I’m nearly glad Lightfall was a bit garbage. After the thirtieth Anniversary Pack and The Witch Queen, I used to be getting used to Future 2 being actually good, and it was a wierd, unsettling feeling. Future’s type has all the time ebbed and flowed, and the highs give form to the lows; terrific as The Taken King and Forsaken have been, they shone extra brightly as a result of Future 1 and a pair of have been so disappointing at launch. Maybe Bungie goes very meta with the message of Future’s Gentle and Darkness Saga – you want each for both to have which means.
However that saga is quickly to finish. Barring delays, The Ultimate Form launch date is lower than a yr out. Whether or not you view Future 2‘s return to nonsensical type with exasperation or my bizarre masochistic nostalgia, each Guardian desires this distinctive story to shut on the triumphant excessive it deserves. What must occur between now and The Ultimate Form to arrange this joyful final result? Spoilers incoming for Lightfall’s marketing campaign, Season of Defiance, and The Ultimate Form teaser trailer.
Most clearly, the remaining seasonal tales need to be good, complementary, and escalatory. They have to be good in themselves and work collectively to set the scene for The Ultimate Form, easily ratcheting up the stakes and teasing the area recreation’s huge end in a means that restores our shaken confidence in Bungie. The Ultimate Form’s teaser trailer is an effective begin.
The triangular gap within the sky on the finish maps onto the form The Witness minimize into (or above?) the Traveler, so one apparent conclusion is that it’s a portal. Would possibly the plush panorama to which it leads be the inside of the Traveler? Would possibly the Traveler’s powers of resurrection clarify Cayde’s presence there? And is there an opportunity it may even be the Black Backyard, as a relationship between it and the Traveler has lengthy been posited within the lore?
These are the sorts of questions that may maintain curiosity throughout a number of seasons so long as they’re managed effectively. Bungie did this brilliantly between Past Gentle and The Witch Queen, however much less persistently between Witch Queen and Lightfall, and has now chosen a better issue by complicated and annoying everybody with the occasions of Lightfall itself.
To recap: we went into Lightfall with the Witness threatening Earth, and have been trying ahead to studying extra of its nature and intentions. As an alternative, it dipped to Neomuna, a metropolis on Neptune, to chase a MacGuffin named The Veil, neither of which we’d ever heard of. The growth thus felt like a sideshow to the primary occasion we’d been promised, and all of it went to piss anyway because the Witness succeeded in its plan regardless of our efforts. Season of Defiance has been as skinny as growth seasons normally are, having us tussle with the Witness’s Cabal sidekicks and explaining nothing of import.
So having broken our hard-won belief, Bungie’s recourse is so as to add which means to Lightfall’s marketing campaign retroactively: what’s The Veil? Why was it essential to introduce Neomuna and can it, or the Cloud Striders, be related once more? What precisely has the Witness performed to the Traveler, and the place has it gone? These questions have a irritating high quality as a result of they come up from Lightfall’s sudden missteps, however Bungie has promised solutions beginning within the newly launched Season of the Deep. It’s trying good up to now, with a incredible nautical theme and the uptake of some fascinating narrative threads which have lengthy been dangling.
Bungie’s remedy of its characters is one other space through which reassurance is required after latest occasions. Each Rohan and Amanda Holliday’s deaths have been poorly dealt with; their heavy telegraphing elicited a form of unhappy, weary dread – ‘oh no, I can’t consider they’re going to kill Amanda’ – slightly than no matter Bungie hoped for, and clearly eliminated any shock from the occasions themselves. They have been additionally milked for impression on the motivations of others and, in Amanda’s case, for thematic relevance, giving it an uncomfortable means-to-an-end feeling. With the deaths of Rasputin and Cayde, there was a respect and understanding for who they have been slightly than how they may serve the messaging (sure, we knew Cayde’s demise was coming, however as a result of it was brazenly declared slightly than clumsily foreshadowed).
It’s essential that Bungie relearns this delicate craft, as a result of the approaching seasons will pose the most important problem in character writing but: how we are saying goodbye to Zavala. Lance Reddick’s passing was felt all all over the world by thousands and thousands who admired his work, and within the Future neighborhood, the tributes have been really touching. We so appreciated the truth that he performed and beloved this recreation as a lot as any of us that for weeks any occasion of The Tower would discover dozens of Guardians kneeling by their beloved commander. Recasting Zavala simply doesn’t really feel like an possibility, which suggests he’ll in all probability need to ‘exit’ the sport for good as soon as Reddick’s recorded materials is used. No matter type that takes, Bungie must deal with it in a means that acknowledges and respects his significance to Future, and to its gamers.
Away from the story, there’s loads of work that wants doing underneath Future’s proverbial bonnet. Technical points, from in-game quirks like invisible weapons to alarming character deletion bugs, in addition to crashes and server outages, have grow to be extra frequent since The Witch Queen’s launch. Bungie did say that the necessity to hold the sport lean for technical causes was a consider its controversial sunsetting coverage, and now that coverage has been reversed we could also be paying the value. I count on most gamers would favor the tradeoff and I’m no programmer, so I’ve no concept how a lot could be performed right here.
Lastly, we have to discuss concerning the meta. With Lightfall we acquired Future 2’s fifth subclass, and the neighborhood’s starvation for brand new loot, each Unique and Legendary, with new perks in new random combos is insatiable. Getting all this to play properly collectively is exponentially tougher as extra is added, however not all game-breaking capabilities come from deep-cut builds that blend dozens of forgotten perks (although among the builds that we’ve been seeing currently are a bit foolish). Right here’s Fallout on how a single new weapon perk can simply get hand cannons to two-tap in PvP:
If there’s one frequent theme to this want record, it’s the issue of navigating a scenario of escalating complexity. In technical load, sandbox balancing, and even storytelling, Future 2 is in essentially the most bloated and complex state it has ever been. However in its story at the very least, every part as much as Lightfall had a sense of items becoming collectively. With the Veil, Neomuna, and the Cloud Striders, Lightfall added large extraneous new parts simply as every part ought to’ve been sliding into place.
Recent from the frustration of Lightfall’s story and surveying yet one more messy meta, many will ask how rather more of our persistence Bungie deserves to get issues proper. Regardless of Lightfall, Future has now achieved sufficient to make it really feel like an unkind query to me, and loads of gamers have proven they’ll persist with Future no matter occurs. Furthermore, we’re now within the residence stretch. Sure, in terms of the last word query of what all of it means and the place Future has been heading, Bungie has been kicking the can down the highway for a very long time, and we’d in all probability all have most well-liked the payoff to be extra evenly distributed. However we’re working out of highway now, and so – name it copium, name it sunk price, name it what you’ll – I’m in for yet one more yr.
