It is unattainable to consider The Final Shape with out the context of the final 10 years, the seven different Destiny 2 expansions, and the 4 unique Destiny expansions–plus the vanilla campaigns that got here with each video games. This eighth Future 2 enlargement is, to a point, the end result of the considerably haphazard decade-long journey that the primary sport spawned, through which Bungie has frequently tried experiment after experiment in gameplay, adjusted and recalibrated its storytelling, and labored and reworked its strategy to operating a live-service sport. Whereas the additions have not all the time persistently constructed towards a narrative conclusion or a definitive imaginative and prescient of the sport, there was a transparent, largely optimistic evolution throughout all these steps that informs what The Remaining Form is to Future as a complete.
I’ve famous up to now when expansions were high-water marks for Destiny 2 as a sport, however that is one thing else. The Remaining Form is not only a step ahead in a protracted march of progress, however, in each single manner, a leap. By way of its marketing campaign, its new vacation spot, its new actions, and its post-campaign story continuation, The Remaining Form is as shut as Future has ever gotten to the unique promise of the sport when Bungie first described a shared-world sci-fi fantasy shooter set in a far-flung future. This is not simply Future 2 as the most effective it is ever been–this is Future 2 because it all the time ought to have been.
All of it begins with a narrative marketing campaign that tosses you into the Pale Coronary heart of the Traveler in a bid to cease the Witness, Future 2’s long-gestating final villain, from utilizing the sport’s convoluted physics-ignoring powers to rewrite actuality. It is instantly obvious that developer Bungie has taken a special tack from the way it normally approaches these chapters, with classes realized from its persistently sturdy seasonal tales that normally spend extra time coping with the humanity of the characters than complicated sci-fi ideas.
A coherent and fascinating marketing campaign
![The Pale Heart is beautiful, full of strange and twisted imagery from the long history of Destiny.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_super/1581/15811374/4314229-20240604133344_1.jpg)
Gallery
The Remaining Form avoids previous pitfalls by pulling collectively the most effective components of all Future 2 tales, setting clear stakes and motivations for the antagonist, whereas conserving a decent concentrate on Future 2’s predominant forged of characters as they head towards a possible suicidal, doubtlessly world-ending confrontation. The Remaining Form is simply the most effective story Future has ever instructed in an enlargement, clearly laying out what’s at stake and, a minimum of emotionally, the way it’ll work, and setting gamers on a journey straight from level A to level B and a remaining confrontation with the Witness.
A significant profit to that story, and the marketing campaign usually, is the Pale Coronary heart itself. Expansions all the time convey new locations to Future 2, normally a brand new planet or moon with a number of cool locations for occasions to occur, however the Pale Coronary heart is inside the Traveler, the magic robotic house god that is been on the middle of this franchise for 10 years. Leaning arduous into that magical aspect of the sport, we get a location that is unusual, acquainted, uncanny, and infrequently outstanding in its artwork path.
The concept is that the truth of the place is manifested from the reminiscences and feelings of the individuals inside it, creating meldings of acquainted areas from all through Future’s historical past, however typically recombined in unusual methods or twisted by corruption. The Pale Coronary heart is a beautiful and interesting place to discover, without delay a heaven and hell of the Future universe. It leans all the best way into the sport’s weirder aspect, which includes a few of the greatest components of Future 2, and provides a ton of various locations to battle, run, and climb, a spread that it makes use of to supply new gameplay eventualities and fight encounters that really feel recent and fascinating, regardless of gamers doing kind of this actual factor for the final 10 years.
The marketing campaign combines most of the greatest components from years of Future 2 gameplay to create a standout expertise, particularly on the difficult Legendary problem. First, it is probably the most mechanically intensive a marketing campaign has been. Nearly each massive encounter has an additional layer to take care of, like poisonous air that requires you to periodically zap a particular object whilst you stand subsequent to it to realize a protecting buff, or enemies that drop „runes“ once they die that correspond to locked doorways, requiring you to recollect which photos you noticed earlier to activate the proper keys.
![Especially in the Legendary version of the campaign, the new Dread enemies are dangerous, challenging additions to the Destiny 2 combat lineup.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_super/1581/15811374/4314257-2024_final_shape_launch_press_kit_combatants_compressed_005.jpg)
Normally, these sorts of components are relegated to Future 2’s more durable and extra teamwork-intensive raids and dungeons, its greatest and most enjoyable content material. They’re easier right here so {that a} single participant can deal with them, however nonetheless extra complicated and fascinating than what Bungie normally presents in a marketing campaign, including a cerebral layer to blasting by hordes of aliens that will increase the chaos with out ever being overwhelming or irritating. The sheer variety of new and compelling mechanics, each within the marketing campaign and scattered throughout the Pale Coronary heart itself, is outstanding, and makes most every part you do in The Remaining Form appear fascinating and completely different from what gamers have change into accustomed to.
Survival of the fittest
The second main addition is a complete new enemy faction referred to as the Dread, which provides a number of new enemy varieties to battles and rewrites the calculus of Future 2’s firefights in important methods. Future has added a number of new enemies to its long-standing factions over the previous few expansions, or modified barely how a number of of them function to pressure you to regulate your techniques. These are minor changes subsequent to the type of whole-cloth tactical alterations the Dread can convey to a battle, particularly on increased difficulties. The most typical and hardest of those wield powers which have largely been the purview of the gamers to date. They concentrate on debuffs that gradual you down or freeze you in place, droop you within the air so you may’t maneuver for a number of seconds, or seize you and yank you out of canopy and into hazard. Bungie put plenty of their focus for the Dread on messing together with your positioning and flushing you out of security, and it makes combating these enemies fraught. They are a phenomenal addition to the fight panorama of Future 2, altering the make-up of fights in important and stunning methods and supporting a bunch of recent challenges.
Stage design within the marketing campaign, and all through the Pale Coronary heart, can be typically sturdy, though Bungie has opted for smaller, tighter arenas than up to now that, at instances, really feel a bit constraining. These rooms really feel like they’re aimed toward placing you nearer to the Dread extra typically, making their area-denial and cover-flushing talents extra harmful. However it will probably additionally really feel such as you’re caught shoulder-to-shoulder with a military, turning a firefight right into a firing squad. Pace and motion are as a lot part of Future 2’s shooter DNA as gunplay, and whereas smaller battlefields can take a look at gamers in numerous and fascinating methods in comparison with open ones, the string of them within the Legendary marketing campaign begins to constrict a few of the greatest and most enjoyable components of Future 2’s battles.
![The Prismatic subclass combines powers from other subclasses to make new synergies, finding cool new ways to make the existing sandbox fun.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_super/1581/15811374/4314253-finalshapeprismatic.jpg)
The ultimate main addition The Remaining Form brings is Prismatic, a brand new subclass for gamers to make use of. The place the final two subclasses had particular focuses–Stasis was about slowing, freezing, and shattering enemies, and Strand was about tying, suspending, and shredding them–Prismatic offers you a slate of choices drawn from every of the opposite subclasses, so you may mix talents to make new synergies. It is not fairly as drastically new or thrilling as Strand was when it was totally unlocked within the final enlargement, however recombining the lego blocks of Future 2’s completely different powers and skills feels nice whenever you get the correct mix of talents, weapons, and armor working collectively for peak construct effectivity.
Bungie has been bettering its subclass talents for a protracted whereas now, growing the methods they’re distinct and distinctive of their gameplay kinds and makes use of, so becoming all these items collectively in numerous methods genuinely results in some intelligent and artistic new alternatives. There are already plenty of nice instruments to play with in Future 2’s sandbox. Prismatic does not drastically change it up–The Remaining Form provides some new Tremendous talents you should utilize with it, alongside new perks for buildcrafting and Transcendence, the brand new „mini-super“ that offers you a cool new grenade to make use of and another extra minor benefits–but simply gaining access to mixtures like freezing your opponents, setting them on hearth, and shutting the gap with an electrified pace increase is a wonderful strategy to create thrilling new moments.
Character constructing
The factor in regards to the marketing campaign that has struck me the toughest, although, is the best way it tells its story. Whereas the seasonal tales between every main chapter have had the house and depth to inform some sturdy, affecting narratives, Future 2 expansions are completely awful with badly instructed, complicated ones, the place monsters you’ve got by no means heard of earlier than present up out of nowhere to threaten the photo voltaic system in imprecise methods utilizing undefined correct nouns. It has typically appeared that, as a result of expansions are main factors of entry for brand spanking new, lapsed, or informal gamers, that Bungie has averted committing too arduous to tales that require a lot understanding of or funding on this planet it has created. Although Bungie moved towards telling a extra cogent ongoing story resulting in the climax in The Remaining Form, it nonetheless appeared that the campaigns had been unwilling to rely an excessive amount of on the sport’s characters or its wider lore. The result’s a large number of marketing campaign tales that typically serve neither the informal nor the hardcore audiences very nicely, and even the most effective Future 2 enlargement tales are just a little arduous to observe and, way more damningly, arduous to care about.
![Cayde-6 has returned from the dead in The Final Shape, something that's a source of both joy and pain for the other characters.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/original/1581/15811374/4314252-finalshapecayde.jpg)
The Remaining Form utterly upends this pattern. It helps that the Witness’s deal is evident no matter how well-versed you’re in house magic, and that you just’re exploring a wild new location the place Bungie could make up new guidelines that everybody is studying on the similar time. However what makes the story of the marketing campaign work is the characters, and The Remaining Form’s willingness to middle them, to sit down with them, and to have interaction with them. We have by no means had a Future 2 marketing campaign care a lot in regards to the individuals collaborating in it, the place the radio banter is as a lot about how characters are feeling and coping and their conflicts with each other, as it’s about what to shoot. It has the results of making missions really feel necessary and significant at each step–not simply because there is a massive universe-ending risk on the finish, however due to how everybody concerned is affected right here and now.
Most significantly, although, Bungie trusts its personal worldbuilding and its viewers with The Remaining Form in a manner it normally does not with expansions. It expects you to both know sufficient about these characters to observe alongside or to choose up the dynamics from context. Importantly, although, the marketing campaign is keen to only cease between missions and take a second, utilizing cutscenes, monologues, or conversations by a campfire, and push that characterization to the forefront. These components have all the time been right here, however they beforehand required you to do the homework of studying taste textual content on weapons or digging into in-game lore books, and thus all the time felt like issues that may be actually good if Bungie really put them within the sport.
In The Remaining Form, Bungie does put them within the sport. This can be a Future 2 enlargement story that feels prefer it actually cares about what it is portraying and expects you to care, too, fairly than coming off as fearful that you just would possibly get bored and switch the sport off if individuals speak for too lengthy with out you capturing something. It is so a lot better than practically each different Future 2 marketing campaign that it makes you surprise what the sport would have been like if Bungie had been keen to deal with the remainder of its tales this fashion throughout the final 10 years.
Gameplay evolution
![New abilities and UI and UX improvements go a long way to improving Destiny 2 in The Final Shape.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_super/1581/15811374/4314260-destiny2finalshapeoverthrowsuper.jpg)
The concentrate on character-building continues even after the marketing campaign, into extra story missions and actions that ship you out into the Pale Coronary heart to discover. Because it occurs, a few of the most fascinating and affecting story moments occur after the marketing campaign, however Bungie does not flip down the standard in any of those missions. Some trace at particular new threats or create extra mysteries that should do with longtime antagonists comparable to Savathun, however all of them make the most of Future 2’s characters particularly methods. Main as much as The Remaining Form’s raid, Salvation’s Edge, you’re employed by particular person tales together with your most necessary allies that do much more to flesh out their positions and their personalities. It is all as rewarding from a narrative standpoint as it’s enjoyable to play by.
And plenty of this can be very enjoyable to play by. The Pale Coronary heart is an exceptional location due to its selection, however it additionally makes use of Future 2’s long-time ambient public actions and marauding teams of enemies in good new methods. Just like the marketing campaign, there’s an enormous emphasis on extra puzzles and mechanics all over the place within the Pale Coronary heart. The most important areas of the placement embrace a particular exercise referred to as Overthrow, which is a multi-stage, escalating battle towards enemy forces that consists of a bunch of smaller, objective-based actions. There are a ton of those, and so they’re all completely different from each other and particular to each the realm and the „stage“ of Overthrow you are at present engaged on, advancing in problem as you full them. Every requires a special fight strategy or a special goal focus, making it really feel like Overthrow is a mixture of 10 or 15 public occasions performed in fast succession. Overthrow defaults to being an occasion you tackle alone, however whereas it appears like a public occasion, it really works simply as nicely with a workforce or solo–there are no components that much less educated teammates can mess up for you, and the density of components makes Overthrow enjoyable alone or in a bunch. It is a extremely participating and extremely rewarding exercise that is so different that it is a blast to play by even over and over.
The additional mechanical focus all through the enlargement additionally interprets into an even bigger emphasis on cooperation than Future has ever labored into its lower-level actions. As soon as you’re employed by the hidden secrets and techniques of the Pale Coronary heart, you may entry Twin Future, a particular Unique mission that is performed solely with two players–you cannot entry it alone, and it will probably’t be accomplished with a typical fireteam of three. Twin Future is superior, possibly the most effective single mission in Future 2 ever. It is robust and stuffed with good puzzles, requiring the type of communication and teamwork Future 2 normally reserves for three-player dungeons or six-player raids. Taking part in it felt like hitting a Future raid for the primary time, what I beforehand thought was a singular expertise. To say something extra can be to break an outstanding, surprising expertise that I completely beloved, and which has secured a spot in my private pantheon of nice online game moments.
![Overthrow is full of great, small activities that combine together to make a massive, unique-feeling battle.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_super/1581/15811374/4320497-2024_final_shape_launch_press_kit_overthrow_large_000.jpg)
There are a number of different unexpectedly nice bits, as nicely. There’s not a lot fanfare for it, however The Remaining Form features a few marketing campaign missions out there with „Cooperative Focus,“ which adjustments up the expertise by including more durable mechanics that, once more, borrow from the most effective instincts of the raids and dungeons. These aren’t simply marketing campaign missions which are scaled to be tougher to accommodate three gamers; they’ve added components that require teamwork and communication, like enemies that may’t be killed until attacked from two completely different sides concurrently, or a debuff that can kill you in case your teammate does not take it from you on the final second–then dooming themselves to dying if another person does not intervene. It is a collection of enjoyable and difficult additions that lean on all the most effective components of Future 2, and like Twin Future, maybe the most effective half is the surprising discovery of those glorious design adjustments.
A satisfying form
Lastly, there’s The Remaining Form’s raid, Salvation’s Edge. Whereas some raids are higher than others, in my estimation, there’s by no means been a foul one, and Salvation’s Edge is one other in that lengthy custom of nice gameplay experiences. Demanding a excessive diploma of cooperation and communication from its six-player groups, it is only a blast, with some good (if head-scratching) new mechanics, robust fights, and delightful, weirdo areas that outdo even the already spectacular artwork path of the Pale Coronary heart. Salvation’s Edge can be a good bit longer than most raids have been of late, which is sweet for these high-level gamers who raid each week and are in search of a better diploma of problem.
It is enjoyable, in different phrases, and whereas Future 2 gamers have come to count on rather a lot from Bungie’s raid workforce, the gameplay depth on show makes even Salvation’s Edge a shock for simply how good it may be. I do not assume it is essentially my favourite raid, however it’s a correctly stable, thrilling, and intense end result of the story. Bungie nailed making the ultimate confrontation with the Witness really feel like the large, complicated, and harmful battle with a near-god that the story demanded.
![Like all Destiny 2 raids, Salvation's Edge is full of great encounters and has some incredible visuals.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_super/1581/15811374/4320520-salvation%27sedge.jpg)
A wonderful and intensely enjoyable addition, nonetheless, was making the ultimate end result of that battle a particular mission referred to as Excision–the sport’s first 12-player PvE exercise, accessible even by gamers who have not completed the raid. The mission offers an appropriately over-the-top really feel to the climax of the story, with 12 gamers offering the ludicrous scope it deserves, however which does not require being the type of one who raids so as to totally expertise it. Excision is its personal type of distinctive, stunning second in an enlargement that has turned out to be completely stuffed with them.
Even little issues just like the person interface is improved with the brand new Pathfinder system, making monitoring every part occurring in-game or finishing common MMO duties simpler to know. The sport now consists of fewer currencies and provides extra readability on targets, and plenty of issues that had been beforehand scattered round or hidden behind completely different actions have been added to vendor menus to make monitoring and finishing them easier.
Other than a number of tiny quibbles about little issues like area sizes, this really appears like what Future 2 has all the time been attempting to be. The Remaining Form takes every part that is good about Future, from nice fight design and creative enemies, to puzzles and platforming, to artistic encounters and enjoyable talents, to chill worldbuilding and glorious artwork path, and brings them all collectively in methods the sport has typically struggled to up to now. It facilities its greatest characters within the marketing campaign and provides you a motive to care about this conflict they’re waging and what it is doing to them.
What’s extra, although, The Remaining Form typically goes above and past these enhancements and nice concepts. With components like Twin Future, it has raised the bar on the most effective that Future 2 could be. With Salvation’s Edge and Excision, it sticks the touchdown on its 10-year narrative. And with extra story missions and character beats ready after you full the marketing campaign, it units up a future for Future 2 that appears simply as participating and interesting as what has come before–if no more so, due to every part Bungie has realized all through that journey. The way forward for Future 2 has maybe by no means been much less clear, but when Bungie can keep the excellence of design and the readability of focus of The Remaining Form, that future has by no means, ever, been extra thrilling.