#also i like seeing that old man (osiris) get bullied

[raetoria]

Let's talk about the Lightfall campaign shall we? As you might expect I'm gonna be talking about spoilers so be warned if you haven't finished yet!

Right now there are a lot of fans who are angry and upset about Lightfall, saying that it's a step down and that they're so disappointed this is what the penultimate expansion is. Their main complaints are around the writing (especially of the Veil), Strand's implementation, and Nimbus.

I really liked Lightfall. This is not gonna be me complaining about the game, sorry. Also I see the constant reminder is necessary, be nice to the devs!!!! They poured a lot of work into this so even if you don't like it, leave some constructive criticism if you really want to and hopefully the seasonal story will be more your speed! I wanted to just put my thoughts out there.

First off, it was a lot of fun and Neomuna as an environment really hits a sweet spot for me that I just love. The aesthetic design, the world lore, all of it is just great. I loved how there was basically no padding in the campaign, almost all of the missions were tight and progressed the story. Legendary difficulty was hard but not impossible and it was a fun challenge to take on. The Witness was terrifying, and the lore implications are huge. I think it's really great we were handed a "loss" right before Final Shape. Overall, the dialogue was clean and I loved seeing these characters interact.

So that brings us to the first point. The Veil and how the story treated it was a little odd. We never really saw it until the end and no one ever explained how it worked or what it did. But, I think that's the point? My feeling is that, from Osiris' point of view, the Witness wants this thing to do something bad to the Traveller and Savathun knew it was extremely powerful / had power to do something to the Witness. Osiris probably concluded, "I don't know what this is and it doesn't matter, we have to protect it because the Witness desperately wants it."

Similarly, the vibe I was getting from the Cloud Striders is that they don't know either! It really felt like that at one point very early in Neomuna's history, the Ishtar Collective found this big nut and went, "hmmmm wonder what this does" and created the first CloudArk prototype. However, I don't think it went further than that. There so far isn't much evidence they really had any understanding of what it could do, at least not how the Witness used it. So with how many generations it's been and how many Cloud Striders have been passing down this information (since it seems like normal people aren't allowed down to the Veil chamber) my guess is the knowledge has been lost. They know the CloudArk runs off it and that the city is powered by it, that's it. So to Nimbus and Rohan, the Witness trying to get the Veil = Neomuna losing a critical piece of infrastructure. They know it's powerful and that it runs the city, but that's it. They don't have any idea how it works because it does not matter to them. They just know losing it is bad and will probably end up causing everyone to die because that's what they've been told. That's why when Osiris asks about the Veil, they give the canned response, because that's what they know and that's their habitual response whenever someone asks!

So taken all together, that's why I think the way the Veil is presented is fine. The whole point is that we have no idea what this thing is and we're probably gonna spend some time post raid figuring it out. I would have loved to see some line from Osiris or the Striders like, "oh we don't know and we don't care what it does" but I think it's still fine. It's not the first time Destiny requires you to just buy into something.

Okay okay, so now let's talk about strand. This one is a bit annoying to me admittedly because Bungie absolutely hit that 80s action movie hero vibe like they talked about in the vidoc with strand during the campaign. They even had a training montage! However, without the rapid recharge in strand empowered areas it's a class that's a bit tough to use. Admittedly, I don't have a build or really any fragments unlocked so I'm sure it'll be fine once I get there, but the grapple is... tough to love. When im able to instantly refund it by connecting to grapple point it's great! And the refund from doing the melee combined with my discipline is also pretty good; I usually have it by the next time I want to swing. But just trying to swing around generally is rough. I'm going to keep playing with it but I really hope I can figure out a way to just zip around in locations without the grapple points.

In terms of it during the Lightfall campaign, I thought it was used well! I liked it frankly, the rapid ability charging and the slow evolution was fun, and a lot easier to manage than stasis for me. Generally speaking, I think the unlock for Strand is gonna be a lot better than Stasis. I also liked swinging around the arenas and punching stuff, as a warlock main it was fun to channel a titan for a bit! Overall, I liked the way it played such a big role in the campaign because of course it did, it's a huge addition to the game!

Okay, final topic, Nimbus. People I feel are hating on Nimbus in the same way they hate on Shaw Han which I just don't really get. Nimbus is a character who takes things in stride and with joy, because that's their personality and they play the role of the hero for the Neomuni. They need to seem unflappable and like nothing is a big deal because that's what the people expect. Also, they're excited and young! They have basically met a superhero (us) and seen the wild things we do! But they have also been thrust into a leadership role suddenly and without warning. They are trying to keep their spirits high even though they are feeling incredibly conflicted underneath. The way their grief is manifesting is that they are trying to throw themselves headlong into their work to take on Rohan's mantle to escape their feelings. Hint, this is also how Osiris acts and so seeing him caution Nimbus is hilariously ironic (he's getting better! Kind of!) As we see in some post campaign content, Nimbus is going through it (tm) and not dealing with their grief. The loss of their mentor / kind of father figure has really hit hard. I haven't finished all the quests yet so I'm excited to see how that develops! They're fun and jokey on the surface, but very thoughtful and driven underneath.

Which brings me to my final thought. For me, Nimbus and Cayde-6 feel incredibly similar. They're both characters who seem jokey and all about fun (and a bit shallow as a result) but are really thoughtful and deep in their quiet moments. They just want to protect the people they have been charged with the safety of, and they know how important seeming cheerful can be. But with Nimbus post campaign we see the mask slip. We see they're not handling the loss well. In the final mission in the Ace of Spades quest, we see the real Cayde-6, the person behind the jokes. That mission is what made me like cayde, frankly I found him a bit annoying otherwise but that one mission of cayde pouring his heart out long after he was gone really got to me. Anyways this is to say that I like Nimbus, I like the hidden depth and I love their bombastic nature. I especially love seeing what a folk hero is like, the good and the bad. And I don't think their voice is annoying. If you do... well that sucks I suppose since he has a lot of dialogue!

Wow that was a lot longer than I thought I guess I have opinions tm. Anyways, tl;dr I liked Lightfall and don't think it's nearly as bad as people are making it out to be. Be nice to the devs!!!