On September 15, Destiny: The Taken King will be released, marking the game‘s third paid DLC. It will offer a large list of new features and content, as well as numerous highly necessary tweaks to the game’s reward system and balance. There will be new story Missions, a new Raid, and three new Strikes (co-op adventures) for Xbox gamers—four for PlayStation gamers.
If you find Strikes as repetitive as I do, then don’t worry: it sounds like Bungie plans to combat the monotony by switching up the enemies you fight and even the dialogue you hear when you do the same Strike multiple times. Speaking of dialogue, Nolan North will be replacing Peter Dinklage as Ghost completely, reportedly because of scheduling issues with Dinklage. Nolan North is extremely well known for his voice-acting work in games, so he should be more than capable of a captivating-as-can-be rendition of the player character’s mostly emotionless robot buddy.
It sounds like all of this and more will take place on Dreadnaught, a new destination. Unlike Destiny’s original four destinations, though, Dreadnaught will have a Patrol mode that players should find both difficult and rewarding enough to do every week. There will be new, Public Event-like boss fights that players can start at will called the Court of Oryx. Bungie developers have hinted that Dreadnaught will be large and complex enough that players will want to explore it and collaborate in order to find and claim all of the hidden rewards it has to offer. These additions and changes will hopefully add much needed variety to Destiny’s gameplay. I’m also hopeful that giving players so much incentive to do activities in social spaces will result in it being easier to get groups together for the Raid and other activities, which don’t offer automatic matchmaking.
Rounding out The Taken King’s offering of new content are three new subclasses. Now every class will have three subclasses, one for each damage type. The new Hunter subclass, Nightstalker, deals Void damage and interestingly seems to be almost completely focused on crowd control.
The new Titan subclass, Sunbreaker, deals Solar damage. The new Warlock subclass, Stormcaller, deals Arc damage. The Sunbreaker and Stormcaller subclasses are both pretty focused on damage dealing, meaning that each class will now have two pure damage subclasses and one support type subclass. All of the new subclasses look really cool, and the Sunbreaker and Stormcaller subclasses remind me of the original two Hunter subclasses, especially their Supers. This is a very good thing. See, right now Hunter Supers are kind of unique in that you activate them, and they give you a powerful ability that you can run around and use for a short while. This makes them more flexible than Titan and Warlock Supers, which mostly work best when your enemies are all standing right next to each other. That might be one reason why Hunters are currently such a popular choice for PvP, and it represents a possible balance problem there, which will now be fixed with style.
Bungie will also be adjusting the balance of many of the most popular weapon choices in PvP. Currently, most people in Destiny’s PvP modes use one of two exotic hand cannons, both of which will be reduced in effectiveness when The Taken King comes out. This, along with a bunch of other small tweaks to the various weapon types, should shake up players’ weapon choices in PvP. Some of the more outrageously powerful exotic PvE weapons should also fall out of favor somewhat, as overused weapons like the infamous rocket launcher Gjallarhorn won’t be upgradeable to higher levels of damage as they have been in past expansions. Other quality-of-life changes for Destiny players include your character level no longer being connected to your equipment’s level, and an improved framework and UI for quests and bounties.
The Taken King DLC is not yet rated, but the overall Destiny game is rated T for Teen. Destiny is available on PlayStation 3 and 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.