The Lightfall We Never Got - Destiny 2 

I forgot to give the dlc a number rating.. 5/10 I will let the video elaborate for me haha much love everyone

The worst part about Lightfall was that the Witness never went “This is your Destiny 2 Lightfall.” I will never forgive Bungie for this.

The saddest part is how strand in this game may have cost Witch Queen story wise. Allegedly strand's introduction was going to be the reveal that strand is what Savathun used kept the traveler locked in place and that is how she betrayed the witness not just "Oh she didn't tell this cosmic entity that a planet he already passed by had a redditor city on it."

I feel like Elsie/the exo stranger should’ve been part of lightfall’s campaign or at least been the person to be all “we need to go to Neptune!” Instead of Osiris since she has a Pouka, which are found in Neomuna.

I remember seeing all the trailers for lightfall thinking “this is going to be crazy if these are the things they’re showing! Imagine what they’re not showing!” Well turns out. They just showed everything before the game was released.

lightfall had such a huge potential, lets hope final shapes potential is made real

"how did our character know to go to Neptune?!" Bruh... Last season literally ended with us finding out the veil was on Neptune directly from Rasputin 😅 that would be the obvious place to go once our character starting seeing a bunch of darkness ships zipping off lol

I think with strand they wanted to do a poison “spider/insect” theme but there wasn’t enough identity. So they changed it. Proof of this is not only all the spider themes on strand (they literally wanted the warlock super to turn you into a spider laying eggs) but there was a bug where a triumph required unraveling kills but instead of unravel it was called “infested”.

Honestly the part of the final cutscene where your guardian has a dilemma about killing your ghost to stop the witness is a very interesting idea. If the ghost ever dies in the story it’ll be like super dramatic and cliche, or he’ll just get revived somehow. But man, it seems like a real homerun way to create an extremely compelling storybeat.

I think the best part about this is that Ghost and everyone acts like the Witness didn't just take over our Ghost (seriously not even a single line of dialog I've heard post-campaign has referenced this)... and the fact when Rhulk even just tried speaking to one in the past the Traveler spoke through it saying "lol no" and self destructing that poor ghost. Does this mean the Traveler wanted this to happen or was it just bad writing?

Veil is mentioned a total of 23 times in the campaign to answer your question

We have repeatedly been shown that the witness and the dark can control our ghost and can talk through the ghost for years.

I loved Witch Queen both story- and gameplaywise. And out of the 4 Seasons, Haunted and Seraph were both pretty good

I like almost everything in your rewrite except for the bosses. I believe Xivu, Nezarec, and even Calus deserve their own bigger spotlight than just 1st, 2nd or 3rd encounter of a raid.

Do the travellers shaker

I just wish they'd just make cutscenes for all of the seasons with a voice-over explaining the season in detail so people can follow the story much better especially the new lights!

Thats not a tree in the vision at 9:00 that's just the back half of the veil still my guy. The veil is shown in 3 different frames. Two of the roots, and one of the top portal looking part

Pretty sure the original 'Lightfall' concept is now going to be 'The Final Shape'. I belive what happened was they, as originally announced, planned to go Beyond Light --> Witch Queen --> Lightfall and have Lightfall be the end of the saga, but they realized somewhere along the line they needed more time to do 'Lightfall'.. so they changed its name to Final Shape, and invented a totally new 'side-story' to be in-between, which is the Lightfall we got. My hope is that this means the 'original Lightfall', aka Final Shape, is going to be really good for getting the extra time to cook. Here's hoping.

The Veil and Nefele Stronghold were mentioned in the lore pre-Lightfall and by Rasputin by during Season of the Seraph. Also "Veil" is said 68 times in the campaign and post game. MyelinGames counted.

They did name-drop the Veil in the last part of Season of the Seraph, and Osiris already knew there was something on Neptune involving it, telling our Guardian that too. Doesn't make it any less terribly written, but they at least did SOME foreshadowing in the season before.

This video made me think of something... If Nezarec was resurrected by the Light, does that make him a Guardian? Does that also make The Traveler his Ghost? Kind of an awkward relationship if that's true 😂

The Veil was mentioned by Rasputin in his final message to us, and was told to Osiris as well. That’s how Osiris knew they were after The Witness and Calus were after the Veil

i think commendations are a fun thing to have, but it shouldnt have been to unlock guardian ranks. I think they tried to make what ffxiv does, after an activity you can commend one pople in your party, those commendations unlock just cosmetics and allows you to be a mentor.

Ps. Still wouldnt be savathuns worm on Fundament cause Mara has it, it was The Osmium Kings deaf worm that whispered to Sathona 🤙

Osiris knew the veil was on Neptune because of Savathùn. He also saw Calus’ ships start moving towards it.

I could be wrong 15:13 ish but I don’t think it mentions dark powers specifically, but that it’s resistant to powers they know that we have and they know we have the 3 lights and Stasis but didn’t know about strand.

Its a shame they went more comic book action as opposed to a grittier take.

I've been waiting for someone to talk about what was likely the original timeline. Great video Evan!

Dialogue in the mission where we have to destroy the radial mast and suppression thingies from ghost specifically goes as follows " It's suppresses our powers all our known powers anyway" which is why strand is what we have to use.

Somethings about the story that bugged me that could be been improved from a writing perspective: -This was the first time we’ve met REAL daddy Calus. When we were on the Glykon, Katabasis said Calus looked like “Slop” or “Sludge”. We don’t see that in any sort of Calus flashback or cutscene” but it would’ve helped us understand why he sided with the witness. To get his body back and his desire to no longer rule from the shadows(Daddy Calus Bots) but on the forefront. -Calus and Kaital having a clash of ideals and mettle has been a hinted to us since the Glykon and the season of the Haunted AND Duality. The fact we don’t see more of them together was a missed Opportunity. Having a cutscene of Father and Daughter having an actual fight. Have him beat her, only because of his Darkness powers and not because of his strength. Have him show remorse she can’t follow him and her desperately trying to appeal to her father who she hates, but still cares for. -Nimbus’ issue is a lack of proper tone yes, but a cool way to have made more sense of it is having Rohan die in the final mission (saves our ghost and dies as a result) then have that change Nimbus(sy) from a wise cracking teen to a more somber, character who makes occasional jokes and wisecracks but is more cynical and saddened as a result and their jokes reflect that(self burns and sarcastic negativity). -Osiris was annoying during the campaign. He would’ve been much more enjoyable if rather than being insufferable with him acting as the ‘only smart guy in the room’ he could’ve been in an everpresent state of mourning over Sigira. Have him sad and remorseful throughout the campaign as he sees us interact with our ghost. Then when Rohan dies, Osiris becomes the mentor to Nimbus who is also dealing with loss, and realizes he needs to use his boundless experience in order to mentor the younger generation and others(somehow Moth Mommy Savathun was a better mentor to crow than Osiris had been in general lmaoo) -Have the loss of the guardians at the intro and Amanda impact the characters more. Have Zavala go to try and Thunder Crash the witness, while Ikora tries no Nova bomb him and the queen harbinger his ass and Crow ‘Golden His Gun’ only for him to shoo them away, not killing them but messing them up. Have the stranger terrified because she’s never seen anything like this happen but knows it’s worse than her Dark Timelines. -Strand is a power of memory right? Osiris says as much when he’s theorizing .Have our guardian experience memories in the form of hostile negative memories(old vaulted boss battles) and the only way to master it is to also remember the good stuff as well. Have it be something that makes our guardian DEAL with his/her trauma and move on to be stronger over all as a character -Nezerec is one of my favorite characters in D2 but I think him just giving nightmares to the people of Neomona is outside his scope. He was brought back to life by the traveler. And is being regrown like a Chia Pet in the Witness’ Pyramid. Have his influence of nightmares extend to the last city, the dreaming city(remember that place?), Caital’s Cabal forces as well as Neomona. Rather then jumping onto the pyramid ship and messing cabal up, have the Cabal be locked in a battle against maybe the Lucent Hive since they’re on the tear to kill Neserec because they know Moth Mommy Savathun would want him dead and they also are getting nightmares. Then have a cool mechanic where we in some capacity team up with a lucent raid team to complete an encounter(like have a lucent Hive knight be the send out a buff to us that highlights which planet is dark and which one is light or something like that). Then when we fight our homie Nezerec, have a cutscene of Nezerec getting his golden armor back(like on his statues). And maybe include a mechanic where he throws curated nightmares at us, manifest copies of himself, jumpscare us etc. have him play into being a FINAL GOD OF PAIN. I’m a writer, working on a few novels at the moment but I’m not trying to say “oh me story better, git gud bungo!” but I feel that few more emotional moments in this story, as well as cutscenes to establish characters and their relationships would go a LONG way. The witness/claus cutsesne was great and I wish we had more like it tbh

You end up on Neomuna because you follow Osiris onto Calus' ship when it starts to depart after the Witness sends him.

A perfect explanation of the entire campaign, I agree with almost every point you brought up about the plot and the gameplay format. Hoping for a new start either at final shape or after 🙌🏼

I just got home from a week in the woods. Perfect timing to catch the Evan drop

Let's hope that lightfall tripped so final shape could run a marathon

We weren’t going to Neptune on purpose, us and Osiris were following the ships that were leaving the battle, and boarded them. All we knew was we needed to stop whatever the hell Calus was doing

tbf they explained why strand is exhausting us -- we're approaching it like stasis, abusing it for maximum power, whereas the idea was to go full bruce lee -- we're not a river, letting it flow through us, we're coercing it to our needs initially

Osiris knew that "the veil" was on neptune due to Rasputin naming it and the coordinates(of neptune) at the end of season of seraph. Nimbus is also an "angsty late teen/twenty something" that was ahead of their class as far as lore. Im still enjoying destiny and have more positive things to say than negative but we all have different experiences and limited perspective. Either way, be kind an respect each others opinions. I don't agree with half of what Ive seen, but this is still a great video so far Evan, if nothing else, people can take away how you see the game. Keep killin' it dude and stay safe out there and be kind

6:35 Ive never seen something compared so perfectly before

Was just running witch queen again and realized you get a buff called thread cutter In the final fight with savathun

One of the things that drove me away from Destiny was the constant feeling of losing progress due to the seasonal light model. It never felt like my account was truly growing...

Sure someone has already commented this but no the ability surpressing feilds block our known abilitys strand was not known by big man but Staiss was

I just noticed that in the scene where the witness is in his pyramid he passes nezarec

I appreciate your story arc continuing with the forsaken model of characters you have to knock off to get something. Nice touch!

It's almost as if the story we got was never actually planned and the actual content they had planned had to be delayed so they tried to make another dlc before the end without actually knowing what was going to happen or even the theme🤪

"You guys are great at making the game part, save the story for the show not the game" and they were great at making the story part too, there's nothing wrong having both.

I'm never this early. Not even for my job😂

"Paracausal" in Destiny is like "quantum" in every other sci-fi show or movie (looking at you MCU)

The only problem with having the stories revolve around using the darkness subclasses is that you’d need to buy the previous expansions to have access to them

9:28 Rasputin actually told us about Neptune, Neomuna, and the Veil at the end of Season of the Seraph, and Osiris had been having visions about Neomuna ever since he returned to us at the end of Season of Plunder

also since strand is supposed to be pulling on threads of the mind, what place would it be more concentrated than a throneworld something woven together by savathouns own mind

your imagined lightfall/story is so much better then what we got and now i wish this would've been the story

Savathuns throne world looks pretty nature esque as well swinging on what looks like magic vines would make more sense here too

Raids that not everyone will be able to do, let alone finish, should never be mandatory to complete the story. That's Gatekeeper thinking.

hey but ive found a “destiny 2 expansion quality loop”: bad (shadowkeep), mid (beyond light), amazing (witch queen), then back to bad (lightfall) so i think the final shape will be mid

9:33 when Osiris escaped savathun’s grasp, he was able to get some info, which was something vague, but he knew she hid something on Neptune

9:45 it got mentioned at the end of season of the seraph by Rasputin

Also, the whole thing with the Ishtar collective is pretty straightforward. The entirety of the dungeon spire of the watcher is all about how neomuna came to be or at least part of that story and how the Ishtar collective is involved. The lore is really good. You should read it and season of seraph with the nafele stronghold also explains this

love that OoT is the background music

Why didn't the Guardian use strand to grab their Ghost and pull it away from the Veil? 😒

You had a misunderstanding, they explain in the story that the radial mast is built to suppress all stuff we have avaible, strand works on it because the witness and Calus didn’t know about it

Sounds to me like Evan’s hinting that he’s secretly Savathûn

Not gunna lie, that borderlands soundtrack in the background is really fitting for some reason.

biggest hint of strand being in Witch Queen, is the final fight with Savathun. The Wizards we need to kill are '' Threadweavers'' Bounding the traveler with Green looking strands of webbing.... hmmm where do we see that before..

The only mention of the veil before Lightfall was on a text screen from the end of the previous season. It was literally just a wall of text that most people skipped or at most skimmed to get the quest done. It was a post mortem message from Rasputin, with no indication it was going to be THE McGuffin from next DLC.

Lightfall itself was decent. It wasn't amazing but it wasn't bad. The writing and plot was kinda mediocre and the raid is a meh... but everything else that came with it has been amazing. Strand feels incredible, except titan because we got shafted on that super, I know its strong but its the super for the 4th or 5th time. The QoL changes are great. The neomuna weapons are good, the armor is good. The destination itself is amazing. The Vex partition missions are some of the best missions ever. The "secret" exotic quest is super fun. The new strike is good. Its just insane to me that people took the writing, the only bad part, and rated the whole expansion just off that and they didn't look at anything else. Also I prefer to judge based on seasonal content meshing with the expansion more than just the expansion. Like Witch Queen should be S or A tier but the seasonal content dropped it down to like a C or D for me. We had 1 good season with WQ and that was the shortest season with season 19. So far season 20 has been pretty good. A little short story wise but still good. Root of Nightmares is a decent raid... Its nice to have a very simple raid to take new players through. Granted DSC, KF, and VoG are also easy for new players but RoN is very beginner friendly. But like half the raid is spent traversing from one encounter to the next. It really feels like they took a dungeon and stretched it out, literally. The explicator encounter is really cool though but I wish we got the leaked boss instead of the cabal guy. But the loot from RoN is just not that great. If you compare it to Vow, Vow is amazing. Vow doesn't have a single bad weapon. Its actually kinda crazy that the vow raid exotic might be the worst weapon from that raid. The glaive and deliverance could be argued to be bad but when the raid came out the raid exotic was by far the worst weapon. Now its good, but I hate that you basically have to buy an ornament to use it. Anyways back to Lightfall itself, yes the expansion should not have cost $100. $70-80 would be more fair. But the player rating or whatever is just because people jumped on the hate bandwagon instead of forming their own opinions. I get that lots of people dont like it but I think most people have come around to saying its like a C tier. And thats where I would put it for now. Like I said earlier if the seasonal content is as good as Beyond Lights seasonal content was then Lightfall will become a B or maybe even an A tier.

9:29 in the season of the seraph when osiris recovered he saw visions of a neptunian city. He wanted to make sure of this and got the help of rasputin at the end. Rasputin recorded a message for the gaurdian after it sacrificed itself to save the traveler from the eramis that confirms the existance of neomuna and it's a home to the veil.

I beat the story n asking myself did they just chopped the expansion into pieces of smaller expansion and..... again? Good thing i wait for the discount to 75 buck in PSN to get just a month later

Can someone please explain why people don’t understand what they did with the veil. To me it makes total sense. From our character and everyone else we know nothing about the veil. Why do people think that bam we know everything all go a sudden. No we don’t know the veil. And bungie did say we would be a pawn. And the witness played us hard to get us into the veil. Since if the witness left the traveler the traveler would have escaped. So the next best pawn was us. And we lost. I see no issues in the story plot wise. Characters were meh tho. Please tell me I’m wrong. I’m waiting

9:42 the veil was mentioned along with the fact it was on neomuna by Rasputin at the end of season of the seraph.

The design of Neomuna is completely nonsensical. Nobody would ever design and live in a city like that. For one, the roads are narrow planks suspended above bottomless pits of death with speed bumps to knock you off the road to your death.

It is cool to see though how the old lightfall poster art mimics the look of the traveler right now. A circle with a triangle in the middle

This is the hard thing for me. using the Lost and GoT reference... I probably knew 3 years ago that there would be no true ending to Destiny. We'll probably kill the witness, or it'll leave, or it'll stay and we leave, or we all die... but no matter what, I always knew I was not going to be happy with any possible ending that the Bungie writers come in with. Expectations vs Reality. The bar is already so high (even after all the misses this season) that when we get to the end it'll fall flat. But, and there is always a but.... the game has made itself such a part of my life, that i'm still going to push on to see the end.

I want to point out we don’t know we have to go to Neptune. Osiris does thanks to Season of the Seraph. we also don’t “just bump into Osiris on his own mission” the opening cutscene and opening missions dialogue we go to help/protect him

I like how they say “it’s going to be one wild continuous ride” and it’s only gonna have like 7 to 8 short missions

It was the premise of season of seraph and spire of the watcher that we find out what was missing as a second plot. 1 of the last 3 mission was that we go to the cosmodrome bunker for the information if nefele stronghold aka neomuna. Osiris was the only one who knew about that because rasputin gave him this information thats why he is on neomuna and we were send after him to babysit him from ikora that is the second cut scene from lightfall before the gameplay

I'm old enough that I played games with almost no story in it. As John Carmack founder of ID studios and creator of Doom said : “Story in a game is like story in a porn movie, It's expected to be there, but it's not important.” My how things have changed.

LF was announced before BL came out, TFS almost a year later. Nothing was "rushed".

I started playing D2 last month, and I've played through the Witch Queen campaign, the Lightfall campaign, and just in the last couple of days, the Beyond Light campaign. I'm super new to the universe, and I'm just along for the ride at this point as a newbie. I don't have the last 8 or 9 years that some have, and I don't expect myself to be on the same level as my friend, who's been with Destiny since the beginning. The poor man has scraped my pixels off the ground more times than we can count, but the environments and the new challenges have been fun for me. In any case, I appreciate your review as an experienced player in the Destiny universe. Your points make sense and I get the frustration of gameplay vs story (I played WoW for a decade, I get it 😅). I can only hope that the writing pulls through from here on in and that find a cohesive conclusion leading into the Final Shape.

Wish we had you writing the last few years for the story it’s perfect

Just as a sidenote, if you notice little details of the ornaments, from witch queen, even things like the gauntlets, on the hunters, all of that crochet and knitted stuff

9:40 the end of the season of the seraph mission??? Rasputin literally mentions the veil being on Neptune along with a hidden city and the coordinates for Osiris to head to it makes perfect sense

People keep saying “they think” strand was for witch queen. Well it was it’s a known fact Bungie literally said it was and it was pushed out for another light 3.0 rework.

We found out about the veil cause of the spire of the watcher mission.

i liked lightfall cause vex are hella cool and being able to enter the vex net multiple times via lost sectors and strikes etc is so cool its why i played season of the splicer so much

I still can't believe calus' fight is literally just a reskin of the big white armored railgun cabal that fire blinding rockets, and then his second phase is just a reskinned gladiator

9:39 It’s Rasputin, after his death he left a note talked about Neptune and the Vile so I think is this the reason about our guardian and the Vile

Appreciate the Borderlands 2 OST music at the end gamers, this is evidence Evan is a GOAT

The veil is mentioned by rapsuting on it's final message, it is a artifact related to paracausal power on Neptune But we never knew where is neomuna, we have visit neptune before and found nothing

I want your lightfall you came up with, it sounds sick

Something you got wrong at 15:10 is that the radial mast (and it’s mini versions) can’t be destroyed by darkness alone. It says it suppresses our KNOWN POWERS. The witness knows we have stasis… he literally gave it to us, however they don’t know that we have strand. Again it’s not that darkness can destroy them, it’s that unknown powers can cause they weren’t made to suppress them.

You did cut off a part of the ending cinematics where the Witness "shapes" a triangle over the Traveler to open that portal

Also also in the last mission of witch queen, the wizards are making threats to tangle the traveler to the throne world, thats strand.

Congratulations. They need to hire you for a story director. I’m not even joking. Your fan made one feels like an actual cohesive story.

Now that we’re getting Prismatic this makes so much more fitting sense. Imagine losing our light abilities in Lightfall to get them back only for the next story beat for us to combine our powers together in a boundary breaking prism. I usually avoid and dislike RU-vid creator rewrites but this is perfect Evan

Yo that commercial was great my guy

It’s crazy how D1 black garden era writing is better than Lightfall

They did mention the Veil at the end of last season, Rasputin said it was on Neptune.

I loved the story, as an avid fantasy reader I would read your entire series of books in a few days for that story

I wish I could go to the timeline where Bungie release the original idea for the dlc

No people, but it has food production, gyms, bars, arcades, but no people, Neomuna makes no sense.