#and also between Destiny and Sims and shit i'm tired of everyone acting like devs don't care about bad products

[vivifrage]

I think with Lightfall like. It's fun. I had a good time. A blast, even! Especially with the gameplay, even when I got frustrated because I was playing Legendary and I'm not a good gamer.

It's action movie fun. Which is what it intended to be, really, from all the tropes and the pacing of it. But it got bodied with sudden roadmap changes and Witch Queen as video game Oscar bait.

Yeah, I think it could have used a breather to bond more with Rohan especially, but there was in-game justification for going fast and I'm sure the format A Destiny Expansion(tm) limited the team. We saw it bad in Witch Queen's seasons, and Bungie acknowledged that yeah the seasons structure was limiting them. As someone who works in software dev, nobody likes having to make things worse. But it happens a lot. Sometimes in really bullshit ways that the software folks wouldn't expect to be that level of bullshit, let alone anyone who isn't working with the software day in and day out. And by bullshit I mean "massive overhaul of the entire system just to make one tiny change" kinds of bullshit. Again, nobody likes it. I promise you.

Back to Lightfall. It's a fun action movie. It's also the plot point we'd been hurtling towards since Witch Queen, and probably even well before that: The Darkest Hour. We're struggling to use this new power in time, the mysteries around us have unraveled but in the end it's too late for us to get the upper hand, and it nearly costs us everything. In the year beforehand, we'd been losing in one way or another at the end of the seasons: Crow kills the Psion, our rituals fail to stop Calus, Eramis gets away, Rasputin dies. The Witness accesses the Traveler.

What it also does is it sets up the rest of the year for our Triumphant Finale. We get a thread to follow - how to get into the Traveler - and chase it through the year, alongside other threads like what the Veil is and how we're gonna deal with Xivu Arath. As of the end(ish) of Wish, we've got our answer and are primed for The Final Shape as our finale.

But first we had to have The Darkest Hour. Which, in the short term, being what it is, is a bummer. No getting around it. It's also part of why comparisons to Witch Queen went awry, IMO.

Witch Queen is, as I said before, the Oscar bait, insofar as an MMO looter-shooter has Oscar bait. It puts the tangled web front and center instead of tracing one thread and then zooming out to show the whole thing. It's more philosophical in nature, sitting back and asking us whether we think we're special and what really separates us from one of the enemies we hadn't forged alliances with yet: the Hive. And, of course, if we'd noticed the puppetmaster behind it all. It ties up the question that's been going on since Forsaken: are we the bad guys? (No, not really, we're struggling to survive the way everyone else is. Which, nobody else we've been fighting is really "the bad guy" either.)

It's a really good storyline! I loved it, even if, honestly, I didn't like the gameplay as much as Lightfall. I think it's earned its good reviews and positive reception.

But it is the Oscar bait. And unlike Lightfall, its plot role didn't require the same downer ending. It could sprawl, and honestly? I don't think it would have worked as our Darkest Hour. Not without screwing up the story and making a jumbled mess. Seriously, I don't think Destiny's "everyone gets a second chance" philosophy would have carried well at all if The Darkest Hour was when the Hive got Ghosts. Instead it would have reinforced our misconception at the beginning of Lightfall - that we are the sole rightful Lightbearers and that the Hive getting the Light was a wrongdoing.

Destiny did need something between Witch Queen and The Final Shape. And they moved things - but announced it less than a year before Lightfall released. At their big press conference-y deal, but still. Limited time for folks to get the news.

And then it came out and it was an action movie, not Oscar bait. But it followed Oscar bait, so that's what the expectation was.

Personally, I'm fond of, say, Moonlight. Fantastic movie. Beautiful and heartfelt. I enjoyed it and I think it is worthy of its high praise. But if you ask me what my favorite movie is, I'll say it's a tossup between Pacific Rim and Mad Max: Fury Road. They fit different niches in the cultural ecosystem - Moonlight isn't a bad Pacific Rim and Pacific Rim isn't a bad Moonlight. Not unless you pit them against each other despite their vast differences.

Also I remember there was lots of complaining about how empty Neomuna was at first, but everything about the CloudArk and especially the lorebook is such early pandemic-era fiction.

Lightfall is a good action movie. Witch Queen is good Oscar bait. Both of them have their strong points and weak points. There are technical factors that limit things. There are other external factors that limit things (looking at you, upper management).

It's fair to critique a story but like, I dunno. Bungie's devs, writers, and artists aren't idiots or evil or out to get you specifically. Lightfall is fine but you can't - and shouldn't - expect it to be Witch Queen.

Please, for the love of everything holy, don't let us repeat the nasty bitchy maelstrom we got around Lightfall. Or I'll start shitting in ovens.

#destiny 2 #destiny spoilers #i'm glad things have generally chilled out in the fandom #but i fear what will happen come TFS #and also between Destiny and Sims and shit i'm tired of everyone acting like devs don't care about bad products #i think just about every human wants to be proud of their work! #especially when it's something that's taken months or years to make #and it really fucking sucks to be hamstrung by The Bullshit(tm)