Destiny 2 - The Final Shape — Digital Ephemera

That’s not really the cover art I wanted to use for this piece. Anyone that’s finished the campaign knows the shot I want to use, but since I have a severe aversion to spoiling games this will have to do. Lets get the nitpicking out of the way first:

Commander Zavala, Lord Shaxx, and Drifter indeed do not have bounties anymore and they’ve all been rolled into the Pathfinder system. I’d say this is a positive for the game as having to go back to the Tower to get more bounties all the time was bothersome. I’m glad that Banshee-44 still has bounties though since that’s the main way I get Enhancement Cores.
Not really sure how I feel about the Pathfinder system just yet, but from a glance I’m not terribly thrilled with how many Crucible and Gambit nodes were in my initial spread. I’m assuming this is Bungie’s way to try to revitalize Gambit in a sense but we will see how it all plays out. Also curious to see if you get one Pathfinder for your account or if your Pathfinder is different for each character.
Very happy to see that Onslaught is still in the game along with the missions for Whisper and Zero Hour.
Happy to see everything in my Vault was raised to 1900 but still confused as to why. Happy that my “sunset” weapons are able to be infused and used again, it’s just too bad that they are seemingly useless in the face of the Grim. Glad I didn’t listen to anyone that told me to delete these weapons. Also glad I didn’t go through with the plan I had to stream me deleting everything in my vault post Final Shape.
At times The Pale Heart feels like a disjointed obstacle course similar to the obstacle course DLC from the first Mirror’s Edge. Its an interesting and very unsettling space to explore but does not feel very welcoming. Also finally seeing what is inside The Traveler was slightly disappointing and not at all what I expected. I honestly don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it.
I like Micha-10’s voice, but why bring this character up now unless they intend to use her as a bridge to future stories…?

I thought this was a nice bit of levity in the face of the dire circumstances we found ourselves in.

Confused and annoyed that this node is still in the Director after launch. If it’s a play to try to get more money out of me, it’s not going to work. I’ve given Bungie the last bit of money I’m going to for Destiny 2.

Very much loved this little touch in the Director. Mousing over the Traveler actually opens the portal into the Pale Heart.

Because of all the server problems the first couple of days, I got kicked out of the campaign. Bungie had the audacity to give me this pop up. Great job assholes.

I agree with this player’s critique of the campaign.

Transmigration

The opening cinematic of the Last City and it’s people getting “finalized” was pretty horrifying, not gonna lie. I honestly thought we were already dead and had lost the war.

Crashing inside the threshold of the portal was a mashup of sights that, upon first glance, boggles the mind. But long time Destiny players with a keen eye can spot specific architecture.

**The entrance to the final room of King’s Fall where you face Oryx.**

**The platforms where Oryx’s daughters reside.**

**The four plinths that stand between you and summoning Oryx. Some fearful part of my mind almost thought he would appear here.**

**But this house is definitely not holy. It feels wrong somehow.**

Fighting through all the enemies and escaping through the old colony ship was a nice touch, but I was not prepared for what came next. The desperation and fear in Mara Sov’s voice is quite unsettling. Through out the whole of Destiny she has never once come across as afraid as in this moment. Always a stoic and fearless leader of the Awoken people, in this moment she finally feels, and sounds, helpless. I did not like that.

The cutscene after you escape following the bird of light, the swarm of ghosts and the terraforming of Mars with the lone astronaut, the spreading corruption and the tree of Silver Wings and the burst of light is top notch. Almost Square Enix level of detail. And then…

Running across these filigree platforms as you run toward the “exit” was a beautiful experience, but there was still more wonder to come.

Upon exiting out of the filigree void and the cave it led into, it was wonderful to see that a comment I made a long time ago - that the Traveler was bigger on the inside and contained more than we knew - was right. Worlds within worlds as they say.

The Speaker’s “scanner” he used to talk to the Traveler. In another universe he’s still using it to examine the silent god.

This part of the Pale Heart is definitely a feast for the eyes as there is beauty and majesty everywhere you look. The Pale Heart of the Traveler is both intimately familiar and terrifyingly wrong at the same time. The level of discomfort and unease is unrelenting at all times, even here. But as the mission progressed, disappointment was soon to rear its ugly head.

In the following series of spaces and obstacle courses, you are finally given a chance to test Prismatic and I was pretty underwhelmed and overwhelmed at the same time. All the YouTubers I follow said that it was a lot to keep up with and they are right. Not only that, but I was personally disappointed because the only thing I really need it for is to blow the “prismatic shield” off of enemies. Beyond that I just didn’t see much of a use for it beyond the typical gamer power fantasy imagining “what if I could combine these” and then putting together your build with a pre set number of parts. Didn’t really have a lot of hopes for Prismatic after this mission and I would later find that I was justified in my feelings by the end of the campaign.

While pretty to look at, I feel like the Prismatic Flare wells were put in the game first to try to teach you how to use Prismatic and second for people that will get overwhelmed trying to get Prismatic started and running. Not gonna lie and say that I didn’t need them (I did, often) but it just didn’t feel terribly magical to me.

After passing through the rooms below and making it up to the top, it was a pleasure to see the old Tower again.

This room is home in another universe. I was also pleasantly surprised that at this point we were given access to Prismatic this early in the campaign. You’re given enough “parts” to start with but all the rest you have to unlock so that’s pretty cool.

You see, I’m writing all this a week (and more) after the fact. I didn’t stop to take that same screencap with my Warlock because I was so frustrated with this expansion at launch. I managed to get through this mission to the final boss after getting disconnected repeatedly, but when I finally finished the first mission I got disconnected. I knew for a fact I missed seeing a cutscene or something happening in the game because after that it just suddenly tells me to go talk to Cayde at the campfire. I wouldn’t find out until a week later when I decided to suck it up and replay the campaign on my Titan (pictured above). That’s when I was treated to this:

Once that was over it was time to move on to the next mission…

Temptation

I loved the short tale from Cayde about his mentor Andal Brask and their bet about what was inside the Traveler. Guess Andal and I are kindred spirits of a sort. I liked that we literally jump off the tower to progress further into the Pale Heart. I’d always imagined, since we’ve never seen it, that there was a gatehouse of sorts in front of the Tower.

I felt compelled to take this picture. I feel like, in another universe, there is someone sitting here with a drink, waiting for a friend. Or in another, the chair’s owner was long gone, never to return.

The Landing is a beautiful area full of activity and puzzles to solve with absolutely gorgeous views. I like to imagine that this is what part of the Last City looks like with bright and colorful mosaic tiles and beautiful statues and fountains.

**And these things, these “hands” are all over the landscape. Their silence bothers me as much as their presence.**

Moving beyond The Landing into the cave where Crow went, this area starts to feel like something right out of Lovecraft.

**The sky is like a metallic liquid and doesn’t seem *right*.**

**A familiar place but somehow not at the same time.**

A cancerous wound in the Traveler. I did not want to enter these but I had no choice if I wanted to find Crow.

I truly believe in these scenes with the sort of crystalline reflections on the sides of the screen that The Witness is trying to encase you in the same amber like structures found through out the pyramid ships with bodies trapped inside. Trying to merge you into its “final shape” for the universe.

The vignettes where The Witness is talking to you are a quite unsettling menagerie of different parts of the Destiny universe all mashed together in each room.

**A dark reflection of Mara’s throne with Uldren as the king of the Awoken people. Another universe where this could have happened.**

**All this suffering makes the age of the Iron Lords seem pleasant.**

I’m glad that finding Crow was the end of this mission and an exit from this wound in the Traveler. The Witness’s temptations are enticing after a fashion but I know they are ultimately meaningless in a completely calcified universe.

Exegesis

The next mission saw us hunting for Ikora Rey. It was in this moment I started having flashbacks to the Red War in the original Destiny 2 campaign and thought that they were trying to re-create those moments of getting the Vanguard back together to save the world. At least, it felt like that for me. This was also when I started to get very frustrated with the game since nearly every enemy was either a mini boss, a boss or just a total damage sponge.

**I was not thrilled with having to use the light mote / dark mote mechanic from the Prophecy dungeon to progress this mission. I wasn’t a fan of it the first time around.**

This puzzle with the plates and light/dark motes was pretty miserable because the motes kept falling through the floor and be unable to collect.

Most of this mission’s purpose is simply to get Ikora back on the team and to explain what The Witness wants to accomplish. I’d like to think of this place as what Io would have looked like had The Traveler had time to properly terraform it. The three faces on the wall near the wreckage of Ikora’s ship were neat but a little frightening, as was the crystal statue of Savathun.

Seeing Ikora and Cayde reunite was a little rough but it felt good.

Requiem

This was the point at which, once I understood how this expansion was structured (Room A with enemies and a boss / short hallway with dialogue / Room B with the mission’s final boss with a ton of enemies) I went back to playing on Normal difficulty. I just didn’t feel like it was worth it to keep making myself miserable to finish it on Legendary.

The Blooming is a beautiful zone, but it’s most distinguishing feature aside from the surroundings resembling the cradle on Io, is the tree at its center:

The faces and bodies of The Hive entwined with the branches of the Tree of Silver Wings further adds to my feelings that the Pale Heart is just somehow wrong and unsettling on a fundamental level.

This wall, that sadly only seems to appear during the campaign, was also a nice touch:

I like to refer to this room as the Fallen camp and I freaking hated fighting in here during the campaign with all the web mines and exploding Shanks everywhere:

The “wound” in The Traveler where you hunt for Zavala is even more disturbing than the one where you hunted for Crow.

I’m glad these nightmarish hellscapes are all a short path.

Upon exiting the “wound” the first thing I spotted was this:

It’s the house where he, his wife Safiyah, and their son Hakim lived. The Witness will stoop to any low that it can in order to wear someone down to submission. The whole scene is a sick thing to behold; the quiet idyllic countryside living yet somehow the air is oppressive and the land just feels wrong. The battle was intense, but brief.

This section of the story was what finally brought me to tears.

Ascent

Setting out from Zavala’s homestead we start to climb the mountain to try to get to The Witness and its fortress. The inverted caverns are cool to look at, but very unsettling.

The mountain itself is a twisted reflection of the Cosmodrome and Plaguelands from Rise of Iron. Hearing The Traveler scream here is unsettling to say the least.

Listening to Cayde and Crow talk, it was interesting to know that Crow knew he wished Cayde back to life. I wonder if he knows that was Riven he was talking to before he left and not his sister…?

Climbing the mountain was interesting because you can see how far away the portal into the Traveler is.

Seeing the old colony ships from the Cosmodrome in the distance was also pretty eerie.

Finding your first jump ship casually hanging out in the wall was weird.

Seeing familiar parts of the wall was a nice change after all the ice and snow. The moment when you reach the other side of the wall where you find the cars where Ghost found your body was kind of “meh” until you get the new Super for your class. That was a fun way to end the mission! It was also kind of strange that you get a whole new Super and they barely acknowledge that it happened. I thought the new Warlock Super was the best of the three.

The Message Part I, II, III

Not really cool to be forced to do the Lost Sectors to pad out the expansion. With the exception of the introduction of Luzaku, it pretty much ruined being able to hunt and run the Lost Sectors of the expansion on my own. I think they are all three beautifully crafted spaces with a lot of references through out.

Liminality

The only strike of the expansion. The dialogue between Ikora, Cayde, and Zavala gets pretty heated. I feel like Zavala is on a suicide mission all through out the strike. Finding out through Byf’s lore video that the substance you encounter in the strike is actually pus from where The Traveler has been infected by The Witness is both alarming and gross. I think what Byf says here about this mission is better than anything I could have ever thought to write.

Dissent

Zavala ran off because he’s convinced that he can find a way to defeat The Witness in the Darkness. This place is frightening, barren, full of despair. It’s like the Swamp of Sadness from The Neverending Story. Only here, there is no giant turtle that’s allergic to me, only the Hive and the Grim and the Howling Plague of The Witness.

Finding out these statues contain dissenters among the beings that make up The Witness was quite the revelation. I immediately started to wonder why whole pyramid ships were devoted to them. Did they contain parts of the civilizations that The Witness conquered and/or eradicated? Or were they the remnants of civilizations that pertained to each statue prisoner? I guess I’ll never know, but this revelation was still fascinating.

After talking to the second statue, back out into the storm. The Howling Plague of the Witness reminds me of the constant “storm” of the Ascendant Plane.

This whole area is unsettling and pure nightmare fuel.

This way to the land of fun…

A storm. A tempest of pure misery where the souls of The Witness’ victims scream silently in pain. This place is a special kind of Hell.

Targe’s anger and annoyance with Zavala is palpable. I love Targe’s forcefulness in trying to get the Veiled statues to talk to him. Fighting that Tormentor in the small space was a real challenge and a real pain in the ass too. Targe’s speech about finding ‘your person’ really hit hard.

**This section is not fun for anyone that has Simsense Vertigo. Points if you know the reference.**

**After springing the trap and running for your life out of the inverted temple, you’re greeted with this view**

Watching Targe sacrifice himself and confront The Witness was pretty brave and ballsy, but ultimately set Zavala on the path that he needed to be on. It was still a sad moment especially in context of the fact that Zavala’s original voice actor had died. After this, it was finally time to confront The Witness face to face…

Iconoclasm

I didn’t quite understand how the ritual site where The Witness was created could be inside The Traveler, unless its just some metaphysical nature of The Pale Heart to manifest things from deep withing the consciousness of one’s mind. Still, we set out to find this place and put a stop to this madness.

**Its interesting seeing this everywhere here.**

**Souls swept away in a river of torment.**

The Witness knows it is about to lose the war, constantly nagging and talking as we make our way closer to the ritual site.

**Was The Witness trying to convince us to join him here?**

The Traveler’s scream after we left this space was definitely unexpected and terrifying.

After killing the ogre, it almost feels like The Witness is fully mocking the game and the people that play it with its speech about triumphs and accolades. What it doesn’t realize is that its death will give me a way out of this “childish game” its talking about. It didn’t (and doesn’t) matter what Bungie did with the game after The Final Shape, I planned for this to be my stopping point a while ago.

Hearing that Mara and the others were coming through the portal was a relief. We ascend to the top of the structure that housed the pyramid glyph from earlier. The view from near the top is unsettling to say the least.

We press on to the top, only to be greeted with a room full of gold, not unlike Xur’s space in Eternity.

The vignette where you walk into the room full of gold felt like the game taking a jab at itself for being a loot grind. But it also felt like it was taking a jab at the greed of humans.

This space is truly the stuff of nightmares.

**You can see the end of the world from here.**

One last festering hallway to walk down before The Witness finally shows its hand.

A twisted and perverse mockery of our home and our family in another life, all while offering to make us one of its Disciples. Never. Never in a million years would I ever become its slave.

The fight with The Witness is a challenge and has a lot of “moving parts” to juggle, and trying to do it with even one other person makes it that much more difficult. Breaking the statues in the Darkness is so satisfying that I hate that its over so quickly. The subsequent run to get out while using the Aegis shield was definitely a fun time and satisfying once you escape. Not gonna lie, the first time, I was terrified I would die.

Seeing this message appear on screen made all my hair stand on end. I was ready to finish this war, once and for all. But first…

**After going through all that and "unlocking" the full functionality of The Lost City, seeing the old Vault was a sort of magical moment for me.**

**And here, coming to where Kadi once stood was both magical and sad at the same time. In this universe she is long gone. I definitely shed a few tears seeing that she was replaced by a terminal.**

Anyway, back to the task at hand. Trying to find the Excision icon to do the activity is a little annoying because it’s alllllllllllll the way to the right of the map.

This was a pretty fun and unique activity in my opinion. I don’t think there has ever been a 12 player activity in the game before this. Here’s 8 minutes from the first time I did it:

But even though we had achieved victory, the joy (if that’s what you want to call it) was short lived:

I was ready. In this moment I was ready to give up. To lay down my arms, to give up my light, to give up being a Lightbearer, to give up being a Guardian, to become a plowshare and live out my days. I was ready to be done with this whole mess. Getting Cayde back only to lose him again for my benefit was a special kind of pain. Like Ikora, I had just gotten used to having him back even though it felt strange.

Final Thoughts

All things considered, I’d give this expansion a solid 7 or 8 out of 10. There are things that I will never do, or never get to do, or have no desire to do and that’s fine. It told the story of The Final Shape as best as it could and left just enough dangling threads so that the story and universe can continue for those that are interested.

**This. This was the image I wanted to use as the cover art and headline art for this blog post but ultimately decided not to.**

I ultimately didn’t like the Pathfinder system as much as I initially thought I would. Id rather that Zavala, Shaxx, and Drifter had bounties but the system works great for The Pale Heart.

I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t have this exact conversation with Cayde during the campaign, but at least he acknowledged where he was:

I had planned on writing some flowery, masturbatory endings for each of my characters by giving them and their Ghosts a name and an epilogue espousing things like self sacrifice, being a hero, and laying down arms after a decade of violence. But after that ending, I don’t think anything I could have written for myself would have done it justice.

The only thing I had thought of went something like this:

[Human Titan talking to his Ghost, Glory]
”Hey Glory, did you ever find out where that pacifist colony was located? I think after all this, I’m just done.”

[Glory}
”I sure did. Still planning on going there to live the rest of your life?”

[Titan]
”Yeah…I think it’s time.”

[Glory]
”Ok. We can go anytime you like.”

[Titan]
”Will you play that old song you discovered on our way? I’d like to hear it again.”

[Glory]
”Sure thing pal.”

[Titan and Glory get in the ship and as it blasts off into space and the end credit roll, this song starts playing over the ship’s speakers:]

I dunno, I thought that made a great song for the “end” of Destiny 2.

Got this in an email from Bungie after I finished the campaign:

I did finish the campaign on Legendary by myself. Fitting since being in the Pale Heart all alone seemed to be the theme of the expansion…

After these videos, I have no desire to ever try the raid that came with Final Shape:

And with that, I take my retirement from Destiny 2. It’s been a hell of a ride, but I’m so done. I plan on writing one last piece encompassing my whole 10 year journey with the game. Until then…

Destiny 2 - The Final Shape