The Lightfall expansion for Destiny 2 is out, but players aren’t loving it.
Fans are wrapping up the campaign now that the update has been available for one day, taking to social media and online forums to air their frustrations. You can get a sense of what people are unhappy about by looking at Twitter and Reddit, but let’s dig a bit deeper.
Storytelling is a common source of disagreement. One popular Reddit post explains that despite plenty of intrigue being set up in advance, none is actually acted upon in Lightfall – the big bad’s motivations remain unclear, and heaps of questions remain unanswered. Throughout Destiny 2’s post-expansion seasons, the narrative continues to be told, but fans seem unsatisfied with what they’ve seen so far.
There is also common criticism of the dialogue itself, which the community finds to be more goofy. In spite of the fact that Lightfall is supposed to mark the end of a long-running story in Destiny 2, the game’s style effectively negates any sense of danger. Those issues have been represented in a new character, Nimbus, with one fan making an unflattering comparison with Thor’s take on the god in the MCU.
There is a common thread among all those complaints that it harkens back to the launch of Destiny 2, which provided little explanation of its moving parts and featured lighter dialogue.
One fan writes, “I was excited for this expansion’s story, but have come out so disappointed by the vague plot garbage we got that my excitement for the expansion has already died.” “I’m not a famous author and I won’t claim to be smarter than an entire Bungie writing team, but what I do know is that a story that has no explanation will never be well received; a fact that seems to have been forgotten between Witch Queen and now.”
A lightning rod of chatter has also been the new Strand subclass. Although some people find it fun, the cooldowns and amount of time spent learning it over the campaign make it frustrating from a gameplay standpoint.
The situation isn’t all bad, however. Though Mods have kinks that need to be worked out, Destiny 2’s base gameplay remains fun. In addition, the campaign brings back the challenge people loved in The Witch Queen.
Most players spend most of their time in Destiny 2’s endgame, so it remains to be seen how they feel about the real meat of the expansion. Nevertheless, the loot ’em up’s story has slowly improved over the game’s lifespan, so each new season of content will decide if disappointment will again give way to intrigue.
