Destiny 2’s Into The Light is the redemption Bungie needed ahead of The Final Shape

The mini-expansion of Into The Light is exactly the redemption arc Bungie needed to win Guardians’ favor before the launch of The Final Shape.

Destiny 2 has, to be blunt, had some of the most ups and downs of any gaming series in the live-service era. The prolific looter shooter sequel from Bungie started out in a fairly rough spot with The Red War, and only really made a comeback in Forsaken. Since that time we’ve gone through several periods of greatness (The Witch Queen) and lackluster (Lightfall) experiences that have shaped the opinions of players along the way.

Into The Light is the latest mini-expansion that leads up to the ultimate finale of Destiny 2. Introducing new content like Onslaught, a new zone, and the reissuing of fan-favorite weapons and missions, the devs are pulling out all the stops to entice players back before one last hurrah.

And it’s done a good job of doing just that, essentially reminding players why they play the looter shooter in the first place.

Firstly Onslaught as a new mode is easily one of the better seasonal additions in recent years, striking a balance between difficulty and replayability, letting you farm the re-released weapons. Then there are also the harder difficulties, which offer even more rewards including Adept weapons and more.

The return of Zero Hour and Whisper of the Worm missions are also a welcome sight in the mini-expansion, letting older players revisit and discover their secrets while letting new Guardians have a go at tackling a few new twists.

All of this content comes with great loot as well, with randomly rolled reissued weapons, and craftable exotics on offer. This brings a bunch of incentives to farm the content even if you already own a form of these weapons before Into The Light.

The Hall of Champions is also a fantastic little zone that features its own reputation system that lets you unlock various rewards as you progress and also lets you attune to a certain weapon which lets you farm better. This is clearly Bungie showing the players that they know what players want, and can also give it to them.

According to the player count across several platforms like Steam and Xbox, players have returned for this last hurrah before The Final Shape launches, with the title re-entering the top 10 most played on Xbox.

Steam showed similar levels of success, with the game spiking in player count upon release, and now hovering between 50-100k concurrent players, doubling the previous stats. It’s a mini-renaissance in light of a mini content drop, but one that means far more than its actual scope. With The Final Shape looming, restoring faith throughout the Destiny 2 community has been paramount. Now, all eyes lay on Bungie sticking the landing with arguably its most important release ever.