Tales from The Taken King: What makes the King’s Fall raid so good

In my review of Destiny’s Taken King expansion, I called its raid, King’s Fall, a triumph. In my full guide to the thing, I explored out just how players should approach it. But that really doesn’t do justice to what it has achieved, what it’s done for Destiny. King’s Fall is a broad step forward for the game’s PvE activities, and proof that Bungie has learned from the mistakes of previous expansions. It absolutely nails the three qualities that make a good raid: individual importance, novelty and summary.

In Crota’s End, the flaccid pinnacle of the Dark Below expansion, you don’t really need teammates. Literally and figuratively, it doesn’t matter who you run the raid with. Not only can it be soloed, it can be carried by a handful of capable veterans. You don’t need teammates; you just need warm bodies. You need somebody of an appropriate level with a gun that can stand where they’re told. There’s no pressure to perform, no real need to cooperate. Much the same is true for many parts of the Vault of Glass, especially the stages dealing with oracles and confluxes. That’s because those stages, and indeed the entirety of Crota’s End, require little more than shooting dudes.

But you won’t get far in King’s Fall just shooting dudes. In Destiny’s latest and greatest raid, everyone has an important part to play. Each stage of the raid artfully divides fireteams of six into specific roles, often by designating teams of two or three. Against Warpriest, two people defend each glyph. Against Golgoroth, two people take his gaze, three people focus the boss and one person deals with all those damn Thrall. The Daughters and Oryx himself follow the same pattern: everyone has a specific, important job. Most importantly, these jobs are layered in such a way that, if one person screws up, the entire team has a problem to deal with, often in the form of a total wipe. To kill the king, you need teammates, and you need them to know their stuff.

This reflects a broader change in design philosophy. With Crota’s End, it felt like Bungie took a utilitarian approach to raiding in order to satisfy the bigger of Destiny’s two demographics—FPS players. Players accustomed to FPS franchises approach Destiny differently from those with a background in MMORPGs. To the latter, raids are supposed to be team-based efforts. Looking for a team and failing a few times is nothing new. But for many of the former camp, which is unsurprisingly the largest given Bungie’s pedigree, having to play with five other people is often seen as a hassle, either due to scheduling issues or preferences in play style. You can be a lone wolf badass in Resistance or Halo, but not in a raid.

Crota’s End and its distaste for teamwork always felt like an answer to that demographical tug-of-war, a way for lone wolves to participate in raids while still giving die-hard raiders a new boss to slaughter. But the quality of the Dark Below’s raid suffered for it. The House of Wolves’ Prison of Elders took this approach one step further by dodging raids altogether, allowing smaller teams to take on weekly challenges that also consist of just shooting dudes.

Thankfully, King’s Fall takes the opposite approach and doubles down on the importance of good teamwork and teammates. If Bungie wants Destiny to be treated like an MMO, even remotely, that’s what the game’s PvE activities need to do. We’ve seen a similar shift in the Taken King’s strikes, which also incorporate specific roles. And lo and behold, this hasn’t been a problem. FPS fans with no MMO experience aren’t stupid, and anyone can figure out and enjoy a raid with enough time and a little research. Instead of shying away with King’s Fall, Bungie opted to reintroduce the core concepts of raiding, and refine Destiny’s execution of them besides.

With this newfound emphasis on camaraderie came a need for more interesting mechanics. After all, if everyone has to pay closer attention than ever to their part of the fight, those fights had better be fun. Here, too, King’s Fall is head and shoulders above Crota’s End, which feels like a homogenous torrent of bullets rather than a segmented raid. All four of King’s Fall’s bosses employ mechanics unique to the raid and Destiny as a whole, which helps distinguish it as an activity. Not only does this ensure variety in the raid, it separates King’s Fall from Destiny’s mantra of “shoot the dudes again.”

Finally, we have Oryx, the climax of King’s Fall. As a college student it feels almost heretical to say this, but I wanted a final exam from Oryx. A final exam is what I want from all video game bosses, because that’s what makes bosses great. To be tested on the mechanics and strategies you spent the previous chapter, level or even entire game learning, all cobbled together in one grand encounter—that’s a great boss. And that is, undoubtedly, Oryx.

From Warpriest, Oryx takes the necessity of grouping up in an aura in order to damage the boss. From Golgoroth, he takes running to orbs in order to deal damage, as well as the precision of timing inherent in the approach. And from the Daughters, he takes the all-important relic running and platform order. All of King’s Fall culminates in Oryx himself, offering a fittingly epic end to the hardest PvE challenge in Destiny and echoing the Taken King’s nonsummativity.