Destiny 2: The Final Shape

Destiny 2 has been, if I’m being honest here, a fixation of mine for the last several years. The entire franchise has been since it debuted, so when Bungie announced that it was actually concluding the story I’d been playing since high school, expectations naturally skyrocketed. Bungie has been rocked by layoffs and controversies that have worried and continue to worry me about its wellbeing and future, but The Final Shape has alleviated some of those concerns.

I won’t sit here and call it perfect, but it sure is a triumph. It moves away from this mode of storytelling Destiny often engages in, which places emphasis on big proper nouns and increasingly entangled background storytelling, and relies instead on big messy feelings about endings and change. It’s operatic and pulls on exactly the strings you expect it to, and it moved me to tears time and time again. I’ve been on a journey with this game and these characters, and I did in fact feel a pang of relief wash over me upon seeing how it concluded. They actually did it.

After the conclusion of The Final Shape’s story, I took a bit of a break before diving into post-campaign shenanigans, exotic hunting, and endgame prep, which ultimately culminated in a tremendous raid I finally got to complete the other day. And perhaps I can best sum up my feelings about The Final Shape by sharing how I felt at the end of the raid: I was left in awe at the repeated ingenuity of the folks at Bungie who put that immaculate thing together, and despite it being long as hell, as well as occasionally infuriating to the point of madness, I’d run it back any day. –Moises Taveras