This week at E3 we got our chance to play some hands on Destiny with their newest expansion The Taken King. The release date is Sept. 15, 2015. The expansion brings a lot of updates to the game but we wanted to talk about some of the gameplay aspects. The price tag is pretty hefty for an expansion at $39.99. However, when you break down all of the content in the expansion this starts to make more sense. Players have wanted more content for the game and this is where they are going to get it.
We got to play the beginnings of a new campaign you will be taking your Guardian on as well fight one of the sub bosses in an abandoned base. Raids have become a big deal to Destiny players so Taken King begins their full course meal for players with some solid raid content as well. All of this is steeped in a much deeper narrative, something fans have been asking for. When Destiny launched as cool as it was to have Peter Dinklage voicing over your guardians exploits it still felt like the storytelling aspect was not fully flushed out. With Taken King the story becomes much more widespread and everything players do ties into advancing the arcs and plots.
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First, in the hands on we played as one of the Warlock Guardians. That was my class at launch and so it felt natural to go through the campaign with our spell casting hero. Joining the campaign part of the game we hit the launch map to the new location and got right into the action. Once landing on the planet it was a trip down into a dark dungeon. It felt like hunting in some abandon tomb which, well hist the mark for the storyline of the Taken. Without giving too much away these beings are almost like vortex vampires if you can imagine that. I was surprised at the lack of resistance I hit on the way down. I still took things slow because who knows when you will trigger a group of a foes. The oddest parts of the journey were the weird whispers and voices going through the zone as you near the boss fight. Not only that you hit several patches of broken up dark matter twisting into the sections of the rooms and hallways.
As we hit the boss fight the voices got louder and the boss phased into the area along with a lot of Taken minions. These void beings were extremely tough to kill. Even after playing the game a long time, they simply kept multiplying as the boss kept shooting at you. The room was in a circular set up and gave plenty of options for cover and movement to keep the fight flowing quickly. It ended in an extremely serious fight which multiplied the Taken as you went through overwhelming you no matter what. It was tough no question about it. Oh and there was still that pesky boss to deal with. Run and gun was the name of the game for me during the challenge, trying to keep the minions spawn rate down to a minimum.
I think the demo was designed to be hard. Lots of news has always pointed to how quickly and easily players can master encounters in Destiny and this event put a lot of pressure on the player. The dark matter looking Taken are a very nice addition to the enemies in Destiny and bring plenty of headaches to players the more they run into them.
Each guardian will now have the option of a third subclass for their main class. The expansion also offers loads of weapons, armor, and loot. It brings a lot of choices for players in terms of how they want to spec out their characters. Not just with the new sets and personal gear. The expansion offers loads of new content. New maps and two new PvP modes are being added to the multiplayer portion of the game. For fans of PvE there will be a new campaign, new dungeons to master and lots of new content across the solar system.
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The team at Bungie continues to support and expand on Destiny, something they had promised fans as new updates seem to always be in the pipeline. The hands on gameplay was certainly harder than we expected which hopefully means the game has a more challenging edge to it with this release. With lots of character options to bring in as well as new zones to explore and PvP maps, it seems like this is the biggest update yet for the game. Retailing for almost forty dollars it should bring plenty of content and updates for players. That is a tricky price point for a new expansion. The early gameplay we went through kept things very close to the universe we have all come to love, with a lot of added twists and better content. We’ll just have to wait and see how much of this new update players will want to take on. Destiny’s expansion is coming out in an early fall which is filled with a lot of major releases for the year. It is very tough competition out there.
