Upon its release in 2014, Bungie put forth an ambitious 10-year plan for Destiny. Over the course of several games and expansions, the studio would tell a story about the forces of Light battling the forces of Darkness with it all culminating in one final battle at Year 10. Since that initial release, not everything has gone to plan with the series experiencing vast change (splitting from Activision, noDestiny3), extreme highs (The Taken King,Forsaken,The Witch Queen) and lows (Rise of Iron,Destiny 2,Shadowkeep). After last year’s dreadfulLightfall, it was an open question if Bungie could pull of a miracle withDestiny 2: The Final Shape, but following a multi-month delay,The Final Shapeis finally here. Was Bungie able to shapeDestiny 2: The Final Shapeinto a meaningful finale or has this 10-year journey been a waste of time?
A finale 10-years in the making
Destiny 2: The Final Shapetakes place immediately after Season of the Wish with you, Commander Zavala and Ikora Rey entering The Traveler’s Pale Heart in pursuit of The Witness. Once inside, it’s a race against time to prevent The Witness from taking over The Traveler and utilizing its Light to reshape existence. With your allies at your back, including the mysteriously resurrected Cayde-6, it’s finally time to confront The Witness.
Bungie has always struggled to tell stories within its Destiny campaigns. Outside ofThe Taken King,ForsakenandThe Witch Queen, most of the campaigns have lacked focus, urgency, major developments and purpose. ForThe Final Shape, Bungie has gone back to the basics and crafted a linear campaign where each story beat and mission flows into the next. There’s no traveling between random planets, no hunting for materials and no distractions that would pull you away from the urgency of the situation.
The result is a focused, cinematic campaign that puts the story and characters front and center. While there are pacing issues from having too much of the campaign focus on reforming the Vanguard,The Final Shapeis an effective story that successfully utilizes years of development for Zavala, Cayde-6, Ikora and Crow to tug at the heartstrings. The story takes its time to deliver payoffs for its core cast, and even other allies like Caiatl and Mithrax.
The focus on the Vanguard throughout the campaign unfortunately comes at the cost of one key player, The Witness. As a villain ten years in the making, The Witness draws the short end of the stick with little screentime and little buildup. With an overlong Act 1 focused on reuniting the Vanguard and an epic Act 3 focused on bringing all your allies together for a final battle, the too short Act 2 rushes through revelations that should have been given more time and importance. One mission the team have no idea what to do to combat The Witness, but one mission later they know exactly how to defeat it. While the ten-year journey to the final battle is appropriately epic and climactic, The Witness itself is a poor final villain for this journey.
Destiny 2: The Final Shapeis one of the better campaigns in Destiny’s history. The linear nature of the storytelling keeps focus on what’s important, allowing it to achieve emotional highs and payoffs ten years in the making. Where it falters is with its pacing and villain. The Vanguard reunion gets too many missions and all revelations about The Witness are forced into a single mission with little buildup and a rushed conclusion. It’s a thrilling conclusion, but it doesn’t stick the narrative landing.
What the campaign does do is provide plenty of great gameplay opportunities. There’s a strong sense of variety in its missions with a blend of intense shootouts, heart-pounding escape missions and Raid mechanics to shake things up. It’s a campaign that values your time and keeps its focus on what matters: the story. The final boss fight itself is something to behold with players working together with multiple AI in the series’ first twelve-player activity. While the story could have been longer with more emphasis placed on The Witness,The Final Shapeis at least a blast to play through.
Review: Destiny 2: Lightfall
Destiny 2: Lightfall is just another filler expansion on the pathway to the final showdown.
A new location, a new enemy faction, and a new subclass
As with all previous expansions,The Final Shapebrings with it a new explorable area. In this case, the expansion takes players into The Pale Heart of The Traveler where the memories of those who enter it form the landscape. With a strong mix of nostalgic callbacks to Destiny 1 combined with the twisted machinations of The Witness and the area’s focused linear level design, The Pale Heart is easily the most interesting and visually spectacular world we’ve gotten to explore since The Dreaming City. Once the majesty of the locale wears off, however, it’s just another Patrol Zone with its own set of Lost Sectors to explore and a public activity (Overthrow). Outside of the benefit the level design makes to the campaign, The Pale Heart doesn’t do anything distinct to make itself that different from other locations.
Destiny 2 has been around since 2017, so it should be no surprise that the game plays the same as it did back then. WhatThe Final Shapedoes bring to the table gameplay wise is a new enemy faction and subclass. That’s right: for the first time in years, Destiny 2 has a new enemy faction in the Dread. With flying (Grim), melee (Husk) and enemies that can use Darkness-based subclasses (Subjugators), the Dread does add a sense of freshness to the sandbox. The one downside is that, outside the campaign and Pale Heart, they don’t show up anywhere else. It would have been nice to see other Patrol Zones, Strikes, Gambit maps and other activities refreshed to include them.
The other new gameplay addition is the new subclass, Prismatic, though it’s not a sublass in the traditional sense. Instead of being a new element with its own distinct powers and abilities, Prismatic combines Light and Dark subclasses together for enhanced customization. The Super, melee ability, Aspects and Fragments are left up to the player to mix and match, though not all features of the previous subclasses transfer over. For example, a Solar Titan’s hammer throw melee ability remains exclusive to Solar. It’s a fun subclass that allows players the freedom to create their own builds. It’s also fantastic that it’s provided right from the start and the whole campaign isn’t built around mastering it. While the Dread and Prismatic may not come close to changing how we play Destiny 2, they’re fresh additions that add needed variety to the sandbox.
Is there any other new content?
What else needs variety yet continues to be ignored by Bungie is Destiny 2’s other non-Raid activities. Much likeLightfall,The Final Shapeadds relatively little new content to the game’s core modes. There’s only one new Strike, zero new Crucible maps, and as has become tradition, nothing new for Gambit. Destiny expansions used to provide a handful of Strikes and several Crucible maps for $40, and yet at $50, it feels like we’re getting less content with each expansion. The campaign and Raid are quality additions, but the activities meant to keep players coming back remain completely stale and neglected.
Closing Comments:
It’s hard to keep something going for ten years, especially a Live Service game. The industry is littered with failed attempts at building ten-year plans. Despite Destiny’s many ups and downs and lack of consistent quality through the years,Destiny 2: The Final Shapecompletes Bungie’s ambitious ten-year plan and mostly sticks the landing. Its story is the most focused a Destiny tale has ever gotten, opting to focus on character interactions, linear level design and heartfelt payoffs. While this route meant a complete neglect of the series’ big bad, it did culminate in an epic finale to the Light and Darkness saga.
Outside the campaign,The Final Shapedoes mostly well. The Pale Heart is a visually-arresting space to explore, though doesn’t change the Patrol Zone formula in any meaningful way. The addition of the Dread enemy faction and Prismatic subclass add freshness to the sandbox, though don’t offer any evolution to the way you’ll playDestiny 2. The only truly downright awful thing aboutThe Final Shapeis that, for $50, there’s still not a whole lot of included content, leaving Destiny 2’s core activities starved for anything fresh.Destiny 2: The Final Shapeis, ultimately, moreDestiny 2, and it provides a meaningful ending to the 10-year Light and Darkness saga.
Destiny 2: The Final Shape
Version Reviewed: PlayStation 5
The final battle against The Witness has begun. Gather your fireteam and allies and enter The Pale Heart of the Traveler where the final threat in the Light and Darkness saga awaits.
