BY JESSE CABRAL
Bungie has released the final expansion for its highly successful first-person shooter Destiny. With the launch of Rise of Iron, Destiny now has four expansions since its release in September, 2014. With news of Destiny 2 on the horizon, this looks to be the final expansion for the beloved game.
Within Rise of Iron, Bungie has included one new zone, The Plaguelands, a barren war-torn land beyond the border of Old Russia. This zone introduces a five quest campaign for players to experience that hopes to shed light onto the fate of the Iron Lords.
According to The Guardian, “Rise of Iron feels like it was built from the ground up by looking at what players actually spent their time doing, and catering to that.” With the many additions Bungie has implemented into Rise of Iron, it certainly feels that way.
A new social zone, Felwinter Peak, has been introduced that allows players to meet with others who have purchased the new expansion to group up and tackle the new content together.
The expansion also increases the light level cap from its previous 335 to 385. This means that players will have to gear up with new equipment if they are hoping to tackle the hardest content this expansion has to offer.
For one player, the content in Rise of Iron is a bittersweet moment. Nikosie Corbin, a player since Destiny’s beta, sat down with The Sun and described his experience playing the expansion.
“It is a moment of sadness when you finish the campaign. It’s like, this is it, that’s the last of the content for Destiny. We aren’t getting anything else. But don’t get me wrong, I loved the expansion. There’s this moment where you go back to the first area in the game and you just pause. You get to sit down and talk to your ghost (the player’s companion) and just reflect on everything that you have been through. That was my favourite moment of the expansion.”
This expansion brings plenty to the table for both new and returning players. Not much of the content in Rise of Iron is groundbreaking but the content that is there, is what players want.
The largest and most important of the content is a new six-player raid called, Wrath of the Machine. This raid is the final one of the game and Bungie is hoping it will strike a balance between length and fun that other raids struggled with.
Corbin is no stranger to experiencing the toughest challenges that Destiny has to offer. Having played through all of the game’s raids he was more than excited for the final one. “They’re like your final exam,” he says. “Everything that you have learned and honed through playing, it’s all put to the test and this raid, it’s the final test. There’s nothing else after this.”
Having played through most of the raids with the same group of friends, Corbin told the Sun how they looked forward to the raid.
“Every time you play through it, you get closer and closer to beating it. Playing through with my friends, no matter how many times we might wipe, we want to win. We’ve beat everything that has been thrown at us and we aren’t backing down from this challenge. Some of us have gotten careers and families since we started playing but we aren’t going to just stop and give up. Whatever spare time we all have is spent playing and beating that raid.”
For players that enjoy the player versus player experience, a new game mode is being added. The new mode, Supremacy, has players picking up crests dropped by fallen players to earn points toward victory.
Kristopher Maldia, a long-time PVP player, is excited for the change to Destiny’s PVP.
“While the content is fun to play through, showing your stuff to other players is what I like.” Maldia chooses to spend his time in Destiny facing other players then running the end-game content over and over. While the content provides him with new armaments to use against other players, in the PVP experience, it all boils down to personal skill. “You can have the latest guns but when you enter The Crucible (Destiny’s PVP mode), it all comes down to how good you are.”
Finally, the content that veteran players have been waiting for, Private Matches, are finally being added into Destiny. The private matches can be played with up to teams of six. These matches should help to provide players with plenty of content to do until the sequel to the game releases sometime in 2017.
For players like Corbin and Maldia, this is a fond farewell to a game that became a part of them. Every game has to come to an end sometime, and for Destiny, this seems like its end.
Much like the characters in the game who look out to the stars for their next adventure, Destiny’s players are looking out toward their next adventure.