloudArk and we get data containing information on either or both. Smaller pieces that add up over time that Osiris, Rohan, or Nimbus elaborate on during or after.
I love this idea. It could even have updated dialogue after certain post-campaign quests were completed, or the raid, or even seasons as the year progresses.
@@yamz1156 Honestly. I'm so pissed there is no solo activity for ron. As a solo who has never done a raid, it felt so good to get a taste of what the raid looked like and how it played with my own character instead of watching a yt video of someone else.
Whatever Bungie's cooking better smack harder than Nezzy's scythe and Rhulk's legs. But no matter how good the future quests are, the thought that it should've been at least a bit explained in Lightfall will be burning in the back of my mind.
Personally i think the final shape is gonna flop. There is so much they are gonna have pull out of their a$$ to make all of it fit in the narrative. And, if im being honest, the expansion is probably gonna be the same size as lightfall with the same cookie cutter sized missions and a 4 encounter raid. There is no way they can wrap up the story in 9 missions.
I spent a lot of time after Lightfall finding myself comparing the campaign not to The Witch Queen, but Season of the Seraph. To me, Lightfall felt more like a season crushed into a story campaign over anything else, and it felt like it needed way more time to tell the story it wanted to. It's such a wildly different experience from Witch Queen or The Red War in regards to pacing and how they stood out as standalone campaigns; and as I struggle to understand why, I found myself focusing more on what Lightfall felt like than what it didn't. Season of the Seraph did a really good job of (re)introducing me to Rasputin, making me care about him and Ana over several weeks as he came into his own, before violently ripping him away in an extremely emotional finale. Rohan, comparatively, did not get that luxury, and so his sacrifice didn't hit with nearly as much impact as it would have if we'd had multiple weeks to actually be more thoroughly acquainted with him. Similarly, Osiris getting more time to struggle through his arc and giving essentially a "season of the Veil" would have also felt a lot more organic. Having two older characters facing their last life, one by choice, the other not, coming to terms with that finality felt like it would've been a much better way to flesh out their respective arcs as well, not to mention giving Nimbus more time to struggle with the idea of coming into their own and learning to say goodbye to their mentor over time. I feel the focus on Strand took away from a lot of what Lightfall wanted to be, and from what I've heard, Strand wasn't supposed to even happen during Lightfall, which makes a lot of sense in retrospect. It feels like a lot of things ended up shuffled around and that was what really made it suffer in the end. Having worked on multiple game titles myself, have witnessed firsthand what production hell can look like, so it's easier to spot it through the mess, especially when those overhauls echo throughout the entirety of a project.
I would have loved a dialogue or one of those black-and-white cutscenes that just explained we didn't know what the veil is or does but that it was something the Witness needed - it felt like everyone else knew what it was except us, some acknowledgement would have gone a long way
Yes, this exactly this. Just the understanding that we didn't know exactly why it was important or how we could use it but that savathun hid it and the witness needed it. Us trying to figure out do we: a) activate it to stop the next collapse, b) destroy it prevent the witness from using it, c) keep the witness from destroying it. Just that question being answered over the campaign the witness needs to use it so that's what we have to stop. And then after explaining how you can use the veil and us failing to stop the witness ghost backup plan then we can be left with the cliffhanger of what the witness did after linking to the traveler. We know you can link yourself to the traveler with the veil and a bit about how but then we can be left with the cliffhanger of what happened to the traveler. If they explain clearly that the traveler is "dissected" and silent, maybe even dead and that this portal is impossible for anything to pass through and we don't even know what dimension it leads to then we can begin figureing that out over the year. What we got instead when they try to make a mystery out of it: Where have the witness gone? Duh, inside the traveler we'll just follow through the portal. What happened to the traveler? it is still there, we still have the light, it is fine.
At the very least, the story should have confirmed what the Veil is, whether or not it actually is the Traveler’s “pale heart”; we can still get the mystery of figuring out what it does throughout the year.
the biggest problem is that the story is told like we know what the veil and the radial mast are and what they do, I have no problem figuring these things out, but I feel like I should already know it
Well said and articulated! My favorite moment was Caiatl's words to her father at the end of the campaign it felt very meaningful and emotionally packed. My main problems with the campaign were the big lore contradictions like when we hesitated to shoot our ghost when it was already established we have to crush them with our hands due to the paracausality to actually kill them so that didn't make sense.
That's not true. Ghosts have been killed by everything from blades to airstrikes. Its explained that you either need overwhelming firepower or to be paracausal to kill them, which we are. So shooting Ghost would've killed him
@@nightgirlgaming1985 yeah at this point the implications behind us grabbing and smashing the ghost is probably more to stop them from getting away immediately like Imaru and Alak-hul's ghost both did
For sure, the narrative is definitely the hardest part. The post-campaign meet up with Zavala and Ikora were just bewildering. I actually spend like half an hour making sure I didn't miss a campaign or cutscene, because what they were saying made no sense. I'm still deeply confused, and I'm not actually that excited for the monologuing that's going to try to address this stuff.
Yeah, they both said that the Traveler is gone and talk like it's died even though it's still there, just with a mysterious portal carved into it, so we really don't understand its status at all.
@@internisus The only thing we have for clues is the prophecy wall from Vow of the Disciple stating how the Witness will commune with the Traveler and "drink its Light"
I was just about to type this same comment. To me, the traveler is the big white sphere that powers our ghosts and powers of the light, and both the physical sphere and our powers remain. So what do they mean that it's gone? The dialogue feels like it belongs in a completely different context, or Zavala and Ikora know something we don't.
I found their facial animations to be hilarious. Zavala was all "kiss your loved ones... cos we in the shit now, son" (direct quote) whilst giving off the goofiest, coyest smile.
I think I’m mostly bummed about Osiris. I wish they focused him being upset that he can’t go on the frontlines anymore and has to rely on others. It could have been a great moment for Rohan to teach Osiris that he has leadership and experience, that he doesn’t need to be on the frontlines to contribute. Rohan could have told Osiris that it is okay to rely on others, just as they have to with Nimbus. There could have been a great bonding moment with Osiris and Rohan talking about how they both only have one life left, reflecting on what their legacy will be. Nimbus and our guardian could have had a moment talking about how all Nimbus wants to do is live up to Rohans example, but they are scared because of the responsibility put upon them. Which could be why Nimbus jokes they way they do. It wouldn’t make it any less cringy, but I think it would have been more bearable with that context. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing dialogue for all of that for fun, because I enjoy writing. Edit: Before Lightfall even came out, I was predicting that Osiris would pursue becoming a Cloudstrider so he could “contribute more”, but is either turned down or chooses not to after learning that he doesn’t have to have the Light to be helpful.
Nimbus should have died, not Rohan. Would have absolutely subverted our expectations and made for a much more interesting narrative considering Rohan is nearing the 10 year limit of his lifespan. Would've been really fucking cool, but instead we got some weird gen z "fellow Kidz* freak
@@Shorkshire i think it could have been a great lesson for Nimbus and Osiris if Nimbus and Osiris were the ones pushing us forward on the mission Rohan died. That way Rohan could have given caution, but then Rohan is forced to go in and save Nimbus and the guardian because he knows he’s closer to death. Nimbus could have been given a first hand account of sacrifice to learn from, and Osiris could have felt the absence of Rohan, learning that pushing forward and sacrificing for the sake of sacrifice has negative consequences. Then Osiris could have been offered to be made into a Cloudstrider, but turns it down because of what Rohan taught him.
I think all of this is very possibly the intent anyways. Nimbus’ joking and carefree nature could very well be a younger way of coping with their duty and mortality. Not all context needs to spoken aloud to be there.
@@adamherrick6077 I agree, but in my opinion the fact that we aren’t entirely sure is why it should have been directly addressed in some way. Almost none of the online dialogue I saw surrounding Nimbus explained the terrible dialogue, which to me means if the intent was for Nimbus to struggle with expressing his emotions and did it through joking, it wasn’t conveyed well enough.
Here's the thing: whenever I listen to the Lightfall soundtrack, I'm like OH GOD THIS IS SO HYPE THE LIGHTFALL VIBES I GET FROM THIS-- then my brain tries to look for the Lightfall vibes that should've been there.
The fact that last season we got one of the best cutscenes we’ve ever had and it was DELETED 2 weeks later is insane. Stuff like that does much more harm than Bungie probably realises.
@@corylyonsmusic take your comment to any other media source and it looks ridiculous. If an author of a book has been writing books for awhile and is now on book 18 getting rid of every book before that because there’s now too many books and his reasoning is “because the fans already know what happened” is moronic. If I’m playing a game I should be able to learn about that games story from that game and other sources related to that game a 3rd party source such as byf should not be a reliable source for new people or people who missed out to get caught up on. I love my man’s content he gets me the in deep knowledge but by no means should he be the only way of getting caught up on the story after a season ends
Thank you for being a level-headed and considerate voice within the Destiny community! The bit about losing people that could have joined in our shared hobby really hit home. I really do love this game, it's been a part of my life since 2014, and it definitely hurts when *my team* loses (loved that analogy) and potential fans leave them behind...
I literally stopped playing. I've been playing since the game came out and I've been heavily playing the last year. (Every title, gilding, for the whole last year, blah, blah) and now I just don't care. The narrative was pretty much non existent, they want us to play a garbage loop, especially after week one story content was a fucking battleground and done. Like this whole expansion is pathetic on a whole new level. Nothing was fun, everything felt tedious, and the characters were obnoxiously annoying. Saw a reddit post about how should have been nimbus dying and Rohan coming up grips that he may be the last cloud strider and the legacy and impact it would have for Neptune, but nah we got generic telegraphed sacrifice and now we have "hello fellow kids" nimbus. I just don't care anymore. It's not fun.
@@MrFraknakThat's your opinion, and you have the right to feel that way, as do others who agree with you. But that's not the issue. The issue when people on either side of the coin comes across someone who disagrees and denigrates them just for having a difference of opinion. Have your opinion, let others have theirs, agree to disagree like adults, simple.
I think the best way to describe the story is from my sister. She is very much a casual player. Enjoys the story, loves the activities. I was with her when she finished calus and the final cut scene. These words epitomize it all, "what?" That's all she had to say. No idea what happen or why the story ended there. Just, "what?" Was her response to the ending. No closure or answers.
I have been playing Destiny since the Destiny 1 beta. I have been present for most of the major events for the story and left briefly when they started sunsetting content. Coming back into Witch Queen made me fall in love with the game again and was awestruck at the incredible environmental designs with Savathun's throne world and Rhulk's pyramid and the story was encapsulating to the point of me becoming addicted to it. I wanted to learn everything about these characters that I've been following for almost 10 years and the new ones that were perfectly implemented into the vast universe of the game. It really breaks my heart to see such a schism in the community that Lightfall has caused. What you said about nuances and how people are so quick to group the entire game as a whole into "game good" or "game bad". There was a time were I also thought destiny was game bad and times I've thought game good. And now that I'm older, I'm able to realize not everything is black and white and just because a part of something is bad, it doesn't mean the whole thing is bad. But when it comes to new players, they don't have that luxury and will be led on first impressions alone. Lightfall is not a beginner friendly expansion and nor do I think its veteran player friendly either. I think that the game is having a hard time catering to both audiences and is dragged down with missed opportunities. However I did enjoy playing with strand which in my opinion is one of the most fun subclasses they've added and Bungie always makes amazing environments and exotic weapons, not to mention the music and reading into extra lore. I have such high hopes for this game and I realize that those hopes turn into expectations and when they aren't ment then it disappoints me greatly. I really enjoyed hearing you speak about your passion Byf and I hope you continue to speak about it.
I wonder what people would have thought of Lightfall if they had made one simple change: when you finally get down to the root of the Veil, it looks like the Heart of the Black Garden. Personally, I would have freaked the f*^% out (in a good way). It’s clearly where they wanted to go with it, and I think it would have singularly improved with minimal effort. However, I would love to hear about your thoughts on the idea.
Would have definitely been a full circle moment, but the implications of the veil being linked with the Heart would be too great I think. Not saying it isn’t possible, but that’s not a “simple change” in any way
In the post campaign missions, it is revealed that the heart was a failed replica of the veil, so it would have been explained nicely why they would have looked so similar
@@nerm9507 I mean graphics wise. We learn from the post-campaign exotic mission that the Heart was intended to replicate the Veil. Having the pulsating orb (possibly harnessed by some sort of Vex-inspired frame; this is partly the work of the Ishtar Collective after all) instead of the random glow bathing Calus in the final fight wouldn’t have necessitated any additional changes to the story: aside from the Guardian and Ghost, nobody who actually saw the Veil had ever seen the Heart, so it would not necessitate any change besides tweaking and implementing a reused asset. They still wouldn’t explain anything: even after all these years we have no clue what the Heart actually was, but it would effectively answer one question with another, bringing the world full circle and lining up the opportunity to explore one of Destiny’s most enduring mysteries.
HyperNet Current was my favorite mission through the campaign, but racing Calus in the final mission, from the very first moment we jumped down that silo, was my favorite in-game moment. The theatrics at play, from sound design to environmental effects to whatever else was happening, it was awesome.
Yeah that was fun and genuinely nerve wracking. I absolutely LOVE when they give us these HUGE vertical spaces too, when they just make you realise how deep down some of these areas go, like the mission in the archology, or the whisper mission where you just drop down massive distances past huge features. Its a shame we don't have some kind of forge mode or photo mode so we can take more time to appreciate the work the environment team do
Byf I absolutely love that you are able to see and understand (the most important part) both sides. The fact that you’re able to see why people are angry or defensive really shows that you’re a level above some people and I give true props to that. Seeing both sides is one thing but understanding and accepting both sides is an infinitely more rare ability so thank you for being cool like that
sounds like devils advocate. over 500,000 views on his kneejerk reaction vid vs 2,300 negative reviews on steam. thats the discourse :/ every destiny dlc has been to some extent a narrative let down that introduces more questions. i get its frustraiting but how can you play destiny and not expect that? that wild to me. the community will never get exactly what they want. why is it different now? because byf is fed up. byf got overentitled and forgot about tempering the expectations of his fans, infact 'loredaddy' became as impaitent as them.
@@thepromocodethis exactly, and it's why I've unsubscribed. I used to come to Byf for insight on lore and to see what's relevant/cool to read, I've never been into his 'critique' videos because I don't value that. Content creators in general need to remember their place, they wouldn't have the followings they do if not for this game, I don't find it constructive to start absolutely dumping all over the game and the people who worked hard on it on a first 24 hour snap reaction coloured by the views of their twitch chats.
“Content creators need to remember their place” The kind of takes you find in the TH-cam comment section 💀 the kinda guy that goes “monarchy is good actually” or “Think about the CEOs” or some other bootlicker shit
@@ateacup2788 yes, and? If Byf et al are allowed to express their, in my opinion, poor takes on the game to a million plus of their followers, am I not allowed the same latitude to say I think they're wrong and far too big for their britches?
I find it absolutely astounding that our most detailed description of what the veil is that we got in the game came from the end of season of the seraph, which ISN’T EVEN IN THE GAME ANYMORE. The expansion where the veil is mentioned countless times, where it is a key plot point, and where we see it with our own eyes doesn’t live up to the single line of “… ‘the Veil’, an object of immense paracausal power. One that is linked to the Traveler.”
I was one of those people that was glad that Bungie shrouded parts of the game in mystery and had full faith in them to slowly unfold that story and answer all the questions they’ve introduced. Except that was back in 2014. After almost every yearly expansion I have showed the narrative team grace for not answering fundamental questions that we have been asking since D1. But LF did me in. I’m a veteran player who can no longer suspend by disbelief in Bungie to tell a good story.
Yeah dude I think lightfall was the straw that broke my back. Even the original expectations we had with the teased photo/thumbnail of the pyramid was drastically better. It’s concerning to me that an expansion’s dlc is needing to have its story be told by 10$ seasons for the next 3-4 times like wiw
It actually would have been fine if Rohan pulled a "Dude where's my car, continuum transfunctioner" and told us "The Veil is a powerful and mysterious weapon, and it's mystery is only exceeded by it's power... But it seems to have infinite power that keeps our city alive." The problem is that everyone seems to know what it is, and won't tell us.
Byf, I love you lol The beginning of this video is something that many people needed to hear. It's always a pleasure to hear your thoughts and opinions about things like this.
I think one of the big reasons Witch Queen performed so well was because it was a conclusion to a LORE-BASED mystery that had been in the story and had been driving the story for years. I think one of the big reasons Lightfall fell wo flat was because it introduced a MAINLINE mystery that would be resolved at an unknown point in the future (until they revealed it). I think the biggest difference is that they left one of the biggest mysteries in the game not as lore, but a main story thread. Witch Queen had years of introduction and had previous storylines changed to fit that side-story into the background. Lightfall? It had season of the seraph's hunt for nefele stronghold which only occurred after the reveal. Sorry for paragraph
That's one of the really amazing things about Witch Queen, grounded in Lore, brought it to the forefront - and it completed what was established there along with pulling you in with another mystery.
It's much simpler than that. Even pretending Savathun had no build up what's so ever, Witch Queen still simply has a better plot and characters with far more interesting personalities. In witch queen you got a better understanding of what was happening after each mission, light fall on the other hand has little progression in story at all besides learning strand and chasing after a plot device which is never explained.
I am LOVING grapple strand. Being able to use it to navigate Neomuna is so fun! In the campaign I actually enjoyed how the first encounter with the Tormentor made me ACTUALLY afraid. An enemy that ACTIVELY chases you with the ferocity that guardians usually take against easy enemies. I remember panicking and jumping around away from it just trying to catch my breath ! It made defeating them all the more satisfying as we grew stronger throughout the campaign. And that fight alongside Caiatl....a masterpiece *chefs kiss*
Obviously it means nothing to anyone but I appreciated reading this cause I've had a broken end game build for awhile now and with the new LF changes I've never felt as weak, which really upset me and made me feel like they balanced the new sandbox wrong. Now, maybe I'm seeing all things gotta move on and maybe the difficulty is actually right just to kick it up again. Make it interesting. I realised it was awhile since I felt like your description 😅
While grapple is fun, I also love that the way subclasses work nowadays allows my hunter to play with threadlings, with the threadling grenades and fragments which let me spawn threadlings on finishers and strand weapon kills. FLY MY PRETTIES!
The most frustrating thing about the campaign was how many times I thought to myself, "why didn't they do ______, that would make way more sense." If these thoughts happen to often (which they did) it becomes more frustrating to play.
If you're going to ignore the fact that there is -No new Crucible or Gambit maps -No new weapon models in either the new expansion or seasonal set -Multiple severe bugs -PC stability issues -A raise in activity playlist difficulty and time to complete without an equal rise in rewards And more on top of a 10$ increase in expansion price for arguably less content and quality than Witch Queen, then don't state that people are lacking nuance when those are all completely valid complaints and are contributions as to why the game is sitting at "OVERWHELMINGLY NEGATIVE" on Steam.
What Byf was talking about at this point 16:00 hits home. I started playing in season of the Haunted. And really, the Witch Queen campaign really took me in. Then, I played Beyond light and finally shadow keep. Yes, the order I played it was wrong, but I don't actually know what the proper order was at that time. I did try to make my own theories although I don't have a lot of details available to me. Then, I searched for a place where I can check if my theories are true; that's when I found Byf's channel. And yes, the things that were confusing became clearer due to Byf's videos. If channels like Byf's wasn't around, the story wouldn't had made sense to me. Especially since some campaigns had been sunset. If anyone knows the game "Blackout Club" here, you would understand how hard it is to try and enjoy a story when things that used to be a big part of the story are no longer available.
holy shit someone else who played that it was incredibly ambitious, and really cool whenever one of the voices invaded your game, but yeah without those the story just feels kinda empty, the interactions with them and the lore it revealed were the story, its different just reading about it vs experiencing it
I started playing at the end of season of the lost, when forsaken still was a thing and free to play. I didn't even realize Forsaken was a DLC, I just started playing... I didn't get the lore back then, but I knew Cade-6 was important... More than one year has passed since then and I started to understand the lore. Later I also got the other DLCs and I also played them in the wrong order but I enjoyed them non the less. I hope Forsaken returns as a free to play DLC so new players start their journey into the world of Destiny with some pieces of lore they are able to understand without having to watch Byf's videos.
@@enbydeadly The "Voices interaction" in Blackout club are pretty much "canon" after all. Without them it's pretty hard to understand the story unless you look through other sources. Iirc, there are even events that have a huge impact on the story that you can't really experience in the game anymore. Which is sad, because Blackout club have a really cool lore.
@@drache3370 When I started, in my case, I actually thought Savathun was like the big bad of the game, and the guardians had been fighting her from the beginning. So I was surprised to know that Witch Queen is actually the very first time the guardians confronted Savathun directly. Since in the past season, Savathun was acting as Osiris and when she did reveal herself, we didn't really fight her in game (Not sure if it was season of hunt or lost).
I actually do like mystery and the idea that we figure out what the Veil is over the year, but as Byf touched on in his first lightfall video, if there's going to be a mystery, it needs to feel like it's meant to be a mystery - not like every NPC knows what's going on but won't tell us
Why do you think it feels that way? Nimbus and Osiris literally say they don't know what the veil is. It's written that they don't know and we are gonna figure it out.
@@GirthCheck If they said that in the campaign I think it needed to be emphasized more. But also Osiris seems to know the veil linking with the traveler is bad, but he doesn't really make us know that he knows that. Even a simple line like "my research shows this could be disastrous" would make it feel better
@Andrew Lin we know its bad because we heard what the witness wanted to do through our ghost. We know it's bad because it's what the witness is trying to do. They express that they don't know in the Dialogue.
The thing that made me quit is that they (Bungie) were selling Strand as a grapple intense, high flying and exciting thing and then we get to play it and grapple is LITERALLY the longest cooldown we had. That's not fun to the point it's annoying.
While the story may not have been exactly where I wanted it, I’ve not played this game this much since d2 released. I’m loving the seasonal content and am looking forward to finding out more. Always enjoy your content.
I was disappointed by the lack of explanations about the veil and the loss of Rohan. Full disclosure I literally just had to ask my partner what his name was because of how little time we were allowed to spend with him. I would have preferred the opportunity to get to know Rohan for at least 3 or four missions with cutscenes before he died. Because I tried interacting with him during the campaign outside of the missions, there wasn't even the option to talk to him outside of the initial instance. And then Osiris's moment where he forgot Sagira was dead...that broke my heart. I wish they'd stop torturing Osiris and have him central to the plot without having to make him suffer. I would happily allow an ahamkara to kill me with their magic if it meant that Osiris' grief was treated with respect. He reminds me a little too much of my dad and what my dad was like in the three years prior to his death this past June. I have watched too many of my relatives grow old and lose themselves.
My biggest problem with the whole thing is the cliff hanger. There wasn't one... If you plan on releasing info in bits that's fine, but you have to set it that way. Give Osiris a few lines like " I'm not sure what it is yet, but I'm trying to figure it out. " Most authors of a story will let you know that a cliff hanger is happening. But not here
I’m fine with criticism of the community. Or of the devs. Or of anyone really. But I don’t the tone of Byfe here. Feels like he’s talking down to everyone for much of this video. “There’s something called nuance!” Oh. You don’t say?! I’d love to see respectful dialog from all sides. Without the “holier than thou” attitude. Normally I love Byfe’s videos. And still appreciate this one.
I will say I think in talking to Bungie Devs, we have a right to be rude to an extant. We paid $50 for lightfall, and the campaign is honestly awful, and the raid is a complete joke. The Bungie devs are directly responsible for this. Now obviously no death threats or even attacking the devs directly, but something like “wtf are you guys going to do to make this right?” We’re all adults. This is their JOB. If I’m slow at wiring up a house or if I short out a bunch of circuits or fuck up bigly, I’m going to get yelled at by my boss and/or my customer(s). We don’t have to be super polite to Bungie. They fucked up majorly and have barely even apologized. Story wise they basically told us “hold on till next season!” I did not pay for that GARBAGE. If you disagree that’s fine, but I think that being rude is sometimes necessary. Personally don’t use Twitter or haven’t messaged bungie or whatever, but I do not blame the people who do
I'd say a solid 7/10. Good subclass, good gameplay, neat environment. But the narrative holes, while I can overlook some, just were too egregious here.
The biggest issue I had personally was the weird sort of “outside looking in” vibe that surrounded the Veil and the Ghost’s connection to the traveler - as seemingly the only character in the story who had no idea what these things meant, it felt like the plot was gatekeeping me or something. All it would’ve taken for me was visible confusion from a few other characters as to what the hell was happening, and the ones who seemed in the know to indicate they would explain (I.e. Caitl promising to elaborate on why “we lost” - could’ve been a seasonal story element). TLDR: Mysteries don’t bug me, the implication that I should understand parts of the mystery that aren’t touched on does.
In that last line from Caitl one single word change would have made a world of difference in the conclusion. Change "We just lost" to "We just failed", we're across the damn galaxy and have no idea if we lose because of this. What we do know is we failed to keep the witness from establishing a link with the veil which was the whole point of the campaign arc. I also agree that even one person showing a little confusion as to what the veil actually is would have been nice.
If anyone defends the lack of information on the Veil and whatnot on the grounds of mystery - I fear they’re missing the fact that NONE of that was presented as a mystery. I love me a good mystery. I wanna ask questions without answers. I want to craft theories. But all the npcs talked as if they knew and just never bothered to tell the players.
I’m glad that of all the things done well enough narratively with lightfall was Nezarec. I remember being so disappointed at the end of plunder, but little did I know he’d be the best character in lightfall
@@ACupOfWarmLatte a little? Without the damage of contest, the poor thing is a absolute pushover. Such a shame for what might indeed be the best character of the DLC.
@@MaxM227 yeah i was really expecting a grim reaper type of scary thing. Large sythe bleeding void energy and darkness, ripped up robe flowing in the wind, opens his robe and lets out nightmares… could have been very creepy and menacing
@@MortuusTyrannus When people use his arguments as a "reason" to be pieces of shit, I think the anger and scolding is valid. It won't do anything because people like that aren't going to take this as a moment to rethink their actions, but I get the frustration.
@@blackout2189 idk. People will use anything as an excuse to act poorly. There’s nothing that byfe’s ever said that would cause a rational, mature adult to make death threats against other human beings. Still think it’s better to act as the bigger person and not talk down to people. It’s unproductive at best. But to each their own I guess. 🤷♂️
I think it will, lightfall and final shape were once the same expansion but had to be split due to time constraints, if I had to guess the vail itself was just a last minute "Oh shit we need something for lightfall" and Bungie had no intentions on ever introducing it until they had to split lightfall and final shape Lightfall wasn't always filler, but became filler, you can really tell in the tone shift, when we originally were shown lightfalls name it had a dark, dreary vibe, but once the split happened all of a sudden its a cyberpunk city, hell neomuna itself story wise feels rushed, "uhhhhh yea there's this city that no one knew about on Neptune with this really important thing on it"
for me, the most frustrating part is that the characters in the story seem to know what the Veil is, but simply don't tell us. and it's not like they choose not to, like it's some secret, they just never address it! it's crazy bad writing.
no see but it's not just that, in the post campaign quest it is then made clear that they DON'T know what the veil is, i think all of this would've been fixed if they just made it clear from the beginning that no one knows, literally just have a cutscene where rohan says "we don't understand it's origins, we just use it to power neomuna, apart from that we understand nothing". if they would've done that i think everyone would've at least immediately gotten the idea that it's supposed to be a mystery across, rather then having it be some confusing factor in the story.
They do address that they don't know in the campaign, multiple times. People need to stop actively lying about the contents of the campaign; it's genuinely infuriating.
@@Scripzure Did you not see the part where Osiris is talking to Saint-14? Keep in mind that they don't have to say "I don't know what the Veil is," verbatim in order for them to communicate that.
The one thing that bugs me the most is part of the final lines from Rasputin. "[The veil] is linked to the Traveller." And then, two-thirds of the way through Desperate Measures we have our ghost saying something like "The Veil feels like the Traveller, but that doesn't make sense."
I think the biggest disappointment is they were doing so well. The seasons up until Lightfall were good, we were all excited for it. Then we get to Lightfall and it falls on its face.
What a breath of fresh air, genuine nuance. Who would've thought? Anyway, like you pointed out, I do fall somewhere in the middle and since you asked, I'll give some of my thoughts. - The whole situation with the Veil, if Bungie did want to do the whole "big mystery" thing, needs to be acknowledged by the characters and especially our character in the campaign. I can forgive the Striders just being like "yeah, the Veil, obviously". And I can even (kind of) forgive Osiris for just going along with it because from his perspective he truly knows it's deeply important to the Witness, and if the Witness wants it that badly, keep it safe first, pick it apart later. But there is no reason our character shouldn't have asked even once what it was. Even if it was met with Osiris saying what I said above, "Witness wants it, that's all the reason we need to safeguard it, we'll figure it out later" and the Striders pulling an Exo Stranger/ "no time to explain", at least it'll feel like we didn't actually miss something important. It isn't the best solution, but it would've made a difference for sure. - I dont mind Strand being as incorporated into the story as it is. I wish it would have been tied into the first point, and I think while it still wouldn't be perfect, more people would be more okay with it. - I've seen people being really upset over Osiris this expansion, this one I just don't get it, but again, I think the first point would've smoothed this over a bit. - I wish Nimbus wasn't as... uncanny? I guess, is the best way to put it for their appearance in game. The personality I think works for the whole "80's action movie" aesthetic, but just something about their face specifically puts me off. I know it's not exactly a story critique, but it's also not just a Cloud Strider thing because Rohan was totally fine to me. But, you know, *shrug* - Speaking of Rohan, very much so a wasted character. He should've stuck around for this last year, then sacrificed himself going into Final Shape, or it shouldn't have been brought up that he only had about a year left at all. If he doesn't become the first Cloud Strider Guardian or something, "hero of the week" is an apt yet incredibly disappointing title for this character that couldve been so much more. - Bungie really needed to find a new beginning for the end cutscene, because it really is too obvious that the first and last cutscene were once the same cutscene cut in half. Why is Zavala, Ikora, Elsie and Mara standing on the bridge of the HELM right when the Witness attacks, spend at minimum hours there in the darkness just waiting, and then the blast shield just happens to rise up right when the Witness gets access to the Veil and carves up the Traveler? You can't convince me that we went to Neptune, had our whole adventure *and* effectively mastered Strand, and then killed Calus in, what, 20 minutes tops? Incredibly sloppy. - I'm actually more forgiving than most when it comes to Zavala and Ikora post-campaign, but I do still have issues with it. On the one hand, we were all ready for the Witness to role up and bring on the apocalypse, with the body count being pretty steep probably. Instead, it hung out in low orbit, did something to the Traveler, and then disappeared. To reiterate, I'm going against the grain here and actually kinda okay with this turn of events because I'm with Destiny for the long run, and I know this will eventually be addressed. Ghosts are understandably upset, of course, but last year we learned not to look to the Traveler as the end all be all, and the apocalypse effectively missed us. Being a little shocked but glad for our current continued survival mixed with getting down to business to uncover the mystery seems like a fairly reasonable response, albeit the animations are atrocious. All in all, the biggest problem is, of course, the mishandling surrounding the Veil. That singular thing not being done even slightly better has a magnifying effect for every other (in my opinion) largely minor problem in the story. Yes, I'm very confident it'll be addressed and I do have hope for the future of Destiny, this year and next, but I agree with Byf that fair, reasonable critique is needed right now.
Great takes. I agree with 100% what you said. I had many of those thoughts myself. While I have taken breaks between forsaken and now, I’ve always kept up with the story and will never not enjoy playing the game when I come back, every time. Gameplay is better than ever I’d wager. Enjoying running around Neomuna between weekly missions. Cheers
Byf was the first person I thought about when I completed the campaign. I had hope he could answer the 100 questions I had. Glad to know he also has 100 questions about the story himself
I love your content. The love and the professionalism shows. It's clear everything you do comes from that. You have managed to combine both so as best as anyone can. Keep up the good work guardian.
While we should never stoop to the level of threats or similar, it is absolutely not a crime to have higher expectations of content that is NOT FREE. The destiny community has this tendency to allow bs to happen simply because we feel like we should be way more considerate or tolerant of things as if this is a totally free game or something. Let us not forget this DLC is FIFTY DOLLAR DLC, $20 off from a modern day full priced AAA game. This is not okay and we should all be upset by this.
This is a bit outside of the campaign, but expanding more on the nature of strand and just ALL of our subclasses in general was a great choice; it gives us a better understanding of both the light and dark, and gives us room to speculate
My friend talked me into getting destiny 2 about a month ago. Here are the raw experiences and opinions of a brand new player. I thought I bought the wrong game, as the intro is identical to the previous game. Every single cutscene or piece of dialogue leaves me asking "who is that? What's going on? I thought he was dead? Where is this?" Etc All the "good story" expansions mean nothing, because they are gone and may as well never have existed to me. All story that there is is accessible at any time, meaning I have no idea what is supposed to happen before something else. Gameplay is fun, but the story is so disjointed/inaccessible that I don't even consider it a part of the game
I had a friend who came back from Beyond light, and he literally asked me "Who was Mithrax again?", "Wait is Eramis alive?" "Who is Caiatl?", and a bunch of seasonal questions. All I could say was to watch Byf videos since there is no place in the game to expplain all this
I feel one can not please ever one.. you will win some and you lose some. That's just a harsh reality some will have to deal with. It's to shame to lose new players or returning players, but there is always a risk.. for the record, you make a lot good points here. For me, this is like comic books in a ways. Things change. Not everthingis is going to great. I like to keep hope alive.
Something I loved and I don't see mentioned enough is the semi-destructible environments. It's a little touch but it plays well and it makes the combat somehow better, more chaotic.
Thank you for everything you do for the Destiny community Byf. You are, live, and positively represent us with class, passion, dignity & perfect articulation. Destiny isn't only our "team," but it is also OUR home. God bless you, Byf. Keep up the astounding work my friend.
Well done video Byf! Showing nuance, reason and critical thinking.... like you made this vid for your most hard-core fans... I've been labeled as a Bungie fan boy by my gamer friends and really I'm a true fan of storytelling, just so happens that my favorite game does so much right to keep me here... I've been saying since day one of Lightfall... many are having a hard time seeing the forest for the trees!
Couldn’t agree more with these takes. Personally I think lightfall is worth the £40 or whatever as an expansion. I bought the £80 thing purely for the next years worth of seasons and the dungeons. And if a season would cost me around £10 anyway i think that annual pass is worth it too with how good seasons have been since Chosen. Yeah the story was missing parts but gameplay wise i had a blast, i think strand is fun and will only develop just like stasis did with exotics and fragments etc, and i’m actually a fan of the difficulty changes throughout the whole game. The raid contest mode being quite easy was a strange one but that certainly doesn’t make me regret buying or playing lightfall.
Byf: "I make my living off of this video game. My channel provides entertainment by explaining the layers upon layers of Lore the game has and why that's fun!" Also Byf: "It ain't that deep." Love ya man. That made me chuckle! I needed a good laugh today. (Also, Nimbus saying the word "Thingamajig" when hes supposed to be revealing meaningful dialogue made me want to uninstall.)
Nah, him calling Calus ugly in front of Caital in what should have been a somber moment made me hate the character more than anything. I wish we kept Rohan. He was dope.
I really like the whole "Training" events with Strand. It made more sense than with stasis were we got those power influxes when commuting and we just "Knew" what we were doing the whole story
@@krillffxiv5021 Not during Stasis introduction, we were just being told to not let it control/corrupt us and other bits that are not 100% relevant to mastering it. Strand, while we were more familiar with Darkness, we wield it wrong hence the Exhaustion afterwards because we believed it the same as Stasis. If Stasis had the introduction as Strand then it would make a bit more sense if Strands was more like how Stasis was, due to being familiar with Darkness and it was being wielded "easily" without the change in perspective.
@@BrakoElMostro that's because strand is the only element that 'fights back', we were able to easily wield stasis because of the splinter Elsie gave us at the start of the campaign
I enjoy so much about destiny, but the main reason I play is the story/lore, so having a massive aspect not explained at all made it difficult to enjoy. However there is alot to like about the expansion (specifically strand), looking forward to more explanations before final shape!
@@bannedmann4469 I also thought Neomuna would be MUCH more vertical. Like actual skyscrapers and stuff. That's why when I first saw the trailer, I was like "Is this Destiny?"
As much as i found this campaign story Lackluster, I had fun with strand. There were a few moments during the campaign where Rohan and Osiris, we talking at the pond and he asks Sagira to analyze something. Just to get slapped with the reality that he is lightless now.
returning player here, played from 2014 launch through forsaken dlc. let me say this felt like it was a total filler arc and the amount of hype i allowed myself to be consumed with after hearing about the witness felt unwarranted. that’s not ok, i stuck it out and decided to continue catching up on content in this game because of how fascinating witch queen and shadowkeep’s campaigns are. ultimately i will enjoy the past and seasonal content but strand should have been tied to savathun and putting it on some street in cyberpunk 77 is a crime i can’t forgive
After seeing the talk about that future story quest bits in TWAB. I feel that the narrative team may trying new ways to make story content, like a "seasonalized" core expansion campaign narrtive that will stay throughout the year. Maybe they want you to come back every season and see more quests and missions expanding the main campaign along with the seasonal story. So the main narrative of Lightfall stays throughout the year, and you get the usual seasonal story on a different front. Like right now Season of Defiance is happening in parallel with the Lightfall main story. They don't even have a connection yet (to me that is). They picked a pretty bad time to do this considering we are at the end of a story arc. We are accustomed to what Bungie has been doing all these years, expectations are there. Missing the expectation have consequences, hence where we are now. And Bungie didn't do a good job communicating what they want to do with the story neither. Leave something to hint that story will be expanded upon later helps a lot. But if this next season Veil story quest is a quick add after all the negativity broke lose. Then all I said is for nothing. For now, we get a core story with missing pieces and unhappy populance, which is just sad. They could have done better, and they are capable of doing better. Hope they can turn things around. Sorry for my English, not my first language. 😓 (Byf senpai notice me)
As a story writer myself I am acutely aware of the narrative and plot as I experience it, and I love nothing more than to feel myself riding the waves of the story, taken away with it, and knowing what will happen next is the narrative catharsis; when your questions are answered. It’s when Sherlock discovers the identity of Moriarty, what he’s done, and even knows what the villain is going to do next. BUT HOW?? The chase is on! Every answer makes the stakes *higher* because the truth reveals more and more just how dire the situation is, and how dastardly evil the villain is. My point is that I agree with Byf that this was not the time for questions shrouded in shadows, it’s the time for answers. Most importantly; answers in the final act create more tension and urgency than the questions which piled up before. It’s like rifling through the suspect’s paperwork hidden in their desk, finding more and more prof they’re involved in not just what you’re tailing them for, but EVERYTHING. You remember clues you didn’t even know you had! At any point in the mission dialogue multiple characters could have answered Ghost asking, “What is the veil? I’ve never heard of it,” with a myriad of theories from Nimbus, Rohan, and Osiris. Even if Bongus didn’t give answers, *at least* give us a direction and clues. When the day 1 beta players and lore nerds like myself are left in the dark, there’s a big problem.
We need more people to see this video. This was very well said overall with everything that Lightfall has delivered and how Destiny 2 is shaping up for the future.
Byf I think you perfectly nailed my stance on this. It really feels discouraging trying to appreciate Lightfall right now when it seems like everyone under the damn sun is railing on the "game bad" side of things. The narrative was definitely not as strong as it could have been. But Neomuna is just incredible. There's so much hidden story to unpack there. It's gorgeous and fun to explore. I love the neon vibes. It's absolutely a masterpiece of set design. I really REALLY wish the story had been better but overall I'm very satisfied with what we got and it makes me really sad to see people just completely ignore everything else because of the campaign falling flat. I know Bungie has it in them to pull this off, and I'm rooting for them as hard as I can. I'm just glad that you have the ability to call out the people harassing the devs and spreading all that hate, because at times it feels like as small as they are, they make so much noise that it becomes common sentiment. You do so much to preserve the integrity of the people who don't do that and it means more than you'll ever know, as someone who's been following you since Rise of Iron
This video provides good perspective. Well done, Byf. I’m going to hypothesize here: From what I have seen of Lightfall, one unfortunate thing was that there is a lot happening. What I mean is this: there is the side of the Witness and the Traveler and all that this side entails, there is the side of Strand and beginning to delve into the nature of paracausality. If this was solely the Strand expansion in a similar way to Beyond Light being the Stasis expansion, with us discovering Strand and beginning to use it against the Witness’s forces with story still pointing towards the confrontation between the Traveler and the Witness, then things may have gone better in storytelling and community reception/perception as there would be sufficient time for developing Strand as a gameplay element and story element and sufficient time for discussing what are our current plot holes. If the events of the final mission and cutscene were to happen more closely before Final Shape with Final Shape seeing us jump from Neptune to Earth in hot pursuit of the Witness through the whatever-that-is in the Traveler’s side which is something we will likely do in Final Shape, that could have a more substantial impact and be received better. As an alternative hypothetical: if we had only been exposed to the race to Neptune to secure the Veil to prevent it from falling into the Witness’s control, lose as we did in canon, and spend these next few seasons finding a way to recoup the Veil or follow the Witness through the whatever-that-is with Strand being an integral part of that process, I would think that that would have potential for better reception/perception. This is a all rough draft-style hypothetical, but I do think that a part of the issue was taking on the separate issues of the new Strand power alongside the events over Earth and with the Veil on Neptune ultimately put too much strain and pressure on the storytellers at Bungie to do too much at once for a single narrative experience.
Compared to other expansions lightfall certainly is not the best and certainly not the worst. I can only imagine the sheer amount of pressure now put onto the final shape and is only going to upset the community even further. Destiny has given me moments in gaming that no other game does, I believe bungo and can fix the hole they dug but it's not gonna be easy.
my biggest issue is honestly not the veil it is how calus was treated. He was one of the greatest villains and build up for so long. Especially with all the background in the season of the Haunted and Duality giving Calus a more Human side, building up all this Tension in the Father Daughter Relationship and then never giving it a payoff. They even set it up in the cutscene where he throws away his chalice the Symbol of his opulence maybe leading to him giving up and admiting his failures WHILE caital is in the room and not somewhere else. I have a MAJOR issue with him just dieing and a stupid Marvel like inappropriate Oneliner that just ruines everything. In general i do Hate Nimbus and this scene was the WORST.
Thank you good sir for that fantastic reality check that some in the community needed! I am going to limit these to three in a way, but nuance matters :) Things I loved with this expansion: 1. Quality of life changes, load outs, shaders vender, more shader options to obtaining them, the find a fire team changes, ranks. 2. challenging exotic quests that have some great call backs. 3. new sub class. Initially I wasn't a fan and now I do quite like it, plus variety is nice. Negatives for me: 1. Story, I dont mind mystery and it causing theories, with promise of reveals, but this story had to many mysteries and its focus felt disjointed. To me it felt like this was a campaign of discovering strand but yet the narrative was about protecting the vail. Take beyond light, it was about exploring darkness and stasis, with the narrative and actions take during that story that leads the player to understanding darkness more and how it can be wielded for good or evil. the antagonist was using that same power. This story though was protect the vail, oh and Osiris wants us to experiment with a new power completely unknown while we do that. The story could have been about the vail, and how strand is derived from it, in my opinion. We should have been exploring archives that would tell players how it powers the cloud arc, and so forth. But what was delivered was a story with two things happening and no interconnectivity with a lack of resolution. Please keep in mind readers I am being broad on this and simplifying for the sake of brevity. 2. Mod changes. SO i am torn on this. I liked the variety and variability we had with all the old mods, now it feels like with the smaller pool there is less individuality and combinations that can occur now I could be wrong and might be, but at present to me it feels more like: If you are this subclass you run these mods in this specific combination to optimize damage output, other combinations are not viable or able to compete. NOW I know that is a gross over simplification its just an impression I presently have. I hope we get more mods and options with future seasonal content. 3. Umbral engrams being removed. I like the ability to focus the engrams with the different venders I dislike them having to be specific to that vender, umbral engrams could have been focused at any vender in my opinion with the adept options just costing more. I would make an exception to this for iron banner and trials those are different in there own way and would make since to have their own engrams to me. Id just rather been able to use the collected engrams more freely. Like on focusing seasonal things or a specific vender if I wanted to instead of having to run a singular activity over and over to farm that specific engram, let me play all the variety the game has to offer and spend it where I see value. I know I typed more for the negatives, but that's only to thresh out my reasoning on those. The positives to me made me still enjoy the game and the negatives are just that areas for critic and improvement for the devs. To any devs that might see this. Thank you for all the work and attention to this game, I dont think you hear that enough, admits the barrage of negatives and complaints, that lack any structural feedback. A random theory. My friend and I upon completing the campaign were discussing the meaning of the ending. He stated, seems like the traveler is the Witnesses "Ghost" it just opened like a ghost sorta and are just on a more massive scale. Now I know there is plenty to contradict that but in a way sorta makes since and was a fun thought. Finally, A moment of solidarity for the passing of Lance Reddick. I do wonder if that is why we did not have many speaking lines from Zavala the last season and this. Amazing individual and he will be missed.
This isn't necessarily the video to comment this on but I have been developing a theory that has a lot of connections throughout the game. I was considering the idea that the actions of the witness and the use of the veil/traveler were in order to ascend to a higher level to end the flower game. Assuming the traveler is similar to a spore from something greater what if the witness needed the veil to truly "drink" and understand/utilize the power of the traveler to ascend to a higher level and take down the true gardener. I have a lot of threads to pull on however this theoretically has ties to the nine and the 4 dissenting members, the overall symbology of the scythe that nezerac weilds, and the viel being a birthplace/nesting place of the traveler. Just a theory I am working on and would like some other input.
One of the biggest issues I’ve had with the discourse with Lightfall, is just how it feels so overwhelming negative, and as a result I’ve been overwhelmingly positive to try and balance it out. I definitely believe that there are narrative issues to Lightfall, although the issue of not knowing what the Veil is for example doesn’t bother me too much and I actually really enjoy the fact that we get to theorize about it (probably a product of me being a long time fan of series like FNAF, which the only thing you can ever do is theorize.) But all of this is to say, I definitely appreciate this video. While this video is still somewhat negative (which make sense, it is a critique) it still gives credit where credit is due. It just overall feels really depressing to be in the Destiny 2 Community right now as people who are usually very level headed like Datto are spending whole videos just railing against all aspects of Lightfall. Looking forward to more content from you Byf, thanks for all you do
Completely agree. Where I live I got to play first mission on release. Was happy. Woke up the next morning to continue and there was nothing but negatively from all the big names. I enjoyed my time with the campaign (in spite of any issues I saw). But I also felt a need to almost defend it more positively than normal discourse might dictate merely because it felt like everyone else was being so utterly negative.
I feel as though the story was... jumbled. The reason being is that Bungie had gone through development hell. It seems to be common Knowledge at this point that Strand probably was meant to release with Witch Queen, being that instead of using Deepsight, we would use strand to traverse the areas, being given the Grapple Hook as the mobility tool for a short while. With this, people feel as though Light 3.0 should have come with Lightfall, giving weight to the story as we lose our abilities, and have to reforge them. We could have a new Red War, except this time, we do lose. I feel as though this would have been the correct way to move the story. An empowering of our light abilities before we get our final Darkness Subclass. That would have been the best. Heres how the story could have gone. The witness suppresses the Traveler, weakening and crippling any and all Guardians. Once again, those connected to the Shard of the Traveler are not as heavily suppressed as we have a conduit as to which we can access the light. While our abilities are still heavily hampered, our revives being limited for the first few missions. We then discover a Node of Light, produced by the veil, but we do not understand nor know what it is. With that being said, it empowers our light Subclasses, giving us the ability to spam the abilities, and otherwise, be absolute gods on the Battlefield. Stand and Stasis stay relatively the same, but they will have there time to shine within the campaign. In the next mission, we discover Light suppression technology related to the Radial Mast. This completely removes our light abilities other than our class abilities. Strand and Stasis are not affected by these suppressors, but all stasis and strand damage is hampered because of the volatile light within the area. We discover the Radial Mast, Go to destroy it, but fail. Next mission once again has us finding an Empowering node. Story advances. 3rd to last mission has us finally destroying the Radial Mast, witch will connect the Veil and the Witness together. 2nd to last mission has us communing to the Veil, finally getting full and unpressed access to the Light. Last Mission has us defending the Veil from Calus, who can not deal with his Failure, and goes to destroy the Veil, disobeying the Wishes of the Witness, and leading us to scramble for Calus, so as to defeat him. We do end up defeating him, but realize to late that the Witness had planed this after Caluses Failure, and had led our Ghost into a trap, using him in place of the Radial Mass, so as to connect both the Witness and the Traveler to the Veil. We lose, but dont lose our abilities. We have hard missions that encourage Gun Play, and the use of our darkness subclasses, which are primarily utility based. It shows that there are more than one source of Light within the universe. We could also have the Deterministic Chaos mission lead into another mission that has the Black Heart Revived, where upon we have to kill it again, and during this mission, our Darkness Subclasses are empowered by the Hearts radiating Darkness. This gives a mission for players who main stasis and strand a chance to enjoy ability spam, despite being the lesser focus of this campaign.
I think what's good about Lightfall was that one of the devs said they're gonna make you feel like you are thrown into the middle of a war, they absolutely delivered on that.
Throughout Halo and Destiny, I loved Bungie's ability to leave us with elements of uncertainty without leaving us annoyed. I've greatly enjoyed speculating, like back in the day considering what the Ark was before Halo 3 released. Lightfall...went too far in one direction. Bungie didn't have the balance of questions answered and questions posed. If we knew what the veil was, cloud ark, black heart, but were still speculating on the Witness's full plan, that would be fine. But EVERYTHING is a cliff hanger. And I agree that this being the end of the saga should've felt more impactful. While technically the year of lightfall just started, the main story needed more impact IMO
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Thanks so much for this nuanced take Byf. Even though I'm one of the people who enjoyed the story and how they're going further with it, I'm also able to see why some people are disappointed or feel let down by it. I actually enjoyed the mystery created and unfolding it step by step, mainly because my mindset into Lightfall and the rest of the "Light and Dark Saga" was that we're going deep into big questions and answers territory and the start of it going to make us ask more questions than find answers. That's why I kinda liked the main story because it gave me that "oh no, Calus and Witness are doing something big, we have to stop them first than figure out what all this is" panic mode. But all of this doesn't mean that I don't understand or refuse to acknowledge your points and criticism. If I had to speculate, these issues caused mainly by the fact that we're too deep into the story and it gets harder to build a new player friendly storytelling. This doesn't mean that it's impossible but it means there are so many places it can go wrong or not as planned. But I'm definitely hopeful about Bungie pulling things together and making sure we all get the ending we deserve for the story.
I think the upcoming quest in the next season is an attempt at rectifying something that I felt during the entirety of last year and thats the fact that once the raid was over with, and once the final exotic was obtained, it stopped being about the witch queen and just another year of drip feed content that honestly wasn't even related to witch queen anymore. Yes, season of the risen was about the lucent Hive, and the lucent hive were in season of the plunder as well, but, the Hive in plunder honestly just felt shoehorned in, they didn't feel right, like it was an attempt at saying "hey, these guys are still in play, don't you see?" And it just didn't feel right for me. I don't want another year of destiny to be about all the secrets of the dlc to be found in less than a week then waiting a week for the next weekly reset to come around and it not even really be related to the dlc at all, I want consistent seasonal stories that are clearly and evidently linked to the expansion which is something that I never felt during last year. This is all an attempt at doing what I mentioned, but its not exactly 100% the correct way of going about it, but to me, I can see that bungie is TRYING, they really are trying their best, figuring stuff out, and it's just sad hearing about people going after them for just trying. I love destiny, I love its story and its gameplay and its lore and its music and its scenery and it breaks my heart to see so many people not see how I see this game.
I... agree. I think they did better than people are giving them credit for, mind you, but I do agree with the sentiment. They are trying to continue to innovate on their idea of an evolving world, as they always have.
@@cryw1092 this whole expansion is an attempt at pacing things out, that's how I see it. The main expansion story in every dlc is over and done with usually day 1 of release, and I hate that, especially in dlcs prior to WQ because there's no proper replayability there, it'd all just be over and done with. I think the seasonal stories exist as a way to keep the story going and keep it interesting, but they've always felt detached from the main dlc of that year with the exception of the first and last season of every year (like how Lost was made to lead specifically into WQ and Seraph explains how we know about the Veil), but for the middle seasons, there's barely any connection to either the past or the future of destiny, sometimes all they do is just link season to season and not season to expansion which is what I think destiny truly needs, a consistent link from dlc to dlc without the seasons feeling like just filler.
@@cryw1092 I think this is dripfeed content done... in a better direction? Idk how exactly to put it into words, it doesn't solve the issues made in LFs main story like the radial mast and how nothing is known about the Veil but, I seriously hope it helps. Destiny is an mmo with a seasonal story system, you can't exactly give a fair review for an expansion until all of it has come out, some things might change over time, or some things might be answered, we just don't know, all we can do is hope for the best
I half agree, you're stating it as a necessity to buy all of the seasons proceeding LF to get a coherent story like the self-contained Witch Queen. And that'a preposterous I get spreading it out, but the fact they've decided to put key developments in mini dlcs is the exact kind of scumbaggery I'm used to from bingle at this point.
Pretty much agree with all apart from the raid part. I agree contest should be difficult. I just don't agree with a raid launch hardcore players. As you said it's a video game. People have real life things away from it. So my suggestion is just release normal raid along contest mode. Just no exotic drops in normal till contest mode. Everyone pays the same price and should have the right to access things at same time.
Here’s a good fix I had in mind for contest raiding, to please both sides: The raid releases on Contest Mode as normal, the Contest Mode is incredibly hard and lasts 24 hours. A second Contest Mode (The Day Two Raid) releases once the World’s First has been completed. This Contest mode is easier and lasts 48 hours, allowing new players or those without builds to participate. The reason I say the easier one comes after the World’s First has been completed is to prevent people from going into the easier Contest Mode to gain insight in the harder one. The Day Two mode would be selected like regular difficulty selection, that bar in the bottom right.
Here’s the problem with Contest and what most people don’t seems to really see. What make a contest hard isn’t as much the light difference but the mechanics (and dps check but let’s focus on mechanics first). When people such as Datto say that the raid (in particular contest) shouldnt be for new player it’s true but what isn’t is how they seems to think every raid should be harder than the last. If we look at mechanics RoN was easy yeah though not the easiest since while they can’t be played anymore, Leviathan, Crota End, Wrath and SotP all exist. Any of those raid would have had the same result and same backlash as RoN. Contest mode doesn’t really change this, meaning that if Bungie release an easier raid, contest will also be easier. The best exemple is how difficult day 1 LW was even though contest wasn’t a thing at the time, meaning the light lock never was the biggest difficulty of day 1 and light lock is the biggest part of contest. Now for the DPS check, Nezarec doesn’t have a lot of health, but it’s also obvious that it wasn’t meant to be fought from the platform and that you were supposed to be chased by Nezarec. Yes Bungie is at fault up to a certain point that they either didn’t saw this as a way to not be hit or Nezarec was supposed to be able to jump on the platform and is currently glitching, but it’s ironic that no one was really fighting him the intended way and then complain about it being too easy. Now for contest, you could switch to -30 or 40 LL, tbf it wouldn’t change much except the DPS, but it’s also important to note that nowadays it’s easy to have good DPS anyway, since the hardest thing to do blind are the mechanics. If the next raid is Wrath and nothing much is modify, it will be the same as RoN, a fast clear and a lot of people criticizing Bungie. tldr : the problem with RoN contest isn’t the difficulty of contest, just that Bungie made a raid with easier mechanics (nothing wrong with that SotP was a fun raid for exemple) so inherently the contest will be easier (and that people don’t understand that cheesing a boss will obviously make him easier)
Dude! That comment regarding bringing old players back it's so true! I know a guy that used to play back during the iron Lord days, he asked me the same question about coming back but decided not to after seeing all the reviews on social media SMH. I tell them about the free-to-play stuff but for right now he's a fence-sitter for sure and decided just to watch content on TH-cam and see where it goes.
hes coping and covering for them false advertising and selling you all nothing AGAIN because his channel depends on the game if he was a proper lore buff hed be on the side of fans livid w bungie rn for this farce they called a dlc
Love to see this. I was actually a little scared that this critique would be heavy on anger toward Bungie (I haven't been watching this channel long) but I definitely agree that this season has had some incredible lore and just because *I* am fine with Bungie keeping their macguffins, there is a real sense in which the veil might have been one macguffin too many. Anyways lmao can't wait for season of the deep to kick off with a mission on the witness's overgrown pyramid to unvault titan.
Calling out the very small minority of players that send abuse in such a way is pointless they don’t care what you think and it does nothing cos the rest of us don’t need to hear this while that minority is probably very happy you’re wasting your energy on it
Hey Byf, do you find it odd that we are back on the farm, with fragments of the traveler in plain sight off in the distance? It can't be pure coincidence, can it? What if the witness winds up draining the light and we lose our powers and have to do something that we did in red war and have to use the fragments to restore our powers for one final stand against the witness? And then we have those antenna in the raid that are connected to the roots of that tree and said antenna are pointing straight at the traveler. What's your thoughts on that?
The best moment in the campaign was fighting alongside Caiatl in the massive battle in the final mission.
For real! That was the scale I was expecting throughout the course of the campaign. Obviously it hit that in certain points of the campaign but from a “moment” perspective that was the highlight and what I wished more of the campaign had.
I wish we fought calus with her, but I'll take what we can get
Her stomping that Imprint of Nezcafé repeatedly was a highlight for me x)
Pffff so true
@Littlegamer Agreed! I was so excited during my stream that I may have squee'd... haven't gone back to check LOL!
The issue with Lightfall is that the majority of the story will be coming during the seasons... this is not what was really advertised and I think people just feel played to spend more money. This was the 'beginning of the end' but this only happened at the end of the lightfall story. We know nothing more about the Witness than we did at the start.
If Bungie gave us Strand from the start this would have been a FAR better campaign, always looking for new ways to use it. They could have made more encounters where we have the freedom and choice to fight how we liked.
Must also say that Destiny suffers from WoW-desease... they are a victim of their own success and the community will only be satisfied if new content is as good or better than pervious content. Mainly due to how much people feel invested in the franchise.
Not only that but seasonal content gets vaulted, so anyone who plays after all the seasonal stuff, or doesn't get any of the season passes this time around, is going to be missing out on very important lore. They should've just included it in the campaign.
I honestly dont think bungie has an insane twist or anything lined up for the upcoming seasons, ill go ahead and assume tfs isn't going to be anything too
@@laurenwoods4199 omg so true! I will say, this season is one of the best Bungie has ever made... it was a mistake not including it inside the main expansion.
I wonder what the difference in reception to the Lightfall story would be if the characters therein shared our level of ignorance and curiosity as to what the Veil is. Something small, like Osiris asking Rohan what it is and Rohan responding that all records were mysteriously expunged. Something that allows us to hang on to narrative threads like "the Veil is paracausal in nature" with anticipation and intrigue instead of disappointment. I think the characters' perceptions of the Veil set an expectation that the player would come to understand it as they do. We, as the community, see the discrepancy as the story not explaining what the Veil is but I think it is far more likely that the discrepancy is that the characters act like they know what the Veil is when they're not supposed to. In this explanation, the quest coming in Season of the Deep makes sense for it to be there instead of part of Lightfall.
I think that is the reason nobody really questioned that the black heart remained a mystery for such a long while even though it had a similar story to Lightfall where we had to chase after it and interact(actually destroy, but still) with it as our mission. The only difference was the fact that nobody in game knew what it was either, both them and we, the players, only knew that it had to be destroyed. So maybe you're right. If the other characters didn't really know what the Veil was either, maybe the story could've had a way better reception.
it would be still horrible. the veil isn't the end all be all centerpiece of issue with Lightfall. LF is the penultimate major chapter of this 10 year saga - it should have been a top of the crescendo, climactic high point, where the main villain took center stage, we dealt with them directly, all characters had a part to play and develop (and maybe some die), and our Guardian had dialogue and challenge with what is pretty much the most powerful being in the universe of the game - it shoulda been big, and we shoulda gotten crushed, our asses whooped, and it would set up everything we would need to do to eventually win in The Final Shape
any good media - show, movie, game - sets up the final battle (ie in this case The Final Shape) with high stakes and lots of meaning - no matter if we knew what the Veil was, LF failed to do this massively
@@4newestaccoun It failed because there were too many inconsistencies that throw you out of the story. @Viperidae IV had a very good point in that the characters acted like they knew what it was, but didn't (and couldn't!) actually know. The cut scene with the space battle starts the campaign out, then at the end of the campaign, you have the SAME cutscene continue. It's _obviously_ the same cutscene and there's no explanation for why the entire campaign took only a few minutes AT MOST. It's inconsistencies like this that kick you out of immersion and leave you with the feeling that it was strung together by several teams that didn't bother to talk to each other so you have a dozen versions of the script and none of them quite match.
Bungie put a lot of effort into it, but they should have brought in someone who hadn't been buried in the story for months on end to look at it from a story standpoint. Writers give their work to beta readers for that very reason. Not to look for the grammar or spelling errors, but to find the story faults & inconsistencies, and give feedback about what works and what doesn't. Bungie needs the equivalent of beta readers. Not to test for errors or check the lore, but to review the story.
Completely agree with you. An unnecessary expectation of the Veil being explained was set.
@KeyClavis It's so odd to me that so many people claim they're the same cutscene. The shot composition in them is quite different. Plus, the Vanguard is on the Helm, a command vessel, which got locked down because of the resonance pulse, which also took out our entire fleet. They had almost no option to stay there and wait it out, especially when a whole fireteam of guardians got effectively cheese-wired.
Something that really rubbed me the wrong way was that moment where ghost was like 'I'm confused about what the CloudArk is' and Nimbus was like 'glad you asked, the CloudArk is x, y and z' amidst not doing the same thing for the Veil.
I don't think the neomuni really understand what the veil is either. They know it powers their entire city and the cloudark, it's life support for their entire population, hence why it's so important to them. But they don't know its true nature any more than us.
The veil seems to connect souls/consciousness. Including the Witness which is why we see the Ghost connecting many times across the series to the Witness since arrivals
rohan describes it so vaguely, he says "The cloudark is everything, it's our defenses, it's our lives and our people" or something like that
@@RageJ i think he describes it fine. He mentions it being a network and being a major part of the infrastructure
Its probably like a more advanced modern day internet except it can have peoples consciousness and is connected to their infrastructure (security systems and whatnot)
The approach of adding new quests in later seasons that expand on the story of the base campaign of Lightfall is equivalent to buying and reading a new book, realizing there are chapters missing that contain context crucial to understanding the grander narrative, and then the bookstore shipped those chapters to you over the course of the next year.
Funny, that's how some stories were published back in the day
And the sun setting them is the equivalent of just not allowing the new or returning customers to have access to chapters that came out anytime in the last 9 months
No, it's really not. It's more equivalent to a series like The Expanse releasing novellas to shed extra light on things that are relevant but not essential to the main narrative.
Destiny has ALWAYS delivered narrative in this way, that's WHY we have lore in the first place for people like Byf to build themselves a base of followers
@@dmc1288 fr. I'm not sure what parallel universe these people have come from where they're expecting a coherent narrative to be delivered in a good way from Bungie. Even WQ (the best story in their opinion) is held up by a lore book you can only read online and a whole prior season that is no longer in the game.
@@underscore_5450 right? For me, I can't believe the uproar about not having the veil immediately and completely explained when it's been eight years and we still don't even know what the Traveller is 😂😂
Two things. First, thank you Byf for being a voice of reason, compromise, and hope. You're a lot more than just Lore Daddy, you're one of the best and most mature voices in any fandom I've been in.
Second: I would really love, at some point, to learn about the process of the narrative development for Lightfall. I really don't think that what we got was the result of the team not caring enough, or not wanting it badly enough, or anything like that. I suspect that they ran out of something: time, or money, or personnel. Somewhere, I think, there was a fumble, and what we got with Lightfall was the best recovery the team could manage following that fumble. I think this partly because I choose to be charitable, but partly because, just like with the D1 vanilla game, there are moments of genius and glory in Lightfall's campaign that don't feel accidental. My hope is that, like D1 vanilla, and all the other examples Byf mentioned of the narrative team not living up to expectations, those moments of greatness will stick with some new players, and maybe they don't really GET what's going on right now or why any of it matters... but they still *want* to find out. That we didn't lose them all. Because this really is a fun game, with a good story, and I think there's enough of that DNA, even in Lightfall, that some people can sense it.
This has got to the best way to put what happened with Lightfall. While playing the game you can see where they put in the work and effort but there are other moments where it just kind of... falls short. The mechanics and new subclass are very enjoyable but when it comes to the story its like someone poked a bunch of holes in a water balloon and now everything is leaking out. Like you said, it seems as if this is the result of a scrambled recovery effort. I really do hope we get to see what really happened behind the scenes when it comes to Lightfall's story development
100% agree. Ironically the Destiny community is a delicately balance dichotomy as much as any of those in the game itself: dark vs light, sword logic vs bomb logic, Asher Mir vs CABAL AGAIN!? - There's the positive half that accept what we get and attempt to justify any disapointments, and there's the rabid sweatbags who flip tables at any minor inconvenience. You see it with LFG too, groups that will happily handhold you through a raid you've not done before, no matter how many times you fail to grasp the mechanic and get wipe, then there's the groups that will kick you if you don't have exactly the right loadouts.
I don't expect we'll get a full explanation of what went wrong with the time line, but seems that strand should have been in witch queen. Witch Queen was pushed back and eventually came without strand, so maybe that was the main issue and squeezing that into lightfall messed with everything else, but as you say there's probably some corporate bullshit going on too and lead to some sort of issue with money/personnel/time that they're inlikely to want to reveal
@@JohnKerans Something that bugs me about the focus on Strand in Lightfall's campaign (tbc, I love the subclass itself) is that even right down to the color palette, it FEELS like Witch Queen, and so the Strand focus felt like we were having the expansion campaign that we *already played* overshadowing the expansion that we were hoping to get. So I think you're spot-on with drawing that connection (ironically, because, you know... Strand :D )
Marco made a great video expanding on this, theorising that Lightfall was made within one year which if true it explains a lot of the big issues with Lightfall
I feel that for stuff regarding the Veil and the CloudArk, we should have had a Lightfall's version of "Altar of Reflection" interludes. These interludes being the Vex attempting to breach the CloudArk and we get data containing information on either or both. Smaller pieces that add up over time that Osiris, Rohan, or Nimbus elaborate on during or after.
Is that koekkoek
They didn't even do a preservation like mission... :/
I love this idea. It could even have updated dialogue after certain post-campaign quests were completed, or the raid, or even seasons as the year progresses.
That would have been excellent. I went back to the Altar many times to get all the two lies and two truths
@@yamz1156 Honestly. I'm so pissed there is no solo activity for ron. As a solo who has never done a raid, it felt so good to get a taste of what the raid looked like and how it played with my own character instead of watching a yt video of someone else.
Whatever Bungie's cooking better smack harder than Nezzy's scythe and Rhulk's legs. But no matter how good the future quests are, the thought that it should've been at least a bit explained in Lightfall will be burning in the back of my mind.
well, as much as I hate it bungie's business model is like 80% throwing hail marys that always seem to connect
@@thisgoddamusernamestoodamnlong Since day 1...
@@reprobatemind6194 I mean, technically since Halo lol
@@thisgoddamusernamestoodamnlong Still true... Industry leader in lucky concepts.
Personally i think the final shape is gonna flop. There is so much they are gonna have pull out of their a$$ to make all of it fit in the narrative. And, if im being honest, the expansion is probably gonna be the same size as lightfall with the same cookie cutter sized missions and a 4 encounter raid. There is no way they can wrap up the story in 9 missions.
I spent a lot of time after Lightfall finding myself comparing the campaign not to The Witch Queen, but Season of the Seraph.
To me, Lightfall felt more like a season crushed into a story campaign over anything else, and it felt like it needed way more time to tell the story it wanted to. It's such a wildly different experience from Witch Queen or The Red War in regards to pacing and how they stood out as standalone campaigns; and as I struggle to understand why, I found myself focusing more on what Lightfall felt like than what it didn't.
Season of the Seraph did a really good job of (re)introducing me to Rasputin, making me care about him and Ana over several weeks as he came into his own, before violently ripping him away in an extremely emotional finale. Rohan, comparatively, did not get that luxury, and so his sacrifice didn't hit with nearly as much impact as it would have if we'd had multiple weeks to actually be more thoroughly acquainted with him. Similarly, Osiris getting more time to struggle through his arc and giving essentially a "season of the Veil" would have also felt a lot more organic. Having two older characters facing their last life, one by choice, the other not, coming to terms with that finality felt like it would've been a much better way to flesh out their respective arcs as well, not to mention giving Nimbus more time to struggle with the idea of coming into their own and learning to say goodbye to their mentor over time.
I feel the focus on Strand took away from a lot of what Lightfall wanted to be, and from what I've heard, Strand wasn't supposed to even happen during Lightfall, which makes a lot of sense in retrospect. It feels like a lot of things ended up shuffled around and that was what really made it suffer in the end. Having worked on multiple game titles myself, have witnessed firsthand what production hell can look like, so it's easier to spot it through the mess, especially when those overhauls echo throughout the entirety of a project.
I would have loved a dialogue or one of those black-and-white cutscenes that just explained we didn't know what the veil is or does but that it was something the Witness needed - it felt like everyone else knew what it was except us, some acknowledgement would have gone a long way
Yes, this exactly this. Just the understanding that we didn't know exactly why it was important or how we could use it but that savathun hid it and the witness needed it. Us trying to figure out do we: a) activate it to stop the next collapse, b) destroy it prevent the witness from using it, c) keep the witness from destroying it. Just that question being answered over the campaign the witness needs to use it so that's what we have to stop.
And then after explaining how you can use the veil and us failing to stop the witness ghost backup plan then we can be left with the cliffhanger of what the witness did after linking to the traveler. We know you can link yourself to the traveler with the veil and a bit about how but then we can be left with the cliffhanger of what happened to the traveler.
If they explain clearly that the traveler is "dissected" and silent, maybe even dead and that this portal is impossible for anything to pass through and we don't even know what dimension it leads to then we can begin figureing that out over the year. What we got instead when they try to make a mystery out of it: Where have the witness gone? Duh, inside the traveler we'll just follow through the portal. What happened to the traveler? it is still there, we still have the light, it is fine.
there is
At the very least, the story should have confirmed what the Veil is, whether or not it actually is the Traveler’s “pale heart”; we can still get the mystery of figuring out what it does throughout the year.
@@robert2german what the veil is isn't nearly as important as what it does. And what the veil does/ can do is explained in the campaign.
the biggest problem is that the story is told like we know what the veil and the radial mast are and what they do, I have no problem figuring these things out, but I feel like I should already know it
Well said mate. I'm not sure why it's so easy for people to forget that you can have a discourse without it ending in violence.
@@ToadimusPrime should have ended the sentence at “you can”
Tell that to the hive
@@ToadimusPrime Completely missing the point there. NOTHING justifies the level of bs that Byf was talking about.
Ending? Lol no. Unless you think harsh words are violence.
Then what am I supposed to do with the 12 pack of pitchforks I bought?
Well said and articulated! My favorite moment was Caiatl's words to her father at the end of the campaign it felt very meaningful and emotionally packed. My main problems with the campaign were the big lore contradictions like when we hesitated to shoot our ghost when it was already established we have to crush them with our hands due to the paracausality to actually kill them so that didn't make sense.
Agreed. Especially since in forsaken Cayde’s ghost was not crushed.
That's not true. Ghosts have been killed by everything from blades to airstrikes. Its explained that you either need overwhelming firepower or to be paracausal to kill them, which we are. So shooting Ghost would've killed him
@@nightgirlgaming1985 And a sniper bullet that looks to be a fifty cal vs something the size of a baseball would be overwhelming AF as the kids say.
@@nightgirlgaming1985 yeah at this point the implications behind us grabbing and smashing the ghost is probably more to stop them from getting away immediately like Imaru and Alak-hul's ghost both did
We don't know yet the meaning of the word "Cemaili" said by Calus when we killed him, some people speculate that is Caiatl mother name.
For sure, the narrative is definitely the hardest part. The post-campaign meet up with Zavala and Ikora were just bewildering. I actually spend like half an hour making sure I didn't miss a campaign or cutscene, because what they were saying made no sense. I'm still deeply confused, and I'm not actually that excited for the monologuing that's going to try to address this stuff.
Yeah, they both said that the Traveler is gone and talk like it's died even though it's still there, just with a mysterious portal carved into it, so we really don't understand its status at all.
@@internisus The only thing we have for clues is the prophecy wall from Vow of the Disciple stating how the Witness will commune with the Traveler and "drink its Light"
@@granmastersword just a dead end plot point abandoned by bungie, dont look into it
I was just about to type this same comment. To me, the traveler is the big white sphere that powers our ghosts and powers of the light, and both the physical sphere and our powers remain. So what do they mean that it's gone? The dialogue feels like it belongs in a completely different context, or Zavala and Ikora know something we don't.
I found their facial animations to be hilarious. Zavala was all "kiss your loved ones... cos we in the shit now, son" (direct quote) whilst giving off the goofiest, coyest smile.
I think I’m mostly bummed about Osiris. I wish they focused him being upset that he can’t go on the frontlines anymore and has to rely on others. It could have been a great moment for Rohan to teach Osiris that he has leadership and experience, that he doesn’t need to be on the frontlines to contribute. Rohan could have told Osiris that it is okay to rely on others, just as they have to with Nimbus. There could have been a great bonding moment with Osiris and Rohan talking about how they both only have one life left, reflecting on what their legacy will be. Nimbus and our guardian could have had a moment talking about how all Nimbus wants to do is live up to Rohans example, but they are scared because of the responsibility put upon them. Which could be why Nimbus jokes they way they do. It wouldn’t make it any less cringy, but I think it would have been more bearable with that context. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing dialogue for all of that for fun, because I enjoy writing.
Edit: Before Lightfall even came out, I was predicting that Osiris would pursue becoming a Cloudstrider so he could “contribute more”, but is either turned down or chooses not to after learning that he doesn’t have to have the Light to be helpful.
Nimbus should have died, not Rohan. Would have absolutely subverted our expectations and made for a much more interesting narrative considering Rohan is nearing the 10 year limit of his lifespan. Would've been really fucking cool, but instead we got some weird gen z "fellow Kidz* freak
@@Shorkshire i think it could have been a great lesson for Nimbus and Osiris if Nimbus and Osiris were the ones pushing us forward on the mission Rohan died. That way Rohan could have given caution, but then Rohan is forced to go in and save Nimbus and the guardian because he knows he’s closer to death. Nimbus could have been given a first hand account of sacrifice to learn from, and Osiris could have felt the absence of Rohan, learning that pushing forward and sacrificing for the sake of sacrifice has negative consequences. Then Osiris could have been offered to be made into a Cloudstrider, but turns it down because of what Rohan taught him.
I think all of this is very possibly the intent anyways. Nimbus’ joking and carefree nature could very well be a younger way of coping with their duty and mortality. Not all context needs to spoken aloud to be there.
@@adamherrick6077 I agree, but in my opinion the fact that we aren’t entirely sure is why it should have been directly addressed in some way. Almost none of the online dialogue I saw surrounding Nimbus explained the terrible dialogue, which to me means if the intent was for Nimbus to struggle with expressing his emotions and did it through joking, it wasn’t conveyed well enough.
See, what you wrote there is already shows so much more than the campaign… this explores and expand on important thing!
Here's the thing: whenever I listen to the Lightfall soundtrack, I'm like OH GOD THIS IS SO HYPE THE LIGHTFALL VIBES I GET FROM THIS-- then my brain tries to look for the Lightfall vibes that should've been there.
The fact that last season we got one of the best cutscenes we’ve ever had and it was DELETED 2 weeks later is insane. Stuff like that does much more harm than Bungie probably realises.
Yes I didn't have time to find all those yellow balls.. i didn't think they were gonna delete that content so soon... Shame on Bungie.
@Gustavo Avila they tell you when the season is ending a few months in advance
To me, it makes sense. Destiny is being made for fans of Destiny. If we are fans, we saw it. If not, it's online for anyone else to see.🤷
@@corylyonsmusic take your comment to any other media source and it looks ridiculous. If an author of a book has been writing books for awhile and is now on book 18 getting rid of every book before that because there’s now too many books and his reasoning is “because the fans already know what happened” is moronic. If I’m playing a game I should be able to learn about that games story from that game and other sources related to that game a 3rd party source such as byf should not be a reliable source for new people or people who missed out to get caught up on. I love my man’s content he gets me the in deep knowledge but by no means should he be the only way of getting caught up on the story after a season ends
@corylyonsmusic not getting access to content I've paid for is ridiculous. Sunsetting is probably illegal, if any law firm would take the case.
Thank you for being a level-headed and considerate voice within the Destiny community! The bit about losing people that could have joined in our shared hobby really hit home. I really do love this game, it's been a part of my life since 2014, and it definitely hurts when *my team* loses (loved that analogy) and potential fans leave them behind...
I literally stopped playing. I've been playing since the game came out and I've been heavily playing the last year. (Every title, gilding, for the whole last year, blah, blah) and now I just don't care. The narrative was pretty much non existent, they want us to play a garbage loop, especially after week one story content was a fucking battleground and done. Like this whole expansion is pathetic on a whole new level. Nothing was fun, everything felt tedious, and the characters were obnoxiously annoying. Saw a reddit post about how should have been nimbus dying and Rohan coming up grips that he may be the last cloud strider and the legacy and impact it would have for Neptune, but nah we got generic telegraphed sacrifice and now we have "hello fellow kids" nimbus. I just don't care anymore. It's not fun.
@@MrFraknakThat's your opinion, and you have the right to feel that way, as do others who agree with you. But that's not the issue. The issue when people on either side of the coin comes across someone who disagrees and denigrates them just for having a difference of opinion. Have your opinion, let others have theirs, agree to disagree like adults, simple.
I think the best way to describe the story is from my sister. She is very much a casual player. Enjoys the story, loves the activities. I was with her when she finished calus and the final cut scene. These words epitomize it all, "what?" That's all she had to say. No idea what happen or why the story ended there. Just, "what?" Was her response to the ending. No closure or answers.
I have been playing Destiny since the Destiny 1 beta. I have been present for most of the major events for the story and left briefly when they started sunsetting content. Coming back into Witch Queen made me fall in love with the game again and was awestruck at the incredible environmental designs with Savathun's throne world and Rhulk's pyramid and the story was encapsulating to the point of me becoming addicted to it. I wanted to learn everything about these characters that I've been following for almost 10 years and the new ones that were perfectly implemented into the vast universe of the game. It really breaks my heart to see such a schism in the community that Lightfall has caused. What you said about nuances and how people are so quick to group the entire game as a whole into "game good" or "game bad". There was a time were I also thought destiny was game bad and times I've thought game good. And now that I'm older, I'm able to realize not everything is black and white and just because a part of something is bad, it doesn't mean the whole thing is bad. But when it comes to new players, they don't have that luxury and will be led on first impressions alone. Lightfall is not a beginner friendly expansion and nor do I think its veteran player friendly either. I think that the game is having a hard time catering to both audiences and is dragged down with missed opportunities. However I did enjoy playing with strand which in my opinion is one of the most fun subclasses they've added and Bungie always makes amazing environments and exotic weapons, not to mention the music and reading into extra lore. I have such high hopes for this game and I realize that those hopes turn into expectations and when they aren't ment then it disappoints me greatly. I really enjoyed hearing you speak about your passion Byf and I hope you continue to speak about it.
Well said. Thank you.
It really breaks my heart to see such a schism in the community that 'byf' has caused
@@thepromocode I mean, he didn't cause it but he isn't helping.
I wonder what people would have thought of Lightfall if they had made one simple change: when you finally get down to the root of the Veil, it looks like the Heart of the Black Garden. Personally, I would have freaked the f*^% out (in a good way). It’s clearly where they wanted to go with it, and I think it would have singularly improved with minimal effort. However, I would love to hear about your thoughts on the idea.
True, it would’ve been like the pyramid moment from Shadowkeep
Would have definitely been a full circle moment, but the implications of the veil being linked with the Heart would be too great I think. Not saying it isn’t possible, but that’s not a “simple change” in any way
In the post campaign missions, it is revealed that the heart was a failed replica of the veil, so it would have been explained nicely why they would have looked so similar
@@nerm9507 I mean graphics wise. We learn from the post-campaign exotic mission that the Heart was intended to replicate the Veil. Having the pulsating orb (possibly harnessed by some sort of Vex-inspired frame; this is partly the work of the Ishtar Collective after all) instead of the random glow bathing Calus in the final fight wouldn’t have necessitated any additional changes to the story: aside from the Guardian and Ghost, nobody who actually saw the Veil had ever seen the Heart, so it would not necessitate any change besides tweaking and implementing a reused asset. They still wouldn’t explain anything: even after all these years we have no clue what the Heart actually was, but it would effectively answer one question with another, bringing the world full circle and lining up the opportunity to explore one of Destiny’s most enduring mysteries.
Calus steps in and roars "So, my shadow, do you think you can kill a God?"
HyperNet Current was my favorite mission through the campaign, but racing Calus in the final mission, from the very first moment we jumped down that silo, was my favorite in-game moment. The theatrics at play, from sound design to environmental effects to whatever else was happening, it was awesome.
Yeah that was fun and genuinely nerve wracking. I absolutely LOVE when they give us these HUGE vertical spaces too, when they just make you realise how deep down some of these areas go, like the mission in the archology, or the whisper mission where you just drop down massive distances past huge features. Its a shame we don't have some kind of forge mode or photo mode so we can take more time to appreciate the work the environment team do
Byf I absolutely love that you are able to see and understand (the most important part) both sides. The fact that you’re able to see why people are angry or defensive really shows that you’re a level above some people and I give true props to that. Seeing both sides is one thing but understanding and accepting both sides is an infinitely more rare ability so thank you for being cool like that
sounds like devils advocate. over 500,000 views on his kneejerk reaction vid vs 2,300 negative reviews on steam. thats the discourse :/ every destiny dlc has been to some extent a narrative let down that introduces more questions. i get its frustraiting but how can you play destiny and not expect that? that wild to me. the community will never get exactly what they want. why is it different now? because byf is fed up. byf got overentitled and forgot about tempering the expectations of his fans, infact 'loredaddy' became as impaitent as them.
@@thepromocodethis exactly, and it's why I've unsubscribed. I used to come to Byf for insight on lore and to see what's relevant/cool to read, I've never been into his 'critique' videos because I don't value that. Content creators in general need to remember their place, they wouldn't have the followings they do if not for this game, I don't find it constructive to start absolutely dumping all over the game and the people who worked hard on it on a first 24 hour snap reaction coloured by the views of their twitch chats.
“Content creators need to remember their place” The kind of takes you find in the TH-cam comment section 💀 the kinda guy that goes “monarchy is good actually” or “Think about the CEOs” or some other bootlicker shit
@@ateacup2788 yes, and? If Byf et al are allowed to express their, in my opinion, poor takes on the game to a million plus of their followers, am I not allowed the same latitude to say I think they're wrong and far too big for their britches?
@@ateacup2788 monarchy is good? Literally what are you on about you know precisely zero about me you utter nugget
I find it absolutely astounding that our most detailed description of what the veil is that we got in the game came from the end of season of the seraph, which ISN’T EVEN IN THE GAME ANYMORE. The expansion where the veil is mentioned countless times, where it is a key plot point, and where we see it with our own eyes doesn’t live up to the single line of “… ‘the Veil’, an object of immense paracausal power. One that is linked to the Traveler.”
Hey you got to appreciate this, this is the first our character gave orders to Osiris and Caiatl. That a strong development on our character's part.
Hey, new opinion just dropped
Finally, I was _STARVING_ for a new opinion to consume!
Thanks Byf! Now I know what to think.
let me DEVOUR your OPINIONS
This is more of a Datto thing, but I get the resistance
Yep I was pretty close to having my own opinion, thank God we dodged that bullet. What am I, an individual 🤣
I was one of those people that was glad that Bungie shrouded parts of the game in mystery and had full faith in them to slowly unfold that story and answer all the questions they’ve introduced. Except that was back in 2014. After almost every yearly expansion I have showed the narrative team grace for not answering fundamental questions that we have been asking since D1. But LF did me in. I’m a veteran player who can no longer suspend by disbelief in Bungie to tell a good story.
fr remember back in shadowkeep and beyond light when we knew that campaigns were shit and filler but we accepted it lmaoo💀
So the story only kept you hooked for 9 years. Lol. Yeah, Lightfall was mediocre, but y'all are the whiniest people around
@@livindeath1643 you do realize that not everyone play this game just for the story right?
You can say they left you stranded!
Yeah dude I think lightfall was the straw that broke my back. Even the original expectations we had with the teased photo/thumbnail of the pyramid was drastically better. It’s concerning to me that an expansion’s dlc is needing to have its story be told by 10$ seasons for the next 3-4 times like wiw
It actually would have been fine if Rohan pulled a "Dude where's my car, continuum transfunctioner" and told us "The Veil is a powerful and mysterious weapon, and it's mystery is only exceeded by it's power... But it seems to have infinite power that keeps our city alive." The problem is that everyone seems to know what it is, and won't tell us.
Byf, I love you lol The beginning of this video is something that many people needed to hear. It's always a pleasure to hear your thoughts and opinions about things like this.
i promise you anyone that actually did that isn't going to watch this video
I think one of the big reasons Witch Queen performed so well was because it was a conclusion to a LORE-BASED mystery that had been in the story and had been driving the story for years.
I think one of the big reasons Lightfall fell wo flat was because it introduced a MAINLINE mystery that would be resolved at an unknown point in the future (until they revealed it).
I think the biggest difference is that they left one of the biggest mysteries in the game not as lore, but a main story thread. Witch Queen had years of introduction and had previous storylines changed to fit that side-story into the background. Lightfall? It had season of the seraph's hunt for nefele stronghold which only occurred after the reveal.
Sorry for paragraph
That's one of the really amazing things about Witch Queen, grounded in Lore, brought it to the forefront - and it completed what was established there along with pulling you in with another mystery.
It's much simpler than that. Even pretending Savathun had no build up what's so ever, Witch Queen still simply has a better plot and characters with far more interesting personalities. In witch queen you got a better understanding of what was happening after each mission, light fall on the other hand has little progression in story at all besides learning strand and chasing after a plot device which is never explained.
I am LOVING grapple strand. Being able to use it to navigate Neomuna is so fun! In the campaign I actually enjoyed how the first encounter with the Tormentor made me ACTUALLY afraid. An enemy that ACTIVELY chases you with the ferocity that guardians usually take against easy enemies. I remember panicking and jumping around away from it just trying to catch my breath ! It made defeating them all the more satisfying as we grew stronger throughout the campaign. And that fight alongside Caiatl....a masterpiece *chefs kiss*
Obviously it means nothing to anyone but I appreciated reading this cause I've had a broken end game build for awhile now and with the new LF changes I've never felt as weak, which really upset me and made me feel like they balanced the new sandbox wrong. Now, maybe I'm seeing all things gotta move on and maybe the difficulty is actually right just to kick it up again. Make it interesting. I realised it was awhile since I felt like your description 😅
While grapple is fun, I also love that the way subclasses work nowadays allows my hunter to play with threadlings, with the threadling grenades and fragments which let me spawn threadlings on finishers and strand weapon kills. FLY MY PRETTIES!
Dude tormentors made me jump when that first one grabbed me. I was literally MASHING my buttons tryna break out lmao
@@dredgen0268 the PANIC of getting grabbed and mashing buttons while your health bar goes down was so intense
The most frustrating thing about the campaign was how many times I thought to myself, "why didn't they do ______, that would make way more sense." If these thoughts happen to often (which they did) it becomes more frustrating to play.
I’m sure other people will hit the points I’d like to. Just wanted to say you’re a Gem Byf and we’re genuinely lucky to have you in the community.
Came here to say this. Thank you Byf 🤘
Luv u loredaddy
If you're going to ignore the fact that there is
-No new Crucible or Gambit maps
-No new weapon models in either the new expansion or seasonal set
-Multiple severe bugs
-PC stability issues
-A raise in activity playlist difficulty and time to complete without an equal rise in rewards
And more on top of a 10$ increase in expansion price for arguably less content and quality than Witch Queen, then don't state that people are lacking nuance when those are all completely valid complaints and are contributions as to why the game is sitting at "OVERWHELMINGLY NEGATIVE" on Steam.
What Byf was talking about at this point 16:00 hits home. I started playing in season of the Haunted. And really, the Witch Queen campaign really took me in. Then, I played Beyond light and finally shadow keep. Yes, the order I played it was wrong, but I don't actually know what the proper order was at that time.
I did try to make my own theories although I don't have a lot of details available to me. Then, I searched for a place where I can check if my theories are true; that's when I found Byf's channel. And yes, the things that were confusing became clearer due to Byf's videos.
If channels like Byf's wasn't around, the story wouldn't had made sense to me. Especially since some campaigns had been sunset.
If anyone knows the game "Blackout Club" here, you would understand how hard it is to try and enjoy a story when things that used to be a big part of the story are no longer available.
holy shit someone else who played that
it was incredibly ambitious, and really cool whenever one of the voices invaded your game, but yeah without those the story just feels kinda empty, the interactions with them and the lore it revealed were the story, its different just reading about it vs experiencing it
I started playing at the end of season of the lost, when forsaken still was a thing and free to play. I didn't even realize Forsaken was a DLC, I just started playing... I didn't get the lore back then, but I knew Cade-6 was important... More than one year has passed since then and I started to understand the lore. Later I also got the other DLCs and I also played them in the wrong order but I enjoyed them non the less. I hope Forsaken returns as a free to play DLC so new players start their journey into the world of Destiny with some pieces of lore they are able to understand without having to watch Byf's videos.
@@enbydeadly The "Voices interaction" in Blackout club are pretty much "canon" after all. Without them it's pretty hard to understand the story unless you look through other sources. Iirc, there are even events that have a huge impact on the story that you can't really experience in the game anymore. Which is sad, because Blackout club have a really cool lore.
@@drache3370 When I started, in my case, I actually thought Savathun was like the big bad of the game, and the guardians had been fighting her from the beginning. So I was surprised to know that Witch Queen is actually the very first time the guardians confronted Savathun directly. Since in the past season, Savathun was acting as Osiris and when she did reveal herself, we didn't really fight her in game (Not sure if it was season of hunt or lost).
I actually do like mystery and the idea that we figure out what the Veil is over the year, but as Byf touched on in his first lightfall video, if there's going to be a mystery, it needs to feel like it's meant to be a mystery - not like every NPC knows what's going on but won't tell us
Why do you think it feels that way? Nimbus and Osiris literally say they don't know what the veil is. It's written that they don't know and we are gonna figure it out.
@@GirthCheck If they said that in the campaign I think it needed to be emphasized more. But also Osiris seems to know the veil linking with the traveler is bad, but he doesn't really make us know that he knows that. Even a simple line like "my research shows this could be disastrous" would make it feel better
@Andrew Lin we know its bad because we heard what the witness wanted to do through our ghost. We know it's bad because it's what the witness is trying to do. They express that they don't know in the Dialogue.
The thing that made me quit is that they (Bungie) were selling Strand as a grapple intense, high flying and exciting thing and then we get to play it and grapple is LITERALLY the longest cooldown we had. That's not fun to the point it's annoying.
While the story may not have been exactly where I wanted it, I’ve not played this game this much since d2 released. I’m loving the seasonal content and am looking forward to finding out more. Always enjoy your content.
I was disappointed by the lack of explanations about the veil and the loss of Rohan. Full disclosure I literally just had to ask my partner what his name was because of how little time we were allowed to spend with him. I would have preferred the opportunity to get to know Rohan for at least 3 or four missions with cutscenes before he died. Because I tried interacting with him during the campaign outside of the missions, there wasn't even the option to talk to him outside of the initial instance. And then Osiris's moment where he forgot Sagira was dead...that broke my heart. I wish they'd stop torturing Osiris and have him central to the plot without having to make him suffer. I would happily allow an ahamkara to kill me with their magic if it meant that Osiris' grief was treated with respect. He reminds me a little too much of my dad and what my dad was like in the three years prior to his death this past June. I have watched too many of my relatives grow old and lose themselves.
My condolences.
As one who has trouble speaking about most things... Thank you for all that you do Byf you are an inspiration to many including myself.
My biggest problem with the whole thing is the cliff hanger. There wasn't one... If you plan on releasing info in bits that's fine, but you have to set it that way. Give Osiris a few lines like " I'm not sure what it is yet, but I'm trying to figure it out. " Most authors of a story will let you know that a cliff hanger is happening. But not here
EXACTLY
I’m fine with criticism of the community. Or of the devs. Or of anyone really.
But I don’t the tone of Byfe here. Feels like he’s talking down to everyone for much of this video. “There’s something called nuance!” Oh. You don’t say?!
I’d love to see respectful dialog from all sides. Without the “holier than thou” attitude.
Normally I love Byfe’s videos. And still appreciate this one.
I will say I think in talking to Bungie Devs, we have a right to be rude to an extant. We paid $50 for lightfall, and the campaign is honestly awful, and the raid is a complete joke. The Bungie devs are directly responsible for this. Now obviously no death threats or even attacking the devs directly, but something like “wtf are you guys going to do to make this right?” We’re all adults. This is their JOB. If I’m slow at wiring up a house or if I short out a bunch of circuits or fuck up bigly, I’m going to get yelled at by my boss and/or my customer(s). We don’t have to be super polite to Bungie. They fucked up majorly and have barely even apologized. Story wise they basically told us “hold on till next season!” I did not pay for that GARBAGE. If you disagree that’s fine, but I think that being rude is sometimes necessary. Personally don’t use Twitter or haven’t messaged bungie or whatever, but I do not blame the people who do
I'd say a solid 7/10. Good subclass, good gameplay, neat environment. But the narrative holes, while I can overlook some, just were too egregious here.
For me it's more of a 6/10
If Lightfall is a 7/10 then Crota's End is the best raid in Destiny
@@bloodmoonangel8925you’re on the wrong page mate
@@bloodmoonangel8925 you are welcome to your opinion bud. Just voicing mine.
... What holes?
The biggest issue I had personally was the weird sort of “outside looking in” vibe that surrounded the Veil and the Ghost’s connection to the traveler - as seemingly the only character in the story who had no idea what these things meant, it felt like the plot was gatekeeping me or something.
All it would’ve taken for me was visible confusion from a few other characters as to what the hell was happening, and the ones who seemed in the know to indicate they would explain (I.e. Caitl promising to elaborate on why “we lost” - could’ve been a seasonal story element).
TLDR: Mysteries don’t bug me, the implication that I should understand parts of the mystery that aren’t touched on does.
'it felt like the plot was gatekeeping me or something' have you ever played destiny before?
@@thepromocode picking up on the wrong part Rob
In that last line from Caitl one single word change would have made a world of difference in the conclusion. Change "We just lost" to "We just failed", we're across the damn galaxy and have no idea if we lose because of this. What we do know is we failed to keep the witness from establishing a link with the veil which was the whole point of the campaign arc. I also agree that even one person showing a little confusion as to what the veil actually is would have been nice.
If anyone defends the lack of information on the Veil and whatnot on the grounds of mystery - I fear they’re missing the fact that NONE of that was presented as a mystery. I love me a good mystery. I wanna ask questions without answers. I want to craft theories. But all the npcs talked as if they knew and just never bothered to tell the players.
I’m glad that of all the things done well enough narratively with lightfall was Nezarec. I remember being so disappointed at the end of plunder, but little did I know he’d be the best character in lightfall
Yeah, I love the story of Nezarec. It's just a lil disappointing that the fight against Nezarec was a little.... minute.
@@ACupOfWarmLatte a little? Without the damage of contest, the poor thing is a absolute pushover. Such a shame for what might indeed be the best character of the DLC.
@@hashtunr4952 He also looks pretty lame for the supposed "God of Pain"
Lol what? The dudes a fucking pajama wearing weirdo that we drank as tea yet somehow he's a raid boss. Nothing surrounding him makes any fucking sense
@@MaxM227 yeah i was really expecting a grim reaper type of scary thing. Large sythe bleeding void energy and darkness, ripped up robe flowing in the wind, opens his robe and lets out nightmares… could have been very creepy and menacing
4:36 holy fuck, mad Byf is not something I expected to hear. But the community needs to hear it
It sounds like when the nice teacher gets mad at the class
@@ZarChasmOfficial That's a very apt comparison for him given his role in the community here lol
He sounds like he’s scolding a child and I don’t think it’s productive. But he’s certainly free to do as he pleases.
@@MortuusTyrannus When people use his arguments as a "reason" to be pieces of shit, I think the anger and scolding is valid.
It won't do anything because people like that aren't going to take this as a moment to rethink their actions, but I get the frustration.
@@blackout2189 idk. People will use anything as an excuse to act poorly. There’s nothing that byfe’s ever said that would cause a rational, mature adult to make death threats against other human beings.
Still think it’s better to act as the bigger person and not talk down to people. It’s unproductive at best. But to each their own I guess. 🤷♂️
He hath spoken...
I have a lot to say, but instead I'll just say: I hope Bungie's gamble with The Final Shape pays off.
same. i also have high hopes for the new dungeon next season. hopefully it will add lore to the game too since it’s season of the deep
Yep. 100%. We can only hope.
I think it will, lightfall and final shape were once the same expansion but had to be split due to time constraints, if I had to guess the vail itself was just a last minute "Oh shit we need something for lightfall" and Bungie had no intentions on ever introducing it until they had to split lightfall and final shape
Lightfall wasn't always filler, but became filler, you can really tell in the tone shift, when we originally were shown lightfalls name it had a dark, dreary vibe, but once the split happened all of a sudden its a cyberpunk city, hell neomuna itself story wise feels rushed, "uhhhhh yea there's this city that no one knew about on Neptune with this really important thing on it"
If they drop the ball the franchise may die straight up
I still trust them to conclude this saga to be a great story, but I accept that bungie isn't perfect and has very much dropped the ball here
for me, the most frustrating part is that the characters in the story seem to know what the Veil is, but simply don't tell us. and it's not like they choose not to, like it's some secret, they just never address it! it's crazy bad writing.
no see but it's not just that, in the post campaign quest it is then made clear that they DON'T know what the veil is, i think all of this would've been fixed if they just made it clear from the beginning that no one knows, literally just have a cutscene where rohan says "we don't understand it's origins, we just use it to power neomuna, apart from that we understand nothing". if they would've done that i think everyone would've at least immediately gotten the idea that it's supposed to be a mystery across, rather then having it be some confusing factor in the story.
They do address that they don't know in the campaign, multiple times. People need to stop actively lying about the contents of the campaign; it's genuinely infuriating.
@@cryw1092 I played through the campaign at least 5 times, I never noticed any dialogue where they say they don't know what the Veil is.
@@Scripzure Did you not see the part where Osiris is talking to Saint-14? Keep in mind that they don't have to say "I don't know what the Veil is," verbatim in order for them to communicate that.
The one thing that bugs me the most is part of the final lines from Rasputin. "[The veil] is linked to the Traveller." And then, two-thirds of the way through Desperate Measures we have our ghost saying something like "The Veil feels like the Traveller, but that doesn't make sense."
The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. The developers didn't explain the veil because they don't know either.
I think the biggest disappointment is they were doing so well. The seasons up until Lightfall were good, we were all excited for it. Then we get to Lightfall and it falls on its face.
What a breath of fresh air, genuine nuance. Who would've thought?
Anyway, like you pointed out, I do fall somewhere in the middle and since you asked, I'll give some of my thoughts.
- The whole situation with the Veil, if Bungie did want to do the whole "big mystery" thing, needs to be acknowledged by the characters and especially our character in the campaign. I can forgive the Striders just being like "yeah, the Veil, obviously". And I can even (kind of) forgive Osiris for just going along with it because from his perspective he truly knows it's deeply important to the Witness, and if the Witness wants it that badly, keep it safe first, pick it apart later. But there is no reason our character shouldn't have asked even once what it was. Even if it was met with Osiris saying what I said above, "Witness wants it, that's all the reason we need to safeguard it, we'll figure it out later" and the Striders pulling an Exo Stranger/ "no time to explain", at least it'll feel like we didn't actually miss something important. It isn't the best solution, but it would've made a difference for sure.
- I dont mind Strand being as incorporated into the story as it is. I wish it would have been tied into the first point, and I think while it still wouldn't be perfect, more people would be more okay with it.
- I've seen people being really upset over Osiris this expansion, this one I just don't get it, but again, I think the first point would've smoothed this over a bit.
- I wish Nimbus wasn't as... uncanny? I guess, is the best way to put it for their appearance in game. The personality I think works for the whole "80's action movie" aesthetic, but just something about their face specifically puts me off. I know it's not exactly a story critique, but it's also not just a Cloud Strider thing because Rohan was totally fine to me. But, you know, *shrug*
- Speaking of Rohan, very much so a wasted character. He should've stuck around for this last year, then sacrificed himself going into Final Shape, or it shouldn't have been brought up that he only had about a year left at all. If he doesn't become the first Cloud Strider Guardian or something, "hero of the week" is an apt yet incredibly disappointing title for this character that couldve been so much more.
- Bungie really needed to find a new beginning for the end cutscene, because it really is too obvious that the first and last cutscene were once the same cutscene cut in half. Why is Zavala, Ikora, Elsie and Mara standing on the bridge of the HELM right when the Witness attacks, spend at minimum hours there in the darkness just waiting, and then the blast shield just happens to rise up right when the Witness gets access to the Veil and carves up the Traveler? You can't convince me that we went to Neptune, had our whole adventure *and* effectively mastered Strand, and then killed Calus in, what, 20 minutes tops? Incredibly sloppy.
- I'm actually more forgiving than most when it comes to Zavala and Ikora post-campaign, but I do still have issues with it. On the one hand, we were all ready for the Witness to role up and bring on the apocalypse, with the body count being pretty steep probably. Instead, it hung out in low orbit, did something to the Traveler, and then disappeared. To reiterate, I'm going against the grain here and actually kinda okay with this turn of events because I'm with Destiny for the long run, and I know this will eventually be addressed. Ghosts are understandably upset, of course, but last year we learned not to look to the Traveler as the end all be all, and the apocalypse effectively missed us. Being a little shocked but glad for our current continued survival mixed with getting down to business to uncover the mystery seems like a fairly reasonable response, albeit the animations are atrocious.
All in all, the biggest problem is, of course, the mishandling surrounding the Veil. That singular thing not being done even slightly better has a magnifying effect for every other (in my opinion) largely minor problem in the story. Yes, I'm very confident it'll be addressed and I do have hope for the future of Destiny, this year and next, but I agree with Byf that fair, reasonable critique is needed right now.
GAME. BAD.
Great takes. I agree with 100% what you said. I had many of those thoughts myself. While I have taken breaks between forsaken and now, I’ve always kept up with the story and will never not enjoy playing the game when I come back, every time. Gameplay is better than ever I’d wager. Enjoying running around Neomuna between weekly missions. Cheers
Byf was the first person I thought about when I completed the campaign. I had hope he could answer the 100 questions I had. Glad to know he also has 100 questions about the story himself
I love your content. The love and the professionalism shows. It's clear everything you do comes from that. You have managed to combine both so as best as anyone can. Keep up the good work guardian.
While we should never stoop to the level of threats or similar, it is absolutely not a crime to have higher expectations of content that is NOT FREE. The destiny community has this tendency to allow bs to happen simply because we feel like we should be way more considerate or tolerant of things as if this is a totally free game or something. Let us not forget this DLC is FIFTY DOLLAR DLC, $20 off from a modern day full priced AAA game. This is not okay and we should all be upset by this.
This is a bit outside of the campaign, but expanding more on the nature of strand and just ALL of our subclasses in general was a great choice; it gives us a better understanding of both the light and dark, and gives us room to speculate
Please stop apologizing and feeling bad, you're not the one doing anything wrong. Bungie missed up and could've done better and they need know that.
My friend talked me into getting destiny 2 about a month ago. Here are the raw experiences and opinions of a brand new player.
I thought I bought the wrong game, as the intro is identical to the previous game.
Every single cutscene or piece of dialogue leaves me asking "who is that? What's going on? I thought he was dead? Where is this?" Etc
All the "good story" expansions mean nothing, because they are gone and may as well never have existed to me.
All story that there is is accessible at any time, meaning I have no idea what is supposed to happen before something else.
Gameplay is fun, but the story is so disjointed/inaccessible that I don't even consider it a part of the game
I had a friend who came back from Beyond light, and he literally asked me "Who was Mithrax again?", "Wait is Eramis alive?" "Who is Caiatl?", and a bunch of seasonal questions. All I could say was to watch Byf videos since there is no place in the game to expplain all this
You are a reason why I love this game/community so much Byf! Thank you for the perspective lore master!
I feel one can not please ever one.. you will win some and you lose some. That's just a harsh reality some will have to deal with. It's to shame to lose new players or returning players, but there is always a risk.. for the record, you make a lot good points here. For me, this is like comic books in a ways. Things change. Not everthingis is going to great. I like to keep hope alive.
Byf: Stop it! Seriously, Stop it!
Me: Wow, even when he's mad he sounds very polite.
*[10 SECONDS LATER]*
Me: Oh.
Honestly given the subject matter he was discussing "fuck off" is a remarkably measured response
Something I loved and I don't see mentioned enough is the semi-destructible environments. It's a little touch but it plays well and it makes the combat somehow better, more chaotic.
Yeah I love that.
I remember be stuck in that door that you had to destroy for so long that I had to Google it lmao
@@willhardy9731 lol. Nice.
My admiration for Byf, as a content creator and as a human being, couldn't be higher. You, my good sir, is an example! Thank you for everything
Thank you for everything you do for the Destiny community Byf. You are, live, and positively represent us with class, passion, dignity & perfect articulation. Destiny isn't only our "team," but it is also OUR home. God bless you, Byf. Keep up the astounding work my friend.
Well done video Byf! Showing nuance, reason and critical thinking.... like you made this vid for your most hard-core fans... I've been labeled as a Bungie fan boy by my gamer friends and really I'm a true fan of storytelling, just so happens that my favorite game does so much right to keep me here... I've been saying since day one of Lightfall... many are having a hard time seeing the forest for the trees!
Couldn’t agree more with these takes. Personally I think lightfall is worth the £40 or whatever as an expansion. I bought the £80 thing purely for the next years worth of seasons and the dungeons. And if a season would cost me around £10 anyway i think that annual pass is worth it too with how good seasons have been since Chosen. Yeah the story was missing parts but gameplay wise i had a blast, i think strand is fun and will only develop just like stasis did with exotics and fragments etc, and i’m actually a fan of the difficulty changes throughout the whole game. The raid contest mode being quite easy was a strange one but that certainly doesn’t make me regret buying or playing lightfall.
Byf: "I make my living off of this video game. My channel provides entertainment by explaining the layers upon layers of Lore the game has and why that's fun!"
Also Byf: "It ain't that deep."
Love ya man. That made me chuckle! I needed a good laugh today.
(Also, Nimbus saying the word "Thingamajig" when hes supposed to be revealing meaningful dialogue made me want to uninstall.)
If we doing it and not actually having a good time then its all a waste
It’s deep for him sure, but for the spectators that he’s talking to? Yeah it’s not deep.. they have no excuse to be shitstains
Nah, him calling Calus ugly in front of Caital in what should have been a somber moment made me hate the character more than anything. I wish we kept Rohan. He was dope.
I really like the whole "Training" events with Strand. It made more sense than with stasis were we got those power influxes when commuting and we just "Knew" what we were doing the whole story
I believe bc we were "remembering what was forgotten" bc the darkness brings memories back
@@krillffxiv5021 Not during Stasis introduction, we were just being told to not let it control/corrupt us and other bits that are not 100% relevant to mastering it. Strand, while we were more familiar with Darkness, we wield it wrong hence the Exhaustion afterwards because we believed it the same as Stasis. If Stasis had the introduction as Strand then it would make a bit more sense if Strands was more like how Stasis was, due to being familiar with Darkness and it was being wielded "easily" without the change in perspective.
@@BrakoElMostro that's because strand is the only element that 'fights back', we were able to easily wield stasis because of the splinter Elsie gave us at the start of the campaign
@@hayato-dono5934 Stasis fights back also by corrupting its user but its never seen in game.
I enjoy so much about destiny, but the main reason I play is the story/lore, so having a massive aspect not explained at all made it difficult to enjoy.
However there is alot to like about the expansion (specifically strand), looking forward to more explanations before final shape!
one of my main takeaways from Lightfall: give that marketing team a RAISE!
Well.. yes, but no. They actually false advertised via the hand cannon on the cover, and the non existing intro screen for a 6 man activity.
@@bannedmann4469 I also thought Neomuna would be MUCH more vertical. Like actual skyscrapers and stuff. That's why when I first saw the trailer, I was like "Is this Destiny?"
Yea they are good at lying
As much as i found this campaign story Lackluster, I had fun with strand. There were a few moments during the campaign where Rohan and Osiris, we talking at the pond and he asks Sagira to analyze something. Just to get slapped with the reality that he is lightless now.
returning player here, played from 2014 launch through forsaken dlc. let me say this felt like it was a total filler arc and the amount of hype i allowed myself to be consumed with after hearing about the witness felt unwarranted. that’s not ok, i stuck it out and decided to continue catching up on content in this game because of how fascinating witch queen and shadowkeep’s campaigns are. ultimately i will enjoy the past and seasonal content but strand should have been tied to savathun and putting it on some street in cyberpunk 77 is a crime i can’t forgive
After seeing the talk about that future story quest bits in TWAB. I feel that the narrative team may trying new ways to make story content, like a "seasonalized" core expansion campaign narrtive that will stay throughout the year.
Maybe they want you to come back every season and see more quests and missions expanding the main campaign along with the seasonal story. So the main narrative of Lightfall stays throughout the year, and you get the usual seasonal story on a different front.
Like right now Season of Defiance is happening in parallel with the Lightfall main story. They don't even have a connection yet (to me that is).
They picked a pretty bad time to do this considering we are at the end of a story arc. We are accustomed to what Bungie has been doing all these years, expectations are there. Missing the expectation have consequences, hence where we are now. And Bungie didn't do a good job communicating what they want to do with the story neither. Leave something to hint that story will be expanded upon later helps a lot.
But if this next season Veil story quest is a quick add after all the negativity broke lose. Then all I said is for nothing.
For now, we get a core story with missing pieces and unhappy populance, which is just sad. They could have done better, and they are capable of doing better. Hope they can turn things around.
Sorry for my English, not my first language. 😓
(Byf senpai notice me)
It definitely isn't a quick add. These sorts of things take several months to develop, and lightfall's been out for two weeks.
Without your channel I'd be totally lost. Thanks for all your hard work, very much appreciated 👍
As a story writer myself I am acutely aware of the narrative and plot as I experience it, and I love nothing more than to feel myself riding the waves of the story, taken away with it, and knowing what will happen next is the narrative catharsis; when your questions are answered. It’s when Sherlock discovers the identity of Moriarty, what he’s done, and even knows what the villain is going to do next. BUT HOW?? The chase is on! Every answer makes the stakes *higher* because the truth reveals more and more just how dire the situation is, and how dastardly evil the villain is.
My point is that I agree with Byf that this was not the time for questions shrouded in shadows, it’s the time for answers. Most importantly; answers in the final act create more tension and urgency than the questions which piled up before. It’s like rifling through the suspect’s paperwork hidden in their desk, finding more and more prof they’re involved in not just what you’re tailing them for, but EVERYTHING. You remember clues you didn’t even know you had!
At any point in the mission dialogue multiple characters could have answered Ghost asking, “What is the veil? I’ve never heard of it,” with a myriad of theories from Nimbus, Rohan, and Osiris.
Even if Bongus didn’t give answers, *at least* give us a direction and clues. When the day 1 beta players and lore nerds like myself are left in the dark, there’s a big problem.
We need more people to see this video. This was very well said overall with everything that Lightfall has delivered and how Destiny 2 is shaping up for the future.
Byf I think you perfectly nailed my stance on this. It really feels discouraging trying to appreciate Lightfall right now when it seems like everyone under the damn sun is railing on the "game bad" side of things. The narrative was definitely not as strong as it could have been. But Neomuna is just incredible. There's so much hidden story to unpack there. It's gorgeous and fun to explore. I love the neon vibes. It's absolutely a masterpiece of set design. I really REALLY wish the story had been better but overall I'm very satisfied with what we got and it makes me really sad to see people just completely ignore everything else because of the campaign falling flat. I know Bungie has it in them to pull this off, and I'm rooting for them as hard as I can. I'm just glad that you have the ability to call out the people harassing the devs and spreading all that hate, because at times it feels like as small as they are, they make so much noise that it becomes common sentiment. You do so much to preserve the integrity of the people who don't do that and it means more than you'll ever know, as someone who's been following you since Rise of Iron
This video provides good perspective. Well done, Byf.
I’m going to hypothesize here: From what I have seen of Lightfall, one unfortunate thing was that there is a lot happening. What I mean is this: there is the side of the Witness and the Traveler and all that this side entails, there is the side of Strand and beginning to delve into the nature of paracausality. If this was solely the Strand expansion in a similar way to Beyond Light being the Stasis expansion, with us discovering Strand and beginning to use it against the Witness’s forces with story still pointing towards the confrontation between the Traveler and the Witness, then things may have gone better in storytelling and community reception/perception as there would be sufficient time for developing Strand as a gameplay element and story element and sufficient time for discussing what are our current plot holes. If the events of the final mission and cutscene were to happen more closely before Final Shape with Final Shape seeing us jump from
Neptune to Earth in hot pursuit of the Witness through the whatever-that-is in the Traveler’s side which is something we will likely do in Final Shape, that could have a more substantial impact and be received better. As an alternative hypothetical: if we had only been exposed to the race to Neptune to secure the Veil to prevent it from falling into the Witness’s control, lose as we did in canon, and spend these next few seasons finding a way to recoup the Veil or follow the Witness through the whatever-that-is with Strand being an integral part of that process, I would think that that would have potential for better reception/perception. This is a all rough draft-style hypothetical, but I do think that a part of the issue was taking on the separate issues of the new Strand power alongside the events over Earth and with the Veil on Neptune ultimately put too much strain and pressure on the storytellers at Bungie to do too much at once for a single narrative experience.
Compared to other expansions lightfall certainly is not the best and certainly not the worst. I can only imagine the sheer amount of pressure now put onto the final shape and is only going to upset the community even further. Destiny has given me moments in gaming that no other game does, I believe bungo and can fix the hole they dug but it's not gonna be easy.
@NPC I thought shadowkeep wasn't very good
@NPC I don't necessarily think any of them are bad other than d2 launch.
my biggest issue is honestly not the veil it is how calus was treated. He was one of the greatest villains and build up for so long. Especially with all the background in the season of the Haunted and Duality giving Calus a more Human side, building up all this Tension in the Father Daughter Relationship and then never giving it a payoff. They even set it up in the cutscene where he throws away his chalice the Symbol of his opulence maybe leading to him giving up and admiting his failures WHILE caital is in the room and not somewhere else. I have a MAJOR issue with him just dieing and a stupid Marvel like inappropriate Oneliner that just ruines everything. In general i do Hate Nimbus and this scene was the WORST.
I honestly wanted Caiatl to backhand him after that awful joke.
Thank you good sir for that fantastic reality check that some in the community needed!
I am going to limit these to three in a way, but nuance matters :)
Things I loved with this expansion:
1. Quality of life changes, load outs, shaders vender, more shader options to obtaining them, the find a fire team changes, ranks.
2. challenging exotic quests that have some great call backs.
3. new sub class. Initially I wasn't a fan and now I do quite like it, plus variety is nice.
Negatives for me:
1. Story, I dont mind mystery and it causing theories, with promise of reveals, but this story had to many mysteries and its focus felt disjointed. To me it felt like this was a campaign of discovering strand but yet the narrative was about protecting the vail. Take beyond light, it was about exploring darkness and stasis, with the narrative and actions take during that story that leads the player to understanding darkness more and how it can be wielded for good or evil. the antagonist was using that same power. This story though was protect the vail, oh and Osiris wants us to experiment with a new power completely unknown while we do that. The story could have been about the vail, and how strand is derived from it, in my opinion. We should have been exploring archives that would tell players how it powers the cloud arc, and so forth. But what was delivered was a story with two things happening and no interconnectivity with a lack of resolution. Please keep in mind readers I am being broad on this and simplifying for the sake of brevity.
2. Mod changes. SO i am torn on this. I liked the variety and variability we had with all the old mods, now it feels like with the smaller pool there is less individuality and combinations that can occur now I could be wrong and might be, but at present to me it feels more like: If you are this subclass you run these mods in this specific combination to optimize damage output, other combinations are not viable or able to compete. NOW I know that is a gross over simplification its just an impression I presently have. I hope we get more mods and options with future seasonal content.
3. Umbral engrams being removed. I like the ability to focus the engrams with the different venders I dislike them having to be specific to that vender, umbral engrams could have been focused at any vender in my opinion with the adept options just costing more. I would make an exception to this for iron banner and trials those are different in there own way and would make since to have their own engrams to me. Id just rather been able to use the collected engrams more freely. Like on focusing seasonal things or a specific vender if I wanted to instead of having to run a singular activity over and over to farm that specific engram, let me play all the variety the game has to offer and spend it where I see value.
I know I typed more for the negatives, but that's only to thresh out my reasoning on those. The positives to me made me still enjoy the game and the negatives are just that areas for critic and improvement for the devs. To any devs that might see this. Thank you for all the work and attention to this game, I dont think you hear that enough, admits the barrage of negatives and complaints, that lack any structural feedback.
A random theory. My friend and I upon completing the campaign were discussing the meaning of the ending. He stated, seems like the traveler is the Witnesses "Ghost" it just opened like a ghost sorta and are just on a more massive scale. Now I know there is plenty to contradict that but in a way sorta makes since and was a fun thought.
Finally, A moment of solidarity for the passing of Lance Reddick. I do wonder if that is why we did not have many speaking lines from Zavala the last season and this. Amazing individual and he will be missed.
This isn't necessarily the video to comment this on but I have been developing a theory that has a lot of connections throughout the game. I was considering the idea that the actions of the witness and the use of the veil/traveler were in order to ascend to a higher level to end the flower game. Assuming the traveler is similar to a spore from something greater what if the witness needed the veil to truly "drink" and understand/utilize the power of the traveler to ascend to a higher level and take down the true gardener. I have a lot of threads to pull on however this theoretically has ties to the nine and the 4 dissenting members, the overall symbology of the scythe that nezerac weilds, and the viel being a birthplace/nesting place of the traveler. Just a theory I am working on and would like some other input.
Bro you are putting much more thought than bungie is
One of the biggest issues I’ve had with the discourse with Lightfall, is just how it feels so overwhelming negative, and as a result I’ve been overwhelmingly positive to try and balance it out.
I definitely believe that there are narrative issues to Lightfall, although the issue of not knowing what the Veil is for example doesn’t bother me too much and I actually really enjoy the fact that we get to theorize about it (probably a product of me being a long time fan of series like FNAF, which the only thing you can ever do is theorize.)
But all of this is to say, I definitely appreciate this video. While this video is still somewhat negative (which make sense, it is a critique) it still gives credit where credit is due. It just overall feels really depressing to be in the Destiny 2 Community right now as people who are usually very level headed like Datto are spending whole videos just railing against all aspects of Lightfall.
Looking forward to more content from you Byf, thanks for all you do
Completely agree. Where I live I got to play first mission on release. Was happy. Woke up the next morning to continue and there was nothing but negatively from all the big names. I enjoyed my time with the campaign (in spite of any issues I saw). But I also felt a need to almost defend it more positively than normal discourse might dictate merely because it felt like everyone else was being so utterly negative.
I feel as though the story was... jumbled. The reason being is that Bungie had gone through development hell. It seems to be common Knowledge at this point that Strand probably was meant to release with Witch Queen, being that instead of using Deepsight, we would use strand to traverse the areas, being given the Grapple Hook as the mobility tool for a short while. With this, people feel as though Light 3.0 should have come with Lightfall, giving weight to the story as we lose our abilities, and have to reforge them. We could have a new Red War, except this time, we do lose. I feel as though this would have been the correct way to move the story. An empowering of our light abilities before we get our final Darkness Subclass. That would have been the best.
Heres how the story could have gone. The witness suppresses the Traveler, weakening and crippling any and all Guardians. Once again, those connected to the Shard of the Traveler are not as heavily suppressed as we have a conduit as to which we can access the light. While our abilities are still heavily hampered, our revives being limited for the first few missions. We then discover a Node of Light, produced by the veil, but we do not understand nor know what it is. With that being said, it empowers our light Subclasses, giving us the ability to spam the abilities, and otherwise, be absolute gods on the Battlefield. Stand and Stasis stay relatively the same, but they will have there time to shine within the campaign. In the next mission, we discover Light suppression technology related to the Radial Mast. This completely removes our light abilities other than our class abilities. Strand and Stasis are not affected by these suppressors, but all stasis and strand damage is hampered because of the volatile light within the area. We discover the Radial Mast, Go to destroy it, but fail. Next mission once again has us finding an Empowering node. Story advances. 3rd to last mission has us finally destroying the Radial Mast, witch will connect the Veil and the Witness together. 2nd to last mission has us communing to the Veil, finally getting full and unpressed access to the Light. Last Mission has us defending the Veil from Calus, who can not deal with his Failure, and goes to destroy the Veil, disobeying the Wishes of the Witness, and leading us to scramble for Calus, so as to defeat him. We do end up defeating him, but realize to late that the Witness had planed this after Caluses Failure, and had led our Ghost into a trap, using him in place of the Radial Mass, so as to connect both the Witness and the Traveler to the Veil. We lose, but dont lose our abilities. We have hard missions that encourage Gun Play, and the use of our darkness subclasses, which are primarily utility based. It shows that there are more than one source of Light within the universe.
We could also have the Deterministic Chaos mission lead into another mission that has the Black Heart Revived, where upon we have to kill it again, and during this mission, our Darkness Subclasses are empowered by the Hearts radiating Darkness. This gives a mission for players who main stasis and strand a chance to enjoy ability spam, despite being the lesser focus of this campaign.
I think what's good about Lightfall was that one of the devs said they're gonna make you feel like you are thrown into the middle of a war, they absolutely delivered on that.
It didn't feel like that at all. We were more like a reservist who was out scrounging for ammo while everyone else was dying.
My personal opinion on Light Fall is that it didn't do as well as Witch Queen, but it was still good
Throughout Halo and Destiny, I loved Bungie's ability to leave us with elements of uncertainty without leaving us annoyed. I've greatly enjoyed speculating, like back in the day considering what the Ark was before Halo 3 released.
Lightfall...went too far in one direction. Bungie didn't have the balance of questions answered and questions posed.
If we knew what the veil was, cloud ark, black heart, but were still speculating on the Witness's full plan, that would be fine. But EVERYTHING is a cliff hanger.
And I agree that this being the end of the saga should've felt more impactful. While technically the year of lightfall just started, the main story needed more impact IMO
Thanks so much for this nuanced take Byf. Even though I'm one of the people who enjoyed the story and how they're going further with it, I'm also able to see why some people are disappointed or feel let down by it. I actually enjoyed the mystery created and unfolding it step by step, mainly because my mindset into Lightfall and the rest of the "Light and Dark Saga" was that we're going deep into big questions and answers territory and the start of it going to make us ask more questions than find answers. That's why I kinda liked the main story because it gave me that "oh no, Calus and Witness are doing something big, we have to stop them first than figure out what all this is" panic mode.
But all of this doesn't mean that I don't understand or refuse to acknowledge your points and criticism. If I had to speculate, these issues caused mainly by the fact that we're too deep into the story and it gets harder to build a new player friendly storytelling. This doesn't mean that it's impossible but it means there are so many places it can go wrong or not as planned. But I'm definitely hopeful about Bungie pulling things together and making sure we all get the ending we deserve for the story.
I think the upcoming quest in the next season is an attempt at rectifying something that I felt during the entirety of last year and thats the fact that once the raid was over with, and once the final exotic was obtained, it stopped being about the witch queen and just another year of drip feed content that honestly wasn't even related to witch queen anymore. Yes, season of the risen was about the lucent Hive, and the lucent hive were in season of the plunder as well, but, the Hive in plunder honestly just felt shoehorned in, they didn't feel right, like it was an attempt at saying "hey, these guys are still in play, don't you see?" And it just didn't feel right for me. I don't want another year of destiny to be about all the secrets of the dlc to be found in less than a week then waiting a week for the next weekly reset to come around and it not even really be related to the dlc at all, I want consistent seasonal stories that are clearly and evidently linked to the expansion which is something that I never felt during last year. This is all an attempt at doing what I mentioned, but its not exactly 100% the correct way of going about it, but to me, I can see that bungie is TRYING, they really are trying their best, figuring stuff out, and it's just sad hearing about people going after them for just trying.
I love destiny, I love its story and its gameplay and its lore and its music and its scenery and it breaks my heart to see so many people not see how I see this game.
I... agree. I think they did better than people are giving them credit for, mind you, but I do agree with the sentiment. They are trying to continue to innovate on their idea of an evolving world, as they always have.
@@cryw1092 this whole expansion is an attempt at pacing things out, that's how I see it. The main expansion story in every dlc is over and done with usually day 1 of release, and I hate that, especially in dlcs prior to WQ because there's no proper replayability there, it'd all just be over and done with. I think the seasonal stories exist as a way to keep the story going and keep it interesting, but they've always felt detached from the main dlc of that year with the exception of the first and last season of every year (like how Lost was made to lead specifically into WQ and Seraph explains how we know about the Veil), but for the middle seasons, there's barely any connection to either the past or the future of destiny, sometimes all they do is just link season to season and not season to expansion which is what I think destiny truly needs, a consistent link from dlc to dlc without the seasons feeling like just filler.
@@omegasupreme4294 And, in the case of Lightfall, it neatly coincides with introducing more Strand Aspects over time as well.
@@cryw1092 I think this is dripfeed content done... in a better direction? Idk how exactly to put it into words, it doesn't solve the issues made in LFs main story like the radial mast and how nothing is known about the Veil but, I seriously hope it helps. Destiny is an mmo with a seasonal story system, you can't exactly give a fair review for an expansion until all of it has come out, some things might change over time, or some things might be answered, we just don't know, all we can do is hope for the best
I half agree, you're stating it as a necessity to buy all of the seasons proceeding LF to get a coherent story like the self-contained Witch Queen. And that'a preposterous
I get spreading it out, but the fact they've decided to put key developments in mini dlcs is the exact kind of scumbaggery I'm used to from bingle at this point.
Pretty much agree with all apart from the raid part. I agree contest should be difficult. I just don't agree with a raid launch hardcore players. As you said it's a video game. People have real life things away from it. So my suggestion is just release normal raid along contest mode. Just no exotic drops in normal till contest mode. Everyone pays the same price and should have the right to access things at same time.
I don't play destiny anymore but I very much enjoyed hearing Byf scold the community. Good on ya Byf 👏
Here’s a good fix I had in mind for contest raiding, to please both sides: The raid releases on Contest Mode as normal, the Contest Mode is incredibly hard and lasts 24 hours.
A second Contest Mode (The Day Two Raid) releases once the World’s First has been completed. This Contest mode is easier and lasts 48 hours, allowing new players or those without builds to participate.
The reason I say the easier one comes after the World’s First has been completed is to prevent people from going into the easier Contest Mode to gain insight in the harder one.
The Day Two mode would be selected like regular difficulty selection, that bar in the bottom right.
Here’s the problem with Contest and what most people don’t seems to really see. What make a contest hard isn’t as much the light difference but the mechanics (and dps check but let’s focus on mechanics first). When people such as Datto say that the raid (in particular contest) shouldnt be for new player it’s true but what isn’t is how they seems to think every raid should be harder than the last. If we look at mechanics RoN was easy yeah though not the easiest since while they can’t be played anymore, Leviathan, Crota End, Wrath and SotP all exist. Any of those raid would have had the same result and same backlash as RoN. Contest mode doesn’t really change this, meaning that if Bungie release an easier raid, contest will also be easier. The best exemple is how difficult day 1 LW was even though contest wasn’t a thing at the time, meaning the light lock never was the biggest difficulty of day 1 and light lock is the biggest part of contest.
Now for the DPS check, Nezarec doesn’t have a lot of health, but it’s also obvious that it wasn’t meant to be fought from the platform and that you were supposed to be chased by Nezarec. Yes Bungie is at fault up to a certain point that they either didn’t saw this as a way to not be hit or Nezarec was supposed to be able to jump on the platform and is currently glitching, but it’s ironic that no one was really fighting him the intended way and then complain about it being too easy.
Now for contest, you could switch to -30 or 40 LL, tbf it wouldn’t change much except the DPS, but it’s also important to note that nowadays it’s easy to have good DPS anyway, since the hardest thing to do blind are the mechanics. If the next raid is Wrath and nothing much is modify, it will be the same as RoN, a fast clear and a lot of people criticizing Bungie.
tldr : the problem with RoN contest isn’t the difficulty of contest, just that Bungie made a raid with easier mechanics (nothing wrong with that SotP was a fun raid for exemple) so inherently the contest will be easier (and that people don’t understand that cheesing a boss will obviously make him easier)
@@azzarnthelizard did you play day one, every ad died in two hits
@@Laeshen they died as fast as any -20 LL enemy, it’s just that with Lightfall there’s a lot more way to fight enemy at -20 so it felt less “special”
Dude! That comment regarding bringing old players back it's so true! I know a guy that used to play back during the iron Lord days, he asked me the same question about coming back but decided not to after seeing all the reviews on social media SMH. I tell them about the free-to-play stuff but for right now he's a fence-sitter for sure and decided just to watch content on TH-cam and see where it goes.
Literally the most educated and level-headed person in the Destiny community. You're a treasure, Byf.
hes coping and covering for them false advertising and selling you all nothing AGAIN because his channel depends on the game
if he was a proper lore buff hed be on the side of fans livid w bungie rn for this farce they called a dlc
Love to see this. I was actually a little scared that this critique would be heavy on anger toward Bungie (I haven't been watching this channel long) but I definitely agree that this season has had some incredible lore and just because *I* am fine with Bungie keeping their macguffins, there is a real sense in which the veil might have been one macguffin too many.
Anyways lmao can't wait for season of the deep to kick off with a mission on the witness's overgrown pyramid to unvault titan.
Why shouldn't fans be angry with Bungie? There are the ones who dug this hole and pissed off people.
@@aaronlaughter6471 what does that have to do with my comment lmao
It's actually pretty funny to watch the community reach the same breaking point with this game that I did years ago.
This is what we need. Level headed and reasonable Byf and Elitist Datto!
Calling out the very small minority of players that send abuse in such a way is pointless they don’t care what you think and it does nothing cos the rest of us don’t need to hear this while that minority is probably very happy you’re wasting your energy on it
Hey Byf, do you find it odd that we are back on the farm, with fragments of the traveler in plain sight off in the distance?
It can't be pure coincidence, can it?
What if the witness winds up draining the light and we lose our powers and have to do something that we did in red war and have to use the fragments to restore our powers for one final stand against the witness?
And then we have those antenna in the raid that are connected to the roots of that tree and said antenna are pointing straight at the traveler.
What's your thoughts on that?