Summary
Destiny 2’s Season of the Witch was a great addition to the game and even made for a good story after the Lightfall debacle, and even though it didn’t exactly answer some burning questions about what Savathun knows or how to access the portal on The Traveler, it set up other plot threads. Still, Lightfall’s failure to engage players and deliver a worthy story is probably partly responsible for this year’s decline of trust in Bungie from the fans, which in turn led to a lack of pre-orders for The Final Shape, and ultimately to the recent layoffs at the company.Bungie’s recent comments about The Final Shapeare about delivering a great expansion, but the studio may be shooting for the wrong inspiration.
The Final Shape is not the first time the franchise feels in jeopardy after issues with the game and community morale, which is something that also happened during Year 1, back in vanilla Destiny 2.
There was little to do or achieve in the game, the grind was limited, the endgame was not rewarding players enough, and the game felt like it lacked its heart and soul outside of Raids like the Leviathan. Enter Forsaken, which changed forever what the game could be - but Forsaken is a rare beast, and statingDestiny 2’s The Final Shapewill be like it is to set it up for failure.
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Why Forsaken Should be The Goal For Destiny 2’s The Final Shape
The recent apology message from Bungie made it sound like The Final Shape needs to be a huge win forDestiny 2, both financially and in terms of playerbase morale. The statement also made it clear that Bungie wants to deliver an experience that’s comparable to the standards set by The Taken King from the first game orDestiny 2’s Forsakenand The Witch Queen. While The Taken King and The Witch Queen were great expansions, neither was on the same level as Forsaken in terms of content, new options, new destinations, endgame content, PvP, and more.
Forsaken didn’t feel like an expansion, but a whole new game, to the point that it seemed like the actualDestiny 2launch. Bungie had a lot on the line, with some reporting that the company was on the brink of shutting the game down, but it managed to deliver one of the best experiences in gaming. Forsaken had it all, and making it the standard The Final Shape should achieve is a very sharp double-edged sword.
What Forsaken did was set a bar that’s hard to clear for any future release for multiple reasons, and withThe Final Shape possibly delayed to June 2024, there might be not enough time for Bungie to achieve that same standard.Destiny 2’s Forsaken features included:
Being on par with Forsaken, or even worse, trying to top it, is a goal that The Final Shape can achieve, but it’s highly unlikely. Alongside thelayoffs at Bungieand their aftermath, players discovered that The Final Shape is probably being set back to June because it was received as good, but not great - whereas “great” is what the game currently needs. To go above and beyond players' expectations, which Bungie already set as quite high by stating it wants to deliver Forsaken all over again, the company would need to add a new Super and Fragment to every subclass in the game, many new PvP maps, a new game mode, exceptional destination and Raid, and much more. Whether it will succeed will remain a question without an answer for several more months.
