Seasonal endings have tended to be anti-climactic in Future 2. That was not the case with Season of the Seraph, which simply added a brand new season finale mission that’s the perfect the loot shooter’s had because it pivoted from DLC expansions to quarterly updates. The mission itself is cinematic and difficult, whereas the ending cutscene has gamers racing to unravel its main implications for Lightfall.
With two weeks earlier than that enlargement goes dwell, on Tuesday Bungie added a brand new story mission known as Abhorrent Crucial, accessible to all gamers whether or not they’re caught up on their seasonal quest log or not. “Return to Seraph Station to forestall the Warsat community from firing on the Traveler,” the outline reads. It caps your energy stage at 1350, which means all gamers can be on equal footing, and the Legendary Problem means enemies are closely shielded and extra aggressive. I obtained my ass kicked far more than I used to be anticipating and had a blast the entire time.
Spoiler Warning: It is best to go play Abhorrent Crucial earlier than studying additional. Ideally you’d additionally full the entire Seraph story missions main as much as it, however that may be a chore and life is brief. On the very least it’s best to watch the cutscene for your self.
The mission has you infiltrate the Seraph area station mid-bombardment as Eramis makes an attempt to make use of its Warsats to explode the Traveller. A platforming part with Earth within the background finally offers strategy to two showdowns, first with Eramis and later with an agent of Hive struggle god Xivu Arath. In-between you get to look at a newly rebuilt Rasputin’s heavy body mechs obliterate the legion of enemies in your path. The ultimate encounter finally ends up being a three-stage battle that nearly seems like an old-school Future boss in the way it requires you to study and adapt to which enemies spawn the place somewhat than attempting to brute-force your method by the encounter.
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Your reward for sticking it out is a cutscene that’s not as novel as Future 2’s 2020 try at a Fortnite-style dwell occasion, however has a a lot greater payoff. The Traveller, which has hung above Earth’s Final Metropolis relationship again to 2014, retreats into area simply as Rasputin manages to self-destruct, blowing up the Warsats earlier than they will hearth. Eramis wonders why it didn’t go away. Cosmic unhealthy man The Witness says it was as a result of it had nowhere else to run. In the meantime, a pre-recorded message from Rasputin reveals {that a} highly effective artifact is hidden on Neptune. Most significantly, the cutscene ends with The Traveller in the very same place over Earth because it seems on the unique Future promo artwork over eight years in the past. See? The ten-year plan was not a lie.
For anybody totally overwhelmed by Future 2’s zig-zagging area opera, the large reveals had been that Eramis is working instantly for The Witness, The Traveller is on the transfer however didn’t utterly abandon humanity, and the facility to forestall the second collapse resides on Neptune, the brand new fundamental location for Lightfall. Rasputin says he didn’t know this prior to now as a result of it was deleted from his reminiscence banks, establishing some intrigue about who needed to maintain it hidden, and why. Eramis is at a crossroads, nonetheless an agent of The Witness however unsuitable in her assumption that The Traveller would abandon humanity because it as soon as did her civilization. And with The Witness closing in, you’ll be able to lastly begin to really feel the sport constructing towards a showdown, in 2024’s The Closing Form, of all the pieces that’s occurred in Future up till this level.
It’s a really totally different feeling from how another current seasons ended. Future 2 has fallen right into a rut of late during which a brand new replace kicks off a number of weeks of recent story missions, adopted by a protracted pause, and culminating in a small mission and bits of dialogue that hardly ever really feel like a payoff for the months of grinding, not to mention like they’re slowly constructing towards one thing greater. That was positively the case final yr proper earlier than The Witch Queen arrived. Hopefully Season of the Seraph’s wonderful finale is an efficient omen for what gamers can count on from the remainder of Lightfall starting February 28.