Launching alongside the Year 6 expansion, Lightfall, Season of Defiance is where some of the core game's story continues, meaning it had a pretty uphill battle to steer the narrative in a positive direction. Whilst its core content offerings are solid - with a particularly decent Exotic mission - it's ultimately underwhelming, especially from a story perspective where it makes some odd choices that feel out of left field and hollow in their execution. It's almost as disappointing as Lightfall in its writing, yet it managed to at least remain more compelling and relevant due the state of the world set up at the end of the previous year.

In terms of what's new on the activity front, another slew of Battlegrounds doesn't bring anything super exciting to the game, though they feature a good number of new environments across Cabal ships and Pyramid structures. There's also a pretty unique angle on an Arthurian legend in the form of a new Exotic weapon and mission, with its own challenging encounters and unlockable secrets and items. The secrets here in fact build up and point towards a more curious narrative the game seems to have been working on setting up for post-Final Shape, though there's still nothing sizeable of note that stands out in it all.

It's one of the game's weaker seasonal releases no doubt, and together with Lightfall, left the game feeling in a rather weakened state. There were some neat quality of life changes to how seasons and their rewards are dished out, but they're only amongst a small amount of impactful good this seasonal release has, making the wait for what was to come all the more difficult.