Destiny: The Taken King: Oryx Has Come For Your Light.

Destiny was the first game to break my staunch opposition to playing first person shooters on consoles. Being a long time member of the PC master race meant that it took me quite a while to get used to the way consoles do things and had it not been for Destiny’s MMORPG stylings I might not have stuck it through. However I’m glad I did as the numerous hours I’ve spent in Destiny since then were ones I very much enjoyed. The time between me capping out at level 32 and the release of the House of Wolves expansion though was long enough for me to fall back to DOTA 2 and I missed much of that release. The Taken King however promised to completely upend the way Destiny did things and proved to be the perfect time for me to reignite my addiction to Bungie’s flagship IP.

Six of you went down into that pit, looking to end the dark grip that Crota held on our Moon. His death rung out across the galaxy, sending ripples through the darkness. His father, Oryx, felt his son slip from this plane and immediately swore vengeance upon you and the light. Oryx has appeared in our system aboard a mighty dreadnought, capable of decimating entire armies with a single attack. Slayer of Crota it is now up to you to face Oryx as he and his Taken are swarming over the entire solar system and threaten to snuff out the light once and for all. Are you strong enough to face this challenge guardian?

Graphically Destiny hasn’t change much, retaining the same level of impressive graphics that aptly demonstrate the capabilities of current generation console hardware. There has been a significant overhaul to the UI elements however with the vast majority of them looking sharper and feeling a lot more responsive. It might sound like a minor detail but it’s a big leap up in some regards, especially with the new quest/mission and bounty interface. It’s the kind of stuff you’d expect to see in expansions like this and I doubt we’ll see any major graphical changes until Destiny 2.0.

The core game is mostly unchanged, consisting of the same cover based shooter game play with the RPG elements sprinkled on top. Every class has been granted a new subclass meaning that each of them now has one that covers each of the elements (fire, void and arc). The levelling and progression system has been significantly overhauled, providing a much smoother experience to levelling your character up both in level and gear terms. Many of the ancillary activities, like the Nightfall and Exotic Bounties, have also been reworked to favour continuous progression rather than constant praying to RNGJesus. Additionally there’s been many quality of life improvements which have made doing lots of things in Destiny a lot easier, much to the relief of long term players like myself. This is all in concert with a campaign that’s about half as long again as the original, making The Taken King well worth its current asking price.

The new subclasses might sound like a small addition but they’ve given new life to a lot of aspects of Destiny. Each new class essentially filled a hole that was lacking in the other two, allowing each class to be far more versatile than they were previously. The only issue I have with them so far is that the new subclasses feel a lot better at more things than their predecessors do which means pretty much everyone is solely using those classes now. Sure the Defender Titan’s bubble is still the ultimate defensive super however it pales in comparison to the toolset that the Sunbreaker has at their disposal. This might just be my impression given my current playstyle (mostly solo) and may change when I finally attempt the raid this week.

The revamp of the levelling system is probably the most welcome change. Unlike before where your level was determined by the light your gear had the new maximum level is now 40, achievable through grinding XP like any other RPG. Then once you hit the maximum level you have your Light Level which is an average of your gear’s damage output and defensive capabilities. As it stands right now that’s pretty much the only thing that matters when you’re attempting an encounter and so the higher your light level the easier it will be. Whilst it’s not a huge change from the previous system it does mean that there’s quite a lot more variety in terms of what gear you’ll end up using. This also means that a lot more pieces of gear, even those lowly blues which we used to disassemble immediately, are now quite viable.

This comes hand in hand with a revamp of how you can obtain gear in the game. Whilst there are still guaranteed ways of obtaining gear through marks (now Legendary Marks which are slightly hard to come by) you’ll mostly be looking for engrams. The engram rate has been significantly increased and when you get them decrypted they’ll roll a random light level in a +/- range of your current light level. This means that, in order to progress, it’s best to equip your highest light level gear and decode engrams. Doing this I was able to get myself to light level 295 in a relatively short period of time, more than enough to attempt the raid. This, coupled with the new avenues to better gear, mean that progression is far smoother than it was before.

The revamped quest and bounties system has everything in it that guardians have been asking for from day one. There’s now a separate tab that has everything in it, allowing you to track objectives so you can quickly see your status without having to pop out into the menu. This has allowed Bungie to include multiple questlines that all run simultaneously, something which was just not possible before. Many of these quests will help you get solid boosts in your light level and, if you follow some of the longer ones, unlock some of the best gear in the game. By far the stand out piece, in my mind, is the heavy sword which (when fully levelled) makes PVE encounters a breeze and the crucible a punchbro’s dream.

The Taken King expansion also gets massive kudos for fleshing out the lore of Destiny significantly. Part of this comes from the extended campaign missions that take you deep into the world of the Hive and the Taken but there’s also dozens of new bits of information scattered throughout the world (accessible through ghost scans). The Books of Sorrow provide a lot of background detail to all the races and their involvement with the Darkness as well as providing some insight into the events that led up to the Traveller’s current state. I’m still picking through it myself but it’s honestly great to see Bungie fleshing out this world as there’s so much potential here and I’d hate for it to go to waste. Additionally Nolan North replacing Peter Dinklage as the voice of your ghost is a welcome change, as is the addition of many more hours of voice acting from all the central characters.

Destiny: The Taken King is the expansion that all guardians had hoped for, bringing with it all the improvements that were sorely needed. It’s a testament to Bungie’s dedication to this IP as the amount of extra content they’ve released for Destiny in just one year is, honestly, staggering. The changes they made with this latest expansion have improved the experience dramatically, both for casual players and the hardcore alike. If you’d been staving off playing Destiny then now would definitely be a great time to give it a whirl as this is the game many are saying it should have been at launch. For long time guardians like myself it’s what was needed to bring me back to the fold and keep me playing for a long time to come.

Rating: 9.5/10

Destiny: The Taken King is available on PlayStation3, PlayStation4, XboxOne and Xbox360 for $79, $79, $79 and $79 respectively. Game was played on the PlayStation4 with approximately 20 hours of play time, reaching light level 295.