Bungie has been known for amazing gameplay and systems for a while now. Witch Queen was special because it finally gave us the thing they were lacking, an amazing narrative. But Lightfall goes right back down to the old days of shadowkeep with something messy... distracting us from all the good stuff the game added in the process. That being said full melee charge energy armamentarium with strand titan is never ending grapple it's SO FUN.

My favorite part was when the Witness said it’s Witnessing time, and we witness him telling us what the veil was.

Nobody tell Bricky that the voice actress for Ikora hasn’t been the Firefly lady for two years now but the new VA is so good that it’s actually pretty hard to tell.

Osiris' delivery is frustrating because HIS VA HAS HAD STELLAR DELIVERY BEFORE And I think some of the delivery in lightfall was great in isolation. When he shouts "we need to do better" and "we have done nothing but waste time," it feels like it would have been amazing if other characters in that conversation had the same tone and if he had more confident and non-frustrated scenes

Considering that Lightfall and Final Shape were meant to be one package and not 2 separate expansions, I honestly think the "traveler gone" voicelines were accidentally left in. Hell, the leading theory so far is that the first and last cutscenes were actually connected as the intro but were split and they rushed a story to fill the space between to make 2 expansions.

“Am I stuck in the gorilla grip of Calus and the caBUSSY?” I can’t express with words how much this caught me off guard and folded my stomach.

Calus was posed to play such an insanely good role in this story, after the years long buildup from season of opulence to season of the haunted, all the lore from the chronicon, the dialogue from DUALITY which was so insanely good, and in lightfall he's reduced to a cartoon villain's cartoon henchman, who shows up in 2 and a half cutscenes and then dies after a lackluster battle. Also insane to me that there was so much buildup of him meeting and obsessively revering the Voice in the Darkness (THE WITNESS!) and then when he finally submits to it, they seemingly fucking hate being near each other. Calus has always been someone guided by his own goals and success, but after finding the voice in the darkness he was head over heels obsessed with making it to the end of everything, and being the last one there to see it. And then comes lightfall, where he doesn't really seem to have any ambition besides being mad that he's being made to do any work. He exists just for the main villain to have someone to say "You've failed me for the last time!" to. It feels like they completely fumbled his character after literal years worth of building and windup and it's so so so disappointing.

Nimbus is a prime example of "Millennial Writing" and Osiris LITERALLY had me yelling at my game "Osiris, STFU, I'M THE ONE DOING ALL THE WORK! NOT YOU!".

I kept describing the narrative around the fact you've got a really big problem with there being no answers or understanding. You have a super enigmatic villain with a vague motive, vague powerset and a vague plan chasing after a McGuffin which has a vague power which means we don't know how it works, why it's important or how the Villain will use it. The reason keeping us in the dark for so long worked with The Witch Queen was because it was an active investigation into the villain's plan and goals which you could crack open and understand as the plot went on. We actually got the answers to how the Hive got the Light, how & why Savathun betrayed the Witness and it fit into her plan to truly steal the Light from us.

Bricky and Skillup dropping lightfall reviews hours apart, this is gonna be nice

I love the part where the witness screamed "WITNESS ME" then he jumped inside the traveler and the traveler blew up. Truly a cinematic masterpiece.

On the scene where The Witness shatters reality, I like to think they are showing their true form (or a piece of it) to Calus, so the fear of the eldritch abomination is real

Here’s the thing that always removes tension: vendors won’t die. As soon as nimbus was shown to be the planets vendor it was clear he was safe

One thing to note is that a lot of gameplay elements introduced in Lightfall and reworks are available for free, so that's even less value in that $50

There’s a theory going around that Strand was supposed to be in Witch Queen, but at the last minute they switched it over to bringing the Light subclasses to 3.0, which is why Strand feels out of place in Lightfall.

I personally believe best story arc would have been if Rohan didnt die but his pupil did and Nimbus came after giving him in the end a strict time of less then 365 days to train his replacement

im so glad that bricky has such a good critical take on this. he's fair and argues in good faith. people have been quick to say that if you dont like it dont buy it, and that's an ok take to have, but if we pay money for a franchise that was doing good since Savathun, then we are allowed to point out where the game fails

I honestly feel that destiny dlcs should be priced somewhere between 20 and 40 dollars and that the annual pass should be included in that price. I also think that they should release some sort of catch up bundle for each dlc where it comes with all the old dlc and the new dlc for something like 60$. It just feels to me every time I’ve tried to get back into destiny that I’m being nickeled and dined to death and that to actually be able to fully experience the game with my friends ima have to drop like 150$ dollars now and 100$ every year.

3:53 He has specific dialogue if you earned the Shadow title, calling you his Shadow and saying you belong at his side. Just a cool little detail I liked. Calus and Caiatl I think are the only redeeming factors of the campaign.

I'm sure you know but the reason Calus was voiced so damn well is he is voiced by Darin De Paul. Plenty of other voices but very recognizable as Reinhardt from Overwatch. Darin DEVOURS every role he partakes in. Meanwhile Oded Fehr who voices Osiris honestly is better in live action. He was in the Mummy as the Medjai and Resident Evil as Carlos. So I think the disconnect of being fully remote sadly hurt his and others positions in VAing. However Lance Reddick as Zavala is always *Chefs Kiss*

You *KNOW* the story for a Destiny expansion is bad when even My Name is Byf, AKA "The Lore Daddy," has no idea what's going on. On my own end... the story was such a bummer. it actually killed my excitement to keep playing this year. It honestly sucks for me to say that. I might hope in, but at this point, I probably wont even keep playing when TFS comes around... and I certainly dont have the confidence to think itd be good. Edit: Ngl, the cutscene where Calus pisses off The Witness is my favorite cutscene in the entire campaign. It does such a great job reinforcing what we know of Calus while also giving The Witness his... their... its(?) own spotlight, how brief it was. The sheer fact that it scared Calus to the point that he couldnt even *blink* was just masterful.

I’ve always liked that interaction between Shaxx and Saint. Shaxx’a va has been known to add a lot of Shakespearean flair to Shaxx hence the strange way of talking (hence why people in the community jokingly say that Shaxx is a resurrected Shakespeare). But back to the point of Osiris yea I noticed it to, it sounded like someone reading directly from their script for the first or second time without rehearsing any of it.

When you were talking about how no one of importance was in danger through the whole story, I remembered there is a fan theory going about that the people in the ships that got unraveled by the Witness at the beginning were the OG fireteam from the live action Destiny trailers. I have accepted this as fact because it actually feels like I lost something in this campaign other than my sanity

Everytime I think of Destiny and it's storytelling, all I can think of is the quotes from the first game: "I could tell you...", and "I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain."

Yes! Another Legendary Machinegun Enjoyer! Also, I'm enthusiastic about them adding Tormentors to future content- since they're just kinda allied with the darkness in general, we should run into them with Scorn, hive and Fallen who chose the wrong side, rather than *specifically* hanging with Shadow cabal and no-one else, still use them in moderation, but they should be seen around more often than the Lucent hive who are extremely unlikely to show up anywhere for a good long while. More of that maybe, Mix up the enemy groups with different factions, that could be nice if used well.

"Ok babe, that was fun. Now let's try the Radial Mast real quick before Timmy gets back from school"

It's also the thing of like bungie has now come out and said that the mystery of the veil will be answered in post campaign content that is scheduled for release around each season roughly. But they completely failed to present the veil or any of that as a mystery in the campaign. So instead of it being a "Ooh I wonder what this magic thinga majig is" it just becomes "Why does everyone else seem to know but I don't".

you could have told me that nimbus didnt even have a VA, that they just autotuned a text-to-speech and i would have believed you.

The funny part about voice actors being remote from each other is that the show Archer did this for almost all of their voice actors and they made everything fit perfectly

For the traveler being "gone", the most popular theory is that its still there physically, but its more of a hollow husk now, hence why the ghosts say they can't feel its presence anymore.

Bricky: I wish Bungie would up the stakes by killing off a character *Monkey paw curls*

As someone who never got into D1/D2 holy crap this game is like listening to a politician, soo soo many words and all of them mean absolutely nothing at all.

“Am I stuck between the gorilla grips of Calus and the CaBUSSY?!” Bricky said bewildered.

Calus actually did have another move. It was called “Sun of Lubre” and it was basically an orbital death laser that he only uses if you stay in one place for too long during his colossus phase.

the first time i met a tormentor i almost shit myself.

I honestly feel like the story was written either by a different team or before which queen. I love watching your videos because you always have basically the same opinion except you know how to articulate it thank you for that.

Wish you could have followed up with the naming, since the last one was "No Witches?" This one clearly should have been "Lightfell off+Ratio"

I really hope the final shape will be as awesome as they’re making it out to be.. because deluxe edition is probably gonna cost $130

I dont understand the setting mix in Lightfall. Everything is about Pyramids, Darkness and death, but the new zone is an 80's arcade playground. Wtf?

Probably not a popular opinion but I think Osiris being whiney made all lot of sense. Was it still annoying, absolutely. But we have a living legend amongst guardians, a one man army, someone so influential and powerful, who has always been able to do anything and everything on his own, reduced to just an advisor. He went from being the equivalent of an epic level wizard to less than a starting character, and I felt like the bitching was him wanting so badly to have some sort of agency

Bungie going mostly remote is one of my biggest gripes with the company. That and their train station design philosophy that’s completely ass backwards. They don’t polish the stuff they release. They don’t collaborate the way they need to. They made game development harder on themselves and aren’t getting any payout for it.

You know the veil will never be explained. It's just another example of vague words with a "THE" in the beginning. All destiny's writing is that. The traveler, the witness, the light, the darkness, the fallen...

I think the addition of non-binary characters were just to check a box for the company to boast about how inclusive they are but they didn’t bother to write an interesting character. I’m all for more people from all backgrounds but most companies use it to avoid criticism of a poorly written character, usually the Twitter crowd saying “You don’t like this character? You must hate ____ group then?”

About killing characters, I have a theory that the only reason Cayde is dead (and the dlcs up to Forsaken have been removed) is because they had some problem with Nathan Fillion's contract... Because the whole excuse about why they removed the old DLCs is bs, and they removed the entire history up to the point Cayde died. Their reason for that was because the game was "too big"... Yet, now they already announced that they will not remove any more content from the game... So if the only issue was game size then bring the damn DLC I paid for back... but of course they won't.

I love it when they showed how strong Phallus, Third Leg of Calus, really is in the 69th mission

Lol I’m glad you mentioned the Osiris voice actor thing I also thought that he was terrible, and even thought he was drunk on some lines

Also it’s really frustrating that big Empress C’s confrotation with her dad plays out off screen. How much cool would it have been if she bursted in during our fight and did something? Like you finish first phase and he starts to go big head Calus and then the proving hammer claps him in the dome and that’s what breaks his hat and makes him go too phase two?

You can definitely see the strain the writers were under due to the Lightfall & Final Shape re-workings; there's genuinely great ideas story wise, it's just that the execution is so disappointing for what we know Bungie is capable of. It also doesn't help that Witch Queen was as good as it was, setting a new bar of quality in every regard that Lightfall probably would've never lived up to.

i liked the part where the witness said "this is your destiny 2: lightfall, traveler" then witnessed all over it

I know absolutely nothing about Destiny, but that effect they do with The Whitness's head is really cool

As simple as it was, ME3 Multiplayer was sooooo good. I loved all the combos and interactions between abilities and damage types.

I compare calus with zenos in FF14 where zenos get glorious send-off at the end of the endwalker and calus just that's it

The zero stakes in Lightfall for me is what makes it feel worse than Shadowkeep to me. Shadowkeep also had no stakes, but Lightfall actually needed them. Shadowkeep is so long ago it's actually irrelevant Lightfall needed stakes to set up the upcoming seasons and eventually Final Shape, and it didn't.

I can only wonder how big destiny would have been if curse of Osiris and the warmind updates weren't such huge disappointments. I know those updates were forever ago but it was those updates that hit destiny the hardest. I know a ton of people who still don't play because of those updates.

Yeah, they reveal what the Veil is in some offhand news broadcast that plays randomly, and it explains that it is the 'pale heart' of the Traveler, whatever that is.

I enjoy these bricky reviews, cause while I absolutely adore the lore and gameplay of destiny 2…….I just can’t bring myself to play it for a simple fact: the vaulting of previous expansions/campaigns. I understand it doesn’t happen anymore but the fact you literally can’t play the story of destiny 2 from the beginning is just something I can’t get over. Maybe when the light and darkness saga is over I’ll join it. But god I want to play the old campaigns.

I'm like you, I'm in. The game has me hooked, the gameplay loop just works for me. It's tough to see the narrative find itself back in a situation similar to D1, where a lot of the best storytelling Bungie is doing currently isn't even part of the actual gameplay. The Grimoire/lore books for this expansion and season are great, and they do a good job of at least pointing us in the direction of the answers to the plethora of unanswered questions that currently plague the narrative. The gameplay here is great, but the content is just shallow.

22:40 You're not gonna believe this bricky... but there's a wave defense mode now.

Feel the same as i did in wow in shadowlands, a weird plot with next to no explanations, a big bad no one knows about or what they want, the one villain people liked was sacrificed unceremoneously (nzoth/calus are even voiced by the same guy) and at the end I just wanted to ignore it all and pretend it didn’t happen

Should've called Nimbus Nimrod and then at least it would've been an accurate nickname.

Ima be real I still love the delivery of “WE NEED TO DO BETTER!” By Osiris it’s so soaked in stress and frustration probably the best line in the expansion.

Even though a few voices are mixed in, I can still hear him, and Bret Dalton is killing it as the witness, and every time the Witness is on screen, he’s amazing. Especially with how much a threat he’s shown to be in the opening cutscene, you have to admit the witness is an awesome villian! Right Bricky?

Well that noone dying part got fixed real quick.

Rohan, who was 2 days from retirement, died to stop a GacMuffin so that we could then go on to secure the MacGuffin, which we failed to do. 10/10 story, would Bungo again.

When Bricky said "Why don't any major characters die?" I din't expect Zavala would fall 3 days after.

Before the end of the campaign I was just annoyed by Nimbus but that scene where he utterly fails to read th room and tries to crack a joke about the death of someone's father right in front of their child less than a minute after he had been killed made me absolutely loathe Nimbus. And what's worse is that our character fist bumped him back at the expense of an extremely steadfast ally and friend. I would NEVER do that. The utter disrespect to Caiatl.... I wouldn't have blamed her if she took Nimbus' head right then and there and I probably would have helped.

The Cloudstriders are just big Ventkids from Warframe. The Hoverboard acrobatics, the accents that can't decide between Australia and England, Shiny Chrome cybernetics with a weird long neck fixation, hanging out in the open world hanging out jobs, fighting against a greed motivated antagonist. Only difference is that the ventkids are kids.

Days Bricky has gone without mentioning the ME3 multiplayer: 0.

I played it a couple weeks ago for the 2nd time since launch and I was just too over whelmed with all the menus and heard that you can’t access half the content from the past and everytime I went somewhere it said I didn’t own something so had no idea where to start

The one thing I don’t like about Tormentors is the fact that I mostly use a fusion rifle and a rocket launcher… so I barely deal any damage to Tormentors since you have to hit the precision spot for them.

The thing that annoys me is that the only story character who has died was Cayde-6. You know, the only one with any personality.

@28:49 Mostly a nitpick but Guardian Ranks reset every season meaning they are literally "How hard you've grinded this season" Pretty good video overall, i think people are also disappointed because this was supposed to be THE expansion when we could tell our friends who didn't play the game to hop on, the on-boarding process wasn't as painful anymore But nope, it still costs €49.99 to buy Lightfall(€100 for the deluxe since it's just a good deal at that point right?), €59.99 to buy everything else then another €30 for Gjallarhorn/A dungeon And then they have to watch a 5 hour video on youtube just to be able to have any idea what's going and and probably a few more videos on what they should be doing and how to do it, which Bungie has always relied on the community to do. Just steal ESO's model and do a subscription service for access to all/most content at this point, although really for how much paid and earned content we lost with sunsetting I can also argue that "legacy" content should just be made F2P

So, Lightfall turned Destiny into a strand type game

Destiny 2 finally became the second Strand-type game. I’m so proud of Bungie and their accomplishment

"this makes me feel like we should have a wave defense mode, gotta say." We did. In Warmind. But they deleted that expansion from the game so you can't play it anymore.

My only problem with Destiny 2 is that there is so much removed content, and as a new player/returning player from when it released, why would I want to sink time, money, and effort into an incomplete game? I feel like Destiny 2 is for two people, those who were there since the beginning and haven't left, or those who just wanna shoot things and see a number go up without caring about experiencing it all.

You're the only person I've seen bring up Osiris' line delivery and i couldn't agree more. Even throughout season of the seraph it was just awkward with weird pauses and felt pretty emotionless. Kind of breaks immersion for me unfortunately.

all of the best story beats are outside of the campaign and while for entrenched players that's great, for anyone getting in it really sucks because yeah, witch queen's campaign story-wise was excellent. i just want both the narrative and the gameplay to feel coherent. like it's the first time in awhile that i've wanted to pound out the expac and the initial story left much to be desired.

1 year later & I can verify, The Final Shape is a million miles better than Lightfall, you're in for a roller coaster Bricky.

Always enjoy your perspective and delivery. You're the kind of guy a lot of us want as an actual friend. Keep up the good work!

I felt Bungie was trying to make a story that was like halo3 odst, And there many similarities between the two (1:you trying to stop the inevitable 2: trying to make you feel like you’re THE last line of defence 3:some of the missions of lightfall are a bit similar to halo 3:odst) And I feel a little disappointed with that because it never feels like your in doomsday mode and trying the best to survive

“Why won’t they kill any actual characters” Cries in cayde-6

My favorite part of lightfall was playing with friends, doing one of the quests to unlock the strand subclass, and my game still said "Complete quest X" after we finished. Love it.

I remember during Which Queen talking about the core game and how I wish it got more attention. Here we are a year later and I am wishing the same thing. I do love post-campaign stuff more than which queen though.

the bad part is that if u want access to strand u have to get the expansion. I'd buy it when it's heavily discounted

1.30 and already a Titanfall 2 reference. My Man's got taste

ABSOLUTELY love the videos bro! Your content is unmatched with in my eyes really only one other KZfaqr in your "genre"and that's The Act Man. I GENUINELY THINK a Collab with the two of you simultaneously reviewing a piece of content together would be an ALL TIME video for you BOTH! Personally, if the Collab couldn't ever happen, I'd love for you to go back and do an in depth review of NON-TREYARCH ZOMBIES such as the STUPIDLY UNDERATED INFINITE WARFARE ZOMBIES similar to your recent COD Ghosts Extinction review. Maybe if you haven't already a series of you obtaining the super EE and beating Mephistopheles in your thoughts throughout the experience! I think that'd make for one HELLOVA vid! Anyways, glad I stumbled on your channel during your crucifixion of vanguard zombies! 🤣🤣 Now, I your one of few can't miss KZfaqrs! Thank you for all you do!

Thank you so much for that merch sale! I've been wanting to get something from your store but haven't really had the money to spare. Procured myself a very nice hoodie though!

I gave up on destiny 2 a while back cause I just couldn't do all the grinding but for some reason I gravitated towards this video

Hence why people are actually saying that IGN for once hit the mark when they gave a 5/10 rating on Lightfall. Absolutely amazing details... real shallow pool of content and post-content. Raids amazing, don't get me wrong. Strand's also rly good... well depending on what class you main. Some ppl say that Titan Strand is best pve clearing, some are still irked af by the fact that Bungie submitted to the "Titan Punch" meme (which I'll admit, its a funny meme but its starting to become similar to the Vaporeon copypasta meme: tiring, exhausting and theres not a soul that already knows it and barely needs anything more than a literal picture to know where the joke's going, yet for some strange reason the hunters are happy to spout it like FPS-game squeakers spout profanity) Rohan you barely get to know and barely get a connection, Nimbus is a literal Skater-Surfer boy which kinda makes any connection a bit difficult to do especially after the loss, Calus was done pretty dirty because every single Disciple was a raid and instead Calus becomes a story campaign boss, aka *_"He done got Ghaul'd!"_* And we're waiting for another season for two dungeons. The DLC prices rly don't match their worth. BTW, Bricky. You want to make "everything died" to "everything died in a circus", use Blinding Grenade Launchers. It legit turns *_EVERYTHING_* into a circus because of how helpless everyone is. *_Even the Tormentors are helpless._*

The city of Neomuna reminded me a lot of the city in Halo Reach with a cyberpunk skin So just like almost every other LGBT character in most movies, TV's, and games, they're a flat, one dimensional, terrible token character for the company to say: "HeY lOoK gAy ChArEcToR!!" Also I agree, Osiris' character was terrible. When we first met his character he was amazing including afterwards

I haven't played destiny 2 in a long while, and it's mainly because I got lost in the story. There was a time where I actually couldn't go back and play old missions and stuff, and it had been so long I had forgotten basically everything, so I just stopped. This was all a while ago now, and I sometimes think about playing it again, but I feel like I'd just be lost again with no idea what I'm doing. I liked my old character, being a titan, but I just don't want to be burned.

Amazing video a lot of valid points When it comes to nimbus I’d have to say that the best character development is in the exotic quest for the lmg, how ever it’s a shame to have to wait for endgame content to see that development

Pizza tower. Overwhelmingly positive reviews. Play it and do a video on it. I've been waiting for a video of yours to say this.

Actually its funny you brought up thanos because him and the Witness actually have VERY similar motives. The witness wants to end all suffering no matter the cost, because even if everything is dead they wont be in pain anymore. It explains that a bit it just yk...we dont know what tf their doing and or how tf their doing it.

My only problem with Neomuna as a concept is that D2 had to retcon A LOT of lore to justify it's existence. That and the aesthetic of the cloudstriders gives off Warframe vibes and that kinda upsets me as someone who had to quit that game for personal reasons after 1800 hours. Don't get me wrong, I think it was all worth it because at least it's a fresh environment compared to every other locale that came before it, but it still needs mentioning. I am also still grinding for Actium War Rig. Stay grinding, my king.

What this made me realize was that a Destiny 2 Firefight gamemode is such a missed opportunity. Being able to queue up a fireteam or make it even 2 fireteams with increasing rewards and randomized enemies and modifiers. The closest they ever got was Black Armory, but didn't hit the mark.

So, you said you wanted a Hoard Defense mode. Well, we got it, a year later, who would of thought, huh?

I haven't played Destiny in three years or so but I keep coming back to your content on it because it's very good. I appreciate your focus on constructive commentary when your inputs are of a negative bent. Even at your grumpiest you aren't unfair or unkind, and in my book that really boosts the weight of your opinions. KZfaq and gaming both need more people like you. Keep up the great work, Brick!

Light vs Dark? Big Triangle? Looks all rainbow'y? Feels like a Pink Floyd reference.