Destiny's original scrapped plot included The Taken King's Dreadnaught

Last month, a lawsuit between Halo series and Destiny composer Marty O'Donnell and former employer Bungie revealed Destiny's plot had been "substantially revised." According to a new report from Kotaku, not only was the plot of Destiny originally quite different, but The Dreadnaught seen in Destiny expansion The Taken King was planned to be part of the base - or "vanilla" if you prefer - version of the game.

The game's plot, as penned by former lead of Bungie's writing team, Joe Staten, was far more linear and focused on saving the Warmind AI, Rasputin. In this version, players would have to rescue an Exo (the robotic humanoid race players can choose at character creation) that was being controlled by Rasputin (though players wouldn't find out his true identity until later DLC). The journey would take Guardians to several locations scrapped from the final game, including Oryx's Dreadnaught - though it's not clear how far into development the area was at the time.

According to Kotaku's anonymous sources, not only were locations overhauled, but plot threads and characters were also reused, recycled, and re-stitched together to form what we would experience in September 2014. Osiris was originally a mentor figure with a female Exo assistant. The Crow was an Awoken male ally with a roguish attitude.

Now, Osiris himself has no in-game presence, and his assistant has become The Stranger. The Crow was recycled to become the stuffy prick we all came to hate, Prince Uldren Sov. As for the story itself, it's hard to sum up its construction better than one person who worked on the game: "The story was written without writers."

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