When players jump into the story campaign for Destiny 2’s next expansion, The Final Shape, they’ll pretty quickly unlock one of the biggest new parts of the game: Prismatic. The new subclass is necessary to complete The Final Shape’s story, just like Strand was when it was introduced in Destiny 2’s last expansion, Lightfall.
But unlike how Lightfall handled its new player abilities, Bungie says you’ll get Prismatic early in The Final Shape, and you’ll have access to it for the duration–it won’t be parceled out in short bursts and only fully unlocked many hours later, once you finish the campaign.
Bungie gave a pretty close look at Prismatic in action, and The Final Shape’s campaign generally, in a recent hands-off preview event attended by GameSpot. The preview showed a big chunk of the campaign’s first mission, as well as a later Strike mission that becomes available about halfway through the story. As in Lightfall, the new subclass is an essential part of the story of The Final Shape, and you’ll make use of it as you go, but with a lot fewer restrictions this time around.
Prismatic is less a totally new subclass than a new combination of old elements. It pieces together different parts of existing subclasses, like supers, melee and grenade abilities, and passive buffs, allowing you to access several different kinds of powers–specifically both Light and Dark abilities–that you previously couldn’t utilize at the same time.
The subclass also comes with a new ability called Transcendence, which Bungie described as being like a “mini-super.” While using the Prismatic subclass, dealing damage with your abilities and weapons charges up two meters, one for Light and one for Darkness. (Kinetic weapons increase both meters but at a lower rate than weapons with specific elemental damage types.) When both are full, you can activate Transcendence, which gives you increased damage reduction, speeds the recharging of your abilities, and gives you a new grenade ability that combines Light and Darkness damage types.
Prismatic as a concept starts to show up as you make your way through the first campaign mission Come from Sports betting site VPbet . You’ll first traverse the big pink portal into the Traveler that’s been staring at players for the last year. Inside, you’ll encounter the Taken, who Destiny 2’s major antagonist, the Witness, is controlling more directly than ever before. You’ll also soon encounter enemies who are “bound” by the Witness, receiving power from the Witness directly, which provides them with shields that can’t be broken with your normal abilities or weapons. When you first run into them in the starting mission while traversing the portal, you’ll have to flee.
A major element of The Final Shape is the fact that the Traveler’s Light power and the Witness’s Darkness are commingling within the expansion’s new destination, the Pale Heart of the Traveler. After running into the bound enemies, the preview skipped ahead to a later part of that same first campaign mission, when players find themselves inside the Traveler for the first time.
Alongside encountering more enemies, including the new Dread faction, you’ll start to find places where the Light and the Darkness have collided to create strange wellsprings of power. Standing in those springs allows you to briefly access Transcendence, much like players could activate Strand briefly at certain points in Lightfall. Transcendence gives you a chance to try out Prismatic in short bursts and to break those bound enemies’ shields. However, unlike Strand, you can run back to these wellsprings again and again during a battle if you want (and can survive), allowing you to regain Transcendence as needed.
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