Hell yeah, a fellow Shadowkeep story enjoyer! While that expansion generally falls relatively low on my list of actual favorite expansions, that's mostly for gameplay and game design reasons. But Eris Morn's story has been one of my favorite ongoing arcs in Destiny, and Shadowkeep is where they really fleshed her out and made her more than just "spooky lady with a tragic history." The deaths of Eris's fireteam at the hands of Crota, presented largely as vague backstory in D1, became a vehicle for meditating on themes of grief and trauma and regret. Themes that have gone on to be cornerstones of Destiny's best recent character stories - Crow, Zavala, Caiatl, Mithrax, Osiris, and now Cayde and even our own Guardian. As for myself, I got into Destiny with the launch of D2, but during the Curse of Osiris lull, went back and played through everything in D1, including all the raids and even the secret exotic missions. Most importantly, it was the game I played with my partner, and we did everything together. Story, raids, dungeons, secret quests, everything down to random patrols, for seven years now. So for The Final Shape to be as perfect an ending as it is really feels like something special. And not just in terms of pure story but also in its game design, mission design, and even on to metatextual levels like how the raid race ended up being the longest ever. The Excision mission, especially, is such a brilliant capstone to the game, in how it served as the culmination of so many ongoing arcs from the 10 years of story, presented so many gameplay firsts (12 players! Triggered instantly upon the raid's completion! So many allied NPCs fighting alongside you! Ghost kamehamehas!!), AND was still one hell of a fun boss fight as well. And then to have all of that epic bombast drop away, as you noted, to this very quiet, intimate coda, was truly beautiful.
Hell yeah, a fellow Shadowkeep story enjoyer! While that expansion generally falls relatively low on my list of actual favorite expansions, that's mostly for gameplay and game design reasons. But Eris Morn's story has been one of my favorite ongoing arcs in Destiny, and Shadowkeep is where they really fleshed her out and made her more than just "spooky lady with a tragic history." The deaths of Eris's fireteam at the hands of Crota, presented largely as vague backstory in D1, became a vehicle for meditating on themes of grief and trauma and regret. Themes that have gone on to be cornerstones of Destiny's best recent character stories - Crow, Zavala, Caiatl, Mithrax, Osiris, and now Cayde and even our own Guardian.
As for myself, I got into Destiny with the launch of D2, but during the Curse of Osiris lull, went back and played through everything in D1, including all the raids and even the secret exotic missions. Most importantly, it was the game I played with my partner, and we did everything together. Story, raids, dungeons, secret quests, everything down to random patrols, for seven years now.
So for The Final Shape to be as perfect an ending as it is really feels like something special. And not just in terms of pure story but also in its game design, mission design, and even on to metatextual levels like how the raid race ended up being the longest ever. The Excision mission, especially, is such a brilliant capstone to the game, in how it served as the culmination of so many ongoing arcs from the 10 years of story, presented so many gameplay firsts (12 players! Triggered instantly upon the raid's completion! So many allied NPCs fighting alongside you! Ghost kamehamehas!!), AND was still one hell of a fun boss fight as well. And then to have all of that epic bombast drop away, as you noted, to this very quiet, intimate coda, was truly beautiful.
Bionicle fans, rise up