This has probably been the toughest year in Destiny’s history, where in the post-Lightfall era playercounts and revenue are down, and Bungie has suffered layoffs and now lives in fear of further layoffs. But at least right now, in this moment, things are looking up just a bit.
A far cry from Bungie dropping a single trailer an hour before season launch, they have gone wall-to-wall with coverage for upcoming Into the Light content, which now includes the following, all of it for free:
- Onslaught, a new horde mode with a 10 wave playlist or 50 wave advanced version.
- 12 reprised classic Destiny 2 vaulted weapons with insane rolls (player complaints about timegating cause Bungie to mostly reverse course on that).
- The return of two of Destiny’s best missions ever, Zero Hour and Whisper, with craftable exotics and new secrets.
- Pantheon, a raid boss rush with escalating difficulty and great rewards.
- The PvP map pack, three new maps in new biomes (Neomuna, Europa and a Pyramid ship), more tightly focused than other recent new maps.
The presentation here has been excellent, three full hours of streams detailing all this, showing players exactly what they’ll be getting alongside gameplay and even detailed breakdowns of weapon rolls, the exact opposite of how they’ve been promoting seasons for years now.
But on top of that, the meat of the content has something for everyone. Onslaught feels like it can be a great onboarding mechanism for new players who just want to experience Destiny’s fun combat, but at higher levels, may offer a tough PvE challenge for veterans.
The boss rush is something the hardest core PvP players have been begging for, and they’re all very excited for its potential.
Three PvP maps added at the same time is something the game has not seen in years, and the maps look gorgeous and likely more well-designed than other recent ones. There are echoes of classic Bungie-era Halo maps in these.
I do recognize the complaints here. There is a good deal of “reused” content. Onslaught takes place on at least one old Crucible map rather than a new zone. The reprised weapons are ones that probably should not have been sunset in the first place, as weapon sunsetting was reversed shortly after (and some of these are even still in the game now). Zero Hour and Whisper also should have never been vaulted this long, or at all. Pantheon will technically be old raid bosses.
There is no disputing that sunsetting and content vaulting were some of the worst things Destiny has ever done and the game has been trying to claw content back ever since. But if they are going to do it, this feels like the way to do it, and the concepts here are great.
Obviously we do not know how any of this plays. Could Onslaught be boring? Could the PvP maps be bad? Maybe, but right now, everyone feels hopeful that Bungie got it right, and managed to make a ton of good content in a very short period of time to fill a gap ahead of The Final Shape, which Bungie also maintains is extremely good. Hopefully they’re right, and hopefully Into the Light is as good as it looks.
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