Bungie has always been feeding the expansive story of Light and Darkness through expansions and periodic updates. After the positive reception of The Witch Queen, Lightfall didn't do the series any favors, making the fans want even more from the game. And then after 10 years of Destiny 2, Bungie finally ended the saga with The Final Shape. Bungie was well aware that this expansion had lofty expectations to meet, and they really stuck the landing.

Destiny 2: The Final Shape comes with more weapons, a cinematic linear destination, and a campaign that truly feels like the Light and Darkness saga climax. This last installment in the winding Light and Darkness narrative, The Final Shape, puts us on the opposite side of those promises, and the storyline finally does come to an end.

Destiny 2: The Final Shape has a cast of characters Destiny fans are familiar with but also new ones from lore and in the Pale Heart. Micah 10 was introduced in the lore and Beyond Light but appears for the first time as a vendor. She guides you to save lost ghosts and has many new quests and rewards including armor and weapons.

In the campaign, Bungie tied up all the loose ends and finally answered the big questions we had in the past inside the Traveler, the sphere protecting the last city and granting you powers since the beginning. Both the story and the destination felt like a linear experience, which was the perfect choice. When you meet Cayde for the first time and go through the threshold, you find yourself in the beautiful, lush greenery of The Lost City and tower, with the monolith far in the distance.

As you fight the corruption caused by The Witness, though, you will find members of The Vanguard, Crow, Ikora, and Zavala one by one, and the portal from which you entered this realm will grow to be smaller behind you, indicating you have limited time. The environment design and soundtrack supplement the gameplay perfectly.

The Witness plays with the minds of the characters, showing Zavala his past family, and wanting your guardian among its ranks, not for Destiny 2: The Final Shape, but as a god alongside it. Emotion comes through in gameplay, cutscenes, and moment-to-moments at the campfire through character dialogue and radio broadcasts.

As this expansion is about stopping the end of the universe, the tone is much more serious compared to last year's Lightfall. We had important characters die and then had others make poor attempts at comedic relief which felt endearing in some ways. The weight of the emotions felt real. Vanguard members hadn't seen Cayde in years, and it was quite interesting seeing them react to his return.

All the foreshadowing and threads woven by Bungie through the story finally come to a close. The story makes you think back on previous moments of the game’s lore and realize why those things actually happened. The questions I had before were finally answered.

The Witness is shown throughout the story, but we’ve never actually confronted the villain before. The encounter was done right as The Witness feels like the imposing villain he needed to be. Bungie took the creepiness and rage found in the lore for this villain and brought it forward flawlessly.

Gameplay in the Pale Heart feels fresh with plenty of new activities to take part in. Even as someone who has been playing since the first Destiny, I enjoyed the variety of content I found in Destiny 2: The Final Shape. It’s more of what we know and love about Destiny with some interesting activities.

Overthrow allows you to kill enemies and complete objectives to cleanse the Traveler and it introduces a plethora of new and fun events that have never been seen before. You can do things like escort a ghost, become a corrupted Thrall to break your enemy shields, team up with friendly exploder shanks to clear the way, and more.

The ideas Bungie has come up with here are quite unique compared to some of the content we've had in the past. It's not the same open-world areas with patrol vendors just sitting waiting for you to activate them, it's not the same old public events like we’ve seen in The Blight for example, it's completely different and it's a nice change. The campaign and patrol offered many puzzles that felt challenging at times but didn't make me feel lost.

Prismatic is done right this time in The Final Shape. It introduces a fun new subclass where you can combine Light and Darkness powers however you want. Unlike Lightfall, where the entire campaign was about obtaining Strand, this expansion lets players acquire Prismatic right at the beginning. When you enter the Pale Heart and make your way to the tower near the start, you get Prismatic right then and there.

Further fragments can be obtained through Prismatic chests that are found by solving puzzles, killing bosses, and looking for secrets scattered throughout the world. Finding each of the fragments by exploring was fun compared to last yere, where you could buy Strand fragments from a vendor.

The Dread is the first brand-new enemy race added to the game in years. In the past, we have had reskins of fallen and hive enemies, but the Dread is quite different from what we’ve seen before. There are Grim that fly around and shoot and stun you, the Husk that can kill you in one shot at higher difficulties alongside the Guise that emerge out of their bodies. Lastly, there are the subjugators who are there to give you a tough time.

The locations you encounter are built into existence from the memories of characters by The Traveler. You get to visit The Cosmodrome, where you were revived in the original Destiny. What is seen feels familiar, but different enough to cause a sense of wonder. Even though we’ve seen some of these places before, the levels have been altered in unique ways.

In escape missions, the floors collapse behind you as you run away, and time-gated puzzles had lava filling up rooms to convey a sense of urgency. Bungie kept it fresh and new, even for fans who have kept up with the game since the beginning of Destiny 1. Despite the campaign being linear, the gameplay did not feel bad by any means when just patrolling.

Destiny 2: The Final Shape, for the first time ever, made the patrol zones your own instance this time, meaning you won’t be seeing other players roaming around in the wilds. It’s just you and your fire team if you choose to have one. This gives a more focused experience, which is a nice addition given how important the conclusion is.

Not having some random guardian jumping around behind Ikora and Zavala as they speak, for example, certainly improves the experience. The Final Shape needed to be gritty, emotional, and cinematic, and it definitely was. The choice to have this as an instance version of missions certainly makes it feel a little more personal.

Things were built up in the universe from Tuesday to Friday until the release of the raid and after the first fire team would complete it. Following this, the final mission would be released, where you play with 11 other players. This is something Destiny has never done before. With 12 players, ally NPCs, and plenty of abilities and effects on the screen, the scene felt as grand as the likes of Avengers: Infinity War or Endgame. There were also some heartfelt moments during the last moments of the campaign.

The launch of Destiny 2: The Final Shape was one of the most surprising in Destiny's history with server issues throughout the day during its release, but once things got up and running, the expansion was a smooth experience. Out of all the live service games out there, Bungie is one of the few that does an excellent job. Server issues aside, when everything was up and running most things in The Final Shape just seemed to work.

Overall, Bungie wrapped up the 10-year saga with a gripping story with Destiny 2: The Final Shape. This is one of the best expansions Bungie has ever put out. The story felt complete and the closure it brought felt right. There are still some questions up in the air, but that is the purpose of a live service game where some of it is told in the lore and the rest is up to interpretation.

The big focal point, the goal, the main threat was addressed in The Witness and this Light and Darkness saga. The gameplay was fantastic with Prismatic, the linear Pale Heart destination, and the whole experience felt connected to the universe. The final battle was approaching, and it felt like everyone we knew was there for the end. Destiny 2: The Final Shape is exactly what the franchise needed for the decade-long saga to come to an end.
 

Ahnaf Tajwar,
Editor, NoobFeed