The Ultimate Form is the perfect ending to Destiny 2
The latest expansion in Destiny 2’s Light and Darkness cycle is the best possible ending to the ten-year saga started by Bungie in the last generation of consoles.
Despite the major technical problems encountered at launch, in the hours following the release of the Ultimate Forme , this year’s expansion of Destiny 2, the web was filled with cautious optimism. This is because the most passionate players, who had just finished devouring the seven hours of the campaign, appreciated the narrative pace, the emotionally intense moments and the crescendo in difficulty. Then caution returned: before expressing a verdict it was necessary to wait for the arrival of the raid, the great yardstick for the satisfaction of the veteran Guardians.
Edge of Salvation made its debut and took more than 19 hours for one of the best teams in the world to beat with other big players in the Destiny 2 community taking almost 24. The race for the world record is over , the rest of the guardians faced him and loved him, but no one could expect what came immediately next.
Bungie already said when announcing the expansion that it would not put the final battle with the Witness, the main villain of these ten years of Destiny, as the last act of the raid. This is because 80% of the players of his space MMO have never set foot in the endgame and defeating the puppeteer who pulled all the strings in the universe should have been an experience open to all. Thus, as soon as the first team defeated the Witness in the raid, the first activity for 12 players in the history of the game was unlocked.
The Ultimate Form is the perfect ending to Destiny 2
Destiny 2: The Ultimate Form – Launch Trailer
There, the teams of Guardians (with an Avengers Endgame-esque introductory cutscene) who took down the villain were rewarded with a series of cutscenes (among the best in the game’s history) that gave its main narrative thread a moving, unforgettable epilogue and, above all, coherent. To understand why The Ultimate Forme is the perfect conclusion to the first 10 years of Destiny , however, it is essential to break down its many parts: only in this way will it be clear how the developers have hit the mark in all key areas of the game, except one.
The gang gets back together
The first thermometer to measure the quality of a Destiny 2 expansion is the campaign, the narrative content that carries most of the story on its shoulders. The Ultimate Form campaign starts very well with the return of Cayde-6 , the most beloved guardian of this universe, slows down a bit with missions dedicated to finding the main characters scattered around the Pale Heart of the Traveler and then accelerates dramatically again while everyone is looking for a weak point to defeat the villain.
In this adventure there is everything that fans asked for from Bungie after the bitter disappointment of the Eclipse : many moments of personal relationship between the main characters, a new enemy faction that shuffles the gameplay cards, a new subclass that is not sipped like the Telascura of the previous expansion, many new skills to experiment with, bizarre weapons and armor in abundance and an increasing difficulty curve with a decisive peak at the final boss.
With a total of 40 minutes of footage, both created with the game engine and in computer graphics, The Ultimate Form takes a lot of space to showcase the internal conflicts of the protagonists, the consequences of such a long story and the impact that its conclusion is having on everyone. The setting in which all this takes place, then, acts as a real character because it not only abandons most of the past stylistic features (the usual three areas to retrace back and forth) but is transformed for the occasion into a linear experience which brings players closer to the final enemy.
Jolly, the masterpiece
Once the campaign is over, The Ultimate Form hits the player with a series of activities, one better than the other: from public events scattered throughout the Pale Heart of the Traveler to activities to save lost ghosts, passing through four missions (two of which are exotic) that delve deeper into the relationship between those who play and the “new faces” of Destiny 2 . We move from an adventure with Caiatl, the empress of the Cabal, to one with Mithrax, the kel of the house of Light elixni, to dodge some of Savathun’s deceptions and conclude with Jolly, one of the most beautiful missions in the history of the game.
This mission focuses on the relationship between the Corvo and Cayde-6 and puts the guardians in the shoes of a real hunter at the frontier of the Solar System: you will have to scout, set up a base camp and eliminate important targets, all while progressing a thread fundamental narrative and with an adrenaline-filled conclusion that warms the heart. As the icing on the cake, the reward at the end of the adventure is a sniper rifle, now essential for doing a lot of damage in the most difficult content.
The best raid in the game
Once the secondary missions are finished and the teams are reunited, it’s time to launch into the raid. The race for world record is an event closely followed by the Destiny community who watch the best try to get there first on Twitch or in turn try to complete what is the most difficult and complicated activity of the expansion. The benchmark to beat for a big raid was very clear: Last Wish, a raid completed, in this mode, by only 12 people when it made its debut.
Edge of Salvation was no exception: divided into five clashes, each more complex than the other, this incursion defeated even the best , the most prepared and the most experienced, demonstrating that Bungie still has what it takes to make a spectacular endgame. The last two challenges, one incredibly complex, one (the battle to stop the Ultimate Form of the Witness) incredibly deadly, and finally, have established the reputation of this raid as the best in the saga for variety of mechanics, setting and overall experience.
The complexity of this incursion has established another key point of a major Destiny 2 expansion: variable difficulty. In the Ultimate Form there is content for everyone: from a well-made, simple campaign (not so much in the legendary version) and with its final event, to the most intricate and multifaceted incursion of the saga. The only sore point on which the entire community agrees is that of the soundtrack. The music of the Ultimate Forme has nowhere near the bite and iconicity of past expansions, and the music is one of those things that made Destiny great. The recent dismissal of Michael Salvatori, the composer of all the most famous themes in this saga, may also have had an impact on this assessment.
The triumph of choice
The Ultimate Form is not the best possible conclusion to the Light and Dark saga because it has a fun campaign, adrenaline-filled exotic missions and the best raid in the history of Destiny 2. Sure, all these things contribute quite a bit, but this expansion is the perfect ending because it is coherent . The following contains previews of the game’s endings, so proceed with awareness.
The Witness wanted to give the universe a definitive, immutable and tyrannical shape, therefore free of suffering. The Traveler, as a herald of the Light, has always been a force of free will, an agent who puts the tools to do great things in the hands of living forms without ever indicating what they are. Commander Zavala often complains that he worships a silent god and the Traveler, even on the verge of destruction, even in the face of the collapse of the universe, does not speak.
The apex moment of this expansion, when Specter sacrifices his Light to deliver the final blow to the Witness, is that of a choice. The Guardian, desperate for the loss of his life partner, begs the Traveler to give him back, begs for his intervention, but the one who responds is Cayde-6 who chooses to sacrifice his Light to bring Ghost back to life and in doing so chooses what meaning to give to his second life . The entire history of Destiny 2 has been driven by this Traveler imperative: give people choice.
The Forerunners (the civilization that fused all the consciousnesses of its inhabitants to generate the Witness) wanted to extort a purpose from the Traveler who, for this reason, abandoned them. At that moment their mission to create the ultimate form, the ultimate purpose, began. After the final mission it is the revived Ghost who says precisely this: “The Witness wanted to give a purpose to the universe, but we choose our purpose, it is up to us to decide our destiny “. The Witness has tried to dictate the future of every living being for millions of years, the Guardians opposed him so that everyone was free to choose their own destiny. We couldn’t imagine a better conclusion than this for the first great saga of the Destiny universe.