oh my god i forgot to review lightfall.
i guess The Death of The Studio and a hundred billion day delay to the next expansion is a good time to make the scathing review. this is getting an essay because i need a place to vent my frustrations about this franchise. i’m a consistent, end-game level player who at one point idolized the franchise. house of wolves veteran and all that.
i will be spoiling the main story, but, honest to god, it is not worth the spoiler tag. no one should care about story spoilers for this campaign.
here’s the short of it:
lightfall was a misguided, poorly thought-out money grab with decent improvements to gameplay that were instantly mired either by poor balancing or a greedy company. the following seasons of content were a bug-filled, uninteresting series of maintaining a status quo. the new raid was visually stunning, but a gameplay flop that, quite literally, caused such a complacency problem in the raiding community that it became a meme. the dungeons have similar problems. i’ve watched some of my closest friends lose interest in the video game that brought us together and i can’t help but join them now. being a fan of this series has become miserable.
ok, full review:
lightfall, as in specifically just the expansion, was not supposed to exist and it absolutely feels like it. already starting off strong, the first cutscene and last cutscene of lightfall were clearly supposed to be the first cutscene of the final shape but it is awkwardly split and edited to not appear that way. though you are the most valuable defender of earth and The Main Bad Guy and his forces are literally in earth’s orbit blowing up the Traveler and Earth, you are told to leave and hunt down a MacGuffin in Deus Ex Machina City neomuna. the entire story takes place in a rushed, lifeless city that we are told is thriving but feels lonely and abandoned. you walk through the levels and feel like you missed a party and are cleaning up the cabal janitors. the friendly new factions called the cloudstriders you meet in the campaign and people of neomuna as a whole exist to either be annoying, die in an explosion two minutes into meeting them, or give quests. hey, remember the macguffin mentioned a minute ago? yeah, the game keeps forgetting about it. you spend half the campaign “mastering strand” and the explanation of WHY you should care about getting the macguffin and this story are explained in post-campaign, HIDDEN, lore dialogue dumps and a few season cutscenes that came out weeks after the campaign. god, i wish i was exaggerating. the developers had to say in a blog post that “we know people have questions!” because the fan base was so upset about a complete lack of answers.
oh my god, i still haven’t even mentioned calus.
the other half is spent trying to properly defeat darkness buffed calus which, admittedly and given the bullshit conditions around it, was sometimes cool. his cutscenes with the witness and the final showdown (both holding down a perimeter with caital and the last boss) were the best parts of the expansion for me. it’s clear that this story beat was the only thing they were able to properly cobble together and i gotta give them credit for making it work. that’s the half of a star over one star.
that being said!
everything you did in the campaign is undone in not-well executed bullshit. the more i think about it, the more upset i get. i’ll give it to bungie for foreshadowing repeatedly that the witness can take control of our ghosts. fine. there was no foreshadowing that it can “make a link” with the plot device you refused to explain, our character, caital, and the stupid cloudstrider just fucking watched our ghost sloooowwwwly fly up to the plot device and honestly Second Macguffin, and no amount of “chekov’s gunning” this is going to remove the sin of invalidating all the player’s efforts this expansion. why did we abandon the main story just to get rug pulled in the last moment? the game smugly acts like “the witness outsmarted humanity’s best efforts” and it absolutely did not earn it. my friends and i finished the campaign wondering what actually happened and i had to read a summary. garbage. just plain garbage.
strand adds a few, new debuffs to the game like weakening the damage an enemy deals, a grappling hook, and a new element to the system. that’s really it. the larger game doesn’t support it like installing grappling spots everywhere for example and tying the grapple to your coveted grenade ability. the developers keep nerfing the potency of strand, gutting creative ways the community uses it (weavewalk and DOT), or not tightening core gameplay (strand warlock is centered around making threadlings. threadlings continue to be mid at best). everything else is just Green Damage. same old that you knew.
stuff that’s usually good like the OST stayed good also. no real change there. oneirophobia is probably my favorite raid theme now.
speaking of raids, lightning round for the seasons after, the raid, and the dungeons. the seasonal stories have been a gauntlet of tying up loose ends either by killing off characters or awkward severing remaining story threads week by week. not great. there’s no meaningful changes to the gameplay loop or grind that make them better than “meh.” like i said WAY earlier, the raid is visually stunning but flops in the gameplay. i absolutely fuck with the direction, lore, and wider premise of root of nightmares but i can’t stomach another boring, rng dependant run of scission. the reprised raids were also fine, but are just nostalgic romps and nothing else. nothing new and engaging. the dungeons are clearly designed now to be “marathons” for people trying to solo flawless the dungeon and, as a result, dungeons are slogs even in full teams. it’s a weekly chore. besides gameplay, dungeons are fine (art, music, whatever). the loot for both is also weirdly awful?? i wouldn’t have brought this up if just the ghost of the deep loot was mid, but why were the potential perks for both so bad??
so, worst expansion in my opinion. it’s the worst because it has all the experience and lack of excuses for the curse of osiris and shadowkeep. bungie wanted more time for final shape (which STILL wasn’t even good enough and has its own delay) and this expansion reeks of that desperation. i’m playing up to the final shape to tie a bow on my time playing this series (as a house of wolves veteran), but i’m not playing this franchise again after the witness croaks. judging by the direction of news about the company, Bungie might implode after that expansion anyway.
whole situation is a bummer.
i guess The Death of The Studio and a hundred billion day delay to the next expansion is a good time to make the scathing review. this is getting an essay because i need a place to vent my frustrations about this franchise. i’m a consistent, end-game level player who at one point idolized the franchise. house of wolves veteran and all that.
i will be spoiling the main story, but, honest to god, it is not worth the spoiler tag. no one should care about story spoilers for this campaign.
here’s the short of it:
lightfall was a misguided, poorly thought-out money grab with decent improvements to gameplay that were instantly mired either by poor balancing or a greedy company. the following seasons of content were a bug-filled, uninteresting series of maintaining a status quo. the new raid was visually stunning, but a gameplay flop that, quite literally, caused such a complacency problem in the raiding community that it became a meme. the dungeons have similar problems. i’ve watched some of my closest friends lose interest in the video game that brought us together and i can’t help but join them now. being a fan of this series has become miserable.
ok, full review:
lightfall, as in specifically just the expansion, was not supposed to exist and it absolutely feels like it. already starting off strong, the first cutscene and last cutscene of lightfall were clearly supposed to be the first cutscene of the final shape but it is awkwardly split and edited to not appear that way. though you are the most valuable defender of earth and The Main Bad Guy and his forces are literally in earth’s orbit blowing up the Traveler and Earth, you are told to leave and hunt down a MacGuffin in Deus Ex Machina City neomuna. the entire story takes place in a rushed, lifeless city that we are told is thriving but feels lonely and abandoned. you walk through the levels and feel like you missed a party and are cleaning up the cabal janitors. the friendly new factions called the cloudstriders you meet in the campaign and people of neomuna as a whole exist to either be annoying, die in an explosion two minutes into meeting them, or give quests. hey, remember the macguffin mentioned a minute ago? yeah, the game keeps forgetting about it. you spend half the campaign “mastering strand” and the explanation of WHY you should care about getting the macguffin and this story are explained in post-campaign, HIDDEN, lore dialogue dumps and a few season cutscenes that came out weeks after the campaign. god, i wish i was exaggerating. the developers had to say in a blog post that “we know people have questions!” because the fan base was so upset about a complete lack of answers.
oh my god, i still haven’t even mentioned calus.
the other half is spent trying to properly defeat darkness buffed calus which, admittedly and given the bullshit conditions around it, was sometimes cool. his cutscenes with the witness and the final showdown (both holding down a perimeter with caital and the last boss) were the best parts of the expansion for me. it’s clear that this story beat was the only thing they were able to properly cobble together and i gotta give them credit for making it work. that’s the half of a star over one star.
that being said!
everything you did in the campaign is undone in not-well executed bullshit. the more i think about it, the more upset i get. i’ll give it to bungie for foreshadowing repeatedly that the witness can take control of our ghosts. fine. there was no foreshadowing that it can “make a link” with the plot device you refused to explain, our character, caital, and the stupid cloudstrider just fucking watched our ghost sloooowwwwly fly up to the plot device and honestly Second Macguffin, and no amount of “chekov’s gunning” this is going to remove the sin of invalidating all the player’s efforts this expansion. why did we abandon the main story just to get rug pulled in the last moment? the game smugly acts like “the witness outsmarted humanity’s best efforts” and it absolutely did not earn it. my friends and i finished the campaign wondering what actually happened and i had to read a summary. garbage. just plain garbage.
strand adds a few, new debuffs to the game like weakening the damage an enemy deals, a grappling hook, and a new element to the system. that’s really it. the larger game doesn’t support it like installing grappling spots everywhere for example and tying the grapple to your coveted grenade ability. the developers keep nerfing the potency of strand, gutting creative ways the community uses it (weavewalk and DOT), or not tightening core gameplay (strand warlock is centered around making threadlings. threadlings continue to be mid at best). everything else is just Green Damage. same old that you knew.
stuff that’s usually good like the OST stayed good also. no real change there. oneirophobia is probably my favorite raid theme now.
speaking of raids, lightning round for the seasons after, the raid, and the dungeons. the seasonal stories have been a gauntlet of tying up loose ends either by killing off characters or awkward severing remaining story threads week by week. not great. there’s no meaningful changes to the gameplay loop or grind that make them better than “meh.” like i said WAY earlier, the raid is visually stunning but flops in the gameplay. i absolutely fuck with the direction, lore, and wider premise of root of nightmares but i can’t stomach another boring, rng dependant run of scission. the reprised raids were also fine, but are just nostalgic romps and nothing else. nothing new and engaging. the dungeons are clearly designed now to be “marathons” for people trying to solo flawless the dungeon and, as a result, dungeons are slogs even in full teams. it’s a weekly chore. besides gameplay, dungeons are fine (art, music, whatever). the loot for both is also weirdly awful?? i wouldn’t have brought this up if just the ghost of the deep loot was mid, but why were the potential perks for both so bad??
so, worst expansion in my opinion. it’s the worst because it has all the experience and lack of excuses for the curse of osiris and shadowkeep. bungie wanted more time for final shape (which STILL wasn’t even good enough and has its own delay) and this expansion reeks of that desperation. i’m playing up to the final shape to tie a bow on my time playing this series (as a house of wolves veteran), but i’m not playing this franchise again after the witness croaks. judging by the direction of news about the company, Bungie might implode after that expansion anyway.
whole situation is a bummer.