Destiny 2: The Final Shape is the final expansion that tries to wrap up the nearly 10-year long story that Bungie has been crafting since the release of Destiny in 2014. In my review-in-progress, I said that “The Final Shape is a must-play for any Destiny fan and I highly recommend jumping back in,” but I wasn’t able to elaborate on some of the end-game activities and the new Episode: Echoes that started the week after launch. So here is our final comprehensive review of Destiny 2: The Final Shape.
The Final Story
The Final Shape’s story is the finale to the Light v. Dark saga that’s been brewing since the first Destiny came out. While it’s a relief, in a way, to finally see this chapter come to a close, I can’t help but feel like it was all a tad underwhelming at times. Some story spoilers will follow, but The Final Shape has been out for almost two weeks now so this is your last warning if you still intended to play it without any spoilers.
The best part about The Final Shape is undoubtedly seeing Cayde-6 return, voiced by the great Nathan Fillian once again. I honestly never thought that we would see his return, but having him back to wrap up the story felt appropriate. I’m glad that Bungie worked in a way to have him return in a way that just kind of makes sense: as Crow’s wish to an Ahamkara. We saw an internal struggle in Cayde as he came to terms with being brought back, but at the same time wishing he could be with Sundance, his ghost, again.
It was a bittersweet moment when Cayde handed over the Hunter Vanguard cloak to Crow, but we saw this coming in the mission prior where it felt like Cayde was instilling his teachings into Crow. Although it might have seemed rushed in hindsight, the mission structure flowed perfectly and allowed for a natural-feeling character development to occur in Crow. It was almost cute, at times, seeing him take on more and more Cayde-isms (such as making silly, pun-filled names for missions).
Likewise, while not a part of the main campaign itself, the side missions for ‘Found in the Dark’ story featured Zavala and Empress Caiatl working together. Their dialogue back and forth similarly brought smiles to my face – especially when Caiatl referred to him as “tiny man” and made comments that his voice pairs well with the sound of gunfire. It comes from such a wholesome place (wholesome in that the Cabal are all about fighting, strength, and honor) that it seems to leave Zavala both confounded and, at the same time, reassured of his duty as the Vanguard Commander. These interactions seem to bring Zavala out of his personal darkness that he’s been brooding in from the campaign.
In contrast, the campaign missions that featured Zavala confronting his traumatic past felt abrupt and shoehorned in, as if Bungie was trying to encompass each main characters’ story-threads to wrap up as part of the campaign. I wish they had just let it be, because it definitely took away from the story of fighting against The Witness. I understand that this was a way for Bungie to bridge the narrative in a way that made it plausible for us to fight against what is essentially a God, but it just felt jarring and out of character to have Zavala leave so abruptly in order to go and join the Darkness.
In him doing so, we do get to see The Witness’s origin story and, thus, ultimately figure out how to defeat him. It’s cool to actually get cutscenes that show this history of the universe before the Traveller came to our solar system, but it feels like too little too late. The Witness being the final “big bad guy” has been a disappointment to me ever since his reveal. He just looks goofy – not at all like he’s the epitome of Darkness incarnate or anything – like he belongs in a Pixar movie. In the hierarchy of main antagonists throughout the history of Destiny’s expansions, The Witness is probably the silliest and least-threatening looking out of all of them.
The Pale Heart
Alongside the campaign is the new destination, The Pale Heart, which is inside the Traveler. I’ve mentioned my initial impressions previously in my review-in-progress, but I wanted to bring up a few more points about how this new destination works from previous ones. Instead of it being a public instance, where you can encounter players randomly as you go about the map, The Pale Heart is always set as a solo instance. This makes it feel really lonely, as opposed to going to the EDZ or exploring Nessus.
I get the feeling that Bungie wanted The Final Shape’s campaign and destination both to feel more personal – like it’s our own world inside the Traveler. Yet it feels more like Bungie is catering to a more solo-player experience. Which is fine during the campaign itself, because that’s how I would prefer it. But the final campaign mission, Excision, forces you to play in a fireteam of 12 players. I would have preferred it if The Pale Heart opened up after this mission and just became like a regular public instance destination.
What Bungie does instead is let’s you matchmake for specific locations within The Pale Heart, seemingly at random. Alternatively, another option would be to give players the choice before going to a destination if they want a solo or public instance. That way solo players can still opt for the more single-player experience while more social players can still engage with others for the Overthrow events, without having to specifically matchmake to a limited location.
Exotic Class Items
This solo vs. group experience extends beyond just the new destination though. It’s also curiously tied in to the new Exotic Class items – which I haven’t been able to unlock yet because of this. In juxtaposition to how much Bungie designed The Final Shape around a solo experience, the quest to get the new exotic class items that have two exotic powers must be completed by two players, and can not be obtained solo.
It also irks me that this quest is completely hidden. Despite the fact that Bungie heavily marketed these new exotic class items as part of the selling points for The Final Shape, it’s not something that’s easily attained (or easily found). In order to even get the mission, you have to complete the Overthrow event in its entirety for each of the three main locations within The Pale Heart: the Landing, the Blooming, and the Impasse. After finishing an Overthrow at one location, you then have to find a hidden Lucent Hive in that area and kill it before you can move on to the next location. And you have to do all this all in one sitting – you can’t go back to Orbit at all.
After which, you’re directed to go fight a couple Hive Knights and then you finally unlock the mission. Now, the good news is that this first part only has to be done once. Once the mission is unlocked, you can just keep running it to get new rolls for the exotic class item. But this is where the whole process seems messed up to me. The quest itself has to have two players to do it, but if you want to the first part and get through the Overthrow events in each location it’s really hard to do it solo unless you’ve got several hours on your hand. Being in a fireteam – or even just having public instances for The Pale Heart – would make this part so much easier. As it stands, I haven’t had enough time for one sitting to finish this first part (without messing it up).
Salvation’s Edge
Where you need a lot of time to play is the new Salvation’s Edge raid that became available just a few days after the launch of The Final Shape. I was honestly expecting the final fight against The Witness to occur within this raid, which initially made me upset because I knew it would take me days (if not weeks) to beat it. I don’t have a dedicated fireteam anymore – most of my friends that played Destiny 2 have moved on to other looter-shooters and I don’t think they’ll ever come back. Thankfully, this wasn’t the case though. As soon as the raid was completed for the first time, it immediately opened up the final campaign story mission for all players.
This was a great choice by Bungie to still time-gate the final ending of the story without locking out a majority of the playerbase and forcing them to play the raid if they wanted to see the “true ending”. The Salvation’s Edge raid just lays the groundwork for going in and killing The Witness once and for all, but isn’t necessarily a pivotal part of the story itself. That said, there is a bunch of lore tidbits that dropped during the raid and left us with some clues as to what we might expect going forward in the Destiny franchise. But for now, that’s all speculation.
True to their promise, Bungie delivered the most challenging raid experience to date. The first completion time took 19 hours, which became the longest ever completion time for a new raid (the previous record was the Last Wish raid which took 18 hours 49 minutes to clear). What makes this raid so difficult is how it takes previously built-upon mechanics and turns them on their heads – like how you utilize platforms differently then from everything else we’ve been taught to do in Destiny 2.
While I still haven’t beaten the raid myself yet, I intend to get it done this weekend when I have a full day available. So far, I’ve gotten to the second phase and I hope that I’ll be able to find a dedicated fireteam that will go the distance with me. While I don’t think it’s as fun as Crota’s End or King’s Fall, I still find the mechanics more enjoyable that Last Wish, personally.
Episode: Echoes
Post-campaign content, besides trying to unlock new exotics, is coming in the form of “Episodes” and each Episode is divided into three Acts lasting 6 weeks each. I was confused at first because I thought that Episodes were completely replacing Seasons – and they are, for the most part – but when The Final Shape launched I was making progress in the season pass even though Echoes didn’t start until the following week. Now, however, Echoes is in full swing and it’s pretty much the same as any previous season. Every week, there’s a little bit more narrative to discover as we endlessly play the new seasonal activity to earn new Episode-specific gear.
While Breach Executable, the new co-op activity for this episode, was fun for a few runs it has one major fundamental flaw that I hope gets addressed. When running from the second encounter to the final boss, there is an opportunity to use a big hammer and get resources that are needed to turn in. Unfortunately, if someone in the fireteam lacks patience or simply does not care, then they might go straight to the boss. This pulls you into the fight alongside them, and potentially wastes the consumable hammer that you needed to get materials.
The solutions I can think of for this is to either not make starting the boss fight pull the fireteam inside, or else don’t make the hammer a consumable item that can be wasted. Several times I used up a hammer, only to then immediately see a countdown for when I would get summoned to the fireteam for the boss, not even having enough time to collect one of the resources. It’s extremely annoying and puts me off from even wanting to do the activity unless it’s with a pre-made group.
Echoes sees the return of Failsafe, the crashed colony ship’s onboard AI with a split-personality disorder, on Nessus. There are worrying signs that something is stirring within the Vex, almost as if a part of them are splitting apart into something new. Instead of acting like a hive mind, these new Vex signals are communicating between themselves. Could this be the beginning of a civil war within the Vex? Will this new faction be allies, similar to how the Cabal under Empress Caiatl and the Eliksni in the House of Light have joined us? It seems like if there’s any chance for a faction of Vex to turn friendly, this is the perfect opportunity for Bungie to do so.
In addition to seeing Failsafe again, there’s also an emphasis on the relationship between Saint-14 and Osiris this Episode. In fact, it seems like Bungie might be taking this opportunity post-campaign to flesh out and finalize some of of the story arcs they’ve danced around previously. It could certainly be a fitting end to spend the next year or so on a trifecta of Epilogues that would bring closure to some of the loose ends of the past decade.
What’s Next for Destiny
Now the Light has triumphed over Darkness, and The Witness has been layed low, what’s next in store for our Guardians? Well, besides the obvious Episodes that we’ll be getting every 4 months or so, Bungie has teased the codename for what’s coming after this year: Frontiers. What this means? Well, we don’t know yet. But I hope that it means we will explore uncharted parts of our system – maybe even explore other systems within our galaxy. I don’t think that this necessarily means we will see a Destiny 3 coming soon. But I think that by finishing the Light v. Darkness story – and if this year’s Episodes really are Epilogues – then it would be a perfect opportunity to build up a foundation to eventually make another sequel.
The Final Word
After dipping into what Bungie has in store for us with their first Episode, Echoes, and experiencing more of what The Final Shape has to offer, I still think that returning Destiny fans should come back to experience the end of the Light v. Dark saga for themselves. It’s a must-play for Destiny fans and it really is worth the time to see this nearly decade-long journey come to a close. The new Prismatic subclass feels powerful, and it’s fun to mix together the Light and Dark powers we’ve accumulated. That said, if you’ve maybe played Destiny before but aren’t really a fan – or if you’ve never played it at all – then I would caution against investing any time or money into the franchise at this point.
The Final Shape really feels intended for players that already have a history or a familiarity with the franchise already established, and doesn’t seem like it’s any better of an opportunity to bring in new or returning players. There’s nothing here to hold your hand and show you what content to do in which order, and menu navigation and item management is no better than it was before. The fact that much of the older story content has been vaulted and is currently unplayable is still a sore spot for a lot of players too, myself included. If you haven’t already invested into Destiny, then The Final Shape doesn’t provide much reason to start now. If you have, however; I think it’s worth it to yourself (and to your Guardian) to finish what you started oh so many years ago.
Full Disclosure: A copy of this game was provided by PR for the purposes of this review. Reviewed on PC (Steam).
