After a decade of storytelling, the overarching saga introduced in Destiny’s original launch has finally concluded. With The Final Shape, Bungie ties up the vast majority of lingering storylines and questions and sets the stage for a new direction in subsequent releases. Furthermore, this concluding chapter is extremely satisfying, providing an exciting, heartfelt, and character-driven conclusion that does justice to what has come before. From story to gameplay, this isn’t the part that welcomes newcomers. But for every hour (or thousands of hours) a player has invested in this adventure, the ending on offer is far more powerful.
The Final Shape expansion transports Guardians to the mysterious interior of the enormous spherical Traveler, a space of liminal and surreal environments halfway between real and imagined. In a decade of strong site design, this new destination is the most unusual and artistically striking, regularly nodding to places we’ve visited before and combining them with strange organic shapes like giant hands and rock-carved faces.
The campaign is designed as a non-stop journey from point A to B, with waypoints acting as moments of fear and catharsis for the key players in the story over the past decade. It is the most human and relatable storytelling the franchise has managed to tell so far.
Thanks to the wonderfully dangerous Dread faction of enemies and some raid-style mechanics, the missions offer a satisfying mix of intense action and gunplay, while requiring careful observation. The story ends with a satisfying dose of excitement and emotion by interweaving the completion of the heist and a final closing activity. Grand and epic stories require a clever mix of bombast and poetic sensibility, and this is one of those moments when a game hits the mark.
The new prismatic subclasses – among a host of other new abilities – make this expansion the most mechanically complex the franchise has yet dared. Building, crafting and experimenting are necessary for high-level play. Despite some attempts to simplify the game, the abundance of currency and interwoven progression systems has become painfully complicated, even for experienced players. It’s hard to imagine how a newcomer would pierce the veil and get up to speed.
Nevertheless, Bungie deserves support for its efforts to explain in-game systems and provide guidance on how to improve them. In addition to some great new Exotics and Legendary weapons (that almost feel like Exotics), players have a huge range of options to customize and play how they want. The sandbox is huge and we have plenty of unique ways to play in it.
Some new systems, such as the new Pathfinder system, are fascinating ideas that nevertheless remain overly prescriptive and often require demanding playstyles that some players are unwilling to attempt. That said, many of the new public events, matchmade activities, and post-campaign missions are fun and thoughtfully built to allow for extensive and enjoyable replay. Many of the current high-end activities, including the new raid and certain equipment chases, are extremely challenging and should be a meaningful mountain to climb for most endgame players in the coming weeks.
As if to remind players that the conclusion of one story is just the beginning of another, The Final Shape wasted little time in launching its new episodic structure to replace seasons. The full reach and potential of that new rollout approach is beyond the scope of this review and will extend into the coming months. However, it is enough to know that an enjoyable sequel already awaits those who break the end of the saga and are ready to continue, with new activities and rewards, such as exotic class items, waiting to be pursued.
Over the years, Destiny 2 has grown into a huge and unwieldy beast, filled with cooperative and competitive experiences, hundreds of named characters and organizations, and an often unapproachable vernacular that can take a long time to learn to speak and play. With The Final Shape, Bungie makes no apologies for complexity, finally offering purposeful punctuation to mark an end point. Largely unfettered by what has come before, the boundaries before us are now open to be revealed.