Collectibles Review · Pre-ordered 2023, charged 2024 · $274.41 CAD ($202.39 USD) via Bungie.net
Pre-ordering a collector’s edition means making a bet almost a year before you know if it paid off. This is how mine landed.
The Background
I put money down on The Final Shape Collector’s Edition back in 2023, well before the game’s story content, release timeline, or even final box contents were fully locked in. That is simply how Destiny 2 collector’s editions work: Bungie announces the tiers, you pick a lane based on trust in the studio and love for the franchise, and then you wait. The charge did not actually hit until 2024, closer to launch, which is why this shows up in my 2024 spreadsheet despite the pre-order going back a year earlier.
The Final Shape mattered more than a typical expansion because it was billed, correctly as it turned out, as the closing chapter of the entire Light and Darkness saga that has run through Destiny since the very first game. For someone who has put real hours into this universe, that context is the whole reason a collector’s edition made sense at all.
Living With It
Collector’s editions live or die on physical execution, and Bungie’s track record here has genuinely been inconsistent across past expansions, some tiers landing beautifully, others feeling thin for the price. This one landed on the better side of that history for me: the included statue and art book both felt like genuine collector-grade items rather than an afterthought bundled onto a digital purchase, and the packaging itself was clearly designed with display in mind rather than just shipping efficiency.
The digital side (season content, exclusive cosmetics, and the expansion’s exotic weapons and armor) delivered exactly what was promised at launch, and playing through The Final Shape’s campaign with the knowledge that this was the actual conclusion to a decade of storytelling gave the whole experience a weight that a standard edition purchase would not have carried in quite the same way.
The honest caveat, and the reason I cannot universally recommend this to anyone reading who is not already a Destiny player: none of this makes sense outside the context of years of investment in the game’s lore.
What I Liked
- Physical items felt like genuine collector-grade quality, not an afterthought
- Meaningful send-off for a decade-long storyline, which added real emotional weight
- Digital content and exotics delivered exactly as promised at launch
- A noticeably stronger collector’s edition than some of Bungie’s past efforts
What I Didn’t
- Pre-ordering a year out is a genuine leap of faith with no guarantee on final quality
- Entirely dependent on prior investment in the franchise to justify the price
- Bungie’s collector’s edition track record has been inconsistent enough that trust, not certainty, is what you are buying on
The Value Verdict
Rating: 4/5
For a general audience, this is an easy pass, it simply does not translate outside the context of the game. As a longtime Guardian who wanted a real physical marker for the end of the saga, I got exactly what I hoped for: a well-made shelf piece and a proper closing chapter, at a price that only makes sense to people already this deep in.
The Compulsive Canadian Gamer 