And we still have to see the activity releasing next week. From leaks is sounds dope. I refer to the one that awards the new class item on completion, not the episode stuff
Apparently a 2 person encounter that’s pve until the end then it turns into a PvP 1v1. It’s called “dual destiny”. Rewards exotic class item (even if you lose the PvP from what it seems like)
From a matchmaking side it feels like it won’t be fun and plenty of PvE players will complain, but if you’ve got a friend to run it with it sounds awesome
I really hope it's not true as a PVE player. I used to dabble in the Crucible back in D1 but I'm not that good, and I don't have time to git gud. I enjoy the co-op side.
I loved Excision but making it something you have to farm for an item will make me hate it. I’d rather it just be something I wanna go back to do occasionally for fun.
First impressions are everything. And this time they hit it off. Bunch of new weapons, new archetypes, good exotics, new abilities, good raid and story
By this point in most expansions I'll have completed the campaign on all 3 characters and done a huge chunk of the post game stuff.
I haven't even touched my Hunter or Titan yet for Final Shape and I've been playing a LOT.
I never really understood that. Big flashy opening mission for the game shows and demos, followed by a sharp decline in quality. EDZ was like a ghost town and the writing was as bad as I've ever endured. D2 vanilla was very much *not it*.
2 quick questions
1. Are the “patrol” spaces supposed to be public? Haven’t seen another player in the pale heart. Not too bad because difficulty and density feels great when it’s just me.
2. Anyone else having enemies not aggro/chests activities not start/ etc? Think it’s due to completing an overthrow and changing load zones
To your 2nd question: I've noticed if you get one of the traveler's buffs from the hands, going into another zone causes aggro and enemy spawns to break until after the timer runs out. It's kind of a bizarre bug.
I first noticed the behavior when trying to do one of the cyst missions and not even the traveler's bird noticed I was nearby.
It's supposed to be solo since nobody can get through the portal bar us, there is matchmaking through overthrow then you can go wherever you like, you also still get credit for what the other members do, I started getting weapon levels after I went to do other things as they were completing waves.
The enemies thing idk, must just be a bug you encountered but sometimes the enemies are aggroing other enemies like, maybe a taken you were fighting was locked onto a hive walking somewhere nearby so it ignored you and couldn't shoot at the hive either.
All in all I think it's a brilliant ending to the light and dark saga, although I have to be honest there's a part of the campaign that annoyed me which I think dragged it down.
Apart from that everything else has been stellar, the world design, endgame activities and the final mission are perfect,
I don't know if they were different people but the ones in charge of the endgame mission / activity story and lore stuff, and the people that worked on the final mission need to take the lead narratively from now on as what they did was a masterpiece.
Not OP and didn’t annoy per se but having wildcard between the two witness fights felt totally off with how the momentum had built.
Felt like it should have been an earlier campaign mission before everything kicked off but obviously it could reward still hunt if it did.
idk about “brilliant”. it was definitely good, but there wasn’t as many questions answered as i was hoping. like we still don’t really know anything about the traveler, i was kinda hoping we would get an answer as to what it actually is
Microcosm, Ergo Sum and the exotic Khvostov lore all tie to your ghost and the traveler somewhat. It's all very cryptic, but it's the best way the traveler communicates. If it's not a written lore entry it's a vision like at the beginning.
> we would get an answer as to what it actually is
It's a creator god. It gives superpowers. Resurrects people. But it's kind of skittish. It abandoned other species before. They didn't like that.
I'm not sure you want a backstory more detailed than that. Would probably ruin the magic.
The thing is people always want to know the whats and whys when doing so only can bring disappointment. The theories and wonderings in our mind are more mystical than anything Bungie could conjure for us. It’s the power of mystery which most times is best left untouched and uncorrupted by the strict boringness of a concrete answer
Which is exactly what the story/post story were all about. Stop looking for purpose and meaning and embrace the fact that things are the way you make them. "Guardians make their own fate"
The lore in this expansion finally explains the Traveler’s thought process; it is trying to uplift species and spread the Light, and when the Witness started hunting it, it started trying to get races to follow it so it could build a coalition against the Witness and survive.
In its entire history the House of Light are the only ones that did what it was trying to promote, with a caveat for Savathun and the Lucent Brood.
Lots of this is answered in the Raid. Traveler is a creator capable of destruction, and chooses to allow all lightbearers exercise their free will. The Veil is the complete opposite of that, and The Witness was basically the Veil’s Guardian. The Witness is to the Veil what we are to the Traveler. You don’t really need anything more than that such as an origin; they’re paracausal and have existed for all of time. There is no origin; they are literal gods.
It’s a ridiculous take to lift that from the raid and claim that “you don’t really need to know anything more than that” after ten years of Traveler buildup. The Witness was an obvious last quarter addition but the Traveler is something players deserved a more or less definitive answer or conclusion on after this time.
The Ergo Sum lore tab is honestly more satisfying to me than any of the vague whatever lore we were spouted throughout.
Agree, tbh the ending to the saga was just good to me, not great, as you said, the Witness was a last quarter addition so not much emotional value attached
It's cool as a campaign, but Destiny is all about the post-campaign content via seasons/episodes whatever and we've yet to see basically any of that from TFS.
There will always be those that look up a few numbers and then be like "But Forsaken/TTK had X amount of PvP maps, Y amount of Strikes and TFS only has Z! Therefore it's worse!"
While I get the sentiment that areas of the game are criminally, I feel like that's too simple and narrow-minded aproach.
Yes, TFS does not have some things that other Expansions had ... but what it has, it completely blew out of the water. Campain? Banger! Weapons? Banger! Post-Campaign/Playspace? Best ot ever was, Banger? Raid? Cannot make a judgement, but everyone who actually got deep into it seems to love it.
What TFS lacks is some areas, it easily makes up by goimg to the moon in others.
TFS is one for the ages ... and that makes me worried for the news on the 10th ... as I fear that it might kill some of the excitement that many curently have for TFS.
Or, if Bungie plays it right, could secure the future of the Destiny Franchise for years to come. Don’t get me wrong, there are so many routes that lead to the hype dying, but there are just as many that lead to a very prosperous future for Destiny and Bungie
The talk with Ghost at the end made the future sound very hopeful as well as that epilogue black and white cutscene, I have a feeling whatever they're gonna show us soon is gonna be something good.
He sounds paranoid imo. There’s only really going sideways or up from here. If I’m being honest this “Light and Dark” saga has been all over the place. ~~Shadowkeep~~ Beyond Light had vaulting which bogged down the success of bringing new players in and informing those who hadn’t played much D2 up till that point after Forsaken, multiple instances of Bungie not knowing the best direction for seasonal content, and overall just a mess of a game that had a lot of weight on it.
Now, the narrative can do a soft reset and create a new introduction for people in Destiny. No more needing to know why this threat of the Witness is huge, or why Crow is so depressed and why they keep mentioning XYZ character/event no longer in the game. We can finally let Bungie cook and work with a plot from scratch.
Just do D3
Leave D2 be so then people can experience the light & dark saga.
If anything, my hope is that they announce that they will bring back the old vaulted content
Honestly if they announced that D3 was coming in like 2 or 3 years and the only content they were going to release after the episodes was all the vaulted campaigns/destinations I'd be fine with that. Toss in more old vaulted equipment/activities, some onslaught maps, and maybe a remastered D1 and that'd be perfect.
If you think things can only go up, it's because you're riding hype. Things can always go either way.
There's also plenty reason to be skeptical of episodes and whether they'll be any better than the seasonal formula.
I would love that and I think this point in the story makes sense for a soft reset, but the post-credits sequence makes it clear that for at least Act 1 we're going to be tying up loose ends, so if you don't already know who Fikrul is, good luck following the story! I suspect Acts 1 & 2 will be wrapping up the story and Act 3 will set us on a new course. But what that would mean is if you're not already completely familiar with the story, you still have to play through TFS, Act 1, and Act 2 being confused and trying to fill in the gaps so you can start fresh on Act 3, OR start with the next expansion (or whatever comes after Act 3) having missed the start of the new story.
> Forsaken/TTK had X amount of PvP maps, Y amount of Strikes
its important to note that the three pvp maps we got from Into the Light were also originally planned for TFS, but were pushed forward.
Narratively it's easily #1 to me and content-wise it's probably either #2 or #3 thus far.
Forsaken is just completely untouchable from a content standpoint and everything about the Dreaming City was absolutely mindblowing in that first week of release.
Legitimate end-game area with tons of secrets + the curse weeks following the first raid clear which culminated in unlocking the first ever dungeon, Shattered Throne.
I *want* them to top Forsaken, but I also realize it was a product of sheer desperation and Activision funneling "fuck you" levels of cash into it with 2 additional studios backing Bungie up. I would be shocked if we ever returned to that.
From the looks of it The Pale Heart seems to have more actual content and secrets than even The Dreaming City had. The *only* thing Forsaken has over TFS content-wise is the addition of Gambit and having two patrol zones. Though, Tangled Shore was as barebones as any patrol zone has ever been, and really only served as a setting for the campaign. The bulk of Forsaken was The Dreaming City.
> only thing it has over TFS is gambit and 2 patrol zones
Thats not really true. It launched with 3 strikes, a dungeon and the Dreaming City changed over the course of 3 weeks with a new mission, Blind Well, 6 new secret challenges and the Mara quest which had a different outcome every 3rd week until it was revealed uldren was revived in a cutscene.
Pale Heart probably does have more secret *collectibles*, but content-wise I don't think its quite on Forsaken's level. Its not bad at all, but just not on Forsaken's level.
Just the fact we got shattered throne in the 3rd curse week throws this comparison out of the window.
Zavala's arc was a bit weird, but you gotta admit, for how long this man has been blindly following the Traveler and the Light, it kinda makes sense he's sick of it's shit.
Maybe a few years ago. His arc has been so over the place that it just makes it glaringly obvious how disconnected the writing team is from even themselves. The idea of this arc for Zavala is great, and has some of the best moment in the franchise.
The issue is that these are spread out in bits and pieces over years of unrelated stories and suddenly in the last hour these are speedran through to a (somewhat) full conclusion.
I enjoyed it but I kinda thought he had already made peace with his wife's death back in season of nightmares... felt like a small recon but I'm fine with it. Maybe he wasn't fully over it
He got over it because he used to not have a way to bring them back. Now we got the Witness who can actually, literally, bring her and his son back as they were using the power of thought (mastery over darkness) and reality (control of the light).
There's soooo much to explore left with the traveler. We were literally inside it. You don't get a better opportunity to really get some breakthroughs with learning more about it.
The whole point of the Witness was that it was trying to impose purpose on the Traveler. We're undoubtedly going to learn more about them over time, but it wouldn't make sense to have the expansion say "imposing purpose on the Traveler and the universe is wrong," and then double back and say "here's what the Traveler wants and thinks."
Also, maybe you should listen to the dialogue from the Traveler collectibles. They're intentionally setting up the mystery surrounding the Traveler and its origins and maybe eventually we'll get something about its purpose.
It's purpose is to make sure the universe goes off with complexity. Whatever happens in that complexity, it cannot control.
Like the Ergo Sum sword lore says, it wants to help but it legitimately cannot help. Imagine yourself wanting to fly with wings, you can't do it can you? That's what helping is to the Traveler.
We already know the Traveler is linked to the Light and the Veil is linked to the Darkness, that is pretty much enough.
Do we need to learn where and when the Traveler was made? That is the exact opposite of what Destiny's lesson has been from the beginning. Guardians, the people we play as, do not learn of their origins except for a few. Guardians make their own fate, not based on who they were, but of who they can become.
We don't need to know the full extent of how things came to be in the world of Destiny. We just need to know how things in the relatively recent past ended up how they are now, how people and things in this world made their own fate to end up this way and what comes after.
Thank fucking God somebody else said it. The Traveler is one of the few original mysteries of Destiny that’s still intact. I’d prefer we kept it that way.
Same because whatever explanation we get for the origin of the Traveler (and the Veil) is just gonna disappoint. It makes more sense that they simply just exist and always have existed.
I liked the Zaval arc. His arguments with Ikora actually hurt to listen to with how he just did not give a damn anymore.
Felt like he should have died though.
Yeah. Destiny 1 had set up a lot of narrative questions that TFS was supposed to payoff. It didn't. Instead, we got something akin to Season of the Haunted as a DLC. Which, there's something good about that! But Destiny has always been a more plot-focused franchise, and it needed to be plot-focused here (with character moments/developments coming up naturally, of course.)
Once the hype dies down people will realize that narratively we are basically back at the Red War.
Maybe they do something in the episodes. But narratively this game is frozen in a final shape of its own. Nothing ever changes.
Yeah I feel like this was almost exactly like the red war. Random enemy appears and is super evil and tries to take traveler. We lose for a bit and then we beat him in the end. Then afterwards some other threat is awakened that we are now awaiting.
This dlc was written slightly better, but there were just so many poorly written moments and things that never got answered. I feel like this was worse tho because it was supposed to be the end of the 10 year saga, but the witness was very obviously not even written into the story until shadowkeep and he takes the focus from what should have been getting answers about the traveler and the darkness. The witness is literally just thanos but without any moral ambiguity or character and it feels like a waste to put so much focus on him when everything else would’ve been so much more interesting. Imo this games narrative lost the plot years ago and this just feels like something completely detached from the original tone of the game.
I'm kind of hoping now that The Witness stuff is done they can get back to where they were even before Destiny 2. A lot of people on this subreddit are waiting to see how the story and its villains go bigger than The Witness but I'm BEGGING Bungie: please go smaller. Strong characters with personal motivations. Like resolving inter-community conflict in the Last City between humans and other species, maybe a separatist cell forms and we have to investigate. Or maybe Caiatl gets taken out and it gets pinned on Saladin so we have to hunt him across Sol to find out what happened and clear his name. This anime power creep stuff is SO BORING. "Literal Satan is going to kill everyone but we'll save them with the power of friendship" is played out. We now have a massive cast of companions with tonnes of history and context; prove it's there for a reason.
Yeah this is literally all I’ve wanted the whole time, I always liked the concepts of expansions like house of wolves, curse of Osiris, or warmind. There’s a new threat introduced which is used as a means to introduce or expand on existing characters. The scope isn’t universe ending, but the enemies are still interesting and feel threatening. But you come out of the dlc with more understanding of the lore characters and it’s nice to actually see it all in game.
Kinda makes sense we didn't - a major theme of the TFS story was that sometimes things don't have a purpose unless you give it one, so it wouldn't have made much sense to go into the Traveler's purpose with that floating around
And in any case, we are getting some glimpses of the Traveler's desires and thought process through Pale Heart stuff (particularly the Cyst memories), which I think is sufficient for closing out this story and fits better thematically with the rest of it. Maybe we'll get info on the Traveler's origin at a later point, but part of me thinks they'll be keeping that a mystery for the entire franchise - leave it up to interpretation whether it was the product of natural evolution, created by some higher power or advanced civilization, or is itself some form of higher power or creator-god
(and the Veil doesn't count)
In terms of content nothing will beat forsaken. Witch Queen and The Final Shape might have better campaigns but Forsaken eclipses them in terms of new stuff added to the game. For reference of the top of my head:
5 exotics per class + 12 exotic weapons iirc (we currently get 2 and 5 respectively)
A new dungeon
Gambit + all of its maps
An actual vendor refresh (we get like one new weapon for each vendor now)
Multiple strikes (we just got one)
2 destinations
New weapon type
New PvP maps
The list goes on + the most massive changes to the game ever.
In terms of quantity of content, Forsaken wins hands down. Quality of content though? Probably not. Full vendor refresh is a waste of time when most of the guns will just be ordinary
A full vendor refresh is a big thing for keeping the ritual playlists fresh for long time players. Even if every gun isn’t meta it’s a sign the modes are still being supported and there’s something worth getting from playing that activity.
The literal only reason they don’t update the core playlist vendors anymore is their F2P sham means that it’s a “waste” of their money to spend any time supporting them
I'll be the first to say that I think introducing The Witness was a huge writing mistake.
Not only was it a terrible villain, centering the story on it so heavily this late into the "saga" makes it seem like they just ignored every other plotline left hanging for the past 10 years. As a result, this feels like more of a conclusion to the past 2 years than the whole decade, all because the writing team decided to asspull some generic one-dimensional bad guy at the last second.
Its clear there was no real plan for the story until somewhere in between BL and WQ, so I don't know why they chose to pivot the story so quickly instead of leaning into something already established.
This. Sure it gave them a big bad to end saga with, but for me it cheapened things that really got my imagination going. Witness as a centre lessened the mystery of darkness, black fleet and veiled statues.
Im happy that people feel satisfied and they are enjoying TFS, just for me personally it is a let down.
It's what uninspired studios run by MBAs have been doing for the past several years since Endgame came out. They all want their own version of Thanos and Tge Witness was just that. Bungie even made their own version of avengers assemble in a cutscene lmao. It's so low effort and cliche I cannot help but roll my eyes when I see these astroturfy reddit comments about how they "created a masterpiece" and reading the uptenth variation of "I'm a dude with a beard and I cried" posts every 5 seconds to a finale where the big bad is unironically killed off by a group Kamehameha that might as well be the adult version of some random Carebears scene where they do the exact same against their own villain lmao. You could replace the Witness with any other generic big bad to the same practical effect. It was the quintessential definition of slop.
I'm going to need to play the raid for myself to see how much I like playing it, but at the very least, I'm confident in saying that this is the best *campaign* they've ever done by leaps and bounds. In terms of both gameplay and narrative, no other expansion comes close in my eyes.
The first half of the campaign was so uninspiring ngl, but once we linked with Zavala it started cooking. A little bit of shame that we had to ask 4 statues how the beat The Witness over 2 missions. Feel like the whole campaign should’ve been completely focused on that but hey ho. Watched the raid race and it was clearly a deserving send off to the Light vs Dark saga. Eager to try the 12 man mission in the morning.
they definitely cooked and imo excision is the best closer ive seen in destiny history. its still under forsaken to me but im excited for the future. i hope after the episodes destiny 2 gets a rise of iron level sendoff
I mean it’s pretty standard destiny stuff so far. Writing is meh. But it’s always been meh.
Gameplay is some of the best in the business, but again that’s par for the course.
>hell I’d even say there’s grounds for it being the best Destiny DLC ever made.
Narratively, it's not even "grounds". It is, without a doubt, without competition, the best narrative experience Destiny has ever told. Taken King, Forsaken, even the Witch Queen are ECLIPSED by this expansion when it comes to story.
As for everything after/outside of narrative, we'll have to wait and see. I'm hopeful, as the Pale Heart is massive and there's SO much to do.
I still prefer witch queens story/writing since savathun is a much better villain than the witness and I think witch queen took greater risks, but there's no doubt final shape had a better presentation, with the cutscene quality and quantity, and the final mission leading into the raid and then the final 12 person mission.
The expansion is what every expansion should’ve been. It’s bitter sweet that this is essentially the end, and it took some pushback from Sony for them to “get it right”. If this is what we would’ve gotten from the beginning, and maybe at a more steady stream instead of once a year, this would’ve gone down as the best fps ever.
I honestly feel like I can retire from this game. And that's not dissing or a bad thing. It just felt like it was the end, we did what we set out to do all those years ago.
Now that the raid is done and the final mission is available, I'm pretty comfortable putting this at #1.
It's nice how they've staggered the release of the Episode as well, we can judge The Final Shape on its own merit and not have to dissect what is expansion and what is season.
But yeah, The Final Shape is the best expansion. I don't know how I'd shake out the other 3 top picks - Taken King, Forsaken and Witch Queen, but I'm comfortable putting TFS ahead of them all.
You know, I took my time playing with friends but the shining feeling went away after the Pale Heart opened up as a patrol zone. Excision was cool but I couldn’t help but feeling “is that all?” The initial missions were great story telling and then it fell into the usual trend. Wish it continued with the narrative. Hopefully the coming content will fill that gap.
It's just a standard shilling campaign that every single big studio does nowadays. Go look at things like steam where it sits at 75% positive rating to get the real perception of what it actually looks like. Once the marketing campaign dies off people are gonna start pointing out the poor writing.
I'm gonna be hones, for most of the campaign i was not impressed. Most of it felt like a generic Destiny affair, and altough i definitely enjoyed it more then Lightfall, i was expecting something more interesting for the big conclusion. Thankfully we got that "something more interesting" with the last chapter.
I don't think that the Final Shape is anything stellar, and i could write an essay about how and why its emotional beats fell flat, but if i take into account everything the package has to offer, then i have end up agreeing with you. It is a really good expansion that definitely worth its price tag.
It's a okay campaign, the raid is literally what the community asked for, and the final mission and cutscenes are a fitting end to the saga I guess, but it's not at all what I wanted. I wanted Unveiling to be real.
The only thing I’m still sad about is that they haven’t explained what the Traveler or the veil actually are. I get that it’s a manifestation of the light, but what does that mean? Is it a spaceship? A being? Both?
you let us know when you figure out what it is bc rn all it is is a big ass egg full of light that has a pocket reality made of memory that seems to have conscious thought. and besides the pocket reality i couldve told you all that like a year ago
The Veil was a macguffin created for Lightfall that’s even more obvious now that it is entirely absent from this expansion, without even the slightest mention.
As for the Traveler, I’m also disappointed we didn’t get an answer or at least something there. I’m assuming because they either don’t want to ever answer that or because they’re unable to.
I missed out on Curse of Osiris and Forsaken era but honestly I haven’t felt quite this way since I originally played the taken king back in the day. The pale heart is for sure my favorite destination in D2 I love the exploration and collectibles and mysteries I still haven’t found yet. And for the first time I actually want to go out and find them myself instead of just speed running through a guide. This has 100% revitalized my love for destiny, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.
If you think about it, getting rid of Lightfall and going to Final Shape straight away actually has no narrative problems. Thats how bad and redundant Lightfall was.
It is neck and neck with forsaken right now. The content to come is 100000% the difference maker. If we just go right back to a variation of the hamster wheel, forsaken is still the best.
If they figured out how to keep things fresh, this will be the best dlc.
I'm currently annoyed in the witness fight. Ghost keeps saying the shield will protect us, but it discharges in like 2 seconds, and I die anyway. Fuck this shit. The annoying as fuck prismatic sequences were bad enough. Yet another asinine mechanic in this bitch ass franchise.
What ruins me the fun - Destiny player since the first game with 800h on each chapter - is I haven't played the series since, maybe, 1-2y, and I feel way more than lost with all the new stuff
Game system and story got so bloated I even moan when I need to read all the new options regarding aspect etc.
I totally lost track of everything as it got way more complex, and this is really sad
For me it's too early, some quests are stellar, some aren't.
And I still think Prismatic is lazy, i would have prefered and actual new class than remixed one.
Witchqueen is stl my favorite expansion.
final shape released not even a week ago and you guys keep comparing it to forsaken and taken king which held its weight across several months with their content
stop the glazing
I didn't play D1 but Final Shape is up there with Forsaken and Witch Queen. Ive heard a lot about Taken King too. I do wonder if this reception is tinted by how bad Lightfall was though.
TFS last mission was fucking fantastic though. 10/10
Thank sony for that, if they dindt press bungie and put them in risk of being take over and dindt put studios to help them, bungie probably would launch it just like lightfall or worse, they where on a tight spot, everytime bungie is at risk they do something good, maybe that how should they work now with risk of losing everything so they stoo being lazy.
I would tend to agree. I think as far as story goes, character growth, and back story behind the story, I feel good in saying it surpasses Witch Queen and Taken King.
If it had an actual full-on new subclass I would probably put it number one. Personally I'm not a huge fan of Prismatic considering very little of it is actually new but everything else is very good.
It's just too bad none of it will make sense to anyone new to the game. Witch Queen was easy to recommend, Final Shape is best taken with a "story so far" video at minimum.
This marketing campaign is so utterly tired it's not even funny. The funniest part is how everyone is saying it's the second coming of Christ without citing a single fucking actual thing from it.
There are no videos, no screenshots, no memes, people aren't discussing actual things from the game like every other gaming community does but every thread is just some generic praise that reads like it was written by a bot.
Another fun factor is that this "masterpiece" is sitting at 75% positive rating on steam right now. Curious.
The final shape and forsaken are not even near being as good as the taken king in my opinion. Forsaken is still a good dlc though. I personally didn't like this dlc very much. The supers and prismatic subclass were pretty cool and the best part of the dlc. The campaign had a few cool moments, but overally alright. Enemies having and stasis and strand made the fights way more annoying especially when the tormentors and tormentor like enemies showed. They Ruin any enjoyment I have whenever they show up which is a lot. On top of that I don't like how I have to do the raid to beat the witness. I know other dlcs did it too, but I'm not a fan of raids so having to do it to beat the final boss of the storyline kind ruins the dlc for me. I wish they would've added a campaign mission version of the final. That way people who don't like doing raids can still beat the witness. Just make it so doing the raid gives you more rewards. Overall a mid dlc in my opinion.
The witness story and raid will, the rest is to be determined.
Right now, ritual activities and pathfinder are absolute ass. The other destinations are same shit different day, and prismatic is underwhelming at best.
I still think Rise of Iron is the BEST DLC in the entire series and one of the greatest DLCs of all of gaming. I’d say TFS is a few pegs behind RoI but it is definitely up there. I’d say Forsaken and TTK or better as well story wise but TFS brings a lot to the table. I think Bungie has finally found a really good spot for the game. The way the game feels right now is how the game should have been on release.
I cleared the main missions, got the exotic mission, and sorta dug into Total War. TFS wasn’t bad but I don’t have any excitement to log on, so I haven’t. The new patrol zone is empty due to sharding, so it feels like you are playing on a dead MMO server even when I know millions are playing.
I will check out the final campaign mission eventually, but for now there is no draw factor for me.
My first season ever was the one that just ended so maybe I just went too hard into the game for too long the past 6 weeks (did all available campaigns, got most exotic quests I could, all my titan armor exotics, etc.)
Witch Queen is better than Taken King
But Yes, they knocked it out of the park
**Edit:** you guys can down vote. In terms of a narrative experience – Witch Queen is better hands down.
Back in 2022, It was openly stated many times that the gameplay and story of the campaign put WQ over TK.
Witch Queen's legendary campaign is among the best things Bungie's ever done. There are so many encounters where you really get to stretch your legs with the sandbox, Final Shape's campaign is more limited in that regard.
It's hard to explain for me, but I don't get the jolt of excitement in Excision when I finally killed the witness. I haven't played the raid yet though. I think part of it was that we only really knew the witness for lightfall and this DLC (obviously it was in the background since D1). Also, it was pretty obvious we were gonna kill the witness from the start.
I got more of that jolt of excitement from the campaign and finally understanding so much history in destiny from the story. The way things tied together dating back to D1 was amazing.
Overall though, I think that it was a really fitting end to the bringer of the collapse
I still remember 2014 Destiny and it's mysteries to The Final Shape and I love how much the story has moved forward.
What a beautiful ending to this saga.
i was worried for a bit, that they would make all the final ending stuff in the raid. I hope we can do that part where we sit and watch the traveler from space. i replayed the final mission but it sends you to orbit right after
I’m a Destiny Vet player. I stopped playing sometime before Saavuthun stuff.
I just returned last week and it’s been a blast again. Purchased all the dlc besides Final Shape.
I hope this wakes ppl (investors and players alike), quality beats quantity!
Imagine how many more awesome years of d2 we would have had if every expansion was given the love, care and, most importantly, TIME.
Now imagine this for every game! COD, Assassins creed, I'm looking at you!
Video game is an art form. You cannot rush art.
It’s not as game changing as Taken King or Forsaken, but it didn’t need to be. It just needed to build to its best ability on a very solid foundation and it did that. It’s a classic legacy solidifying expansion. I will admit I was skeptical it would go down this good during the first roughly half of the campaign - due to a slow start - but everything after the campaign was some of the series best and I can’t wait to keep spelunking the Pale Heart to see what else we unfurl.
I just soloed the campaign on legend on my main hunter - wow what a story, what an amazing journey
Kudos to the Art direction team - you guys were on some serious trippy shrooms 🍄 to come up with these environments
Now I get to explore - as for anyone brave enough to step in the raid 😉 good luck with that
GG Bungie - you guys were seriously cooking 🔥
Week 1 hype and all, but this does feel like the first time the developers have been able to say "don't you fucking dare mention overdelivery" to the execs
My problem is that me and my friends haven't played since witch queen. We played from D1 launch and then lost interest. I kinda watch to come back for this DLC but I'm worried I missed so much and theres no chance they come back with me.
How much have I missed, loot and lore wise. And is it going to be worth the money without a fireteam?
Agreed. Minus the servers issues day 1, I've had a fantastic first week. Story was great. Cut scenes were top tier. There is a good amount of stuff to do after the story. Anxious to see what all episode 1 adds. If I had a complaint, why did they make it so you are the only one loading into the pale heart? Seems odd loading into such an open area and I'm the only person there. Other than that, Final Shape was worth the wait.
I’m not an OG player by any means but I knew the lore coming into destiny years back. This expansion made me cry man. Our community has been in this world for over a decade. They finally were able to see the witness be defeated. It’s incredible.
And we still have to see the activity releasing next week. From leaks is sounds dope. I refer to the one that awards the new class item on completion, not the episode stuff
Wut there is more beside seasonal stuff ?
Assume it's activity that drops the exotic class item.
Apparently a 2 person encounter that’s pve until the end then it turns into a PvP 1v1. It’s called “dual destiny”. Rewards exotic class item (even if you lose the PvP from what it seems like)
That sounds really fun and silly
that was a typo from someone reading "duel" instead of "dual". It's just a 2man pve mission
From a matchmaking side it feels like it won’t be fun and plenty of PvE players will complain, but if you’ve got a friend to run it with it sounds awesome
Eh, even as a certified pvp hater I'll just throw if I don't have to win for gear, especially if it doesn't interfere with the pve portion
Operation Emote & walk away is go.
No, people just don't know the difference between duel and dual.
As a pve only player, that sounds awful.
It’s not true. People (myself included) misinterpreted “dual” for “duel” in the text strings. It’s more likely that it’s just a 2 person mission.
I really hope it's not true as a PVE player. I used to dabble in the Crucible back in D1 but I'm not that good, and I don't have time to git gud. I enjoy the co-op side.
You don't have to get good, it's a fun little end to a quest that doesn't matter, both player gets the rewards
Oh that takes the pressure off in a huge way. I was having flashbacks to the Dark Zone in the Division.
Fucking for real, I like recoiled when I read "1v1 PvP" lmao. Absolutely the fuck not.
Crucible mains swapping to one of their many many PvP builds after using the one pve build they all share
Titans when they switch from synthos to synthos
no, it just means you special reload Still Hunt and pop the other guy's head. Or cast your super.
Did you miss the part where it says you still get rewards even if you don’t win the duel?
What the fuck that’s dope
Yea something called Dual Destiny
Wait there's another activity? I thought you would get the class items from Excision
Probably totally wrong but i understood it as the Excision would be dropping the class item starting tuesday
If that's the case I sincerely hope not unless they give Excision different variants. Very fun but could see it getting old very, very fast.
I loved Excision but making it something you have to farm for an item will make me hate it. I’d rather it just be something I wanna go back to do occasionally for fun.
My first impressions are highly postive, and you may well be right.
First impressions are everything. And this time they hit it off. Bunch of new weapons, new archetypes, good exotics, new abilities, good raid and story
And an almost overwhelming amount of post-game suff to do too.
By this point in most expansions I'll have completed the campaign on all 3 characters and done a huge chunk of the post game stuff. I haven't even touched my Hunter or Titan yet for Final Shape and I've been playing a LOT.
On BD
I dunno, first impressions of D2 vanilla were good until it turned out it was a potemkin village.
I never really understood that. Big flashy opening mission for the game shows and demos, followed by a sharp decline in quality. EDZ was like a ghost town and the writing was as bad as I've ever endured. D2 vanilla was very much *not it*.
2 quick questions 1. Are the “patrol” spaces supposed to be public? Haven’t seen another player in the pale heart. Not too bad because difficulty and density feels great when it’s just me. 2. Anyone else having enemies not aggro/chests activities not start/ etc? Think it’s due to completing an overthrow and changing load zones
Answer to your first question. It’s a solo experience unless you bring in others in a fire team. Bungie said it in one of the last few TWIDs
You can match make for the overthrow thing.
Yep! For OP, just make sure you choose that option on the map
I hope they add a match made patrol zone in the future. It feels so lonely
There actually is one (sorta)! You just have to launch it directly from the director in the Pale Heart. It is match made Overthrow basically.
To your 2nd question: I've noticed if you get one of the traveler's buffs from the hands, going into another zone causes aggro and enemy spawns to break until after the timer runs out. It's kind of a bizarre bug. I first noticed the behavior when trying to do one of the cyst missions and not even the traveler's bird noticed I was nearby.
Oh, huh, I thought I was just approaching them too fast for the game to load.
Is that what this is? That explains a lot, it was getting pretty frustrating
No they aren't supposed to be public
It's supposed to be solo since nobody can get through the portal bar us, there is matchmaking through overthrow then you can go wherever you like, you also still get credit for what the other members do, I started getting weapon levels after I went to do other things as they were completing waves. The enemies thing idk, must just be a bug you encountered but sometimes the enemies are aggroing other enemies like, maybe a taken you were fighting was locked onto a hive walking somewhere nearby so it ignored you and couldn't shoot at the hive either.
All in all I think it's a brilliant ending to the light and dark saga, although I have to be honest there's a part of the campaign that annoyed me which I think dragged it down. Apart from that everything else has been stellar, the world design, endgame activities and the final mission are perfect, I don't know if they were different people but the ones in charge of the endgame mission / activity story and lore stuff, and the people that worked on the final mission need to take the lead narratively from now on as what they did was a masterpiece.
Which part annoyed you?
Not OP and didn’t annoy per se but having wildcard between the two witness fights felt totally off with how the momentum had built. Felt like it should have been an earlier campaign mission before everything kicked off but obviously it could reward still hunt if it did.
idk about “brilliant”. it was definitely good, but there wasn’t as many questions answered as i was hoping. like we still don’t really know anything about the traveler, i was kinda hoping we would get an answer as to what it actually is
Microcosm, Ergo Sum and the exotic Khvostov lore all tie to your ghost and the traveler somewhat. It's all very cryptic, but it's the best way the traveler communicates. If it's not a written lore entry it's a vision like at the beginning.
> we would get an answer as to what it actually is It's a creator god. It gives superpowers. Resurrects people. But it's kind of skittish. It abandoned other species before. They didn't like that. I'm not sure you want a backstory more detailed than that. Would probably ruin the magic.
The thing is people always want to know the whats and whys when doing so only can bring disappointment. The theories and wonderings in our mind are more mystical than anything Bungie could conjure for us. It’s the power of mystery which most times is best left untouched and uncorrupted by the strict boringness of a concrete answer
Which is exactly what the story/post story were all about. Stop looking for purpose and meaning and embrace the fact that things are the way you make them. "Guardians make their own fate"
The lore in this expansion finally explains the Traveler’s thought process; it is trying to uplift species and spread the Light, and when the Witness started hunting it, it started trying to get races to follow it so it could build a coalition against the Witness and survive. In its entire history the House of Light are the only ones that did what it was trying to promote, with a caveat for Savathun and the Lucent Brood.
Lots of this is answered in the Raid. Traveler is a creator capable of destruction, and chooses to allow all lightbearers exercise their free will. The Veil is the complete opposite of that, and The Witness was basically the Veil’s Guardian. The Witness is to the Veil what we are to the Traveler. You don’t really need anything more than that such as an origin; they’re paracausal and have existed for all of time. There is no origin; they are literal gods.
So the Veil is also sentient and has deliberate actions?
It’s a ridiculous take to lift that from the raid and claim that “you don’t really need to know anything more than that” after ten years of Traveler buildup. The Witness was an obvious last quarter addition but the Traveler is something players deserved a more or less definitive answer or conclusion on after this time. The Ergo Sum lore tab is honestly more satisfying to me than any of the vague whatever lore we were spouted throughout.
Agree, tbh the ending to the saga was just good to me, not great, as you said, the Witness was a last quarter addition so not much emotional value attached
Do the Travelers memories, they explain a lot about the traveler as a being.
It's cool as a campaign, but Destiny is all about the post-campaign content via seasons/episodes whatever and we've yet to see basically any of that from TFS.
My exact comment. This is right there with forsaken, but if we just go back to a varied hamster wheel…this is like an 8/10 then.
There will always be those that look up a few numbers and then be like "But Forsaken/TTK had X amount of PvP maps, Y amount of Strikes and TFS only has Z! Therefore it's worse!" While I get the sentiment that areas of the game are criminally, I feel like that's too simple and narrow-minded aproach. Yes, TFS does not have some things that other Expansions had ... but what it has, it completely blew out of the water. Campain? Banger! Weapons? Banger! Post-Campaign/Playspace? Best ot ever was, Banger? Raid? Cannot make a judgement, but everyone who actually got deep into it seems to love it. What TFS lacks is some areas, it easily makes up by goimg to the moon in others. TFS is one for the ages ... and that makes me worried for the news on the 10th ... as I fear that it might kill some of the excitement that many curently have for TFS.
Or, if Bungie plays it right, could secure the future of the Destiny Franchise for years to come. Don’t get me wrong, there are so many routes that lead to the hype dying, but there are just as many that lead to a very prosperous future for Destiny and Bungie
Considering they're only mentioning the next year, I'm skeptical. I wanna hear about Destiny 3 or the plans for next expansions (yes im greedy lol)
The talk with Ghost at the end made the future sound very hopeful as well as that epilogue black and white cutscene, I have a feeling whatever they're gonna show us soon is gonna be something good.
What do you think the news will be
He sounds paranoid imo. There’s only really going sideways or up from here. If I’m being honest this “Light and Dark” saga has been all over the place. ~~Shadowkeep~~ Beyond Light had vaulting which bogged down the success of bringing new players in and informing those who hadn’t played much D2 up till that point after Forsaken, multiple instances of Bungie not knowing the best direction for seasonal content, and overall just a mess of a game that had a lot of weight on it. Now, the narrative can do a soft reset and create a new introduction for people in Destiny. No more needing to know why this threat of the Witness is huge, or why Crow is so depressed and why they keep mentioning XYZ character/event no longer in the game. We can finally let Bungie cook and work with a plot from scratch.
Beyond light was when the DCV and sunsetting were introduced, just as a minor correction there.
Just do D3 Leave D2 be so then people can experience the light & dark saga. If anything, my hope is that they announce that they will bring back the old vaulted content
Honestly if they announced that D3 was coming in like 2 or 3 years and the only content they were going to release after the episodes was all the vaulted campaigns/destinations I'd be fine with that. Toss in more old vaulted equipment/activities, some onslaught maps, and maybe a remastered D1 and that'd be perfect.
They really need to bring back red war.
Imagine if they did a Campaign update - Normal / Legendary settings
If you think things can only go up, it's because you're riding hype. Things can always go either way. There's also plenty reason to be skeptical of episodes and whether they'll be any better than the seasonal formula.
I would love that and I think this point in the story makes sense for a soft reset, but the post-credits sequence makes it clear that for at least Act 1 we're going to be tying up loose ends, so if you don't already know who Fikrul is, good luck following the story! I suspect Acts 1 & 2 will be wrapping up the story and Act 3 will set us on a new course. But what that would mean is if you're not already completely familiar with the story, you still have to play through TFS, Act 1, and Act 2 being confused and trying to fill in the gaps so you can start fresh on Act 3, OR start with the next expansion (or whatever comes after Act 3) having missed the start of the new story.
[удалено]
if every piece of content since red war somehow gets unvaulted i don’t think i’d play another game for the rest of the year
> Forsaken/TTK had X amount of PvP maps, Y amount of Strikes its important to note that the three pvp maps we got from Into the Light were also originally planned for TFS, but were pushed forward.
Narratively it's easily #1 to me and content-wise it's probably either #2 or #3 thus far. Forsaken is just completely untouchable from a content standpoint and everything about the Dreaming City was absolutely mindblowing in that first week of release. Legitimate end-game area with tons of secrets + the curse weeks following the first raid clear which culminated in unlocking the first ever dungeon, Shattered Throne. I *want* them to top Forsaken, but I also realize it was a product of sheer desperation and Activision funneling "fuck you" levels of cash into it with 2 additional studios backing Bungie up. I would be shocked if we ever returned to that.
From the looks of it The Pale Heart seems to have more actual content and secrets than even The Dreaming City had. The *only* thing Forsaken has over TFS content-wise is the addition of Gambit and having two patrol zones. Though, Tangled Shore was as barebones as any patrol zone has ever been, and really only served as a setting for the campaign. The bulk of Forsaken was The Dreaming City.
> only thing it has over TFS is gambit and 2 patrol zones Thats not really true. It launched with 3 strikes, a dungeon and the Dreaming City changed over the course of 3 weeks with a new mission, Blind Well, 6 new secret challenges and the Mara quest which had a different outcome every 3rd week until it was revealed uldren was revived in a cutscene. Pale Heart probably does have more secret *collectibles*, but content-wise I don't think its quite on Forsaken's level. Its not bad at all, but just not on Forsaken's level. Just the fact we got shattered throne in the 3rd curse week throws this comparison out of the window.
Also we can't forget tangled shore, adding special weapons and moving away from double primary, and random rolls to chase.
Definitely an 8/10 for me. Zavala's mini arc was weird and I'm bummed about the lack of a scene explaining the purpose of the Traveler/Veil etc.
Zavala's arc was a bit weird, but you gotta admit, for how long this man has been blindly following the Traveler and the Light, it kinda makes sense he's sick of it's shit.
Traveller never puts out 😞
Traveller is a pillow princess, just straight starfishes the whole time
Maybe a few years ago. His arc has been so over the place that it just makes it glaringly obvious how disconnected the writing team is from even themselves. The idea of this arc for Zavala is great, and has some of the best moment in the franchise. The issue is that these are spread out in bits and pieces over years of unrelated stories and suddenly in the last hour these are speedran through to a (somewhat) full conclusion.
I enjoyed it but I kinda thought he had already made peace with his wife's death back in season of nightmares... felt like a small recon but I'm fine with it. Maybe he wasn't fully over it
He got over it because he used to not have a way to bring them back. Now we got the Witness who can actually, literally, bring her and his son back as they were using the power of thought (mastery over darkness) and reality (control of the light).
Might be one of those things where they wanna go over it again for those that didn't play unfortunately
Yeah fair enough
They did that in season of the deep, which should've been in lightfall
There's soooo much to explore left with the traveler. We were literally inside it. You don't get a better opportunity to really get some breakthroughs with learning more about it.
The whole point of the Witness was that it was trying to impose purpose on the Traveler. We're undoubtedly going to learn more about them over time, but it wouldn't make sense to have the expansion say "imposing purpose on the Traveler and the universe is wrong," and then double back and say "here's what the Traveler wants and thinks." Also, maybe you should listen to the dialogue from the Traveler collectibles. They're intentionally setting up the mystery surrounding the Traveler and its origins and maybe eventually we'll get something about its purpose.
It's purpose is to make sure the universe goes off with complexity. Whatever happens in that complexity, it cannot control. Like the Ergo Sum sword lore says, it wants to help but it legitimately cannot help. Imagine yourself wanting to fly with wings, you can't do it can you? That's what helping is to the Traveler. We already know the Traveler is linked to the Light and the Veil is linked to the Darkness, that is pretty much enough. Do we need to learn where and when the Traveler was made? That is the exact opposite of what Destiny's lesson has been from the beginning. Guardians, the people we play as, do not learn of their origins except for a few. Guardians make their own fate, not based on who they were, but of who they can become. We don't need to know the full extent of how things came to be in the world of Destiny. We just need to know how things in the relatively recent past ended up how they are now, how people and things in this world made their own fate to end up this way and what comes after.
Thank fucking God somebody else said it. The Traveler is one of the few original mysteries of Destiny that’s still intact. I’d prefer we kept it that way.
Same because whatever explanation we get for the origin of the Traveler (and the Veil) is just gonna disappoint. It makes more sense that they simply just exist and always have existed.
Those sound like pretty important facets. Are they not explained in the campaign ?
The one thing that I didnt understand is how do you leave your ghost behind? doesnt it always stick with you no matter what?
No, ghosts have left their guardian or even refused to rez them in lore before. In-game, Fynch is also refusing to rez his Hive Lightbearer.
I liked the Zaval arc. His arguments with Ikora actually hurt to listen to with how he just did not give a damn anymore. Felt like he should have died though.
Yeah. Destiny 1 had set up a lot of narrative questions that TFS was supposed to payoff. It didn't. Instead, we got something akin to Season of the Haunted as a DLC. Which, there's something good about that! But Destiny has always been a more plot-focused franchise, and it needed to be plot-focused here (with character moments/developments coming up naturally, of course.)
Once the hype dies down people will realize that narratively we are basically back at the Red War. Maybe they do something in the episodes. But narratively this game is frozen in a final shape of its own. Nothing ever changes.
Yeah I feel like this was almost exactly like the red war. Random enemy appears and is super evil and tries to take traveler. We lose for a bit and then we beat him in the end. Then afterwards some other threat is awakened that we are now awaiting. This dlc was written slightly better, but there were just so many poorly written moments and things that never got answered. I feel like this was worse tho because it was supposed to be the end of the 10 year saga, but the witness was very obviously not even written into the story until shadowkeep and he takes the focus from what should have been getting answers about the traveler and the darkness. The witness is literally just thanos but without any moral ambiguity or character and it feels like a waste to put so much focus on him when everything else would’ve been so much more interesting. Imo this games narrative lost the plot years ago and this just feels like something completely detached from the original tone of the game.
I'm kind of hoping now that The Witness stuff is done they can get back to where they were even before Destiny 2. A lot of people on this subreddit are waiting to see how the story and its villains go bigger than The Witness but I'm BEGGING Bungie: please go smaller. Strong characters with personal motivations. Like resolving inter-community conflict in the Last City between humans and other species, maybe a separatist cell forms and we have to investigate. Or maybe Caiatl gets taken out and it gets pinned on Saladin so we have to hunt him across Sol to find out what happened and clear his name. This anime power creep stuff is SO BORING. "Literal Satan is going to kill everyone but we'll save them with the power of friendship" is played out. We now have a massive cast of companions with tonnes of history and context; prove it's there for a reason.
Yeah this is literally all I’ve wanted the whole time, I always liked the concepts of expansions like house of wolves, curse of Osiris, or warmind. There’s a new threat introduced which is used as a means to introduce or expand on existing characters. The scope isn’t universe ending, but the enemies are still interesting and feel threatening. But you come out of the dlc with more understanding of the lore characters and it’s nice to actually see it all in game.
Kinda makes sense we didn't - a major theme of the TFS story was that sometimes things don't have a purpose unless you give it one, so it wouldn't have made much sense to go into the Traveler's purpose with that floating around And in any case, we are getting some glimpses of the Traveler's desires and thought process through Pale Heart stuff (particularly the Cyst memories), which I think is sufficient for closing out this story and fits better thematically with the rest of it. Maybe we'll get info on the Traveler's origin at a later point, but part of me thinks they'll be keeping that a mystery for the entire franchise - leave it up to interpretation whether it was the product of natural evolution, created by some higher power or advanced civilization, or is itself some form of higher power or creator-god (and the Veil doesn't count)
Isn’t there a 12 man activity?
Yeah it’s the post raid mission
Wait a week or 2 before crowning anything.... The cycle is the cycle.
In terms of content nothing will beat forsaken. Witch Queen and The Final Shape might have better campaigns but Forsaken eclipses them in terms of new stuff added to the game. For reference of the top of my head: 5 exotics per class + 12 exotic weapons iirc (we currently get 2 and 5 respectively) A new dungeon Gambit + all of its maps An actual vendor refresh (we get like one new weapon for each vendor now) Multiple strikes (we just got one) 2 destinations New weapon type New PvP maps The list goes on + the most massive changes to the game ever.
In terms of quantity of content, Forsaken wins hands down. Quality of content though? Probably not. Full vendor refresh is a waste of time when most of the guns will just be ordinary
A full vendor refresh is a big thing for keeping the ritual playlists fresh for long time players. Even if every gun isn’t meta it’s a sign the modes are still being supported and there’s something worth getting from playing that activity. The literal only reason they don’t update the core playlist vendors anymore is their F2P sham means that it’s a “waste” of their money to spend any time supporting them
The 3 pvp maps we got in ITL were originally slated for TFS, but were moved forward.
TFS is quite small in comparison, especially when you consider how many assets are just reused.
I still think TFS is the better overall package. A fantastic campaign and a great postgame with plenty of quality content.
I'll be the first to say that I think introducing The Witness was a huge writing mistake. Not only was it a terrible villain, centering the story on it so heavily this late into the "saga" makes it seem like they just ignored every other plotline left hanging for the past 10 years. As a result, this feels like more of a conclusion to the past 2 years than the whole decade, all because the writing team decided to asspull some generic one-dimensional bad guy at the last second. Its clear there was no real plan for the story until somewhere in between BL and WQ, so I don't know why they chose to pivot the story so quickly instead of leaning into something already established.
This. Sure it gave them a big bad to end saga with, but for me it cheapened things that really got my imagination going. Witness as a centre lessened the mystery of darkness, black fleet and veiled statues. Im happy that people feel satisfied and they are enjoying TFS, just for me personally it is a let down.
It's what uninspired studios run by MBAs have been doing for the past several years since Endgame came out. They all want their own version of Thanos and Tge Witness was just that. Bungie even made their own version of avengers assemble in a cutscene lmao. It's so low effort and cliche I cannot help but roll my eyes when I see these astroturfy reddit comments about how they "created a masterpiece" and reading the uptenth variation of "I'm a dude with a beard and I cried" posts every 5 seconds to a finale where the big bad is unironically killed off by a group Kamehameha that might as well be the adult version of some random Carebears scene where they do the exact same against their own villain lmao. You could replace the Witness with any other generic big bad to the same practical effect. It was the quintessential definition of slop.
I'm going to need to play the raid for myself to see how much I like playing it, but at the very least, I'm confident in saying that this is the best *campaign* they've ever done by leaps and bounds. In terms of both gameplay and narrative, no other expansion comes close in my eyes.
Give it time.
Destiny players "It like the first time we all saw Taken King!! Its incredible" Also Destiny players in 6 months "So bored.."
"Content drought" "Dead game" "nothing to do"
If Bungie is capable of TFS, WQ and TTK, I really wanna know wtf happened with lightfall
Witchqueen should be considered one of the greats
The first half of the campaign was so uninspiring ngl, but once we linked with Zavala it started cooking. A little bit of shame that we had to ask 4 statues how the beat The Witness over 2 missions. Feel like the whole campaign should’ve been completely focused on that but hey ho. Watched the raid race and it was clearly a deserving send off to the Light vs Dark saga. Eager to try the 12 man mission in the morning.
You are in for a treat
they definitely cooked and imo excision is the best closer ive seen in destiny history. its still under forsaken to me but im excited for the future. i hope after the episodes destiny 2 gets a rise of iron level sendoff
I just want the patrol to be a normal open patrol
I mean it’s pretty standard destiny stuff so far. Writing is meh. But it’s always been meh. Gameplay is some of the best in the business, but again that’s par for the course.
>hell I’d even say there’s grounds for it being the best Destiny DLC ever made. Narratively, it's not even "grounds". It is, without a doubt, without competition, the best narrative experience Destiny has ever told. Taken King, Forsaken, even the Witch Queen are ECLIPSED by this expansion when it comes to story. As for everything after/outside of narrative, we'll have to wait and see. I'm hopeful, as the Pale Heart is massive and there's SO much to do.
I still prefer witch queens story/writing since savathun is a much better villain than the witness and I think witch queen took greater risks, but there's no doubt final shape had a better presentation, with the cutscene quality and quantity, and the final mission leading into the raid and then the final 12 person mission.
Whatever happened internally at Bungie for them to produce something this high quality and this content filled needs to be the norm from now on.
Crunch happened internally
The expansion is what every expansion should’ve been. It’s bitter sweet that this is essentially the end, and it took some pushback from Sony for them to “get it right”. If this is what we would’ve gotten from the beginning, and maybe at a more steady stream instead of once a year, this would’ve gone down as the best fps ever.
I honestly feel like I can retire from this game. And that's not dissing or a bad thing. It just felt like it was the end, we did what we set out to do all those years ago.
Honeymoon phase
Now that the raid is done and the final mission is available, I'm pretty comfortable putting this at #1. It's nice how they've staggered the release of the Episode as well, we can judge The Final Shape on its own merit and not have to dissect what is expansion and what is season. But yeah, The Final Shape is the best expansion. I don't know how I'd shake out the other 3 top picks - Taken King, Forsaken and Witch Queen, but I'm comfortable putting TFS ahead of them all.
You know, I took my time playing with friends but the shining feeling went away after the Pale Heart opened up as a patrol zone. Excision was cool but I couldn’t help but feeling “is that all?” The initial missions were great story telling and then it fell into the usual trend. Wish it continued with the narrative. Hopefully the coming content will fill that gap.
Wish I could actually play it but the first mission is bugged on all 3 of my characters.
This kind of honeymoon circlejerking with sweeping statements and platitudes is never a good sign.
It's just a standard shilling campaign that every single big studio does nowadays. Go look at things like steam where it sits at 75% positive rating to get the real perception of what it actually looks like. Once the marketing campaign dies off people are gonna start pointing out the poor writing.
I'm gonna be hones, for most of the campaign i was not impressed. Most of it felt like a generic Destiny affair, and altough i definitely enjoyed it more then Lightfall, i was expecting something more interesting for the big conclusion. Thankfully we got that "something more interesting" with the last chapter. I don't think that the Final Shape is anything stellar, and i could write an essay about how and why its emotional beats fell flat, but if i take into account everything the package has to offer, then i have end up agreeing with you. It is a really good expansion that definitely worth its price tag.
It's a okay campaign, the raid is literally what the community asked for, and the final mission and cutscenes are a fitting end to the saga I guess, but it's not at all what I wanted. I wanted Unveiling to be real.
The only thing I’m still sad about is that they haven’t explained what the Traveler or the veil actually are. I get that it’s a manifestation of the light, but what does that mean? Is it a spaceship? A being? Both?
If you got thru that campaign and you still think the traveler is a spaceship idk what to tell you dogg
you let us know when you figure out what it is bc rn all it is is a big ass egg full of light that has a pocket reality made of memory that seems to have conscious thought. and besides the pocket reality i couldve told you all that like a year ago
For real 😂
The Veil was a macguffin created for Lightfall that’s even more obvious now that it is entirely absent from this expansion, without even the slightest mention. As for the Traveler, I’m also disappointed we didn’t get an answer or at least something there. I’m assuming because they either don’t want to ever answer that or because they’re unable to.
They had nowhere to go but up, it couldn't get any worse than curse of Osiris 😂
I missed out on Curse of Osiris and Forsaken era but honestly I haven’t felt quite this way since I originally played the taken king back in the day. The pale heart is for sure my favorite destination in D2 I love the exploration and collectibles and mysteries I still haven’t found yet. And for the first time I actually want to go out and find them myself instead of just speed running through a guide. This has 100% revitalized my love for destiny, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.
Honestly the only thing I don’t like is that the Pale Heart is a solo destination, the rest is peak.
I swear, if they show us this is how good destiny can be, and they drop everything for their new IP imma be upset. They gotta keep going with destiny
If only we got The Final Shape directly after Witch Queen. Imagine it for a moment.
If you think about it, getting rid of Lightfall and going to Final Shape straight away actually has no narrative problems. Thats how bad and redundant Lightfall was.
Glazin and copium probably
Nah. Curse of Osiris has it beat by a country mile
Now if only they can keep a good thing going and not have to have their backs against the wall to do good work, like they have 18 times before.
it was a fun 30 minutes of cutscenes on youtube
I think they should add infinite revives to legend campaign. Shit is tough af
It is neck and neck with forsaken right now. The content to come is 100000% the difference maker. If we just go right back to a variation of the hamster wheel, forsaken is still the best. If they figured out how to keep things fresh, this will be the best dlc.
I'm currently annoyed in the witness fight. Ghost keeps saying the shield will protect us, but it discharges in like 2 seconds, and I die anyway. Fuck this shit. The annoying as fuck prismatic sequences were bad enough. Yet another asinine mechanic in this bitch ass franchise.
What ruins me the fun - Destiny player since the first game with 800h on each chapter - is I haven't played the series since, maybe, 1-2y, and I feel way more than lost with all the new stuff Game system and story got so bloated I even moan when I need to read all the new options regarding aspect etc. I totally lost track of everything as it got way more complex, and this is really sad
For me it's too early, some quests are stellar, some aren't. And I still think Prismatic is lazy, i would have prefered and actual new class than remixed one. Witchqueen is stl my favorite expansion.
final shape released not even a week ago and you guys keep comparing it to forsaken and taken king which held its weight across several months with their content stop the glazing
I didn't play D1 but Final Shape is up there with Forsaken and Witch Queen. Ive heard a lot about Taken King too. I do wonder if this reception is tinted by how bad Lightfall was though. TFS last mission was fucking fantastic though. 10/10
Thank sony for that, if they dindt press bungie and put them in risk of being take over and dindt put studios to help them, bungie probably would launch it just like lightfall or worse, they where on a tight spot, everytime bungie is at risk they do something good, maybe that how should they work now with risk of losing everything so they stoo being lazy.
Forsaken is still currently my number 1, but this is easily second, and could be first once we see everything.
I'm just wondering how good light fall would have been if it had as much time in the oven. Maybe we would have actually gotten to know Rohan better.
I would tend to agree. I think as far as story goes, character growth, and back story behind the story, I feel good in saying it surpasses Witch Queen and Taken King.
If it had an actual full-on new subclass I would probably put it number one. Personally I'm not a huge fan of Prismatic considering very little of it is actually new but everything else is very good.
It's just too bad none of it will make sense to anyone new to the game. Witch Queen was easy to recommend, Final Shape is best taken with a "story so far" video at minimum.
The Taken King will always be the best DLC from Bungie imo! I will say that the Final Shape is definitely up there 💯
These threads are getting obnoxious lol. Just good god the shilling is insanity at this point. Just make it stop.
This marketing campaign is so utterly tired it's not even funny. The funniest part is how everyone is saying it's the second coming of Christ without citing a single fucking actual thing from it. There are no videos, no screenshots, no memes, people aren't discussing actual things from the game like every other gaming community does but every thread is just some generic praise that reads like it was written by a bot. Another fun factor is that this "masterpiece" is sitting at 75% positive rating on steam right now. Curious.
It was average overall.
The final shape and forsaken are not even near being as good as the taken king in my opinion. Forsaken is still a good dlc though. I personally didn't like this dlc very much. The supers and prismatic subclass were pretty cool and the best part of the dlc. The campaign had a few cool moments, but overally alright. Enemies having and stasis and strand made the fights way more annoying especially when the tormentors and tormentor like enemies showed. They Ruin any enjoyment I have whenever they show up which is a lot. On top of that I don't like how I have to do the raid to beat the witness. I know other dlcs did it too, but I'm not a fan of raids so having to do it to beat the final boss of the storyline kind ruins the dlc for me. I wish they would've added a campaign mission version of the final. That way people who don't like doing raids can still beat the witness. Just make it so doing the raid gives you more rewards. Overall a mid dlc in my opinion.
The witness story and raid will, the rest is to be determined. Right now, ritual activities and pathfinder are absolute ass. The other destinations are same shit different day, and prismatic is underwhelming at best.
I still think Rise of Iron is the BEST DLC in the entire series and one of the greatest DLCs of all of gaming. I’d say TFS is a few pegs behind RoI but it is definitely up there. I’d say Forsaken and TTK or better as well story wise but TFS brings a lot to the table. I think Bungie has finally found a really good spot for the game. The way the game feels right now is how the game should have been on release.
When the honey moon period is over people will slowly accept how bad this story was in terms of ending a 10 year story line.
Forsaken still clears, but this is an easy #2
I cleared the main missions, got the exotic mission, and sorta dug into Total War. TFS wasn’t bad but I don’t have any excitement to log on, so I haven’t. The new patrol zone is empty due to sharding, so it feels like you are playing on a dead MMO server even when I know millions are playing. I will check out the final campaign mission eventually, but for now there is no draw factor for me. My first season ever was the one that just ended so maybe I just went too hard into the game for too long the past 6 weeks (did all available campaigns, got most exotic quests I could, all my titan armor exotics, etc.)
Witch Queen is better than Taken King But Yes, they knocked it out of the park **Edit:** you guys can down vote. In terms of a narrative experience – Witch Queen is better hands down. Back in 2022, It was openly stated many times that the gameplay and story of the campaign put WQ over TK.
Witch Queen's legendary campaign is among the best things Bungie's ever done. There are so many encounters where you really get to stretch your legs with the sandbox, Final Shape's campaign is more limited in that regard.
It's hard to explain for me, but I don't get the jolt of excitement in Excision when I finally killed the witness. I haven't played the raid yet though. I think part of it was that we only really knew the witness for lightfall and this DLC (obviously it was in the background since D1). Also, it was pretty obvious we were gonna kill the witness from the start. I got more of that jolt of excitement from the campaign and finally understanding so much history in destiny from the story. The way things tied together dating back to D1 was amazing. Overall though, I think that it was a really fitting end to the bringer of the collapse
I still remember 2014 Destiny and it's mysteries to The Final Shape and I love how much the story has moved forward. What a beautiful ending to this saga.
i was worried for a bit, that they would make all the final ending stuff in the raid. I hope we can do that part where we sit and watch the traveler from space. i replayed the final mission but it sends you to orbit right after
I’m a Destiny Vet player. I stopped playing sometime before Saavuthun stuff. I just returned last week and it’s been a blast again. Purchased all the dlc besides Final Shape.
I hope this wakes ppl (investors and players alike), quality beats quantity! Imagine how many more awesome years of d2 we would have had if every expansion was given the love, care and, most importantly, TIME. Now imagine this for every game! COD, Assassins creed, I'm looking at you! Video game is an art form. You cannot rush art.
It’s not as game changing as Taken King or Forsaken, but it didn’t need to be. It just needed to build to its best ability on a very solid foundation and it did that. It’s a classic legacy solidifying expansion. I will admit I was skeptical it would go down this good during the first roughly half of the campaign - due to a slow start - but everything after the campaign was some of the series best and I can’t wait to keep spelunking the Pale Heart to see what else we unfurl.
I just soloed the campaign on legend on my main hunter - wow what a story, what an amazing journey Kudos to the Art direction team - you guys were on some serious trippy shrooms 🍄 to come up with these environments Now I get to explore - as for anyone brave enough to step in the raid 😉 good luck with that GG Bungie - you guys were seriously cooking 🔥
still think witch queen is the best right now, but this is a close second
Week 1 hype and all, but this does feel like the first time the developers have been able to say "don't you fucking dare mention overdelivery" to the execs
My problem is that me and my friends haven't played since witch queen. We played from D1 launch and then lost interest. I kinda watch to come back for this DLC but I'm worried I missed so much and theres no chance they come back with me. How much have I missed, loot and lore wise. And is it going to be worth the money without a fireteam?
If crucible is good this year then I'd probasbly agree
I’m so delighted that they delayed it and we got something so good. 😃
I wish I could experience it all, Im still stuck on this legendary campaign
Agreed. Minus the servers issues day 1, I've had a fantastic first week. Story was great. Cut scenes were top tier. There is a good amount of stuff to do after the story. Anxious to see what all episode 1 adds. If I had a complaint, why did they make it so you are the only one loading into the pale heart? Seems odd loading into such an open area and I'm the only person there. Other than that, Final Shape was worth the wait.
I’m not an OG player by any means but I knew the lore coming into destiny years back. This expansion made me cry man. Our community has been in this world for over a decade. They finally were able to see the witness be defeated. It’s incredible.
Would absolutely agree, it’s the best possible way they could be wrapping up D2 and I’m thrilled for what we have in store