taken king rift mayhem

RIFT: Everything You Need to Know

Published on: Jun 16, 2015 @ 17:31

The Taken King content continues to roll in, with IGN providing exclusive footage of one of the Crucible’s new game modes, Rift.

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First Look

Rift is Destiny’s answer to “Capture The Flag” (as Bungie likens in to) and represents another addition to objective-based PvP that the game is admittedly lacking. The objective is to claim a neutral “Spark” and upon reviving it, take it to the opposing team’s “Rift” within 2 minutes to slam it home for capture points. All the while, you have to keep an eye out for your enemies and kill them with extreme prejudice, especially when protecting your own Rift or guarding the “Runner” with the Spark.

As you dunk the Spark into the other team’s Rift, it will kill any enemies in the immediate surroundings and announce “Rift Ignited” to the rest of your team, to indicate that you scored. At this point, there will be a brief respite before the next Spark spawns, and the fight to control it for transport will be on again!

taken king new crucible mode rift

Unlike standard CTF, it is not round-based, but an ongoing fight. To this end, fortifying positions and playing conservatively will be key. There is also only one ‘flag’ – the Spark – and there’s a short charging period where teams have a chance to get set-up to seize the spark.

The Runner possesses full use of his or her weapons, in addition to a light increase to Damage Resistance. This, of course, comes at the cost of having a target painted on the Runner’s back that tells the enemy exactly where he or she is at all times.

You’ll have to pick your fights if you’re one-on-one with the Runner when defending, and support him or her aggressively if you’re on offense, or the Spark will be up-for-grabs again quickly. If you manage to make progress toward the enemy’s Rift, you’ll be given 100 points for each of the 5 “distance” checkpoints, broadcasting messages of your Guardian being “inbound” or “closing end” as he or she nears the Rift. These points will be crucial to your team winning the overall fight, as kills can only get you so far.

In the video, we can see the POV of a single player playing Rift, using what appears to be a new Scout Rifle and Fusion Rifle. The Scout has the MIDA’s shot sound effect, and the Fusion Rifle has an aesthetic similar to Hard Light. At the beginning of the fight, we appear to catch a glimpse of an enemy Sunbreaker’s Thermite Grenade, launching lines of dangerous Solar energy towards our POV. Later, a Nightstalker Hunter locks down our POV player and his friend with a Gravity Bow shot, killing the friend before finally being dispatched by some backup.

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Current Exclusives will Unlock with TTK

DeeJ, who was available to answer questions during the discussion of the Rift gameplay, confirmed that all Destiny PS-exclusive content will become available for Xbox users on Day 1 of The Taken King. This includes Hawkmoon, The 4th Horseman, and the Dust Palace and Undying Mind strikes.

Of course, a whole new host of PS-exclusive gear and content will open up the same day, and be locked down for another year as per Year 1’s pattern.

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Not all will be Revealed

On Oryx, DeeJ mused that he would rather let us “discover [him] for ourselves”, but assured that he was an all new type of fun and challenging enemy – not simply a giant Knight with wings.  He offered similar praise about the design team’s work on the Taken, whom he said represent a whole new paradigm when it comes to enemy encounters in the PvE sandbox.

oryx story mission

When it came to discuss a couple of recurring issues, DeeJ’s feedback was ambiguous, with lots of buzzwords and very few concrete answers. This was in response to questions about the revival of old weapons from before The Dark Below, such as the Shadow Price, and – more significantly – the outlook of Vault space moving forward. He equivocated somewhat, claiming that one of the goals of Bungie was to get guardians to take a look at what role they want to take in PvE, and choose which weapons they need as a result of this. He stated that he too enjoys “collecting”, but that you can’t collect everything, and that it would be boring to have “a marriage to the same gun for ten years.”

Reading between the lines, it seems that Bungie hasn’t quite figured out how to solve the issue of Vault Space, and DeeJ’s rhetoric especially smacks of some post hoc justification for simply not having enough room to put things. DeeJ is in a tough spot, of course. Bungie knows that the issue of Vault Space is not clerical but actually tied into recall of server-side storage, and thus held back by previous generation systems and an unreasonable demand on memory. Hopefully, they’ll get something figured out to give DeeJ some ammunition for the next live query.

DeeJ concluded by discussing some of the new maps available with The Taken King: Frontier, Bannerfall, Sector 618 (A PS-Exclusive), and Crossroads. They are apparently well-balanced to accompany objective-based games, with symmetrical layouts to prevent one side having an undue advantage.

He mentioned that “man-cannons” are coming back to Bungie games, offering instant – if risky – high-speed transportation across maps. Vehicular combat is not a priority at this time, which is a bummer for fans of Combined Arms, and doesn’t suggest maps like Bastion or First Light are going to be the template for PvP moving forward.

Thanks to IGN for providing the footage for review, and thanks to DeeJ for the candid and personable Q&A. We’re looking forward to what The Taken King has to offer, and Rift’s early footage suggests it’ll be a fun addition to Destiny’s burgeoning Crucible world. Keep an eye on Planet Destiny for everything Taken King, and let us hear your thoughts in the comments!

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Even though you can see a Light level 50 Guardian in the video above, it appears as though this is due to an ‘outdated’ E3 build, and may not make it to release.