Today, we have received information on what to expect from Destiny’s next Expansion “The Taken King” based on the experiences by Matt and Ben from Game Informer. First information that was provided were the first impressions of The Taken King, second what to expect from the story, details on one of the new locations (the Dreadnaught), and fourth, the new gameplay aspects.
Moving on with the first impressions, the in game narrative felt more ‘integrated’ than ever before in every location of the game, and more replay value to it according to Ben. Backing up this statement by Ben, Matt stated there will also be more weapons available to use than they since the launch of Destiny resulting with green weapons that “out-power” the raid gear from Year One. Also, one of the biggest gameplay moments from The Taken King is acquiring the new subclass like the Warlock’s new Stormcaller class, which grants the ability to shoot out bolts of lightning like a Sith Lord from Star Wars. This also means that both the Hunter and Titan will each have a new subclass as well with the Titan wielding a Hammer and a Hunter’s archery ability.
Warlock using the Stormcaller Class against opponent
Regarding the narrative in The Taken King, it will be more cohesive than it has been the first year since launch. Before diving in the details on how it’ll be cohesive, the brief synopsis from The Taken King will focus more on Oryx seeking to annihilate the Guardians (the players) to avenge the death of his son Crota.
Crota Son of Oryx during the Crota’s End Raid
Moving on, the characters the players will meet in Destiny will be more engaging in conversations that just stating plain Declarative sentences which gives a more developed background to the story, and feel much more involved when patrolling in certain areas such as The Dreadnaught.
Speaking of the Dreadnaught, there will be a variety of things to do according to Ben. For example, despite the sparrow not being usable in this area, there is no need to use it at all with parts of its environment constantly disappearing including fifty pieces of an exotic weapon that is scattered all over the Dreadnaught for the players to hunt and piece together. In detail with the environments, Matt described the Dreadnaught to have “many chasms, tight corridors,” and other areas that won’t open for the players until they reach level forty. With the Dreadnaught being a massive environment to explore when working on Patrol Missions, there will also be a number of enemies that won’t be taken lightly. With both the Hive and The Taken to deal with in the Dreadnaught, there will also be the Cabal involved during this conflict as well. Of course, with enemies to fight, this will also involved the players leveling up and acquiring new gear on the way.
The way the leveling system worked during the first year of Destiny, it required the players to keep on fighting monsters and completing missions until they’ve reached level twenty, and to surpass level twenty, they were required to find and equip new armor to upgrade. Of course that is set to change in The Taken King.
To eliminate the concern for most veteran players are having, the progress they have achieved so far will remain in the game as stated by Ben. Of course, for players who have been keeping a collection of unused guns in their vault, they can be used to upgrade their other guns they care about. With that said, this is going to allow players to play Destiny exactly as it was promised by Bungie since 2013, which also incudes having new skin for their AI companions The Ghosts, which will boosts both light level and gear of the players. Of course, this will also result players having a variety of emotes to play with and not being required to wear the same equipment in order to grind through a faction such as Dead Orbit.
With that said, this will also result with the changes that will occur in the Tower’s economy. During the first year, there were many factions that will require more than one currencies such as Vanguard and Crucible marks, but that’s going to change. Instead, this is all going to be replaced with Legendary marks, which will be the main way to purchase Legendary Gear. To add to that, Xur will be selling a new perk called “Three of Coins” which will boost the players chance for an exotic drop after completing a boss fight.
Since this is sounding more like a beneficial change to Destiny, this also means that the Strike missions in Destiny will be different from how they were previously. Adding to that, as stated by Matt “It’s a fight against the Cabal one time, and a fight against the Taken the next time. Ammo spawns and even stationary turrets show up at new and different places. They’ve even recorded multiple versions of the dialogue, so that on a subsequent run at any given strike, you might get new tidbits of lore. To be fair, we only played these new strikes through once ourselves, due to time constraints.”
Along with the PvE experience in Destiny, there will also be new game modes in PvP as well. The new game modes will be Zone Control, Mayhem, and Rift. Zone control involves locking down zones, Mayhem will be as crazy as Rocket Slayer from Halo, and Rift involves grabbing an energy ball and taking it to their territory to score just like in Capture the Flag from Halo, Titanfall, and other games.
Last but not least, The Taken King will also feature a new Raid named “King’s Fall” which is considered to be the biggest Raid yet in Destiny as stated by Luke Smith. Not much information has been given about the new Raid but it will more likely remain secret until players get their hands on The Taken King this September.
