The Destiny 2 lore community appears to have figured out some important elements of the Lightfall DLC's narrative after Bungie left them mostly unexplained. It's no secret that Destiny has always had trouble communicating its more ethereal features in gameplay and video format, relying instead on written lore to keep the story going.
Now that Destiny 2 has received its biggest content release of 2023, the game has once again drawn in a massive crowd of players both new and old. Given that the franchise often delves into deep metaphysics and unconventional storytelling, it's hardly surprising that its community would host a fairly significant number of lore buffs, and one of them has taken to explaining some of the key details that Bungie didn't conclusively touch upon.
After Destiny 2: Witch Queen's acclaimed storytelling delivered a satisfying balance between written lore and actual in-game story progression, Lightfall seemingly left many things up in the air, with the strange Veil artifact being the most problematic inclusion. While many players felt that the Veil wasn't adequately explained, Reddit user metroidpwner feels that the writers did, in fact, leave plenty of hints about its nature. For example, metroidpwner notes how many similarities are drawn between the Veil and the Traveler and how seemingly important linking the two was to the Witness. Metroidpwner's conclusion is that the Veil may be the core or soul of the Traveler, originally hidden on Neptune by Savathun to keep the Witness away during the first Collapse.
Considering how visually similar the design of the Veil is to what's been shown about the Destiny 2: Lightfall raid, upcoming endgame content should provide more context on the Veil, its nature, and its connection to the Traveler itself. In the interim, metroidpwner's summary of everything known so far has fostered plenty of discussion and theorycrafting already.
More information may yet be coming as part of Destiny 2's Season of Defiance, too, as it ties in directly with the Lightfall campaign. Namely, Season 20 sees players continue their war campaign against the Shadow Legion and the Witness, but this time on their own home turf. The obvious downside to this approach, however, is that the content found in Season of Defiance will end up getting removed upon the release of the next major DLC, The Final Shape, potentially leaving Lightfall inconclusive on its own.
As Destiny 2: Lightfall sets new records on Steam, a chunk of the community is already discovering some downsides to Bungie's latest batch of updates and changes, as well as some faults with the long-awaited Strand subclass. While these are bound to be alleviated in future updates, the matter of unresolved narrative developments may linger.
Destiny 2: Lightfall is out now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S