10 Years. 10 years have passed since we first made contact with one of the best and most important universes of all time, full of Guardians, Ghosts and conflicts between Light and Darkness. After 10 years of expansions and DLC, celebrations and incredible moments lived inside the purest fictional world, finally the main narrative arch of Destiny universe arrives at his end. This has been a long journey, an incredible crossing through multiple plot twists and multiplayer epic moments: we have fought against Oryx and Crota, seeing the destiny of the Awokens, lived Seasons after Seasons of Events linked with real-life festivities, watching the death of iconic characters and seeking revenge only to love the murderers as new allies. 10 years of new classes and specials, new powers and discoveries, arriving at the everlasting question: what’s inside the Traveler?
Destiny 2 The Final Shape tries to give an answer, and I can immediately say that the clarifications are spin-chilling, observing one of the most emotional and incredible stories I have lived during my career as a gamer. The only problem in this whole moving ending is the excessive multiplayer contents it requires in order to be completely experienced.
Let’s start by saying that the incredible artistic work made by the developers is the most helpful element to deliver a nostalgic and summary telltale, all set inside the Traveler. Without doing spoilers about the locations, I can immediately applaud the great work in meta-narrative made for this expansion. In fact this eternal war we try to end is turned slowly in a love letter to what Destiny could be without all the difficult problems it had in the years. The Final Shape is in fact the necessary perfect form Bungie would like to give to its creature, an impossible objective for the chaotic nature of video game development. In this case, we find zones and locations all created with the purpose of showing the potential energy of every little content they would like to give us. The Traveler is nothing else than Destiny itself, it is the place in which everything of the world is created and given to players.
The Final Shape is also an enormous occasion to close all the little backstories the main characters were still trying to conclude. We have always thought that Zavala, Cayde-6 and Ikora were the main three heroes of a world in which the gray scale makes it so difficult to find a pure legend. Here the three icons for the classes of the guardians eliminate the remaining glimpse of NPCs they had to become the real members of a vanguard against the Witness, and all of them solve the remaining gaps among their characterization. If you wanted to finally obtain the glorification of the lost ones, or if you wanted to finally see the conclusions of every plot line, well, you will be satisfied, with a writing of great quality for intelligence in mixing up the cards, without ever flowing in an exaggerated fan-service.
As Destiny 2 The Final Shape approaches to the definitive storytelling for this universe, the same could not be said about the game design, and the nature of Game As A Service of the project. Let’s make one thing clear: the beautiness of Destiny has always been to follow a narrative with all the other players, giving everyone the occasion to feel the videogame as a container for events and ideas. My expectations about this new great moment for the saga were, however, a little different. I truly hoped that the entire new contents could be lived without the necessary intermission of other players, but yet the great ending of The Final Shape is locked behind a new Raid, as every other conclusion of every other expansion. The main difference, here, was the opportunity Destiny gave to every member of this community to live a great story even without thinking to all the extra online elements, forcing a narrative in which it is suggested to not do other activities until its completion. Obviously it’s all fun and captivating, with the new prismatic classes as a great way of summing up all the last 10 years of classes and abilities, turning the light score in a mere PVP thing and offering a varied list of different missions, but yet the low duration of the whole thing and some bad map designs and conceptual problems (please don’t make us repeat the same actions ever during Boss fights) turned the majestic and poetic Traveler into a bullet hellish nightmare, still full of entertainment and tears, but not perfect as the title would like to suggest.
Gameplay: 4
Game Design: 3
Technical Feature: 4
Narrative: 5
Protagonists: 5
Villains: 5
Multiplayer: 3
Score and Music: 4
Artistic Feature: 5
Atmosphere: 5
Emotional Impact: 4
Final Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Destiny 2 The Final Shape tries to give an answer, and I can immediately say that the clarifications are spin-chilling, observing one of the most emotional and incredible stories I have lived during my career as a gamer. The only problem in this whole moving ending is the excessive multiplayer contents it requires in order to be completely experienced.
Let’s start by saying that the incredible artistic work made by the developers is the most helpful element to deliver a nostalgic and summary telltale, all set inside the Traveler. Without doing spoilers about the locations, I can immediately applaud the great work in meta-narrative made for this expansion. In fact this eternal war we try to end is turned slowly in a love letter to what Destiny could be without all the difficult problems it had in the years. The Final Shape is in fact the necessary perfect form Bungie would like to give to its creature, an impossible objective for the chaotic nature of video game development. In this case, we find zones and locations all created with the purpose of showing the potential energy of every little content they would like to give us. The Traveler is nothing else than Destiny itself, it is the place in which everything of the world is created and given to players.
The Final Shape is also an enormous occasion to close all the little backstories the main characters were still trying to conclude. We have always thought that Zavala, Cayde-6 and Ikora were the main three heroes of a world in which the gray scale makes it so difficult to find a pure legend. Here the three icons for the classes of the guardians eliminate the remaining glimpse of NPCs they had to become the real members of a vanguard against the Witness, and all of them solve the remaining gaps among their characterization. If you wanted to finally obtain the glorification of the lost ones, or if you wanted to finally see the conclusions of every plot line, well, you will be satisfied, with a writing of great quality for intelligence in mixing up the cards, without ever flowing in an exaggerated fan-service.
As Destiny 2 The Final Shape approaches to the definitive storytelling for this universe, the same could not be said about the game design, and the nature of Game As A Service of the project. Let’s make one thing clear: the beautiness of Destiny has always been to follow a narrative with all the other players, giving everyone the occasion to feel the videogame as a container for events and ideas. My expectations about this new great moment for the saga were, however, a little different. I truly hoped that the entire new contents could be lived without the necessary intermission of other players, but yet the great ending of The Final Shape is locked behind a new Raid, as every other conclusion of every other expansion. The main difference, here, was the opportunity Destiny gave to every member of this community to live a great story even without thinking to all the extra online elements, forcing a narrative in which it is suggested to not do other activities until its completion. Obviously it’s all fun and captivating, with the new prismatic classes as a great way of summing up all the last 10 years of classes and abilities, turning the light score in a mere PVP thing and offering a varied list of different missions, but yet the low duration of the whole thing and some bad map designs and conceptual problems (please don’t make us repeat the same actions ever during Boss fights) turned the majestic and poetic Traveler into a bullet hellish nightmare, still full of entertainment and tears, but not perfect as the title would like to suggest.
Gameplay: 4
Game Design: 3
Technical Feature: 4
Narrative: 5
Protagonists: 5
Villains: 5
Multiplayer: 3
Score and Music: 4
Artistic Feature: 5
Atmosphere: 5
Emotional Impact: 4
Final Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐