A had
a post in an earlier thread detailing a lot of this stuff. To add to the OP, here's some additional information.
An interesting quote
from Penny Arcade's Tycho:
Gabe chimed in with his thoughts from that play test:
There was another report from a play test that describes a story that starts the same way as the final game, but then goes off in a distinctly different way:
(I'll give you a minute to chuckle at that last line). The
source for this has gone offline, but I had copied the whole thing in
an earlier post I made about Destiny's cut content. The play tester makes mention of the Seraphim Vault, a location that had not been revealed when he made that post, and wouldn't be for months, so I am inclined to believe the post.
The
official site for the actor who does the voice of the Queen's Brother lists his character as "PRINCE ULDREN SOV (MASTER OF CROWS)," and the character's Grimoire Card also says he is the "Master of Crows." As the OP mentioned, this name was seen in pre-release materials, namely the very first Vidoc, Pathways Out of Darkness.
It is interesting to note that both in this early mobile app and in an early mockup of the main menu, the story is described as being split into "Books" and "Chapters." This terminology is missing from the final game.
The name the menu uses for the Raid is also interesting. It doesn't quite fit the Vault of Glass, but does seem quite reminiscent of Crota's End, which bears the description "He waits in the dark below." Later in that vidoc are several shots of areas on the Moon that don't feature in the main story (they may be in Crota's End, but I haven't spent much time in that activity).
The large enemy in that last screenshot is also unfamiliar to me. It could just be an early version of an Ogre.
Speaking of unknown areas from that vidoc, there is a shot of a spacecraft approaching Mercury. This would be unremarkable by itself, by as the OP mentions, there appears to be a screenshot of an old man (possibly Osiris) on Mercury.
And then there's Saturn. As the OP said, in a later vidoc, Technical Art Director Ryan Ellis said "You can go from Earth to Venus to Mars to the Moon to Saturn." The Reef is in the asteroid belt (according to a Grimoire card), far from Saturn. So what, exactly, would we be going to Saturn for? It was shown in several videos, as stated by the OP. Maybe the location of the Reef was changed at some point, but that does beg the question, why?
One last note about that first vidoc: some of the interviews were 2 years old and were done for the "O Brave New World" documentary that was released in August of 2011.
Fun fact that kind of relates to the OP, but is interesting nonetheless: according to Jaime Griesmer
in a recent Game Informer podcast, for about a year early in development, Destiny was a 3rd person shooter.