There is very little doubt that Destiny and the Taken King edition of the game has gone through some major redesigns since the title was first launched. New weapons have of course been added,a s well as new missions, but there’s more to it than that. Luke Smith, Bungie’s Creative Director for Destiny: The Taken King recently sat down with the Planet Destiny Podcast crew in order to talk about a great many things, including his involvement with the development of the Vault of Glass, originally known as the Glass Throne.
Among the tidbits Smith shared is that he chose to focus on the concept of descent, designing the raid around that idea. He also said he and his team started working on the Gorgon’s Maze first because they wanted to make a mission that didn’t involve guns, in order to kind of change things up from what players were used to seeing in Destiny. Smith added he wanted players to actually face some real uncertainty when it came to taking on the Gorgon’s Maze and he wanted “players to stop before jumping, confused about where to go next until a player finally made that leap of faith.”
Perhaps the most interesting part of his talk about the Glass Throne was that he borrowed from some classic games as part of the inspiration, saying he leaned on Megaman and Double Dragon for the jumping puzzle. You can listen to the entire interview with Smith below where he talks about the Glass Throne as well as other aspects of the game he worked on.