The hard mode version of Destiny: The Taken King's end game raid, King's Fall, opens today and I'm sure thousands of Guardains will race to be the world's first to complete it. Those of you who turned to the weekly blog for any sort of leg up, however, were probably disappointed to find that Bungie is remaining tight-lipped; although, they did tease a few thigns about the new difficulty — probably nothing that'll help you too much, though.
"I've seen a lot of speculation online about the mechanics for Hard Mode," said lead designer Gavin Irby. "Will Oryx choose a random player to be Torn Between Dimensions? Does Golgoroth blind the taunters? Did we replace every combatant with Taken Captains? Let's just cut to the chase, because I think we all really know what Hard Mode is going to be this time around: Everything is clockwise. BAM!"
He's joking, of course. The raid will be much harder than that. Although he didn't spoil the actual mechanics, Irby did share how Bungie designed the raid to be more difficult.
"This time, we followed a subtractive approach by building the mechanics early on. For a long time, we play-tested internally in Hard Mode, treating it as the default experience. Once we were satisfied, we removed them to arrive at the Raid you have already played.For the mechanics themselves, we shied away from simply increasing sandbox difficulty (not that it won't be harder). You've had time to hone your strategies and develop a rhythm. Some of you might even be able to do it backwards, blindfolded, or upside-down. Hard Mode is going to upset that rhythm. We're going to give you one more plate to spin, and make you think on your feet."
