Few Expected This Kind of Lightfall; Destiny 2 Bombed on Steam
The Destiny 2: Lightfall DLC has been received very badly. Players flooded Steam with negative reviews complaining about the poor campaign and disappointing new city.
The Destiny 2: Lightfall DLC, the latest expansion for Bungie's popular online shooter, debuted 3 days ago. Enough time has passed since the release to assess how the expansion was received. Unfortunately, it turned out to be quite a disappointment.
- This is most painfully evident on Steam, where only 29% of user reviews are positive, which is categorized as "mostly negative" reception.
- Players are disappointed primarily by the low quality of the campaign. It is significantly inferior to that of last year's The Witch Queen. Fans of Destiny 2 are complaining about the poor story and poorly designed missions.
- Also criticized is the new city, which is terribly empty..
- Players also complain about the too undemanding legendary difficulty mode, which in previous DLCs made re-playing the campaign very interesting.
- Praise is mostly aimed at new powers, but players do not like that so much of the campaign acts as a tutorial for them.
- Many people are also bothered by the atmosphere. The opening cutscene promises a dark story, while in reality the story is full of questionable humor and characters that strongly displease players (especially the infantile Nimbus takes the cake here).
Below we cite some sample reviews from Steam that capture the mood of players.
"The campaign missions do not even come close to those of The Witch Queen. The Legendary difficulty is not very challenging compared to WQ. The city is empty and uninteresting. (...) The plot makes no sense at all. Calus, the main villain, is literally a reskin of a colossus and a gladiator. Nimbus is the most twisted character ever (probably created by a 12-15 year old).
The person responsible for the script of this expansion should be fired immediately and never hired again for such a project. How can the most anticipated DLC be so damn screwed up?
This is the worst expansion to date (yes, even worse than Beyond Light). A huge disappointment for $50."
"The best thing are the opening campaign cutscenes. After that, it gets worse and worse with every second. The new characters and story are boring, the new place is empty, nothing fits together."
"Lightfall was supposed to be our Infinity War, and it came out Captain Marvel. Tragedy. 9 years of building an antagonist and the specter of doom for a "training montage". Bungie has never been outstanding when it comes to scripts, but in Witch Queen they showed that they can tell an interesting story. It seems that something that was supposed to be a "new standard" became short flash of talent."
The add-on was also not to the liking of Adrian Chmielarz, developer currently working on Witchfire. On Twitter he commented on the quality of the DLC as follows:
"Finished #Destiny2Lightfall campaign. Combat scenarios were good. Strand feels random, I don't get its core fantasy. World, story, characters, dialogue -- in one word: infantile. In two words: infantile, cringe. As bad as Curse of Osiris. Graphics: PS3, a big step back from WQ."
Of course, the weak campaign from the add-on won't bury the whole game, as this is the mode most players will spend the least time in. The new season, which kicked off with the DLC, is receiving a warmer reception so far, and on top of that everyone is waiting for the next raid, which will debut on March 10.
Still, it's a shame that Lightfall has disappointed so badly. Destiny 2 is a rare case of an online shooter where every year players get an expansion with an FPS-like single-player story campaign. The one from The Witch Queen was stunning and fans expected Bungie to at least maintain that level.
Recall that Destiny 2 Lightfall debuted on February 28. The DLC is available on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.
