Destiny: the Taken King
The Taken King was my first project at Bungie. My work on it fell into two categories: campaign missions and open world objectives called Patrols.
Patrols
The Destiny Franchise features “Patrols,” which are brief, optional objectives players can pursue during open-world activities. I created the 3 new patrol types featured in Taken King and implemented all reprised patrol types from “vanilla” Destiny . A primary goal was to create a sense of depth discoverable through player effort, and then to reward players for that effort.
The Taken Hunt Patrol
This patrol sent players into deep, dark spaces to hunt down Taken, our new enemy combatant race in the Taken King. Upon starting the patrol, a waypoint led players to a new area where squads of Taken were waiting for them. I built this content as an extensible system. The script supported any size / depth of dungeon, with any length or number of encounters.
After defeating all enemies present, the Patrol completed and rewarded players. However, I added a hidden stretch goal: if players cleared the encounters quickly enough, a huge Taken boss took notice of their Light and would enter the arena to challenge them, offering greater challenge and far greater reward.
The Energy Spike Patrol
The Energy Spike Patrol, also known as the “Race Patrol,” tasked players with passing through glowing energy checkpoints as quickly as they could in order to collect research data on the anomalies. Players started at 0% progress, and passing through each energy spike grants some progress. However, progress also steadily decays over time, so if players don’t move quickly enough, they’ll find themselves back at 0%.
If players complete the base patrol quickly, an optional objective flashes on screen as all of the remaining checkpoints shine bright gold: “Optional: Activate Overcharge.”
If players choose to pass through one of the gold checkpoints, they begin a more difficult version of the race. Progress decays more quickly but each checkpoint grants more progress. Once in Overcharge mode, if players hit 0% at any time, the patrol is over. If they hit 100% again, however, they can enter a 2nd tier of Overcharge, and then a 3rd, all the way up to a 5th tier where both the difficulty and the rewards are considerable. If players fail at any time, they are still rewarded for their highest completed tier.
The Unknown Patrol
The Unknown Patrol, sometimes called the “Mystery Patrol,” was a fun one to watch players discover. Unlike other patrol types, the Unknown Patrol could not be found and activated by patrol beacon. Instead, it had a random chance to activate on players automatically during extended play sessions. Presented as a cryptic message from inscrutable gods (The Nine), the Unknown Patrol didn’t give players explicit objectives. Who could say what would please the Nine?
Each Unknown Patrol gave players three objectives in a row, pulled at random from a larger bucket of potential gameplay verbs and then sorted in random order. Potential verbs included:
Enemy kills
Enemy Critical Kills (headshots)
Enemy kills with Super Abilities
Looting treasure chests or destination materials
Dancing (player emote)
Creating orbs of light
Loot defeated enemies
To encourage player experimentation, the mission objective text initially displays as question marks, slowly decoding into text as players make progress. An objective for critical kills, for example…
Might start off as: ????? ????? ???: 0%
Eventually turning into: HE?D? ?L?WN O?F: 35%
And finally: HEADS BLOWN OFF: 70%
Each objective type also featured multiple potential UI strings with varying length to prevent players from scrying the secret objective purely by the number and placement of question marks. We did put in a failsafe, however, in case players got stuck; if several minutes passed without progress, the question marks automatically begin to decode.
Campaign Mission: Enemy of my Enemy
I created the 4th campaign mission in Taken King, called “Enemy of My Enemy.”. Guardians continue their search for Oryx by first investigating what the Cabal know about the nature of the Dreadnaught and its gateways to the Ascendant Realm. After breaking into the Cabal Assault Ship that has crash landed into the Dreadnaught, players learn that a Cabal strike team is already on its way to such a gateway. Zavala gives the order to beat them to the punch.
Upon closing the distance, however, it becomes clear that the Cabal, while powerful, are desperately outnumbered by Taken. As the strike team’s numbers dwindle, a trio of wizards arrive to “take” the Centurion leading them, sending him to another dimension.
Players continue their investigation into the gateway by scanning nearby relics. The gateway springs to life, first spilling out Thrall and eventually an Echo of Oryx boss. While the Guardians are unable to enter the Ascendant Realm for now, they learn an important truth: they too must become Ascendant if they hope to confront Oryx.
Warlock Stormcaller Missions
I created a questline called “A Spark in the Shadow,”which consisted of two story missions Warlock players needed to complete to unlock the new Stormcaller subclass in Taken King.
The first mission, sends players into the tunnels under Mars in search of Vekron, a powerful Vex Mind with insights into Arc energy. Players must fight their way through both Vex and Cabal, in the light and in the dark, in order to reach Vekron. Verkon himself is a large Ultra Hydra that we customized to shoot Arc projectiles (instead of Void). Additionally, I scripted a unique mechanic where Vekron teleports around the arena, his arrival heralded by lightning bolts. Vex reinforcements continually arrive via Warp Gates, although players can ebb the flow of enemies by destroying these gates. After defeating Vekron, players have the insight they need to confront the storm.
In the second mission, players travel to the middle of a raging Arc storm on Mars. To go with the brooding sky box, I scripted random lightning strikes all around the level to amplify the sense of danger. Players visit three focal points of the storm to meditate on the Arc energy around them. With each meditation, the intensity of the lightning falling around them grows, and the nearby Vex work harder to push the player away. Finally, players successfully unlock their new Stormcaller subclass in a cutscene, and they return to the action with (temporarily) unlimited energy for their new super ability, unleashing chain lightning on throngs of hapless Vex in a compelling power fantasy.