Destiny 2: The Final Shape – First Hands-On Impressions

ign.com:

It has been a long journey for Destiny over the last decade (that’s right: Destiny turns 10 years old in September!). It’s a journey that spanned two console generations and three publishers (first Activision, then Bungie itself, and now Sony). Hell, I met my wife, got married, and had two kids since I started my journey as a Guardian. The point is, it’s been a hell of a ride for the Destiny faithful, and this finale of the Light and Darkness saga has a lot riding on it for players who’ve followed this game since the beginning. And Bungie wants to surprise and delight their fans with something special for the end of the Light and Darkness saga.

The team invited us to play a handful of story missions, dive into Prismatic, try the new exotic class item, test out the new subclasses, play with a handful of the new exotics, and even let me get destroyed in PVP. Props to Fallout Plays, Datto, and More Console for taking it easy on me though. All of that crammed into two days was a lot. But I’m sure there’s one question that is on your mind: Did they pull it off? Did The Final Shape wind up being an impactful sendoff for the story arc we started all those years ago? Well… I’m not sure yet.

The story we did get to experience was… different. The entire premise and aesthetic the Witness has built with the Pale Heart is about perception and memory, and my interpretation of the story is that it seems to focus on one core tenet: grief. How do you deal with loss? How do you deal with the complex emotions of losing someone or something you love? To what lengths will you go to prevent it from happening again? It’s an interesting motif that plays out with the weird and wild interpretation the Witness has of the locations we’ve seen before. Like the highway where we were first brought into this world, but it’s held up by creepy hands that stretch out from beneath it. Or the Destiny 1 tower, which is all but abandoned and now covered in green growth. And even familiar but with some