Summary

  • Destiny 2's Season of the Witch set up new plot threads but failed to answer burning questions, contributing to a decline in trust in Bungie and lack of pre-orders for The Final Shape.
  • The apology message from Bungie emphasized the need for The Final Shape to be a huge win, comparable to Forsaken, but Forsaken set a high bar that may be difficult to surpass.
  • To meet players' high expectations, The Final Shape would need to introduce significant new content and features, making it unlikely to achieve the same standard as Forsaken. The delay in release and recent layoffs further complicate its success.

Destiny 2's Season of the Witch was a great addition to the game and even made for a good story after the Lightfall debacle, and even though it didn't exactly answer some burning questions about what Savathun knows or how to access the portal on The Traveler, it set up other plot threads. Still, Lightfall's failure to engage players and deliver a worthy story is probably partly responsible for this year's decline of trust in Bungie from the fans, which in turn led to a lack of pre-orders for The Final Shape, and ultimately to the recent layoffs at the company. Bungie's recent comments about The Final Shape are about delivering a great expansion, but the studio may be shooting for the wrong inspiration.

The Final Shape is not the first time the franchise feels in jeopardy after issues with the game and community morale, which is something that also happened during Year 1, back in vanilla Destiny 2.

There was little to do or achieve in the game, the grind was limited, the endgame was not rewarding players enough, and the game felt like it lacked its heart and soul outside of Raids like the Leviathan. Enter Forsaken, which changed forever what the game could be - but Forsaken is a rare beast, and stating Destiny 2's The Final Shape will be like it is to set it up for failure.

RELATED: Destiny 2 Players Are Refunding The Final Shape Preorders

Why Forsaken Should be The Goal For Destiny 2's The Final Shape

The recent apology message from Bungie made it sound like The Final Shape needs to be a huge win for Destiny 2, both financially and in terms of playerbase morale. The statement also made it clear that Bungie wants to deliver an experience that's comparable to the standards set by The Taken King from the first game or Destiny 2's Forsaken and The Witch Queen. While The Taken King and The Witch Queen were great expansions, neither was on the same level as Forsaken in terms of content, new options, new destinations, endgame content, PvP, and more.

Forsaken didn't feel like an expansion, but a whole new game, to the point that it seemed like the actual Destiny 2 launch. Bungie had a lot on the line, with some reporting that the company was on the brink of shutting the game down, but it managed to deliver one of the best experiences in gaming. Forsaken had it all, and making it the standard The Final Shape should achieve is a very sharp double-edged sword.

What Forsaken did was set a bar that's hard to clear for any future release for multiple reasons, and with The Final Shape possibly delayed to June 2024, there might be not enough time for Bungie to achieve that same standard. Destiny 2's Forsaken features included:

  • 3 new subclasses per class (9 total), including new Supers for each
  • Multiple new Exotic weapons and armor pieces
  • 2 different patrol destinations (Tangled Shore and Dreaming City) with unique quests and farming methods
  • New Scorn enemy faction
  • The Gambit game mode and associated maps
  • 4 Crucible maps
  • 4 new Strikes
  • The Last Wish Raid
  • The Collections feature to reacquire gear
  • Random rolls on weapons
  • New bow weapon type

Being on par with Forsaken, or even worse, trying to top it, is a goal that The Final Shape can achieve, but it's highly unlikely. Alongside the layoffs at Bungie and their aftermath, players discovered that The Final Shape is probably being set back to June because it was received as good, but not great - whereas "great" is what the game currently needs. To go above and beyond players' expectations, which Bungie already set as quite high by stating it wants to deliver Forsaken all over again, the company would need to add a new Super and Fragment to every subclass in the game, many new PvP maps, a new game mode, exceptional destination and Raid, and much more. Whether it will succeed will remain a question without an answer for several more months.

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Destiny 2
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Systems
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Top Critic Avg: 84 /100 Critics Rec: 88%
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Released
August 28, 2017
ESRB
T For TEEN for Blood, Language, and Violence
Developer(s)
Bungie
Publisher(s)
Bungie
Engine
Tiger Engine
Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op
Cross-Platform Play
PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One & Xbox Series X|S
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WHERE TO PLAY

DIGITAL
PHYSICAL
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Expansions
Destiny 2: Forsaken, Destiny 2: Shadowkeep, Destiny 2: Beyond Light, Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, Destiny 2: Lightfall
Number of Players
1-6 (Co-Op)
Genre(s)
FPS
How Long To Beat
100+
Metascore
85
Platforms That Support Crossplay
PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One & Xbox Series X|S
PS Plus Availability
Essential, Extra, & Premium (The Witch Queen)