Will Destiny's Taken King expansion be worth $40? - GameSpot's The Lobby

[MUSIC] Hello and welcome to the Lobby, Gamespot's weekly hangout every Tuesday, 2pm Pacific, right here on gamespot.com. I'm your host Danny O'Dwyer fresh back from Germany. Full of pork knuckle, Weissbier, and God knows what else. And I'm joined by Alex Newhouse. Hey Danny. You're only with us for another week, right? Yeah that's true. Congratulations. Thank you. Intern most summer. Great job. Thank you. Could **** it up right now though, so we'll see. I could. Erick Tay. What up? How you doing? Doing all right. Welcome back. Sweet shirt. Oh thanks. Do you always wear a nice shirt when you're going to be on the Lobby? I have to now. You know it's trying to step up the game in the office here. We got to get a little bit, slightly more professional. [CROSSTALK] I stepped up my game to match you a little bit. Looks great. This is the only piece that's washed after spending a week in Europe. So that's why I'm wearing that. Glad you're clean. And you two are here which means we're talking about one particular game. Could only be that game. Yeah, last time you guys, we had you on, we had a great chat about Destiny. Now we're going to have another one. The Taken King is out in just a couple weeks. September right around the corner. Not only is it bringing obviously a bunch more concepts for the low, low price of $40, but on the day of release there's also going to be a patch coming out for all Destiny players. It's going to change up a bunch of stuff. Let's talk about that first. So the first is Dinka bot's out and Nolan North's in. What do you guys think about that? I think it's great. Peter Dinklage is a good actor, wasn't great in Destiny. And for them to get Nolan North, someone who's tried and true in video games that just seems like a good move for them. They're going back and completely scrapping Dinklage from the entire game, going back and replacing every single line that the Ghost says with Nolan North. It's a little aggressive. It's a little aggressive, kind of feel bad. But at the same time, it makes sense. I feel like Nolan North will do a little better. OK. Another big change. It's being completely scraped, not completely scraped, but in terms of XP progression. Pass over 20 just like prelevel 20, your XP will be gotten directly from quest Sort of in line with most other MMOE type character level online games. Tay, what do you think about that? Yeah, I think it's good. I think, looking back at original Destiny and thinking of just how light level works, it was kind of a little bit confusing at first. I was like, oh, I kinda hit max level, but it's not really max level, because gear takes me to this higher level. So now like you said, it is going back to a traditional kind of style where it's all experience based, and all the weapons and armor you get will just make you a stronger guardian. So it's like, as you progress in through the game, it's like ok, I've got raid tier armor that has a hundred, or three hundred more armor than my last armor. Yeah. It's easier to understand, and I think the interesting thing too coming out of that for me is Is this gonna start this whole thing with Trials of Osiris which is their new PVP mode, Yeah. With what WOW did which is now we can balance for PVP and for PVE because we can give special stats to PVP and here's different gears that's Right. Specifically for PVP. That's what I'm interested about. They haven't talked about it, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's something like that. Is there any more changes? I know that you went up to To go back to the tower as much, with bounties and quests and what not. Is there anything they're doing that's kinda jumped at you or are they the two main ones with that update specifically? I mean, I think like the HUD overhaul is incredibly important as well, because it's just like, they're making it so that you can track the progress in your quest and your bounties on the HUD itself, which is huge. Like you don't have to pop up the menu during play sessions and stuff. Not having to go back to the tower is also really essential. But really the light level overhaul is probably the biggest change that they're making to this. You two are big fans of Destiny. I'm gonna throw this devil's advocate thing out there. It's great. WOW was a big touchstone for me with this sort of stuff. Whenever a big expansion pack comes out they always launch a big Patch around that time as well, when they kind of update a bunch of stuff for everybody else. Isn't the fact they're going back and like rewriting the main story character in this game and isn't the fact that they're like getting rid of this pretty like fundamental aspect of their progression. Doesn't that sort of mostly show you that the game they made last year was just wasn't that good? I mean, they're changing fundamental parts of the game. Okay, so you're mostly right, I mean a lot of people on the internet have been saying, oh we just went through Destiny Beta, like two beta, and just now we're getting to the point where it's like real Destiny. Real expensive beta. Sure, but the thing is, like a lot of games, now, just again we'll talk trends, it's an evolving system, right? Like Maybe the Destiny that we got originally wasn't as good as its gonna be now because like a lot of games iterate on quality of life stuff, and that's really what Destiny did. They found a lot of the quality of life stuff and they kinda upped the game on that and made it better. What do you mean by the quality of life? For example, not only did the light level get easier to understand, But they figured out factions. You used to have to wear a special piece of armor, turn it in to get your rep. Now, it's no, you don't have to wear that. Just pledge yourself to a faction. Right. Or, there used to be crucible marks and vanguard marks. There used to be separate things th at you could earn and you would get capped each week. Guess what? It's all lumped in to one now. So there's a lot of these kind of minute changes that isn't that big of a deal but, for a player like me that's been playing, it's like, oh, I wish I had that in the beginning. So, anyone who starts now, they won't understand some of the trials and tribulations that we went through. Right. [LAUGHS] And to get back to your story thing, they are trying to Deal with that a little bit. Part of it is with the rewriting of Dinklage and we bring in Nolan North, but you will be able to scan more objects in the world now that will give you more lore behind it. They said it's not necessarily like the Grimoire cards, that still isn't in the game, which is mind-boggling because There is so much rich deep lore in the grimoire cards. It sounds like they're actually worth reading so it's kind strange that they didn't [INAUDIBLE]. [INAUDIBLE] in the grimoire cards is crazy. So they are trying to give you those at least nuggets where in the past where you just walk by, oh, I don't know what's going on. Now it's like you might be able to scan a dead body. You might be able to scan a structure and you'll get little snippets from either Nolan North himself or I think it will tap back to the tower. You'll have this radio interaction of like so what the hell is this kind of thing? Now you can maybe do that more often. Cool. That's tidying up some of that stuff. It's pretty important. Getting on to the taken king. At forty dollars, it's their big expansion. Obviously we've had a bunch of them around the price of twenty bucks. Which is kind of a price point people still aren't really sure what they're getting for. At $40 is more inline with sort of what we expect from most expansion packs, with MMO packs, stuff like that. Alex first of all, as a fan of Destiny, you've been playing for a bunch, but you're also like very critical of But probably more so critical than some of these flashbacks. What do you think about The Taken King in terms of its value prospect? So, I've actually been surprised over what they've been saying about it because last time I was on here I talked about how predatory the pricing of Destiny is, but what they seemed, like all of their rhetoric around The Taken King has sounded In a lot of ways very humble. They're acknowledging the fact that the light level system was sort of broken and it brought players down the wrong lines. They're acknowledging the fact that some of their weapons have been unbalanced and they made a game in which everyone users the gather horn. And they say that that isn't a good thing. They want to encourage people to experience the entire breadth of it. And so what they're doing with the Teigan King When they talk about it they make it clear they are going back to the story and making the story campaign something that people actually wanna play. It's gonna be like twice as long as what we got in House of Wolves I'm hearing. That's what they say. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see. They have been saying that they are putting a significant amount of story content in there. Which to be fair, that isn't saying much relative to the rest of Destiny, but they are. Adding far more cinematics, than both Dark Below and House of Wolves had one, as the intro. Right, yeah. They should have more between each mission. They've got this whole, everything they talk about the end game after you finish the story, they haven't even discussed the details yet, of that yet, but they keep talking about it as this huge expansive, like pretty new thing they're doing after you get out of a Strike campaign. So from what they've been talking about, I'm actually really hopeful that this will be worth $40. And both of you've played the game a bunch, you obviously love it a lot, how important is this expansion pack to you as a fan of Destiny to keep you hooked in? Because obviously Getting certain pieces of quest and an odd crucible map and some of the old expansion packs, there didn't need to be a larger mode of content to keep you engaged? This ones going to be a big test for me because I still like Destiny. I still like playing it a lot, but I've dwindled. Whatever that is for me. Compared to anyone else, but for me. As one of the hardcore players. Right? This one's gonna tell me a lot, of am I gonna keep playing or am I gonna play a lot less? And am I gonna continue to lose friends after this one, if this one doesn't deliver? But they are adding a lot of stuff. Now it just comes down to let's play it. Let me see if I think it's worth the $40. But I will say, this is gonna be whatever but- [LAUGH] I think if you haven't played Destiny, this is a very good value. Never been a better time- Never been. To get hooked on [NOISE]. But honestly though, in some ways I almost wish like I was Able to get all of that stuff now for $60, and understand how we have to kill Atheon. I didn't understand why you had to kill Atheon the first time. I don't read the Grimoire cards because it's not in the game. You know? Now you'll know why. Do you expect to play through the story mission and be left on a massive cliffhanger Alex Newhouse? I really hope not. I really hope this is going to lead directly in to the rest of the game. Directly in to The King's Fall Raid, and they've also been seen there going back and reworking all the bounties from the previous, like the base game and the previous expansions, to make those tie in more. They're really trying to make it all tie together. Obviously, they're talking about it like that, like they are, which sounds really promising to me. All right, gentlemen, we've had you on plugging about Destiny a bunch. Thank you so much again for coming on. Last question. We gave Destiny 6/10? Yeah. Lewis, 6/10? Yeah, 6/10. And Erick Tay, Alex Newhouse, give me your score of Destiny after year one based on your own experiences. Erick, out of 10? We're doing this based on GameSpot, right? So no halves, right? No halves. No halves. Okay. No, no, no. 10 point scale man! No zeros either. I think it's still a seven. Yeah? I always thought it was a seven, and I still think it is, but I can also see why people might think it's a six. But for me seven. All right Alex, what you got? I go back and forth. When I'm- Four or five, so close. [LAUGH] When I was deep into House of Wolves I was like this is an eight or a nine, like I was loving it. Yeah. But now Now that I'm back you know that I've heard what they're doing and stuff, I'm sitting around a seven. Seven alright. It's going to be interesting. I hear word around the office that we might be doing a re review after a year. I guess we'll have to wait and see if that's the case or not. Tay's shaking his head. I don't know if that means no, or don't do it. [UNKNOWN] taken king review. Okay yeah we'll see soon enough.