Bungie’s Destiny Could Have Been Straight-Up Fantasy Game

Though Destiny has been revealed to be a (seemingly) massive, sprawling sci-fi shooter, Bungie's original plans for the new franchise were dramatically different.

Speaking with OXM UK, Destiny's design director Joseph Staten talked a bit about the genesis of the game, and how Bungie ended up with the otherworldly title we saw debut back in February. "We thought of a good handful of other genres as well," Staten said. "We've had a pretty long pre-production period and we explored everything from straight-up fantasy to something a little bit more modern to many, many other things as well."

Some of those fantasy elements did end up making it into the game, even if Destiny itself is much more of science fiction adventure. "Ultimately we gravitated towards this mix of science fiction and fantasy because it gave us this freedom," Staten continued. "You saw small things like the prevalence of cloth in the game, a lot of characters have capes or cloaks and the combatants have cloth as well. Fantasy brings us this texture that we can wrap around sci-fi, which is really appealing, especially if you're an artist who's just been stuck making straight up space armor for ten years. A bit of cloth is very refreshing."

Destiny's look is certainly very different from what we've seen from Bungie in the past, even if there are some hallmark touches designed to fit in with genre. How it will all play out remains to be seen, as Bungie still remains tight-lipped about what Destiny really has to offer.