The Taken King: The Momentum Builds

Picture1For the longest time Bungie has been saying “We are listening.” As fans we have said again and again and again: “Prove it”. With each DLC and patch Bungie has shown signs they have been.  But if all reports for The Taken King in the last couple of weeks is to be believed, I don’t think we will be asking them to prove it anymore and I really, really hope that they live up to the hype this time.

It all started almost two weeks ago when Game Informer announced their cover article for September (psst hey guys it’s only the start of August…. just saying…). In it they revealed that the new level cap will indeed be 40, as many had speculated. There are multiple cut-scenes in the new content, which are also skippable now. And surprisingly Ghost has been completely been re-cast and even had his original dialogue re-recorded. And after Gamescom last week and over the weekend we have had some more information made available.

Game Informer has all this information over on their page. The have all the scoops and information is being drip fed from their website as we speak. In fact there is supposed to be another update tomorrow. As they have done all the work I’m not going to go into huge depth here. Go read their articles. Buy the magazine. Credit where credit is due and all that. But here’s the skinny on what they have so far.

The new level cap is 40. Gone are light levels. Kind of. Light will still exist and be on your gear to some extent. How the new light system works Bungie is yet to reveal, but now you can reach max level with just experience. No more chasing gear to and praying to RNGesus to get into the end game proper. At Gamescom Bungie have said when the Taken King launches your character will be of equal experience level to whatever your current highest level achieved is for that character so far. An example would be if you were level 34 with gear, with experience you will be 34 also. If your 31 with gear, then you will be 31 with experience. Bungie also confirmed to IGN at Gamescom that there will be a one off level boost available to everyone so everyone will be able to enjoy the new content from day one.

Story is finally going to be in the campaign. Yes finally, they have time to explain what they didn’t have time to explain last time. We haven’t seen or heard a lot really. That was until GameInformer shared their latest video interview with Taken King Creative Director Luke Smith and Executive Producer Mark Noseworthy. I’m really excited to see Cayde-6 get his time in the sun, mostly because Nathan Fillion is amazing as Cayde and the character is the one I have hoped to see expanded on since I first played the Beta back in July of last year. Actually I hope now that they have announced Nolan North as the voice of Ghost, they announce (or sneak in) the other biggest VO name in games today, Troy Baker. And then cast him as the voice of Cayde’s Ghost. The banter possibility there is brilliant.

Like I said, there’s more information coming soon, and I expect Bungie to announce upcoming live twitch streams to reveal more this week in the weekly update, but in the meantime check out these and the other articles Game Informer have on their site.