Destiny‘s upcoming expansion The Taken King represents an interesting dichotomy as far as DLC goes. Typically we can write DLC off as either being of great or poor value, and there is very little room for middle-ground. Some big-budget games will force you to remortgage your home just to pay for a shoddy map pack, while others will throw a load of free stuff at you and make you feel all special. The Taken King sits neatly between these two approaches to downloadable content, offering a deal that is great value for money for those just thinking about getting into Destiny, whilst simultaneously dealing yet another blow to those who were day one buyers of the vanilla game.
Little needs to be said of Destiny’s underwhelming base game. While many have still piled countless hours into it (which is arguably more to do with the game’s maddeningly addictive leveling system that its gripping plot or varied gameplay), in terms of the game Bungie had alluded to prior to its release, it was not the true FPS/MMO hybrid of us were hoping for. For a game that Bungie stated would have a 10-year life-cycle until its inevitable sequel, it was oddly barren and lacking in content, with a variety of its content being repurposed and its game world being much smaller than expected. Many, myself included, were sold on Destiny due to the promise shown by its exciting beta, but then when the final game was released we were forced to contend with the fact that the beta basically represented everything we would get to do within the full game: shoot things, pray for good gear in randomized drops, and replay the same missions over and over again in the hopes of a Legendary. It certainly had a “just one more go” quality that kept players returning to it, but it was in no way the revolutionary shooter we were all hoping for.
So what happened with its following expansions, The Dark Below and The House of Wolves, was that Bungie steadily released the kind of varied content we had expected to see in the base game. While the former expansion was a little disappointing and light on content in and of itself, The House of Wolves featured a variety of new features that made the world of Destiny feel more robust, such as the fantastic Prison of Elders and Trials of Osiris. Finally, Destiny felt like it was shaping up to be the game we thought it was going to be, but unfortunately players were required to spend $100 in total in order to obtain the expansions that made it a semblance of what had been anticipated.
So now in steps The Taken King, releasing a year after Destiny‘s launch, and it brings with it a number of changes to the core game along with some extra additions. There will be new sub-classes for all three Guardian classes, a new location in the form of the floating Dreadnaught castle, new story missions, new Crucible maps, a new Raid, new PVP game modes and new Strikes. Peter Dinklage’s lackadaisical voice acting will also be replaced with the soothing tones of Nolan North, a prospect which has got fans of the game almost as excited as they are for new quest lines that – get this – feature more variety than simply wandering around shooting enemies in the face.
Yes, The Taken King‘s story content will see players solving puzzles and exploring secret locations, something which has been toyed with in the game’s Raids but hasn’t been introduced to the game on a wider basis. With Raids being the only stand-out components of Destiny in terms of gameplay thus far, tasking players with completing objectives outside of “shoot this alien and then run over there” that also encapsulate platforming and puzzle-solving, it’s undoubtedly great to see Bungie looking to expand Destiny‘s mechanics on a wider basis. But this was arguably the game many thought Destiny was going to be in the first place, offering a world full of adventure and intrigue to explore rather than repeating the same missions on the same planets over and over again ad infinitum. The Taken King appears to be the beginnings of a new era for Destiny, but those who have been with the game for the long haul have undoubtedly been slighted by the pricing of its latest expansion.
The Taken King is priced at $40 for those who own Destiny and its two expansion packs. That means that those who bought the base game and have wanted to continue playing the game (given the nature of Destiny, purchasing it expansions is hardly optional if you want to keep playing the game – while it doesn’t have the same variety in gameplay as an MMO, it keeps all of the facets of the genre which ensure that, if you fall behind with its new content, you might as well uninstall the game from your hard drive and throw it out of the window), buying The Taken King will mean that you have spent $140 on Destiny in one year. This is even more egregious if you live in areas outside of the US – say, for instance, my home country of England – where Destiny was priced at £50, the expansions were £20 and The Taken King will be released at £40, with exchange rates having seemingly been all but forgotten about. This will mean that purchasing all of Destiny‘s content will total in at £130, which is roughly $202.
On the other hand, those who are just jumping into Destiny can buy the Legendary Edition which includes the Destiny base game, The Dark Below, The House of Wolves AND The Taken King for $60, which is less than double the amount paid by day one buyers. So what do day one buyers get for jumping on the game so early, and having essentially been a part of Destiny‘s trial run until Bungie figured out what they wanted to do with the game? A new Sparrow, an armor shader and an emblem. Thanks for playing, guys!
For those who have refrained from jumping on the Destiny bandwagon, The Taken King‘s Legendary Edition represents a massive saving and a great deal of content for the price of one retail game, but if you’re a player who has stuck by the game since launch, then your wallet is well and truly being pilfered by Bungie and Activision, and while they are well within their rights to do so (and you’ll inevitably come a myriad of snot-nosed commenters who will inform you that “Bungie is a business” and “they have to make money,” as if consumers need to stand up for major corporations shilling overpriced DLC), I don’t think it’s something that we should particularly take lying down. Overcharging your loyal players for content that you’ll hand to newcomers for far cheaper is not the quickest way of building consumer loyalty, but I feel that Bungie’s tryst with Activision, a publisher well-known for these kind of underhanded tactics, has somewhat soured them on the idea behaving nicely when it comes to the treatment of their customers. There are many who point the finger of blame solely at Activision for this money-grubbing, but rest assured that Bungie have signed contracts, too, and they must have known full well what they were getting into with the game.
As a day one player of Destiny who is disappointed with it having become a hollow piggy bank, I find it highly irritating, if still understandable, that players will purchase The Taken King in their droves. I mean, what else are Destiny players going to do? Not buying the DLC will effectively ensure that they’re no longer in the loop with a game they enjoy and, by all accounts, is going to become measurably better. They’ll likely balk at the thought of paying the cost of a retail release for an expansion, and would presumably suffer from heart failure if they took into account that, if Destiny really were to have a 10-year life cycle and continued with its current rate of DLC, players would have pay up to $1000 in order to keep up with the game, but if they want to continue playing the game without having to retread through out-of-date content then they’ll need to shell out $40 in order to do.
Bungie knows that Destiny‘s fans will pay out this cash, whereas it would be incredibly unlikely that newcomers would even shell out $80 in order to obtain the full game and all of its expansions, so this means that rather than offer The Taken King at a reasonable price for both new and old Destiny players, they have instead opted to offer prospective Destiny buyers a great deal while those who have been players from the outset are being shortchanged. It’s an incredibly transparent move on behalf of Bungie and Activision, and one that is essentially punishing fans of the game for remaining loyal to it through each new expansion release.
Yes, I get it, Bungie are trying to make money out of Destiny, and a quick and easy way of doing this is to up the price of their releases. I also have no doubt in my mind that their tactic will work and, while there will be the vocal minority such as myself who will overlook The Taken King and, to borrow a tired cliche, “vote with our wallets,” there will be many more who will throw down those $40 and ignore Bungie’s incredibly mismatched treatment of old/new Destiny players in order to play through the game again without Dinklebot’s dulcet tones ruining everything.
But I do think that Destiny has seen Bungie stretch its relationship with its consumers almost as far as it can go, and if The Taken King doesn’t match expectations, it could damage the developer and Destiny as a series irreparably. Unfortunately, by that point Destiny players will have already been suckered in over the $100 mark, and will therefore have to continue to buy each new expansion for the game for the rest of their lives. Who knows, maybe if we throw enough money at it, it will eventually become the game we expected it would be.
