Game Informer sat down with The Taken King’s creative director and lead designer of the Vault of Glass, Luke Smith to discuss King’s Fall, the new raid coming to us on with TTK.
King’s fall should be Destiny’s most complex and biggest raid to date.
When asked about raids in general, Luke Smith explained that franchise director, Jason Jones was the one to want raids in Destiny early on, stating that Jones “felt it was really important that players have a cooperative activity that requires coordination and communication.”
With strikes, they want them to be less cooperative heavy, but raids are meant to challenge the player and require teamwork and coordination.
They always seemed pretty set on six players for raids, but Smith admits that Bungie is still learning what raids can be as far as game play goes. They want every raid to be a different experience through the mechanics and styles and are constantly experimenting with new ideas.
Smith talks about TTK raid as the culminating moment of the story that players will experience throughout the DLC.
When asked about what they learned from designing Vault of Glass and Crota’s End that helped with designing King’s Fall, Smith explains that players always surprise them. Players come up with intelligent, unique ways to manipulate the environment and mechanics to their favor in ways that Bungie never expects. The players have taught the developers and testers new ways to look at and test the experiences within raids better.
Smith alluded to Prison of Elders in a possibly hint dropping and interesting way when he said, “I think Prison of Elders had some cool mechanics that evoke feelings of raiding, and we’re trying to build this journey for players where the game is preparing you for what the raids will ask you to do later on.”
On the topic of gear and drops in raids, the devs took it hard when people were getting stuck at level 29 because one piece of raid gear just wouldn’t drop for them. They want all of your slots on your character to matter and that your experience with leveling doesn’t rely on a raid loot drop happening for you or not so they split light and character levels from each other. They want highest-level gear to be a little bit less important, hoping, “that players see their light level as a tool that allows them to climb the mountain they want to climb in the way that’s most interesting to them.” Bungie wants players to look how they want to look and chase progression.
For the full interview visit GameInformer.
Let us know in the comments below what you want to see different in King’s Fall compared to previous raids.