Destiny 2: The Final Shape Review (PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, & PC)

The long-awaited Destiny 2: The Final Shape is finally here. It’s been at the top of the minds of hundreds of thousands of players, so much so that the servers crashed at launch. Yup, we’re pretty much used to it by now. Though, hopefully, developers borrow a leaf or two from Bungie’s launch demise. Many who dished out a review of Destiny 2: The Final Shape rated it lower than the expansion deserves. 

Anyway, with Bungie responding promptly to the Day One server issues that arose, ironing out any hurdles users were facing, and even getting kicked out of the orbit mid-campaign, the ratings seem to be climbing back up, slowly but surely. If, like us, you’ve taken the time to wait for the server overload to wind down, you can salvage the situation by checking out what to expect from the new game down below. 

Specifically, whether the campaign is even worthwhile to sink precious hours into. Is the hype real or would you be better off waiting out the upcoming raid on Friday, the final mission that wraps up “The Light and Darkness” saga much later, or elsewhere on better FPS shooters out there?

The Beginning of the End

Every story has an end, and whether it satisfies you is up to you to decide. This applies to Destiny 2: The Final Shape’s campaign. Spanning seven missions, it concludes a journey that began in 2014 with the original Becoming Legend campaign. This nearly decade-long saga, known as the Light and Darkness saga, has been ongoing. Dedicated followers have no doubt kept mental notes of all the cliffhangers and loose threads Bungie has yet to resolve.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Every gamer is looking for some form of specific resolve that will send them home happy. And I think what we have to applaud here is that Bungie has delivered the best they can under the circumstances. It’s no secret the pressure the studio has been under, from the hugely disappointing Lightfall to the tension at the office over layoffs and potential shuffling of the board if Destiny 2: The Final Shape fails to deliver on its promise. If the expansion fails, I highly doubt it’d be for a lack of trying.

Back from the Dead

Politics aside, Destiny 2: The Final Shape takes a lighter approach to storytelling. It only has a small cast of four: Vanguard, Zavala, Ikora and Cayde-6 (and Crow). All of them will be familiar to fans of the series, with each one having unfinished business. You play as each character at one point or another, each having distinct skills and abilities, plus unique backstories and motivations.

Cayde is the best character of them all, in terms of his character progression and depiction in general. He’s brought back to life to wrap up the Light and Darkness saga, and while resurrecting him seemed perplexing at first, it all makes perfect sense the more you play through the campaign.

Loose Threads

That said, some of the answers to the loose threads we’ve been most anxious to unravel feel unsatisfying. Even the ending, including the Witness’s motivations, can feel bland and predictable. But it’s not at all terrible. Certainly nowhere close to Lightfall’s disappointing campaign. Sure, some story beats can feel rushed through. But at least Destiny 2: The Final Shape takes its time to set the stage. And all through the campaign, it germinates into something that’s at least interesting and, at best, mysterious.

Mystery, indeed, is Destiny 2: The Final Shape strength. It dances around the more complex story beats, never giving you too much all at once. The Witness is probably the biggest mystery of them all. From the beginning, it seemed darkness would be the big, bad villain. But as you approach closer to The Witness, learning more about the entity and frightening you out of your mind, the closer you reach him, the more worthwhile the entire saga becomes.

The Witness

With multiple heads floating through the air, the Witness is actually a merging of an entire species into one single entity. The build-up to the Witness feels well worth it, if not climactic, with the big, bad guy having mastered the full power of the Darkness and focused solely on the utter destruction of the celestial being, the Traveler. 

As the Guardians, you’ll travel along a mostly linear path that treads closer and closer to the Witness. At the start, you have lush green, unreal flora all around you, perfectly illustrated like a surreal painting. But as you tread closer to the Witness, you begin to see the influence of the darkness in the world around you. It’s a fantastic way to establish continuity. 

Pale Heart

Both linearity and a progressively changing world work spectacularly well to immerse you further into the climax toward the end. Of course, we also have plenty of nostalgic throwbacks, depicted through the recollection of the Guardians quite literally in the world they tread through. Some recollections will appear as fragments, seen through the eyes of the guardian’s memories of the past. 

There are moments of pain, anger, and fear, all perfectly depicted via the new free-roam destination, the Pale Heart of the Traveler. It synchronizes the wild emotions the characters are going through with the cracks tearing through the world around them. Yet even with the constant dread, the Pale Heart is all about nudging you forward, toward the Witness; there’s no way out of this one.

Prismatic

Perhaps the most exciting addition in Destiny 2: The Final Shape, at least besides Pale Heart, is the Prismatic subclass. It takes a while to unlock the full power of Prismatic. Many of its abilities are stacked away in secret locations, many of which you’ll uncover way past the linear campaign is over. Yet the concept is intriguing: merging light and darkness into one subclass. 

The possibilities are endless, with the freedom to mix and match familiar mechanics and discover new ones in the process. With the Prismatic’s full abilities locked away post-campaign and more to come with future updates, at its current state, it can seem a bit weak.

Less exciting is the Dread, a new enemy race that feels a little too rushed over. You have the flying, screeching bats, often annoying, but still a good challenge to spice up gameplay. But there are a couple of scary Dread enemies (in appearance and power). It can get quite intense to take down the Strand and Stasis-wielding ones.

More to Come

The raid on Friday will allow exploring more of the lore in the Pale Heart. At completion, the place will surely pack plenty of things to do, including more Dread and other enemy species to kill and exciting, new environments to comb through. Destiny 2: The Final Shape has taken a different approach to future content releases. Keep a lookout for three episodes each year focusing on new content drops. Each episode will have three acts, each running for six weeks. With each new act, you can look forward to new missions, weapons, story beats, and more.

In fact, a raid is coming this Friday, which will no doubt add more story beats. Plus, the final mission remains under wraps, which, hopefully, gives Destiny 2: The Final Shape the send-off it deserves, at least for now.

Verdict

It’s tricky to give a verdict when Destiny 2: The Final Shape still has more content coming up. We can’t quite be sure whether the final mission will be the big payoff we’ve all been waiting for until it arrives. What we can be sure of, though, is that Destiny 2: The Final Shape has stepped up its game drastically from the disappointing Destiny 2: Lightfall. The campaign gets the job done, and then some, with conscious decisions evidently made about the characters and environments that wrap up the nearly decade-long Light and Darkness saga. 

Sure, some story beats can feel rushed over. Others can feel predictable. And it’s for these minor issues here and there that Destiny 2: The Final Shape, perhaps, falls a little short, at least compared to Destiny 2: The Witch Queen. With The Witch Queen, we received an expansion that capitalized on the element of surprise. With Destiny 2: The Final Shape, however, we almost have a conclusion in our heads that we want Bungie to accomplish, a quite specific expectation that, when not met, feels unsatisfying. 

Yet Destiny 2: The Final Shape does deliver a campaign that, if not thrilling, holds your attention throughout its run-through. Plus, with future content to come, Destiny 2: The Final Shape may still redeem itself, giving us the big payoff we’ve been waiting for. As always, the environments and gameplay stun. Not much needed to be said there, except that Bungie keeps doing what they’ve been doing. It seems to be working out great so far.