- Destiny 2: The Final Shape will be the conclusion of a decade long storyline.
- After the expansion’s story has concluded Bungie will start a new cadence of content releases in episodes.
- There is no word yet on whether there will be more mainline expansions or a Destiny 3.
On Tuesday Bungie revealed the next and final phase in its long running Light versus Darkness saga in that has been the tale the developer has spun out over a decade in Destiny. That final phase is The Final Shape and following the events that have played out this year, it feels a lot like Avengers: Endgame did.
Where in Endgame the Avengers sought to reverse Thanos’ snap, in The Final Shape Guardians will be trying to prevent the Witness from calcifying the universe into its perfect vision.
Unlike previous expansions which featured a free-to-explore destination, The Final Shape takes place within the Traveler and players will navigate a linear path through the destination toward what Bungie called The Pale Heart. There will be new weapons and armour to collect, new Supers, new Exotics and of course a new campaign and new Raid.
Bungie said explicitly that the Witness will be the final adversary in the Raid and players won’t be dispatching them in a story mission. However, while Bungie hyped up the importance of the Raid and said it links directly to the story in The Final Shape, it’s not a piece of content that players will be required to complete. The Destiny 2 community has speculated that this more than likely means completing the Raid will trigger something in the world much like the completion of the Last Wish kicked off the curse cycle in the Dreaming City.
One thing we have to point out is the constant reference to “everybody” and “all Guardians”. Which has piqued our curiosity. There have been whispers that ever since a bug that allowed 12 players to team up surfaced, Bungie has been trying to make that bug a feature. We guess we’ll have to wait for more information to find out of that is the case.
There is no new sub-class although each class is getting a new Super and Aspects. Warlocks have a new Solar Super, Titans have a new Void Super and Hunters get a new Arc Super that allows them to throw a staff across the map and blink to it.
Fireteam Finder is an in-game “looking for group” or LFG service that Bungie says is additive and won’t replace existing services and platforms. As the developer explained it wants to make it easier for all players to find players that match their style. There were a series of tags players could use to showcase what style of play they prefer, skill level and more, It’s nice to see this in the game and it should be arriving in Season 23, just before the launch of the expansion.
The Future of Destiny
Bungie also finally gave us information regarding how Destiny will continue after the finale of this story. Following The Final Shape the first Episodes will be introduced
These Episodes are comprised of three Acts that play out over roughly four months. Over this time there are new story beats to follow, quests to complete, gear to earn and more.
Bungie says these Episodes give it more room to be a bit “weird” with the game so we’re interested to see what happens here. The first three episodes are titled Echoes, Revenant and Heresy and each will play out over the course of 2024.
What happens when Heresy has run its course? That is an unknown at this stage and we don’t even have coy hints to over analyse.
For now, Bungie looks like it will continue to throw resources at Destiny through this new Episodic model.
The Final Shape is scheduled for release on 27th February 2024 and there are three different iterations you are able to pre-order namely the Standard Edition, the Annual Pass Edition and the Collector’s Edition.
You can find out more about each pre-order version at this URL whether you play the game on PlayStation, Xbox or PC.
