Crazy; it turns out that if you play a multiplayer game for long enough to realize that there's a pattern wherein its servers fumble on stability 99.7% of the time on day-one releases of both its expansions and seasons, and then act on that by not engaging with it on day one and instead queuing in a day or two afterwards, you get to experience the content you paid for normally and in the way that its developers intended! Unbelievable, I'm sure, but having tested this out myself, I can confirm - it is, in fact, a Thing.

Forgive the introductory snark, but I see that Mixed status and I know for a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fact that it's undeserved. One needs to get things off their chest before moving onto the meat of things. And speaking of—

This marks the first time that I have ever felt outright enamored with an expansion. It was an established fact toward the end of Lightfall that TFS was, off the bat, going to be an all-or-nothing deal. It had to land. It had to be sublime in its story, presentation, gameplay, sandbox, so on and so forth. It could slip up with a few minor mistakes, but otherwise, it needed to be perfect. To me—it is. My main critiques really just boil down to "parts of the campaign are pretty hard" but that makes sense because I was on Legendary, and "the big Dread guys tend to be annoying as hell" but Transcendence alleviates that for the most part, and Prismatic is what you should be utilizing throughout the whole campaign anyhow, so. Moot point on both. I can live with them. Beyond that; everything landed. Many goofy grins and a smattering of tears. No specifics, no details—experience it on your own time, and if possible, on solo. It's only right.

Grātiās for the good times over the last three years, Bungie. For as easy as it would be to default to smug condescension for all the misdeeds sprinkled in that span of time, the fact of the matter is that I ended up persistently coming back despite it all. There's some nobility in that, I'd say.

That outro could've used some more Paul McCartney, though, I'm not gonna lie.

Crazy; it turns out that if you play a multiplayer game for long enough to realize that there's a pattern wherein its servers fumble on stability 99.7% of the time on day-one releases of both its expansions and seasons, and then act on that by [i]not[/i] engaging with it on day one and instead queuing in a day or two afterwards, you get to experience the content you paid for [i]normally[/i] and in the way that its developers intended! Unbelievable, I'm sure, but having tested this out myself, I can confirm - it is, in fact, a Thing. Forgive the introductory snark, but I see that Mixed status and I know for a goddamn fact that it's undeserved. One needs to get things off their chest before moving onto the meat of things. And speaking of— This marks the first time that I have ever felt outright enamored with an expansion. It was an established fact toward the end of Lightfall that TFS was, off the bat, going to be an all-or-nothing deal. It [i]had[/i] to land. It [i][b]had[/b][/i] to be sublime in its story, presentation, gameplay, sandbox, so on and so forth. It could slip up with a [i]few[/i] minor mistakes, but otherwise, it needed to be perfect. To me—it is. My main critiques really just boil down to "parts of the campaign are pretty hard" but that makes sense because I was on Legendary, and "the big Dread guys tend to be annoying as hell" but Transcendence alleviates that for the most part, and Prismatic is what you [i]should[/i] be utilizing throughout the whole campaign anyhow, so. Moot point on both. I can live with them. Beyond that; everything landed. Many goofy grins and a smattering of tears. No specifics, no details—experience it on your own time, and if possible, on solo. It's only right. Grātiās for the good times over the last three years, Bungie. For as easy as it would be to default to smug condescension for all the misdeeds sprinkled in that span of time, the fact of the matter is that I ended up persistently coming back despite it all. There's some nobility in that, I'd say. [spoiler] That outro could've used some more Paul McCartney, though, I'm not gonna lie. [/spoiler]