A Week With Destiny The Taken King: Day 2

Author’s Note: This will be a part of a longer series of posts looking at some of the new features and my experiences in Destiny The Taken King leading up to a final review of this latest expansion. This will be part two of the discussion. Here is a link to Part One.

If there is anything Destiny The Taken King gets right, it is explaining the lore of Destiny should take place in game. For the first time, the game has given you a very succinct introduction to each aspect of the story it is introducing. Not with a sidenote from a character you walk into or a denotation in an offline codex, but with a full cutscene and explanation of what is happening and why.

Each segment of guardians has different subclasses and these classes are defined by distinct characteristics. There is even a backdrop in which these new subclasses started taking place with their own tribal learnings among the guardians. You have loner groups, roamers like the Nightstalker subclass and then you also have full on clans that have formed.

Enter the Sunbreaker clan of the Titan guardian class. Destiny The Taken King provides an entire backstory on each of the new subclasses. It is really interesting to get a deeper look at what has transpired in the years since the traveler went dark and how guardians have affiliated themselves over the years. I’ll spare ruining one of the more interesting storylines presented in the game here, but it is able to make Destiny’s world a bit more fascinating to think about.

The Sunbreaker clan takes you under their wing on the planet of Mercury. This is the first time Mercury is even a planet you can visit in Destiny. And it looks pretty awesome as the sun resides so profoundly in the backdrop of the level. See the picture below. The Sunbreaker clan themselves actually break it down for you so you can see

As with the Nightstalker subclass, Destiny introduces a series of challenges with an unending blessing of light to get you used to working with your new Sunbreaker hammer. It is a pretty cool ability. You throw the hammer causing an explosion of solar damage among enemies. It feels fantastic to use as well. I am still a little bit more partial to the Nightstalker in terms of new abilities, but it was pretty fun using the hammer to destroy enemies.

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The new look Destiny The Taken King doesn’t only explore new ways of storytelling about characters though. The entire backstory of what has been occurring since the Traveler went silent takes place. Then, on top of that, they also introduce you to the ongoing story of the events your character is currently enraptured in.

This all begins to present Destiny with a much broader sense of scale than the first iteration of the game did. It is not just a generically named combat simulator among the Milky Way. This is beginning to look like something a bit deeper. As such, each time you hop out of your ship, you begin to feel a bit more connected to things that are going on. They have also technically expanded things a bit more than usual even if only one off events take place there. The dreadnought of Oryx presides in the rings of Saturn. Your first mission takes place on Phobos, one of Mars’ moons.

Destiny The Taken King is shaping up to be really fun and the streamlined nature of everything in its presentation has greatly improved the experience of playing Destiny from Year One. The added weight of the story really makes the whole game much more engaging than it once was.

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