Destiny 2: The Final Shape Review – A Fit Finale

Bungie is a legendary development studio that has defined some of the core elements of the gaming industry, genres, and platforms over the past decades. With their Halo series, they established a control system for first-person shooters on console controllers that is still used today, helped propel the development of the Xbox console, and also 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. Fate has successfully been with us for ten years, which was her original (at that time completely unheard of) intention, and now, according to this original intention, the time has come for the storyline of the Light and Darkness saga. come to an end.

• Platform: PC, PS5 (review version), Xbox Series X/S
• Publication date: 04/06/2024
• Manufacturer: Bangui (USA)
• Genre: MMOFPS
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: Online, up to 12 players
• Download data: 36/143 GB
• Game 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 story over the past ten years in Destiny and Destiny 2 has chronicled the technological advances this “Wanderer” from the depths of space has given us before its first appearance. The vanguards of his pursuers arrived – several different alien races seeking to destroy the Traveler. The result was a long and complex war across the solar system, in which the Guardians, chosen human warriors, supported by the Pilgrim’s tiny artificial emissaries and equipped with near-total immortality and offensive magic, played a key role. But now the Pilgrim’s nemesis, the Witness, has arrived to finish his job once and for all and stop all time and life in the universe, in the form of a deformed, eternal “fossil”.

Although Destiny has been led by different writers and designers over the years, so the quality of the story (and the game itself) has fluctuated, after a very weak previous “data disc” called Lightfall, it was possible (also thanks to a significantly longer development) to this time release an expansion that is practically superior in every way. The Witness is truly the scariest threat we’ve fought so far, his power noticeably more destructive, and we also get a glimpse inside the Pilgrim himself, where dreams and nightmares materialize in fascinating and absurd ways. While some of the dialogue is surprisingly amateurishly written, the ending of the story is overall very good, providing a nice nod to the show’s ten-year history, its characters and events, and culminating in a spectacular and moving finale.

Various writers and designers have worked on Destiny over the years.

As almost always, the best work in this DLC is once again done by the environmental graphics. Locations in Destiny are almost always amazing, but this time they surpass anything we’ve seen so far. The witness fossils are always of brutally crushed proportions, with parts protruding from walls, ground and ceilings as horrific reminders of dimensional destruction. It’s a shame that the great music of the past is weaker this time around – perhaps this is a side effect of the unexpected layoffs at the studio, which also affected the legendary musical group. The overall experience is greatly helped by the fact that the expansion comes with more pre-rendered movies, which are also noticeably more narrative driven – perhaps this is the help of external PlayStation studios helping with these things for larger internal projects. , showed up here.

Prismatic future

As always, Bungie’s games continue to excel primarily in their great “shoot-out” gameplay, or shooting feel, that is practically the best in the industry thanks to its combination of looks, performance, sound and gun control. Nothing has changed here either, and the new weapons are dominated by one of the basic automatic pistols that you get during the campaign. But what is absolutely sensational is the transition from individual magical elements (electricity, fire, etc.) to so-called “prismatic” magic, where spells and special abilities of all elements can be combined together, including completely new variants and additions. Along with a new race of enemies and more varied campaign mechanics, Destiny has reached its most varied and exciting form yet.

The final raid was also a success, taking teams of the world’s best players in record time to complete. Subsequently, the first mission in the series’ history was unlocked, in which twelve players are brought together through automatic matchmaking 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 much different format, but it is a little 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 will finally venture beyond our solar system to discover completely new places in space.