After 10 years of storytelling, the overarching saga that was introduced in the original Destiny release has finally come to an end. With The Final Shape, Bungie bows to the vast majority of its lingering storylines and questions, setting the stage for a new direction in subsequent releases. Before that, this final chapter is extremely satisfying, offering an exciting, heartfelt and character-driven conclusion that lives up to what came before. From the narrative to the gameplay, this is not a game that welcomes newcomers. But for every hour (or thousands of hours) the player has invested in this adventure, the ending on offer is much stronger.
The Final Shape expansion transports the Guardians into the mysterious interior of a massive spherical Traveller, into a space of liminal and surreal environments halfway between the real and the imaginary. In a decade of strong location design, this new destination is the most unusual and artistically impressive, regularly nodding to places we’ve already visited and combining them with strange organic shapes like giant hands and faces carved into rock.
The campaign is set up as a continuous journey from point A to B, with waypoints acting as moments of angst and catharsis for the story’s most important players over the last decade. It’s the most human and believable storytelling the franchise has managed to date.
Thanks to the delightfully dangerous Dread enemy faction and a number of raid-like mechanics, missions feature a satisfying mix of intense action and gunplay, while requiring careful observation. The story lands with a satisfying touch of excitement and emotion by combining the completion of a raid and one final closing activity together. Grand and epic storytelling requires a clever combination of bombastic and poetic sensibilities, and this is one of those moments where the game hits the spot.
Featuring new prismatic subclasses – along with a host of other new abilities – this expansion is the most mechanically complex the franchise has ventured yet. Building and experimenting are essential for high-level play. Despite some efforts at simplification, the overabundance of currencies and interconnected progression systems made it painfully confusing even for experienced players. It’s hard to even imagine how a rookie would pierce the veil and get up to speed.
However, Bungie deserves props for trying to explain the systems in the game and providing guidance on how to improve. Aside from the amazing new exotics and legendary weapons (which are almost like exotics), players have a huge range of options to tweak and play however they want. The sandbox is huge and we have a lot of unique ways to play in it.
Some of the new systems, like the new Pathfinder system, are fascinating ideas, but remain overly prescriptive, often demanding playstyles that some players aren’t interested in. This means that many of the new public events, match-based activities, and post-campaign missions are fun and thoughtfully constructed to allow for extensive and enjoyable replayability. Many of the current high-level activities, including the new raid and certain gear chases, are extremely challenging and should offer a meaningful mountain for most endgame players to climb for many weeks to come.
As if to remind players that the end of one story is only the beginning of another, The Final Shape wasted little time in launching its new episodic structure that replaced seasons. The full scope and potential of this new deployment approach is beyond the scope of this review and will continue for months to come. However, just know that for those who crack the end of the saga and are ready to continue, there is already an enjoyable continuation waiting for them with new activities and rewards such as exotic items waiting to be chased.
Over the years, Destiny 2 has morphed into a massive and unwieldy beast, full of co-op and competitive experiences, hundreds of named characters and organizations, and an often inaccessible vernacular that can take a long time to learn to speak and play. With The Final Shape, Bungie doesn’t apologize for complexity, but finally offers purposeful punctuation to mark the end point. Largely unencumbered by what came before, the frontiers before us are now open to discovery.