#giving us such a beautiful environment like neomuna and dropping the black fleet in the sky is so much more powerful

[thefirstknife]

What are your thoughts on the critisism that Neomuna, and more specifically cloudstriders, feel "out of place", or the feeling some have that Lightfall has a whole has thematically defied their expecations in a bad way? (insert that comparison of the key art from the BL reveal vs the current key art here.)

Really hard to critique any aspect of it currently before we know more and play it.

A lot of stuff in Destiny can feel really odd and out of place without any context! I remember similar doubt and questions about Lucent Hive for example. For any serious critique, I'll have to see the expansion first, learn more about Neomuna and Cloud Striders and see if their story fits and has something valuable to add to the setting.

So far, I don't think they're out of place. The ECHO ships and surviving human colonies outside of Earth have been seeded almost 3 years ago and I've quite literally accurately predicted how that specific lore is tied to Neomuna. I think it's a pretty cool way to tie in an older open-ended storyline with something new that they need for an expansion.

A story about "survivors of the Collapse" is pretty much a given, as that's something that we've always wondered about in the setting. Could some humans have escaped? Could they have survived? What would've happened if they did and how would've they developed if the Collapse hadn't stopped us? Going there and examining that story can give us valuable information about our past (Golden Age and speculation on what we could've achieved if it continued) and our fall (the Collapse, how it happened, what exactly happened, how to prevent it a second time). On top of that, it's giving us super cool scifi concepts about neo-human civilisations and advanced development through nanotechnology.

And yeah, the original key art was really striking; no colours, grim, very evocative with imagery of a Pyramid eclipsing the Traveler. It was of course simply just a base for the expansion. It was a placeholder. I've seen a lot of people saying that Bungie "robbed" us of something; they did not. They cannot rob us of something that never existed. Concept art is a really long process with millions of ideas being thrown around, especially placeholder concept art.

For what it's worth, from what we know about Lightfall, the base idea for the expansion is still the same. We are very much in deep trouble, especially if we're correct in our predictions that the Traveler is about to run and if the trailer's footage of a massive battle in Earth's orbit is anything to go by. Neomuna itself is under massive siege by a new disciple and the Witness itself. There are new enemies and enemy threats that we haven't seen for a long time acting up again (the Vex).

Is the expansion much more colourful in comparison with a black and white placeholder image? Yeah. But that doesn't remove the danger the system is in. I'm not sure what people expected. Destiny is not a super edgy setting of only doom and gloom. It certainly has a basis of incredibly terrible stuff going on, but it never presents it without a balance. Even in the Red War and Forsaken, things were still colourful and beautiful and had a lot of different vibes packed together.

To me, a massive fleet of Pyramid ships descending on colourful Neomuna is an incredibly powerful image with a really visceral theme of how nobody can successfully escape the Darkness forever. You can buy yourself time, but ultimately it will find you. I think that's a pretty doom and gloom theme. I feel like the only reason people aren't seeing it is because the original was black and white, while the current is colourful.

My only proper concern is that they're introducing a whole new aspect to the setting this late. Introducing it itself is not the issue as much as that we're 2 expansions (including Lightfall) until the end. There's still a lot of stuff to go through and solve and deal with so I'm not sure how wise it is to introduce a whole new set of characters and a setting of this scale. Of course, as with the rest of the question, we can't really fully make a judgement on that before we play.