As part of Game Informer’s September cover story, we have learned that the second expansion to Destiny, The Taken King, has a lot of changes headed to the players. First and foremost, the voice of your Ghost will no longer be Peter Dinklage. Bungie has gone to veteran voice actor Nolan North to take on the voice, and not only will he be the Ghost in the new expansion, but they have gone back and erased all of Peter Dinklage’s dialogue, effectively killing Dinklebot.
The next piece of news we have from the story is that the level system is getting revamped in a major way. In the first year of Destiny, the level cap was 30; 20 of those levels were earned through experience, and the next 10 were done with the light level associated with your armor. Throughout the other expansions, that level cap has been increased to 34. Once The Taken King releases, however, Bungie has revealed that the level cap will get pushed up to 40, with leveling no longer being tied to your light. Instead, you’ll just rank up as you play with the experience you earn. The loot system is also being retooled, giving players less duplicate items as they find them.
Weapons are also due for a change in Year Two of Destiny, according to Bungie. The weapons that players have come to know as their go to weapons won’t be that after Year Two starts. “Year One” weapons and armor, as they will come to be known, won’t level up past their current level. The gear will be okay for the early part of the expansion, but as time goes on, tons of new items will easily dwarf whatever you have now. According to creative director Luke Smith, “There are definitely some weapons that you are going to find better versions of — there’s going to be something that replaces that sniper rifle that you love,”.
Normally I get pretty down on Destiny for it’s choices (I stopped playing back House of Wolves released). I thought that the game had ultimately become an endless grind of doing the same raids in hopes of leveling up, and I couldn’t justify playing it anymore. However, I have to hand it to Bungie; if this works as promised, then there’s going to be a much easier learning curve for incoming players and even for some old veterans like myself to return.
Destiny: The Taken King will release on September 15, for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox 360.
