Destiny: The Taken King
Let’s first address the elephant in the room. Destiny is a game that has been under a microscope since it was announced back in 2013. Bungie had created Halo, what is arguably one of the biggest FPS games out there right now (now helmed by 343 Industries), so the pressure was on. The game was well received but was notably lacking in certain areas, primarily narrative.
Two expansions were released as part of an ‘Expansion Pass’ (although each could be purchased separately at a slight premium), and while they introduced cool weapons and new areas, they still felt like more of what players already had. It was the same Hive and the same Fallen everyone had already gotten used to, and the fact that Destiny Year Two would make some of the content pretty much useless didn’t help matters. Destiny needed something grand to help carry it into its second year.
That’s where The Taken King came in. Here was an expansion that completely transformed the Destiny experience. A coherent narrative was weaved into the already existing game and expansions, and a Quest structure was introduced in order to provide easy to follow story threads. Characters were fleshed out a bit more, leveling and rewards were redone, and new subclasses were thrown in to keep things interesting. This DLC was essentially an entirely new game.
Other additions came in the form of things that should have been available since day one. Everything your Guardian wears now has stats, you can repurchase weaker versions of Exotics as long as you’ve found them before, and the infusion of weapons and gear allows you to keep some of your favorite weapons around longer. Oh, and more dancing, you can never have too much dancing.
The Taken King was proof that Bungie was listening to fan feedback. Let’s just hope they’re still listening as we move into 2016.
