Destiny The Taken King Raid Will “Raise the Stakes Again”, Raid Gear/Loot Discussed

In its continuing coverage on Bungie’s upcoming Destiny expansion The Taken King, Game Informer spoke at length with creative director Luke Smith on the design of raids, including the upcoming King’s Fall. Smith is responsible for designing what’s undoubtedly the best content in Destiny with the Vault of Glass raid and is also in charge of King’s Fall.

Expectations are high from this expansion, especially considering the House of Wolves didn’t include a raid. Smith stated that, “The raid coming in the Taken King is objectively and emphatically our biggest raid yet. It is a journey that we hope players and their friends are going to remember. We’re really excited about it, and we think it will raise the stakes again for what the raid team is asked to deliver next time. It’s big.”

The name King’s Fall is also very much intentional and is “really like a shot across the bow in a game called The Taken King. That story of Oryx and his presence in our solar system is going to continue after the credits roll and were going to continue to tell you more about Oryx and his minions after you face them for the first time in the game. The raid is really the culmination of that story.”

What about the raid gear/loot that players will obtain in King’s Fall? For that matter, how will Destiny handle raid gear going forward, especially with the separation of Light from one’s character level? “We want all the slots on your character to matter. We want every piece of gear that you get to have the potential to be something that excites you or makes you more powerful in both great and small ways. In order to do that we had to separate your light level from your character level.

“We believe the highest gear level is a little less important to the game now. We hope that players see their light level as a tool that allows them to climb the mountain they want to climb in the way that’s most interesting to them. If they look at a raid and they see it’s recommended light level is 280, then we want them to think, ‘I want to get my light to 280, so I can climb this mountain in front of me.’ The gear you have is just a tool to reaching those activities and not the end goal.”

Destiny: The Taken King is out on September 15th for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS4. Update 2.0 will release on September 8th.