Destiny: The Taken King review

This is how you tell a story

“There is more story, cinematics, and character development in the first 30 minutes of TTK than all of the original release.”

That was the title of the number one post on the Destiny subreddit the day The Taken King was released, and I agree with it.

The very first mission throws you into chaos, with a giant Cabal warrior suddenly crawling at you, clearly dying. As you progress through a battlefield, watching these gargantuan beasts reduced to nothing, you’ll probably feel a twinge of Halo nostalgia, mixed with a healthy dose of curiosity and fear.

It’s followed by a cutscene and dialogue between various characters that blows anything else I’ve previously seen in Destiny out of the water.

The previously dull, two-dimensional Vanguard mentors (the trio of senior Guardians that send you on missions) now have fully fleshed out personalities, and Nathan Fillion’s performance as a rebellious Exo Hunter is just excellent.

Cutscene after cutscene felt like I was watching an actual Destiny movie, making the story far more engaging than Bungie’s previous efforts, and the extra personality goes a long way to help you care about what it is you’re actually doing.

The story itself is easy to follow and engaging, and sees players take on the Hive God Oryx. You’re number one on his ‘To Kill’ list, thanks to the fact that you and your friends disposed of his son Crota in the last raid (in fairness, he really was asking for it).

He’s so displeased in fact, that he’s decided to corrupt all sorts of different enemy races into his personal army of ‘Taken’, all of which want nothing more than to end your very existence.

The Taken enemies are dark, almost glitchy versions of familiar foes, and I love them. They remind me a little of the Flood in Halo, with their erratic movements and zombie-like qualities, although they thankfully don’t look as gross.

Each Taken enemy has a set of unique abilities, making them very formidable and rather dangerous. Fallen Taken Captains for example, can now move at approximately 1,000mph, teleporting around in the blink of an eye, and shooting you with waves of darkness, making you blind for a few seconds.

Then there’s the Cabal Psions, which split into two when you shoot them, or the darned Vex Hobgoblins that blast you with void cannons when they die, forcing you to scream like a little girl assess the situation carefully and make a tactical retreat.

They add a welcome twist to the gameplay, and Bungie throws in a few other surprises along the way, but I won’t spoil those for you here.

I hammered through the main story itself in around four hours, which I thought was a little short, but that’s by no means the entire, or even the main meaty filling, of The Taken King.

Time to explore

While there are a few new areas sprinkled on existing planets such as Earth and the Moon – with some of the Earth areas providing spectacular, jaw-dropping views – the star of The Taken King is the Dreadnaught – Oryx’s ship and all-new explorable area.

It’s a gigantic gloomy labyrinth of a ship with ominous dark hallways littered with skulls and bones, secret tunnels, and plenty of enemies to sink your bullets into.

Visually, it’s uniquely striking, and I’ve had genuine fun exploring its nooks and crannies without any real objective in mind.

The gem in its crown, is the Court of Oryx – an area which lets players activate runes to spawn waves of powerful enemies, netting you all plenty of loot in the process. It’s essentially like playing on a giant arcade machine, with players using up runes like coins – except deadlier, with more wizards shooting lightning at you.

Bungie really needed to add a new area to the game to keep things fresh, and while it’s technically not a new planet (though it is situated in Saturn’s rings), it’s a massive breath of fresh (stale, death-reeking) air.

It’s stuffed with mysterious locked chests, new materials to collect and puzzles to figure out, and it’s by far my favourite area in the game to date.

A whole new you

The Taken King introduces three new subclasses to the Destiny universe – a void-based Hunter, an arc damage Warlock, and a solar Titan.

Each class has its own miniature story quest line in which they discover their new powers. I’ve only played as a Warlock so far, and – without spoiling anything – the way in which I obtained my lightning powers was rather awesome.

Until now, the Hunter has always been an attack-centric class, with the golden Gun and Arc Blade supers both focused on dealing out massive damage and slicing through foes ultra quickly.

The new Nightstalker Hunter subclass is instead a support role that makes use of a void damage bow to ensnare enemies and make them immobile, leaving them open to attack.

Other notable abilities include a Voidwall Grenade, which throws up a wall of damaging light, and a smokescreen that disorientates and slows down targets.

The Sunbreaker Titan is probably the most notable new class, as it offers titans a ranged super attack for the first time. Arguably the coolest super in the game, Sunbreakers can summon the Hammer of Sol, which is essentially Thor’s hammer but, you know, on fire.

Said hammer can be used to devastating effect, killing enemies with mighty blows across a large area. The current Fist of Havoc, like the Warlock’s Nova Bomb, is a one-hit kill, but is limited to a restricted area of damage.

The new hammer lets Titans run around killing foes over a wider area, making them a formidable enemy in the deatmatch-style Crucible mode. Like existing Sunsinger Warlocks, solar burn damage is also on the cards, letting you watch enemies’ health tick away before they drop dead to the floor.

Lastly we have the Stormcaller Warlock, whose super is essentially Emperor Palpatine on a bad day. Warlocks can now tap into the power of arc energy and fry multiple enemies with bolts of lightning, shot straight out of their fingertips.

It offers more flexibility than the single-area damage Nova Bomb, and the new grenades, which call down bolts of lightning, are an absolute joy to use.

Another personal favourite is a perk that instantly recharges your punch power if any enemy hits you, and it’s proved to be incredibly useful (to the point that it’s almost unfair), in the Crucible.

Not that I’m complaining, you understand. I’m Warlock 4 Life, yo.

Out with the old, in with the new

The arrival of The Taken King marks the end of some of my favourite weapons, as their damage levels will no longer be upgradeable.

At first, the thought of putting my hard-earned Fatebringer out to pasture made me sadder than I care to admit, but within an hour I’d forgotten all about it. The new weapons in The Taken King look and feel excellent, and even the basic, common blue and green items pack a decent punch.

There’s even a new sword that can go in your heavy weapon slot. It makes cool swishing noises when you wave it around, and I’m currently halfway through forging one.

Selected exotic weapons and armour class can be carried over and upgraded with a new blueprint system, but I’m looking forward to seeing what new threads and weapons I can use this time around.

There’s also a new light and level system which, while confusing at first, soon becomes clear. Whereas before your level was tied to your armour’s light level, the two are now separate. Your overall level is now based entirely on experience points, and existing players will probably hit the new maximum of 40. But your new light level will take a lot longer to max-out.

It’s calculated from a combination of your weapons’ attack level and your armour level, and it can be bolstered by different ghost shells, artifacts and class items. The light level is the new factor that determines which missions and Strikes you’ve got a realistic chance of completing, and the game is far less forgiving of under-powered players than it has been in any previous version of Destiny.

I tried to do the Daily Heroic Mission (which was previously extremely easy for high level players), and despite being just 20 light points short of the recommended level, I found it utterly impossible. The Nightfall and Weekly Heroic activities are even harder, and many players will struggle to even bolster their light level enough to have a crack at those in their first week.

This new light level system, coupled with the new Legendary Marks (a currency earned through various missions and quests) all appear to have the sole aim of slowing player progress down.

It sounds strange, but I actually think that this is a good thing. It’ll stop people burning themselves out and maxing everything out in a few weeks, after which they’ll complain that there’s nothing left to do.

Content with content

Although the main story concerning your battle with Oryx might seem relatively short at around four hours long, players actually have a lot more content to grab hold of this time around.

Before we’ve been consigned to repeating the same bounties over and over and over again, but Bungie’s injected a good deal of variety with The Taken King, with tonnes of quests to keep players occupied.

At the time of writing, after the first day, I’ve got at least ten active quests on the go, each one of which has enough variation to keep things feeling fresh.

This is, however, only after the first 12-hour day, so it’ll be interesting to see how (or if) these different quest lines will be varied after the first week or so. There’s definitely a danger of repetition down the line, once players have completed everything there is to complete, but if the quests get refreshed and tweaked regularly, then there could be enough to keep players in the Destiny world without them feeling as though they’re beating a dead horse. Of course it helps that the actual amount of content is now vastly larger than it was when Destiny first launched.

In fact, The Taken King adds four new Strikes (three-player specific missions that are a good deal bigger and more rewarding than the standard story missions), taking the total up to 13. The new ones manage to introduce some new mechanics and present a fairly formidable challenge without ever becoming head-bangingly brutal. The bosses at the end of each Strike are all more interesting than the boring bullet sponges we’ve become a little too familiar with, too.

U wot m8

Ah, the Crucible – a place where Destiny players go to shoot each other, and solve their differences with grenades, knives and multiple things that go boom.

With The Taken King, Bungie has thrown two new game modes into the mix – Rift and Mayhem. The former is essentially a single-flag capture the flag affair, except the flag is replaced with a spark, which periodically spawns at the centre of a map. Teams must control the spark and carry it to the enemy base before slam dunking it in the enemy rift to score big points.

It’s not quite the two-flag CTF mode that ex-Halo fans might have craved, but it’s a lot of (very stressful) fun, especially if you’re a player who enjoys objective-based matches rather than just shooting anything that moves without a second though. As with any objective game mode, it can be frustrating at times, especially if you’re playing with random teammates who don’t communicate. All too often I’ve found myself rushing around in a blind panic with the spark, screaming for backup that never arrives and eventually meeting my demise at business end of an enemy shotgun. Go team.

The other new mode, Mayhem, is aptly named. In it, Guardians’ supers are recharged at a significantly faster rate. This of course leads to utter chaos, as people wave around their explosive space magic, Earth-shattering grenades and fiery punches without a care in the world.

It’s not the sort of thing you’ll probably want to play all night given how hectic it is, but it’s essentially Destiny set to God Mode, and can be great fun.

Down with the King