Destiny 2 Season of the Lost will need more content to avoid losing players

Destiny 2’s latest season, Season of the Lost, is here – but will it keep players satiated until the Witch Queen?

Despite traditionally revealing Destiny 2 seasons sometime before release, Bungie tied the Season of the Lost reveal (formerly known as Season 15) to its Witch Queen event.

• Destiny 2: Where is Xur this week?

With few details revealed prior to the season’s start date on August 24, there was genuine excitement about this season – and much of it was justified if the first two weeks are anything to go by.

Spoilers ahead for the start of Season of the Lost – you’ve been warned.

Bungie’s writing is back to its best

With Season of the Splicer culminating with confirmation that something was going on with Osiris, it was refreshing to see Season of the Lost essentially open with the reveal that yes, Osiris has been Savathun in disguise for quite some time. Hearing Saint-14’s reaction felt genuine, despite him often feeling comically over-the-top last season.

In fact, it led to another one of Destiny 2’s excellent “storyboard” style cutscenes. Check it out below:

As Savathun so excellently puts it when speaking to Crow, she’s been Osiris as long as he’s known him, and hearing the former Prince Uldren question all of the life lessons (and dead Ghost collecting) that “Osiris” made him do has been one of the more subtle high-notes of the season so far.

• Read More: Everything we know about The Witch Queen

Speaking of our floppy-haired Crow, he’s been bought back into the fold after having relatively little to do last season only to be met with Queen Mara – his sister. I still think their relationship borders on being a bit creepy at times, but I’m curious to see if Mara can unearth any of Crow’s memories of his life before.

Reach for the stars

As with Override and Expunge last season, we’ve got a pair of new activities this time around – Astral Alignment and the Shattered Realm, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag here.

Firstly, Astral Alignment is nice, but the main boon is that it’s not simply depositing items into a central repository as we’ve been doing pretty much some variation of since Forsaken came out.

There’s also the fact that it’s set in the Dreaming City, which in my mind remains one of Destiny 2’s most beautiful locales. I mean, just look at it, it’s like high fantasy and sci-fi had a gorgeous, lilac-tinged baby.

As lovely as it is, though, the soft-lock bug certainly made it feel like players were overstaying their welcome – but it appears to have been fixed in the latest patch.

The Shattered Realm, though, I’m much more torn about. On the one hand, I love that each week seems to be giving us a small open-world hub full of secrets. On the other, roaming the pitch-black areas of the map doesn’t feel as exciting when we’ve done it countless times in strikes like The Corrupted, only now there’s an irritating “slow” debuff in certain areas. Here’s hoping an upgrade to the Wayfinder’s compass will alleviate that somewhat.

Stasis right there

While Stasis has, undoubtedly, been contentious among the community, the new Stasis weapons are pretty great. The hand cannon, Vulpecula, is a particular highlight, and Fractethyst (a shotgun), isn’t bad either.

Sadly, though, Lorentz Driver (the new Season Pass weapon), feels a little… dull? Following on from Ticuu’s Divination and Cryosthesia, both of which had pretty unusual exotic properties, it’s a little on the tame side – it marks enemies behind obstacles, and can cause Void implosions.

Maybe I’ll grow to love it (with the catalyst), but at present, the best thing about it is the sound effect it makes.

Where we’re going, we don’t need roadmaps

The big question mark hanging over the Season of the Lost is in its ability to mix things up. The update marks an unprecedented six-month season that will run until the Witch Queen, after all.

With prior seasons running out of steam with a few weeks to go, here’s hoping Bungie has enough up its sleeve. I wonder if the continued lack of the developer’s traditional roadmap for the season is an indication that there are surprises in store, while the Bungie 30th Anniversary pack will certainly add more content for those that are happy to pay for it.

Still some questions, then, but as long as Bungie keeps leaning into its characters and its underused locales, I think there are exciting days ahead.