News Summary:
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It’s not drastic on all fronts: Neomuna, Lightfall’s new location, is still what Bungie calls a “triple bubble zone,” putting its size on par with Europa or World of Throne. So it’s not particularly big from what I understand and we’ll probably see most of the place by the end of the challenging season. One thing I appreciate about Destiny 2’s newer locations, though, is the depth of these labyrinthine worlds. Neomuna’s land area seems relatively small compared to Nessus or EDZ, but hopefully we’ll see the city scene use its height to create more volume in places you can walk through and explore Break: a perfect add-on to the new Strand subclass specifically for Lightfall. I remember a thought I would share with my friends at the start of Destiny 2, as we walked from Trostland through ruined buildings, “Don’t you want us to be able to get in there?”
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Normally, Destiny 2’s in-game limbo eases a bit as we learn more about the next expansion, and this week, details about Lightfall are coming in massive thanks to a Bungie preview. brand new vidoc that GameSpot has been invited to join. Watching the vidoc at the preview event and the live gameplay demo of the first mission, a thought popped into my head: we get to see the game evolve right in front of our eyes again.
We haven’t finished Neomuna yet, but we’ve seen a number of different scenic locations thanks to the B-roll footage provided by Bungie and it’s truly breathtaking. I can’t fully understand the retro-arcade aesthetic, and while I’m not sure, I feel that while not every building in Neptune’s Hidden Metropolis can be explored floor by floor, it will. there’s always a lot of verticality in geography, and that’s interesting.
Neomuna and the new Lightfall campaign will take center stage when the expansion rolls out, but there are plenty of other notable additions, including an improved new player experience, changes to weapon crafting, economy and change the quality of life. This isn’t just another experience bundled with a smaller expansion release; they laid the groundwork for The Final Shape and ultimately the next chapter of Destiny after the story of Light and Shadow. The newly overhauled player experience in Guardian Rank is likely to be the biggest change for the future of Destiny 2. For now, new players are figuring out how to navigate the game on their own. The biggest question is still “What am I doing? Where am I going?” and it really doesn’t help that if any new players first join mid-season, they don’t even have a chance to find themselves in orbit but are immediately dropped into the cutscenes and seasonal quests without a chance to prepare.
