Published on: Jun 15, 2015 @ 20:51

The Taken King has finally been unveiled and it’s jam-packed with new goodies to speculate wildly over. Let’s take a look at what we saw!

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New Supers

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Super: Shadowshot, Tether a large group of foes to a Void Anchor, slowing and suppressing them for your Fireteam.
Voidwall Grenade: Grenade explosion creates a horizontal wall of burning Void Light.
Smoke: Throw Smoke to slow and disorient those within its cloud.
Shadestep: Gain an evade to avoid damage.

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The Hunter is sporting a stylish looking Void “Gravity” bow, and promptly unloads it on an Ogre. From the duration of the clip, we couldn’t tell if the activation and deployment of the super were simultaneous, or if the Bow could be summoned for a duration, much like the Golden Gun. Either way, we’re curious as to how gravity really comes into play. Does it draw in low-level enemies only to explode? Does it create a singularity like Mass Effect’s Adept class? Right now, we predict it acting like a Nova Bomb for Hunters – and let’s be honest, that’s pretty cool.

 

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• Super: Hammer of Sol, Summon a flaming hammer and wreak destruction down upon your enemies.
• Thermite Grenade: Grenade explosion sends a line of fire toward your target.
• Sunstrike: Ignite your enemies with a heavy solar strike.
• Fire Keeper: Hammer of Sol lasts longer and you gain an overshield while standing near a Sunspot.

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The Titan is taking the fight to you this time around. There’s no panicky or defensive aspects to the Solar super we saw on display in this trailer. Shrouded in a wreathe of flame, the Titan appears to hurl his hammer causing a swath of AOE damage in a given direction, only to have the hammer instantly return to his hand for a second burst of damage, Mjolnir-style. All this happens very quickly, so there’s a few questions up in the air too. Can the hammer be thrown multiple times? The Super appears to have a Golden Gun-like activation animation, as witnessed at the very beginning of the trailer, so it’s possible it will have a set amount of throws.

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• Super: Stormtrance, Chain Arc Lightning from your hands.
• Storm Grenade: This grenade calls down a localized lightning storm.
• Thunderstrike: Deliver an electrocuting melee strike at extended range.
• Perpetual Charge: Getting a grenade kill recharges your melee. Getting a melee kill recharges your grenade.

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The Warlock seems to be channeling his inner Cole MacGrath, with a channeled Arc Storm super that envelopes foes in front of him. A constant stream of electricity erupts from his fingertips, and upon contact with an enemy, immediately chains to nearby baddies, tossing them into the wind as they are dispatched. The Warlock has the ability to strafe and move about normally, albeit while being grounded, but the range appears fairly limited.

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The Dreadnaught

Destiny is moving beyond the first four planets of the Solar System… Just how far do we extend this hype? Saturn!

A massive Hive Dreadnaught ship looms in the rings of Saturn. Oryx, The Taken King has arrived in our solar system, bringing with him a corrupted army to exact revenge on the Guardians who destroyed his son Crota, and to consume our worlds. Arm yourself with newfound abilities, weapons, and gear. Defeat the Taken hordes. Make your way aboard the Dreadnaught, and face Oryx himself within his inner sanctum.

Though we’re not sure if Saturn is a fully realized planet that can be explored, it has been confirmed that Guardians will be boarding the dreadnaught orbiting the planet that houses Oryx, and we can only hope that this means the planet proper will be available for exploration at some point.

Either way, the Guardians in the trailer were traversing new and old landscapes alike, so it’s a safe bet that existing areas will be incorporated into the new story, but we we’ll also get a change of scenery for some of the most dramatic and difficult showdowns in the story and beyond.

Oryx, The Taken King

Some scholars say that it was the vile “children” of Oryx that first crawled from the ashes, post-Collapse.  His brood grew quietly, but quickly enough, spawning armies of Hive loyal to their King deep within the caverns and shadows of our worlds. Among them was Crota, the god-Knight whose offspring poisoned our Moon.

Crota and his army would have infected the Earth were it not for the efforts of Eris Morn, and the Guardians who heeded her warnings. Now, Crota is dead – body and soul extinguished by your hand.

Oryx, armed with a dark power beyond anything we’ve yet to face, is coming to claim his revenge.

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The Bosses Take Flight

Ever since Orville and Wilbur Wright, bad guys with lots of health have dreamed of slipping their earthly tethers to embrace the majesty of flight. The Cabal have apparently really embraced the jetpack; we could see a Centurion boss who looked a bit like our favorite Valus Ta’aurc catching some unwary Guardians by surprise with an aggressive jetpack charge. While the Cabal have floated aimlessly about for short durations before, this represents a leap forward for precision aerial combat.

And how about that Oryx! Crota’s father isn’t fooling around: His bat-like wings and Wizard-esque design are suitably menacing for the biggest of the Big Bads. It looks like we’re going to have a boss who isn’t relegated to stomping around on solid ground.

If he has the mobility, tenacity, and unholy shields of a Wizard, he’s going to be a real pain to take down. Just imagine the size of the poison cloud he can summon.

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The Story

It was pretty hard to glean anything useful from the sparse dialogue, but it’s clear that the ultimate goal of The Taken King will be the utter destruction of Oryx himself.

The VO for the trailer hints that you might encounter him early on in the DLC, by getting “his attention” (though this just as easily could be a recap of you slaying his son), and the brief animation of Oryx unfurling his wings in a new, cosmic environment could be the final zone in which your chase comes to a climatic conclusion. If this is the case, it will be a little similar to Skolas, but it’s too early to predict that with any degree of certainty.

Taken Army

No doubt we’ll face Oryx’s army throughout the story missions, and possibly in the raid as well.

Oryx wields the ability to control a twisted army of vile corruptions known as the Taken. These new enemies have been wholly consumed, possessed by the Darkness, bodies and mind twisted into service of their King. Now, they are bent to a singular purpose – our eradication.

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New Crucible Mode(s)

What we’ve seen so far is extremely limited, but Clash Mayhem is definitely coming! In the interview that you can watch in this video, Urk also mentions more objective modes, and it looks like one of them in a CTF-esque variant. You can also see that there’s at least one new mode of transportation in the Crucible: a field that you can run through to get a massive speed boost!

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PS Exclusives

There will be a timed exclusive Strike, Crucible map, as well as at least 1 weapon and armor set. It will remain exclusive until at least Fall 2016.

At launch, team up for a co-op strike to stop the Vex from constructing a time bridge, challenge fellow Guardians in a PVP multiplayer map set within the mighty Cosmodrome Wall, and acquire powerful new legendary armor and an exotic weapon.

Armor

Weapon

Strike, Echo Chamber

The Vex have laid siege to time itself. Attempting to unravel your once-decisive victory against Sekrion (from the Destiny strike, “The Nexus”), the Vex are constructing a time bridge to call the Nexus Mind from the past in order to execute a terrible future.

Crucible Map, Sector 618

Once a part of the mighty Cosmodrome wall, Sector 618 fell long ago to the Fallen House of Devils. Now reclaimed by the City, the beams and walkways of the wall’s interior are in dangerous disrepair—thus, an ideal location for the Crucible’s grueling games.

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Your Thoughts?

What’s your initial impression? The trailer may have been short, but there’s certainly no shortage of stuff to talk about. Right now, it looks like Bungie was concerned with showing us enough of the new Supers to whet our appetite, and hinting at the path on which The Taken King is going to lead us.

What do you think? Has this made you double-think your initial reaction to the price? Did we miss anything obvious? Tell all in the comments below!