10 Ways Your Favourite Video Games Were Almost Radically Different
5. Destiny
By all accounts, the development of the original Destiny was a bit of a shambles.
While the game's core was always similar to what it is today, with a focus on MMO-style gameplay and a shared-world single player design, the story and structure of the game underwent monumental shake-ups until a few months before it hit shelves.
The original idea was to give Destiny a story as expansive and as intricate as Bungie's previous Halo games. Taking place across multiple different planets and focusing on characters like Osiris (who featured heavily in the first draft but not the final release itself), the title's narrative wasn't shaping up how the developers wanted.
Unimpressed by what they'd seen and with only six months left before release, the management decided to throw the story out completely in favour of patching something else together instead.
Realising they couldn't create something new in such a small amount of time, instead of having one cohesive story Bungie split up missions into different sections to create more content. Consequently certain set-pieces were ripped out of levels to be used later outside of their original context, and entire planets like Mercury were dropped entirely in favour of a smaller scope.