Destiny 2: The Final Shape

Destiny 2: The Final Shape delivers on much of what this series has promised, bringing exciting new challenges and a satisfying ending to its decade-long story.

With a character-driven story and a focus on enhancing its gameplay on nearly every level, The Final Shape feels like what Destiny 2 has been trying to be all along.

Bungie sticks the landing as it finally brings together the threads of its epic first saga.

It's simply the best Destiny 2 expansion-both a satisfying conclusion to the series' first saga, and a compelling shooter packed full of stuff to do.

With a confident and satisfying campaign, a fascinatingly well-designed destination, and several standout endgame pursuits, Destiny 2: The Final Shape is an excellent offering for veteran and returning players of the FPS. Even with some classic endgame grinding repetitiveness, it's an incredibly well-executed expansion that nicely rounds off a decade-long journey, making it Destiny 2's best.

Over the years, Destiny 2 has ballooned into a massive and unwieldy beast, filled with cooperative and competitive experiences, hundreds of named characters and organizations, and an often-unapproachable vernacular that can take a long time to learn to speak and play. With The Final Shape, Bungie makes no apologies for the complexity but does finally offer purposeful punctuation to mark an endpoint. Largely unencumbered by what has come before, the frontiers ahead are now open to be revealed.

Destiny 2: The Final Shape feels like a promise fulfilled. We can't help but think back to all of the late night sessions exploring iconic corners of this vibrant sci-fi universe, and digging into all manners of lore to help make sense of it all. And now, despite it's ups and downs, we have a gratifying end to the decade spanning Light and Darkness saga, that evokes all those memories in one big celebration. Destiny 2: The Final Shape is the hope and dream of every other live service game out there. It's a testament to Bungie's unwavering commitment to a riveting saga that defied all odds, and did exactly what it set out to do. This one is for the fans.

Bungie's conclusion to Destiny's first 10 years more than sticks the landing.

It’s hard to keep something going for ten years, especially a Live Service game. The industry is littered with failed attempts at building ten-year plans. Despite Destiny’s many ups and downs and lack of consistent quality through the years, Destiny 2: The Final Shape completes Bungie’s ambitious ten-year plan and mostly sticks the landing. Its story is the most focused a Destiny tale has ever gotten, opting to focus on character interactions, linear level design and heartfelt payoffs. While this route meant a complete neglect of the series’ big bad, it did culminate in an epic finale to the Light and Darkness saga.

As the universe celebrates the prevention of its extinction, there is much debate about what awaits the future of Destiny and our Guardians. After all, the universe is a big place, and threats unknown or unresolved are bound to rear their heads sooner or later. There might be uncertainty in where the Guardians go from here, but there is also comfort in the certainty that this is not the end, but a new beginning – one where each Guardian makes their own fate.