This week, interviews are making the rounds with various members of Destiny 2’s seasonal and narrative teams. A huge focus is Lightfall and the reception to it, as Bungie tries to explain why that expansion was the way it was, which received probably the biggest backlash to a storyline the game has ever seen.
While over time, the expansion itself shined in other areas like the fully-unlocked Strand, the story was incoherent, mainly focused on The Veil, a mysterious object that is extremely important and absolutely never explained at all, even by the end of the campaign. Given the beginning cutscene and the end, it felt like the entire expansion could have been excised and it wouldn’t have even mattered.
This was, however, according to Bungie, a purposeful storytelling experiment where Lightfall was always meant to have answers explained in “aftermath” seasons, the rest of Defiance and now Season of the Deep, apparently.
“There’s a lot of narrative threads that were left very intentionally unresolved to dig into and expand upon and feel the impact of,” narrative designer Robert Brookes said. “And then from 22 and 23 onwards, it’s the ramp up and lead into the dive into The Final Shape. It’s a very different shape than what we’re used to, so some of the narrative arcs might be done in a different way, and that’s very intentional.”
It may have been intentional, but that doesn’t change how it felt in Lightfall. It’s not just that it left the end of Lightfall feeling empty, it’s that you’ve now invented a model where you’re telling people they must tune in to the resulting few seasons to “resolve” the mysteries that probably should have been answered in the first place. The seasons, of course, cost additional money above and beyond the expansion itself. So whether you buy it separately or this is herding you into the $100 bundle for everything in a year, it still feels like it’s pushing you toward buying something to get a more finished, well-rounded story.
The way that’s manifested this season is that we now have weekly radio messages that have explained more about The Veil than literally anything in Lightfall itself. I believe these may be free to access, but in that case it’s the timing that’s the problem, as they should have been dropped in Defiance, the season that was included with the expansion.
Then, we have Season of the Deep which took the entire seasonal storyline to show us arguably the most important cutscene in history, exploring the origins of the Traveler, The Witness and The Veil. Once it aired everyone seemed to agree that it was A) really good and B) really should have been the grand finale of Lightfall instead of dropped five weeks into a sold-separately follow-up season.
Now heading into The Final Shape, we probably won’t have to worry about that being inconclusive, because it’s supposed to be a pretty definitive ending to a years-long saga spanning practically the entire lifespan of the series. After that is supposed to be at least some level of soft reset, but it is likely the grand conflict between the Traveler and Witness will end. Probably with The Veil involved in some capacity.
This may have been an experiment, but experiments fail. I’m not sure simply explaining that changes anything.
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