The Final Shape Full Review – Unparalleled Success

As I was writing up my thoughts on the opening campaign missions a day or so after Destiny 2 released its massive Final Shape expansion, I knew this wasn’t going to be my full review. There’s still so much left, including the raid, the final mission, and the secrets that were just revealed as of this week. But now that it’s all on the table, it’s time to do a full breakdown of everything.

This is the best expansion Destiny 2 has ever produced. Possibly the best campaign story, best destination, best raid and look at it, possibly the best exotic mission they’ve ever done. I remember hearing about how internally Bungie wanted it, needed it to destroy all the other expansions, even The Taken King and Forsaken, and it just seemed impossible. It wasn’t impossible. They did it. Here is the procedure:

Campaign – This is the part I mentioned before, but Bungie has created an excellent narrative focusing on the three core members of the Vanguard, plus the new addition of Crow, in addition to our very own Guardian. They managed to do something I thought was impossible, make Cayde’s appearance important and impactful rather than a marketing gimmick, and turn The Witness into a compelling, hateful villain you want to see dead.

The missions themselves are excellent, maybe starting a bit slow with the “reassemble the scattered team” intro, but towards the end? The last two missions in particular are definitely the best the series has ever done in a story campaign. I’m not sure the story itself has anything to match the “Savathun and the Traveler” moment from The Witch Queen, but overall this is a better story, especially once you get to the final mission which was unlocked later.

Prismatic – The ultimate fusion of all our guardian powers has been a blast to play with, further ramped up this week with the release of exotic class items combining two perks at once.

I haven’t pulled Prismatic from any of my subclasses since the start of the season, and I feel like every day the community comes up with some new, creative use of all the different potential combinations of skills, aspects, and fragments that are a lot of fun to build. and test. It seems to be evolving as everyone gets deeper into it and the unlocking process has been much better than what we’ve seen in the past with Strand and Stasis.

Raid – Easily the wildest foray Bungie has ever made with the first world race flying past lengths as players struggled with certain segments, specifically encounters one and four. Raid race was a bit of a bust in the end with top players blacking out their screens so no one could watch, but that’s not Bungie’s fault.

The raid itself is brilliantly creative, with that infamous foursome in particular being one of the most mechanically impressive things Bungie has ever done. It won’t exactly most accessible to average players before they learn some serious strategy, but it makes perfect sense for this to be the craziest raid the game has gotten in a long time, and they delivered exactly that.

Final mission – Easily the best moment in the history of the game. Zavala’s Helm’s Deep moment in the intro, the rush of every NPC we’ve ever played into the mission, and then the first 12 guardian attacks on The Witness and his powers in the game is utter chaos. NPCs flock to give us relic weapons, 12-man DPS stages before a monolithic witness. Fun, but not really difficult for any player to experience.

The ending cutscenes are just…out of this world. (Spoilers) Cayde’s sacrifice to revive our spirit is the most emotional moment of the entire series, and Crow’s rise as Hunter Vanguard is the resolution of a story that was essentially a decade in the making. I can’t imagine how this finale could have been handled any better.

Pale heart – We circle back to where it all takes place, The Pale Heart, which is definitely my favorite destination Bungie has made. Both in terms of its aesthetic, which ranges from gardens of paradise to hand-crafted horrors deeper into witness corruption, and I’ve never stopped to take so many screenshots in my life. But aside from the visuals, the Overthrow system and using space as a solo instance is the most engaging I’ve had in patrol mode since Escalation Protocol. A truly stellar setup and great late game placement for all of the above.

Exotic mission – But wait, there’s more! Since this reset, players have done a Whisper-like patrol mission to unlock a secret Whisper-like mission, Dual Destiny, which is used to obtain new exotic class items. The forced duo mission is extremely creative, the first to force you to work with one partner alone, but with a mechanic that’s easy enough to speed things up in the end, provided you communicate.

I know some decry mandated multiplayer, but this is easily one of the best exotic quests we’ve seen from Bungie, and I appreciate the risk they took in experimenting with a PvE concept that we literally haven’t seen in a decade. I want to see more of this in the future.

This is as close to perfect as a Destiny expansion can get. If my biggest complaints are “I don’t love the new shader icons” and “the Ritual Pathfinder system should be improved,” I think we’re doing well. Instead, The Final Shape is a stunning finale to a decade-long story arc that’s not only a huge event for Destiny itself, but for the industry as a whole, because I just don’t think it has another benchmark in gaming history, assuming I’m on this journey so long. Bungie left everything on the field and delivered on all fronts.

It is 10/10. The most emphatic 10/10 I can give.

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