On September 15th, Destiny’s newest expansion,The Taken King, will release to fans ready for more action. At a hefty price tag of $40 which is double the price of the prior two expansions, developer Bungie has promised that the new content is wellworth itin size and quality. So what exactly is being offered in the new expansion? Let’s take a look. (Please see an update on confirmeddouble vault space here)
New Campaign
Highlighting the release is a brand new story campaign, centered aroundOryx, the Taken King who desires vengeance over his son Crota’s death by theGuardians. Manipulating the Darkness, Oryx creates an army of corrupted Taken bent on consuming civilization. Players will be tasked with penetrating Oryx’s massive hiveDreadnaughtorbiting over Saturn, and putting an end to the campaign of destruction. Expect to travel deep into the nooks and crannies of the massive ship, discovering new gear along the way.
New Abilities
Three new subclasses make their debut: the TitanSunbreaker, WarlockStormcaller, and HunterNightstalker. The Sunbreaker will feature a flaming hammer that can be summoned and either thrown at range or wielded for up close melee smashing. The Stormcaller can conjure up an electric storm of Arc energy. The Nightstalker will feature a void energy bow for lethal ranged precision.
New Gear and Activities
There will be of course a bevy of newgearand exotics for the players to discover as they play. Also included are a major six person fire-team raid, seven new crucible multiplayer maps, three new strikes and several “Taken” revisions to existing strikes to give them a fresh feel.
Improvements
Bungie is using the expansion as an opportunity to overhaul a few core game concepts, namely leveling and questing. The leveling cap will be raised to 40, and the game is changing the Light level system in which players leveled up to 20 and then increased their levels further through maxing out armor. With the revision, players will continue to level up past 20 via killing enemies and completing bounties all the way to the level cap. Armor will still play a vital role in defense. Loot drops will also be more closely tied to a player’s level.
Quests will now have a different feel, and will be designed in a more story focused fashion, similar to the base game’s Exotic bounties. They will also be organize in-game differently in a menu tab called Quests, compiling all the various activities into one group. The HUD will now also track quest and bounty progress which can be called up via a directional button and players will now be able to hold up to 16 bounties at a time. The last major revision here is that players can now complete bounties via the Quest menu, saving them the trip back to the Tower for turn in.
There is a quite a bit of content to look forward to and some major changes to the game’s formula, enough overall to make this feel like a partial new entry in the series. Those who are new to the game can pick up the Legendary Edition for $60 which includes the base Destiny game plus all of its expansions. Amazon Prime members can pre-order the Legendary Edition for $50. Check back with us on theDestiny Wikiuntil release and beyond for more!
