Blog

As I wrote my thoughts on the initial 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 was so much left, including a raid, a final mission, and secrets that were just revealed this week. But now that everything is out on the table, it’s time to do a full breakdown of everything.

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

The campaign – This is the part I’ve already covered, but Bungie has created an excellent narrative focusing on the main three members of the Vanguard, plus the new addition Crow, in addition to our own Guardian. They managed to do something I thought was impossible, making Cayde’s appearance important and impactful rather than a marketing gimmick, and making the Witness a compelling, hate-able villain who you really want to see dead.

The missions themselves are excellent, perhaps starting off a bit slow with the “reunite the scattered team” intro, but by the end? The last two missions in particular are certainly the best the series has ever done in a story campaign. I’m not sure there’s anything in the story itself that matches the “Savatun and the Traveler” moment of The Witch Queen, but overall it’s the better story, especially once you reach the final mission which was unlocked later.

Prismatic – The ultimate fusion of all our guardian powers has been great to play, and it’s only escalated even more this week with the release of exotic class items combining two perks at once.

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

The attack – Probably the wildest raid Bungie has ever done with the world’s first race that spans player lengths as players struggled heavily with certain segments, namely encounters one and four. The attack race it ended up being something of a failure, with the 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 this outrageous encounter four in particular being one of the most mechanically impressive things Bungie has ever done. It won’t be exactly that most accessible to casual players before some serious strategies are learned, but it only makes sense that this would be the craziest onslaught the game has received in all this time, and that’s exactly what they’ve delivered.

The final mission – Easily the best moment in the history of the game. Helm’s Deep moment by Zavala in the intro, every NPC we’ve ever played rushing into the mission, and then the first 12 Guardian assault in the game against The Witness and his forces in total chaos. NPCs warping to give us relic weapons, 12-man DPS phases in front of the monolithic Witness. Fun but not really hard so any player can experience it.

The ending cutscenes are just… out of this world. (Spoilers) Cayde’s sacrifice to revive our ghost is the most emotional moment of the entire series, and Crow’s ascension as Hunter Vanguard is the denouement of a storyline that’s essentially been a decade in the making. I can’t think of how this finale could have gone any better.

The pale heart – We’re going back to where all of this is happening, The Pale Heart, which is definitely my favorite destination that Bungie has made. It’s both in terms of its aesthetic, which goes from Gardens of Eden to hand-based horror, deeper into the corruption of the Witness, and I’ve never stopped taking so many screenshots in my life. But aside from the visual effects, the Overthrow system and the use of space as a solo instance is the most involved patrol mode since Escalation Protocol. A truly stellar setting and a brilliant endgame spot for all of the above.

The exotic mission – But wait, there’s more! Since this reset, players have completed a Whisper-like patrol mission to unlock a secret Whisper-like mission, Double Fate, which is used to obtain new exotic class items. The duo-forced mission is extremely creative, the first to force you to work with just one partner, but with mechanics that are easy enough to eventually speed things up, provided you communicate.

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

This is as close to perfect as a Destiny expansion can get. If my biggest complaints are “I don’t like the new shader icons” and “the Ritual Pathfinder system needs to be changed”, I think we’re doing well. Instead, The Final Shape represents a stunning finale to a decade-long story arc, which is not only a huge event for Destiny itself, but for the industry as a whole, as I simply don’t think there’s another point of comparison in gaming history where provided I was on this trip so long. Bungie left everything on the field and delivered on all fronts.

It is 10/10. The absolute 10/10 I can give.

follow me on Twitter, threads, YouTube, and Instagram.

Get my science fiction novels Herokiller series and The “Born of the Earth” trilogy..