Lightfall, the latest expansion for Destiny 2, can be a blast. Though Bungie‘s long-running sci-fi shooter is a massively multiplayer online (MMO) – meaning large swathes of it are designed to be played with other players, dubbed Guardians – its campaign is a fantastic first-person shooter (FPS) that you can play all by your lonesome.
After much googling, I landed on the conclusion that, yes, Lightfall was absolutely fine for new players to jump into. I’d always wanted to give Destiny 2 a shot, and jumping in while the community was still wide-eyed with a new expansion felt like the perfect opportunity.
Things started wonderfully. A dramatic opening cinematic sets the scene of an Earth utterly ravaged by alien forces, and an opening mission takes you through the basics of Destiny. Blink, and you’ll miss many of the hints that pop up – a lot of the combat-centric pointers are delivered in the heat of battle – but the guts of Destiny 2 are rather straightforward: see alien, shoot alien. Find loot, equip loot. Rinse, repeat.
If only the rest was as easy. After that alien-bashing mandatory introduction, I figured it was time to jump into the latest expansion It took another quick Google to work out how to kick Lightfall off (Destiny‘s map of the cosmos is a little overwhelming for players who are yet to leave Earth) but it was admittedly a small hitch, and I was soon jetting off to Neptune to presumably save the world again.
Lightfall kicks off with a brief recap of Destiny 2‘s events and while it can be difficult to catch players up on a six-year story, the cutscene does enough to inform you that The Witness – who looks like a goofy vape-addled Megamind, but can dice up Guardians with a flick of his wrist – is a big deal. The recap manages to convey the basics of why you’re fighting him, but new players face an awkward quandary. Do you play through countless hours of dated content – missing some of the story beats that have been “vaulted”, rendering them unplayable – to know who’s who and what’s really going on? Or do you skip to the good stuff, which by all accounts you should be able to follow along with anyway? I don’t think there’s a right answer, but there are a few too many new faces and story beats to make its come-one-come-all approach feel entirely truthful.
Whichever you choose, Lightfall’s first mission sets you loose on an alien ship, sinking fiery salvos into Neptune’s would-be invaders and trying to blow their vessel up from within. Firefights are kinetic and despite Destiny‘s MMO nature, most enemies feel like real, fleshy targets rather than bullet sponge stat-checks. A miniature jetpack means you’re always launching yourself from cover to cover and finding new angles to attack from. Throw your powerful class-specific abilities and diverse range of weaponry into the mix, and a good time’s all but guaranteed.
Lightfall thrives when it keeps things simple, and boasts some of the most exciting shootouts going, but there are some major hurdles to enjoying the wider campaign. Lightfall’s recap fails to set up a number of big story beats that crop up during the campaign, meaning that when it ventures into territory that runs deeper than stopping an invasion, I was left largely confused. Without the benefit of six years to get to know characters, some of them (ahem, Osiris) can feel two-dimensional.
Toward the end of one particularly intense mission, you’re whacked with a short-timer and tasked with making a hasty retreat. It took me scores of futile attempts before I Googled the solution, to which I learned that you should have a vehicle to complete it. If, like me, you’re a new player jumping straight into Lightfall, you won’t actually have arrived here with a vehicle. This meant cancelling my mission right as I was nearing its completion, stopping for even more Googling, and jetting off mid-invasion. Sorry, Neptune, back in a tick – just buying a Sparrow.
It’s silly, and it feels like Destiny 2 has been wrapped in its own systems for so long that it can’t recognise the issues new players face. Bungie could have taken care of this with a quick preface before beginning the expansion – “Hey, you need a vehicle, grab one here” – or even just a handily-placed Sparrow where it’s needed, but instead new players are left to bang their heads off the wall.
Bungie’s six-year run at Destiny means it has near-unprecedented freedom to tell its story, and once you take the time to catch up, there’s a brilliant universe waiting out there. Yet for new players, catching up on so much feels borderline untenable. This isn’t a call for Bungie to abandon that story, but if it wants to keep bringing in new players, it needs to try harder to welcome them. There’s so much to love about Destiny 2 – I just wish it didn’t make it so difficult.
Lightfall is out now, for all platforms Destiny 2 is available on.
