The Final Shape campaign finally delivers on Bungie’s “raid-lite” promise

Destiny 2Raids have always been the best thing in the game. Unfortunately, only a fraction of Guardians attempt them. Developers at Bungie have tried a number of different tactics over the years to address this issue, the most notable being an attempt to inject a bit of difficulty into campaigns to help close the complexity gap between raids. and the rest of the game. But the studio never quite found the right balance, even in some of its best campaigns, like The Witch Queen.

Luckily, as a long-time Destiny raider, I finally feel like Bungie is delivering on its “raid-lite” promise with The final form. I visited Bungie HQ to check out some missions from the upcoming expansion and was pleased with the raid-lite mechanics I saw.

In 2022, I spoke to former game director Joe Blackburn to find out if we’d ever see the expansion’s big bad in the raid again. Although it could be argued that Riven (the final boss of the Last Wish raid) was the true puppet master of The abandonedraiders haven’t fought the villain on the box since we took down Oryx in 2015’s King’s Fall. King taken expansion. This has been a bit frustrating for my Fireteam because it makes the expansion’s epic conclusion feel more like a side quest. Blackburn told me that putting a boss of Savathun’s caliber in the raid was something the studio wanted to do again, but that it needed to recruit more players first. In the raid – otherwise a good part of the community would not get a satisfying conclusion to the story.

Image: Bungie

Blackburn hinted that we’ll see more puzzles and mechanics in the campaign Witch Queen. And while there are certainly objectives a little more complex than “kill all enemies in this room;” OK, now start again,” that never gave me the raid vibe. This felt like a great Destiny campaign.

A little over two years later, I found myself sitting in a Bungie test lab in Bellevue, Washington, unable to run and identify the mission mechanics in my preview of The final form campaign. And I was delighted.

After playing a few Final form missions, I met Catarina Macedo, project manager for the entire Destiny 2the extensions of, and Ben Wommack, Destiny 2combat zone manager, to talk about this change in philosophy when it came to making the campaign feel like “baby’s first raid.”

“One of the things that we knew The Witness as a villain would be worthy of was like, ‘Yeah, that’s going to be our raid leader.’ It’s fair. It justifies that challenge for the players,” Macedo said. “With the campaign, because we knew The Witness was going to be the raid boss, we were like, ‘Hey, that would be really cool to. introducing all these different mission mechanics that make it feel like there’s a little bit of a learning curve.”

Image: Bungie

The first mission of the campaign starts out fairly simple from a mechanical standpoint, as it’s mainly there to introduce the new Prismatic suite of abilities and the special enemies you can only defeat by using it. Unfortunately, this is also the only mission I’m allowed to talk about in any real detail. But I can at least say that the later missions I played allowed me to perform much more interesting mechanics than I’m used to finding in a game. Destiny 2 campaign.

Without going into detail or the mechanics themselves, I found that each mission built on itself, much like raids do. The first arena can teach one mechanic, while the second arena teaches another. And in the third, the game asks you to do both at the same time. This is how Bungie has structured raids for years, where the mechanics are basic elements that start small before becoming very complex.

That being said, it’s not like seasoned Destiny raiders will be using their Microsoft Paint skills for the campaign. Instead, the experience simply emulates a raid by giving you a different objective than “killing” during combat. And if you’re having trouble executing a particular mechanic, in-game notifications will help you find the solution – something raids tend not to do.

Macedo told me that the developers wanted players to live comfortably in this raid-lite space. This is the Destiny team that gets players used to fighting and solving at the same time so that when the new raid comes out and The Witness needs beating, it won’t just be players like me who will dive to do it. .

Image: Bungie

However, an unfortunate side effect of this move to deeper mechanics is that the actual combat challenge of the legendary campaign has decreased quite significantly compared to the last two releases – at least in the version of the game I previewed . I was able to solo the missions I played on maximum difficulty without any real difficulty, even though I was playing with a different mouse sensitivity than I had been aiming with for years. I played solo through the other legendary campaigns as well, but there were a few peaks in a few of these missions that made me sweat a little, even in the comfort of my own home. It feels like Bungie took some of that combat difficulty and injected it into the puzzles instead – which is great for non-raiders, but might disappoint some late-game players.

Overall, I was very impressed with The final form missions I played. In fact, as I write this, I’m looking forward to both replaying what I’ve already seen and exploring new areas of The Pale Heart on launch day with my friends. But more important than the Guardian experience is the fact that Destiny’s developers have finally found a way to bring the game’s most interesting and well-designed activities to the masses by injecting just a little bit of that special raid sauce in the countryside.

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.