Destiny: The Taken King Week 1
Or more accurately weeks 1–3 because I’m a slow writer…
I didn’t pre-order the Taken King until 1 week before the release date. This is coming from someone who put what seems like 1000+ hours into the original Destiny, beat both raids on hard numerous times, and had every piece of gear. I was very skeptical about this expansion, as both the Dark Below and House of Wolves only provided about 2 months of entertainment before my fireteam and I completed every activity too many times. However, after reading about what the Taken King would consist of, I pre-ordered it right before update 2.0 went into effect. I was already excited when I took a look around the tower when the 2.0 update went into effect. Now, 1 week into the Taken King, I can honestly say this expansion is the best thing to happen to Destiny so far.
First off, the story is exhilarating. Granted, expectations were incredibly low as Destiny 1 had a nonexistent story, or any interesting part of the story was tied up in the Grimoire which required a computer to access. I’m not sure about anyone else, but when I first landed on Phobos, all I could think of was “OMG this is just like halo!” (side note: I’m a huge Halo fan and think it has some of the best lore”). The mechanics of Destiny have always been superb, no one can argue that, but the fact that there was motivation for my actions was a much needed improvement. The NPCs now had personalities and a purpose, there were more meaningful cut scences, and Nolan-bot did an amazing job bringing a new personality to ghost. The new enemies, the taken, are also much more fun to fight than the original 3 factions. They require more skill and tactics: if there’s a taken goblin, you have to kill it so it doesn’t protect it’s allies. If there is a Psion, you better kill it quick before it multiplies like a bunny rabbit.
On the topic of skill, everything in the game now requires actual skill instead of the bosses being giant bullet sponges. The Darkblade is my favorite new strike and reminds me of Dark Souls where you fight The Four Kings in the abyss. The new strikes have mechanics that may not be obvious the first time you run through them. The waypoints aren’t quite as straightforward and they require the players to think about what they are doing instead of mindlessly running through the entire strike (aka the Nexus). It was also a nice surprise to see that they update some of the old strikes. Nothing was more fun on the Valas Taurac strike than having to fight a taken gate lord instead of that stupid floating tank for the millionth time.
The “questification” that the game underwent was a much needed change. Every time a new update came out, my fireteam would have every activity completed on day 1 aside from the raid, which was usually beaten soon after. Now, the quests force you to draw out how you play the game. The exotic quests especially take a lot of time to complete, which makes the reward all the better once you complete it. The quests also give specific goals and specific rewards, so you know exactly what you should be doing and what you’ll receive at the end. This makes the game feel much more like an MMO and I feel like I always have something to do. At this moment, I’m thinking about the 50 Hadium Flakes and 45 Calcified Fragments I have to collect for a new exotic bounty.
To top everything off: The Taken King introduces a new raid. Previously the raids have always been the ultimate PVE test. They were, and remain, the only way to get to max light level via PVE. VoG was an amazing raid, and showed what Destiny could be really great at. It had puzzles, took teamwork, and was still fun even once the max light level was raised. Crota was fun the first two runs, but after that, it became a boring chore that, as the light level was raised, kept getting easier and easier. King’s Fall is a return to the VoG days, but 100 times better. I spent probably 20 hours that first week to be one of the first to beat the raid and each hour was better than the next. This raid not only requires strong teamwork, but impeccable timing. Everyone on the fire team has a role and if they fail, the team will fail. After running it over and over again, it has become more routine and now takes less than 2 hours to complete, but it is still incredible fun. I don’t think it will ever get old fighting a humongous Oryx, watching him slam his fist right above your head, your guardian being the size of half of his pinky finger.
Overall, I think Bungie did an amazing job with the Taken King. Destiny got a much needed overhaul and is now much more comfortable in its hybrid FPS/RPG role, forcing you to take your time on certain tasks and allowing you to customize your character. Granted, I’ll still be running around the tower with my raid gear and Touch of Malice because lets be real, status is, and will always be, everything in Destiny.
