Prismatic feels like a grand experiment in Destiny 2: The Final Shape

When I first saw the debut trailer for Prismatic — the new, “advanced” subclass coming to Destiny 2 in The Final Shape — I told my friends, “This is the most significant change they’ve ever announced for Destiny.” And after a visit to Bungie HQ in Bellevue, Washington, to play part of the expansion early, I’m convinced I was right.

“Putting Prismatic in is probably going to change Destiny on a fundamental level,” Ben Wommack, Destiny 2’s combat area lead, told me at our on-site interview. “But that’s kind of the intention of releasing that kind of feature in the game.”

If you’re unfamiliar, Prismatic doesn’t add any new abilities to the game, like the Stasis or Strand Darkness subclasses that Guardians have gotten in previous years (although each class is getting a new Super and Aspect in The Final Shape, which is separate from Prismatic). Instead, the idea is that Guardians can combine elements together from all of their subclasses to create far more elaborate and powerful builds than ever before.

For example, if I currently want to use the Thundercrash Super on my Titan, I have to be on my Arc subclass, because Thundercrash is an Arc ability. Prismatic lifts those restrictions — mostly — so when The Final Shape launches, I can use Thundercrash for boss damage while also running around with a Strand Shackle grenade and a Void-throwing Shield.

Image: Bungie

Then there’s Transcendence, which is a new Super-like ability that you can charge up by dealing Light and Darkness damage in equal measure. Damage with Light-based weapons or abilities fills up the Light bar, while the opposite fills up the Darkness bar. When you’ve filled both bars, you can “Transcend,” which refills all of your ability energy, temporarily increases your weapon damage and defense, and gives you a Transcendence-exclusive grenade.

It’s all very overwhelming, but like Wommack said, that’s kind of the point.

“I think this is really us giving a big love letter to the master build crafters of the game,” said Wommack. “We’re gonna give you a lot to think about. And we do want you to think about it, because we think about it.”

Catarina Macedo, the expansion project lead for Destiny 2, went on to say that Prismatic works from two angles: rewarding players who already have a lot of game knowledge — the “master build crafters” Wommack mentioned — and encouraging players who have very little experience with crafting builds to get in on the fun. Prismatic gives you so many more options than you’ve ever had in Destiny that it’s nearly impossible to look at the Prismatic customization screen and not think, OK, how am I going to make these things work together?

Now, I’ve put together quite a few builds in my decade with Destiny, but during my preview I repeatedly found myself jumping into my menu and making slight tweaks to my Prismatic setup. Finding a way to consistently charge up my Transcendence meter felt like a real dance, and it had me thinking about how well my loadout synergized with my class setup. I’d gotten a sweet Stasis and Strand Titan build together that let me freeze and suspend everything, but without any Light abilities, I was having a really tough time getting the Light side of my Transcendence buff bar going.

Image: Bungie

To fix it, I started changing up my weapons, and I swapped a Strand melee for an Arc one. Now kills with my primary and heavy weapons were contributing to my Light bar, while most of my abilities gave me Darkness energy. Every time I tried out a new build, I’d have to go through this iteration process. And each time, the game would reward me for it, as if every piece of the puzzle I managed to slot in made me that much stronger. I wasn’t just build-crafting so I could take down a big raid boss or a difficult Grandmaster Nightfall, I was doing it because it was fun.

Fun as it was, I did leave Bungie HQ with a few concerns regarding Prismatic.

First, I felt so powerful using Prismatic that I couldn’t help but wonder how Bungie ever plans to challenge me again. The Legendary campaign missions I played felt much easier than Lightfall and The Witch Queen once I figured out how to maximize my newfound powers. But Bungie has already promised that the new Final Shape raid is going to be one of the franchise’s hardest, and after the uber-difficult Crota’s End reprise last summer, I’m willing to give Bungie the benefit of the doubt here.

My more serious concern was over what abilities and Aspects the developers have decided to include with Prismatic, as you can currently only pair certain abilities from each element together.

The team at Bungie decided to use some of the least popular Aspects from each class when making Prismatic. This meant I only had access to Aspects I don’t spend a lot of time using. On one hand, that was pretty exciting, as it helped the whole package feel fresh. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but wonder what kinds of builds I’d be able to make if Bungie removed the restrictions even more.

Image: Bungie

What if I could pair the Solar Titan’s Sol Invictus Sunspots Aspect with the Void Titan’s Controlled Demolition Aspect so I could spread explosive, healing puddles of fire around the entire arena? Surely that would be even stronger and harder to balance than the Prismatic I played during my preview — which is probably why both of those Aspects are unavailable for Prismatic. But the new subclass is so fun that it’s a bit of a bummer that I can’t just play out whatever bizarre Titan fever dream my brain can come up with.

That might sound like whining because you can only have cake or ice cream — and it kind of is — but that’s OK with the folks I spoke to at Bungie.

“We have a lot of future plans that we’re hoping to, you know, change and react to, depending on how players react to Prismatic in the first day, first weekend, through the raid race, through the first week,” said Wommack. He told me that the developers want and expect players to think about how non-Prismatic Aspects would impact their Prismatic build. But the hope is that those same players would also ask themselves questions like, “Well, how would Bungie balance that?”

There are a few ways to look at Wommack’s statement there, but to me it’s clear that Prismatic is an experiment, like Stasis was for the subclass 3.0 system back in 2020. Ahead of The Final Shape’s launch, that experiment is already the most interesting thing that’s come to Destiny in years. But what will this experiment look like in a few months, or even next year? That’s the question that all Destiny fans should really be asking once The Final Shape arrives on June 4.

Disclosure: This article is based on a Destiny 2: The Final Shape preview event held at Bungie’s headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, from May 14-17. Bungie provided Polygon’s travel and accommodations for the event. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.