Bungie won’t let Destiny 2 slow down after The Final Shape – even if it has to break the universe

By Austin Wood

Six Guardians clad in The Final Shape gear line up before the expansion’s hotly anticipated raid

The Final Shape, the massive expansion capping off Destiny and now Destiny 2’s decade-long Light And Darkness saga, which has defined virtually the entire realm of this science-fantasy space opera cleverly disguised as an MMO shooter, couldn’t be rushed.

Bungie is glad it delayed it. The additional time – and the extra polish that enabled – was essential as the developer fought to live up to the likes of Destiny’s renowned Taken King and Destiny 2’s equally regal Witch Queen. According to expansion lead Catarina Macedo, it was about putting The Final Shape on the same high shelf as “those really good expansions.”

Destiny 2 players have spent years watching, romanticising and slowly approaching the horizon. It’s long been felt that the big thing always existed just ahead of the current game, with each expansion bringing players a little closer to it. As its title implies, then, teases and broad strokes and setup wouldn’t be enough for The Final Shape. It’s time to stop asking questions and start answering them. We’ve reached the horizon. The Final Shape needed to be epic, climactic, specific.

Worthy. It needed to play some big cards – and, based on what we’ve seen, it has done so.

Now that it’s finally here and players the world over have had their showdown with the Witness, Bungie can stop worrying about how to make good on its ten-year promise, and instead start worrying about how to follow it up. As though heading off player concerns, with some worries inflamed by layoffs which followed reports of internal shortfalls after Lightfall’s less-than-stellar reception, Bungie has repeatedly stressed that The Final Shape is not the end of Destiny 2, that the game still has gas in the tank. But this is the end of Destiny 2 as we’ve known it for years. Beginning in year ten of this franchise, a new model built around three standalone Episodes, each containing three Acts lasting about six weeks apiece, is replacing the well-worn seasonal model.

Destiny 2expansion lead Catarina Macedo

BREAKING THE GAME

Compared to traditional subclasses, Prismatic can sometimes feel peerless, especially when you first get a taste. Wommack reckons that’s just fine, and even good, as long as it isn’t actually game-warping. “We don’t want to break the game,” he says. “That’d be bad for everyone. But it’s great when someone feels like they’re breaking the game. When you feel like you’re playing by the rules, but you’re doing something unexpected that gets you way farther than you thought – that’s really good. And some of the time we even design it to be intentional like that. People were playing some of these initial builds of what Prismatic would be and they felt, ‘Oh, this is really so broken’. But in playing it, it wasn’t actually broken, it was just this completely different way of approaching how to accomplish some of these parts of game cycles that we’re already used to.”

With the Light And Darkness saga officially finished, once these Episodes have explored the effects of our fight with the Witness, we’ll be in uncharted waters. Even the shape and timeline of the next pillar expansion (which still seems essential for a game that apparently can’t survive on microtransactions and season pass equivalents alone, especially under the watchful eye of corporate owner Sony) feels unclear now that the quadrilogy that began with 2020’s Beyond Light expansion has been resolved. Just as The Final Shape had a lot to live up to, the Episodes in year ten now have a lot to prove. As Bungie prepares to “break the rules of the universe” a bit, as assistant Destiny 2 game director Robbie Stevens puts it, it must also answer the big question from the game’s community: now what?