Now He Comes For Us All
Destiny has released its latest expansions The Taken King for all current platforms, and with it, a multitude of gameplay changes and interface upgrades. Even before being released, Bungie had interviews that described what they wanted to do and what they wanted to fix to make their player base enjoy it even more. They knew there were problems and they wanted to fix them as soon as possible. Thus, with the release of the current expansion, the players got just that and a heck of a lot more.
The Taken King, or TTK for short, enhanced how the story is told to the player. Before hand, it didn’t feel like there was much interaction between the player and the NPC’ (Non-controllable player/People) in terms of a story. Sure, you had to go to them to get a quest, but they wouldn’t really interact. They would say few words that were not related to what you were about to do and then fall silent. They didn’t have much life to them nor did they appreciate your efforts for what you were accomplishing. Now with the TTK, that has changed drastically. Picking up quest lines, the NPC’s express more gratitude and concern, as well as seem to give the sense of hope that you are the only one capable of completing the mission at hand, which is a nice touch. Even though it may not be the biggest of changes, it still gives the player a sense of accomplishment and a place within the game, making the character that they created feel more alive. The quests given also provide you, depending on the quest, actual legendary armor. It may not be the highest in defense, but for the time you complete it, you probably don’t have anything better so it’s a nice touch to keep making the player want to continue. TTK also brought some interesting interface changes.
TTK released a lot of user-interface changes, such as the way you can view quest lines, pick-up or hand in bounties, track currently selected missions, and so on. It gave the old interface, a new face. It was well needed though, both from reading on the forums and playing the game myself, I’m glad it happened. Before it was a hassle to have to travel back and forth between your menu and the game to see how many enemies you needed to punch in the face before dying to complete the bounty, and then to go all the way back to the tower (the social area, or lobby in a sense for Destiny) to then have to run up to a NPC and hand in the bounty. Now you can do that simply from the menu, so you can continue collecting loot and slaying evil doers alongside friends. With that in mind, it means you can continue leveling up at a faster rate, and raising your light with the new changes installed.
Weapon changes, armor changes, and the greatest thing of all, light level, got changed. For those of you who have played Destiny at the time where light level was the cruelest thing ever, Bungie has finally removed the concept that your level was based of the light score provided by your armor. The leveling system now revolves around a normal experience gain, making the max level you can achieve 40. Light has been revamped; it is now an average of both the weapons and armor you currently have equipped, making it based off of damage for weapons, and the defense stats for your armor. This allows for a steady climb in damage potential, making it less punishing if you are a few light levels behind compared to the old system. This, in my personal standpoint, is by far the greatest improvement that has come to TTK. I had characters that were stuck in limbo in terms of having to do the same raid countless times to try and get better gear than what I had. Now, all my characters are roughly evenly balanced.
Personally, TTK is worth the price. You can pick up the new copy of Destiny which, if you have not seen the commercials for is known as Destiny: The Taken King, for a sales price of 69.99$ and it comes with Destiny, the first two dlc’s and The Taken King, which is a lot cheaper than what I spent being that I played from the start. It’s a great way to hop back in if you had gotten bored of Destiny and returned your copy to EB games and you save a lot more money than if you were like me and bought the dlc expansion pass plus the game, plus The Taken King.
Written By: Cayde-6
Originally Published: September 2015
