You didn’t miss much 😭😂 i didn’t miss the OG infinite forest but I did miss Season of the Dawn. I am a take a long break and come back every once and a while D2 player after being a D1 no-life 😂
@@SymbioteMulletI started close to the end of Season of the Deep, you can imagine the amount of stuff I missed (yes, a friend introduced me to the game around Season of Arrivals and I've been devouring the lore since, but experiencing it? not a chance XD)
Journey is regarded as one of Destiny's greatest tracks. That moment in Homecoming when you are marching through the Last City, destroyed and infested, is genuinely something I played over and over. Regardless of how well the rest of the Red War's story was received that specific moment is my favorite in Destiny. The drums started beating and it made everything real, I felt like a Guardian in that moment. Journey still plays every once in a while if you wait in orbit long enough, but there are so many people who will never get to experience that feeling, that rush down my spine as the music exploded with all of the pride and fury and loss that the Red War represented, that Destiny embodies...and that makes me sad.
Honestly I loved every part of the red war campaign. It was cheezy at times but so what. I think the community was more concerned about Bungi making mistakes than about what they were achieving. Destiny 2 as a whole was a super risky and controversial release.
I'd like to point out that I haven't played since Witch Queen, and that the only reason I'm aware of the general goings-on and state of the story in Destiny is because I watch you. My question is: are they allowing this "context" to disappear because they assume you and others will just fill in the blanks for those that haven't been playing and take for granted you all work hard to keep people caught up?
They have said they intend to add some way of preserving this context, particularly the big Witness backstory cutscene from Season of the Deep, but they haven't given any details yet. Maybe part of the big Into the Light update dropping before Final Shape? Who knows.
It feels like that's how they are operating things lately. (Spoilers if you don't know about last season) One of the most important cutscenes of the entirety of the last season between our group and Savathun was not even acted out in the "finale," but rather in a lore tab of a book that's unlocked AFTER the quest is completed, in a rather obscure place for players to look. For most players, people like Byf making videos on that lore tab was THE only reason they knew that conversation even took place to begin with and that the season didn't end with Savathun remaining dead as was shown in the final cutscene. Between that, the Witness's backstory only being revealed in a random cutscene in a season that truthfully had little to do with it, and the weekly dialogue from "Veil Containment," it really seems that Bungie has been in a "tell, don't show" mindset with Destiny's story, especially since Lightfall.
Bungie’s leadership needs to take accountability. “Oh we get paid the most because we are responsible for the biggest decisions” Okay, but what if you make bad ones. You need to be responsible for those too. The captain should go down with the ship, not throw the crew overboard.
@@johngancarcik5682"but I deserve all the benefits and money and golden parachutes because, uh, something something risk that I pass on to others, something something so I get more profits? Yeah I like that!"
They will quite literally never take accountability. Morally good, fair, just, kind people simply do not get to be in positions of power within the corporate world.
Part of the problem is locking story quests behind the seasonal subscriptions. Right now, it's like paying for each chapter of the Lord of the Rings, but getting the climaxes of each book for free. For most live service games with season passes, the pass content is cosmetic: skins, emotes, exclusive gear, leveling resources. Bungie goes one step further by locking the s e a s o n a l s t o r y e v e n t s, literal chapters of Destiny's broad arc, behind that paywall. And what do those include? Key moments, like Crow entering the portal, the Witness' origins, or Eris banishing Xivu Arath. As in, the really important story bits. Even in games with subscription-exclusive events, the story and the events aren't necessarily intertwined. But for Destiny, with it's RPG elements and ever-evolving story, making story chapters subscription-exclusive takes that incredible, vast story and chops it into little inaccessible bits.
The fact that Season finale missions are not placed into a queue within the Vanguard Playlist are CRAZY to me. The fight against Quria, the assault on the keep to excise Savathun's worm, stopping Eramis from dropping Bombs on the Traveler, its astounding these moments are missing.
And even if you pay the story is still confusing and you need to watch Byf and other lore channels just to understand that the scene where Savathun a Zavala compete against each other on a DDR machine was foreshadow during Season of Oppulence by one of Calus’ Psions while he was completely bored taking a dump and asked by those Psions to read the future.
The problem is the design of the game. To maintain a game like this, it is a constant money sink. This is why MMORPGs often look so cheap. It's because they NEED to be cheap. Look at SWTOR. SWTOR graphics, and animations are low effort. Destiny 2 is not. Destiny 2 is trying to be a perpetual cinematic experience. Which is amazing. It is just, expensive. And it takes up A LOT of drive space. If it wasn't for the Vault. Destiny 2 would be around 700-1000GB. It would be larger than ARK.
@@fulgerion false dichotomy. Players need not have every element of the game installed at once if the game was designed appropriately. The core game should contain the hub, guardians' characters & their inventory. Other elements should be optional installs. The current architecture is the epitome of anti-consumer practice.
Defiance was also slapped together like Lightfall, I believe. The mission where you rescue Amanda has you enter a pyramid structure in the EDZ, but the cutscene you get when you save her is clearly onboard the cabal prison ship. The chaperone cutscene.
@@anwardegoat82Making them optional downloads a la Black Ops 3 (I can't believe I'm actually using a COD game as an example) would help mitigate that greatly. Also, a simple fact of today's gaming landscape is that MMOs are massive and will continue to be massive.
Another thing often overlooked is that when The Final Shape comes out we are going to make our way through the campaign until the final mission, the climax of the entire light and darkness saga and then be stopped until after the raid is completed. Narratively if you are in it for the story it is in your best interest to NOT be there day one and that is a HUGE problem.
@@dylanmiller1140 I understand the rationale I just have no faith that they will pull it off in a way that doesn't feel really anticlimactic until the raid drops.
I’ll do you one better about the Amanda plotline: it made a whole lot more sense for it to be Hawthorne instead. In fact, outside of the romantic stuff between her and Crow, it all made more sense for Hawthorne.
EXACTLY, and Hawthorne coming back as a guardian would be so poetic, taking into account how she helped the Vanguard in red war without the light, arm to arm with Zavala ,Ikora and Cyde. It literally fits as a whole
@@Spr0ket Anyone (at least any Human, there'd be significance in a Cabal or especially and Eliksni) sacrificing themself and coming back as a Guardian would undermine the plot beat entirely no matter who it is. People need to be able to permanently die. I think part of the reason Amanda's death panned so widely is being just assuming she'd become a Guardian which... She's not. It's not gonna happen.
@@skeletor8951 Yes, you're right from my point of view if it could(I mainly mean if it was Hawthorne instead of Amanda) happen it would be probably after we deal with Witness when Traveler is "woken up" cause if i remember correctly it's dormant right now
@@skeletor8951another part of it that's panned is SHE DIDNT NEED TO BE THERE. AND ontop of that our guardians just literally fought in the room she was in and scanned a object if I remember correctly. That activates the cutsence and were just not there.
@@skeletor8951 I agree with this take wholeheartedly. Point the first, they've long since established in-universe that when raised by a ghost, a lightbearer has no knowledge or memory of who they were before. She'd be as good as remaining dead, because she wouldn't be _our_ Amanda anymore. Point the second(and far more critical), it would cheapen her death. Death in destiny is already cheap as it is, given that we play as a pseudo-immortal magical zombie, so the few _actual_ deaths we've had are all the more important. To kill such a well-known character off only to bring her back would be a disservice to the character itself as well as every in-narrative reaction to it. Zavala's lines at her graveside? Meaningless. Crow's feelings in the wake of it? Meaningless.
I was mucking around on Nessus last night and found myself thinking about back when that location actually mattered to the game. It got me thinking back on just how much content has been made for Destiny as a franchise over the past decade and just how little of it is still available. I understand limitations exist but it's so damn depressing to think about just what all is gone. I love this game. I loved D1. Even when they were both awkward and clunky, even at their lowest I still loved them. It sucks to know new players will never be able to experience what made me fall in love with the story and world of Destiny. I made a new character for the first time last year. I've been a warlock main since I started playing and never needed anything else, but found myself wanting to try a hunter. The process of going through the new light missions and getting up to speed was tedious at best and grating at worst. If that's what we have to offer to new players, I don't have much hope for growth moving forward, and that's before the utter lack of context Byf describes here. What would be the point of joining on for the Final Shape without knowing the decades worth of story that leads up to such an important moment? I'll still be here one way or another, but every time I find myself on an old planet or in a location I used to frequent with my friends, I'll spend a moment to remember what once was.
I think one problem that can’t be blamed on the execs is that even if they had to pad the game with an extra narrative/story, they didn’t have to go the creative route they did. Because it seems to me the biggest issue with Lightfall isn’t, “What is the explanation for these plot devices,” but “why should we care about Neomuna and cloudstriders at this point in the narrative?” Given that Final Shape is going to be primarily about what happens inside the Traveler, there was nothing preventing a Lightfall story centered around an invasion of the city we actually care about: The Last City. I think the real issue is somewhere in the middle: the execs wanted a longer runway (probably to give more time to get Marathon ready) and the devs wanted to use that to introduce something a little different.
I kind of agree with you there, my guess is the suits up top were on their usual bs, and the devs probably tried something new that didn’t land well at all, splitting up an expansion story throughout the whole year, purposely leaving out very important details to pad out the story is almost never a good idea, i personally think it’s a mountain of issues that we’ve all seen that are now showing the consequences of either not letting your devs go all out because of “being aware of over delivering” or purposely not listening to your community even with your own devs are begging for changes as well and it just sucks to see a game I love go to shit. Hopefully they can figure it out cuz the world of destiny is cool asf
This is why I started to like the first Destiny so much; I could go and replay all the major campaign chapters and get caught back up when it came to the storyline.
Bungie sure is lucky to have a lore keeper like Byf. Without him, millions of veteran players and New Lights, would be lost, and not know the story, and deeper lore of Destiny 1 & 2, as much as they should. Hopefully, his upcoming “Story of Destiny” video will be seen by plenty of fans, and catch everyone up with a four, narrated recap of the first saga. If it were up to me, Byf would be a lore-related NPC vendor in the game. To shed more light on the deeper stories of Destiny, for New Lights, and returning to players.
Let us be sure to remind ourselves to be grateful for something silver to line leaving a delineate path between our Nostalgic tendencies and the ability to keep, not only a solid victory alongside the battering of our veritable Dignity but a damage control element for every heart invested in the future and perhaps losing to a new pandemic.. That which up to now fails to give up Hope. BYF: You Are, for all interest and positive purpose, the True remaining conscience and confidence left to whatever left Destiny. We stand beside one another for the Brand of Hero The eternal Fireteam You have been so far.. Zavala has this Commander in You. A remaining balance for those of us knowing whom the Destiny 1+2 characters and absolute Heroes In These Stars there truly have been. Have long gone and whom continue as the Legitimacy of what this Game continues toward even Now. Stay Well. - LEv Continuing Fireteam Leadership wherever Accounts.”
As someone who's been playing since d1, I would be ok if destiny 2 became a 200gb download that includes Everything from red war onwards as long the accessible parts are in order with what is unlockable, have a story bit I'm final shape that all the planets came back corrupted and change their ambiance a bit. I want to be able to make a new character and plan the entire story of destiny 2, start to finish and earn loot accordingly
About that year leading up to the witch queen, during the campaign we find a crystal from Season of the Lost; Savathun’s prison. If you didn’t play that season before WQ, you would’ve had no idea why the crystal is significant. This is apparent everywhere in the game
That's what I was thinking too cause his whole point can be said for WQ going into LF. Imagine a new player playing witch queen and then going into lightfall, they would have no idea why calus is with the witness or how we ended up knowing about Neptune and the veil. All of that is left unanswered to a new player becuz they never played the seasons in between
There is just so much history to destiny it honestly gets me a little emotional thinking of it all. I think we all expect another cutscene with some brief replays as the intro to the final shape. But man. A proper long cutscene going over all those major hits with some narration from cayde and ikora and zavala would be honestly enough to get me as back into destiny 2 as i was at the start going through the red war excited to start a new journey with new powers and an endless road ahead.
I would like to see them add an "Archived" area in the game. A menu or something that contains all of the sunset areas, gear and events available to download but does not download with a fresh game install (something optional). Make the multiplayer events active again to people who have the archived areas downloaded or make them available for "offline ish" single player. I would love to relive the Red War campaign and even though not everyone does I have enough storage space to house every piece of this game and I would love to have it all.
Never gonna happen, they can barely keep up with the main game pipeline, adding a secondary pipeline of archived content is more wooooork that they CBA to do
The thing I don't understand is how Bethesda manages to do this with Elder Scrolls Online (to this day you can play the original story campaign), but Bungie somehow can't?
The biggest frustration of the Lightfall Campaign is EVERY SINGLE TIME Nimbus or Rohan starts trying to tell us about what the Veil, the Cloud Ark, or the Radial Maguffin are, Osiris would immediately butt in, screaming at us how it isn’t important and we just need to get to the veil and we’ll worry about it later…which leaves us with zero stakes at all.
Litterly all of lightfall was just Osiris screaming that we need to get to the veil yet didn’t stop to think that maybe we should plan ahead and figure out what we’re dealing with. Even ghost bothered to ask what the cloud ark was? But like out of all questions to be asking the cloud ark was it??? Not asking about what the main thing we need to get to is or why it’s important
"Maguffin, Maguffin, Maguffin" Y'all are a broken record. Since when did we need to know every single detail about something to go and do it? All we needed to know was that it was linked to the traveler and that the witness needs it. I personally loved having something that was mysterious and got to see it and make my own theories about it in a "show, don't tell" manner. Also the tone was lighter because TFS is so much more serious. it makes for better storytelling if you have ups and downs in the story instead of super serious space drama all the time.
Another major mistake was removing the one off things too. Imagine if ONLY guardians with Forge weapons could find hidden messages with their scopes throughout content. It feels like Bungie never over lapped anything, then the vaulting idea popped up and removed any possibility of things even mattering.
Something that was amazing in destiny 1 was when an area was repurposed. Like you found a new path in an old area or something. It felt like the old areas mattered while ever since shadowkeep the only area that matters is the new patrol space.
I don't think Bungie ever will learn, their suits don't give a shit and only want to see $$$. Im gunna stick with Hell Divers 2 gotta protect Super Earth.
When execs do slash and burn, the company is dead. Loss of consumer confidence, promoting mercenary behaviour in key staff, and goals aligning to short term profitability at branding cost. I'm glad we got witch queen. But bungie has a habit of crapping the bed, and doing so uncontrollably.
Which is hilarious because both companies are owned by Sony. Both are showing what to do and not do for live service games. If I was Sony, I'd be counting down the days until I can fire the leadership at Bungie for their massive mistakes.
Imagine you love a tv-series and its tenth and final season is coming up. You're hyped up and try to get your friend to watch it, but you have to preface it with a "btw, you can only watch seasons 4, 5, 7 and 9, the other ones aren't available anymore". No one would want to watch that show. I find it absolutely mind boggling that someone at Bungie thought removing parts of an ongoing story was ever a good idea.
26:52 Byf nails on the head EXACTLY what I’ve been clamoring for since we first got timeline reflections. What a freaking treat it would be if that’s what “Into the Light” ends up being.
Its what it HAS to be for TFS to be good tbh. And honestly; I think its why TFS was delayed bc while Bungie has the tendency to shoot themselves in the foot; they're not stupid. Sunsetting was a good idea in concept; the game was really big in file size before sunsetting. Sunsetting seasons also offset Destiny's file size, the problem is now pretty much file size; how to manage it without destroying the story. Seasons worked for a while bc they were so good they kinda ignored the problem. Now the problem is really obvious and Bungie's scrambling to make a quick pre-campgain before TFS to give a small recap btwn now and TFS, which due to the nature of Episodes, has to be self contained.
24:55. That list. That gave me goosebumps of nostalgia along with despair of loss with the mention every single storyline. I truly want to be able to experience those again.
The good news is that cutscene with The Witness's origins and the veil is going to stay in the timeline permanently. However, I really feel like moments like the endings to Splicer, Lost, Haunted, Seraph, Deep, Witch, and Wish need to stay in the game. Edit: I think Bungie also needs to give a small narrative blurb like what is in the Timeline Reflections so new players understand why these moments are important
The cutscene with The Witness’ backstory from Deep WAS put into the game permanently in the Timeline feature from the Director, however I don’t think that’s enough. I honestly think every season needs a small cutscene going over the important elements that occurred and how it links to everything. It may take some effort but if we’re continuing to be in an era of seasons containing important story beats, then I think it’s necessary.
How is it only NOW that people are talking about this? This is something I picked up on, immediately upon starting the game back in Season of Plunder. I asked my friend who got me into the game why I couldn't play the original campaigns and he explained the content vault and the rotating out of seasonal content. I immediately knew it was stupid and would never work from a cohesive narrative perspective. And yet it just gets ignored forever until it finally "matters". It mattered all along.
It has always mattered and people always wanted content to stay since the end of Forsaken before beyond light lanuched and brought it up before each new expansion
It's really sad being able to open D1 right now on hard drive, and jump into a full game with all of its narrative context (as messy as it was at first) still available and jumping to the sequel and having like half of all its content just not available in any form. Tbh I saw this being the end point as soon as it became obvious Bungie were lying about vaulted content properly coming back. They love to say it's an MMO, but every other huge MMO makes a point out of keeping all the main content and if the original content becomes iffy, to make an active effort to bring it up to their current standards and smooth onboarding. Bungie want new players and their money without the actual effort needed to bring new players in and keep them long term.
@@jimbob1862 Completely agree. And the objection I hear so much from (morons) people in this community is that I can just watch RUclips reels of it, or catch up with Byf and Myelin. Like FUCK OFF, I'd rather play the game and experience it first hand. How is it even a contentious point?
@@evocaeden2932 Exactly. I still boot up D1 sometimes to replay specific missions or do runthroughs of the campaigns again, and a big reason why I don't touch D2 outside of expansions is because I know it's all temporary content. Why would I pay for seasons I know are going to be gone anyway? I've turned away so many friends from starting because I don't want to explain ten years worth of story context, and telling new people to watch Byfs 5 hour mega cut of the lore up to Lightfall, and then a years worth of content of top of that just to be up to speed is a fucking stupid place to be in. It's really funny how hard Lightfall woke people up but I'm glad it did. Bungie have gotten away with far too much and it's insane how lenient the community has been on them imo.
Having neomuna as lightfall setting was a big mistake imo, it had too many factors to cover while taking away from the main conflict with the witness. It should have been aboard the witness’s ship keeping the fight focused against the witness, while the seasonal would be on earth. The narrative from this point would have focused on guardians racing to stop the witness from destroying the traveler. While calus attempts to stops guardians only to fail as we begin to learn strand due to the weird interaction of light and dark as the part of the pyramid begins to terraform. The radial mast could have been what was harvested from the tree in season of arrivals, and be destroyed midway through thinking we saved the traveler. Only to be revealed that it was a relay to the veil that now the witness has link to, and with it gone we cannot trace it back to the veil but we can use deep sight into the witness mind (play witness origins) Now desperate we assault the witness’s chamber only to be slowed by nightmares of nezarec in tormentors, and end with the fight against calus, only to be too late. The witness has established the link to the traveler through our presence on the ship, and now has the power to carve open the portal. Post campaign: RoN still happpens, to kill nezarec before he can regain his power and haunt sol. quest leads to recreate the link to the veil and it ends with Osiris following it back to the source, in the following season, back to Venus.
This would've been good. Neomuna feels...off for Destiny. The Arcology on Titan was the pinnacle of what a settlement could look like back then, so it's weird that they went with such a one-note retrofuturistic look with a chrome city and chrome people for a city that has had all this time to advance their technology. (lore nerds hold your comments, I know there are technobabble explanations for this but in reality the art team decides this stuff.) Neomuna feels more like a fun little pit stop (arcade! vr! hoverboarding weirdos!) than the penultimate location in the story, so I think making it a small patrol zone with lore dumps on what the Veil is and making the important stuff happen up in space among the Black Fleet ships (maybe even move the Veil up there? idk) would have given Lightfall the 11th hour feeling it needed.
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx dude, neomuna and the cloudstriders was so out of left field I stopped playing. I hated the designs, I hated Nimbus, I hated the lol so random tone. I wanted to see the build up to the final conflict. Not a bunch of jokey humor while dropping random maguffins
All they had to do was delay lightfall and release older storylines and raids from the sunset vault until they finished the expansion. That would be amazing.
All they had to do keep spending money while not making much money: not a strategy any business likes to adopt unless their back is really against the wall.
@@atomic_wait except the games already overmonetized from events to eververse to season pass. there should be no money issues unless theres major mismanegment with the games funds
All they had to do is even further delay tfs to sometime in 2025+ to redesign and port every piece of old content back into the game and also work even longer after that to iron out as many unforseen bugs/issues It's so simple why doesn't blungiette just do that are they stupid?
@@lunararmy1624 they didn't overmonetize anything. Considering how much Destiny 2 costs to make and how much games in general cost to make in 2024 we are getting Destiny at a major discount that has Bungie (and now Sony) operating at a perpetual loss. Also ensures Destiny won't be around after the Final Shape. "All they had to do ..."
Me and my mom used to play D1 on 360 together, she decided she didn't want to buy a new console to play D2, so asked me to keep her updated on the story. But as it progressed and I couldn't play some seasons, I couldn't fill her in on the story and we slowly just lost that interest in the game together. Which is most of my friends who were active D1-D2 players since the start. Keeping up and not being able to go back and catch up is definitely the worst thing about live service gaming. Only thanks to Byf have I've been able to enjoy the story that me and my mom loved so dearly.
“Cut at the knees” seems like a perfect phrase for what it feels like for anyone trying to get into the story of Destiny by playing, especially when considering the fact that many players for one reason or another didn’t keep up with the seasonal story for a while and are completely unable to even attempt to catch up due to content vaulting.
One thing I'm confused about the most (Since you brought up the Lightfall story) in the cutscene where we see The Witness talking to Calus through our Ghost, they directly tell Calus to see to it that the Veil is destroyed. But as we know now with what the Witness did, he needed the Veil to create that link with The Traveler. This leads me to think that Bungie themselves didn't really know what The Veil really was and came to a decision around Season Of The Deep.
I didn’t have a hard time seeing the whole thing as a trick. The witness always intended us to take out Calus and be close enough for it to use the ghost as a connection. Calus never knew he was the bait.
@@adamherrick6077Okay but the Radial Mast was nowhere near the Veil and what if Rohan didn't sacrifice himself to destroy it? I refuse to believe that The Witness thought that far ahead.
@@gargathulothhastur4981 It's never been this blatant. I'm talking about what we are seeing in one mission being completely different than what we're told the next.
It was stated that the main writing team of bungie got swapped, so that goes to show that they weren't on terms of what the story was leading to, goes to show also how little the story really mattered for a "strong story leading game"
I liked the idea of a story that was told over the entire year and really evolved and expanded upon the campaign of the expansion. When I finished Lightfall I knew that most of what was missing would be explained in the seasons. They could have definitely done some parts better. Pulling Veil Containment into Defiance would have been a huge help. Having one of the seasons be directly about investigating the Veil would have been ideal (ideally the first season). I think we had the nature of the Veil understood enough for the campaign, but then waiting 3 months to give more didn't work. Stuff like the Radial Mast never being explained was a definite issue with Lightfall though. Having Defiance actually be semi-relevant to the story would also have been necessary, to do it properly. However, I liked how it felt like throughout the rest of the year we were always working towards getting through the portal. All of that starting with Joxer dead at the beginning of Deep. Deep told a good story mostly, but had something missing I can't quite put my finger on. It led well into Witch, which was both a great story, and a fun season to play. And Witch led well into Wish. Wish definitely continued the story, but it felt a bit tangential to the goal of the portal. We basically knew everything about the portal (other than the 1 person thing) at the start of the season. If Riven didn't say no, it could have been over in the first cutscene, and been no different. You could say the same about Witch, if Savathun allowed herself to be resurrected, but I think that worked better because the season dealt a devastating blow to Xivu and took her out of the coming fight, which wouldn't have happened if Savathun were just resurrected immediately. The season instead focuses on the Ahamkara, which on its own is great, but as the last season before Final Shape, falls a little flat in its relation to the wider story. We didn't get a moment like we did in Seraph that truly felt like a strong lead up to the expansion (although there is one more mission, so fingers crossed). It did lead into it, but that lead in was much weaker than Seraph. I'd say Wish was a very good middle of the year season, but a average end of the year season. All of this is in theory a type of improvement upon the story telling of the year of Witch Queen. Witch Queen just had random events that happened 3 months apart and didn't lead into each other or into a wider story. Risen was sorta a continuation of Witch Queen, but as the first season of the year, fell a bit flat, as they tend to. Next thing we know the Leviathan comes back (this was somewhat connected because of Calus in Lightfall, but that's pretty weak, and it wasn't led up to at all). Then suddenly, we are fighting fallen pirates. 3 months later Ana finally finishes fixing Rasputin. Luckily that season led well into Lightfall. The leadup of the seasons into each other, and their wider connection to the story, I see as a good thing. It lets them tell a coherent story throughout the year, rather than having random events that serve as world building at best and filler at worst in between expansions, that told the entirety of the story. They've been doing this for a while with the last season of the year, like how Lost led to Witch Queen, but they need to expand it to all seasons (episodes now) throughout the year to have the game tell a overarching story. Execution wasn't perfect throughout this year, and with the exception of Witch, it arguably wasn't even a good exectuion, but I like the concept. I hope they do more of this overarching story in the future with Episodes, but learn from the mistakes of this year, and find a way to make that work with the transient nature of some of their content. I'm a little concerned Episodes will go back to the random events happening 4 months apart, but I understand that as the saga winds down, we may need to take some time away from large overarching stories. Just saying some sort of lead in and lead out to the episodes would be nice, and improve the story telling aspect of the game. Byf is right that this is an issue for returning players, and a solution should be found for that. The cutscenes will likely be included in the Journey thing, but they definitely do need a bit more. Including some old missions would be extremely helpful. A 'Previously on Destiny' would go a long way, but ideally there would be more. Ideally, in the future Episodes won't be transient, but I think that's a bit unlikely, given the technical issues involved. I don't expect them to nail it in time for Final Shape, but I hope they implement something as a bandaid to the issue they've created. And I hope hey look at their wider issue and find a way to address this in the future.
I started playing during season of plunder. I had no idea what the story was or what was happening but that season was so much fun because I was a spade pirate. The action was incredible. I've since put 1000+ hours into the game and have watch dozens and dozens of lore videos to get caught up. I absolutely adore this game even though ive only played for the past 1.5 years. To see how this game is being treated now and what happened to the employees crushed my want to play the game. I'll be here for final shape and waiting in hopes of a good landing for the story but it's hard to watch the future of this games success be dangled so precariously between people remembering it for a bad ending or one that might actually be a banger. I hope for the best for this game I love.
i think a very simple solution could be introduced in a lore friendly way....just use the infinante forest as a way to "revisit" past experiences and use it to "learn from mistakes made" in essence jsut use it as a giant instance for old content
Ok so the infinite forest isn’t actually real. It would require significant work in order to update and debug all of the content that would get an extremely small amount of playtime
I feel like the moment when Crow hopped into the portal to inside the Traveler should've involved more pomp and circumstance. Not ritual, but importance! It was just Crow, Mara, and Queens Wrath. Not even our own Gaurdian was there. I feel this was a monumental moment and it deserved more than just a 39 sec cutscene. Not to mention there was nothing on line for this moment. Like, we as players knew we would access the heart of the Traveler. Although we didn't exactly know how, this moment felt lack luster because we already knew Crow would succeed. Where is the suspension of disbelief? Why was there no climax, no thing to potentially lose? Ugh.... such missed opportunities seem so obvious now with D2 that I'm only tagging along because I started this 10 years ago and I'm not letting Bungee ruin it for me.
I hear ya Byf. For me specifically, it was a tragedy that Season of the Haunted's content was vaulted. Heads-up, this is about to get really heavy. When I started playing Destiny, I had moved out to a new town I had never been to before to finish my education. And it was truly horrible. Moving with me was a sweep of emotions that came from traumas which I never had addressed properly; traumas that I ultimately did to myself from being such a short tempered, emotionally inept moron when I was a teen. During that time, I was a hateful, miserable, socially-awkward shell of a man who hated himself, hated everyone around him, and just wanted to watch the world burn in the hopes I would burn too. But then, I played Season of The Haunted. I got to see Crow. I got to see how Crow thought of himself after the revelation he received that he was Uldren in a past life. I got to see how Crow had a similar sense of self-hatred and how even in-spite of his then former best friend Amanda pretty much ending her friendship with him, how he found the courage to confront his past and come out better for it; to come to the revelation that "we all have parts of ourselves we wish weren't there. But acknowledging them can help make us stronger." In that moment, I felt seen. And from that, I found the courage myself to confront my own past through therapy. I'm not even going to begin to pretend I'm 100% better; I still have a flaming hot temper, motivation issues, and difficulties being around people for too long...but I've realized that I'm not a monster. That I am more than my past, and-as Rasputin later emphasized in Season of The Seraph-that no matter who I am, what I've said or done, I can choose to be something more. To this day, Haunted and Seraph are still some of my biggest inspirations for my own creative works. It tears me apart inside to see stories with such poignant messages be torn away, and that I can never experience them again except through RUclips videos.
thanks for sharing your story, it's always nice hearing about how this hobby can actually help people beyond just giving us a few hours per night to kill.
I had a very similiar story with Haunted. I was finishing university far from home, and during those years the pressure got to me. I started avoiding classes, lying about my grades, wasting money on food to eat away my problems, and after few years, it finally came crashing down on me. Haunted started, I received a letter that I'm going to be expelled from uni for crossing the deadline on my MT. I felt suicidal, went to a bridge and decided to jump. I stand on the railing, about to jump, and suddenly fear strikes me, and I hesitate. Wind suddenly blows me back on the walkway, and I walk away, calling myself a p***y for being a chicken, and not going with the plan. I return home, play through week one, and next day is reset, do week two story, but Crow's line: "...but lies? They get us only so far.." really gets stuck in my head, not letting me rest, so I gave up, and asked my mother go with me on a walk. She is surprised, because I never suggested it before (usually it is the other way around), but she agrees, and after few minutes, near a river, I tell her everything. About school, about grades, about lying, about my self hatred and my subcontious attempts at sabotaging my own life out of shame, about suicide attempt... She is horrified, saying she had no idea, and that I'm making a hell on Earth for myself. We talk things through, and she convinces me to go my teacher, reveal everything, and ask for extending the time for my MT. Guy was always a demading man, but fair one. He was shocked, but agreed, and gave me a number for psychotherapist, and director agreed after hearing my story to allow me to repeat a year free of charge due to my mental state, and my grades would be copied, except for one final exam from subject I didn't pass, and had another year for my MT. A lot of time, work, and therapy sessions later, I managed to pass the final exam, and my thesis as well. I found a job, rebuilt my life, and found happiness. For all faults of the season, and Bungie later f**k ups, I'm still grateful for Haunted, even if I left the game after Deep, after I got disillusioned with Bungie. But despite all, I'll never forget what Haunted did for me.
As a returning player for The Final Shape, I have found that I am completely lost and confused within the story and what has happened for the year hiatus that I needed to take for personal reasons. After logging in I found myself listed as a New Light Player(first time was when content was vaulted) once more having to unlock some of the pieces of each sub-class(Solar, Arc, Void) with the exception of Statis and already having half of the Strand sub-class unlocked without even having to enter the LightFall pieces. Annoying to say the least. Missing the entire section of the previous year of seasons, not enough said about the previous Campaign stories that got vaulted. I truly miss at the very least the daily/weekly mission for those campaigns. At this point, even after playing for past 6 years, roughly the end of Forsaken. When I started playing much of the story content was playable, it held your hand to catch you up, it told you the story. This makes me sad and had I known that I would never be able to play previous content was to be removed, I might have considered not even playing the game. There is a complete difference playing a live service for seasons that have no story compared to ones that are story rich. I would like to suggest a remastered content for the previous vaulted, whether it be a stand alone or all mashed together as one game. Just to be able to play it again. I guess I will have to live with the timeline for now. Sad just so sad and I have to agree on all points made with this video.
I understand that some old content may be irrelevant but it’d be so awesome to have everything we’ve been given/ paid for at our disposal and play what we want, use what we want, when we want! I don’t understand how they just sunset things I paid for! Totally wild.
I can imagine them putting in a beefed up version the Speaker's D1 intro/prologue to start Final Shape. That would be quite poetic, I think. Of course, new players won't have any idea who's talking or what happened to him 😒
70% of story drops are no longer in the game. Once Final Shape releases, that number will jump to 82%. How many other games only have 18% of their content? Bungie should have ended Destiny 2 and made Destiny 3 long ago.
@@phelan8385 I agree entirely, but bungie has said they won't do that because if the game is too big then every time they make a patch there's just more stuff that might break
@@ArcherJLady Yeah I understand that, I mean just story missions n stuff like that so people can experience it if they want to. Doesn't have to include loot or anything in case updates break them, just have them there as an option to play but disconnected from the rest of the game. Its definitely doable but it would probably be quite the investment for no immediate return.
The solution is simple: when Lightfall launches, jampack the necessary older narratives into a series of missions. Make these missions optional for returning players. It could be a psionic training simulation for the new lights to prepare them to go to battle (aka the official new story).
@@marchodl370because if you stop playing for a relatively extended period of time it’s very easy to get lost in almost every aspect of the game and also miss out on a bunch of limited time content while you were gone
Agreed. The Sunsetting and cutting destinys story down to "the current thing" is a main reason i to this point have massive issues to jump back in after a year off.
I definitely agree that the damage has been done. Every time they take away content, they're taking away important context and parts of the story that may not be easy to find. Channels like yours cover the missing pieces well, but it shouldn't be on your shoulders to be the only ones preserving those memories and moments. Hopefully Bungie will work on their sunsetting tactics and finally try something new
There are some things that are staying around that are key to the narrative like all of veil containment and associated cut-scenes as those where earmarked to be directly tied to and added as free content for Lightfall.
They introduced a new in-game lore nerd with Eido in season of the plunder and haven't used her at all. Having her supply and go into the story re-caps would be a great way to keep everyone up to speed on the in-universe goings-on prior to final shape.
While not the best solution, it just blows my mind that seasonal cut scenes are not accessible in game in order and properly labeled. Why do they go away? Why do I have to go to RUclips of all places to find cut scenes? It makes zero sense for an ongoing narrative. At the very least it fixes a few problems.
Byf I hope you realise that this video is probably the reason why everyone, as of today 8th May 2024, have access to all seasonal content since the lightfall release. Yes this includes the season pass and all of the missions/quests linked to defiance, witch, deep, wish, etc. When I updated the game and hopped on I found all of this available to me for free. So I just wanted to say thank you as I am sure many others will and should be thanking you for this.
The fact that they took out content that we’ve paid for isn’t right. 70$ for chunks of game gone takes your ownership and makes it into a rental game. They shouldn’t take out anything and rather give the player the option to delete past content rather than strip it from us
I think the timeline on the director could really be expanded on as an archive almost. All cutscenes and pivotal story moments in one place that can be accessed by everyone. So that if you do miss something, there is something to look at in order to catch up.
I think the biggest mistake Bungie made was not finding out a way to keep all sunset/removed content available somehow, like adding some way to un-install all the content you don't play anymore but if you want to, you can either re-install or keep it installed with maybe a warning like "Your load times, etc. will suffer if you have all this installed." similar (in a way) to the 'Master Chief Collection' where (if I remember right) it downloads all the relevant data for multiplayer, and if you want any campaign content you need to go into a menu and select what you want to download. To expand a little more on the idea, all the nodes in the Directory would be grayed out for content that isn't installed and give an option to download the related content, maybe even add a small node next to the tower that would open a menu for all sunset/removed content, while removing all pointless quest steps like "Play _____ mode 5 times" and pretty much only keep actual missions available. Granted it is a shame losing something like the Coil, even if I did get sick of it eventually the loot drops are fucking amazing.
in a perfect world, I think an MCC style way of downloading everything from D1 up until now would be the best option. I have a feeling the work required to make the game that modular would be too ambitious for the devs especially after the layoffs. If Destiny has a future at all, the closest thing to this would be going back to numbered sequels like they originally planned under Activision. The Tiger engine was not built to hold this much stuff, full stop.
I've been saying this for years, I'm glad that people are finally talking about this because it feels like if you haven't played since 2014 and then logged in every week since shadowkeep (which I pretty much have) you're gonna miss out on HUGE story beats, that get oversimplified in a "highlight" mission. Beyond light has nothing to do with Witch Queen, and the seasonal story that set up Witch Queen left before it came out. The small bits that introduced us to Savathun outside of bungieNet Grimoires are all removed too (Savathun's Song strike, Forsaken's campaign)
21:00 Start of each season also usually has an intro cutscene that acts as a catch-up. Example is Season of the Wishes, learn a little about mara/riven, what we learn in Witch (that savanthun made a wish), and that the goal is to go into the Portal to hunt down the Witness. (this is all before you load in to the first mission of the season). So, I'm confident that will also be the case when everyone boots up TFS. Plus, we also have "Into the Light" coming that is suppose to be good for new players and veterans a like. Is is a revamp to the new player experience, catch up/summary of the story this year, just a loot chase to arm ourselves before we go in? Who knows. We have to wait. Additionally, since we don't know what lies ahead, the problem of "keeping the story in the game" could be handled differently in the future with episodes. We don't know if they get sunset or how they tie into the story structure going forward. Right now it was too late to change how they've handled things, but maybe they are setting themselves up in the future to prevent that from happening?
the youtube channel The Phoenix has a ton of small cutscenes & voice lines from old seasons btw. dont think he's done it for last few seasons so youll have to scroll back, but that channel has been hugely helpful for me.
I want everyone to imagine this amazing cutscene we never got. Caital holding the lines as we rush to the veil. Calus drops in and caital exclaims he has lost what it means to be cabal. They fight and its clear from the battle ensuing that Caital has the upper hand and that she is the superior cabal once again claiming she will rebuild the cabal as the greatest emporer in history. Calus mocks her goals and claims they all mean nothing and says he will win at any cost.. Calus activates darkness powers and overwhelms Caital mocks her again before sparing her Caital claims hes not true cabal if he doesnt have the stomach to finish her off. Calus spares her saying hes better than cabal and leaves to track us under the veil to the final battle. So caital is the superior cabal but calus still takes the power from the witness to become stronger WHY DIDNT WE GET THIS CUTSCENE
I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating here. They need to take all that old content and make it into an offline set of games, about three years each, similar to Halo in narrative structure. Far too many people worked far too hard for far too long for all that content to be discarded and never seen again. The game MUST be preserved in some form.
One of my favorite moments was watching the Almighty go down. I was couch hopping at the time and had my laptop that could run destiny. Sitting on my laptop on the couch with my headphones on and waiting the agonizing 2 and something hours just to pretty much talk with my tower chat is really something. Even now I play with someone who joined sometime during Season of Gambit and they remember better times during those days while I was reminiscing on D1 moments.
One idea ive mentioned to a few of my friends is either getting this content in there own stand alone games that you can download and play, like mass effect did allowing you to uninstall and reinstall the different games from its menu. Or to add in a monthly content rotater that you can play through the dlc's, seasons, and important moments for a month before it gets rotated out for something else that way people have something to look forward to.
Man.. your Chess analogy is spot on for me. I played D2 Red War; I then took a break, and came back on the last half of the last season on Beyond Light. I didn't get to play all the in-between campaign, the seasons, I never saw Saint return; I never saw the corruption of Uldren or the resurrection of Crow; I never saw Cayde die, let alone avenge his death; who knows what a Splicer is, though apparently Mithrax is one of the best of them; what the heck happened to the Dreaming City, why is it half-Taken and what is this Curse everyone keeps talking about? Yet all these story-beats are referenced constantly throughout the existing game. I can live with the "alternate storytelling" that they tried with Lightfall. I've been an overall supporter of the change-up a long time. My biggest -- and ultimately, ONLY -- complaint, is that it all goes away. Lightfall without the seasons does not make any sense; WITH the seasons it still feels incomplete, but if I know the next chapter is coming I'm willing wait. But without, there's no reason to care about any of it, there's no urgency in getting to the next chapter. Even with as incomplete as Lightfall currently is, once TFS is out there's no real conclusion. There is no Final shape to Destiny 2, unless the final shape is simply a black hole.
As new players, my girlfriend and I have finished Witch Queen and Lightfall and there was a very noticeable cut from Witch Queen to Lightfall. At the end of the Witch Queen campaign, we see Savathun's ghost disappearing and that was that, it was kind of left ambiguous. We then started Lightfall (as the game doesn't make it quite clear that there might have been cutscenes that we had to watch) and we were thrusted into the beginning cutscene, where we entered a ship, why we did, we were never explained until AFTER we were done with the Lightfall campaign, when we started watching some recaps on RUclips. Hell, we had no idea what seasonal content even was, because to us, we connected seasons to just the rewards you get in the director. Our quest menu is also filled with all manners of quests and it's really difficult to distinguish between main and side missions, although I guess that might be because all missions ARE main missions in a way. I think another fundamental issue Destiny 2 has is that it does nothing to tell you that there is more story-relevant content to explore. The best example I can give is Final Fantasy 14, where the expansions are structured into basically 6 parts: First comes the expansion story, which is usually a long story arc with a connection to previous expansions. After you're done with that, you wait for and do the 5 patch stories, which are mandatory if you want to play the next expansion story. It requires you to play through the entirety of the story, yes, but it makes sure that you don't miss out on the important information that you need to stay attached to the story. Additional content like raids can expand the sides of the story but they don't contain content that you NEED to know for the story. As a contrast, Destiny 2 seemingly allows you to do any expansion story whenever you like (so far as it is still accessible) and even then, it is only the main story, no seasonal story content (which apparently often contains important story information). Coming out of Witch Queen, since I was used to Final Fantasy, I never bothered checking if there even WAS anything and now that we are done with Lightfall and are about to start the Season of the Wish story, looking back to find something is gonna cause nothing but confusion because the story would be so disjointed. We still love Destiny 2 and personally, I didn't think the Lightfall story was so bad. Yes, Witch Queen was VERY compelling (although a bit confusing at first, since we started into it having no idea what's going on), but Lightfall has its moments. Lastly, it's a little rude that the rest of the seasonal content for Lightfall is locked behind a paywall, considering we already paid for the expansion (why are we supposed to pay extra for being late to the party?) but in the grand scheme of things, this is just how it is. We won't pay money for the annual pass (nor will we for The Final Shape, given that the expansion + pass is 99€ per person, a price that you can buy almost 2 triple A games for!) so we will just play the seasonal content as it unlocks to keep on track. I wouldn't be opposed to instead pay monthlies for access to the game, if it entailed access to the past seasons of each expansion I own (similarly to Final Fantasy, where you pay a monthly + buy expansions and in turn get permanent access to everything) but I can see how some players wouldn't like that, it IS just my opinion though.
As someone who started playing just about a month before witch queen was released, my friend who was teaching me and joining me along for the ride, helping me RUSH through the key elements of Tangled shore and Forsaken before it's removal whilst also catching up on the story that I could to prepare for Witch queen release. If it was not for him I would have had just about 0 clue about what was going on and even with his help I had to get a lot of what I was experiencing explained to me by him, I was still sort of lost. He informed me of your RUclips channel and that's where I've found most of my knowledge about a game I wish I could experience the whole story of. Whilst I do love your videos and appreciate that they dive a lot deeper into it then I would on my own, I still wish I could've been there to play the story myself, and then watch your videos and it not all being new information to me. I feel somewhat punished for not finding the game earlier and therefore missing key elements of the story, and in a good game you should not have to watch RUclips videos to even know the story, it's something you should watch because you wanted to dive deeper into it. Now I don't think Destiny is a bad game, I actually fell in love for the first time in a game that was shooter and that was sci-fi, whilst previously never been able to really stick with any similar game before. Destiny opened me up to shooting games in general a lot more. I saw a brief story of Cayde and he was instantly my favorite character and watching him die I bought all the expansions because I was going to avenge him. However a lot of his story I was forced to catch up on through RUclips. I have had so much fun playing Destiny with my friends but this last year has really just drained my motivation, it has sprouted from time to time but ultimately, I NEED Final shape to be a goddamn bombshell of a DLC and I WANT it to be. Thank you for the videos you create, you've helped me be part of this story more than Destiny did, keep up the good work and hopefully, the next expansion will give you loads of good lore to cover.
I like the idea of the long recap at the beginning of TFS but also have a section in triumphs to watch all the cutscenes from the prior seasons so you can get a full recap of that season in about 5 minutes per montage
As someone who was dropped at the very end of Shadowkeep, basically the beginning of beyond light. Trying to piece together what happened to even start this was extremely difficulty and to this day I have no idea and simultaneously trying to figure out what is so important about the darkeness, who is the exo stranger, why did we exactly need the darkness, how did we know variks before this and so on and so forth. It was honesty too much and half way through I just kinda stopped retaining the info and just kept going to where the story took me. Only now when the season when Saint 14 helped the Fallen I tried again to understand and then i took a long break from D2 just to come back at witch queen and to this day my confusion continues with me trying to cram everything from defiance to now and it sucks honesty because the story looks intresting but with no in game way to figure it out, it just makes it tedious.
I just recently found out you can play the opening mission of Forsaken. It rallied me and gave me a decent bit of nostalgia. If Bungie decided to add a whole section that involved 1 or 2 missions from previous campaigns with Ikora doing a narrative bit they’d win so many players back. Do I want to play the whole campaign? Not really, but the core missions? I’d love to fight Gaul again on the traveler, or the city mission right before? That was one of the most entertaining missions!
I’d love to see bungie implement a master chef collection style dlc system where the player can pick and choose what seasons or even expansions are actually installed(in terms of things like the story missions not the gear). I know this would be difficult to build but I personally think it would be worth it
I left off at the end of season of arrival after being with the game since D1. Recently booting up D1, I remember how well they handled the story when you created new characters. In the lead up to Destiny 2 I would delete characters just so I can play it again, it wasn’t the best option but it made a difference and being able to relive some of my favorite moments was huge. Coming back during season of defiance I was disoriented. It wasn’t until recently after searching that I found Evaze’s timeline video. Four and a half hours of Destiny lore from the red war to lightfall. The lore has always been my favorite part of the game and the work you, evaze, & myelin do to bring it forward is invaluable and appreciated even if I wish their was a more active way to engage with the story bits.
While I do understand the points being made, I do have to say that someone also needs to be there in order to experience the story. If you skipped the entirety of Lightfall (I did) then you cant complain about those stories not being in the game after they are removed for new stuff. Thats how it works in 90% of the games out there. Best option would probably be to either have some form of archive where the cutscenes are saved with some form of summary for the events that happened in each season. But removing the content itself is necessary otherwise your game will become too big quite quickly.
I had originally thought the DCV was going to be a separate installation for the content removed from the "current game" if I remember correctly, that was how it was advertised, and it solves the major issues on space size, and content gaps
I think a major thing Bungie could implement, is a cutscene library similar to games like RE4 and such, and maybe include a brief description of what happened between scenes. I’m not sure how many dev hours that would take, but having that in game would be a major win for the more casual players
I remember when I first played destiny 4 years ago, and the amount of story I had to catch up on and features of the universe I had to understand was immense. I can't even begin to imagine the quanitity of narrative that they need to go through to even BEGIN to comprehend what is going on and why
I always wondered why Bungie didn't let some missions from vanilla D2 and the other expansions in the game. Like after the "Eyes up guardian"-tutorial, you come to the city and get introduced to various characters like Zavala, Ikora and Cayde and the cabals via the first red war mission. After loosing your light you have the experience that your power comes somehow from the traveler. Then you play the mission, arrive at the farm and do 3 or 4 missions from red war. Last one would be fighting Ghaul. Everything else is just mentioned and was done by other guardians. Then you visit Osiris biggest fan on mercury to see if he is OK. Fighting some Vex to get access. You get the information that he is fine to Ikora which is like" Ah yeah...anyway...Osiris needs help. Then again 3 or 4 missions from the "Curse of Osiris" DLC which introduces Osiris, Sagira and the Vex. Back in the Tower Ana Bray contacts you to meet with her and you fall instantly in love with her...I mean uhm... you do some missions from the "Warmind" DLC and get introduced to Rasputin and the Hive. Then comes the introducion of the drifter and some of his story arc, explaining who he is where he was and so on bringin the darkness as a weapon into play. And of course Gambit. Lot's and lot's of Gambit! The Forsaken would then be the introduction of the Awoken,Mara, Crow, the Reef, Spider and Riven / Ahamkara plus the Scorn. After that, Shadowkeep, with Eris and the story about the moon the pyramid, connection to the darkness! Then some bunker missions witnessing the arrival of the pyramid ships. Some Quests for Asher Mir, Sloan, Ana and Vance and then finally the arrival with Svathuns intervention. And so on, you see the pattern. That would be the best for new players imo.
I think extending the timeline to back before destiny 2 to see events from d1 would be nice. And having a recap for major events in a cutscene form for each season to catch players up on the basics of the story and previous events. Can have it so for each year there’s a cutscene explaining and the events that happened and everything. I dunno, just something easy and simple would be nice for the new lights.
Byf the cutscene of the origins of the Witness is staying, Bungie has said that, Veil Containment is staying (they do need to move the node for it though) also “only Lightfall” buddy Shadowkeep, The Witch Queen and Beyond Light will also be there
I think a fun way to recap everything would be a triple va cutscene going over everything important from destiny, swapping between the voices of Ikora, Zavala, and Cayde, leading into the cutscene of Ikora meeting Cayde in the pale heart we've seen as part of the trailers.
I know my friend group has said this and is kinda wide spread in the community that had been talked about since the season leading to the light fall is there at least needs to be a well put together cinematic of all major events and info leading up to a expansion so when a new player or even a veteran who took a brake can watch and be caught up almost like a tv show when they do the “previously on (insert tv show here)” idk why all live service story games haven’t made that mandatory!!
New lights have had an issue knowing what is going on since Beyond light because the onboarding experience in game is remarkably bad. The fact that friends of mine ask if it is worth getting into destiny again and my response is usually "When did you stop playing?" cannot be healthy. However I would argue that the need for final shape to have context may not be accurate as we do not know what the next saga looks like and it may be a soft reset story wise allowing a fresh entry point. If that is how bungie resolves the issue however I feel like it would be a worse solution than leaving the context available in some form.
I felt the same problem, and dissatisfaction when I picked up the game again. Context: I had played Destiny for a few years, back when Forsaken was the expansion. I played all the way up through Shadowkeep, to the season of the Splicer in Beyond Light, but never reached the end of it. I had quit Destiny 2 because I started seeing it as a bit of a sickness (for me). You clock/log in, do your chores. Every day, weekly tasks, then seasonal months-long tasks. I realized it was starting to be a problem and I decided no more. I eventually came back to play with friends, who've since been not able to play with me. But when I returned, just a couple months ago now, I got Lightfall and Witch Queen alone with some of the leftover Silver I had. It came with Season of the Wish, but I had no access to the other content. Some key things I noticed when I started playing again: Uldren Sov knows who he is; Mara Sov is here again; there's this Witness creature thing; there are these Tormentors who are here; Calus is back; Rasputin is gone; there are a whole bunch of not-Rasputins; Ana Brey is alive; Elsie Brey is hanging around; Sloane is alive; Titan's here again (kind of); Mars is here again (kind of); Osiris was cake the whole time (a lie); Eramis is alive; Savathuun is alive; Crota's not dead anymore; Oryx is not dead anymore!... those last two are just confusions of why the hell two D1 raids are here and what they have to do with the story right now. As you can see, these are all things that happened... *_outside of campaign events!_* I sat there confused and upset that there was no way for me to gain the answers to missing context. I was pushed into getting the Lightfall Annual Pass, which _did_ allow me to play those missing seasons... *_of this year alone._* I continue to see the predatory nature of suckering players into wanting story, and then only giving it to them one spoonful at a time. I'm honestly ashamed of myself for having returned to this game. I feel like an addict who's slipped. As for the story and narrative right now, I'm kinda sick that there's never any acknowledgment of our past feats. Nothing ever acknowledges, save for Drifter's comedic jab at the end of a Gambit match, that we've killed a Wyrm God who attempted to eat/kill Rasputin. We killed the Hive Taken Godking. We killed the Hive Witch Goddess. We killed a reality-bending Dragon Goddess. We are literal deity-slayers... and the story has this--aggravating tendency to just forget it. It's like the writers are counting on no one remembering anything in the past. As are the execs and devs. They are hoping no one can maintain an attention span. Same reason the D1 raids are back... same reason you're only given important context with the *season*... money. tl;dr: scumbag Bungo. "we don't want FOMO" >> is nothing but FOMO
I think that the first one showing cinematic might already be happening in the way of old stuff being in the traveler meaning they can retell how we got here in the story of final shape
Watching this video made me realise how much I didn't even know I missed in terms of the story, being a player that for the past few years played the expansion and the season at that time and maybe dipping my toes in for the other three seasons of the year, some more than others, but never fully completing the entire season as it released, I have missed so many little things from the story which has added up to be a massive blank space in my knowledge for this game
I remember spending 2 weeks replaying the story from the beginning of Destiny 1 through after Forsaken. I streamed it. Didn't get a lot of viewers, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a dirty shame no one can experience that now. I wish I had recorded them, and saved them to a DVDr.
im hoping that final shape will make me as immersed in Destiny as I was during the Witch Queen year. During Witch Queen, even though I only brought one expansion, Beyond Light during Witch Queen because i saw stasis and thought it looked cool and I wanted something more to do since I found the intro quests to be fun enough. To put it short, I have very fond memories of literally faking being sick for a full week of school just so I could play Beyond Light on all characters and unlock everything in just a week. Most fun i've ever had gaming. Within a few months I had 300 hours if not more in game because it was just THAT GAME for me, like how you probably couldn't stop playing Minecraft as a kid (Or whenever you first found it, wish I was born earlier to have experienced the alpha days). Destiny has a very special place in my heart because of this, and every time i've loaded on to Europa the amount of nostalgia I get is unreal. The feeling of being a hero in a universe that seemed doomed and on its last legs was an unreal experience for me. So if anyone from Bungie's D2 team somehow sees this, please bring back that "miracle game" that I found 2 years ago.
Brother, this is so true. I've been a Destiny player since the release of Destiny 1. When my wife started playing Destiny (Witch Queen) she had no clue what was what. It took days of explaining the whole "story so far" in order for her to understand what was happening and what was at stake. I had to show her The Red War on RUclips. Hot take: looking back at it The Red War was very underrated.
As someone who still counts himself as a New Light (Started during Witch Queen on Stadia and continued on through Lightfall on Xbox) Destiny and the Community are the reasons I didn't start earlier. I came to the States during the Launch of D2 and all through out it I was repelled by the Community saying it either sucked, or was mah at best. So I waited, and every time I poked my head in, I was shoved back out by negative comments or more people telling me to wait. Now, 2022 comes around, Witch Queen ads are everywhere and I was just gifted 6 months of Stadia from a RUclips Red promotion. And I took that opportunity to try D2 for myself since it's Free to Play, and I don't have anything to lose at this point. And I can say I regret trying it sooner. While I'm glad the game i came to was in a better state outwardly then I thought, I'm still seething over the fact so much content that I've been seeing for years turned to vapour, and now we're left looking at less than 40% of the total content that's been in the game, with a lot of near empty shells in places. From that alone I can say how hard it is to want to spend money or care about the game in places, because there's not the same attachment to the series other people have developed through the rough and great times. And The Final Shape looks to be the WORST place from anyone to start, regardless of anything Bungie can do in a year or two of development time. The series is on the life support of what players it has and the few new players it'll get from the DLC., and I can't find that sad because while I enjoy it, I still don't care that much about it from what I've gotten out of it so far.
I would LOVE even as a mid way player (between veteran and newlight: I joined back during shadow keep, but had played a bit of D1 in the early days) to have a set of missions/strikes/cut sense that explain everything up to the Final Shape. I can take my current character in watch the sense to get reminded of stuff and be ready to go right away. But if Make a new character/account and I want to play completely new, I should be introduced to the world and story in the same way and have the option of playing some of the old content PvE wise to get the story so I can jump into the final shape missions/cut sense and have a good understanding like vets would.
The infinite forest dissappearing could easily be fixed with saint 14 doing the halloween event, his monster story fits there perfectly as well as the point of views from the fallen. Osiris could help simulate it, saint could do the story beats with a mission telling some of the history or hell maybe even saint 14 sitting in the farm telling ghost stories about the infinite forest
110% agree on your take Byff. I still couldn’t get over the thought that most of us vet guardians bought D1 and STILL have the content. We can revisit it anytime. But D2, I understand it can be difficult for the devs but we bought their game, dlcs and seasons but most of it have been removed. Even WoW still has their old content with them. I do hope one day they’ll bring it back (maybe as DLC) or someway for the benefit of long time Destiny players and new ones.
Lightfall fell so short for me that I've not even been convinced to play the seasonal content, especially with how many of the gameplay loops for season's have felt uninteresting and painfully grindy in years prior; I came back to Lightfall because I've been a fan of the Destiny story for ages, and am somewhat saddened I've not been motivated to experience these seasonal story beats because the game feels like such a chore to keep up with. It's to the point now that I honestly don't know if I'll bother to play through Final Shape first hand with how bungled things have been for the Lightfall expansion, unless there's some big efforts to take steps like suggested in the video to either keep some seasonal portions of content or provide a notable summary of the seasonal content that took place over the roughly year and a half that Lightfall ran. Thank you Byf, for bringing these points to light; I hope something positive can come from these sort of dialogues, but won't hold my breath with the history from Bungie's exec team. Either way, I appreciate this effort to try and incite change for the better, for the community as a whole.
In my opinion, here is a way they could meet us halfway - cinematic flashback cutscenes. For each DLC and its subsequent seasons, create a cinematic cutscene similar to a movie trailer which is 3 to 4 minutes long, and includes your guardian in their current gear as it would in any other cutscene. Create a place on the galaxy map where you can access a timeline which will include a summary of each DLC and it seasons to go along with these cutscenes. It's not the same as being able to keep access to all the content, but I would consider it a fair compromise that could catch people up on what has happened in the past while inserting their guardian as they appear now into those moments.
"The moment when Saint returns from the infinite forest"
...
I never even saw the infinite forest...
You didn’t miss much 😭😂 i didn’t miss the OG infinite forest but I did miss Season of the Dawn. I am a take a long break and come back every once and a while D2 player after being a D1 no-life 😂
@@vCrux And the Haunted Forest!
Heck, not just the infinite forest, there's players like me that haven't seen entire planets like Mercury, Mars or Io D:
@@RodrigoLeaf15 I started D2 in season of the chosen, I missed all of them too.
Well, except D1 mars.
@@SymbioteMulletI started close to the end of Season of the Deep, you can imagine the amount of stuff I missed (yes, a friend introduced me to the game around Season of Arrivals and I've been devouring the lore since, but experiencing it? not a chance XD)
Journey is regarded as one of Destiny's greatest tracks. That moment in Homecoming when you are marching through the Last City, destroyed and infested, is genuinely something I played over and over. Regardless of how well the rest of the Red War's story was received that specific moment is my favorite in Destiny. The drums started beating and it made everything real, I felt like a Guardian in that moment. Journey still plays every once in a while if you wait in orbit long enough, but there are so many people who will never get to experience that feeling, that rush down my spine as the music exploded with all of the pride and fury and loss that the Red War represented, that Destiny embodies...and that makes me sad.
Honestly I loved every part of the red war campaign. It was cheezy at times but so what. I think the community was more concerned about Bungi making mistakes than about what they were achieving. Destiny 2 as a whole was a super risky and controversial release.
I'd like to point out that I haven't played since Witch Queen, and that the only reason I'm aware of the general goings-on and state of the story in Destiny is because I watch you. My question is: are they allowing this "context" to disappear because they assume you and others will just fill in the blanks for those that haven't been playing and take for granted you all work hard to keep people caught up?
Dude that feels about right. If lore RUclipsrs never existed who would know about Necarec? Byf and the other lore RUclipsrs carried season 18.
They have said they intend to add some way of preserving this context, particularly the big Witness backstory cutscene from Season of the Deep, but they haven't given any details yet. Maybe part of the big Into the Light update dropping before Final Shape? Who knows.
If so, Byf should to be compensated from Bungie.
Cool story tell me more it’s riveting.
It feels like that's how they are operating things lately. (Spoilers if you don't know about last season) One of the most important cutscenes of the entirety of the last season between our group and Savathun was not even acted out in the "finale," but rather in a lore tab of a book that's unlocked AFTER the quest is completed, in a rather obscure place for players to look. For most players, people like Byf making videos on that lore tab was THE only reason they knew that conversation even took place to begin with and that the season didn't end with Savathun remaining dead as was shown in the final cutscene.
Between that, the Witness's backstory only being revealed in a random cutscene in a season that truthfully had little to do with it, and the weekly dialogue from "Veil Containment," it really seems that Bungie has been in a "tell, don't show" mindset with Destiny's story, especially since Lightfall.
Bungie’s leadership needs to take accountability.
“Oh we get paid the most because we are responsible for the biggest decisions”
Okay, but what if you make bad ones. You need to be responsible for those too.
The captain should go down with the ship, not throw the crew overboard.
Accountability?? Can't remember the last time the guys at the top took responsibility
@@kurtisdeakin
Guys at the top: what is responsibility?
@@johngancarcik5682"but I deserve all the benefits and money and golden parachutes because, uh, something something risk that I pass on to others, something something so I get more profits? Yeah I like that!"
People at the top never take accountability. They move on to destroy another company/project with their inept management.
They will quite literally never take accountability. Morally good, fair, just, kind people simply do not get to be in positions of power within the corporate world.
Part of the problem is locking story quests behind the seasonal subscriptions. Right now, it's like paying for each chapter of the Lord of the Rings, but getting the climaxes of each book for free.
For most live service games with season passes, the pass content is cosmetic: skins, emotes, exclusive gear, leveling resources. Bungie goes one step further by locking the
s e a s o n a l s t o r y e v e n t s, literal chapters of Destiny's broad arc, behind that paywall. And what do those include? Key moments, like Crow entering the portal, the Witness' origins, or Eris banishing Xivu Arath.
As in, the really important story bits.
Even in games with subscription-exclusive events, the story and the events aren't necessarily intertwined. But for Destiny, with it's RPG elements and ever-evolving story, making story chapters subscription-exclusive takes that incredible, vast story and chops it into little inaccessible bits.
...and then throws it in the bin afterwards, sending the signal that it was utterly disposable all along.
The fact that Season finale missions are not placed into a queue within the Vanguard Playlist are CRAZY to me. The fight against Quria, the assault on the keep to excise Savathun's worm, stopping Eramis from dropping Bombs on the Traveler, its astounding these moments are missing.
And even if you pay the story is still confusing and you need to watch Byf and other lore channels just to understand that the scene where Savathun a Zavala compete against each other on a DDR machine was foreshadow during Season of Oppulence by one of Calus’ Psions while he was completely bored taking a dump and asked by those Psions to read the future.
The problem is the design of the game. To maintain a game like this, it is a constant money sink. This is why MMORPGs often look so cheap. It's because they NEED to be cheap. Look at SWTOR. SWTOR graphics, and animations are low effort. Destiny 2 is not. Destiny 2 is trying to be a perpetual cinematic experience. Which is amazing. It is just, expensive. And it takes up A LOT of drive space. If it wasn't for the Vault. Destiny 2 would be around 700-1000GB. It would be larger than ARK.
@@fulgerion false dichotomy.
Players need not have every element of the game installed at once if the game was designed appropriately.
The core game should contain the hub, guardians' characters & their inventory. Other elements should be optional installs.
The current architecture is the epitome of anti-consumer practice.
Defiance was also slapped together like Lightfall, I believe. The mission where you rescue Amanda has you enter a pyramid structure in the EDZ, but the cutscene you get when you save her is clearly onboard the cabal prison ship. The chaperone cutscene.
1000%. All throughout lightfall’s campaign and throughout Defiance’s activities and story, I felt like I was playing an unfinished beta.
We are at the end of the year and defiance still makes no sense like has Eramis returned yet?
@@FireStriker_Its implied she went to Riis
To this day I cannot believe the Red War and Forsaken are still vaulted
Curse of Osiris and Warmind as well.
@@anwardegoat82 bruh just make them optional downloads???
@@anwardegoat82Making them optional downloads a la Black Ops 3 (I can't believe I'm actually using a COD game as an example) would help mitigate that greatly. Also, a simple fact of today's gaming landscape is that MMOs are massive and will continue to be massive.
@@alphagamma1289exactly, MCC does this with no problems. you can even choose to download only singleplayer or only multiplayer
@@theAstra_ ouh yeah that never crossed my mind but tbf it would still take a bit more time since their are focusing on final shape
Another thing often overlooked is that when The Final Shape comes out we are going to make our way through the campaign until the final mission, the climax of the entire light and darkness saga and then be stopped until after the raid is completed. Narratively if you are in it for the story it is in your best interest to NOT be there day one and that is a HUGE problem.
Oh no they want to give a satisfying conclusion to non raiders, because you can’t have the witness not be the final raid boss.
@@dylanmiller1140 I understand the rationale I just have no faith that they will pull it off in a way that doesn't feel really anticlimactic until the raid drops.
They refunded me on PlayStation so I'ma just wait. I still have the pre order stuff too which is odd
I’ll do you one better about the Amanda plotline: it made a whole lot more sense for it to be Hawthorne instead. In fact, outside of the romantic stuff between her and Crow, it all made more sense for Hawthorne.
EXACTLY, and Hawthorne coming back as a guardian would be so poetic, taking into account how she helped the Vanguard in red war without the light, arm to arm with Zavala ,Ikora and Cyde. It literally fits as a whole
@@Spr0ket Anyone (at least any Human, there'd be significance in a Cabal or especially and Eliksni) sacrificing themself and coming back as a Guardian would undermine the plot beat entirely no matter who it is. People need to be able to permanently die. I think part of the reason Amanda's death panned so widely is being just assuming she'd become a Guardian which... She's not. It's not gonna happen.
@@skeletor8951 Yes, you're right from my point of view if it could(I mainly mean if it was Hawthorne instead of Amanda) happen it would be probably after we deal with Witness when Traveler is "woken up" cause if i remember correctly it's dormant right now
@@skeletor8951another part of it that's panned is SHE DIDNT NEED TO BE THERE. AND ontop of that our guardians just literally fought in the room she was in and scanned a object if I remember correctly. That activates the cutsence and were just not there.
@@skeletor8951 I agree with this take wholeheartedly. Point the first, they've long since established in-universe that when raised by a ghost, a lightbearer has no knowledge or memory of who they were before. She'd be as good as remaining dead, because she wouldn't be _our_ Amanda anymore.
Point the second(and far more critical), it would cheapen her death. Death in destiny is already cheap as it is, given that we play as a pseudo-immortal magical zombie, so the few _actual_ deaths we've had are all the more important. To kill such a well-known character off only to bring her back would be a disservice to the character itself as well as every in-narrative reaction to it. Zavala's lines at her graveside? Meaningless. Crow's feelings in the wake of it? Meaningless.
I was mucking around on Nessus last night and found myself thinking about back when that location actually mattered to the game.
It got me thinking back on just how much content has been made for Destiny as a franchise over the past decade and just how little of it is still available. I understand limitations exist but it's so damn depressing to think about just what all is gone.
I love this game. I loved D1. Even when they were both awkward and clunky, even at their lowest I still loved them. It sucks to know new players will never be able to experience what made me fall in love with the story and world of Destiny.
I made a new character for the first time last year. I've been a warlock main since I started playing and never needed anything else, but found myself wanting to try a hunter. The process of going through the new light missions and getting up to speed was tedious at best and grating at worst. If that's what we have to offer to new players, I don't have much hope for growth moving forward, and that's before the utter lack of context Byf describes here.
What would be the point of joining on for the Final Shape without knowing the decades worth of story that leads up to such an important moment?
I'll still be here one way or another, but every time I find myself on an old planet or in a location I used to frequent with my friends, I'll spend a moment to remember what once was.
It's a ton of content and that means a ton more code to worry about/deal with and making sure everything in Destiny works within all of that content.
I think one problem that can’t be blamed on the execs is that even if they had to pad the game with an extra narrative/story, they didn’t have to go the creative route they did. Because it seems to me the biggest issue with Lightfall isn’t, “What is the explanation for these plot devices,” but “why should we care about Neomuna and cloudstriders at this point in the narrative?” Given that Final Shape is going to be primarily about what happens inside the Traveler, there was nothing preventing a Lightfall story centered around an invasion of the city we actually care about: The Last City.
I think the real issue is somewhere in the middle: the execs wanted a longer runway (probably to give more time to get Marathon ready) and the devs wanted to use that to introduce something a little different.
I kind of agree with you there, my guess is the suits up top were on their usual bs, and the devs probably tried something new that didn’t land well at all, splitting up an expansion story throughout the whole year, purposely leaving out very important details to pad out the story is almost never a good idea, i personally think it’s a mountain of issues that we’ve all seen that are now showing the consequences of either not letting your devs go all out because of “being aware of over delivering” or purposely not listening to your community even with your own devs are begging for changes as well and it just sucks to see a game I love go to shit. Hopefully they can figure it out cuz the world of destiny is cool asf
This is why I started to like the first Destiny so much; I could go and replay all the major campaign chapters and get caught back up when it came to the storyline.
Bungie sure is lucky to have a lore keeper like Byf. Without him, millions of veteran players and New Lights, would be lost, and not know the story, and deeper lore of Destiny 1 & 2, as much as they should. Hopefully, his upcoming “Story of Destiny” video will be seen by plenty of fans, and catch everyone up with a four, narrated recap of the first saga. If it were up to me, Byf would be a lore-related NPC vendor in the game. To shed more light on the deeper stories of Destiny, for New Lights, and returning to players.
No thanks, i don’t want to hear his whiny voice 😂
They're only lucky byf won't take the bungie shlong out of his mouth. The story turned into nothing more than a money grab for the brainless.
Let us be sure to remind ourselves to be grateful for something silver to line leaving a delineate path between our Nostalgic tendencies and the ability to keep, not only a solid victory alongside the battering of our veritable Dignity but a damage control element for every heart invested in the future and perhaps losing to a new pandemic.. That which up to now fails to give up Hope.
BYF: You Are, for all interest and positive purpose, the True remaining conscience and confidence left to whatever left Destiny. We stand beside one another for the Brand of Hero The eternal Fireteam You have been so far..
Zavala has this Commander in You. A remaining balance for those of us knowing whom the Destiny 1+2 characters and absolute Heroes In These Stars there truly have been. Have long gone and whom continue as the Legitimacy of what this Game continues toward even Now. Stay Well.
- LEv Continuing Fireteam Leadership wherever Accounts.”
@@Arctis326 nice bait 🤓
No new player can keep up with this crap tbh, the game is just kept alive for the already addicted ones
As someone who's been playing since d1, I would be ok if destiny 2 became a 200gb download that includes Everything from red war onwards as long the accessible parts are in order with what is unlockable, have a story bit I'm final shape that all the planets came back corrupted and change their ambiance a bit. I want to be able to make a new character and plan the entire story of destiny 2, start to finish and earn loot accordingly
About that year leading up to the witch queen, during the campaign we find a crystal from Season of the Lost; Savathun’s prison. If you didn’t play that season before WQ, you would’ve had no idea why the crystal is significant. This is apparent everywhere in the game
That's what I was thinking too cause his whole point can be said for WQ going into LF. Imagine a new player playing witch queen and then going into lightfall, they would have no idea why calus is with the witness or how we ended up knowing about Neptune and the veil. All of that is left unanswered to a new player becuz they never played the seasons in between
...not really? I hadn't played anything up to WQ and I just used context to get what was going on. I'm sorry you're stupid I guess?
There is just so much history to destiny it honestly gets me a little emotional thinking of it all. I think we all expect another cutscene with some brief replays as the intro to the final shape.
But man. A proper long cutscene going over all those major hits with some narration from cayde and ikora and zavala would be honestly enough to get me as back into destiny 2 as i was at the start going through the red war excited to start a new journey with new powers and an endless road ahead.
I would like to see them add an "Archived" area in the game. A menu or something that contains all of the sunset areas, gear and events available to download but does not download with a fresh game install (something optional). Make the multiplayer events active again to people who have the archived areas downloaded or make them available for "offline ish" single player. I would love to relive the Red War campaign and even though not everyone does I have enough storage space to house every piece of this game and I would love to have it all.
Or maybe a library where we have a Warlock of the Praxic order as the custodian of it?
Never gonna happen, they can barely keep up with the main game pipeline, adding a secondary pipeline of archived content is more wooooork that they CBA to do
I would be willing to pay to replay all that old content (yes I know we have all already paid for it once but incentive to the upper management)
@@blakeconnor8440I am not going to pay just to get something back that was stolen from me, especially when it already cost me $320
The thing I don't understand is how Bethesda manages to do this with Elder Scrolls Online (to this day you can play the original story campaign), but Bungie somehow can't?
The biggest frustration of the Lightfall Campaign is EVERY SINGLE TIME Nimbus or Rohan starts trying to tell us about what the Veil, the Cloud Ark, or the Radial Maguffin are, Osiris would immediately butt in, screaming at us how it isn’t important and we just need to get to the veil and we’ll worry about it later…which leaves us with zero stakes at all.
Litterly all of lightfall was just Osiris screaming that we need to get to the veil yet didn’t stop to think that maybe we should plan ahead and figure out what we’re dealing with. Even ghost bothered to ask what the cloud ark was? But like out of all questions to be asking the cloud ark was it??? Not asking about what the main thing we need to get to is or why it’s important
"Maguffin, Maguffin, Maguffin" Y'all are a broken record. Since when did we need to know every single detail about something to go and do it? All we needed to know was that it was linked to the traveler and that the witness needs it. I personally loved having something that was mysterious and got to see it and make my own theories about it in a "show, don't tell" manner. Also the tone was lighter because TFS is so much more serious. it makes for better storytelling if you have ups and downs in the story instead of super serious space drama all the time.
@@zeroghost115 I completely agree with this. I skipped pretty much this entire year of seasons, and I don't think I'm particularly lost?
Don’t worry Bungie will just put a few cutscenes into the timeline and pretend it’s a good replacement for actual story content
Exactly this
Another major mistake was removing the one off things too. Imagine if ONLY guardians with Forge weapons could find hidden messages with their scopes throughout content. It feels like Bungie never over lapped anything, then the vaulting idea popped up and removed any possibility of things even mattering.
Something that was amazing in destiny 1 was when an area was repurposed. Like you found a new path in an old area or something. It felt like the old areas mattered while ever since shadowkeep the only area that matters is the new patrol space.
I don't think Bungie ever will learn, their suits don't give a shit and only want to see $$$. Im gunna stick with Hell Divers 2 gotta protect Super Earth.
When execs do slash and burn, the company is dead. Loss of consumer confidence, promoting mercenary behaviour in key staff, and goals aligning to short term profitability at branding cost.
I'm glad we got witch queen. But bungie has a habit of crapping the bed, and doing so uncontrollably.
Which is hilarious because both companies are owned by Sony. Both are showing what to do and not do for live service games. If I was Sony, I'd be counting down the days until I can fire the leadership at Bungie for their massive mistakes.
I have no idea the story of helldivers
@@urazz7739 Arrowhead isn't owned by Sony ma dude
@@oVoidhawko "Mercenary behaviour" is common fucking sense. You could hire people instead of having your good employees do burnout speedruns
Imagine you love a tv-series and its tenth and final season is coming up. You're hyped up and try to get your friend to watch it, but you have to preface it with a "btw, you can only watch seasons 4, 5, 7 and 9, the other ones aren't available anymore". No one would want to watch that show. I find it absolutely mind boggling that someone at Bungie thought removing parts of an ongoing story was ever a good idea.
26:52 Byf nails on the head EXACTLY what I’ve been clamoring for since we first got timeline reflections. What a freaking treat it would be if that’s what “Into the Light” ends up being.
Honestly I believe that's what into the light is gonna end up being, a nostalgia trip to past events to get us hyped and ready for the final shape.
Its what it HAS to be for TFS to be good tbh. And honestly; I think its why TFS was delayed bc while Bungie has the tendency to shoot themselves in the foot; they're not stupid. Sunsetting was a good idea in concept; the game was really big in file size before sunsetting. Sunsetting seasons also offset Destiny's file size, the problem is now pretty much file size; how to manage it without destroying the story. Seasons worked for a while bc they were so good they kinda ignored the problem. Now the problem is really obvious and Bungie's scrambling to make a quick pre-campgain before TFS to give a small recap btwn now and TFS, which due to the nature of Episodes, has to be self contained.
24:55. That list. That gave me goosebumps of nostalgia along with despair of loss with the mention every single storyline. I truly want to be able to experience those again.
The good news is that cutscene with The Witness's origins and the veil is going to stay in the timeline permanently. However, I really feel like moments like the endings to Splicer, Lost, Haunted, Seraph, Deep, Witch, and Wish need to stay in the game.
Edit: I think Bungie also needs to give a small narrative blurb like what is in the Timeline Reflections so new players understand why these moments are important
The cutscene with The Witness’ backstory from Deep WAS put into the game permanently in the Timeline feature from the Director, however I don’t think that’s enough. I honestly think every season needs a small cutscene going over the important elements that occurred and how it links to everything. It may take some effort but if we’re continuing to be in an era of seasons containing important story beats, then I think it’s necessary.
How is it only NOW that people are talking about this? This is something I picked up on, immediately upon starting the game back in Season of Plunder. I asked my friend who got me into the game why I couldn't play the original campaigns and he explained the content vault and the rotating out of seasonal content. I immediately knew it was stupid and would never work from a cohesive narrative perspective. And yet it just gets ignored forever until it finally "matters". It mattered all along.
It has always mattered and people always wanted content to stay since the end of Forsaken before beyond light lanuched and brought it up before each new expansion
this is all because Bungie stopped doing numbered sequels. the Tiger engine wasn't built with this many years of content in mind
It's really sad being able to open D1 right now on hard drive, and jump into a full game with all of its narrative context (as messy as it was at first) still available and jumping to the sequel and having like half of all its content just not available in any form.
Tbh I saw this being the end point as soon as it became obvious Bungie were lying about vaulted content properly coming back.
They love to say it's an MMO, but every other huge MMO makes a point out of keeping all the main content and if the original content becomes iffy, to make an active effort to bring it up to their current standards and smooth onboarding.
Bungie want new players and their money without the actual effort needed to bring new players in and keep them long term.
@@jimbob1862 Completely agree. And the objection I hear so much from (morons) people in this community is that I can just watch RUclips reels of it, or catch up with Byf and Myelin. Like FUCK OFF, I'd rather play the game and experience it first hand. How is it even a contentious point?
@@evocaeden2932 Exactly. I still boot up D1 sometimes to replay specific missions or do runthroughs of the campaigns again, and a big reason why I don't touch D2 outside of expansions is because I know it's all temporary content. Why would I pay for seasons I know are going to be gone anyway?
I've turned away so many friends from starting because I don't want to explain ten years worth of story context, and telling new people to watch Byfs 5 hour mega cut of the lore up to Lightfall, and then a years worth of content of top of that just to be up to speed is a fucking stupid place to be in.
It's really funny how hard Lightfall woke people up but I'm glad it did. Bungie have gotten away with far too much and it's insane how lenient the community has been on them imo.
Having neomuna as lightfall setting was a big mistake imo, it had too many factors to cover while taking away from the main conflict with the witness. It should have been aboard the witness’s ship keeping the fight focused against the witness, while the seasonal would be on earth. The narrative from this point would have focused on guardians racing to stop the witness from destroying the traveler. While calus attempts to stops guardians only to fail as we begin to learn strand due to the weird interaction of light and dark as the part of the pyramid begins to terraform.
The radial mast could have been what was harvested from the tree in season of arrivals, and be destroyed midway through thinking we saved the traveler. Only to be revealed that it was a relay to the veil that now the witness has link to, and with it gone we cannot trace it back to the veil but we can use deep sight into the witness mind (play witness origins) Now desperate we assault the witness’s chamber only to be slowed by nightmares of nezarec in tormentors, and end with the fight against calus, only to be too late. The witness has established the link to the traveler through our presence on the ship, and now has the power to carve open the portal.
Post campaign: RoN still happpens, to kill nezarec before he can regain his power and haunt sol.
quest leads to recreate the link to the veil and it ends with Osiris following it back to the source, in the following season, back to Venus.
This would've been good. Neomuna feels...off for Destiny. The Arcology on Titan was the pinnacle of what a settlement could look like back then, so it's weird that they went with such a one-note retrofuturistic look with a chrome city and chrome people for a city that has had all this time to advance their technology. (lore nerds hold your comments, I know there are technobabble explanations for this but in reality the art team decides this stuff.)
Neomuna feels more like a fun little pit stop (arcade! vr! hoverboarding weirdos!) than the penultimate location in the story, so I think making it a small patrol zone with lore dumps on what the Veil is and making the important stuff happen up in space among the Black Fleet ships (maybe even move the Veil up there? idk) would have given Lightfall the 11th hour feeling it needed.
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx dude, neomuna and the cloudstriders was so out of left field I stopped playing. I hated the designs, I hated Nimbus, I hated the lol so random tone. I wanted to see the build up to the final conflict. Not a bunch of jokey humor while dropping random maguffins
Neomouna was the most boring place to explore ever ,absolutely dead nothing happening at all
All they had to do was delay lightfall and release older storylines and raids from the sunset vault until they finished the expansion. That would be amazing.
"All they had to do..."
All they had to do keep spending money while not making much money: not a strategy any business likes to adopt unless their back is really against the wall.
@@atomic_wait except the games already overmonetized from events to eververse to season pass. there should be no money issues unless theres major mismanegment with the games funds
All they had to do is even further delay tfs to sometime in 2025+ to redesign and port every piece of old content back into the game and also work even longer after that to iron out as many unforseen bugs/issues
It's so simple why doesn't blungiette just do that are they stupid?
@@lunararmy1624 they didn't overmonetize anything.
Considering how much Destiny 2 costs to make and how much games in general cost to make in 2024 we are getting Destiny at a major discount that has Bungie (and now Sony) operating at a perpetual loss.
Also ensures Destiny won't be around after the Final Shape.
"All they had to do ..."
Me and my mom used to play D1 on 360 together, she decided she didn't want to buy a new console to play D2, so asked me to keep her updated on the story. But as it progressed and I couldn't play some seasons, I couldn't fill her in on the story and we slowly just lost that interest in the game together. Which is most of my friends who were active D1-D2 players since the start. Keeping up and not being able to go back and catch up is definitely the worst thing about live service gaming. Only thanks to Byf have I've been able to enjoy the story that me and my mom loved so dearly.
“Cut at the knees” seems like a perfect phrase for what it feels like for anyone trying to get into the story of Destiny by playing, especially when considering the fact that many players for one reason or another didn’t keep up with the seasonal story for a while and are completely unable to even attempt to catch up due to content vaulting.
Well, it's a good thing channels like your exist, to make sure the important bits of the story live on forever and are always available to learn from.
One thing I'm confused about the most (Since you brought up the Lightfall story) in the cutscene where we see The Witness talking to Calus through our Ghost, they directly tell Calus to see to it that the Veil is destroyed.
But as we know now with what the Witness did, he needed the Veil to create that link with The Traveler.
This leads me to think that Bungie themselves didn't really know what The Veil really was and came to a decision around Season Of The Deep.
I didn’t have a hard time seeing the whole thing as a trick. The witness always intended us to take out Calus and be close enough for it to use the ghost as a connection. Calus never knew he was the bait.
@@adamherrick6077Okay but the Radial Mast was nowhere near the Veil and what if Rohan didn't sacrifice himself to destroy it?
I refuse to believe that The Witness thought that far ahead.
Bungie has been bumbling around with the story since D1. Is anyone surprised?
@@gargathulothhastur4981 It's never been this blatant. I'm talking about what we are seeing in one mission being completely different than what we're told the next.
It was stated that the main writing team of bungie got swapped, so that goes to show that they weren't on terms of what the story was leading to, goes to show also how little the story really mattered for a "strong story leading game"
I liked the idea of a story that was told over the entire year and really evolved and expanded upon the campaign of the expansion. When I finished Lightfall I knew that most of what was missing would be explained in the seasons. They could have definitely done some parts better. Pulling Veil Containment into Defiance would have been a huge help. Having one of the seasons be directly about investigating the Veil would have been ideal (ideally the first season). I think we had the nature of the Veil understood enough for the campaign, but then waiting 3 months to give more didn't work. Stuff like the Radial Mast never being explained was a definite issue with Lightfall though. Having Defiance actually be semi-relevant to the story would also have been necessary, to do it properly. However, I liked how it felt like throughout the rest of the year we were always working towards getting through the portal. All of that starting with Joxer dead at the beginning of Deep. Deep told a good story mostly, but had something missing I can't quite put my finger on. It led well into Witch, which was both a great story, and a fun season to play. And Witch led well into Wish. Wish definitely continued the story, but it felt a bit tangential to the goal of the portal. We basically knew everything about the portal (other than the 1 person thing) at the start of the season. If Riven didn't say no, it could have been over in the first cutscene, and been no different. You could say the same about Witch, if Savathun allowed herself to be resurrected, but I think that worked better because the season dealt a devastating blow to Xivu and took her out of the coming fight, which wouldn't have happened if Savathun were just resurrected immediately. The season instead focuses on the Ahamkara, which on its own is great, but as the last season before Final Shape, falls a little flat in its relation to the wider story. We didn't get a moment like we did in Seraph that truly felt like a strong lead up to the expansion (although there is one more mission, so fingers crossed). It did lead into it, but that lead in was much weaker than Seraph. I'd say Wish was a very good middle of the year season, but a average end of the year season.
All of this is in theory a type of improvement upon the story telling of the year of Witch Queen. Witch Queen just had random events that happened 3 months apart and didn't lead into each other or into a wider story. Risen was sorta a continuation of Witch Queen, but as the first season of the year, fell a bit flat, as they tend to. Next thing we know the Leviathan comes back (this was somewhat connected because of Calus in Lightfall, but that's pretty weak, and it wasn't led up to at all). Then suddenly, we are fighting fallen pirates. 3 months later Ana finally finishes fixing Rasputin. Luckily that season led well into Lightfall.
The leadup of the seasons into each other, and their wider connection to the story, I see as a good thing. It lets them tell a coherent story throughout the year, rather than having random events that serve as world building at best and filler at worst in between expansions, that told the entirety of the story. They've been doing this for a while with the last season of the year, like how Lost led to Witch Queen, but they need to expand it to all seasons (episodes now) throughout the year to have the game tell a overarching story. Execution wasn't perfect throughout this year, and with the exception of Witch, it arguably wasn't even a good exectuion, but I like the concept. I hope they do more of this overarching story in the future with Episodes, but learn from the mistakes of this year, and find a way to make that work with the transient nature of some of their content. I'm a little concerned Episodes will go back to the random events happening 4 months apart, but I understand that as the saga winds down, we may need to take some time away from large overarching stories. Just saying some sort of lead in and lead out to the episodes would be nice, and improve the story telling aspect of the game.
Byf is right that this is an issue for returning players, and a solution should be found for that. The cutscenes will likely be included in the Journey thing, but they definitely do need a bit more. Including some old missions would be extremely helpful. A 'Previously on Destiny' would go a long way, but ideally there would be more. Ideally, in the future Episodes won't be transient, but I think that's a bit unlikely, given the technical issues involved. I don't expect them to nail it in time for Final Shape, but I hope they implement something as a bandaid to the issue they've created. And I hope hey look at their wider issue and find a way to address this in the future.
I started playing during season of plunder. I had no idea what the story was or what was happening but that season was so much fun because I was a spade pirate. The action was incredible. I've since put 1000+ hours into the game and have watch dozens and dozens of lore videos to get caught up. I absolutely adore this game even though ive only played for the past 1.5 years. To see how this game is being treated now and what happened to the employees crushed my want to play the game. I'll be here for final shape and waiting in hopes of a good landing for the story but it's hard to watch the future of this games success be dangled so precariously between people remembering it for a bad ending or one that might actually be a banger. I hope for the best for this game I love.
My brother in Christ, this game is the same way for ages
i think a very simple solution could be introduced in a lore friendly way....just use the infinante forest as a way to "revisit" past experiences and use it to "learn from mistakes made" in essence jsut use it as a giant instance for old content
Ok so the infinite forest isn’t actually real. It would require significant work in order to update and debug all of the content that would get an extremely small amount of playtime
At this point we need Destiny 2: Extended Edition with all the sunset content coming back, like WoW did with WoW Classic.
I feel like the moment when Crow hopped into the portal to inside the Traveler should've involved more pomp and circumstance. Not ritual, but importance! It was just Crow, Mara, and Queens Wrath. Not even our own Gaurdian was there. I feel this was a monumental moment and it deserved more than just a 39 sec cutscene. Not to mention there was nothing on line for this moment. Like, we as players knew we would access the heart of the Traveler. Although we didn't exactly know how, this moment felt lack luster because we already knew Crow would succeed. Where is the suspension of disbelief? Why was there no climax, no thing to potentially lose? Ugh.... such missed opportunities seem so obvious now with D2 that I'm only tagging along because I started this 10 years ago and I'm not letting Bungee ruin it for me.
I hear ya Byf. For me specifically, it was a tragedy that Season of the Haunted's content was vaulted.
Heads-up, this is about to get really heavy.
When I started playing Destiny, I had moved out to a new town I had never been to before to finish my education. And it was truly horrible.
Moving with me was a sweep of emotions that came from traumas which I never had addressed properly; traumas that I ultimately did to myself from being such a short tempered, emotionally inept moron when I was a teen. During that time, I was a hateful, miserable, socially-awkward shell of a man who hated himself, hated everyone around him, and just wanted to watch the world burn in the hopes I would burn too. But then, I played Season of The Haunted.
I got to see Crow. I got to see how Crow thought of himself after the revelation he received that he was Uldren in a past life. I got to see how Crow had a similar sense of self-hatred and how even in-spite of his then former best friend Amanda pretty much ending her friendship with him, how he found the courage to confront his past and come out better for it; to come to the revelation that "we all have parts of ourselves we wish weren't there. But acknowledging them can help make us stronger."
In that moment, I felt seen. And from that, I found the courage myself to confront my own past through therapy. I'm not even going to begin to pretend I'm 100% better; I still have a flaming hot temper, motivation issues, and difficulties being around people for too long...but I've realized that I'm not a monster. That I am more than my past, and-as Rasputin later emphasized in Season of The Seraph-that no matter who I am, what I've said or done, I can choose to be something more.
To this day, Haunted and Seraph are still some of my biggest inspirations for my own creative works. It tears me apart inside to see stories with such poignant messages be torn away, and that I can never experience them again except through RUclips videos.
thanks for sharing your story, it's always nice hearing about how this hobby can actually help people beyond just giving us a few hours per night to kill.
I had a very similiar story with Haunted. I was finishing university far from home, and during those years the pressure got to me. I started avoiding classes, lying about my grades, wasting money on food to eat away my problems, and after few years, it finally came crashing down on me. Haunted started, I received a letter that I'm going to be expelled from uni for crossing the deadline on my MT. I felt suicidal, went to a bridge and decided to jump. I stand on the railing, about to jump, and suddenly fear strikes me, and I hesitate. Wind suddenly blows me back on the walkway, and I walk away, calling myself a p***y for being a chicken, and not going with the plan. I return home, play through week one, and next day is reset, do week two story, but Crow's line: "...but lies? They get us only so far.." really gets stuck in my head, not letting me rest, so I gave up, and asked my mother go with me on a walk. She is surprised, because I never suggested it before (usually it is the other way around), but she agrees, and after few minutes, near a river, I tell her everything. About school, about grades, about lying, about my self hatred and my subcontious attempts at sabotaging my own life out of shame, about suicide attempt... She is horrified, saying she had no idea, and that I'm making a hell on Earth for myself. We talk things through, and she convinces me to go my teacher, reveal everything, and ask for extending the time for my MT. Guy was always a demading man, but fair one. He was shocked, but agreed, and gave me a number for psychotherapist, and director agreed after hearing my story to allow me to repeat a year free of charge due to my mental state, and my grades would be copied, except for one final exam from subject I didn't pass, and had another year for my MT. A lot of time, work, and therapy sessions later, I managed to pass the final exam, and my thesis as well. I found a job, rebuilt my life, and found happiness. For all faults of the season, and Bungie later f**k ups, I'm still grateful for Haunted, even if I left the game after Deep, after I got disillusioned with Bungie. But despite all, I'll never forget what Haunted did for me.
@@grzegorzflorek5623 Holy crap dude...glad you got your life turned around too.
As a returning player for The Final Shape, I have found that I am completely lost and confused within the story and what has happened for the year hiatus that I needed to take for personal reasons. After logging in I found myself listed as a New Light Player(first time was when content was vaulted) once more having to unlock some of the pieces of each sub-class(Solar, Arc, Void) with the exception of Statis and already having half of the Strand sub-class unlocked without even having to enter the LightFall pieces. Annoying to say the least. Missing the entire section of the previous year of seasons, not enough said about the previous Campaign stories that got vaulted. I truly miss at the very least the daily/weekly mission for those campaigns. At this point, even after playing for past 6 years, roughly the end of Forsaken. When I started playing much of the story content was playable, it held your hand to catch you up, it told you the story. This makes me sad and had I known that I would never be able to play previous content was to be removed, I might have considered not even playing the game. There is a complete difference playing a live service for seasons that have no story compared to ones that are story rich. I would like to suggest a remastered content for the previous vaulted, whether it be a stand alone or all mashed together as one game. Just to be able to play it again. I guess I will have to live with the timeline for now. Sad just so sad and I have to agree on all points made with this video.
I play a lot of different games, but nothing has ever left me as hopeful yet simultaneously depressed as Destiny. Really hope one day that changes
I understand that some old content may be irrelevant but it’d be so awesome to have everything we’ve been given/ paid for at our disposal and play what we want, use what we want, when we want! I don’t understand how they just sunset things I paid for! Totally wild.
I can imagine them putting in a beefed up version the Speaker's D1 intro/prologue to start Final Shape. That would be quite poetic, I think.
Of course, new players won't have any idea who's talking or what happened to him 😒
Byf u should definitely do a video or series of videos explaining this years seasonal storyline and key points would be great
70% of story drops are no longer in the game. Once Final Shape releases, that number will jump to 82%. How many other games only have 18% of their content? Bungie should have ended Destiny 2 and made Destiny 3 long ago.
Or just have optional, modular story campaigns that you can download and delete as needed
@@phelan8385 I agree entirely, but bungie has said they won't do that because if the game is too big then every time they make a patch there's just more stuff that might break
@@ArcherJLady Yeah I understand that, I mean just story missions n stuff like that so people can experience it if they want to. Doesn't have to include loot or anything in case updates break them, just have them there as an option to play but disconnected from the rest of the game. Its definitely doable but it would probably be quite the investment for no immediate return.
The solution is simple: when Lightfall launches, jampack the necessary older narratives into a series of missions. Make these missions optional for returning players. It could be a psionic training simulation for the new lights to prepare them to go to battle (aka the official new story).
The fomo that drives destiny is also what’s killing it
explain
@@marchodl370because if you stop playing for a relatively extended period of time it’s very easy to get lost in almost every aspect of the game and also miss out on a bunch of limited time content while you were gone
Agreed. The Sunsetting and cutting destinys story down to "the current thing" is a main reason i to this point have massive issues to jump back in after a year off.
I definitely agree that the damage has been done. Every time they take away content, they're taking away important context and parts of the story that may not be easy to find. Channels like yours cover the missing pieces well, but it shouldn't be on your shoulders to be the only ones preserving those memories and moments. Hopefully Bungie will work on their sunsetting tactics and finally try something new
There are some things that are staying around that are key to the narrative like all of veil containment and associated cut-scenes as those where earmarked to be directly tied to and added as free content for Lightfall.
They introduced a new in-game lore nerd with Eido in season of the plunder and haven't used her at all. Having her supply and go into the story re-caps would be a great way to keep everyone up to speed on the in-universe goings-on prior to final shape.
While not the best solution, it just blows my mind that seasonal cut scenes are not accessible in game in order and properly labeled. Why do they go away? Why do I have to go to RUclips of all places to find cut scenes? It makes zero sense for an ongoing narrative.
At the very least it fixes a few problems.
Byf I hope you realise that this video is probably the reason why everyone, as of today 8th May 2024, have access to all seasonal content since the lightfall release. Yes this includes the season pass and all of the missions/quests linked to defiance, witch, deep, wish, etc. When I updated the game and hopped on I found all of this available to me for free.
So I just wanted to say thank you as I am sure many others will and should be thanking you for this.
The fact that they took out content that we’ve paid for isn’t right. 70$ for chunks of game gone takes your ownership and makes it into a rental game. They shouldn’t take out anything and rather give the player the option to delete past content rather than strip it from us
I think the timeline on the director could really be expanded on as an archive almost. All cutscenes and pivotal story moments in one place that can be accessed by everyone. So that if you do miss something, there is something to look at in order to catch up.
I think the biggest mistake Bungie made was not finding out a way to keep all sunset/removed content available somehow, like adding some way to un-install all the content you don't play anymore but if you want to, you can either re-install or keep it installed with maybe a warning like "Your load times, etc. will suffer if you have all this installed." similar (in a way) to the 'Master Chief Collection' where (if I remember right) it downloads all the relevant data for multiplayer, and if you want any campaign content you need to go into a menu and select what you want to download.
To expand a little more on the idea, all the nodes in the Directory would be grayed out for content that isn't installed and give an option to download the related content, maybe even add a small node next to the tower that would open a menu for all sunset/removed content, while removing all pointless quest steps like "Play _____ mode 5 times" and pretty much only keep actual missions available. Granted it is a shame losing something like the Coil, even if I did get sick of it eventually the loot drops are fucking amazing.
in a perfect world, I think an MCC style way of downloading everything from D1 up until now would be the best option. I have a feeling the work required to make the game that modular would be too ambitious for the devs especially after the layoffs. If Destiny has a future at all, the closest thing to this would be going back to numbered sequels like they originally planned under Activision. The Tiger engine was not built to hold this much stuff, full stop.
I've been saying this for years, I'm glad that people are finally talking about this because it feels like if you haven't played since 2014 and then logged in every week since shadowkeep (which I pretty much have) you're gonna miss out on HUGE story beats, that get oversimplified in a "highlight" mission.
Beyond light has nothing to do with Witch Queen, and the seasonal story that set up Witch Queen left before it came out.
The small bits that introduced us to Savathun outside of bungieNet Grimoires are all removed too (Savathun's Song strike, Forsaken's campaign)
13:10(Clap clap) Thank you. I couldn’t put words to but ‘distraction’ fits perfectly
21:00 Start of each season also usually has an intro cutscene that acts as a catch-up. Example is Season of the Wishes, learn a little about mara/riven, what we learn in Witch (that savanthun made a wish), and that the goal is to go into the Portal to hunt down the Witness. (this is all before you load in to the first mission of the season). So, I'm confident that will also be the case when everyone boots up TFS. Plus, we also have "Into the Light" coming that is suppose to be good for new players and veterans a like. Is is a revamp to the new player experience, catch up/summary of the story this year, just a loot chase to arm ourselves before we go in? Who knows. We have to wait.
Additionally, since we don't know what lies ahead, the problem of "keeping the story in the game" could be handled differently in the future with episodes. We don't know if they get sunset or how they tie into the story structure going forward. Right now it was too late to change how they've handled things, but maybe they are setting themselves up in the future to prevent that from happening?
Copium.
the youtube channel The Phoenix has a ton of small cutscenes & voice lines from old seasons btw. dont think he's done it for last few seasons so youll have to scroll back, but that channel has been hugely helpful for me.
I want everyone to imagine this amazing cutscene we never got.
Caital holding the lines as we rush to the veil.
Calus drops in and caital exclaims he has lost what it means to be cabal.
They fight and its clear from the battle ensuing that Caital has the upper hand and that she is the superior cabal once again claiming she will rebuild the cabal as the greatest emporer in history.
Calus mocks her goals and claims they all mean nothing and says he will win at any cost..
Calus activates darkness powers and overwhelms Caital mocks her again before sparing her
Caital claims hes not true cabal if he doesnt have the stomach to finish her off.
Calus spares her saying hes better than cabal and leaves to track us under the veil to the final battle.
So caital is the superior cabal but calus still takes the power from the witness to become stronger
WHY DIDNT WE GET THIS CUTSCENE
I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating here. They need to take all that old content and make it into an offline set of games, about three years each, similar to Halo in narrative structure. Far too many people worked far too hard for far too long for all that content to be discarded and never seen again. The game MUST be preserved in some form.
One of my favorite moments was watching the Almighty go down. I was couch hopping at the time and had my laptop that could run destiny. Sitting on my laptop on the couch with my headphones on and waiting the agonizing 2 and something hours just to pretty much talk with my tower chat is really something. Even now I play with someone who joined sometime during Season of Gambit and they remember better times during those days while I was reminiscing on D1 moments.
One idea ive mentioned to a few of my friends is either getting this content in there own stand alone games that you can download and play, like mass effect did allowing you to uninstall and reinstall the different games from its menu. Or to add in a monthly content rotater that you can play through the dlc's, seasons, and important moments for a month before it gets rotated out for something else that way people have something to look forward to.
Man.. your Chess analogy is spot on for me. I played D2 Red War; I then took a break, and came back on the last half of the last season on Beyond Light. I didn't get to play all the in-between campaign, the seasons, I never saw Saint return; I never saw the corruption of Uldren or the resurrection of Crow; I never saw Cayde die, let alone avenge his death; who knows what a Splicer is, though apparently Mithrax is one of the best of them; what the heck happened to the Dreaming City, why is it half-Taken and what is this Curse everyone keeps talking about? Yet all these story-beats are referenced constantly throughout the existing game.
I can live with the "alternate storytelling" that they tried with Lightfall. I've been an overall supporter of the change-up a long time. My biggest -- and ultimately, ONLY -- complaint, is that it all goes away. Lightfall without the seasons does not make any sense; WITH the seasons it still feels incomplete, but if I know the next chapter is coming I'm willing wait. But without, there's no reason to care about any of it, there's no urgency in getting to the next chapter. Even with as incomplete as Lightfall currently is, once TFS is out there's no real conclusion. There is no Final shape to Destiny 2, unless the final shape is simply a black hole.
As new players, my girlfriend and I have finished Witch Queen and Lightfall and there was a very noticeable cut from Witch Queen to Lightfall. At the end of the Witch Queen campaign, we see Savathun's ghost disappearing and that was that, it was kind of left ambiguous. We then started Lightfall (as the game doesn't make it quite clear that there might have been cutscenes that we had to watch) and we were thrusted into the beginning cutscene, where we entered a ship, why we did, we were never explained until AFTER we were done with the Lightfall campaign, when we started watching some recaps on RUclips. Hell, we had no idea what seasonal content even was, because to us, we connected seasons to just the rewards you get in the director. Our quest menu is also filled with all manners of quests and it's really difficult to distinguish between main and side missions, although I guess that might be because all missions ARE main missions in a way.
I think another fundamental issue Destiny 2 has is that it does nothing to tell you that there is more story-relevant content to explore. The best example I can give is Final Fantasy 14, where the expansions are structured into basically 6 parts: First comes the expansion story, which is usually a long story arc with a connection to previous expansions. After you're done with that, you wait for and do the 5 patch stories, which are mandatory if you want to play the next expansion story. It requires you to play through the entirety of the story, yes, but it makes sure that you don't miss out on the important information that you need to stay attached to the story. Additional content like raids can expand the sides of the story but they don't contain content that you NEED to know for the story.
As a contrast, Destiny 2 seemingly allows you to do any expansion story whenever you like (so far as it is still accessible) and even then, it is only the main story, no seasonal story content (which apparently often contains important story information). Coming out of Witch Queen, since I was used to Final Fantasy, I never bothered checking if there even WAS anything and now that we are done with Lightfall and are about to start the Season of the Wish story, looking back to find something is gonna cause nothing but confusion because the story would be so disjointed. We still love Destiny 2 and personally, I didn't think the Lightfall story was so bad. Yes, Witch Queen was VERY compelling (although a bit confusing at first, since we started into it having no idea what's going on), but Lightfall has its moments.
Lastly, it's a little rude that the rest of the seasonal content for Lightfall is locked behind a paywall, considering we already paid for the expansion (why are we supposed to pay extra for being late to the party?) but in the grand scheme of things, this is just how it is. We won't pay money for the annual pass (nor will we for The Final Shape, given that the expansion + pass is 99€ per person, a price that you can buy almost 2 triple A games for!) so we will just play the seasonal content as it unlocks to keep on track. I wouldn't be opposed to instead pay monthlies for access to the game, if it entailed access to the past seasons of each expansion I own (similarly to Final Fantasy, where you pay a monthly + buy expansions and in turn get permanent access to everything) but I can see how some players wouldn't like that, it IS just my opinion though.
As someone who started playing just about a month before witch queen was released, my friend who was teaching me and joining me along for the ride, helping me RUSH through the key elements of Tangled shore and Forsaken before it's removal whilst also catching up on the story that I could to prepare for Witch queen release. If it was not for him I would have had just about 0 clue about what was going on and even with his help I had to get a lot of what I was experiencing explained to me by him, I was still sort of lost. He informed me of your RUclips channel and that's where I've found most of my knowledge about a game I wish I could experience the whole story of.
Whilst I do love your videos and appreciate that they dive a lot deeper into it then I would on my own, I still wish I could've been there to play the story myself, and then watch your videos and it not all being new information to me. I feel somewhat punished for not finding the game earlier and therefore missing key elements of the story, and in a good game you should not have to watch RUclips videos to even know the story, it's something you should watch because you wanted to dive deeper into it. Now I don't think Destiny is a bad game, I actually fell in love for the first time in a game that was shooter and that was sci-fi, whilst previously never been able to really stick with any similar game before. Destiny opened me up to shooting games in general a lot more.
I saw a brief story of Cayde and he was instantly my favorite character and watching him die I bought all the expansions because I was going to avenge him. However a lot of his story I was forced to catch up on through RUclips. I have had so much fun playing Destiny with my friends but this last year has really just drained my motivation, it has sprouted from time to time but ultimately, I NEED Final shape to be a goddamn bombshell of a DLC and I WANT it to be.
Thank you for the videos you create, you've helped me be part of this story more than Destiny did, keep up the good work and hopefully, the next expansion will give you loads of good lore to cover.
I like the idea of the long recap at the beginning of TFS but also have a section in triumphs to watch all the cutscenes from the prior seasons so you can get a full recap of that season in about 5 minutes per montage
As someone who was dropped at the very end of Shadowkeep, basically the beginning of beyond light. Trying to piece together what happened to even start this was extremely difficulty and to this day I have no idea and simultaneously trying to figure out what is so important about the darkeness, who is the exo stranger, why did we exactly need the darkness, how did we know variks before this and so on and so forth. It was honesty too much and half way through I just kinda stopped retaining the info and just kept going to where the story took me. Only now when the season when Saint 14 helped the Fallen I tried again to understand and then i took a long break from D2 just to come back at witch queen and to this day my confusion continues with me trying to cram everything from defiance to now and it sucks honesty because the story looks intresting but with no in game way to figure it out, it just makes it tedious.
I just recently found out you can play the opening mission of Forsaken. It rallied me and gave me a decent bit of nostalgia. If Bungie decided to add a whole section that involved 1 or 2 missions from previous campaigns with Ikora doing a narrative bit they’d win so many players back. Do I want to play the whole campaign? Not really, but the core missions? I’d love to fight Gaul again on the traveler, or the city mission right before? That was one of the most entertaining missions!
I’d love to see bungie implement a master chef collection style dlc system where the player can pick and choose what seasons or even expansions are actually installed(in terms of things like the story missions not the gear). I know this would be difficult to build but I personally think it would be worth it
I left off at the end of season of arrival after being with the game since D1. Recently booting up D1, I remember how well they handled the story when you created new characters. In the lead up to Destiny 2 I would delete characters just so I can play it again, it wasn’t the best option but it made a difference and being able to relive some of my favorite moments was huge.
Coming back during season of defiance I was disoriented. It wasn’t until recently after searching that I found Evaze’s timeline video. Four and a half hours of Destiny lore from the red war to lightfall. The lore has always been my favorite part of the game and the work you, evaze, & myelin do to bring it forward is invaluable and appreciated even if I wish their was a more active way to engage with the story bits.
While I do understand the points being made, I do have to say that someone also needs to be there in order to experience the story. If you skipped the entirety of Lightfall (I did) then you cant complain about those stories not being in the game after they are removed for new stuff. Thats how it works in 90% of the games out there. Best option would probably be to either have some form of archive where the cutscenes are saved with some form of summary for the events that happened in each season. But removing the content itself is necessary otherwise your game will become too big quite quickly.
I had originally thought the DCV was going to be a separate installation for the content removed from the "current game" if I remember correctly, that was how it was advertised, and it solves the major issues on space size, and content gaps
12-24 guardians vs. world boss, maybe once a day or once every 2 days. full armor and ALL weapons for each boss, exotic weapon is boss weapon.
I think a major thing Bungie could implement, is a cutscene library similar to games like RE4 and such, and maybe include a brief description of what happened between scenes.
I’m not sure how many dev hours that would take, but having that in game would be a major win for the more casual players
I remember when I first played destiny 4 years ago, and the amount of story I had to catch up on and features of the universe I had to understand was immense. I can't even begin to imagine the quanitity of narrative that they need to go through to even BEGIN to comprehend what is going on and why
I always wondered why Bungie didn't let some missions from vanilla D2 and the other expansions in the game. Like after the "Eyes up guardian"-tutorial, you come to the city and get introduced to various characters like Zavala, Ikora and Cayde and the cabals via the first red war mission. After loosing your light you have the experience that your power comes somehow from the traveler. Then you play the mission, arrive at the farm and do 3 or 4 missions from red war. Last one would be fighting Ghaul. Everything else is just mentioned and was done by other guardians. Then you visit Osiris biggest fan on mercury to see if he is OK. Fighting some Vex to get access. You get the information that he is fine to Ikora which is like" Ah yeah...anyway...Osiris needs help. Then again 3 or 4 missions from the "Curse of Osiris" DLC which introduces Osiris, Sagira and the Vex. Back in the Tower Ana Bray contacts you to meet with her and you fall instantly in love with her...I mean uhm... you do some missions from the "Warmind" DLC and get introduced to Rasputin and the Hive. Then comes the introducion of the drifter and some of his story arc, explaining who he is where he was and so on bringin the darkness as a weapon into play. And of course Gambit. Lot's and lot's of Gambit! The Forsaken would then be the introduction of the Awoken,Mara, Crow, the Reef, Spider and Riven / Ahamkara plus the Scorn. After that, Shadowkeep, with Eris and the story about the moon the pyramid, connection to the darkness! Then some bunker missions witnessing the arrival of the pyramid ships. Some Quests for Asher Mir, Sloan, Ana and Vance and then finally the arrival with Svathuns intervention. And so on, you see the pattern. That would be the best for new players imo.
I think extending the timeline to back before destiny 2 to see events from d1 would be nice. And having a recap for major events in a cutscene form for each season to catch players up on the basics of the story and previous events. Can have it so for each year there’s a cutscene explaining and the events that happened and everything. I dunno, just something easy and simple would be nice for the new lights.
Byf the cutscene of the origins of the Witness is staying, Bungie has said that, Veil Containment is staying (they do need to move the node for it though) also “only Lightfall” buddy Shadowkeep, The Witch Queen and Beyond Light will also be there
“Guardian, we finally found a way into the traveler!…. It’s behind a $70 paywall
I think a fun way to recap everything would be a triple va cutscene going over everything important from destiny, swapping between the voices of Ikora, Zavala, and Cayde, leading into the cutscene of Ikora meeting Cayde in the pale heart we've seen as part of the trailers.
I know my friend group has said this and is kinda wide spread in the community that had been talked about since the season leading to the light fall is there at least needs to be a well put together cinematic of all major events and info leading up to a expansion so when a new player or even a veteran who took a brake can watch and be caught up almost like a tv show when they do the “previously on (insert tv show here)” idk why all live service story games haven’t made that mandatory!!
I has this same issue when I came back to the game and tons of things were changed, like I never saw the revival of the traveler or many key points
New lights have had an issue knowing what is going on since Beyond light because the onboarding experience in game is remarkably bad. The fact that friends of mine ask if it is worth getting into destiny again and my response is usually "When did you stop playing?" cannot be healthy. However I would argue that the need for final shape to have context may not be accurate as we do not know what the next saga looks like and it may be a soft reset story wise allowing a fresh entry point. If that is how bungie resolves the issue however I feel like it would be a worse solution than leaving the context available in some form.
I felt the same problem, and dissatisfaction when I picked up the game again.
Context: I had played Destiny for a few years, back when Forsaken was the expansion. I played all the way up through Shadowkeep, to the season of the Splicer in Beyond Light, but never reached the end of it. I had quit Destiny 2 because I started seeing it as a bit of a sickness (for me). You clock/log in, do your chores. Every day, weekly tasks, then seasonal months-long tasks. I realized it was starting to be a problem and I decided no more. I eventually came back to play with friends, who've since been not able to play with me.
But when I returned, just a couple months ago now, I got Lightfall and Witch Queen alone with some of the leftover Silver I had. It came with Season of the Wish, but I had no access to the other content. Some key things I noticed when I started playing again: Uldren Sov knows who he is; Mara Sov is here again; there's this Witness creature thing; there are these Tormentors who are here; Calus is back; Rasputin is gone; there are a whole bunch of not-Rasputins; Ana Brey is alive; Elsie Brey is hanging around; Sloane is alive; Titan's here again (kind of); Mars is here again (kind of); Osiris was cake the whole time (a lie); Eramis is alive; Savathuun is alive; Crota's not dead anymore; Oryx is not dead anymore!... those last two are just confusions of why the hell two D1 raids are here and what they have to do with the story right now.
As you can see, these are all things that happened... *_outside of campaign events!_* I sat there confused and upset that there was no way for me to gain the answers to missing context. I was pushed into getting the Lightfall Annual Pass, which _did_ allow me to play those missing seasons... *_of this year alone._* I continue to see the predatory nature of suckering players into wanting story, and then only giving it to them one spoonful at a time. I'm honestly ashamed of myself for having returned to this game. I feel like an addict who's slipped.
As for the story and narrative right now, I'm kinda sick that there's never any acknowledgment of our past feats. Nothing ever acknowledges, save for Drifter's comedic jab at the end of a Gambit match, that we've killed a Wyrm God who attempted to eat/kill Rasputin. We killed the Hive Taken Godking. We killed the Hive Witch Goddess. We killed a reality-bending Dragon Goddess. We are literal deity-slayers... and the story has this--aggravating tendency to just forget it.
It's like the writers are counting on no one remembering anything in the past. As are the execs and devs. They are hoping no one can maintain an attention span. Same reason the D1 raids are back... same reason you're only given important context with the *season*... money.
tl;dr: scumbag Bungo. "we don't want FOMO" >> is nothing but FOMO
I think that the first one showing cinematic might already be happening in the way of old stuff being in the traveler meaning they can retell how we got here in the story of final shape
Said this to my buddy the other day. A cutscene leading up to final shape when it begins would be great for new lights to understand the story so far!
It is like reading a book, and the pages burn away after they are read. It really is sad to know that it is all gone.
Watching this video made me realise how much I didn't even know I missed in terms of the story, being a player that for the past few years played the expansion and the season at that time and maybe dipping my toes in for the other three seasons of the year, some more than others, but never fully completing the entire season as it released, I have missed so many little things from the story which has added up to be a massive blank space in my knowledge for this game
I remember spending 2 weeks replaying the story from the beginning of Destiny 1 through after Forsaken. I streamed it. Didn't get a lot of viewers, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a dirty shame no one can experience that now. I wish I had recorded them, and saved them to a DVDr.
im hoping that final shape will make me as immersed in Destiny as I was during the Witch Queen year. During Witch Queen, even though I only brought one expansion, Beyond Light during Witch Queen because i saw stasis and thought it looked cool and I wanted something more to do since I found the intro quests to be fun enough. To put it short, I have very fond memories of literally faking being sick for a full week of school just so I could play Beyond Light on all characters and unlock everything in just a week. Most fun i've ever had gaming. Within a few months I had 300 hours if not more in game because it was just THAT GAME for me, like how you probably couldn't stop playing Minecraft as a kid (Or whenever you first found it, wish I was born earlier to have experienced the alpha days).
Destiny has a very special place in my heart because of this, and every time i've loaded on to Europa the amount of nostalgia I get is unreal. The feeling of being a hero in a universe that seemed doomed and on its last legs was an unreal experience for me. So if anyone from Bungie's D2 team somehow sees this, please bring back that "miracle game" that I found 2 years ago.
Brother, this is so true. I've been a Destiny player since the release of Destiny 1. When my wife started playing Destiny (Witch Queen) she had no clue what was what. It took days of explaining the whole "story so far" in order for her to understand what was happening and what was at stake. I had to show her The Red War on RUclips. Hot take: looking back at it The Red War was very underrated.
As someone who still counts himself as a New Light (Started during Witch Queen on Stadia and continued on through Lightfall on Xbox)
Destiny and the Community are the reasons I didn't start earlier.
I came to the States during the Launch of D2 and all through out it I was repelled by the Community saying it either sucked, or was mah at best.
So I waited, and every time I poked my head in, I was shoved back out by negative comments or more people telling me to wait.
Now, 2022 comes around, Witch Queen ads are everywhere and I was just gifted 6 months of Stadia from a RUclips Red promotion. And I took that opportunity to try D2 for myself since it's Free to Play, and I don't have anything to lose at this point.
And I can say I regret trying it sooner.
While I'm glad the game i came to was in a better state outwardly then I thought, I'm still seething over the fact so much content that I've been seeing for years turned to vapour, and now we're left looking at less than 40% of the total content that's been in the game, with a lot of near empty shells in places.
From that alone I can say how hard it is to want to spend money or care about the game in places, because there's not the same attachment to the series other people have developed through the rough and great times.
And The Final Shape looks to be the WORST place from anyone to start, regardless of anything Bungie can do in a year or two of development time.
The series is on the life support of what players it has and the few new players it'll get from the DLC., and I can't find that sad because while I enjoy it, I still don't care that much about it from what I've gotten out of it so far.
I would LOVE even as a mid way player (between veteran and newlight: I joined back during shadow keep, but had played a bit of D1 in the early days) to have a set of missions/strikes/cut sense that explain everything up to the Final Shape. I can take my current character in watch the sense to get reminded of stuff and be ready to go right away.
But if Make a new character/account and I want to play completely new, I should be introduced to the world and story in the same way and have the option of playing some of the old content PvE wise to get the story so I can jump into the final shape missions/cut sense and have a good understanding like vets would.
I’ve actively played all these seasons, and I still don’t really know what’s going on, or how things are happening.
The infinite forest dissappearing could easily be fixed with saint 14 doing the halloween event, his monster story fits there perfectly as well as the point of views from the fallen.
Osiris could help simulate it, saint could do the story beats with a mission telling some of the history or hell maybe even saint 14 sitting in the farm telling ghost stories about the infinite forest
110% agree on your take Byff. I still couldn’t get over the thought that most of us vet guardians bought D1 and STILL have the content. We can revisit it anytime. But D2, I understand it can be difficult for the devs but we bought their game, dlcs and seasons but most of it have been removed. Even WoW still has their old content with them. I do hope one day they’ll bring it back (maybe as DLC) or someway for the benefit of long time Destiny players and new ones.
Lightfall fell so short for me that I've not even been convinced to play the seasonal content, especially with how many of the gameplay loops for season's have felt uninteresting and painfully grindy in years prior; I came back to Lightfall because I've been a fan of the Destiny story for ages, and am somewhat saddened I've not been motivated to experience these seasonal story beats because the game feels like such a chore to keep up with. It's to the point now that I honestly don't know if I'll bother to play through Final Shape first hand with how bungled things have been for the Lightfall expansion, unless there's some big efforts to take steps like suggested in the video to either keep some seasonal portions of content or provide a notable summary of the seasonal content that took place over the roughly year and a half that Lightfall ran.
Thank you Byf, for bringing these points to light; I hope something positive can come from these sort of dialogues, but won't hold my breath with the history from Bungie's exec team. Either way, I appreciate this effort to try and incite change for the better, for the community as a whole.
In my opinion, here is a way they could meet us halfway - cinematic flashback cutscenes. For each DLC and its subsequent seasons, create a cinematic cutscene similar to a movie trailer which is 3 to 4 minutes long, and includes your guardian in their current gear as it would in any other cutscene. Create a place on the galaxy map where you can access a timeline which will include a summary of each DLC and it seasons to go along with these cutscenes. It's not the same as being able to keep access to all the content, but I would consider it a fair compromise that could catch people up on what has happened in the past while inserting their guardian as they appear now into those moments.