Destiny The Taken King’s Shield Brothers Strike Details: Arc Edge, Boss Mechanics and More

After some initial hiccups, the reveal of the first strike offered new information.

Bungie’s recent live-stream for Destiny’s The Taken King started off on a rather troubling note – the power effectively went out in the studio, delaying the stream by several minutes – but eventually things returned to normal and we had a chance to check out the new level 36 Strike on the Dreadnaught, “Shield Brothers”.

The live-stream helped outline some of the different skill trees that the new classes can roll along with the new weapons. The star of the show was the Arc Edge though, a new heavy weapon which is effectively like the Sword of Crota. This weapon functions on heavy ammo though and has the capability to block incoming damage.

Along with showing off the different environments in the Dreadnaught like the Mausoleum and the Cabal ship, we saw the Taken enemies in action and learned that Strikes will have different set-ups at times. Some instances may have different dialogue and different enemies fighting each other for instance. It’s a small touch but should help break the monotony often observed when grinding strikes. The infamous Cabal tank also made an appearance and, well, it was still the same tank we’ve always seen.

The Shield Brothers did show some variety from other strike bosses though. The fight started with one boss running around and effectively meleeing Guardians before retreating. The second boss then came out to launch several long-range attacks before retreating at low health. The fight concluded with both bosses fighting at once, each using a different set of abilities the second time around and mixing up both Arc and Solar attacks. This isn’t including the different enemies that one must fight in between.

Overall, it was a decent strike even if there were a few new things in terms of mechanics. Destiny: The Taken King is out on September 15th for Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360 and PS3. What are your thoughts on the strike? Let us know in the comments.

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