God I reeeeaaaally hope the pay off is worth it. I really hope this isn't just being rushed. I hope this game doesn't end with us beating the Darkness and leading into Savathûn later cause the Darkness is supposed to be THE big bad, the opposite to the traveller. I hope this is a new race and we get new subclasses. I hope bungie just cut out storylines that aren't necessary from now on and retcon what they need to in order to move things forward. That means things like the Exo origins, the stranger should be brought back or forgotten, etc. Cause we haven't heard of the stranger for years and the deep stone crypt was mentioned in one of Cayde's final logs but hasn't been explored in any way. Things like that need to be resolved sooner rather than later because the game can't keep moving forward once per year in favor of smaller storylines that don't end up being connected in any meaningful way, that includes this storyline since Shadowkeep. This storyline is connecting to September and all but we've had no actual story this season, just towers and tiny bits of dialogue about the invasion we know about already from the past. Then last season was all just a setup for this season with the Almighty which has had no bearing on anything this season except the tower event so there's no real threat and this season gave trials which gives lore explaining the importance that Mercury will supposedly have.