One Life Left: The Taken King

Just over a year ago, I wrote a mixed review of Bungie’s Destiny. The game was plagued with connection bugs, a lack of any semblance of a story and a pretty flat player experience overall. I gave the game a generous 7 out of 10, with hopes that it would improve as time went on. It took a year, but the massive multiplayer online shooter has finally come around with its latest expansion: The Taken King.

TTK was released two months ago on Sep. 15, marking the beginning of year two for Destiny. The concept of a game running through a “second year” is unique to Destiny on the console platform. Previously, the only games to use such a concept were PC games like World of Warcraft that steadily released expansions over time. This was made possible because such games required the use of internet. Constant internet access allowed developers to keep improving and adding onto their games as players enjoyed it.

Destiny has taken advantage of modern consoles to follow the lead of those aforementioned PC-based games. To date, Destiny has released the base game along with three expansions, the most recent being TTK. Bungie uses these expansions to move the story of the game world forward, as well as respond to some of the criticism from Destiny’s community on how to make the game more enjoyable and balanced.

One of the biggest things Bungie has done with TTK is establish a clear and easy-to-follow storyline — something entirely absent upon release of the original game. What happens?

In the game’s first expansion, The Dark Below, the player set out to stop the invasion of Earth by an alien prince-god named Crota, who took the Moon from humanity with an army of “Hive,” one of the evil alien races waging war on the Last City. The expansion culminated in the death of Crota at the hands of the player using the god’s own sword. Crota’s father Oryx, also known as the Taken King, catches wind of the death of his son and comes to our solar system upon his ship, the Dreadnaught, seeking revenge. He brings with him an army of Taken. The Taken are creatures that Oryx has “taken” or stripped them of their will and given new powers in return. Thus, the developers have remade old enemies to change up the combat experience for players.

Your job as a Guardian of the Last City is to sneak onto the Dreadnaught, shut down its weapons and establish a beachhead from which you and other Guardians like you can advance to challenge the Taken hoard. The expansion ends in a brand new raid called King’s Fall, where you and five of your closest friends plunge into the depths of the Dreadnaught to destroy Oryx once and for all.

As previously mentioned, the developer, Bungie, often uses expansions to respond to the community’s criticisms of the game – and TTK does mark several important improvements to Destiny. The foremost change in TTK is the introduction of three new subclasses. The Warlocks gained arc abilities with the new Stormcaller subclass, the Hunter learned to harness the void with its new Nightstalker subclass and, in turn, Titans went eco-friendly with the addition of solar power in the new Sunbreaker subclass. Along with each new subclass comes a new super ability as well. The Stormcallers channel their inner Chancellor Palpatine and shoot lightning out of their fingertips. The Nightstalker is the first assist-based Hunter subclass whose new super, Shadowshot, allows them to anchor enemies in place. The Titans use the Hammer of Sol to throw exploding hammers that decimate their opponents.

Another big addition to the game is the Infusion mechanic, which allows you to upgrade your favorite weapons and armor to a higher level by sacrificing another piece of gear at a higher level. This allows players the freedom of choice in which gear they wear unlike in previous expansions where everyone was wearing the same gear they got from the raid.

The developers also addressed the issue of boss fights. The new boss encounters use a variety of different mechanics to keep them interesting, unlike many of the older encounters which simply required you to put an ungodly amount of bullets into your target.

TTK is not without its flaws. In classic Destiny fashion, certain aspects of the game are extremely tedious. Several quests require you to spend a ridiculous amount of time going around and collecting resources in the game’s Patrol mode – the removal of purchasable upgrade materials in TTK only exasperates this problem. As useful as the new Infusion function in the game is, it often takes too long to find a piece of gear of a high enough level to upgrade a weapon or piece of armor in your inventory. Finally, the introduction of the Sunbreaker class has thrown the competitive multiplayer way off balance in favor of the Thor look-a-likes.

In the grand scheme of things, Destiny has come a long way since its release in September 2014. TTK has improved upon a lot and the developers are already looking into fixes for many of the issues I just mentioned. Overall, I give Destiny: The Taken King an 8.5 out of 10 for now.