Today Bungie revealed one of the new strikes coming to us with The Taken King. This particular strike is called Shield Brothers and is a Cabal themed strike on the Dreadnaught. Fireteam: Community Manager Cozmo, Communtiy Guest Mr. Fruit and Sandbox Designer Claude Jerome entered the level 36 strike while Community Manager, Deej and Design Lead, James Tsai announced.
Shield Brothers starts because the Cabal are an invading force on the Dreadnaught and we want to stop them so we have access to the secrets and loot aboard the Dreadnaught.
The strike begins by dropping you straight into the Dreadnaught with enemies attacking you almost right away. Level 36 Cabal attack as you make your way through room by room. You also come across some Taken enemies. Your fireteam must take out a tank in a small room to continue forward.
The final boss battle consists of two different bosses. One known, as Valus Mau-ual is Cabal with boosters on his shoulders and the ability to body slam you from great distances as well as an arm canon. His brother Thu’urn has a large canon on his back that launches mortars at you from great distances. You fight one brother at a time at first, not quite finishing each one off.
Then they come back out together. There are boss shields involved and the bosses seem to be less grounded and more mobile than previous strike bosses. It appears that when you defeat just one of the bosses when they are out together the other boss picks up the dead ones attack ability. So when the fireteam killed Maul-aul, Thu’urn seemed to become the ultimate boss by receiving Maul-aul’s shoulder boosters and arm canon. Meanwhile the whole time there are additional enemies filing in and attacking.
Over all the strike only took the fireteam about 20 minutes to complete, but keep in mind they were level 40s doing a level 36 strike with higher level weapons.
James Tsai discussed strikes as a whole and we learned a few interesting and important changes coming to strikes with TTK. Bungie wanted to make strikes more rewarding, so bosses will have unique loot drops. They also wanted strikes to be less static so you may see variables in enemy types, and dialogue each time you do a strike. So that may mean the strike we saw today won’t be exactly the same when you first attempt after September 15th.
The team also showed off and discussed their new subclasses and their artifacts.
We also saw Mr. Fruit pick up something interesting towards the beginning of the strike. We are unsure at this time what it is for. Let us know what you think of the new strike and what your theories are about this drop Mr. Fruit got.
Check out the full archived stream HERE
Stay tuned for a more personal spoiler free review of the strike from an audio only, non video experience from our very own Twizted.
