Bungie sticks the landing as it finally brings together the threads of its epic first saga.
After a storytelling exercise spanning ten years, two enormous games, and one paracasual Starhorse (don’t ask), Bungie has finally concluded its first Destiny saga with Destiny 2’s The Final Shape expansion. The result is a surprisingly lovely experience that manages to balance the hefty demands of nostalgia, lore, and novelty.
Destiny 2: The Final Shape reviewDeveloper: BungiePublisher: BungiePlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out now on PC (Steam, Epic), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
There’s a lot to get through here, as the first week-and-a-bit since release has included the main story campaign, a raid, a 12-person conclusion mission, a new subclass (Prismatic), a 2-person secret exotic activity, and the first part of a three-act episode called Echoes (episodes being the replacement for seasons – the packages which keep players going between expansions). Let’s start with… story?
As the expansion opens, a universe-ending crisis looms. A host of familiar faces must set aside their differences and come together to repel the story’s Big Bad and save their way of life. In this instance, the Big Bad is The Witness; a huge triangular being with silently screaming smoke for hair. The Witness embodies the consciousnesses of an entire civilisation and is trying to do away with suffering and chaos by using the Traveler to reshape reality, freezing the universe into a perfect unchanging tableau.
Summaries of the events which led to this point will vary according to the teller. Players who are mostly here for the guns and the achievements might shrug and say “Erm, it’s about light versus dark?” A more advanced recap might add, “And the Light – note the capital L – is represented by a big circle, and the Darkness is represented by a big triangle. Well, it’s more of a sphere and a pyramid, but I’m trying to keep it simple. Anyway, the sphere is called the Traveler and-” The most dedicated lore-keepers might sit you down for the best part of a day and talk you through every single main character as well as abstract concepts like Sword Logic.