Last Call: Breaking down Forsaken's opening mission

Between getting bogged down with stepping on plates and defeating waves of enemies, Destiny manages to get quite a few memorable missions into its campaign and post-games.  Sometimes they range from really deep and esoteric secrets involving an ARG.  Other times, they're just really solidly designed combat sequences that are fun to run through.  Last Call, the opening mission in Forsaken, and final fight of Cayde-6, falls into the latter.  It presents an excellent way to kick-off an entire expansion's breadth of content.  It's worth breaking down all the elements that come together in order to make this sequence as explosive as it is.

Backstory

Jumping off the deep-end when it comes to story is a pretty bold choice.  New players to the Destiny universe, especially those that hadn't played the previous entry, may be at a loss for who Prince Uldren is, why he's killing Cayde-6, or even the retort from Cayde about his sister.  The one decent counterpoint to this is that marketing for the expansion has been spoiling this opening moment since E3 2018, giving fair-weather fans incentive to go seek out the backstory.  The short version:  Uldren sister seemingly sacrificed herself in an ineffective attack against a previous big-bad. Uldren, as former high royalty, has been stuck in the dregs of captivity since.  As far as player's can tell from the opening, this is either a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or something more personal.

The other player that we have on the scene is Petra Venj, the former Queen's devoted right hand (who just loves field work), calling upon you and Cayde to clear out this prison riot.  Even the location itself, Prison of Elders, is a place visited by players in Destiny's House of Wolves expansion.  While at the time, players only ever explored the arenas in the Prison, the action for this mission is instead designed around the winding cell blocks that seem to go on forever.  This is a really nice touch that helps to expand players ideas of what the location actually consists of.  A strike mission later in the game helps to bridge this experience more by having you connect the two areas, creating an effective piece of nostalgia.

When we get to how the actual story for this mission is told, Bungie has opted to use in medias res, and show the final moment's of Cayde's life before explaining how exactly this all came about.  The neat part is that this storytelling technique is recognized by the mission and is teased with scripted moments in the mission itself.  Multiple times throughout, you'll cross paths with Cayde in a harrowing moment that could potentially spell out his doom, only for him to escape at the last second through acts of sheer skill and luck.  You know at some point that the other shoe has to fall, but you don't know when or where.

Gameplay

The opening mission of any kind of expansion content has a tough job to complete:  It needs to not only be engaging and interesting content for veterans to sink their teeth into, but it also needs to serve as a springboard for lapsed and new players to get their feet wet with, especially if it's a player's first time playing. Forsaken manages to walk this tightrope act with impressive results, by leaning on some novel choices for how the mission is put together.

The location itself gets first credit.  While the design is effectively one long hallway, the space feels much larger to the high interior skyboxes that Bungie is so famous for, and the myriad of other cell blocks in the space.  There is very little room for the player to get lost, and instead, the constant pressure to push forward.  The setting also manages to inform enemy selection and design choice.  In this mission, you'll be facing off against four different factions, Fallen, Hive, Cabal, and the new Scorn.  It's worth noting that you'll rarely find missions in all of Destiny itself that contains more than two factions at a time, so this ends up being a real treat as far as enemy variety goes.  This enemy variety also serves as a direct comparison of how the new faction operates compared to the old.

The choice of having all of these enemy factions also makes sense for setting.  Prison of Elders is literally that: a prison, set-up by the Awoken and the former House of Judgment as an arena to perform trial by combat.  The factions rioting can even be identified by which cell blocks they belong to.  Better yet, the old Doom trick of having enemy factions fight each other presents the perfect opportunity for players to dictate how and when fights begin.  Lastly, there's a notorious lack of shielded enemies present in this mission, instead relying on sheer numbers of foes.  This makes weapon choice for the mission less important, and instead allows players to approach it however they feel best.

Artistic Presentation

The other elements that really ties this mission together are just the number of artistic touches present throughout this trip to prison. Starting with the soundtrack, we're opening with a very classic Destiny inspired piece, and Halo before it.  The Gunslinger represents some of the most eclectic hero music from the returning team of Michael Salvatori, Skye Lewin, Rotem Moav and Pieter Schlosser.  You've got heavenly choir, dancing strings, bombastic horns and foreboding drums that you can find in a bunch of different tracks in the series, all mixed together to make this glorious last-stand track that mixes in and out with other enemy faction themes.  It serves as about as awesome a sendoff as any Guardian could want.

The choice of scripted moments in the prison help to reinforce the fantasy of a team assault as well.  While we're still not literally fighting alongside these compatriots, running into them and passing by them helps to sell the fantasy.  Cayde himself has a vast array of quotes and quips based on actions you perform in the prison, ranging from multiple melee kills, precision headshots, and even activating your specific super ability.  This all ends up being a potent concoction of action and explosions with one-liners peppered throughout, a real sort of summer-blockbuster vibe.