Show me to your (Taken) King

We are only a few days from the release of Destiny‘s latest expansion, The Taken King and I have been spending a lot of time getting my characters prepared. I’ll admit that I had been excited about House of Wolves almost solely based on the idea of end game content geared toward a three person fireteam. Sadly, it didn’t quite hit the mark. So why am I so psyched about this new set of content when I’ve ended up feeling at least a little let down by previous expansions? It’s because we’ve already been experiencing a big chunk of the new changes that it brings and they’ve been a damn nice change of pace.

I’m not about to do a complete rehash of everything that’s come from the Destiny 2.0 patch. If you’re looking for a comprehensive breakdown of it, check out the the Taken King Mega Wiki over on the Destiny subreddit. What I am going to do is share my favorite bits and talk about what I’m doing in anticipation of the big launch on Tuesday.

As with all new things, it took me a little bit to grow accustomed to Nolan North as the new voice of the Ghost. But you know what? I like it. He comes off a bit more like an AI with just enough personality shining through at key moments. The humor is still dry in the places where old lines have been re-recorded, but the new material sounds great. For now, the new stuff is generally a quick bit of dialogue being spouted at the start of a patrol mission. After two sets of DLC with an inexplicably silent Ghost, I’m really looking forward to having him chat away at me as I delve into the Dreadnought.

The most mundane thing that also makes me happiest has to be the expansion of the vault and the addition of collections. It’s about friggin’ time we have some way of acquiring all of the damn emblems and shaders we want (and we do want them all) while still having a way to keep them. Firstly, I’m sure that I’ll end up scrapping nearly everything in my vault by the middle of the coming week. However, I’m equally as sure that I’ll find all new crap to fill it up with. (Okay… maybe that ascended Cryptic Dragon will stay in my vault forever alongside my Queen’s Wrath armor from the second week of the game.) At least now my general tab will be filled with materials instead of all the ships and emblems that I’m not using. Oh, and those pumpkin heads that I’m inexplicably saving for… I don’t know… next Halloween?

The one thing that has disappointed me is knowing which of my prized exotic items aren’t getting the year two bump. Do you know how hard I worked to finally get Thorn? I absolutely suck at all things pvp. I was also rather fond of Super Good Advice since I’m not always the most accurate marksman in the game. Then there’s the loss of my favorite weapon for any nightfall with the juggler mod: Icebreaker. And, of course, Gjallerhorn is being left behind as well. Why are my favorite toys being relegated to obsolescence? I don’t know what year two exotics will be able to replace those for me, but I hope that something will fill that void (arc and solar too).

So in preparation for the launch of The Taken King, I’ve been spending time in Destiny leveling up my characters to 34 and picking my new main. Right now, I have my warlock (who looks remarkably like Pete White) loaded up with 16 completed bounties just waiting to be consumed. Hopefully, when combined with my Red Bull xp boost, that’s at least one level out of the gate. I also did all five of the test weapons for Banshee-44 after completing a nightfall to assure rank 1 for the first week. That was absolutely brutal. My aforementioned lack of pvp skill made that sniper rifle test grueling, frustrating, and very long. (There may have been several strings of curses uttered.) But it’s done now and I can relax for a couple days before jumping back in head first to complete all of the new quests and missions.

According to Bungie’s website, “Destiny: The Taken King will launch at 2AM Pacific on September 15th.” So expect me to be on our Twitch channel, DorkadiaPlays, sometime around that obscenely early hour as I marathon some space wizardry until I collapse. Pajamas and coffee may be involved. I’m looking forward to exploring all of the new content and bringing glory to Dead Orbit until I finally get that Revenant shader.

Have opinions about Destiny and The Taken King? Let us know in the comments below!