[Console Games] Destiny 2: The Final Shape Review - Becoming Legend First Released Sep 6, 2017

[Depo -]

It's impossible to think about The Final Shape without the context of the last 10 years, the seven other Destiny 2 expansions, and the four original Destiny expansions--plus the vanilla campaigns that came with both games. This eighth Destiny 2 expansion is, to some degree, the culmination of the somewhat haphazard decade-long journey that the first game spawned, in which Bungie has continually tried experiment after experiment in gameplay, adjusted and recalibrated its storytelling, and worked and reworked its approach to running a live-service game. While the additions haven't always consistently built toward a story conclusion or a definitive vision of the game, there was a clear, mostly positive evolution across all those steps that informs what The Final Shape is to Destiny as a whole.

I've noted in the past when expansions were high-water marks for Destiny 2 as a game, but this is something else. The Final Shape isn't just a step forward in a long march of progress, but, in every single way, a leap. Through its campaign, its new destination, its new activities, and its post-campaign story continuation, The Final Shape is as close as Destiny has ever gotten to the original promise of the game when Bungie first described a shared-world sci-fi fantasy shooter set in a far-flung future. This isn't just Destiny 2 as the best it's ever been--this is Destiny 2 as it always should have been.

The Final Shape avoids past pitfalls by pulling together the best elements of all Destiny 2 stories, setting clear stakes and motivations for the antagonist, while keeping a tight focus on Destiny 2's main cast of characters as they head toward a likely suicidal, potentially world-ending confrontation. The Final Shape is easily the best story Destiny has ever told in an expansion, clearly laying out what is at stake and, at least emotionally, how it'll work, and setting players on a journey straight from point A to point B and a final confrontation with the Witness.

A major benefit to that story, and the campaign in general, is the Pale Heart itself. Expansions always bring new destinations to Destiny 2, usually a new planet or moon with lots of cool places for events to happen, but the Pale Heart is inside the Traveler, the magic robot space god that's been at the center of this franchise for 10 years. Leaning hard into that magical side of the game, we get a location that's strange, familiar, uncanny, and often remarkable in its art direction.

The idea is that the reality of the place is manifested from the memories and emotions of the people within it, creating meldings of familiar locations from throughout Destiny's history, but often recombined in strange ways or twisted by corruption. The Pale Heart is a gorgeous and fascinating place to explore, at once a heaven and hell of the Destiny universe. It leans all the way into the game's weirder side, which comprises some of the best elements of Destiny 2, and offers a ton of different places to fight, run, and climb, a variety that it uses to provide new gameplay scenarios and combat encounters that feel fresh and interesting, despite players doing more or less this exact thing for the last 10 years.

The campaign combines many of the best elements from years of Destiny 2 gameplay to create a standout experience, especially on the challenging Legendary difficulty. First, it's the most mechanically intensive a campaign has been. Just about every big encounter has an extra layer to deal with, like toxic air that requires you to periodically zap a specific object while you stand next to it to gain a protective buff, or enemies that drop "runes" when they die that correspond to locked doors, requiring you to remember which pictures you saw earlier to activate the correct keys.

 

Link: https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/destiny-2-the-final-shape-review/1900-6418239/