Everyone knows by now how problematic the year of Lightfall has been for Destiny 2 and Bungie at large. The DLC itself, for sure, was an issue, but the final season of the year was disappointing and a mounting number of real-world concerns didn’t stop coming. Until now, that is.
I’m something of a Destiny expatriate, you see. For the years between Forsaken and Lightfall, Bungie’s seminal franchise was the go-to game for me, from the lore books to day one raiding, I was all over everything related to Destiny at large. It wasn’t perfect much of the time, it goes without saying, but releases such as Witch Queen and a solid raiding/endgame friend group meant there was always, always something good for us to engage with. And, so we did. Until we stopped.
Now, I’m not saying that the questionable quality of Lightfall and its subsequent seasonal offerings was what put many of us off, necessarily, but it sure didn’t help. My playgroup simply fell off the live-service wagon that Destiny‘s been dragging behind it forever now, and getting back onto it wasn’t an option. Around the time of this taking place, the Destiny community was up in arms over a variety of things:
- Game Director Joe Blackburn up and left Bungie early in 2024
- The PvP modes were in shambles
- The Final Shape DLC was delayed
And that’s a very non-exhaustive list of issues that cropped up for Destiny 2 on top of all the other, more serious problems that it had been dragging along from the months prior. This is relevant because as I fell off the daily Destiny grind, so too did I stop checking in with the community, which became more and more unhappy with the state of the game as Bungie encountered problems all of its own. The subsequent layoffs made things worse still, leading to an overall air of unease that became associated with Destiny 2.
The stage is set for Destiny 2: The Final Shape
It was strange and impressive in equal parts, then, when I checked back in with Destiny 2‘s biggest subreddit following the release of Into the Light. This free DLC release marked a major push onward, as far as Bungie’s attempts to turn things back around go. And now, with Into the Light in tow, the actual events of the game and its balancing are the main topics once again, betraying a sense of normalcy. Something that you wouldn’t necessarily expect, considering what Bungie and Destiny 2 have been going through since Lightfall came out.
Just months ago, it was virtually unthinkable that Bungie would successfully turn things around for Destiny 2 in such short order. Yet, here we are.
To be perfectly fair, this doesn’t mean that The Final Shape will be selling gangbusters. I’d be hard-pressed to expect this DLC to perform as well as Lightfall did, though I’m almost positive it’ll be a fair bit better in the end. That’s because Lightfall enjoyed the windfall delivered by the amazing Witch Queen DLC, while The Final Shape is bound to rile up negative attention thanks to Ligthfall‘s failures.
Yet, the sense of excited normalcy is pervasive on the r/destinythegame subreddit. The most popular topics as of mid-May discuss game balancing, excellent Pantheon combat strategies, The Final Shape content, and in-game cats. This is in no particular order, mind: just to give you a general sense of how things have settled down, now that we’re less than a month away from what is, in effect, the most important Destiny 2 DLC we’ve had yet.
Can Bungie deliver, once again?
Destiny 2: The Final Shape is due to release on June 4, and the simple fact of the matter is that Destiny fans do have a lot to be excited about. The sheer presence of the Prismatic subclass, for one, is unprecedented on its own, to the point that it’s easy to forget what else we’re getting with the DLC. A whole new Darkness faction? A reworked power system? The un-sunsetting of items that were out of the rotation since Beyond Light?
Honestly, it’s like someone’s taken the generalized community content wishlist for Destiny 2 and went ham on it. This stuff is so interesting that it’s completely overshadowed Bungie’s propensity to sunset a fair chunk of Into the Light once Final Shape comes out, but that’s a story for some other day.
Back to the topic at hand, it was virtually unthinkable just months ago that the Destiny community would be back to its usual self ahead of The Final Shape. Against all odds, though, Bungie succeeded in balancing things out, and if The Final Shape delivers out of the gate, it may well end up being just the type of thing this franchise needs to maintain its momentum.
All of this is to say that, as it currently stands, things are looking nice and calm in the Destiny corner of the world. This isn’t a given that everything will be hunky-dory once The Final Shape comes out, naturally, but it does give us an idea that the community is ready for Bungie to deliver something that’s in line with the franchise’s pedigree.
It’s still entirely possible that this extremely hyped-up DLC will flunk. Or, as was the case with Lightfall, that it’ll do well early on, only to fall apart under further scrutiny and a continuously unremarkable post-DLC content schedule. Remember: we’ve got absolutely no idea how The Final Shape‘s ‘Episodes’ will function.
Bungie is making a deliberate delineation between Episodes and Seasons as they were up until now, and there is potentially a fair bit less content planned for 2024 and beyond. Remember: we’re only getting three Episodes during the year of The Final Shape, compared to the Lightfall‘s four Seasons. The Episodes’ act-based structure and content formatting may pan out, but we just don’t have enough information to go on.
So Bungie is about to make a huge gamble with The Final Shape. The team’s done well over the past couple of months, which resulted in possibly the best pre-DLC situation they could’ve wished for. The community is extremely receptive as it now stands, too, and the stage is set. As for what comes next… we’ve got just a few short weeks to go before we find out.
