Year one of Destiny felt like an extended early access period instead of a finished product. Bungie has taken all of the user feedback and with the release of The Taken King next month offers a much more cohesive and respecting experience for players new and old. The Taken King is the perfect time to return to Destiny, or to jump in for the first time.
Storytelling
This time, Destiny has a story. Launch Destiny had a broken up, nearly unintelligible story with nearly all the story being explained at you by your robot sidekick. Bungie is re-cutting the original story missions, and merging them in a way that is much more cohesive package. Bungie’s creative director, Luke Smith has explained that they have created a much deeper story telling environment with The Taken King putting an emphasis on more engaging cut scenes and specifically calling out Nathan Fillion’s character playing an actual role, not just a stationary NPC. The Taken King will also implement a new quest system, complete with it’s own menu page and allow players to track missions and quests easily during gameplay.
Improved Character Progression
In a post The Taken King world, your character’s level will not be dependent on how much light is on your gear, but instead by experience earned, in line with how more traditional RPGs work. Subsequently light has become an average of your weapon and armor stats, which will play a part in determining how much damage is dealt to and from your enemies. If you are playing Destiny for the first time with The Taken King, Bungie is giving players an in-game item, Spark of Light, which will automatically level one character up to 25, subsequently opening all of the Taken King content. This means that if you stopped playing Destiny, or wanted to make a new character to try one of the new sub-classes you won’t need to grind through previously played content to level up if you don’t want to.
Greater Diversity
Players who stuck around with Destiny will know that one of the biggest problems was the lack of content. If players wanted to work their way up to the endgame content, it required hours and hours of playing the same strikes, completing the same bounties hoping to get the piece of gear needed, just to attempt one of the raids. With Destiny 2.0 Bungie is implementing a slew of new systems to help diversify gameplay. Bounties will be distributed through different vendors, players can hold 16 (a step up from 10) and can be turned in for their reward without returning to a social space. If you have been playing Destiny on the Xbox side of things, even more content will be distributed to you at the launch of The Taken King. All of the unique content which was exclusive to PlayStation players in year one will be made available to Xbox players when Destiny updates to version 2.0. While the PS exclusive strike missions were some of the worst in the game, they are all getting remixed both platforms, although Bungie hasn’t detailed what that actually means.
Smart Loot
Grinding through the same content over and over trying to get a pair of boots that you need to level up your Guardian only to get the same chest piece you’ve been exclusively getting for weeks was par for the course of vanilla Destiny’s random number generator. That was one of the things Bungie tried to address in the two expansions of year one, where the potential loot drops would be impacted by which gear had already been dropped. It still wasn’t perfect so Bungie has tweaked it again and ensures that once The Taken King releases that the loot you earn will have a greater chance of being something that you are actually looking for. A new collections system has also been added for exotic armor, exotic weapons, shaders, emblems and more so players won’t have to clog up their newly expanded vault space without losing the ability to rebuy previously earned items.
Player Versus Player
The Trials of Osiris is a weekend playlist that promises exclusive loot for skilled, dedicated players. First introduced with the second expansion, House of Wolves, Trials is a 3v3, first to five game of elimination. With The Taken King, Bungie is introducing Trials specific bounties, with loot that is comparable to those of the weekly PVE Nightfall strikes. The Taken King brings with three new game modes with it: “Rift” a re-imagining of a neutral flag CTF, “Mayhem” where players’ supers, grenades and melees recharge at a rapid rate, and “Zone Control” a mode in which the only way to earn points for your team is to control the zones.
Destiny wasn’t the best game to release in 2014, but it kept pulling me back in a way that games hadn’t done in years and if what Bungie is promising for The Taken King is true, then it looks like my most played game of 2015 will also be Destiny.
