Destiny 2: The Final Shape – Campaign | Review

The Shape of a Mediocre Story

Jesse 'Doncabesa' Norris 4 weeks agoLast Updated: June 5, 2024

2 10,497 5 minutes read

Destiny 2: The Final Shape is upon us. This epic expansion has been hyped to the Black Garden and back, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. The environmental art team steals the show once again, as the inside of the Traveler is full of stunning vistas and mediocre story beats. A heavy reuse of existing mechanics is mixed with aging tech that gives a fleetingly fun campaign. I’m not sure that this was the shot in the arm that Destiny 2’s most faithful were hoping for, but there is good to find here. So let’s get into it.

The Premise

I am on the more serious though still casual side when it comes to Destiny as a franchise. I’ve logged thousands of hours between the two titles and owned every expansion put out. Destiny 2: The Final Shape isn’t on the level of Rise of Iron or Forsaken but it’s still “good” on the whole. The Witness is a being of many cloudy, evil heads and he’s cut a triangle into the silent space God known as The Traveler.

Destiny’s biggest story strengths lay in its obfuscation of facts. The Final Shape attempts to give answers, like why Cayde-6 is back alive, and most of them are unsatisfying. I actually liked the reason for Cayde, but what the Witness is, how it’ll be beaten eventually etc. is all extremely predictable. This is the first expansion since the passing of the great Lance Reddick. The equally fantastic Keith David takes over the role of Zavala and does an admirable job with the poor dialogue he’s forced to scream out. Both Zavala and Ikora are mostly unlikable and useless in this story with the majority of the plot beats feeling like “we needed it to go this way, so it will”.

The biggest issues could easily be solved by people simply talking to each other and not being idiots. It is my least favorite type of plot, one where we as the nearly omniscient player have no control over how dumb our companions are being and are forced to watch them make mistake after mistake through this linear narrative. Crow is boring, Ikora feels useless, Zavala is an idiot, and Cayde is great. Nathan Filion returns to voice him after Nolan North had taken over the role for a while. He puts his all into making Cayde as loveable as ever and it worked for me. What didn’t are the “new” gameplay mechanics.

The Gameplay

Destiny 2: The Final Shape continues the series tradition of being unbelievably fun to play, most of the time. The Final Shape adds in a new spin on old mechanics in a way that I grew tired of quickly. There are sections where you need to unlock gates, lots of them, to do this you have a small handful of ways. Those ways are then used again when it comes to breaking boss shields because they still haven’t found a way to overcome most fights ending in 10 seconds if they don’t give bosses immunity to damage phases.

The star is the new prismatic class, though the prismatic shielded enemies are garbage and should die in a fire. Any mechanic where I simply cannot damage an enemy unless I go get a temporary buff is so played out in this franchise that it drives me up a wall, almost as much as every NPC conversation ending with them walking three feet before transmatting away. The Prismatic class lets you have a handful of skills/supers/grenades/and more from each subclass. It also adds a light and dark meter that requires you to mix and match your weapon and skill damage types between light (arc, solar, void) and dark (statis, strand). It works well though it can feel a bit restrictive as you level and are at the RNG God’s mercy for damage types on weaponry.

That light and dark meter goes pink when full and allows you to temporarily super-prismatic charge all attacks, gain a new grenade, and is the only way to break the enemy’s prismatic shields. Whenever those shields come up you can be assured there will be a well of prismatic light to stand on to quickly get your buff back and while it was fun the first 10 times the remaining 50 wore a bit thin on me by the campaign’s end. In the end, it’s Destiny, and whether on controller or M&K it feels great to pop alien heads. There is a new enemy type though they mostly fly which means they suck. They’re forgettable compared to the other races and feel like more of an afterthought than a new “race” to fight.

The Experience

Graphically Destiny 2: The Final Shape has moments of absolute glory, with some of the best environmental artwork ever seen in a game. There are some stunning vistas and locales on offer here, mixed with an aging platform that has fallen behind the heaviest graphical hitters in some ways. There are numerous textures that don’t appear to be finished, as they are N64 in quality. It didn’t pop up a ton but when it did it was jarring compared to how incredible it looks in general. I played on PC, though rest assured that the Xbox version is as good as ever. I played through a few campaign missions again after completing it on PC and outside of going from 120 to 60 frames per second it looked nearly identical.

The music is great, though there wasn’t a truly memorable song that hit me in my first playthrough. I was so busy trying to not die as I played through solo mixing and matching between normal and legendary difficulty that I remember enjoying what I heard but not exactly what it sounded like. One of my main issues is The Witness. Their voice acting isn’t scary, their motivations are generic and petty, and while most of their design is interesting they have Mr. Burns’s drugged-up eyes from The Simpsons and I can’t not see it.

Issues-wise launch day was a disappointment. I get that popular live service games are tough, but if you’re looking to buy this around launch expect to get kicked out of missions often. I was kicked out of the game and sent back to orbit no less than 80 times on launch day with various issues cropping up. When I was playing the “contacting server” pop-up was nearly constant with rubber-banding being a constant issue. In the end, I got it done and a few days after launch I’d expect things to clear up for the most part. This is a review of the base campaign, which will have more content added to it after launch. Reviewing live service titles is tough so make sure to keep an eye on your favorite streamers/creators post-launch if you’re curious whether or not this one is worth it.

Wrapping Things Up

Destiny 2: The Final Shape mixes incredible environmental art, fun gameplay, and a compelling new subclass with a boring story full of predictable cliches. It’s not the rebirth of Destiny 2 that some were hoping for, but it’s still as fun to play as ever. If you felt burnt out this expansion isn’t likely to change that. If you want to ignore a disappointing story and enjoy a gorgeous new area to play through with a plethora of fun new toys then this one is worth checking out once the server issues clear up, if the $50 price tag doesn’t scare you off.