Destiny 2 Lightfall has had a pretty abysmal reception from players, with a Mostly Negative rating on Steam that’s still growing. Some fans say it feels like a filler DLC, something that a prominent Destiny 2 leaker has also been talking about, suggesting that Lightfall was initially meant to be a part of The Final Shape expansion.
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The Lightfall expansion for Destiny 2 was released this week, taking players to a new location on Neptune, Neomuna. There, players battle the combined forces of The Witness and Calus’ Shadow Legion, acquiring the new Strand Subclass to enable them to fight back against these forces of darkness. However, despite a glut of CGI cutscenes, which fans do love about the DLC, the actual content in Lightfall doesn’t feel as substantial as past major expansions.
Destiny 2 leaker Destiny Leaks has weighed in with a bombshell only a few days into Lightfall’s existence. Stating that what Lightfall was originally intended to be is now The Final Shape expansion, set to release in 2024. The Lightfall we’re playing now, they say, is filler content built partly from what The Witch Queen was meant to be and what The Final Shape will be.
Destiny Leaks’ claims are unsubstantiated, but there is some evidence that lines up with what they’re saying. For example, they say that Bungie didn’t originally plan on releasing Lightfall and another DLC after that within this story arc. In June 2020, as reported by Polygon, Bungie announced the future of Destiny 2 up to the Lightfall expansion. This was before the pandemic and The Witch Queen’s delay, so Lightfall was still penned in for 2022. One year later, as covered by MP1ST, Bungie announced The Final Shape and Season of the Lost.
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Somewhere within that year, Bungie clearly decided it needed an additional expansion to end the Saga of Light and Dark, but this might have been a ploy to give the developer more time to complete the expansion that was Lightfall. Destiny Leaks adds that Strand, Lightfall’s new Subclass, was originally intended for The Witch Queen. This would make sense, given the themes of exploring consciousness in that expansion, as well as the iconic green color.
Finally, the jarring shift of tone between The Witch Queen’s dark fantasy sci-fi and Lightfall’s hyper-futuristic 80s sci-fi doesn’t sit right with some fans. It feels as though there’s a chapter between the expansions that’s missing. We’ll likely never know the truth of whether Lightfall is a filler expansion and the original Lightfall became The Final Shape, but there are certainly threads that look like they’re leading that way for us to pull on.
