http://kotaku.com/leak-destinys-new-expansion-is-the-taken-king-out-sep-1709972043

The leaked marketing doc's list of things we either already knew or could have safely assumed based on previous leaks.

• Titled The Taken King
• The expansion will cost $40
• Third sub-class added to each race
• New raid where you hunt down Oryx, dad of Crota
• Release date of September 15th

We've known the title for a while I feel. We've known the third sub-class was coming based on the empty slot currently in the game, but it's nice to know what it entails. The release date of mid-September is a no-brainer.

The new new stuff appears to be that the raid will be about Oryx, which isn't a big leap in logic. Some new enemies called The Taken, and a bunch of content we don't know about yet that will hopefully justify the $40 price tag on it.

Having just recently gotten back into the game I'm all about this. There are rumors of an all new planet which would help justify the price tag as well. I'm interested in how much content it is going to be though as I've been enjoying myself this time around.

I really hope the name above the raid boss' health bar reads "Oryx, Dad of Crota."

Based on earlier leaks this sounds like a pretty sizable piece of content and if House of Wolves is anything to go off of, Bungie is definitely listening to fans. I'm excited (and give me the Hunter's Gravity Bow super NOW).

That. I want that.

At that price, the previous two expansions should be included. And that would still be barely enough to justify it.

And then change Crota's to Crota, Son of Oryx

So for what portion of the expansion do you get to play as Liam Neeson?

@bisonhero: Due to contractual issues with Dinklage, Ghost is now voiced by Liam Neeson

God I just get depressed when I think about Destiny.

There's so much about it that I absolutely love about it but the lack of reason for continuing to play killed it for me. I guess when it comes down to it I think there was a long list of small issues that just became too much to deal with after a few months of playing. By the time the first DLC rolled around I was done with it and even if it fixed the issues I may have been having, the price point didn't help either.

Oryx is going to be an even bigger Knight!

Thats why I'm hoping Bungie talks alot more about fundamental changes to the game at E3. New content, classes, strikes etc. is great but that doesn't fix the core gameplay loop. They need to retool the drop system, fix the way they handle story, and just make an overall engaging experience. Then the content they do add doesn't become stale in a week.

that's already what it says

@takayamasama: I don't even have time to explain why I don't have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills.

Tells you how much I pay attention then.

I highly doubt this will come even close to being worth 40$

@irvandus: Keep in mind that we live in the same universe where Blizzard is charging $10 for an alternate character portrait in Hearthstone.

@zirilius said:

"Crota, Kid of Oryx"

"Phogoth, The Aggro Fella"

"Sepiks, The First One"

"Riksis, Boss from Heck"

"Sekrion, The Brain-say Thing"

@a_e_martin said:

By mid-September of 2015 do you think the Destiny base game, first two DLC's, and then The Taken King expansion would be all sold together for $60? Or $80-$90? We're already seeing the Destiny base game for going as low as, what?, $25 at some places?

With the house of wolves gear saying things like "highest year one value" I would hope the fourty dollars is for the year two season pass. In reality it's more likely the first expansion is fourty and the next season pass is 60. Will still be excited for the new subclasses (titan flame hammer? Yes please), new weapon types and new enemy type. Overall I'm curious how they change things if they do at all, and I'm curious as to how they do a sequel later on.

Forty

Dollars

Well, since I already own the base game, I'll probably have to wait until Christmas at the earliest before the prices of the past expansions and this new one come down to an acceptable level.

I want to play this game. I kind of miss playing this game. I wish there was more stuff to see and do in this game.

Yeah, I know. There's no story. Whatever. That being said, I hope the Cabal are more of a focus in Year 2. I think introducing ANOTHER race/group of enemies is a mistake before fleshing out what's already there. The Hive and Fallen got the spotlight with the two respective expansions, and the Vex were a "big" part of the main "story" quest line.

The Hive are boring at their core, so I don't think anything can make them cool. But HoW gave us some cool characters for both the Fallen and the Awoken. The Cabal have been nothing more than some dudes on Mars with shields and grenade launchers. What gives Bungie?

Hmm.. several new and interesting planets/explorable areas on the current planets are pretty much the only thing that would justify that price point to me. If you'd told me when the game came out we would be two $20 "expansions" into this game with no new planets or zones or even just expanded areas of current zones added to the base game, I woulda said you were crazy.

I feel slightly burned by the price I paid for the season pass, so far the price to value ratio has been pretty far off to me, but hoping they correct that in this "big" expansion (nottttttt holding my breath....)

Going back to the Hive well seems lame. I'd much rather have a Fallen or Cabal themed raid.

I've been replaying the main game with a secondary character after taking my primary through the major expansions. In a way, House of Wolves (Dark Below to much, much lesser extent) helps bring context that retroactively elevates the events of vanilla Destiny. I think we're all wanting nuanced, developed narratives from this universe. House of Wolves is by far the closest Bungie's come to getting that piece right. Here's to hoping that trend continues with The Taken King.

How can we be talking about the value of this thing when we don't even know what's in it yet? Blizzard routinely charges $40 for expansions and no one bats an eye. If this thing turns out to be bad value, I'll be at the front of the line criticizing the price tag, but let's wait until we actually know what we're getting before talking about the price being justified or not.

Take all my money!

Thats like 100% of the raids in the base Destiny game for 2/3 the price. Sounds like a steal.

Eurogamer reiterated what the leaked content plan from a while ago said about this expansion, which was that it "would offer 12 new missions, four new strikes and six new competitive multiplayer maps" (though of course those plans may have changed). I'd say it's pretty safe to assume that's close to what we'll end up getting. Now, to someone like me, who's mainly interested in the story missions, and maybe the strikes and competitive multiplayer on a good day, that's not $40 worth of content, particularly if the mission structure of the story missions is still the same as it has been so far. And even if I was interested in the raids, I'd still find that pretty thin.

I do bat an eye at Blizzard's expansion prices, by the way. I've never bought one at full price.

Oryx, dad of Crota?... Dota? Oh god...

@a_e_martin: I wouldn't count on that leak from months ago being entirely accurate. Much of the information in there has turned out to be only somewhat true. House of wolves ended up having 5 story missions, despite the leak saying it would have 3. The leak also said house of wolves would have a raid, but instead it had a new end game activity, Prison of Elders. It also said this fall expansion would be called "Comet: Plague of Darkness."

I'm not expecting it to be radically different, but I could see there being 15 or more story missions and maybe even a new "arena" like Prison of Elders to accompany the new raid. Remember, the photo that info came from was taken almost a year ago, things happen in development, and if there's one thing House of Wolves has shown it's that Bungie is certainly trying to take feedback and criticism into account for the game's post release content. Things have most certainly changed since that photo was taken.

However, let's say for a second the leak was 100% accurate. I still would probably be okay spending $40 on that. Even looking only at House of Wolves, which had a fair bit more content than Dark Below, that was 5 story missions, 1 strike, 3 multiplayer maps (4 on Playstation), Prison of Elders, Trials of Orisis, and a bunch of new weapons and armor for $20. Some people didn't like that value, I thought it was pretty good compared to the amount of content and price of other FPS DLC.

If The Taken King includes exactly what that leaked photo suggested, we're looking at more than twice as many story missions, three times as many strikes, twice as many multiplayer maps, a new raid, 3 new subclasses, a new explorable area, a new XP level cap (as opposed to a light increase), and new weapons and armor. That's much more than twice as much content as the other DLCs for twice the price. As someone deep into Destiny, I'd be happy to pay $40 for that much new stuff, but I can certainly see how someone not as hooked on the endgame and PVP might not see it as a good value.

For the record, when I first saw that leaked photo several months ago I immediately assumed the big expansion would be $40, so the fact that anyone is surprised is kind of puzzling to me.

@ll_exile_ll: I think it's great that there is content being made for those that enjoy the game and want more of it in various forms.

That said, I don't think DLC should cost $40, which is more than half the price of the full game. There is something to be said about replayability and about the price of Call of Duty map packs, but at the end of the day for me $40 is crossing some sort of invisible line where I think OK this is getting out of hand. Double so for Destiny, which has a running history now of DLC that arguably doesn't always warrant the price tag - depending on who you ask.

This isn't as bad as the Batman stuff, but it shouldn't be more than $30 unless they're offering significant, NEW, content.

I guess we'll have to see what this thing ends up including. I feel like they're going to try to position this as one of the big fall releases, and I'd wouldn't be surprised to see a $60 boxed version that includes the main game, previous DLC, and/or "expansion pass II" for their 2016 DLCs.

If there's a new planet I'll probably buy this. I'm close to getting House of Wolves anyway.

@ll_exile_ll: a GOTY edition with 3 DLC packs for $60 sounds like a good deal for Destiny newcomers. You just need to find a good price point for existing players. If someone bought Dark Below and House of Wolves which set them back $40, it's kind of lame that you're asking them to fork over another $40.

@ll_exile_ll: You see Blizzard doing that a lot with WoW. They first introduced a "battlechest" during the third expansion which packaged the base game and the first expansion into a cheap $20 format. Then when the fourth expansion came out, they put the third expansion into it too and so on and so forth. I don't think they originally did it at launch until the most recent expansion at which point you could get all the current content for $40.

I could see them doing it with Destiny. If they really plan to have this as a game running for ten years, then eventually they have to make the entry point be further into the amount of content available than just the base game as it is now.

And no new areas, besides the raid, maybe? Sounds familiar. Third subclass should have been in the game on release. And for $40? Laughable. Almost all my friends have given up on Destiny, so whateves I guess.

"What about the Cabal?"

"Who?"

If the taken are the hive with like 2 new units I'm going to be so pissed. They did so little with the cabal in the story and strikes and we might get a second hive raid? You know, I like a bunch of things about destiny but it seems like every single decision they've made before and after launch has been just meeting the bare minimum requirements. Just barely enough for me to justify a purchase and I'm getting sick of it.

Crota's end was no VoG but it was just enough to be worthwhile. Prison of elders is kind of garbage but Trials, even though it doesn't actually involve that much content, makes the latest expansion worthwhile. Their post release support has been trash. They fix certain minor things super fast and other things get fixed 2-8 months too late.

The bare minimum every time. That's why I'm kind of wondering: 3 new subclasses is kind of a game changer so what if everything else is middling/bad? What if the taken are just the hive with new skins? What if they put all their resources into 15 new story mission I won't care about?

@takayamasama: I'd pay $40 just for that.

I feel like I've received $20 worth of entertainment out of House of Wolves and I haven't even played much of it aside for the story missions and one or two POE runs with each character. I feel like people like to forget $20 is the equivalent of one or two good cocktails or an afternoon at the movies. I haven't even scratched the surface of House of Wolves thanks to my lack of LFG usage, Witcher 3 and MLB 15's Diamond Dynasty (not to mention Batman on the horizon and working 14 hour days for the next week due to the Men's College World Series) and I feel satisfied.

New subclasses alone sound awesome, but I suppose it's all about what you're invested in and whether you've found Destiny entertaining throughout it's run. I've had a week or two of falling off but it's always consistently roped me back in, I've either had amazing luck with the RNG (at the very least, nothing close to @brad's experience documented in the comments of the first June 2015 Bombcast) or I just enjoy the shooting that much, rendered all the more effective by the fact Bioshock Infinite was the first FPS I'd played since the original Modern Warfare, thus the simple act of shooting things from atop a gun barrel has always had a rare appeal to me; when it sticks, it really sticks.

@theht: Just wait for the next Destiny expansion: Journey to the Center of the Knight, in which you fight exclusively Knights in a Traveler sized Knight, the final boss of course being his heart, a Knight.

Unfortunately that actually sounds more interesting than the expansions to date.

Super self-aware Destiny would probably be pretty funny at this point.

@nodima: @pyrodactyl:

I do agree that the Cabal are severely under represented in the game. They show up late in the story and don't really have much in the way of presence in strikes or bounties. Can't imagine a scenario in which they are completely put on the back burner and imagine they'll play a roll either in this or future expansions. I am interested in seeing what kind of variations they put on the taken. I can see them being a lot of the same units with different biomorphs (knights with both guns and swords, flying ogres, thrall tunnelers, etc).

As for the expansion itself I think that 40 dollars is worth it. If the rumors are true, which we should find out in a week or so, there is a pretty significant amount of content coming in this expansion. I still need to run VoG but even not doing the raids I find House of Wolves to be worth the cost. I love the weekly bounties, the chance for exotic loot from prison of elders, and just generally how it changed how the patrol areas work. The only downside is now that I've decided to level a titan some of those Wolves can make running around the world super annoying. Case in point with the Queensbreaker in the cosmodrone. The asshole who though he should be placed in a major low level traffic area can suck it.

Other than that though I'm looking forward to more of this. Which is weird to say since 6 months ago I swore I wouldn't play this game until the patched the fun in which I'm having a shit of now.

According to the old leak, there will be a new explorable area. There basically has to be, they've used all the areas they had locked away on the edges of the game world.

$40 doesn't surprise me, but I'm still a little disappointed. That better be one hell of a package.

Also if we're taking out Oryx what motivation will the Hive have to continue...?

Solar Hammer! Solar Hammer! Oh God, I don't even dare watch Destiny's E3 reveals. I just don't want to see them, because if I do, I just can't wait to get my hands on it.

They should stop releasing these " expansions " that have less content than the average MMO content patch under the title " expansion. "

@steadying: I am very happy with what House of Wolves delivered. I stopped playing Destiny for a bit, when HoW released I... well... I have a shameful number of hours into it now. It's not healthy. It's great.