Evening, Guardians!
DeeJ just posted the Bungie Weekly Update a short time ago, which is probably the most interesting BWU in quite some time now. This week DeeJ explains that in the coming weeks we will be finding out a lot more information about The Taken King. While nothing specific is revealed or discussed this week, the Update does mention some basic information about TTK, including what the Expansion comes with in terms of content, but it's more of a tease than anything!
Most of the stuff that DeeJ lists as being in the Expansion is fairly obvious and and self explanatory, like "New Exotics" or "New weapons." There are, however, a few things that stood out to me that I think are worth talking about, so let's get right to it!
"New story missions and an array of sidequests..."
As we've known for a while now, The Taken King is supposed to be the largest Destiny expansion yet. It's been rumored to contain more content than both The Dark Below and House of Wolves expansions combined (which isn't too hard to imagine!) and some even speculate that it's amount of content will rival that of the original Destiny game.
The mention of sidequests is particularly interesting, and I think it gives a fairly good insight into how large this expansion will actually be. Since the main story missions will probably be greater in number than the story missions for HoW, I think it's safe to assume that TTK will ship with at least six story missions. The idea of having side quests in addition to this is awesome, in no small part because it means that TTK shouldn't become stale and repetitive quite as fast as the previous expansions have.
"The Dreadnaught, a full new destination, with unique secrets, rituals and treasures to uncover."
The Dreadnaught, essentially Oryx's floating palace, will be Destiny's first completely new destination since Launch. It's apparently pretty large and is the setting for several story missions, at least one Strike, and the new Raid. But what are these "unique secrets, rituals and treasures?" My guess is that the rituals that DeeJ hints at could very likely be a new Public Event (or two or three). That makes sense, right? As for the treasures, its possible that there will be another set of Golden Chests to discover, but it's entirely possible that this is something completely different. The "unique secrets" that we will uncover is fairly generic, and could be literally anything, so I'm not going to speculate on that for now.
"A new breed of enemy combatants, The Taken, armed with new abilities and weapons"
We saw pieces of this before, but since this is basically confirmation, I thought it was worth discussing. The Taken are not simply reskins of existing enemies. They may look similar to existing enemies in the Destiny universe, but the Taken are designed to function like an entirely new enemy faction. The new weapons and abilities will make fighting a Taken Acolyte distinctly different from a regular Acolyte, and that is pretty exciting in my book!
"New subclasses with all new Supers and abilities"
There's nothing hinted at here that we didn't already know. However, I think it's worth taking a look at my previous post about these new supers. Some more information has been leaked, so I'll be updating it to make it even more comprehensive in the coming days.
"New cooperative Strikes with unique and dynamic new Boss battles"
Some where, some time ago, I believe it was on NeoGaf, a Bungie employee commented that in the future, Boss battles in Strikes would become more dynamic and interesting. In the few short clips that have been released of the new Boss battles, they do appear to be decidedly more interesting. One that stood out in particular was a large Cabal with a jet pack, who was fairly mobile around the encounter space and even very aggressive. It may be a bit early to be saying this, but with this small hint from DeeJ, I think spongey and stationary Boss battles might be a thing of the past.
"Redesigned and Reimagined Strikes..."
It was previously hinted at before that a handful of Destiny's existing strikes would be receiving a few tweaks and modifications with the arrival of TTK. In the Weekly Update, DeeJ confirmed that the Cerberus Vae III, Dust Palace, and Undying Mind Strikes will "now overrun by Taken." This is something interesting, as there are two ways I could see this playing out. The first is to simply replace the existing strikes with the newly modified versions. The second option, and in my opinion the more likely route, is to have two versions of these three Strikes, one in the original state, and one in the modified state. This would allow for easy addition of new content since they could have the original versions and their original level, and the new version at a presumably higher level.
These new versions of the Strikes will likely make an attempt to fix some of the issues with the original versions. This probably means more dynamic Boss battles, and possibly better encounters all throughout the Strikes. On a side note, since it was also mentioned that we will be receiving "new" Strikes, it is likely that these reskins aren't the only Strike related content we will see in TTK.
"The biggest six-player Raid yet"
It's no secret that the Destiny Community as a whole was fairly disappointed with the absence of a Raid in House of Wolves. It's even less of a secret that many people were disappointed with Crota's End. It's nice to know that this new Raid will be the biggest one yet, as one of the things that was disappointing about CE was it's relative shortness. Since Bungie has had plenty of time to work on this Raid, I have pretty high expectations for it, but I'm sure that the Raid will live up to them and probably even surpass them. Since Luke Smith keeps dropping plenty of references to the secrets of the Vault of Glass, I'm willing to bet that this new Raid will have it's fair share of secrets and hidden surprises.
"New narrative driven by cinematic cutscenes starring an engaging cast of characters"
This was my favorite tease from the entire Update. The few cutscenes that were included with HoW were so nice, but having cutscenes that actually drive the story that TTK is trying to tell will be even better. Cutscenes are one thing that has been sorely missing from Destiny, even from the beginning. With the Halo games, the cutscenes made the story. They added so much weight, perspective, and most importantly, exposition to the story, that it made Halo's story, well, an actual story. The story of HoW was an improvement on the "story" for the original game and TDB. But, if Bungie combines cutscenes with the voice over elements used in the the HoW missions and a few other elements already in use in Destiny, then I think the story of TTK will be significantly better than any "story" that has been told in Destiny thus far.
To hear that not only are there actual cutscenes, but that they drive the narrative, is great. It really makes me excited for TTK at a time when I was starting to get bored with Destiny's lack of immersive storytelling. The tease of "engaging characters" is also a breathe of fresh air, since most of the existing custcenes only feature our Guardian and maybe one other character.
Bungie Day
DeeJ also teased about what will be going down on Bungie Day, which is this Tuesday. Year One players of Destiny will be excited to hear that Bungie will be announcing how veteran players can "achieve permanent, exclusive legendary status." DeeJ says that it's something they've "been working on for a while," so hopefully it's good! But, there's nothing more beyond that, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see what it is!
That's all for this analysis of the Bungie Weekly Update. Be sure to check out the official Update for a visit from the DOC and to check out the Movie of the Week!
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