The sweet, sweet taste of Exotic loot just got a whole lot sweeter
It doesn’t matter how heavily entrenched you are into the booty systems of this trail-blazing shared-world shooter. It doesn’t matter how deeply you’ve delved into the hidden corners of lore laid down over the last 12 months, nor how keenly you’ve picked the bones of Year One’s two raids, endless PvE arenas, or elite PvP events. No matter how much you might have played Destiny up until now you will, amongst the millions of others as enamoured with the series as you, have come up with some way – likely many ways – that Bungie’s all-conquering blaster could be improved.
The Washington-based studio has chipped slowly and delicately away at these niggling complaints over some 40-odd patches, but with The Taken King its intent is clear. Where once fans declared that ‘Destiny’s a great shooter but it has problems,’ The Taken King is Bungie’s effort to well and truly fix them.
Since its vanilla launch, the game’s players have had to contend with an unfathomably obtuse method of storytelling, forced to actively leave the game to glean any sense of layered narrative, through a set of digital Grimoire cards unlocked in a separate smartphone app or in a browser, while repeating stale story missions ad infinitum. That’s changed. Grimoire cards still exist, but backing them up is a legitimate story, told through a 6-8 hour long initial campaign.
We say legitimate because now there are actual characters to care about and interact with. Your Ghost, freshly voiced by a slightly chirpier Nolan North (he of Nathan Drake fame), is one such character, offering up snippets of exposition through dialogue infused with lovably inept charm. Eris Morn, the lone ex-Guardian whose story was mildly leant upon during the game’s first expansion, is fleshed out with a much stronger backstory, and we even get to experience the exact set of circumstances that led to her deformation into the humorously humourless, single-minded Hive-killer she has become.
First Cayde
And then there’s Cayde-6. Voiced by an always brilliant Nathan Fillion, he’s clearly a focal point for Bungie’s intense new appreciation of words and putting them together. He’s funny and immediately likeable, yet boasts layers of intrigue. Bungie has taken the voice away from your actual Guardian (a shame, as our female Awoken Hunter has always come across as a total badass, rather than the stoic tag-along she now feels), but thanks to Cayde and the Vanguard’s riotous bickering we’ve a refreshing new reason to titter, gasp, and generally ride to wherever Destiny’s story-coaster wants to take us.
And it’s one hell of a ride, too. Action clips along at an always thrilling pace, crashing through explosive encounters with a new enemy faction (more on them in a moment), dank, close-quarters battles amidst isolating environments, and even – and you’ll never believe that it works, but it does – a stealth section. Especially appreciable is the constant planting of essential plot details in unobtrusive and ever-escalating ways. An initial cut-scene sets up the immediate danger of Oryx, the god-king of the game’s title, who’s out to en-kill-erate the Guardians responsible for his son’s death. But with each of his appearances in the build up to the story’s climax, the tension ratchets up a notch, and the stakes get that little bit higher. It’s not a flawless campaign, being a little on the short side, but then, this is really just the very tip of The Taken King’s spear.
Once you’ve polished off the story, see, you unlock a seemingly never-ending array of quests. Traditionally you’d have occasional Bounties to pick up and follow through with, but now, while those still exist, the real activities you set your sights upon sit within a new tab on your inventory screen. Here a continual flow of new stories and tasks opens up, offering increasingly enticing rewards.
Remember hitting level 20 in the base game and wondering what the chuff you were supposed to do next? Remember the achingly vast chasm between level 26 and the level cap of 30, where you would finally be able to contribute effectively in endgame content? Neither of these are things now.
Instead there’s always a string of Missions, Strikes, Patrols, kill quotas or other unique activities you can commit to at any time. Rather than just repeat the same content again and again hoping for that one lucky loot drop which enables you to boost your stats, now you can take your pick from any number of activities. Will you face off against a stream of spawnable bosses? Try out wholly new missions, unlocking revealing fresh story information (ever wondered just who Praedyth actually was, or what happened to him?)? Or perhaps you’ll delve into one of the lengthy new yellow-tinged quest lines, which reward you with an Exotic item when you eventually best them? There are sumptuous choices to make with each journey back to The Tower or The Reef.
Light shows
The levelling system has been tweaked to enable players further, too. Everyone can reach the level cap of 40 – within a matter of hours, if you’ve already achieved level 34 in the Year One game. Once there, progression then becomes a matter of finding better weapons to wield and gear to wear, with their overall power combined measured by your three-figure Light level.
You’ve more control over this loot too. Legendary weapons and gear you find can be infused with more powerful drops to boost their overall effectiveness, meaning you can keep hold of the guns and helmets you particularly like using for longer. The first few steps into The Taken King can be fairly jarring for those familiar with the most infamously efficient weapons and gear sets of Year One. Within five minutes of playing we’d discovered a Blue rarity item, a generally quite feeble one for The Taken King, which utterly dwarfed our Gjallarhorn for attack power.
Alongside this surprising abandonment of certain sticky exotics (though some, such as essential pulse rifle Red Death, do have Year Two versions) comes a fresh and highly enjoyable sense of discovery. Sure, within a few weeks committed players may have determined which guns are most suitable for any given situation, but the process of stepping through the world towards the endgame is marked by a constant flurry of exciting drops.
As before, the new weapons and equipment aren’t just about numbers either. Each gun feels unique, and experimentation with them is a joy. At one point we actively chose to use a less powerful Green rarity scout rifle over a stronger Blue one, purely on the basis that the snapping bullet which crackled forth with each trigger press made it more fun to use.
What are great guns, though, without adequate baddies to pepper with their discharge? The Taken of the title refers to Oryx’s stable of minions – the naughty god-king has teleported a load of existing world enemies, such as Vex and Cabal, away to some unknown dimension where something apparently rather nasty happened to them. They return to the battlefield through temporal rifts, shaky and unnerving. And while they are distinctive to behold, with shady new visages and some neat new sound cues to boot, it’s how these foes demand fresh methods of combat which delights.
Take the Taken Goblins, for example. Once a series of fairly harmless grunts with glowy tummies waiting to be shot at for critical hits, this iteration can project invulnerability shielding onto any other nearby enemy. They have a habit of doing so while hiding around corners, too – so, say you’re facing off against a boss being protected by one of these suckers, your team needs to actively hunt down the little blighter first.
Then there are the Fallen Captains, now capable of firing huge balls of blindness-inducing Darkness at you. Or the Cabal Psions, which now split to multiply in number, usually right as you’re lining up a one-hit-kill sniper shot.
Take on me
When the Taken show up, the screen warping and undulating with their portal-based arrival, you know your fireteam is in for a fight. As threats they inevitably, gradually become less daunting and unknowable a prospect, yet they in turn emerge as wildly satisfying to fight against.
Traditional enemies, such as the shield-toting Phalanx or the one-hit kill-able Dreg, always smacked of Halo’s tried-and-tested archetypes (the Jackal and the Grunt in those cases). Here, The Taken are a whole new shooter prospect. It feels like the longest time since we’ve been able to say that about the folk we perforate in an FPS game.
Then there are the new Super abilities which your Guardians can wield in combat. While these all feel unique, they’re not all necessarily going to immediately take over as your class’ power of choice – every one feels like it fills a gap that previously existed for each class. Hunters get the Nightstalker subclass, complete with stealth-infusing smoke bombs, and a bow and arrow which pins multiple foes for others to polish off. Once the most maligned class in Year One fireteams, it suddenly makes them ideal party members.
Titans, meanwhile, become Sunbreakers, getting a rangey hammer infused with Solar damage, finally enabling them to wipe out enemies while not being right up in their chops. And Warlocks get what might become Destiny’s most contentious Super of all (perhaps up there with the Hunter’s Arc Blade as most annoying to face in PvP). Stormcallers can essentially Force-lightning a cone area in front of them. It’s a devastating sustained attack which, again, wasn’t an option in their repertoire previously.
Equally fresh is the huge new PvE map, The Dreadnaught. Nestled within the rings of Saturn, this vast, space-faring warship is the vessel which brought Oryx to the Solar System’s doorstep. It’s here that you delve into all new Patrol missions, hunt down new crafting materials – and explore two new, additional pastimes.
The first of these is the Court Of Oryx. Essentially this is a public event spawner, Destiny’s answer to the pool tables at your local pub. A new series of items, called Runes, function almost like 50 pence pieces on the side of the table. Only instead of knocking balls around a baize, you conjure up various tiers of bosses. The summoning player earns especially alluring rewards for completion of these boss fights, and everyone nearby who participates is also rewarded with reputation and/or the occasional loot drop.
Going in we assumed this would quickly become a repetitive exercise, but it actually provides for an ideal location to spend time either waiting for friends to come online, or, brilliantly, to make new ones. While Destiny still doesn’t have an adequate matchmaking system in place (we totally don’t buy the insistence by Bungie that such features would ruin Strikes or Raids – if they weren’t needed then sites such as Destinylfg.com wouldn’t thrive), the Court Of Oryx goes some way towards filling in. It gives players a neat location to actively meet other Guardians, and open up channels of communication.
Super troopers
The other thing you spend time doing in The Dreadnaught is solving mysteries. Explore for any amount of time and you discover chests, unlockable only with certain keys, obtainable only through initially unknown means.
There will, we’re certain, be a subset of players happy to scour the Destiny subreddit for the immediate answer to these often literal riddles (some keys come with oblique clues as to where their corresponding chests are located) – but equally there should also be a sufficient number of Guardians actively enjoying seeking out these answers for themselves. As we were playing, we heard one member of our team utter, “I can’t wait for Reddit to put together a map for this place.” Another replied, “I can’t wait to start drawing that map up myself!” Telling.
Over in PvP, you get a smattering of six new arenas (one of which is a PlayStation exclusive until autumn 2016) to memorise as you navigate two fresh game modes. Mayhem is… well, it’s exactly what it sounds like. Utter chaos unfolds across each match as Super abilities recharge at alarming rates. Meanwhile, Spark may have a sultry name, and involves a Rift rather than a Base, but really it’s a tarted up version of Capture The Flag. A welcome addition to Destiny’s PvP roster, but not as groundbreaking an addition as its unusual name implies. No player that takes PvP seriously will abandon Trials Of Osiris for these outings, but it’s an ideal place to let off steam between the more legitimate match types.
Overall there’s a startling amount of things to do. Until now, it’s always been the case that there was a specific box to tick each time you logged into Destiny. Now the The Taken King is here, each evening we sit down to sweep through the Solar System never quite sure what aspect of this deeply satisfying shooter we’ll get stuck into next. And that, when you boil away all the stats, nerfs, and patches, is what we – what every Destiny devotee – have always wanted.