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Destiny: The Taken King Story And Gameplay Details Emerge From The Darkness
Yesterday, Bungie officially pulled back the curtain on the long-rumored The Taken King expansion. Today brings a new vidoc with all sorts of details about what we can expect.
Storywise, we learn that guardians start out by exploring a Cabal base on Phobos, a moon of Mars. There, they learn that the menacing Cabal are terrified, and fleeing from Oryx and his Taken army. The Taken use roughly similar models to existing enemy creatures, because they are aliens that have been corrupted by Oryx’s power. However, the Taken have new animations, behaviors, and seemingly new attack patterns that change up the feel of the combat.
Players also visit Oryx’s Dreadnaught, a whole new game area that seems to be on the scale of one of the game’s existing areas, like Earth or Venus. While it’s not entirely clear how large the Dreadnaught is, the video clearly shows a point where one of the Guardians pulls up his status screen, and we see he is in the “Hull Breach” section of the Dreadnaught, implying there are multiple other areas within the massive ship to explore.
In that same screen, we see new options for tracking bounties and missions using the d-pad.
Because of Oryx’s incredible power, the Guardians are forced to track down lost arts of the ancient guardians, which is the story conceit that leads to the three new subclasses, which we’ve detailed here. It looks as if each class will have a dedicated story moment or mission in which they claim their lost subclass.
In the vidoc, we also learn of two wild new Crucible modes on the way in The Taken King. Mayhem plays like team deathmatch, but everyone’s supers and abilities recharge extremely fast. Meanwhile, Rift is Destiny’s variation on the capture-the-flag game type; take the spark, and deliver it to the enemy rift to win a point. Slam dunk the spark to get the point, or back flip slam the spark for bonus points and cool factor.
Bungie is also promising all new patrols and public events, which is great news for players who are getting sick of the same tasks we’ve been playing for months.
Finally, we’re promised multiple new strikes in the expansion, and we see a glimpse of the new Raid that the team is working on, which appears to be set aboard Oryx’s dreadnaught.
The Taken King is headed for release on September 15. If you’re really excited, you might consider looking into the new collector’s edition.
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