Destiny: The Taken King will greatly improve quests and bounties, and how they're handled

Destiny developer Bungie is introducing a much-needed overhaul to the game's quest system with The Taken King this fall, the studio announced today.

Bounties for exotic weapons are some of the most fun, rewarding sequences of tasks in Destiny, even if some of the individual parts can be tremendously frustrating (we're looking at you, void-damage PvP kills for Thorn).

Those bounties "took you on a journey through multiple activities — which in the best cases had flashes of unique moments — and ended with rewards players cared about," said Luke Smith, creative director on The Taken King, in a Bungie blog post today. "We want Destiny to provide more experiences like that."

To that end, said Smith, "The Taken King was built with Quests in mind." And since Bungie didn't want to leave Destiny and its first two expansions out of the loop, the studio went ahead and "questified" everything in the game so far.

That starts with a new tab in Destiny's interface, the fifth one: "Progress." This screen tracks bounties — for which there will be 16 slots, not just the 10 that have been available since November — as well as quests. Destiny 2.0, which coincides with the launch of The Taken King in September, will allow Guardians to turn in completed bounties directly from this Progress screen; you won't have to visit the Tower or the Reef anymore. And Bungie is moving reputation icons from the Inventory page to the Progress tab.

You'll also be able to catch a glimpse of quest progress on the screen that appears when you bring up your Ghost, as you can see in the screenshot at the top of this article. This is a great way to utilize a screen that currently consists mostly of empty space. In fact, all of these changes look like smart upgrades that will cut down on some of the busy work that's inherent to playing Destiny.

Bungie said today that in the weeks to come, it will provide more in-depth glances at weapons, balance, progression, destinations, enemies and more in The Taken King. The expansion is set for release Sept. 15. For more details, check out the quest details screenshot below, and our hands-on impressions from E3.

Correction: Destiny launched with five bounty slots, not 10. We've edited the article to reflect this.