Apparently the story as it was, as written by Staten, was this-
The Travel brought light and an advance in technology to the planets it visited. Somewhere along the line it went dormant however. You start off with talking to the Speaker, connected to the traveler, who tells you about the plights of the Traveler-IE you have to collect some pieces of it.(In current Destiny, this is present in one of the missions on the moon where you have to 'uncorrupt' a shard of the traveler'.). However, you get kidnapped by the Crow, who with his group, have abandoned the Light and the traveler. They go look for somethings to stop the Darkness.
One way or another it's discovered that the Traveler was the one who gave birth to the darkness, and that whilst it provided a technological advance to the planets it visited it also brought the darkness towards them. The Speaker is revealed to not only know this, but he's trying to get you to activate the traveler again by recovering and 'saving' these shards. If the story is true, then this leads to you kinda exposing the Speaker and the Traveler sooner or later.
So it's possible he came up with the light and dark stuff. There's remnants in the form of Rasputin who defended earth against the darkness but somewhere along the line went rogue/deviated from it's programming(Leads into saving his avatar from the Dreadnought?), Charlemagne was supposed to be the Mars AI, the Fallen were escaping from the Darkness, another remnant civilization that became obsessed-and destroyed-with the traveler(Thus why they're on Earth), the Vex were trying to compress time and stop everything from happening/preventing the future from being expunged by the darkness, and the hive simply followed the darkness/tried to extinguish the light of the traveler to convert it to darkness all the time.
I mean, sure it may be a bit cliched, but it's alot more interesting than what we got. Before the game come out, people were wondering what connections Charlemagne would have with the player(As it was a running theme throughout Bungie games, having AIs related that run rampant of sorts, I'm sure there's image compilations here and there of how he was connected to Cortana and the AI from the Marathon series.).
That's what I can gather from the snips and pieces revealed about the original storyline.
Thanks alot for this! listening to it right now..
Edit-Christ calling Trautmann an idiot in meetings...
Edit Edit-He essentially helped create the idea of ODST? And Bungie was like 'That's just stupid'? Sheesh. Makes me think-That if the higher up thought Statens story was stupid-maybe it really wasn't(Seeing as how they're using things from the original story). ._.
Makes me really sad hearing trautmann talk about how he was treated.
I'm weird about Staten. ODST is one of the best stories we got, and that was his baby, if I remember right.
Overall, though... like... his book is the worst one in the series. For one thing, it had all these weird romance subplots. I think there was a Grunt Romance, Johnson's Romance, and an AI Romance thing sorta. None of 'em were very good, kinda like the weird Johnson/Keyes relationship in
In a way, it felt like a Bioware game--shlocky writing and all--by way of Aliens. It works. It's endearing, even when it's terrible.
Halo 1, which had guys like Trautmann on it, seemed to be way better than the later Halo stories, ODST aside. Reach felt like the most polished Halo story, but it also had some weird calls in it.
When you play Destiny, though, it doesn't sound like Staten's work, and it feels like it's... lost something. There's a campiness to some of his dialog that's just great.
That said?
The idea of the Traveler being a bad guy is very much a bad idea, for a lot of reasons. First, and most importantly, it's predictable. It's why just about every bad story idea on reddit that comes up is "what if it was a bad guy?" Go to any bad writing class on any campus in any university, and "...but what if the guy you trusted was actually the bad guy" is one of the most common suggestions by failing students. Heck, it's a common element of most bad movies.
It's a hollow, meaningless twist that doesn't make the story interesting or good.
More importantly, games are about doing things, and when a game wants you to "become legend," as Destiny does, then you should feel like a hero. Not all the time, of course--you should feel like you really earned your heroic-ness--but if suddenly the game goes "well, friend, you're actually AREN'T the hero. Actually, you're working for the villain, and, hey, the guys who you murder ceaslessly? They're actually not so bad. Some are actually victims of the real bad guy..." well, that just kinda makes you feel bad.
In a shooter where you are supposed to have fun, you should never feel bad about shooting your enemies, because, uh... then the game stops being fun. So if the Fallen are just the victims of the Traveler, or the Cabal are just some military force out to stop the Darkness, or whatever... then killing them is kinda... maybe not a good thing, and now the humans are the bad guys. You kinda have to hate yourself and your role, and there's nothing you can really do about it.
It's like "hawhaw, ur so dumb, look at you, being tricked into being the bad guy."
And players hate feeling deceived. They get mad at games that do that, unless that game magically makes them feel smarter for it (hi, Bioshock).
Having a good cause and learning about space and growing your legend and becoming awesome? Good.
Discovering you were secretly the bad guy? Not so good. KOTOR 2's the only game that pulled that off, with you working for Kreia and all.
Plus, the whole "humanity is bad, and these fictional races that don't exist are all inherently good" is dumb and shows a bizarre self-loathing we need a lot less of in games.
So.
If the Traveler really was evil, I would definitely have demanded a rewrite. But, hey, if I were running things, I'd be working tight with the story guys (since games are about doing things, and the reason for doing things is motive, and motive comes from mechanics AND story), and this idea never would have gone past the initial idea pitch meeting.
I miss Staten's voice, not so much his plots.
Bit concerning that the Mars section cut from Taken King is being developed by someone other than Bungie for Destiny 2? WTF is that all about? How can we ensure its going to be good?
Apparently its a new 'public space', strikes and a raid!
Pretty sure they've been working with Bungie since House of Wolves. They definitely worked on Taken King.
Now, if they were the guys who designed the "wait a week" bounties, or the really crappy encounters like Black Spindle/No Time To Explain's final mission... then ew, gross. But if they were the guys who built, like, the campaign missions in the game, cool.
Charlemagne's Vault definitely exists in some form, if the original GI article is to be believed, since it was apparently playable then. A Bungie mailsack story talks about actually playing on Europa too.