The grand finale of Destiny 2's Season of Defiance hasn't managed to entertain Bungie's player base, it would appear. After the big yearly Lightfall DLC failed to deliver an engaging narrative hook and mishandled some of its most critical elements, many players turned to the ongoing seasonal offerings instead, which seemed fairly promising at the time.
In fact, some believed that Destiny 2's Defiance could carry Lightfall forward and maintain solid momentum as the story progresses, but the final mission of the Season seems to have disappointed a significant number of players. After some downtime brought about by the game's mid-season balancing patch, players have taken to Destiny's official subreddit to share their thoughts on Defiance's final showdown.
Many Destiny 2 fans feel like the Season of Defiance has ended up being filler content. A Reddit thread posted by VectorTheSpecter is trending as one of the most popular topics on the biggest Destiny subreddit, with hundreds of upvotes and a huge number of other users echoing this sentiment. While the final mission certainly has merit and provides a fun selection of encounters for players to burn through, it doesn't capitalize on the Season's biggest narrative development, which is ostensibly the death of a fan-favorite member of the Vanguard. Players feel that the mission is underwhelming, highlighting specifically the fact that Devrim takes down the current Cabal Shadow Legion commander off-screen.
While there have been rumors that Destiny 2: Lightfall is just filler as Bungie prepares to release the long-awaited Final Shape DLC, the Season of Defiance has mostly avoided such critique so far. Still, with a substantial part of the community feeling that its final mission failed to deliver, it seems that Bungie missed the mark on multiple fronts this time around.
Naturally, it's worth pointing out that some of the things that have only been hinted at with Season of Defiance lore are bound to be explained later down the line. For example, there's been no context provided as to why the Shadow Legion has been kidnapping civilians, which is a fairly important narrative beat. Considering some of Destiny 2's classic Cabal lore, it's possible that something is indeed brewing in the background.
One of the better developments that took place as part of the Season of Defiance is the release of Bungie's Destiny 2 cutscene archive YouTube channel. This channel gives players a solid look at how the seasonal story has been progressing over the past couple of years, making it way easier for newcomers to jump into the fray. It's still not ideal, of course, but it's an improvement nonetheless.
Destiny 2 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.