The build up to The Final Shape was 10 years in the making and there was a whole bunch of pressure on Bungie to deliver. The Final Shape has been out for a few days now, and I’ve been through the campaign on legend difficulty, and today I’ll let you know my thoughts on the campaign and whether Bungie managed to stick the landing of this Light vs Darkness saga in Destiny 2.

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First of all, we have to clock the server issues that plagued day one. I managed to play one mission on the first day, but the server issues then kicked in and I couldn’t play anymore, so I logged off and tried again the next morning. After a full days play, working through the campaign on legend through Fireteam Finder, I’m ready to give my thoughts on the campaign.

The Final Shape camapign is a huge return to form for Bungie who are still licking their wounds from a lacklustre campaign with Lightfall. The story is focused on The Vanguard and us trying to stop The Witness from enacting is plans to deliver The Final Shape on the universe.

The campaign focused on each member of the Vanguard; Zavala, Ikora Rey, and the returning Cayde-6 plus we have some help from Crow. Each character has their time to shine, and The Pale Heart of the Traveler sets the scene beautifully for all the action to play out. The Pale Heart is built from images in our mind including the original Destiny 1 Tower, we have Zavala’s house, plus other nostalgic locations from our 10 year journey in Destiny.

While the campaign is relatively slow to get going, Bungie spend time telling us what The Final Shape is, not wanting to repeat the errors of Lightfall and The Veil. We’re teased throughout the campaign with Zavala potentially turning, given how grief stricken this man is from losing his wife and The Witness tempting him. The campaign is focused from the get go. There’s no leaving the campaign and going off to play cruicble or gambit, you are focused on the job in hand. I even ventured into the Tower at one point and Bungie reminded me everything I needed was on the Pale Heart and the campaign was meant to be finished before I did anything else. I wasn’t locked into the campaign, but it’s nice to have a focused Bungie campaign.

Nostalgia is strong in the design. I am Destiny 2 fan, so I have been here for 10 years and I get the references. I imagine if you’re not a fan, or new to the game then these references will likely go over your head, however, I don’t think there is anything here stopping you from enjoying yourself. While the campaign started slowly, it ramps up in the later missions. The bright Pale Heart of the Traveler’s environments change from being grassy and vibrant, to much darker with the pyramid structures. We move from our memories, and memories of The Vangurd, to The Witness. Previous to The Final Shape I hadn’t felt the threat from The Witness, but here in the campaign you can feel it, and it finally becomes an ombinous enemy that can strike fear into the heart of Guardians.

Prismatic is the new subclass of the expansion, and I played it from the start and throughout the campaign. We’re given a few aspects and fragments to make some builds, although we have to play through the post-campaign missions to unlock the whole package. I was playing through as a Warlock, so Void and Stasis was my focus. Roughly half way through the campaign you unlock your new Light super, mine was Solar and it’s a decent ranged super firing mini bursts at enemies. First impressions are good, I like roaming supers, and Solar has been strong for some time.

The combat encounters are stronger through the back half of the campaign, especially with the final campaign mission which offers up a relatively complicated fight against an Ogre, and then the final boss itself. This is about as close to raid or dungeon mechanics you can get without alientating players, and on legend difficulty with LFG players, this was fairly tough. I imagine if you go in with friends or a regular fireteam then it would have been mich easier.

The Dread are a decent addition to the game. We have out first flying enemies, who send out paralysing screams at you. We also have smaller, Psion-like Dread enemies which can fire Strand at you, pulling you towards them in a nice change to the normal push mechanics. Tormentors were back to help out the fight with the Harbingers and the Omens. It’s great to finally see some new enemies in Destiny 2 and I can imagine them being tough in the upcoming raid.

The campaign is littered with puzzles, lighter mechanics when compared to dungeons or raids, but more puzzle heavy than I can remember in previous campaigns. There are symbol puzzles similar to the Witch Queen campaign and the Vow of Disciple Raid, and I imagine this is teasing the upcoming raid mechanics.

We had some new Lost Sectors introduced in the campaign, one particularly stood out with a Lucent Hive Witch helping us as we navigate through the combat zone. The new strike was also good, although I need to play that a few more times to really get a sense of it.

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING

The campaign builds to a showdown with The Witness. The first 6 story missions are about reuniting The Vanguard, plus Zavala loses his ghost Targe resisting The Witness. Zavala is now Lightless… however, this story twist led to a revelation, and a weakness with The Witness.

The Witness is made of thousands of beings, and not all of them in are agreement with The Final Shape, there is conflict within The Witness. In the final showdown with the Witness we have to face off against Subjugators, but then we open a portal into The Darkness realm. Only by fully embracing the darkness can we get the answers we seek.

One of the Veiled statues says “What was made in Darkness can be unmade in Darkness”. As we destory these veiled statues, we can slowly whittle down the health of the Witness, removing it’s sheild. We’re then joined by Zavala, Cayde, Ikora and Crow to help smash the statues and weaking the Witness for the upcoming raid showdown.

Once we have removed the shields, then we deal out first damage to The Witness. This is the first time we have ever dealt damage to our enemy, showing it can be defeated.

“We had such hope you would understand. But you choose entropy. You will revel in chaos, and in your wake, there is only suffering.” The Witness says.

The Witness then transforms into a monstrous version of itself, as Zavala, Cayde, Ikora, and Crow escape from it’s clutches in a fantastic final cutscene. The Witness has transformed into it’s raid boss mode, so we await the raid tomorrow to find out the next installment of the story. Meanwhile, Mara Sov has been gathering allies like Caital’s Cabal, and Mithrax’s Eliksni plus Micah-10, described by Mara as a “Guardian of great renown who comes to us with bold ideas”.

Overall, it’s a massive return to form for Bungie and I think they did a great job with the campaign. The story is focused on the Vanguard, and each of them get their time to shine. There is touching moments when Cayde reunites with Ikora and Zavala, plus in the back half of the campaign things really ramp up with the combat. This is much better than Lightfall and Beyond Light as a campaign. Personally, I think it just about edge’s Witch Queen as the best campaign we’ve had in Destiny 2.

This is only part 1 of the story, the remaining part will be throughout the Salvation’s Edge raid, and then we’ll have a final story mission unlock after the raid where I anticipate we’ll all have to get together to defeat the Witness. However exactly this is going to unfold, I don’t know, but do far I have really enjoyed the ride.

Let me know what you think about the campaign in the comments.