What also helps is how this expansion connects story and gameplay better than the base game. Oryx’s presence is felt all throughout Taken King and Destiny as a whole, from the moment you select the game on your system and see his glowing eyes to roaming a planet and having a small group of Taken pop up in the area. Even when you’re not doing the story missions, you feel like you’re growing in power for when you eventually have to go up against the titular big bad. The new subclasses don’t hurt either, to their credit. When you start the mission to acquire new powers, the music swells and the narration sets the stage; there’s history in the Vanguards talking about the power behind your new abilities. Flowery dialogue it may be, but damn if it doesn’t fit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE-JpDHjSXE
Taken King provided a complete beginning, middle, and end (much better than the base game), and for many, that was assumed to be the end of Destiny’s first story. Surprisingly, that turned out not to be the case, as last week’s Rise of Iron has shown us. The new (and presumably final for reals) expansion deals with Guardians helping Lord Saladin put an end to the SIVA virus his fellow Iron Lords died locking away years prior. It’s a more straightforward story than Taken, to be sure, but there’s a sense that you’re a part of something bigger as you walk up the mountain reclaim Felwinter Peak from the Fallen. Wielding Saldin’s flaming axe has weight behind it, almost as much as zapping baddies like your Emperor Palpatine or shooting energy arrows.
If House of Wolves was an outlaw story and Taken King was a revenge story, Rise of Iron is a legacy story. It’s a smart move on Bungie’s part, getting players to become more invested in the lore by showing the history behind the guns they use in battle, and certainly a preferable approach to than Grimoire Cards. For some players it won’t matter, but others may decide to play through the story missions of the expansion with the guns named after those Lords, just for the symbolic experience.
Vanilla Destiny was sparse on cutscenes, and so was Taken, but that’s not the case with Rise; it’s the most cutscene heavy expansion of them all. It’s easy to see why, since Bungie wants you to feel like you’re stepping into the shoes of literal legends in this new expansion. Saladin’s Iron Banner has turned out to be training of sorts for when the SIVA virus would come back. While you can go into the expansion relatively blind and still feel like a student walking through a history museum, you’ll definitely get the most out of it if you’ve been participating in the Banner and have gotten the guns named after the dead Iron Lords. Even completing the campaign in its entirety, raid included, gives you a sense of accomplishment and makes you feel like an Iron Lord.
There’s still a good amount of mystery surrounding the upcoming Destiny 2. All we know about it is the recent reports of it coming to PC and possibly jettisoning everything from the first game to become something completely new. It’ll definitely be a shame if our Guardian doesn’t stick around for the next big story, but if this also provides an even better story for the base game–and going off this possible art of the Last City in flames, that may be the case–that’ll at least be some consolation.
