You Only Need To Watch Three Short ‘Destiny 2’ Cutscenes To Prepare For ‘The Final Shape’

PlayStation has just announced that Destiny 2’s Witch Queen would be in the content offered for March’s PS Plus collection. Obviously it’s worth picking up and attaching to the free-to-play base game, as it’s arguably the best story campaign the series has ever had, even if say, Forsaken was a better expansion because of its sheer size (and naturally, it no longer exists due to content vaulting).

This got me thinking that if you want to prepare for The Final Shape you can…essentially just play The Witch Queen and skip everything else after that. Not that you can play all the seasons anyway, but so many of those were self-contained stories that are not absolutely necessary to know much about heading into The Final Shape, and many appear to be hinting toward future Episodes after the expansion instead.

Yes, this also means you can skip playing the entirety of Lightfall and nothing of story value will be lost (I’d do it for Strand alone, but that’s just me). The running joke-but-not-really-a-joke is that you can watch the first cutscene of Lightfall and the last cutscene of Lightfall and you will essentially miss nothing because this expansion wasn’t supposed to exist in the first place. It was inserted into Destiny 2 to give The Final Shape more time, which was a full extra 15 months and then it was delayed another three anyway. There’s no outright proof of that, but yes, you can just watch these two cutscenes together that serve as the intro to The Final Shape after The Witch Queen.

Lightfall Opening Cinematic

Lightfall Closing Cinematic

Then, there is just one more cutscene that’s a must-watch before The Final Shape. For reasons that no one seems to fully understand, about five weeks into Season of the Deep, Bungie dropped one of the most arguably important cutscenes in the game’s history, explaining the full history of what The Witness actually is and why it hates the Traveler so much. A massively important history lesson that was for some reason stuck in the middle of this random season.

Season Of The Deep Witness Origin

Past that, a quick catch-up over the past year:

• Amanda Holliday died in a fight against the Cabal on earth for no real reason.
• Eris gained the power of a god, resurrected and killed Savathun, and severed Xivu Arath, Hive God of War and Witness servant from her throne world, making her mortal. Then, not in a cutscene, we learned Savathun was resurrected again and is now roaming around somewhere. This seems like a lead-in to a Hive-themed Episode after Final Shape. Though it’s possible Xivu could be a Final Shape boss, in theory.
• This season after finding a bunch of eggs, probably resurrecting the Ahamkara race in the future, Riven granted us a wish what portaled Crow inside the Traveler, which is how we will follow The Witness inside when The Final Shape launches.

That’s…pretty much it. I mean you can play Lightfall and the four attached seasons this year if you want, but if you just need the story, that’s pretty much it. Not even ten minutes of cutscenes and a couple paragraphs. Weird year.

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