Before we go any further, this post contains possible spoilers. If you haven't finished Destiny's main story, or any of the rumours turn out to be future storylines, reader discretion is advised.

It all starts with a mysterious, and now deleted, Reddit post. The original poster claims to have been invited by Bungie to participate in a user research program. The user notes that they were under a Non-Disclosure Agreement, but believes said agreement is now void post-release.

According to the user, the story experienced in the retail version of Destiny isn't the same story they played during 2013.

Allegedly, the original idea for Destiny was to focus around a different character, The Crow, who is introduced early on in the story in place of The Stranger. The story then takes an unexpected turn. After being abducted on Earth by Crow's group, which comprises of former, Ghost-less Guardians, the player learns that there's something wrong with one of the group's senior members, The Speaker.

What would cause The Speaker to leave The Tower and join The Crow and his band of former Guardians? Well, according the poster, The Traveller – the person responsible for stopping The Darkness – is also the cause of The Darkness. In this version, The Traveller transports The Darkness to Earth with him, bringing on the collapse of The Golden Age, infecting Earth's technology to a point where it nearly wipes out all of humankind.

Eventually, the player ends up being sent to Venus to recover a Gatekeeper's eye, which is said to hold a powerful AI. Sound familiar? It should. A mission to Mars then sees the player learn that the Cabal have been harbouring an advanced AI for their own personal gain (Rasputin?).

So that's the first few hours. The poster goes on to mention that the internal test group is sent ten hours into the story's future, which again, brings another huge plot change.

The AI points to a location on the Moon, The Hellmouth. Inside, the structure harbours a secret super weapon capable of reviving The Traveller out of his dormant stasis to, presumably, unleash havoc on Earth once more.

Interestingly, during the first video documentary, the Bungie App features a mission where the player must "Help The Crow loot the academy archive."

Over on a different Reddit thread, users have noted that several areas are missing from the retail version. The Seraphim Vault was an area found in the Alpha version via players glitching their way through the game's map. Furthermore, in the official video documentary, foliage-rich areas of Earth can be seen. Have these areas been pulled? The likely explanation, albeit unconfirmed at this point, is that these areas are intended for use in future DLCs – the first of which being The Dark Below and The House of Wolves.

Adding further to the theory of an alternate story, back in September, 2013, IGN reported that Bungie's lead writer Joseph Staten had exited the company.

“After fifteen great years at Bungie, from the battlefields of Myth to the mysteries of Halo and beyond, I'm leaving to tackle new creative challenges. While this may come as a surprise, fear not. It's been my pleasure building Destiny these past four years, and after the big reveal this Summer, our hugely talented team is on track for greatness. ..

IGN: Was This The Original Storyline For Destiny?

So, in the original storyline you abducted, and interesting plot details awaited you, Guardian? It sort of does sound more interesting than what's been released for retail. Really, I haven't actually completed the Destiny campaign yet. I'm at level 15 or so, and still need to finish Venus. At this point, I'm not super-excited to finish it anyway, so now we're co-oping it at a whatever pace. All the while reminiscing how much fun I had looking for dead bodies in GTA V co-op, and trolling the multiplayer. Dat Halo MCC..

The Joseph Staten leaving Bungie is certainly weird. I've read a couple of Halo books that are barely more interesting than Destiny, and even some of Joseph Staten's Contact Harvest I've read. Didn't finish it.

Anyway, what do you think about this supposed original story from Reddit-Land, the place of supposed lies and half-truths or whatever? I've considered Destiny a solid B- at this point, and I'm not really looking forward to the DLC only to eventually meet someone named The Crow. I still bet they're gonna shove out a Comet expansion pack thing next year for $50, full of strike missions and storyline that raise the average Destiny score to a B+. Its whatever now.

Sounds like something that is still possible to happen in a future add-on. Everything that's been leaked lately is pointing to Destiny being butchered at some point to sell the pieces apart from the initial release. Probably a decision made by someone in an expansive suit with a calculator.

The guys over at Penny Arcade echo a similar statement from just after the launch of the game with Jerry saying this on the site

"I played Destiny a long time ago, and I’m fairly certain I signed a document that said I could not tell you what I had played. Let me see how I can say this. You are not playing what I played before. It coulda gone a lotta ways. That’s always the case with software, obviously. But I think they found the path." -

Jerry Holkins

Sounds like business if they cut out on disc content just to release it as dlc and money. It's there game and they can do what they want, consumers can decide to support the game or not by buying the dlc.

The stuff that sat behind on disc unfinished is weird as shit to me. Like Activision saw it wasn't going to get that hot, decided to save some losses and do double DLC rather than just one to maintain hype along with pushing story to DLC. I am 99% sure that we were intended to actually get answers to questions, figure things out, learn who and what. If the bunker encounter DLC becomes the mission or strike or raid that explains everything originally intended to be there, finishing with an encounter against something way outta this world complete with MGS-like story exposition that will be it. Evidence something happened.

I'm happy that my PS4 had to go away for RMA.

This just makes me sad for what destiny could have been. It feels like it was a regular new first person shooter from bungie with an interesting story and they decided since the pre order hype was so big that they would cut out half the content and change the narrative to be completely bland so that the game made sense without half of it. Ugh, so depressing.

There are at least a couple of interesting theories on what that different story was, or may still be if it's ever revealed in future content.

The first I read (and now can't find a link to) was someone on reddit heard one of The Fallen call his Guardian "The Darkness". The theory is The Traveller uses the Ghosts to raise an undead army of Guardians, and then uses that army to fight its enemies: The Fallen, Hive, Vex, and Cabal. These aliens have seen this happen before, perhaps to their own people, and refer to this undead army as The Darkness. Basically, by fighting for The Traveller we're seen as the bad guys by the rest of the galaxy.

The second I just read this morning here on reddit. The tl;dr is quoted below, but I recommend reading the full version at the link.

Humanity is extinct, it no longer exists. We're fighting in a transdimensional simulation, while the real Earth is being scanned in reality where the speaker is (the giant machine in Speaker Room). Only the Speaker, Vanguard and Nine know about this. Rasputin, the war mind AI introduced in the game, tries to save save humanity so travels back in time using the vessel of the Traveler thus starting the cycle all over again, the golden age, collapse, darkness, everything, since war minds also bring war (all the Alien races). But the timeline we're playing in, Rasputin tries something different. He divides himself up and creates the Ghosts, something he learned from in the Black Garden from God (black heart).

Destiny had a story?

@theacidskull: And it's available for only six bi-monthly instalments of $19.95

Well the Hellmouth is the location for the first DLC. It's entirely possible that's still the story there.

I'm done with Destiny though, it was fun while it lasted but I can't see myself going back to do the expansions unless they are really really good.

The above sounds dumb, just dumb in another way than Destiny is now. Truthfully, I don't really think that sounds like anything but a DLC story or a sub arc of teh main story. I think even it that person did see or hear something like that it was not the main story arc at all. Even very early reports about this game pointed far more into what they current game is in my opinion.

I mean, this could be true, but anybody could right fanfiction and pass it off as a better "story" than destiny's. If it doesn't involve dinkle bot scanning shit i don't believe it tbh.

That all sounds terrible.

I remember when the game was first revealed that it seemed like they intended the game to solely take place in a Numenera-like future earth. All the enemies that you were going up against, had claimed parts of the planet. It kind of shows in the design for the other areas, with the exception of the moon. I mean Venus looks like a heavy forested area with a few glowing crags and Mars looks like a random desert with orange sand. Not to say the areas look lackluster, but you can tell that they went through a couple of revisions and they wanted to keep the art assets.

Well, mars is a basically a random desert with orange sand. I think massive sandstorms would have been a good effect though during missions.

@theacidskull: yes, and it actively rages me how empty and hollow it is

I'm sure this is true of a lot of games, especially huge ones with as a long of a development cycle as Destiny had. Things are bound to change a lot in that time.

"It all starts with a mysterious, and now deleted, Reddit post."

Really disappointed that this didn't turn into a creepypasta halfway through.

All of that makes more sense than the characterless, story-less game we got. It also explains the weird, out of place cutscenes you get in the middle of the game.

This is not new where people forget games like Bioshock Infinite had a dramatic shift and rewrite at a couple of points. Although it is an interesting "what if?" I'm not sure it is worth any more time consider it or means anything in particular.

That was the basis of my joke :)

That was the basis of my argument :)

TEN YEAR PLAN FOKS

There might be some story down the line, but will there be enough that care at that point?

I think it would be pretty interesting if they had a twist where this big thing you thought saved the Earth and everyone is so desperately protecting, actually turns out to be the reason everything went to shit in the first place and no one knows it. In an alternate timeline where this was a complete single player experience with a fleshed out story you would get to go inside the traveller for an incredible final confrontation. Who knows maybe even get a choice to make with some interesting consequences: destroy the traveller and lose X or let the traveller live and perpetuate the lie or something.

I mean this is all in a crazy hypothetical world where Destiny was a complete product and not a 10 year plan. Where developers were trying to push the boundaries of storytelling in the new console generation instead of taking enormous steps back. It's really kind of gross how a big developer like Bungie with a high budget and decent development time really half assed the entire game. It's terrible that in 2014, after all these countless shooters before it, the best thing that people have to say about Destiny is that the shooting feels pretty solid - like yah, at least they got the most basic element of the formula down.

Huh. How much of the fifth species did they introduce in the Destiny that went live? (Not Vex, Cabal, Fallen, Hive or what the Player can chose from)

(The stuff on that Reddit page make too much sense - that it all indeed did get axed, and we ended up with SPACE-.LOPEZ GET ON THE SPACE-FIFTYCAL WHILE I HACK.)

I know it will take a hell of a lot to make me care about any of the Destiny fiction going forward. I love story in games, but at this point my main concern for the future of this series is having enough to actually do in the games to sustain more than a couple of weeks of play time.

I wonder how many are like me. In that we're completely the opposite.

The thing I want most from Destiny, from that world, is a really interesting narrative. Like, they have this kind of complex world, and they've established some ground rules about the allegiances of the different factions, even if those ground rules are really--really--vague at the moment.

Some manner of space intrigue is exactly what would get me to care way more about the proceedings of the game. Destiny has significant problems beyond its narrative, of course. The mission design is just completely flaccid. But, even still, I've put in some sixty hours and will likely devote one or two-dozen more to the game. Even if it's Halo Extended Fiction-level nonsense, it'd still be something.

Well, I was certainly disappointed by the lackluster story and I'd be absolutely delighted if the fiction became something I cared about as the series progressed, but I guess at this point I've enjoyed the core gameplay so much that really what I want most out of the series, for now at least, is more stuff to do. The fact that the parts of the game with the least amount story (raid, crucible, and strikes) are what I've enjoyed most about the game is largely the source of these feelings.

Completely agree.

We'll get a story one way or another it seems, it will just cost us extra $$$ and our dignity. They arn't getting money from me for their destroyed game.

Destiny will have a story so good that $59.99 wasn't enough to tell it. It's going to be better than Star Wars and it's going to cost a grand, paid for in small increments so as not to allow people to feel like they are being frivolous with their hard earned money.

Destiny is a good game....but that story wasn't finished and that's a problem. You don't pay $59.99 for a trailer.

Destiny will have a story so good that $59.99 wasn't enough to tell it. It's going to be better than Star Wars and it's going to cost a grand, paid for in small increments so as not to allow people to feel like they are being frivolous with their hard earned money.

Destiny is a good game....but that story wasn't finished and that's a problem. You don't charge $59.99 for a prologue.