Regularly playing Destiny for the past decade, through all its unforgettable highs and painful lows, has been a tremendous leap of faith for me and my fellow Guardians. This uneven saga hasn’t always felt like it was leading somewhere worth following, but with Destiny 2: The Final Shape, it seems our faith has been rewarded at last. After some extremely rocky launch day server troubles, followed by two days of nonstop playing, what I’ve seen so far has been overwhelmingly awesome. The campaign (absent a proper finale right now) is one of the best in series history, the new Prismatic subclasses are exactly the badass shock to the system its sandbox needed, the fresh set of weapons have been a literal blast to mess around with, and the fearsome Dread enemy faction add welcome variety and difficulty to the battlefield. There’s still a lot left for me to play, including the endgame raid I’ll be battling against this weekend and the story conclusion that’s locked behind it – but as the ending to this 10-year saga takes its final shape, Destiny is more fun than it’s ever been, and I’m eager to see if it can stick the landing.
If you’re arriving extremely late to the space opera party, The Final Shape is the latest (and quite possibly greatest) expansion in developer Bungie’s ongoing, magically-infused multiplayer FPS. As an immortal and homicidally inclined Guardian, I’ve had the privilege of defending humanity against all manner of alien threats over the years, from evil sorcerer insects to an extremely boring robot army, all while looting cool weapons and armor, unlocking sweet space magic abilities, leveling up, and juggling so many currencies, menus, and ill-explained RPG systems that your head is liable to explode Arc of the Covenant-style if you don’t have a friend to walk you through it. After seven years of expansions, patches, and seasonal updates, Destiny 2 has grown into one of the best and twelve of the worst games you’ll ever play, all wrapped into a live-service package unlike anything else out there. It’s great; I hate it.
The Final Shape has the unenviable task of concluding the main story of good vs. evil that’s haphazardly played out since the first Destiny. Although that story has mostly been a veritable jambalaya of overused tropes, sci-fi gobbledygook, and lore so convoluted one player had to make a ten hour YouTube video to explain it, it occasionally brings the heat with some genuinely compelling characters and meaningful stories, like those found in 2022’s The Witch Queen. So far, The Final Shape appears to count itself among those rare instances of solid storytelling, finally focusing on the big bad that’s been alluded to from the very beginning for a showdown with the fate of the universe on the line.
That archenemy comes in the form of The Witness, and although I wasn’t impressed with the character’s initial reveal or the setup that’s taken place over the past two years leading up to this finale, The Final Shape’s campaign, packed with hard-hitting cutscenes that explain a whole lot, finally sold me on this existential horror. I won’t go into details to spare you any spoilers, but The Witness ended up being a much more interesting villain than I’d anticipated, the threat humanity is facing finally feels real instead of like some distant shadow we have an appointment with, and I’m thrilled we’re finally getting some actual answers to the questions we’ve had all these years.
That said, there are still plenty of points in The Final Shape where Destiny’s usually sloppier storytelling continues in that tradition, like with the middle act of the story where it pivots to some drama with the stoic and stalwart Commander Zavala, who suddenly (and with only the scarcest whiff of justification) becomes an emotional loose cannon to add a bit of unearned tension into the mix. There’s also some side stories with obscure characters returning from seasons you might not have played or lore entries you probably didn’t read, which mostly pulls focus away from the conflict at hand without adding a whole lot – the kind of par-for-the-course wonky Destiny storytelling that’s irked me since 2014.
But, ultimately, the thing that’s really going to matter is whether or not The Final Shape can deliver a satisfying conclusion, and that remains to be seen. While I enjoyed the seven-mission main story, which can be completed in as many hours, it doesn’t have a real ending quite yet – instead, it sets up the raid that unlocks today, which will serve as one last big battle before an eighth and final campaign mission that will likely wrap everything up. Here’s hoping Bungie can give us something at least as good as the rest of the campaign with that, because it’s largely delivered a satisfying finale so far.
Regardless of how that story ends, the levels you’ll play and new areas you’ll explore are some of my favorites yet. Delving into the body of a God, you’ll explore The Pale Heart of the Traveler, a bizarre reality where one’s memories, desires, and fears manifest themselves in the physical world. What starts as an idyllic but peculiar world begins to shift into a horrific landscape, as the twisted wishes of The Witness corrupt it, with a bunch of gross hands and faces filling up the environment. That gives it an uncomfortable and surreal quality that’s a massive departure from the mostly grounded areas our Guardians have visited so far. It’s also fantastic that we finally got a map that isn’t just a loop with a few small areas to explore, instead favoring a fairly linear layout that feels like traveling from the Shire to Mount Doom on an epic quest to put the world right. I’m still exploring its nooks and crannies, shooting and looting everything I can find, but it’s already easily my favorite destination to date.
Similarly, its missions follow in the fantastic footsteps of The Witch Queen by adding light raid mechanics and challenging combat encounters, which provide more than the mindless shooting hallways that Destiny sometimes finds itself reduced to. In one level, you’ll hop between two realities to solve a puzzle in order to kill a massive boss, and in another you’ll battle to the top of some icy peaks, taking advantage of gale winds to propel you across massive gaps. Each level does a great job of teaching you a new mechanic here and there, slowly adding to the complexity of gunplay and puzzle solving, until somehow you’re juggling half a dozen things at once by the final battle, taking out an army of foes in one of the most badass showdowns so far. I had a ton of fun playing the entire campaign solo on Legendary, and am already looking forward to going through it again with friends on my other characters.
One of the things that makes these missions so enjoyable is the first new enemy faction Destiny has gotten in six years, called the Dread. Even the two other enemy factions added in previous Destiny expansions were mostly remixes of existing enemies, so one could argue that the Dread are the first fully original faction so far, and what a difference that makes. The Grim, batlike creatures that fly around pelting you with blaster fire and screeching at you to slow your movement are overwhelming in large groups, while the Husk are melee bruisers who rush you with deadly blades and send explosive creatures flying at you if you don’t kill them in a specific way. Most of these additions are completely awesome, injecting some desperately needed variety into a sandbox that has stagnated over time. That said, there are a few that are less inspired: Attendants and Weavers, for example, appear almost as reskinned enemies from an existing race and pelt you with irritating abilities, including one that makes you move extremely slowly for way too long, and which resulted in more than a few deaths that felt a bit cheap. Still, these are minor qualms I have with a faction that’s been a ton of fun to fight so far.
As always, the latest Destiny expansion comes with a whole arsenal of unique toys to loot and bring to bear upon your foes, and The Final Shape has some really nice additions. The Call, a small sidearm that shoots mini rockets, is absolutely phenomenal to goof around with, while Lost Signal is a grenade launcher that shoots a smattering of explosives that do damage over time. My personal favorite new item is an exotic called Hazardous Propulsion that launches a flurry of missiles from your back whenever you use your class ability, which has gotten me out of so many tight spots lately – I’m completely obsessed. Destiny has always been renowned for its gunplay, even when other aspects of the shooter have come up short, so none of this is particularly surprising. But even for a game that’s known for its great weapons and armor, The Final Shape is a standout so far in what it offers. They really cooked on this one, folks!
The Final Shape also adds to Destiny’s space magic repertoire with a new subclass called Prismatic, which allows you to mix and match certain Light and Darkness abilities found in other subclasses to create interesting combinations. It then adds some new abilities of its own on top of that, from grenades that combine different damage types and status effects to do things like suspend enemies in the air and electrocute everything in the vicinity, to new super abilities that might let you throw giant exploding axes onto the battlefield, then pick them up to wreak havoc on the enemy. Being able to wield a mix of elements and abilities that were previously locked behind their own specific classes is a major game changer, and takes buildcrafting to the next level in terms of customization and playing around with different possibilities. I have yet to unlock all the options and have only played on one character class (the Titan) at the moment, and I’m already equally overwhelmed and excited by the possibilities.
I’ve played about 30 hours of The Final Shape so far, and will easily play another 40 over the weekend as I dive into the raid, finish the story, explore more of the side content, and try out the other character classes, but I’m already having a blast with what I’ve seen. I'll be back with a scored review sometime next week, but The Final Shape has already delivered in more ways than I thought possible – here’s hoping that momentum continues as Bungie rolls out the last act.
