Destiny 2 The Final Shape: A Beacon of Hope

 

Destiny 2: The Final Shape has been out for a little while now and now that I’ve been able to sink my teeth into everything offered, I figured it’s about time I talk about it. Spoilers for literally all the things, please click off if you care about spoilers.

P1: EXPECTATIONS PRE-LAUNCH

aka: “how much i hated this game before april”

First, I think it’s important to talk about my expectations before The Final Shape launched. Before the April showcase, I was not sold on TFS in any capacity. Lightfall, the previous expansion, killed any hope I had of Bungie closing out the narrative in a satisfying way. LF was a tone-deaf mess of a campaign where the entire plot became about the new subclass instead of, y’know, stopping Calus and The Witness from doing whatever it is they wanted to do. I mean hell, we learned what the veil was in a cutscene that was released 5 MONTHS AFTER LAUNCH. While the Y6 seasonal content was at its peak gameplay wise, the story was not; at some point, I just stopped caring. I felt no reason to play, loot grind wasn’t all that great, and the story–the one consistent thing WQ and its year of content had–was not doing it for me. It felt more like ping-ponging around different people being told “oh I actually don’t have what you want but [insert x character here] does.” After the layoffs at Bungie, I decided I’d had enough. I had set my mind on not buying TFS and just watching it on YT or something.

One day on a whim, a friend of mine showed me the April 4th showcase because he saw that Luke Smith, the previous game director with WONDERFUL ideas like removing supers and sunsetting exotics, was in it. This was a mistake however, because they also revealed the new prismatic subclass and exotic class items. To be honest, I was kinda sold. I was cautious with it, but sold on the expansion nonetheless. The same day as that showcase, a major content update dropped as well, Into the Light, which turned out to be really promising. That sucked me back into the game, fully preparing me for what was to come.

P2: CAMPAIGN STUFF

aka: “yap simulator 2024 babyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy”

June 4th was shaping (haha get it) up to be a great day for Destiny players (virgins)June 4th finally came around and it might be the most hype day to be a destiny player. I felt like marketing really ramped up after April and ItL brought a lot of goodwill back to the playerbase. With everything set for a successful launch, what could possibly go wrong? Enter the plague of D2: server issues. It’s no secret that something went horribly wrong with the rollout of the expansion, as numerous people couldn’t play for most of the day. It rivaled Shadowkeep’s launch issues back in 2019. Couple this with the 25 hour downtime the day prior, and people were not happy. It wasn’t a great launch, but once everything calmed down, most complaints subsided very quickly. Once I was able to actually play the game, I was immediately blown away. Seeing those first few cutscenes, especially the one of the Witness actually enacting the final shape for a moment and the transitional cutscene from the purple portal area to the grassy plains of the pale heart made me feel something I hadn't felt in this game before. Progressing through that first mission was surreal, and that feeling only escalated once I unlocked prismatic ON THE FIRST MISSION WOOOOOOOO YEAH SUCK IT STASIS AND STRAND. The cutscenes after the first mission were great too, fully selling me on Cayde-6’s inclusion, something I was very iffy on before. After this, we spend the first half of the campaign getting the gang back together, which I really appreciated. I’ve always felt the vanguard, ESPECIALLY ZAVALA, were the weakest link in the story. Cayde was the exception, but he was killed off in Forsaken. Ikora had some moments in the past (think S8, S15 + WQ) but outside of that, she just kinda stood around and talked sometimes. Zavala felt like he didn’t even exist prior to the Caiatl storyline, but he’s had more spotlight in recent years. Speaking of Zavala, this is the first time we get to hear his new voice actor, Keith David, and I think he does a phenomenal job. His voice is quite different from what Lance Reddick did for the character and will definitely take some getting used to, but I think he landed his first impression well. 

The visuals of the Pale Heart are top-notch, potentially making it my new favorite planet. I love the very clear progression path of the campaign, starting out all normal with all this greenery and as we move closer to the Witness things get more and more messed up. More hand structures start appearing, things seem to be breaking apart more, and we finally hit the monolith where the environmental design peaks. We get closer to that “Final Shape” look of things and it’s so well done. I know the art team always does a great job but this just felt like they cranked the dial up to 11 and I’m all here for it. As a result, the campaign takes a more linear approach to progression and while that makes it the least destiny-like campaign, I think it was for the best. I believe there’s only one moment of backtracking but the game spawns you in the area you need to be anyway, so it’s not really a major problem, especially because you don’t unlock fast travel points until you complete the 7th mission. 

The difficulty of the legend campaign experience definitely kicked my ass a few times. Now granted, I have not soloed the other 2 legend campaigns, so I don’t have a great point of reference there, but I definitely got stuck on some encounters at times. The 3 player experience didn’t feel as hard as WQ’s, but it was definitely harder than what LF’s offered. In terms of the actual level design, I think this is the best it has ever been and I was in love with every arena. All the boss arenas were greatly designed, with a lot of the standard enemy encounters being more open and forcing more cover play than usual. Speaking of enemies, we finally got a new enemy race with the dread and I genuinely cannot imagine this expansion without them. We’re introduced to them almost as soon as we enter the pale heart and they become a mainstay very quickly. They’re annoying as hell to fight but in a fun kinda way, unless you’re in the raid but more on that later. 

The story is about, you guessed it, preventing the final shape from happening. The first half is more about putting the gang back together, as mentioned earlier, but I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the vanguard in the spotlight. Zavala not only having his crisis of faith that was hinted at so long ago but also losing his light was really great to experience. I’ve always wanted more for his character and I’m so happy he finally has the spotlight. Ikora felt a lot more of the same as she was in WQ so no complaints there. Cayde’s inclusion was definitely interesting. He not only got to see how his best friends have changed since his death, but also their reactions to seeing him alive again. Him and Crow honestly steal the show at times. Targe was a character we’ve known about but rarely seen, much less heard and yet, despite his short screentime, I empathized with Zavala when he died. Hearing the witness try to coerce us to its side was neat, it was done hijacking our ghost and started talking to us directly, manifesting what it believes we want. We also learn a lot about the witness throughout the journey too, stuff that really, really should’ve been in LF. Learning that it’s the amalgamation of an entire civilization that wanted to make the traveler pay for leaving after they tried to bring the veil, the darkness equivalent of the traveler, to it in order to make it give the universe a purpose in its vision, which is of course the titular final shape. Meanwhile we’ve been talking to the darkness statues that we’ve seen around the solar system before, eventually revealed to be dissenters within the witness. They tell us how to defeat it: by heading to the place where the witness was born–now manifested inside the pale heart thanks to the traveler’s light–and unmaking the witness by destroying enough dissenters to weaken it, which was absolutely insane. We actually lose to the witness in the campaign; it kicks us out of the ritual site before we can do enough damage to it, and also leads directly into the raid, which I don't believe has been done before. In the raid, Salvation’s Edge, we finally travel into the monolith that has been towering over the skybox all this time and confront the witness for the 2nd to last time, essentially severing its connection to the travelers light, allowing it to help us once more. Everything ends with the franchise’s first ever 12 player activity, excision, which sees us destroying enough dissenters to weaken the witness further, allowing us to channel the traveler’s light through our ghost and putting an end to the witness once and for all. It’s genuinely incredible bungie managed to make the ending super satisfying and even got me a little emotional at the end of it all, something I never expected going into this.

Next up, I wanna talk about the raid since it directly correlates with the story. Salvation’s Edge might be my new favorite raid in the entire franchise, going neck and neck with WQ’s Vow of the Disciple. I thought the mechanics were great in forcing people to actually know their roles, the enemy density was really well done, and this is also where the dread peak for me. The combat difficulty has been really fun to play and the chaos of it all is something I’ve missed, especially since the last non-reprisal raid was Root of Nightmares, and I do not have enough words to describe how disappointing that was. The 4th encounter, verity, was the most unique and insane encounter that has been designed and I’m absolutely in love with it. Having your ghost shell and fashion matter in an encounter is something I never thought I’d see, hell having SPECTATING being a core mechanic in the encounter is insane enough but that on top of the dissect mechanic being as complicated as it is and the splitting of teams just makes for a perfect encounter. The final encounter, however, I don’t have as many praises to sing as the rest of the raid. It’s the only encounter where you could have half the team doing ad-clear and still succeed, something that isn’t possible in any other encounter up to this point barring some insane luck in verity. I do like the DPS phase though, forcing people to move around and jump during damage is a really nice way to spice things up over the typical “stand in this spot and do damage” DPS phases. I also do like that all the wipe timers in the encounters relate to the final shape in some way, it gives a good sense of urgency, like “oh shit if we fail this it’s over.” The scale of the entire raid was really well done on top of the visual design. You’re in such massive spaces but it feels so well paced that it’s a little insane.

Excision is the franchise’s first 12 player activity and is probably the coolest part of the entire expansion, which is a really high bar considering how much great content is here. I do feel like the player count is unnecessary on normal mode but it’s cool so who cares. Bungie did release a grandmaster mode and it sounds about as insane as you’d think it is, although the rewards for doing it aren’t really that desirable and feels more like something you’d do once and never again.

Before I end this segment on the campaign I just wanna touch on the music a little bit. It’s unfortunate that a few of the big name composers got laid off but they knocked it out of the park for this expansion, especially for the last couple of cutscenes. The music is always fantastic but this time just felt extra special. I’m not a big D1 nostalgia lord or anything, but hearing them remix bits from D1’s music into the tracks was just really nice to hear. The cutscenes you get after excision also have really great music, using a lot of leitmotifs from the series history, even calling so far back and using part of “The Hope” from music of the spheres. The cutscenes and everything that happened were really great on its own, but the music really helps settle in the mood and tone of everything. 

P3: POST CAMPAIGN STUFF

aka: “WOW PRISMATIC’S UNLOCK IS ACTUALLY SUPER FUCKING GOOD”

After completing mission 7 you gain access to free roam on the pale heart, meaning you can finally start doing all of the other things the expansion has to offer, which is a lot. Let’s get into that because I haven’t yapped enough for my own liking.

First up: Prismatic. Prismatic’s unlock system is nowhere near as horrible as the darkness subclasses were and if it was I wouldn’t be able to take it anymore. You unlock some of prismatic during the campaign, with 3 hidden fragments if you can find them, but most of the fragment unlocks will come from chests that you find in the open world. Most of these chests have their own unique mechanics in order to unlock them, which is really neat but I think the cherry on top is YOUR FRAGMENT UNLOCKS ARE ACCOUNT WIDE. THANK YOU BUNGIE FOR NOT PULLING A STRAND AND MAKING ME GRIND THE FRAGMENTS 3 TIMES. You unlock the rest of your abilities through the destined heroes post campaign quest, which is character specific. HOWEVER, completing this quest on one character auto-completes it for your account, meaning once you hop on your alternate characters all you have to do is just launch the adventures from the old tower and you’re good to go. Onto prismatic itself, this might be the most broken subclass we’ve had, unless you play titan. Warlocks get to run around with 3 little buddies and hunters are over here doing some of the best single target damage in the game with nighthawk golden gun + still hunt, and titans get… punch in all different flavors. Hopefully bungie gives titan some love, because prismatic is so much fun on the other classes. The new supers and aspects are pretty good unless your name is unbreakable. Warlocks get D1 radiance back in the form of song of flame, which supercharges you and your allies’ abilities while augmenting your own. During the super you get an upgraded version of incinerator snap and a new grenade that I don't think has a name but is basically a tracking ball of fire that does some good damage. This super might be the best of the 3 because not only does it give you a whopping 90% damage resistance and 30% DR to your allies, but it also has the capability to just constantly stun bigger enemies with the constant ignitions you’ll be pulling off. Hellion, the new aspect for solar warlocks, is also really good: it summons a solar soul that shoots out balls of flame that are a really good source of passive damage. Hunters get storm’s edge for their super, which was surprisingly fun. It’s really fun to just ping pong between enemy formations with it, seeing the cool animation as everything in your path just ceases to exist. Ascension is the new arc aspect and is also surprisingly fun, giving on-demand amplified and anything to make platforming sections faster is always good in my book, especially since you can pair it with grapple on prismatic. Titans get twilight arsenal, which pre-launch was my favorite new super. Throwing 3 mega void axes at enemies AND being able to pick those axes up looked really cool. It still is though, don’t get me wrong, but I think something like song of flame has stolen the spotlight for me because i totally don’t main warlock or anything. Unbreakable is the new void aspect and it sure does exist. Sacrificing your grenade for a dinky shield that most enemies will just counter anyway was a choice ever. Really cool in theory, not that great in execution.

There’s 3 exotics for you to earn and they’re probably the best expansion exotics we’ve gotten in a long while. However, I wanna talk about tessellation real quick even though it was the pre-order exotic and I don’t believe it’s available for people who didn’t pre-order but it technically is a final shape exotic. It’s a really fun exotic that has its extreme niche of turning your grenades into a big explosion, which is really nice for something like solar where you can run both a healing grenade and tessellation which allows your grenade to do damage, even if it won’t count as grenade damage. On to actual exotics introduced in TFS, I wanna start with still hunt since its mission is part of the post campaign quest. Still hunt is basically “golden gun, the gun” and is insanely good because of it. The exotic mission is really fun too, giving us more cayde and crow screentime which I am all here for. Khvostov is next and oh man how I missed this gun. This was the one exotic I wanted back from D1 even though I knew it wouldn’t return in that way. It’s here and it’s glorious, launching with a stability bug that bungie has since patched but buffed the stability of the weapon to sort of bring that stability back. The main gimmick is just “what if we gave ricochet rounds tracking” and while it sounds lame on paper, in execution this thing shreds enemies. That on top of its ability to loop into itself with siphon mods and shoot to loot to pick up orbs at a range and you have yourself the defacto ad clear exotic primary. Shame the quest was (is?) bugged for a while but it’s worth the pain of doing the cysts for this weapon. Microcosm is the weapons team’s attempt to implement the traveler beam from LF’s opening cutscene into a weapon and I think it feels really good. The marketing for it was very unfortunate, underselling the weapon to an insane degree. It’s the first ever kinetic in the heavy slot, meaning it charges both gauges of prismatic and is also really great for super regen with its perk, not to mention the extra damage it gets after your super ends which makes it a really solid option for dps. The co-op focus missions you do to unlock it are really nice too, instead of the typical “higher level version of missions with champions” of the previous expansions. Ergo sum is an exotic sword that was inspired by the craftening, an event that happened back in august of 2023 where people discovered a bug where you could put intrinsic traits or weapon perks on weapons that did not have them normally. Ergo sum not only rolls in all 3 light elements, but also has 5 different frames it can roll and 8 different exotic perks, meaning this thing is a beast. It’s also a special ammo sword, which is definitely unique and highlights just how fun swords are but unfortunately take up the heavy slot. Euphony is the raid exotic and I haven’t been able to mess with it much but from what I have used it gives strand warlock a really solid dps rotation, utilizing an exotic helm I never thought I’d ever see used anywhere in apotheosis veil. Probably really good in higher end stuff too with threadlings spawning fairly often from this weapon and their damage buffs your damage. It also might be the coolest looking raid exotic, up there with something like conditional finality from root of nightmares.

In terms of the legendary weapons, the pale heart weapons are really good, especially the new strand rocket sidearm. This thing was glued to my hand during my original campaign run along with red death. We got some new archetypes too, like the healing auto rifle, the 600 rpm machine gun and the wave sword frame. No hesitation, the new healing auto rifle is everything I’ve ever wanted in a support weapon, coupled with the new ui change to show ally health bars makes me very happy as a support player. Raid weapons are very solid too, with the sniper probably rising to be my favorite one so far.

Dual Destiny unlocked the 2nd reset of the expansion and is how you obtain the exotic class items and it might be the best exotic mission they’ve ever made. It feels like a 2 player raid where both players have to communicate and I’m absolutely in love with it. It’s a shame that it received so much backlash because people don’t wanna find another person to run it with but I sincerely hope that these kind of missions get made again cause it was really fun to figure out the first time, especially once me and my friend sorted out our miscommunication in one of the rooms. The exotic class items are farmable from these missions and chests on the pale heart and are a similar concept to ergo sum. They’re able to roll diet versions of other exotic perks and even roll with perks that are from exotics that aren’t from your class. These are pretty vital in prismatic build crafting, although with the double loot cheese being patched the farm isn’t as fun for these anymore. I hope bungie iterates on this idea and gives us more in the future, as well as a better method to farm them, because this is a really fun concept that should definitely be expanded on.

The exotic armor piece acquisition was changed in final shape with it coming from a special focusing tab in rahool’s vendor screen instead of solo lost sectors which I am honestly not the biggest fan of. Especially with exotics gaining artifice slots which, like the special focusing, requires ciphers which is a very scarce material at the moment. Not to mention in order to get the special focusing you need to fully reset his rank, which just feels not great. On to the actual exotic armor pieces, I’ve only messed around with about half of them and they’re really, really good. Speaker’s sight allows me to become even more of a support player than I already could be and it’s absolutely beautiful. Mataiodoxía is one I haven’t messed around with that much, but my good friend on screen reviewed it for me so I can be lazy. Hazardous propulsion allows me to be explodey boy and it’s great. Wishful ignorance exists for some reason, because strand titan wasn’t broken enough. Granted I haven’t tried it out in group content but luckily my good friend reviewed it for me. Gifted conviction is a chest piece that I thought was gonna be a meme, and it totally is and I’m in love with it. It’s so dumb but in a great way. Balance of power is an exotic. It sure does exist and does a thing. Here are my friend’s thoughts on it.

P4: MISC QOL STUFF

aka: “wow this ui rework sure changed nothing!”

TFS, like any expansion, came with some sweeping quality of life changes and some of them are great, and some need more work. First, the power grind is only 100 levels this time around, which I am very grateful for because WOW THE PINNACLE GRIND STILL SUCKS #FOREVER1999. Account wide power is another component that I think makes the pinnacle grind less horrible as you can essentially power level a character that you’ve ignored. Fireteam power is also a great change since I can do random loadouts in raids and not be totally throwing. We got 2 more loadout slots which was nice but I do wish we had more. Mod icons got color coded which is probably the best quality of life feature they introduced if I’m being totally honest. Unfortunate that the mod system hasn’t been added onto since S21 but I’m just too used to bungie making/overhauling a system and never adding on to it afterwards. The fabled ui rework also happened this expansion and while I definitely think it’s an improvement, it needs more work. We’re still limited to only seeing 4 buffs/debuffs on the left side and with how many things you can activate at once, especially on prismatic, 4 channels just isn’t enough anymore. I also think certain things shouldn’t take up channels, like anti-champion capabilities or magazine overflow perks. Having raid/dungeon important buffs at the top is nice. I think doubling the available channels and moving debuffs to the right side would be ideal. Easier said than done I know, but something needs to be done about it cause the game simply has too many things to keep track of at the moment. I also feel like those buffs with high uptime (i.e armor charge) should have its own buff channel as well so it isn’t fighting with everything else. I believe bungie has talked about some sort of adjustment so I’m excited to see how it goes.

P5: EP1 STUFF

aka: “seasons the sequel: the sequel but somehow slightly worse for now”

Bungie has decided to rename seasons for some reason, and I still don’t understand why. Welcome to episodes, the new seasonal content model that so far, before act 2 launches, is no different than a regular season. So far it seems to just be more timegated but without more content I can’t really give a full opinion, but I can at least talk about what we have.

Story so far is this: After the witness’s defeat (spoilers btw) the traveler releases anomalous matter dubbed echoes and one of these lands on nessus, which starts to make the vex act strang and transform the planet. So naturally we go find out what’s going on, and we find out that there’s a new villain in the picture named the conductor. Who this character is or what their motives are, we don’t know because we’re not that far.

In terms of activities we only have two so far: breach executable and enigma protocol. I still haven’t done enigma protocol so let's talk about breach executable. It feels like another usual seasonal activity: kill things, pick up drop, bank it, repeat. Enemy density is pretty good, and being on nessus again is nice since it hasn’t been important since 2021.

Weapons this time around are pretty good, but we don’t have everything so it’s kinda hard to judge them fully. We got the return of Red Death, a D1 exotic brought back to life to kill its impostor Crimson. It’s pretty neat, definitely the new king of survivability. Alongside that, we got some reprisal weapons from season of the dawn but they left out the one weapon I wanted back, so that’s fun. In terms of the new weapons, the only one I’ve really used is lost signal, the new area denial frame grenade launcher. The aesthetics of everything else are cool but I feel like I’ve said everything I can without having the full arsenal to use. Also I know this section isn’t about armor but I just wanna shout out the warlock helmet. Look at this thing. It’s so dumb looking but I kinda love it. You can also give it an anime blush but that’s probably cursed knowledge aaaaaaaaaaand it’s time to move on.

P6: CLOSING

aka: “thank fuck he’s finally shutting up”

Destiny 2: The Final Shape is pretty good, if you didn’t catch that yet. There’s a lot to like here and I think it’s definitely the best expansion the game has ever seen, surpassing forsaken. I hope my insane rambles for [however long this shit turns out to be lmaoooo] was entertaining. Thanks for watching, stay hydrated and I’ll see you next time. [queue epic ending that i totally won’t forget to do HEY FUTURE ME DONT FORGET TO DO THE THING YOU WANNA DO OKAY]

 

    video link: https://youtu.be/ucJU7Qn4FL0?si=JVfg0fQoQf9Ej0mI 

 

  short director's commentary: cool bug fact: this video underwent 4 or 5 different drafts before i ended up on this version. the first couple were similar in vein to the persona 3 reload video i had made prior to this, being unscripted rambling where i vaguely follow along my notes. however i felt this was too low effort and ended up trying to write a script, only to end up rewriting another 3 times. the video itself also had to be re-edited multiple times due to some file corruption, meaning in the ~2 months this video took to come out, most of that was me dealing with production issues to some capacity. days before i finished this video, bungie decided to layoff even more employees, causing me to completely rewrite the ending of the video at the 11th hour, as i felt the original ending's bombastic and celebratory tone would be in poor taste, with a bit more added to pad out the time since i couldn't fully figure out what i wanted the new ending to be but also wanted to be done. thanks bungie, very cool.

word count: 4,811
video length: 24:55