A Decade In the past, The Taken King Saved Destiny–And Then Cursed It

Future: The Taken King is celebrating its 10-year anniversary at present, September 15, 2025. Under, we glance again at the way it got here to characterize the years of Future, and live-service video games extra broadly, that might observe.

Ten years in the past, Bungie carried out a miracle. It additionally, sadly, invoked a curse.

In 2014, the studio famend for the Halo franchise launched Future, which promised to mix its penchant for dynamic single-player campaigns and kinetic multiplayer gameplay with the framework and community-oriented options of MMOs. And whereas the sport was launched to an excited and impressionable viewers, it floundered. Its opening salvo felt limp and incomplete–a sentiment that later reporting would confirm–but it maintained a playerbase by means of a spate of smaller middling DLC releases main as much as The Taken King, Future’s first main enlargement and saving grace.

The Taken King launched on September 15, 2015 and–I say this with out exaggeration–revolutionized the sport, which felt aimless until its arrival. Future’s worlds, whereas massive and delightful, felt quiet and devoid of life. Its solid felt extra like disparate archetypes thrown in a blender than a cohesive firm. And its paper-thin plot…properly, it was simply that. Future wasn’t with out merit–it excelled in gunplay, boasted an artwork type that blended sci-fi and fantasy seamlessly, and the extent design of its strikes and raids have been nonetheless exemplary–but all of that felt pointed at nothing particularly. The Taken King whipped it into form.

From its opening mission by means of to the riotous finish of its raid, The Taken King was sharp in a means the preliminary launch of Future may solely ever dream of. For 10 years now, I have been struck by the development of the enlargement’s first stage, the place the participant should mount a protection of a besieged base on Phobos, and the way a lot livelier it felt than something Future had carried out within the 12 months prior. Small touches, like an enemy ship cresting over a hill and shining its highlight on the participant, in addition to the sights and sounds of explosions within the distance, lastly broke up the virtually glacial entrance that permeated Future’s locations. It was like throwing a rock into nonetheless water.

The Taken King lastly supplied a worthy and significant antagonist in Oryx, whose affect and brood nonetheless have ramifications on the world of Future to this present day. It breathed life into characters that might’ve fallen by the wayside, like Eris Morn. It supplied a bounty of secrets and techniques nestled within the crevices of the Dreadnaught. Hell, it even gave gamers a quest log! It can’t be overstated how amorphous Future felt earlier than The Taken King’s arrival, and the way fantastic it felt to delight in it for the weeks and months to return. It hadn’t simply come to life, however develop into even bigger in scope. Eventually, I felt like I used to be collaborating within the epic wrestle between mild and darkness that Future had been billed as whereas I flitted by means of the cosmos and used my spectacular powers and weaponry to dwell out the adventures of my goals.

For all intents and functions, Future had mounted the comeback it wanted. With some narrative route and goodwill on its facet, it had sufficient gasoline to proceed its ascent. So what curse may I presumably have been referring to earlier?

The unlucky downside with Future is that it by no means stopped needing saving. When you’re in any respect aware of the arc of the collection, chances are you’ll be tangentially conscious of the bumpy highway the video games, in addition to the corporate behind it, have been on ever since. For each high–every Taken King or Forsaken, which got here at an identical time in Future 2’s lifetime–there have been some standout lows. Sadly, whereas Future’s historical past is marked by a protracted line of comebacks, it is simply as stained by these immense valleys, introduced on usually by frequent retooling and reinvention that steadily eroded any floor which may present it steady footing. And though Future had confirmed, very similar to Rainbow Six Siege and No Man’s Sky, {that a} live-service recreation may bounce again, it additionally stood as proof optimistic of how risky ongoing video games could possibly be. It has typified the usually harsh ebb and circulate of the mannequin.

You see, Future by no means actually loved a way of stability. Whereas Bungie devised a means ahead for its bold collection, the video games suffered content material droughts that turned its group towards the sport at a number of factors in its prolonged lifetime. To unravel this downside, Bungie discovered a cadence and template for content material drops, like expansions, title updates, and seasonal occasions, that might complement the group and feed the machine.

We regularly discuss concerning the live-service treadmill from the attitude of the buyer, which is at all times a useful viewpoint to contextualize its affect and potential hurt. However what usually feels under-discussed is the impact that this work has on the individuals who make the content material for these endless video games. And whereas some titles, like Epic Video games’ Fortnite, seemingly have the capital to throw armies on the factor, the identical is not true of each group.

The cadence of releases underneath the Future banner have appeared more and more exhaustive on the workforce producing it, particularly when factoring within the fixed expectations for the subsequent additions to the sport to be larger and higher. The live-service treadmill is not the one factor killing Future although. Paired with the mismanagement of the studio underneath earlier management, a poisonous office tradition, in addition to fixed layoffs and reinventions–some higher than others–it’s no shock that Future’s lineage is riddled with instability.

Generally that cadence of releases meant that game-changing updates like The Taken King would shake issues up for the higher. However simply as usually, it meant that the realities of creating such an enormous enlargement for Future caught up with the group behind it. Issues fell quick. Different expansions like Rise of Iron or Past Gentle felt half-baked, even when they have been well-intentioned. Seasons, which have been launched in Future 2, felt like a little bit of triage that allayed many storytelling and content material woes however opened up one other can of worms totally through the years on account of repetitive duties and the removing of seasonal content material. Some system-level adjustments, like reworks to lessons, have been welcome whereas others, just like the introduction of the Portal, weren’t. The gulf between Future releases has usually left lots to be desired and it has meant that for each two steps that Future appeared to take, it could continuously take one again.

The place does The Taken King fall into this, precisely? Nicely, it arguably set the bar fairly excessive for what Future releases needs to be, and although Bungie has lived as much as that promise a couple of instances over the 10-plus years it is labored on the collection, these ambitions have made for simply as many misses as there have been hits.

It established an unlucky rhythm of Bungie amending its errors, exhibiting unprecedented power, after which exhibiting how that hubris may simply as simply be the studio’s undoing. Like clockwork, Bungie has spent the final decade and alter stepping on rakes and bouncing again higher than ever solely to additional upset the steadiness of issues in Future and inadvertently step on one other 5 rakes, which solely landed there by the studio’s personal actions.

It’s unfair to position the blame for Future’s unevenness on one its earliest and finest expansions. It could be a mischaracterization of the DLC and the intent behind it. The Taken King is not a stain on Future’s legacy as a result of it is too good. That is a ridiculous factor to suggest. However it actually did set the sport and the group behind it on a trajectory that has, on the very least, proved untenable for the studio and the well being of the sport in the long run.

So for all the nice that Taken King did Future by saving it again then, it is exhausting to disclaim that it has made for a tricky act to observe, and chasing it after its highs has indelibly marked the studio. It is concurrently emblematic of one of the best Future would provide, and the lows it could continuously must get well from.