Destiny world design lead Niles Sankey recalls that one of the game’s early challenges was inspired by Dark Souls.
Maybe not as much in the modern era where we all know what a Souls game is, but the first Dark Souls was a magical moment. After the introduction boss area, you arrive in the Firelink Shrine, and I’d wager a lot of us didn’t realize we had to go into the aqueduct behind us first thing, and instead ventured straight into the graveyard in front of us. In said graveyard, you’ll inevitably have gotten rocked by a group of skeletons and pondered if the game was really this hard. But this was an important lesson in where not to go in this vast world.
Sankey recalls working on Destiny’s Cosmodrome area and hiding mysterious areas behind high level enemies. After a fan mentioned the “skull health bar knights” (the Hollowed Knight enemy from the Destiny beta), Sankey reveals: “I specifically placed the ‘skull health bar knights’ in Cosmodrome for this reason. It was inspired from my experiences playing Dark Souls.”
Yea I specifically placed the “skull health bar knights” in Cosmodrome for this reason. It was inspired from my experiences playing Dark Souls.As a design lead, I had to ensure the ‘skull knights’ stayed in the game (we had A LOT of people working on these destinations). There… pic.twitter.com/WLLqE4IFgZJune 11, 2026
However, Sankey also says that he had to fight a lot to make sure these enemies stayed in the game. “There were situations where other devs would say ‘These knights are too high level, this must be a bug. Delete them.’ and I would say ‘Nooo!!! Please leave them please, it’s by design.'” But over ten years later, Sankey is “happy to know players still have fond memories of these guys.”
He also teases a “really tragic but also funny development story about these Knights,” but says it’ll be saved for “another time.”
Personally, I do have an appreciation for games that will let you get your ass kicked as a learning experience, but I am also ashamed to admit that those Dark Souls skeletons I mentioned earlier got around an hour or so of battering me before I realized what the game was trying to tell me.
Destiny 2 and Bungie as a whole were “very close” to closing before Sony buyout, according to ex-community lead: “It was an emergency acquisition.”
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