Activision and Bungie are about to release a new expansion pack for Destiny called The Taken King, and I got to play some of it recently and it made me want to play Destiny again.
Before I talk about The Taken King, I wanted to say why I stopped playing Destiny. Like a lot of players, as soon as Destiny was released last September I started playing it a lot. It didn’t take me very long to finish the story campaign, and like a lot of players I was left a little disappointed.
Destiny was supposed to be massive, so how did I complete the story that quickly? I could play in the Crucible and other PvP areas, but that wasn’t what I was really interested in. I could try the Strike missions but I found it hard to find people who wanted to play when I did, which meant playing with “randoms” which more often than not had them dropping out before the Strike was over leaving it very hard to finish. But I gave it a try and I waited for the first expansion pack to come out. It did, and I finished that story in a few hours! So back to waiting for the next pack – The House of Wolves – to be released.
This one when it came out was a lot better and had a longer story, but still, it felt like something was missing for me, so I stopped playing. Then Activision and Bungie announced The Taken King, and suddenly I was interested again, although I was a little dubious that it wouldn’t live up to the hype. The pack would have a new story campaign and quests, new enemies and locations, new Strikes and Crucible maps, and much more, but more interesting to me was the new set of subclasses for my Guardian, along with new weapons and gear.
So when I was given the opportunity to have a play on one of the new story missions I jumped at the chance. I don’t want to give anything away with the story, but I found myself really enjoying playing Destiny again. I had the chance to play with the new subclasses for all three Guardian types which bring along a new super. For the Warlocks there is a devastating electric storm, Hunters have a really cool energy bow and the Titans (my particular Guardian) has a flaming hammer that is just so much fun to wield. Just getting to play that one mission really sparked my interest in Destiny again and so in preparation for The Taken King I dusted off my Titan and have been playing again, and I have to say I have noticed a lot of subtle little changes in the game since the last time I really played it.
Luke Timmins is an Engineering Lead at Bungie and I got to sit down with him and talk about The Taken King and various changes the team have been implementing to make Destiny even better, so over to Luke:
Destiny: The Taken King will be released September 15th on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and I can’t wait to play more of it.
