Today, we all started Bungie’s new installment of Destiny: The Taken King. For Year One veterans, you’ll probably want to head over to the tower to collect your special Year One shader and emblem. At first glance around the tower, there are tons of things to do, and it’s apparent you’ll be visiting all of the vendors more often.
If you pre-ordered The Taken King, head over to the vanguard quartermaster and pick up a SUROS foundry gun if you’d like, though you’ll quickly replace it.
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TTK is the Answer
This expansion is Bungie’s answer to our problems. This isn’t to say The Taken King is going to fix everything, or is perfect, but this is what Bungie is offering to answer our major complaints – and it has mostly succeeded. Let’s take a look at the changes that were made that we have consistently asked for.
We asked for new weapon models. We got tons of them, including a variety of foundries, which allow for new customization options to your loadout. There are a variety of perks of which, in a month, we’ll probably have shaved to a smaller list of “preferred” perks. There are countless exotics out there to find, and Xbox users are going to be able to find the PS exclusives from Y1. The sidearm is now a legitimate weapon class, open for variety and customization. Plus, we all know in a month all we’re going to be talking about is swords.
We asked for Crucible balancing. After many months, we got a pretty good tune-up. This new edition of Crucible has been out for a week, so this is old news. We can sit back and determine which gun rules the time to kill spreadsheets and determine a newer “best” weapon, but that doesn’t change the fact that equipping a Suros Regime or a Vision of Confluence is less of a hinderance. Thorn users have to step in just a little bit farther to reliably kill you, and thus, you have more breathing room, even if you’re not rocking The Last Word or a Hawkmoon to counter it.
We asked for a story, and boy, did we get it. We asked for Ghost to have a bigger role in the storytelling outside of bare-bones exposition, and we got a nice monologue about Ghost’s relationship with us in the beginning cinematic. The Awoken Queen and her brother are featured briefly in a context of much more importance than when they were patronizing you in The Reef during the vanilla storyline. Legitimate cinematic cutscenes showcase the beautiful the voice acting of Lance Reddick (Commander Zavala) and Nathan Fillion (Cayde-6) as well as provide meaning to our quests. These quests now have backstories, and to that end, we haven’t even scratched the surface on what quests are available to you at level 40.
We wanted new enemies and bosses that had unique AI, and we definitely got that. Wait until the first time you aim at a Taken Captain’s head and fire, only to realize it blinked laterally in an instant to dodge your assault. The Echo of Oryx, one of the main bosses of the storyline, aggressively stalks you, shoots at you, berates you with his Hive tongue and summons Taken.
Oh, and the Psions. Please, don’t make the same mistake I did. Shoot the Psions first. They multiply, fast. These Taken enemies have unique changes to their attacks and abilities, and they invoke even more inter-faction fighting between enemies.
We wanted new areas, and Bungie delivered on that too. The Dreadnought is huge, and it extends the environment concepts of the Crota’s End raid to even darker means, and there’s so much to discover there. We explore different parts of the solar system that we haven’t seen before, and we get to them from areas we are familiar with to give perspective on how areas are linked. We revisit some familiar areas in cool ways, including a unique rendition of The Dark Below.
Overall, Bungie seems to have delivered answers on fixing many of our complaints. The game seems to have shifted tone for the better, and quality of life updates have steadily patched up the glaring problems from the vanilla game. However, we’ll have to see how this honeymoon stage lasts. We still have the King’s Fall raid to look forward to, and given how quickly we can run through the storyline, we’ll need the raid, strikes and missions outside of the initial story to come through in a big way to solidify the community’s desire for quality content.
Considering it’s still day one of the release, there’s more than just the raid to look forward to, but for now, that’s where our eyes are fixed. The quality of life updates, storyline, new gear and new enemies, all round out Destiny to resemble more of the game that we all thought it would be at release. As we discover the new strikes and play the new raid, we’ll discover if it’s one that has enough things to do.