Destiny could've been a fantasy game set in the modern day world like The Secret World, or played it straight as a high-fantasy game. Ultimately, its developers settled upon the game's current sci-fi fantasy setting.
Speaking to OXM, Bungie writer and design director Joseph Staten explained how the developers experimented with many different possible themes for Destiny in during pre-production.
"We thought of a good handful of other genres as well. 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," he said.
He added that the studio naturally decided on a setting which allowed them the freedom to do what they wanted.
"Ultimately we gravitated towards this mix of science fiction and fantasy because it gave us this freedom. 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."
We hope that Destiny offers more than a bit of cloth and some Star Wars-oriented space magic.
Destiny is set for release on both current- and next-gen consoles.
