Summary
Destiny 2’s The Final Shape carries a lot of weight on its shoulders after the shortcomings of Lightfall because many players now have mixed expectations, and the expansion needs to deliver if Bungie wants gamers to stick around for much longer than that. This need stems from the fact that, whileSeason of the Deep is redeeming Lightfall’s reputation on its own, the general consensus is that the story didn’t really need to be split into seasons, and the expansion could have achieved much more than it did. The problem is that if The Final Shape’s story is self-contained, its seasons could instead become the new Lightfall.
What Lightfall lacked was answers, as it was marketed as the beginning of the end, also in a non-metaphorical way considering Bungie’s plan to conclude the10-year Light and DarknessDestiny 2sagawith The Final Shape. As such, failing to provide answers with the penultimate expansion before the end of this chapter was infuriating, even more so when one considers that every NPC in the game seemed to know exactly what The Veil was - but not the players. Providing answers through the seasonal model is effective only to a degree, but whichever path Bungie chooses for The Final Shape could result in a different controversy.
RELATED:Why Destiny 3 Won’t Exactly Be ‘Destiny 3’
Destiny 2’s Story in The Final Shape Could Undermine its Seasons or Vice Versa
On one hand, Bungie can straight up conclude the Light and Darkness saga with The Final Shape’s campaign and Raid, which would make it what players wanted and came to expect from Lightfall. On the other hand, this approach could rob the accompanying seasons for Year 7 of their right to shine, as they would essentially be reduced to the status of fillers until the next big release hits the store.Destiny 2’s The Final Shapehas to strike a balancing act like never before, and that’s no small feat.
Having the expansion tell a mostly self-contained tale while still making seasonal content interesting for the whole year sounds like a near-impossible task, and Bungie is likely well aware of this coming from the first year ofDestiny 2. Back then,Destiny 2’s expansions were completely self-contained environments, as the game had not entered its live-service era just year, meaning that players could virtually finish everything there was to do within just a few days. This didn’t make players happy, however, as the game’s content drought would be felt up until the next release.
The seasonal model inDestiny 2helped fix that by constantly introducing new things to do and look forward to, from weekly missions to advance the overarching story to unique quests that would become available mid-season.Destiny 2’s secret quests and Exotics are still one of the game’s biggest drives, although they’re not as common due to the amount of work and time that needs to go into them. Yet, all of this is what makesDestiny 2seasonsworthwhile, as players know from day one that they will have lots of things to do, including new story beats.
If The Final Shape is to deliver all the answers and conclude the saga on its own, then its accompanying seasons should be the catalyst forDestiny 2’s new sagasafter it. There are still plenty of mysteries surrounding characters, events, locations, and even items in the universe ofDestiny 2, and a good send-off to the Light and Darkness saga would be to keep these smaller stories growing and thriving after a campaign that resolves the 10-year conflict once and for all. It’s probably still too soon to know exactly what Bungie will do, but with the big August showcase happening soon it’ll be a good time for answering this question.
Destiny 2is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
