Destiny 2: Final Shape’s Prismatic Subclass Looks Like Another Great Experience

When I first saw the first trailer for Prismatic – the new “advanced” subclass coming to Destiny 2 In The final form —I told my friends, “This is the biggest change they’ve ever announced for Destiny. » And after a visit to Bungie headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, to participate in the expansion from the start, I’m convinced I was right.

“The integration of Prismatic will likely change Destiny on a fundamental level,” Ben Wommack, Destiny 2The person in charge of the combat zone told me this during our on-site interview. “But that’s kind of the intention to release that kind of feature in the game.”

If you’re unfamiliar, Prismatic doesn’t add any new abilities to the game, like the Stasis or Strand Darkness subclasses that Guardians have gotten in previous years (although each class gets a new Super and Aspect In The final form, which is distinct from Prismatic). Instead, the idea is that Guardians can combine elements from all of their subclasses to create constructs that are far more elaborate and powerful than ever before.

For example, if I currently want to use Thundercrash Super on my Titan, I need to be in my Arc subclass, because Thundercrash is an Arc ability. Prismatic lifts these restrictions – for the most part – so when The final form lance, I can use Thundercrash to deal damage to bosses while running around with a Strand Shackle Grenade and Void Launcher Shield.

Then there’s Transcendence, which is a new Super-type ability that you can charge up dealing Light and Dark damage in equal measure. Damage from Light-based weapons or abilities fills the Light bar, while the opposite fills the Dark bar. When you’ve filled both bars, you can “Transcendence”, which recharges all of your ability energy, temporarily increases your weapon’s damage and defense, and gives you a Transcendence-exclusive grenade.

This is all very overwhelming, but like Wommack said, that’s kind of the problem.

“I think this is really us sending a big love letter to the master craftsmen of the game,” Wommack said. “We’re going to give you a lot to think about. And we want you to think about it, because we think about it.

Catarina Macedo, project manager for the expansion of Destiny 2, went on to say that Prismatic works from two angles: rewarding players who already have a lot of in-game knowledge – the “master build craftsmen” mentioned by Wommack – and encouraging players who have very little experience creating games. constructions to have fun. Prismatic gives you so many more options than you’ve ever had in Destiny that it’s almost impossible to look at Prismatic’s customization screen and not think: OK, how am I going to make these things work together?

Now, I’ve put together quite a few builds over my decade with Destiny, but during my preview I found myself repeatedly jumping into my menu and making slight changes to my Prismatic setup. Finding a way to constantly recharge my transcendence meter felt like a dance, and it got me thinking about how my gear synergized with my class setup. I had built Stasis and Strand Titan together which allowed me to freeze and suspend everything, but without any Light abilities I was really struggling to get the Light side of my Transcendence buff bar to work.

To solve this problem, I started switching weapons and swapped a Strand melee for an Arc. Now attacks with my primary and heavy weapons contributed to my light bar, while most of my abilities gave me dark energy. Every time I tried a new version, I had to go through this iteration process. And each time, the game rewarded me, as if each piece of the puzzle that I managed to fit made me even stronger. I wasn’t just building so I could take down a big raid boss or a difficult Grandmaster Nightfall, I was doing it because it was fun.

As fun as it was, I left Bungie HQ with some concerns about Prismatic.

First of all, I felt so powerful using Prismatic that I couldn’t help but wonder how Bungie planned to challenge me again. The legendary campaign missions I played seemed much easier than Fall of light And The Witch Queen once I figured out how to maximize my new powers. But Bungie has already promised that the new Final form The raid is going to be one of the toughest in the franchise, and after the very difficult replay of Crota’s End last summer, I’m willing to give Bungie the benefit of the doubt here.

My most serious concern was with the abilities and aspects that the developers decided to include in Prismatic, as you can currently only combine certain abilities of each item.

The team at Bungie decided to use some of the less popular aspects of each class when creating Prismatic. This meant that I only had access to aspects that I don’t use a lot of time. On the one hand, it was kind of exciting, because it helped the whole thing feel fresh. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but wonder what kinds of builds I’d be able to pull off if Bungie removed the restrictions even more.

What if I could combine the Sol Invictus sunspot aspect of the Solar Titan with the controlled demolition aspect of the Void Titan so I could spread explosive, healing pools of fire throughout the arena? It would surely be even stronger and harder to balance than the Prismatic I played during my preview – which is probably why these two aspects are not available for Prismatic. But the new subclass is so much fun that it’s a little disappointing that it can’t fulfill whatever weird Titan fever dream my brain can imagine.

This may sound like whining because you can only have cake Or ice cream – and it kind of is – but that’s not a problem with the people I’ve talked to at Bungie.

“We have a lot of future plans that we hope to, you know, change and respond to, based on how players react to Prismatic on day one, on weekend one, during the raid race, throughout of the first week,” Wommack said. He told me that developers want and expect players to think about how non-prismatic aspects impact their prismatic build. But the hope is that those same players will also ask themselves questions like, “Well, how would Bungie balance that?” »

There are many ways to look at Wommack’s statement, but to me it’s clear that Prismatic is an experiment, like Stasis was for the 3.0 subclass system in 2020. The final formAs Destiny launches, this experience is already the most exciting thing to happen to Destiny in years. But what will this experiment look like in a few months, or even next year? This is the question every Destiny fan should really ask themselves once. The final form arrives June 4.

Disclosure: This article is based on a Destiny 2: Final Form preview event held at Bungie headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, May 14-17. Bungie provided Polygon’s travel and accommodations for the event. You can find additional information on Polygon’s ethics policy here.