When Bungie and Activision announced plans for The Taken King, fans and critics assumed it was "just another expansion pack" providing new content for longtime players. When Bungie categorized it as the start of "Year 2" with loads of new features and refinements, nobody thought much of it.
We had no idea how wrong we were. There's new content, oh yes — and loads of it. But The Taken King is nothing less than a comprehensive re-thinking of the entire game, going all the way back to the very beginning. It's not a polish or a new coat of paint. It's a remade game down to the core.
Maybe Bungie lowered our expectations on purpose, hoping that once people played The Taken King, they would be pleasantly surprised (utterly stunned, is more like it) by all that had changed. If that was their strategy, then it worked brilliantly. Because The Taken King flat-out knocks your socks off. Destiny is now, at last, a compelling, addictive, generation-defining title that is unequivocally a must-have.
Bungie listened to its fans
First and foremost, there's evidence everywhere you look that Bungie hash heard the cries of its fans, and responded. From little tweaks to the interface to finally getting to visit long-teased locations (like one of those alluringly just-out-of-reach, towering colony ships in the Cosmodrome), much of The Taken King feels like it came about because of fan requests.
Leveling up is a snap
It's rare by now to see anyone below Level 40, because everything you do, every kind of experience you undertake, contributes to leveling up. It used to be such a slog just to get to Level 20, and then acquiring the right weapons to take you higher was enough to drive one mad. This system gets it right.
NPCs come alive
In the original game and the last two DLCs, Lance Reddick, Nathan Fillion and Gina Torres were often unrecognizable automatons who blandly intoned orders or commended you for good work before immediately sending you back out to thefight. One of The Taken King's smartest moves is to bring these three characters to life, injecting them with personalities and even conflicting agendas.
No character benefits from this more than Fillion's Cayde-6, since the actor was finally allowed to let out his inner Fillion-ness. He hams it up to perfection, dropping dry one-liners and making passive-aggressive criticisms about his fellow leaders at the Tower. His cheeky interactions with the always-serious Eris Morn are a highlight of the new story campaign. (And it was a nice move by Bungie to bring all of those actors back in and record new dialogue. There are several awesome new CGI cutscenes, too.)
The Blessed Quest Screen
What a brilliant addition the Quest screen is. Finally you can easily keep track of not just your bounties but every quest or mission you've been given by someone in the Tower. If there's a certain number of things you must acquire or enemies to kill, you get a meter that shows exactly how much further you have to go. If you can't remember what you traveled to Venus or Mars for, just pull up the Quest screen and you'll find your goal right there, with simple, concise instructions.
Everything you do matters
Thanks to the renewed focus on the importance of story, you really feel like your every action has genuine consequences. Perfect example: much has been said about the new subclasses each of the three kinds of Guardians (Hunter, Warlock and Titan) gain access to in The Taken King. Based on past experience, you'd expect that third subclass to simply appear as a new option, out of the blue. Just because. But instead, the new subclasses are introduced as part of the story campaign -- and each class gets a separate story mission that's all about gaining that new subclass. It matters because it's an important part of the story.
The Dreadnaught is the best and most interesting location ever
It sounds like a flagship, but it's much more than that. Think of it as the science fiction version of a massive enemy castle, where endless exploration and an enormous amount of goodies await discovering. There are also enemies of all kinds located throughout the ship. One of the most memorable locations is a gigantic hull breach, where a giant Cabal ship has crashed into the Dreadnaught — and the Cabal vessel's interior is fully playable, too. Public Events occur on the Dreadnaught, but the twist is that they're not scheduled; players initiate them directly.
The new content is terrific — and the old content is better than ever
The loads of new weapons and gear, the new pathways to getting exotics, the expanded amounts of everything you can carry (including quests and bounties), the tough new enemies known as the Taken, the swords you can finally own (swords!)... It's fantastic, long awaited stuff, and the story content is by far the best Destiny has ever had. Working your way up the ranks until you face Oryx himself is a thrilling undertaking, and you really feel the full weight of your quest as it progresses.
But none of this comes at the expense of underscoring all of the old content's shortcomings. Those shortcomings have been fixed, with the very structure of those old story missions, strikes and raids being reconfigured to function more like The Taken King's vastly improved way of doing things. It's all one smooth, consistent experience.
The Tower is a genuinely useful place now
Aside from being the place to purchase gear as you're leveling up or to stop by and pick up bounties or decrypt engrams, plenty of thought and attention went into making the Tower a more important part of the overall experience.
There are Collection kiosks located at several places to help you track all of the items you've collected, along with hints of where to find the items you're missing. The Gunsmith will now offer you prototype weapons to try out on specific tasks, which you'll gain experience points for with him. Level up with the Gunsmith and you'll be able to place orders for Legendary items, which are delivered on Wednesdays. You don't have to return to the Tower to turn in completed bounties anymore; they can be turned in anywhere in the game. That's handy, and really helps with leveling up, particularly since bounties have become one of the best ways to do that.
On the other hand...
My one gripe is that The Taken King tries as hard as it can to force you to play alongside others. It shoves co-op down your throat, sometimes requiring it as the only way to complete the next step in a quest.
For those fortunate enough to have a regular group of trusted friends to play with, this doesn't pose a problem. But there are probably a lot more players that opt to go it alone, and having co-op imposed on you this way is frustrating. It feels uncomfortably like how your teacher in grade school would team a popular kid up with a shy one, as a way to keep anyone from feeling left out. It just makes things worse.
That's because the real problem boils down to the players, not Bungie. There's a reason many gamers (like myself) hate multiplayer. Every time I've tried a co-op mode like a Strike, I've wound up trying to fight next to elitist, impatient, childish jerks. Most recently, I tried one of the new Strikes as part of an ongoing quest, and I was barely in the fight for a few minutes — after chasing both of my "partners" through the level as they charged ahead at a reckless, breakneck pace — before both of them dropped out because I wasn't performing at their level.
I'll never understand why anybody would want to play multiplayer when you're forced to play with pompous tyrants.
...But Still Totally Worth It
Despite that caveat, The Taken King is a revelation, a transformative experience that has turned Destiny into the game that Bungie intended for it to be from the start. Bungie refers to The Taken King as "Destiny: Year 2," but it might as well be called Destiny 2, because there's more than enough content to constitute a whole new game.
If you've never tried Destiny, now is the perfect time. And if you've tried it but dropped out, you owe it to yourself to give it one more chance with The Taken King.
True story: I had written off ever playing it again a few months back, after tiring of the endless grinding it required. But when Activision sent me The Taken King, I decided to give it one more shot.
Now it's all I want to play.
Be sure to follow T-Lounge on Twitter and visit our Facebook page.
