Destiny 2: The Final Shape

Destiny 2: The Final Shape is a major expansion for Destiny 2, a first-person shooter video game by Bungie. Representing the eighth expansion and the seventh year of extended content for Destiny 2 and 10th year of content for the Destiny franchise, it was released on June 4, 2024, after being delayed from its original February 2024 date. The Final Shape revolves around the player's Guardian seeking out the franchise's major villain, the Witness, who had disappeared through a portal that it created on the surface of the celestial Traveler at the conclusion of Lightfall. The Guardian and the Vanguard must stop the Witness from creating the titular Final Shape—the calcification and destruction of all life in the universe—and end the war between the Light and Darkness, concluding Destinys first major saga, the "Light and Darkness" saga. The expansion also sees the return of the character Cayde-6, who had been killed during the events of Forsaken.
In addition to new super abilities for the existing Light subclasses, a new subclass, "Prismatic", was added, allowing players to combine and use select Light and Darkness abilities in tandem. The expansion also added new content across the game, including new missions, Player versus Environment locations, Player versus Player maps, player gear, weaponry, a new raid, and the series' first-ever 12-player PvE activity.
Unlike prior years since Year 2, Year 7 did not follow the seasonal model in which the year was divided into four seasonal content offerings. Instead, there were three larger episodes released throughout the year, which were standalone experiences, with each episode divided into three acts, telling the aftermath of the expansion. The episodes, titled Echoes, Revenant, and Heresy, were originally set to release in March, July, and November, respectively, but these were also pushed back due to The Final Shapes delay; Episode: Echoes began on June 11, a week after the expansion's release, with Episode: Revenant released on October 8 and then Episode: Heresy on February 4, 2025. Two new dungeons were also released over the year during the episodic content. A free event, the Rite of the Nine, began in May 2025, which acted as a prologue to the next expansion, The Edge of Fate, which released on July 15, 2025, and began Year 8 as well as the franchise's next saga, the "Fate" saga. This was the only year to utilize the episodes, and they, along with Rite of the Nine, were removed upon release of The Edge of Fate, although the Contest of Elders activity from Episode: Revenant returned as a fireteam ops activity in September 2025. Year 8 changed the delivery model of content as it instead has two medium-sized expansions lasting five to six months each with both receiving one major update two to three months after their respective releases.

Gameplay

The Final Shape expands on the base Destiny 2 gameplay by adding a new free roam destination, the Pale Heart, located within the celestial being, the Traveler, with areas influenced by previous destinations explored throughout the history of the franchise. The destination is the first patrol zone that can be explored solo, unless a player has a pre-made fireteam. New and existing story content was expanded with a "Legendary" difficulty similar to that from the previous two expansion packs. Additional content for The Final Shape includes one new raid, "Salvation's Edge", which released on June 7, 2024, and takes place in the Witness's monolith in the Pale Heart, as well as two new dungeons, "Vesper's Host" and "Sundered Doctrine", which were released during the episodes Revenant and Heresy, respectively. Upon the world's first completion of Salvation's Edge, the game's first-ever 12-player activity was unlocked called "Excision", the final story mission of The Final Shape in which players take on the Witness for a final time.
The expansion introduces the first new enemy race since Forsaken called the Dread, who are the personal soldiers of the Witness. These include Grims, flying bat-like enemies that can shoot players from midair and can unleash a sonic scream attack to suppress and slow players; Husks, which are fast-moving and attack players using blades and unleashes a homing Geist enemy upon death; Attendants and Weavers, Cabal Psion-like enemies that respectively use Stasis and Strand powers; Subjugators, which are tall, slender, bipedal beings that use glaives that are split between Stasis-wielding Omens and Strand-wielding Harbingers; as well as Tormentors, a singular enemy type that was first introduced in Lightfall.
The Final Shape introduces three new Light-based supers for each of the Guardian classes: "Twilight Arsenal" for Sentinel Titans, where they throw three Void axes at enemies which can be picked up by other Guardians from the ground; "Song of Flame" for Dawnblade Warlocks, where they imbue themselves with Solar energy to unleash unlimited powered melee attacks and grenades, similar to the Sunsinger Solar subclass in the original Destiny ; and "Storm's Edge" for Arcstrider Hunters, where they throw an Arc dagger at enemies and then teleport to it to unleash a spin attack. In addition, the expansion introduces a sixth subclass called "Prismatic", which combines both Light and Darkness powers together, allowing players to mix and match abilities and supers from the other five subclasses. The Prismatic subclass introduces two meters that fill when damaging and defeating enemies with either Light or Darkness weapons and abilities; Kinetic damage charges both at a slower rate. When both meters are fully charged, players can activate a super-like ability called "Transcendence", which grants supercharged melee and grenade regeneration, increased damage resistance, and increased weapon damage. Players can also unleash unique grenades of combined elements depending on their class while Transcendence is active—Electrified Snare for Titans, Freezing Singularity for Warlocks, and Hailfire Spike for Hunters. Prismatic also features an increased number of Aspect and Fragment slots compared to the other subclasses.
The expansion also features the first appearance of exotic class items since the original Destinys final expansion, Rise of Iron, with one for each class. These exotic class items work specifically with the Prismatic subclass and can mix and match exotic perks from other exotic armor introduced in the game from across all three classes, allowing for further buildcrafting.
Other significant gameplay changes include:

The Power level system received some major changes in The Final Shape. Activities now show if a player is Power enabled or Power disabled; for example, if an activity is Power enabled, there is an indicator showing the activity Power cap and whether or not a player has reached that Power level cap for that activity. The Fireteam Power feature adjusts players' Power levels to five levels below the fireteam leader who has the highest Power level, allowing more players to play Power enabled activities regardless of their current Power level. Account-wide Power allows for gear to drop on any player's character with a Power level relative to the character with the highest Power level. As well, Power enabled difficulty modes were renamed to Standard, Advanced, Expert, Master, Grandmaster, and Contest Mode. Upon release of the expansion, new and existing players' Power level was increased to the new minimum Power level of 1900, a soft cap of 1940, with the hard Power level cap set to 1990, and the Pinnacle reward cap at 2000. During Year 6, the level caps remained the same throughout the entire year, but for Year 7, Bungie reversed this decision so that each cap went up by 10 for each episode.
Bungie reversed weapon sunsetting that was first introduced in Beyond Light as a result of the new Power level system, allowing these weapons to be used in new content without penalties. Any legacy weapons that players dismantled were unable to be recovered, but Bungie plans to reintroduce sources for most or all legacy weapons and updating them to the latest sandbox with origin perks introduced in The Witch Queen as well as buildcrafting perks.
A three-tier weapon enhancement system for non-craftable weapons was introduced as part of the weapon crafting system first introduced in The Witch Queen. Weapons obtained post-Season 17 from Vanguard Ops, Crucible, Gambit, Iron Banner, Trials of Osiris, the Prophecy dungeon, the 2024 Guardian Games event, the BRAVE weapons from Onslaught, and Adept weapons from the "Vow of the Disciple" and "King's Fall" raids, can now be upgraded with enhanced perks, and do not require visiting the Mars Relic for the enhancement process.
Destination patrols, weekly vendor challenges, and the bounties from Vanguard Ops, Crucible, and Gambit were consolidated into a new "Pathfinder" system. The Pathfinder system gives players 20 objectives divided into five tiers to complete and progress through to earn rewards. At launch, two Pathfinder systems were available, one for ritual activities and one for the Pale Heart destination.
The player's HUD and user interface were updated to better display critical information. Important activity information, such as wipe mechanics and modifiers, appear on top of the HUD beneath the player's health bar. Weapons-related information, such as active weapon perks, appear above the subclass Super meter. Buffs and de-buffs continue to appear on the left hand side of the HUD.
Legendary shards, which were first introduced during Year 1, were depreciated at the launch of The Final Shape, to make it easier and more fair for all players to purchase in-game items. As well, fully masterworked exotic armor pieces can now be further upgraded to include an artifice armor slot, which costs an exotic cipher and 10,000 Glimmer. Bungie also increased the amount of vault space by 100, bringing the total vault space to 700 spaces.
During Episode: Echoes, Bungie broke down and released each act's narrative content over a three-week period, followed by three weeks of downtime that were typically occupied by a limited-time event. For Episode: Revenant, Bungie changed this and released the entire act's story on the day of release for each act, allowing players to complete each act at their own pace. For Episode: Heresy, Bungie reverted to the release model of Echoes while also shortening the amount of time between the releases of each act.