Introduction

Destiny 2 is a series that is one of the defining looter shooters that popularized this style of game within the live service model. It is also a video game that has experienced numerous highs and lows throughout its 10 year lifecycle, experiencing numerous low-points that would be "the end of destiny" or numerous revivals and expansions that would tell the tale of how "destiny changed everything".

I feel this is an important opener for this video because with the release of The Final Shape comes the closure of this ten year running saga, which was the originally envisioned lifespan of the Destiny series. It is clear now ten years later that Bungie has no intention of slowing down, and whilst the the history of both Destiny and Destiny 2, has ebbed and flowed between highly acclaimed expansions, and widely panned expansions we're now at a point of respite, because many of these beloved expansions released to right the wrongs of something prior, and don't get me wrong, The Final Shape had to do that to. However, where I feel The Final Shape differs is that it not only needed to correct the records on the shortcomings of Lightfall, but also close out the entirety of the current Destiny story.

The Final Shape delivers on all the questions and concerns one may have coming from Lightfall and concludes this longstanding story of Light and Darkness in a way that feels satisfying, and further contextualizes and provides further meaning to a lot of concepts that are touched on in prior expansions. It provides a story that feels personal and intimate with the established characters and concludes many character arcs in a way that feels meaningful to me, as someone who has dropped by for some of the seasons over the years.

There is much to discuss here from the new subclass, location, and overall activities and I'm excited to get into all of them because long story short, I enjoyed The Final Shape and I believe that it is definitively the best expansion Bungie has released for this series to date. So let's get into my review for Destiny 2: The Final Shape.

Story

Now we're talking story and first and foremost The Final Shape, had huge shoes to fill, being the conclusion to a 10 year saga, and also being a follow up to the lackluster storytelling of Lightfall. Bungie had been fighting an uphill battle for the past year and half trying to right the wrongs of Lightfall's storytelling whilst simultaneously trying to prepare us for the events of The Final Shape, and as someone who played the Season of Defiance and got the rest of their seasonal lore from videos I can understand where the events of Final Shape kick off.

So how is the The Final Shape Campaign? Well I believe that it is undoubtedly the best narrative that Destiny has ever experienced. The Final Shape delivers a personal story, that plays on the emotions and desires of many of the different key characters who Bungie have been carefully fleshing out over the past few years through both the main campaigns and more evidently the seasonal content.

It tells a much more intimate story through the environment of The Pale Heart which is both a single player instance and an environment that is constructed of the memories of those who pass through it. It works incredibly well, as the story explores and retreads the 10 year journey, but through this bleak battle of attrition that the guardians must face as they push towards The Witness. The fact that this zone is a single player instance instead of a open patrol means that you won't see other guardians outside of your fireteam around during the main campaign and honestly it works really well in creating the sense of atmosphere and intimacy between character interactions.

There are many emotional beats here and the way that Bungie have answered a good chunk of questions that they've laid out over the years whilst leaving some of them up to interpretation. Most importantly I feel that The Final Shape had a strong sense of theming and was when I truly understood why this game is called Destiny. The Final Shape feels like a hard hitting campaign that really does close out the Light and Dark Saga of Destiny in a way that feels worthwhile and meaningful to those who have been following the series throughout this journey.

Gameplay

Prismatic Subclass

The new Prismatic subclass, is an interesting edition to the Destiny experience as it feels like whilst it is technically a subclass, it plays more like a gateway between all of our classes, allowing a much more flexible approach to build-crafting and specing your playstyle. It allows you to mix and match the different components of the various available subclasses, and allows you to select whichever abilities, melee attack and super ability peak your fancy. On top of that however, the Prismatic class does come with its own abilities, but much like using a super, the abilities of this class need to be charged. It's such a clever class, because charging this bar requires 50% usage of light related damage and the other requires 50% usage of darkness related damage. You'll need to be smart with your loadout ensuring that you have a good combination of both light and dark damage to correctly play the class and get the full effect of Prismatic, and this is what I mean when I say that it opens up a whole new realm with its approach to how you build your character, and how you to choose to optimize which abilities and stats you select.

I also feel like Bungie have found a much more solid approach to introducing to the subclass, because in prior expansions like Beyond Light and more recently Lightfall, one of the major complaints and issues with that campaign was just how woven into the story, the subclass was. It felt like half of the campaign missions were focused around acquiring this class more than tackling the substance of the expansions main threat. Fortunately here in The Final Shape, the subclass feels complimentary to the rewards for completing a segment of a mission or more so a side quest. It'll reward you with a specific chest that unlocks new aspects and abilities for you experiment with. It also removes much of the tedious grind that I feel really took the wind out of my sails when unlocking Strand. It's a great blueprint and I hope that Bungie continue to iterate on this going forward.

Progression Systems

So now I'd like to touch on a few things here such as the gear progression, the pathfinder system, and the quality of life features like guardian ranks and how these systems function here at the point of The Final Shape's release. I'll also be tackling this through the lens of a solo player. So first and foremost the gear progression feels like it follows the same methods and structures to reach the soft-level cap, before you'll need to grind harder activities such as Nightfalls, Raids and other end game related activities. However, Bungie have introduced a new system called the pathfinder system, which is a set of challenges which reset weekly and revolve around the player completing a set of various tasks in The Pale Heart, which is the expansions new zone. These objectives are the equivalent to the bounties you'd pick up from a vendor, and they all connect to a reward which is a powerful gear item, that'll help provide a gear increase and you can reset this once per reset too. The pathfinder system is an interesting concept and definitely is one to help the more solo players find ways to meaningfully progress, if they're unable to participate in the more team focused end-game activities.

Speaking of team-focused activities, Bungie have also included a new feature that builds on the guided games feature, offering a LFG experience that is now built into the game, rather than being something that you need to access through bungie.net. That and the Guardian Rank coincide together to help try to reward teamwork the upvote system still seems to remain mostly as it was around the release of Lightfall. It seems that many of these much needed touch-ups and quality of life features, are now in place which I do think is a welcome.

The Pale Heart Zone

In The Final Shape you'll be exploring a new location inside of the Traveler called The Pale Heart, and I touched on this earlier but this zone operates a little differently to previous patrol zones in Destiny focusing more on the individual guardian and the overall exploration of The Pale Heart.

This leads me to the activities that The Pale Heart lays host to, and that is first and foremost a new open area horde style objective called Overthrow where you'll arrive in a particular area in The Pale Heart and assist other guardians in completing various objectives and filling 4 different tiers that'll lead to a boss encounter in the area. It is an interesting hybrid activity, and does differentiate itself from prior activities of a similar ilk but overall it will feel somewhat familiar but a fun distraction. Another thing that I think is cool in The Pale Heart are these mini-puzzles that you'll trigger which throw me back to The Dreadnaught days in The Taken King.

New Enemy Race - The Dread

It feels weird to say this but fitting for Destiny, but here we are after ten long years and we finally have a new race. One that is completely new and refreshing in both its design and mechanics. The Dread are an interesting inclusion into the world of Destiny and serve as a great basis for any future races to come in the series, because each different enemy type would have an ability that would serve as some sort of crowd control that applies pressure to the player. This is doubly true on Legendary, and honestly what made these encounters even more fun is when you take into account the mini-bosses that are also apart of this races ensemble of enemies. It's great and it really does help keep the various encounters in the campaign, The Pale Heart, and any other side quest feeling like a fun challenge to navigate. Whilst I can understand and agree with the frustrations that it has taken way too long to see something on this scale, I feel like it is a great blueprint for the types of enemies I'd love to see more of in Destiny, and that is a sentiment that I can feel resonates across this whole expansion.

Episode Echoes

The seasonal model of content for Destiny 2, has also seen a change this time around with instead of there being four seasons that run in a given year, it will instead be broken into episodes, and these episodes will follow a three act structure. Bungie have announced that there will be three acts post the release of The Final Shape, and now we're in the midst of experiencing act one of their first episode Echoes.

So now the next question is how does this episodic structure feel compared to seasons and how good is it? Well it is still a bit early to fully tell, but so far it feels on par with the weekly structure of content that is presented with the seasonal model prior. But where I feel that these episodes will separate themselves is in the way they approach storytelling, and I suspect the missions and places that we go to throughout these acts. But on the surface from what I've seen thus far, whilst it feels a bit more cinematic compared to the seasons, it has all the core staples that you would see from a season such as weekly drip fed story beats, and an overarching activity to tie the season too.

The New Player / Lapsed Player Experience

Now I'd like to discuss what I feel is the focal point of this review that I'm making. I've touched on my overall thoughts with the expansion and all the new inclusions, quality of life feature, and improvements in writing that have been made. But there is still one major lingering question that plagues every single Destiny expansion, and that is how does this expansion fix the ever-growing issue with welcoming back lapsed players and onboarding new ones.

Well....It's still an issue, but one that I'll say I feel is in a much better spot than it was a year prior. There are now missions you can access from previous expansions to get a taste, but it doesn't offer up any of the key info to fill in the blanks, past seasonal content is still left inaccessible and not really accessible to be read up on in game. The content that has been vaulted in the past remains vaulted, and the new light quest still is a very middling way to onboard a new player into this experience.

In all honesty though, The Final Shape is the end of a ten year saga, and whilst I'd say this year isn't the best year to jump into Destiny as a newcomer, the next year going forward maybe the best starting point, as it'll more than likely begin a new journey ahead. It is sad that unlike other offerings like Final Fantasy 14, you're unable to just play through older content, but I guess that's just how things go.

For lapsed players you'll probably be able to jump into The Final Shape and follow what is going on as you're more than likely familiar with the core concepts of the universe, but things like the UI, and some older content, may not be the same as you remember it and may take time readjusting too, depending on how long it has been.

Visuals and Sound

Destiny 2 is now clocking over to being a seven year old game, and whilst it's visuals may not be the cutting edge in terms of fidelity, but something really must be said here with the level of artistic style and commitment to a theme and atmosphere that The Final Shape tries to capture, and how it isn't afraid to create uniquely different interiors and exteriors that'll make exploring feel unnerving and outright unpredictable and really does set the correlate well with the thematic of the story.

As for the soundtrack it is as fantastic as it has always been when it comes to Bungie titles, it has a variety of range and reoccurring motifs from moments in the long running saga and new additions that are as menacing as they are triumphant. But the soundtrack also comes as a bittersweet moment receiving one of the last soundtracks from Bungie that involved Michael Salvatori, due to the layoffs that took place in the most recent year that had passed.

On a more positive note the various cast of voice actors did an excellent role capturing the emotion of each scene and really selling the narrative of this experience. It was great seeing the return of Cayde-6, but doubly satisfying getting to hear Nathan Fillian reprise his role as a enigmatic exo hunter. The Witness as a villain really had a standout performance, being voiced by Brett Dalton who did an exceptional job. Seriously every time they try to communicate with us, they'd still the stage with the various different forms of emotions and whilst Savathun was a cunning villain, The Witness felt unpredictable in their goal, presence and overall demeanor, and that was conveyed perfectly through this performance.

The Future of Destiny - Conclusion

So to bring this video to a close, I'd like to say that The Final Shape is an incredible feat for Bungie and Destiny and whilst there having been many highs and lows over the course of this ten year journey, it feels like a chance to start anew in terms to many of the problems that have plagued Destiny over the years from the new player experience to the inconsistent storytelling and absence of meaningful enemy variation. If The Witch Queen proved that Destiny can have an interesting villain and narrative to match, than The Final Shape was a showcase that the main cast of heroes can be as equally compelling.

Prior to the release of The Final Shape the future of Destiny seemed like an unknown. This would be the end of a saga, but would it be the beginning of a new one, and if so would that new saga begin within Destiny 2, or would we see the story continue in a sequel? Well shortly after the release of Bungie released a short video showcasing what to expect the future episodes that I mentioned in the video. They also revealed a label for Year 11 of Destiny labelled as Destiny Frontiers. What this means for the series more or less means we could be leaving our solar system, beginning a new journey and turning the page on the current state of Destiny and charting a new course for its future.

Through all the ups and downs this series has had, if there is one thing that I think The Final Shape managed to do, it is successfully close out a long standing saga, and introduces a level of hope and anticipation for the broader future and evolution for Destiny on a whole. The Final Shape may serve as a conclusion to one story, but feels like the start of another and I'm hopeful that beyond the stars is an adventure that matches the highs of The Final Shape, but only time will tell.