Deej Reveals Details about The Taken King with IGN

Bungie Community Manager Deej sat down with Fran Mirabella III from IGN to discuss details about The Taken King. Throughout the interview there are excerpts from the first Taken King story mission on phobos as well as some new crucible gameplay.

Deej shares that there will be new ways to declare allegiance to a faction. You can walk up to a faction leader and declare allegiance and receive faction specific bounties to receive rewards more directly instead of using faction items, requiring less guessing and more receiving.

Overall Bungie is trying to make Destiny more rewarding with a clearer line between you and what you want.

The name of the new raid, being referred to as the biggest raid ever in Destiny, is revealed to be the Kings Fall . The Court of Oryx , which is a player instigated public event where you go up against different combinations of bosses and scenarios, is also mentioned.

The new level cap of 40 is attained by playing the game, all XP based. However Light level is still important. Light is the combination of your attack and defense rating on your weapons and armor, it is how powerful you are. Some missions will have a light level suggestion for you to equip yourself to be able to best complete that mission.

Deej explains how the transition from current Destiny levels to The Taken King will work. You will step into TTK with the level you are at the time of launch. So, if on Sept 14^th you are a level 34 you will enter TTK as a level 34. If you are lower level, say 26 for example you will still enter as a 26, but there are missions and things for you to do to quickly level up. One way Bungie will help guardians who are a bit behind level up faster is through a new consumable they are offering to all who purchase TTK. For example, if you are a level 12 or are brand new to the game you can use this boost consumable and it will boost you up to the appropriate level to play TTK. This exact level is not yet announced. This also helps if you start a new character that you want to try out with new supers on even as a veteran player.

Bungie wants you to be able to focus on the mysterious of the Dreadnaught and the missions themselves rather than the mystery of how to level up. They want to be more respectful of the players’ time and to reward the players’ time better.

Year one legendaries, as we know by now, are not going to be available for upgrading to TTK levels. However, they are still very viable in normal crucible, where power doesn’t matter. Previous content will also provide viable places to use year one weapons. Plus new players who boost up might see your year one weapons and be jealous and be interested in how and where you got them.

For those still not convinced, have no fear because there are also many new weapons, foundries, options and customizations coming with TTK.

Deej goes on to give a great explanation as to why weapons like Gjallarjhorn need some changes. He explains it as follows. If there is only one go to weapon for a certain activity they are doing it wrong. That one of the coolest things to hear is when gamers share their favorite weapons from certain games and they want each version of Destiny we play to have new sets of favorites. They want you to have a reason to think about using weapons you may have ignored before, that may be just as good or better for that section of content. For a much more suave explanation check out the video, for this particular section go to around 12mins in.

From watching the new crucible gameplay that is shown during the interview you may notice the points or Xp rolling off of kills and assists are much higher. It appears that a normal kill is worth around 1,000 and an assist is around 500 instead.

When asked about vault space Deej said “Before the game launches, I am going to make a pledge to you, we are going to have a live walk through of the tower. We are going to show how the tower is a functional space that enables you…” They are going to show how it enables you to collect, progress, pick missions, . They will show how all of that is going to work through some new systems they have coming online with TTK.

For the full interview check out the video below.

Warning: there may be some spoilers included in the excerpts from the first story mission. If you are a guardian wanting to be totally surprised during story missions the first few minutes of this interview may be an audio only experience for you. (The mission gameplay ends a the 3:57 mark).