Destiny 2: Lightfall Launches This Week, New Players Should Play After It Goes Live

Destiny 2’s upcoming expansion is a significant release for the series as it kicks off the long-standing light and darkness narrative players have known for years. The Traveler is now forced to face off against The Witness and Calus’ Cabal army, and we are in the middle of it all as the Guardians face their toughest adversary yet. 

All of the game’s lore so far has been leading up to this moment. This confrontation with The Witness and the Traveler leading up to next year’s Final Shape expansion is said to conclude the main story of the series, shifting Destiny 2 in a new direction. 

Play Destiny 2 for the first time after Lighfall’s release

It’s natural for new players to be eager to jump in hoping to catch up and take in everything the game has on offer to prepare for the upcoming expansion, but as a player that’s been playing the game for years, I strongly recommend you wait until after the Lightfall expansion has released as starting as early as now will just make things confusing and intimidating. 

Why? Destiny 2 just doesn’t have a good new-player experience, a problem that’s been around for years, and jumping in at the tail-end of the current season will make things worse. If you go online now with New Light guiding you – the game’s current new player experience – you’ll be thrown at the deep end of the pool and bombarded with various mechanics. After the initial introduction, you’ll likely be greeted with cutscenes that will make your head spin as the storytelling is mainly centered around Season of the Seraph, the current season that ends the moment Lightfall goes live. 

Not worth the hassle.

So what do you do until then? If lore is important to you, it’s best to take in the game’s story through videos from content creators. Yes, it’s that bad that the best advice I can give you is to watch YouTube videos. Old content has been removed from the game, making Destiny 2 at its current state not capable of keeping you up to speed in-game lore-wise. Players can no longer play the initial Destiny 2 campaign The Red War, DLCs Warmind, Curse of Osiris, and even the Forsaken expansion, one of my personal favorites.

I suggest YouTuber Evaze, a content creator that has covered the whole story before and has recently released an updated video in preparation for Lightfall’s release. It’s over 4 hours long, so yeah, there’s a lot to go through.

If you’re caught up and assuming Lightfall is now live, the new Guardian Ranks system should be up and available for all players.

Guardian Ranks will be the new player experience when Lightfall goes live

The goal of the new Guardian Ranks system is to make the new player experience more streamlined and smooth for any player new to the genre and those returning to the game. Think of it as a guide to introduce you to the game’s many systems and activities, letting players focus on a couple of things, then slowly introducing more as you go up in ranks. There will be 11 ranks when Lightfall goes live with Rank one to five designed to introduce the basics of the game, all the way to 11, which highlights the most difficult activities found in the game. Veterans and those that completed New Light (current new player experience) will naturally skip the starting ranks.

The one thing that’s uncertain is how much clearer will it be for a new player with no knowledge of the game. Will there be enough lore injected in the first five ranks of Guardian Ranks to get you up to speed? We’ll have to wait and see, which is why I mentioned watching videos first to catch up, just in case.

Destiny 2: Lightfall launches on February 28 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.

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