In a lengthly video interview with IGN, DeeJ, the community manager for Destiny, sat down at Gamescom to talk about Destiny’s upcoming expansion The Taken King. In the interview, DeeJ addresses some concerns about the inability to boost Year One legendary weapons in Year Two and about lowering (or nerfing) the power of select legendary weapons like the Gjallarhorn.
“In The Taken King, we are delivering to the Tower the largest arsenal that this game has ever seen,” he said, “That includes Destiny Year One. New weapons, new Foundries of weapons, Hakke, Omolon, Suros. It’s the act of discovery that makes being a Guardian interesting, and we’re leading people down that path again because there are new enemies to fight, more powerful foes. When you see Oryx to fight, it’ll make Crota seem like a distant memory of a fonder time. You’re going to need more powerful weapons to meet these rising threats, and that’s the experience we wanted to give people in Year Two.”
DeeJ talked about legendary weapons and addressed the concern about the fact that Year One legendary weapons can’t be boosted to match the power level of Year Two. “This is the challenge for us, to create things that you always want to do,” he said. “If we created Destiny that was a game where it was just, ‘Oh, another Destiny game is coming out, which I like to call more aliens for me to kill with my Gjallarhorn,’ I think people would probably accuse us of design failure. We want to give you new things to experience all the time, new places to go, new ways to upgrade your Guardian, new enemies to fight, new weapons to use, new subclasses to learn how to master. The act of playing Destiny is all about evolving a character. And using the same weapons for the next decade wasn’t really part of that vision.”
DeeJ specifically spoke about the fan favorite Gjallarhorn and how the studio hoped to lead fans into weapon diversification within their loadouts. “Our goal as developers is to keep you guessing, to keep you thinking about, ‘I’m going into this tactical scenario with these people on my fireteam with these enemies, what am I going to equip, what am I going to bring?'” Deej said. “And if Gjallarhorn is an obvious choice, then we’d like to provoke you to think a little bit more about your loadout.”
He continued, “Like I said, Destiny shouldn’t be Gjallarhorn simulator version 4.0 in a number of years. Destiny should always be, ‘Here comes another Destiny game, what am I going to equip this time? What’s going to be my favorite weapon in this year of Destiny?’ There are still going to be missions where you’re going to use that Gjallarhorn. There are also going to be weapons that maybe start to catch your eye. There’s always a perfect tool for any job in Destiny. So those Year 1 weapons are absolutely going to be relevant. Don’t dismantle them, there’s still going to be a time when you need to use them.”
The full interview which includes new footage from The Taken King can be found here.
To keep up on all things The Taken King make sure to check out our Destiny hub on Gamespresso.com.