Destiny The Taken King Updates: New Patrol Locations, Taken Army and New PvP Modes

The Dreadnaught – Source: Bungie

So we all know that Destiny’s third expansion, The Taken King, is coming September 15, 2015 to PlayStation and Xbox. Bungie, in a weekly news update revealed various new story locations for the long awaited expansion, ominous concept art showcasing the menacing castle in the sky, the Dreadnaught.

Andrew Hopps, Senior Artist commenting on the games new playscape in the games weekly update stated:

“It is important to us that you would feel the scale as you moved through the hulls of the Dreadnaught, never sure about what to expect as large spaces condensed to claustrophobic tunnels before revealing entirely new areas of the ship. A sense of wonder about the unknown is what drove a lot of the spatial design. It was an incredibly fun challenge to find the right balance between a mysterious tomb ship and the flagship for the Taken fleet – to capture the idea of this unfathomable threat, a monstrous spaceship captained by the Taken King, yet filled with vast caverns and unknown passages. I can’t wait for players to explore and discover all of its secrets.”

During an interview with VG247, Luke Timmins, Bungie programmer, had commented on various new elements for the third expansion. Timmins had explained that the expansion will occur in two new locations; Mars’ moon, Phobos, and Oryx’s spaceship, the Dreadnaught.

“The first mission you’re going to play is called The Coming War, and it takes place on Phobos, which is Mars’ moon. You can actually see Phobos in the sky-box when you’re playing on Mars, and now you get to go there. That’s where the new campaign kicks off. But the new destination in The Taken King is the Dreadnaught. The Taken King is this ancient Hive lord who’s come to this system on a mission of revenge, to get back at those guardians who defeated his son Crota, and he’s brought with him a Taken army.”

Timmins also went into detail on the subject of the expansions new enemies. The Taken Knight for instance has special abilities which allow him to teleport and conjure up a wall of flames, while the Taken Phalanx, like the traditional Phalanx’s, have the power to use their shields to aggressively push guardians utilizing what Bungie have called a, “radiating force.” Lastly, Timmins commented on the Taken Psions, which surprisingly has a freakish new power which allows him duplicate himself.

Creative Director of The Taken King, Luke Smith noted that, “one of the design goals for TTK was to make the alien races of Destiny feel even more alien.”

Concept Art – Source: Bungie

In-Game

Designer Ben Wommack in the update also explained that the studio additionally made efforts into making changes for in-game patrols.

“We’ve created a suite of new mechanics and woven them into the Patrol mode. Every week, every day even, it will draw you back to fight through to its depths for loot and glory. Expect to find new Bounties, Patrol Missions, and Public Events both large and small – some of which you can even investigate yourself, if you can discover how.”

The images provided above is an illustration of The Taken King’s second patrol area which takes place on Oryx’s Dreadnaught – a menacing empire in the galaxy. Details of this ominous area indicates that the Dreadnaught is home to the Taken; which for anyone unfamiliar with this title, is the name for the “new” enemies for the expansion. Although there are the obvious quotation marks surrounding the word new to subtly direct sarcasm towards Bungie’s lack of creativity when it comes to conjuring up new enemies, but instead recycle old enemies, I can’t help but feel torn between the choice behind re-skinning older mobs.

The word “taken” which finds itself at the beginning of every enemies name,  points towards the fact that these enemies have indeed been taken and in a sense brainwashed into joining Oryx’s army, as is evident during an official, “The Taken King ViDoc,” where enemies are shown with an luminous white, “supernatural flame which burns them from the inside” as Art Director, Michael Zak commented.

Concept Art – Source: Bungie

In-Game

The Design lead for Destiny, Lars Bakken, spoke in length about the games new PvP modes. One game mode titled, Mayhem, which is a completely new competitive mode of crucible. He commented, “we wanted to see what happened when we let ability energy and super energy recharge really quickly, which is where the name Mayhem comes from, which is essentially team death-match.”

The second new mode of PvP is what Bakken called, Rift. This second style of play is what the games PvP system was lacking to begin with and completely contrasts the traditional games crucible mode of, Control. Bakken asserted that each team has to attempt to grab what he called a spark, which players would then proceed to take to the enemy teams rift.

“There’s two ways players can do this. You can go in forwards and do the traditional dunk right in, and players can also back-flip dunk which nets you extra points for style. If the enemy team grab it, you then have to defend your point and make sure they don’t bring the spark back into your rift.”

So what do you guys think about these updates, locations and information on The Taken King expansion?

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