Destiny 2: The Final Shape Review – A Worthy Ending

Bungie is a legendary development studio that has defined some of the core elements of the entire gaming industry, genres, and platforms over the past decades. With the Halo series, they established the first-person shooter control system for console controllers that is still used today, helped develop the Xbox console, and laid the foundation for how online and multiplayer games should look on consoles. With the Destiny series, they once again pushed the entire genre forward by defining how a story-driven shooter should work as a game as a service. Destiny has been with us successfully for ten years, which was its original (and at the time completely unheard of) intent, and now, according to that original intent, it’s time for the storyline of the Light and Darkness saga to close.

• Platform: PC, PS5 (review version), Xbox Series X/S
• Publication date: 04.06.2024
• Manufacturer: Bangi (USA)
• Genre: MMOFPS
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: Online, up to 12 players
• Data for download: 36/143 GB
• Play time: 20+ hours
• Price: 1189 CZK (PS store)

The end of the saga

Beginning with the arrival of a strange, moon-sized creature in our solar system, the last ten years of Destiny and Destiny 2 have chronicled the technological advances this “Wanderer” from the depths of space brought us before the first vanguards of its pursuers arrived – several different alien races bent on destroying the Traveler. The result was a long and complex war across the solar system, in which the Guardians, select human warriors supported by tiny artificial emissaries of the Pilgrim and equipped with near-immortality and offensive magic, played a key role. But now the Pilgrim’s nemesis, the Witness, has arrived to finish the job once and for all, stopping all time and life in the universe in the form of a warped, eternal “fossil.”

While Destiny has had different writers and designers overseeing it over the years, and the quality of the story (and the game itself) has fluctuated, after the very weak previous “data disc” called Lightfall, it was possible (also due to the significantly longer development time) to deliver an expansion that is almost superior in every way. The Witness is truly the most terrifying threat we’ve fought so far, its power is noticeably more destructive, and we also get a look inside the Pilgrim himself, where dreams and nightmares materialize in exciting and absurd ways. While some of the dialogue is surprisingly amateurish, the story’s ending is generally very good, making nice nods to the series’ decade-long history, its characters and events, and culminating in a spectacular and touching finale.

Destiny has had a number of different writers and designers working on it over the years.

As almost always, the best work in this DLC is once again done by the environment graphics. Destiny’s environments are almost always stunning, but this time they surpass anything we’ve seen so far. The witness fossils are always brutally pulverized in proportion, with their parts sticking out of the walls, ground, and ceilings as terrifying reminders of spatial destruction. It’s a shame that the great music of the past is weaker this time around – perhaps a side effect of the studio’s unexpected layoffs, which also affected the legendary band. The overall impression is greatly helped by the fact that the expansion features a large number of pre-rendered movies, which are also noticeably more narrative – perhaps this is the help of PlayStation’s external studios, who help with these things for large internal projects. , came into play here.

Prismatic Future

As always, it remains true that Bungie games excel above all else for their excellent “gunplay,” or shooting experience, which is among the best in the industry thanks to the combination of look, performance, sound, and handling of weapons. Nothing has changed here either, with the new weapons being dominated by one of the base automatic pistols you get during the campaign. But what’s absolutely sensational is the move away from individual magic elements (electricity, fire, etc.) to what’s called “prismatic” magic, where you can combine spells and special abilities from all elements together, including entirely new variations and additions. Together with a new enemy race and more varied campaign mechanics, Destiny has found its most diverse and exciting form yet.

The final raid was also a success, with teams of the world’s best players completing it in record time. Subsequently, the first mission in the series’ history was unlocked, in which twelve players are matchmade together to eliminate the Witness once and for all and save the universe. It also marked the beginning of a new format for content delivery – instead of seasons, we will receive episodes in which we gradually clear out pockets of resistance in our solar system. It’s not a hugely different format, but it is more dependent on the time gate. Either way, when it comes to the more distant future of the series, the plot clearly suggests that next time we finally go beyond our solar system to discover entirely new places in space.