Infusion works exactly the same way here, with all of your second year gear easily infused right the way up to the new maximum of 385 light – Year 1 gear is sadly trapped forever in its own little world. They hit upon infusion as a method of letting you take the light level of one item and apply that to an existing piece of gear, so that items that would ordinarily be cast by the wayside could, if you were so inclined, be used as part of a maxed out set of armour and weaponry. The Taken King was a grand revision of a flawed original release and first year for the game, after Bungie toiled through the first two expansions to find a solution. Now in its third year, Bungie have clearly settled on how Destiny should be structured around the continually excellent first person shooting. There’s still a few too many homing death blasts for my tastes, but they’re much less present than with the Taken. Dregs with peg legs, Captains with different shields and more powerful cannons, and Servitors with rapid fire energy blasts all put a nice spin on what went before. Splicers are Fallen merged with SIVA’s technology, twisting some of their abilities on their head and augmenting others. It’s a familiar feeling place to go to, but SIVA’s eerily organic technology is clear to see everywhere, particularly in the enemies you face. SIVA’s influence spreads out into some parts of the Cosmodrome that we know all too well from the main game, and as a wintry spell blankets the area in snow, little drones fly around, carving up parts of the metal structures and putting them to other use. There’s plenty of new content to explore and it sits somewhere between The Dark Below and The Taken King in scale, with a big part of its content coming from the new area to patrol.

The main thrust of the expansion’s story can be quite easily wrapped up in a couple of hours, but just as with The Taken King, it branches off into a few further quests and plot threads. There’s one new strike and a couple of revisited strikes, which shake things up with different enemies and boss abilities, and there’s also a number of exotic quests, the reforging of the Gjallarhorn, and the Archon’s Forge activity in the Plaguelands, which is akin to the Court of Orix from last year.

Rise of iron release date