Destiny 2: Lightfall DLC was very poorly received. Players flooded Steam with negative reviews complaining about the poor campaign and disappointing new town.
Destiny 2: Lightfall DLC, the latest expansion for Bungie’s popular online shooter, debuted 3 days ago. Enough time has passed since release to gauge how the expansion was received. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a huge disappointment.
- It’s most painfully obvious and Steamwhere only 29% of user reviews are positivewhich is classified as “mostly negative” reception.
- Players are mostly disappointed with the low quality of the campaign. It’s significantly lower than last year’s The Witch Queen. Destiny 2 fans are complaining about the poor story and poorly designed missions.
- The new city, terribly empty, is also criticized..
- Players also complain about the undemanding Legendary difficulty mode, which in previous DLCs made replaying the campaign very interesting.
- The praise mostly goes to the new powers, but players don’t like how much the campaign acts as a tutorial for them.
- Many people are also bothered by the environment. The opening scene promises a dark story, when in reality the story is full of dodgy humor and characters the players don’t like at all (especially the childish Nimbus takes the cake here).
Here are some examples of Steam reviews that capture the mood of gamers.
“The campaign missions don’t even come close to those of The Witch Queen. Legendary difficulty is not very difficult compared to WQ. The city is empty and uninteresting. (…) The plot makes no sense. Calus, the main villain, is literally a new colossus and gladiator skin. Nimbus is the most twisted character in history (probably created by a 12-15 year old).
The person responsible for scripting this extension should be fired immediately and never hired for such a project again. How can the most anticipated DLC be so screwed up?
This is the worst expansion yet (yes, even worse than Beyond Light). A huge disappointment for $50.”
“The best are the opening scenes of the campaign. After that, it gets worse every second. The new characters and the story are boring, the new place is empty, nothing is right.”
“Lightfall was supposed to be our Infinity War, and Captain Marvel came out. Tragedy. 9 years of building an antagonist and the Specter of Fate for a ‘practice edit’. Bungie has never been exceptional when it comes to scripts, but in Witch Queen they showed they could tell an interesting story. It seems something that was meant to be a ‘new standard’ turned into a brief flash of talent.”
The plugin was also not to the liking of Adrian Chmielarz, a developer currently working on Witchfire. A Twitter commented on the quality of the DLC as follows:
“I completed the #Destiny2Lightfall campaign. The battle scenarios were good. Strand seems random, I don’t understand its basic fantasy. Setting, story, characters, dialogues, in one word: childish. In two words: childish, embarrassing. As bad as Curse of Osiris. Graphics: PS3, a big step down from WQ.”
Of course, the add-on’s weak campaign won’t bury the entire game, as it’s the mode most players will spend the least amount of time on. The new season, which started with the DLC, is getting a warmer reception so far, and on top of that, everyone is waiting for the next raid, which will be released on March 10.
Still, it’s a shame that Lightfall disappointed so much. 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. That of The Witch Queen was impressive, and fans were hoping Bungie would 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.
- Destiny 2: Lightfall on Steam
- Bungie – official site