In Destiny 2, boss Luke Smith revealed what the original vision for the first raid in Destiny 1 was: Originally, a gigantic Hive raid was planned. Because the story changed, they then needed the Vex raid “The Glassed Chamber”. However, the ideas for the Hive raid can be found in Crota’s End and King’s Fall.
Who is speaking? There is a new long interview with Game Director Luke Smith. He was a guest on the talk show “Cool Friends” by Kinda Funny and spilled some insider information.
It matched well because the 5th anniversary of the release of Destiny is being celebrated. Luke Smith himself has been working on the title since 2010: “A quarter of his life,” as he says.
Meanwhile, Smith is responsible for Destiny as a franchise and is essentially the overall boss of the game. He was in a chatty mood and revealed quite a bit that one previously did not know about Destiny.
How did Smith become the raid lead on Destiny? Smith recounts that he had originally landed at Bungie as a gag writer for the website after working as a journalist but now needed money.
Bungie knew he loved WoW and Halo, so about a year later, they approached him when they needed ideas for RPG elements in Halo Reach. That’s how he started as a designer at the lowest level.
In 2011, Smith was promoted to “raid lead” of Destiny.
He says he was bored and unhappy back then. Because day in and day out, he only worked on concepts and wrote documents for Destiny. The game itself was still a long way from being seen. Back then, Bungie itself did not know what kind of game Destiny would actually become. They were in the finding phase.
Smith could not imagine at the time that any design concept he was writing down would actually make it into the game.
A producer noticed how dissatisfied he was and then asked him if he could take over “this raid thing.” The responsible designer had just left.
Back then, they didn’t know how big raids for Destiny would become, and Smith was relatively new to the design business. At that time, only a prototype of a raid from Destiny existed. However, it was never implemented in Destiny.
We had planned a gigantic Hive raid
That was the original plan: Smith says that originally, parts of the later raids Crota’s End (Darkness Looms) and King’s Fall (King of the Taken) were a large common concept. They wanted to build this huge Hive raid for Destiny.
But then it went, probably after the story reboot, to Destiny 1 at the end of the story about the Vex, and Bungie needed a Vex raid. That’s how “The Glassed Chamber” came to be. The writers at Bungie initially wanted to call the raid “The Glass Throne,” but that didn’t work – because colloquially that describes a toilet.
The Hive raid was not implemented but went back into the drawer. However, the components of this raid can be found in “Crota’s End” and “King’s Fall”: the raids 2 and 3 of Destiny 1.
Bungie throws nothing away even with raids
What was used in Crota’s End: The end of the raid “Crota’s End” was originally the end of the Hive raid. Someone had the idea with the “Lights” many years before players descended into the raid for the first time in December 2014.
The scene with the bridge came from the original, never implemented prototype of a raid.
What was used in King’s Fall: Smith says some rooms from King’s Fall originated from the original Hive raid:
- The beginning of the raid, the opening raid, was an encounter that he and Brian Frank had designed long ago. Brian Frank is now the raid lead.
- The idea for the ogre room also comes from the old Hive raid.
This is shown in the clip: We played the stream at 1:49:30. That’s when Smith begins to talk about how difficult the concept phase for Destiny was. Shortly after, Smith begins to talk about the Hive raid.
Is all of this recycled? Smith says: They recreated all these rooms in the later raids, but they were based on older ideas.
This is how one works as a game designer. Much of what one designs is based on the bones of old ideas.
When a mentor told him years ago that this is how to work as a game designer, he couldn’t believe it back then. He thought he would always have new ideas.
Today, Smith sees it differently. One looks at old ideas and then says to oneself: “Why didn’t this work? I still want to do this!”
