Creepiest Things Found In The Destiny Games

If there's one thing Destiny is known for, it's art. Both games in the series have a unique style to them. Each planet or moon you're transported to has a certain vibe to it. The worlds created by Bungie's artists can sometimes do just as much to tell a story as the cutscenes and voice acting.

There are bright, beautiful locales just begging to be explored. But there are some scary spots, too. The kind that make you shiver and wish you'd never come in the first place. And there also exist creepy elements inside the game, as well. Not every gun is built to honor a hero. Some have dark powers and even darker beginnings.

This list compiles some of the more disturbing bits you'll find inside both Destiny and Destiny 2. You should be warned: there will be spoilers for those who haven't played the most recent campaign at the time of this writing, Destiny 2: Forsaken.

For now, here are the creepiest things found in the Destiny games.

Let's get this out of the way right now: the Hive are one of the creepiest races in the Destiny universe. Your initial encounters with them in the original Destiny won't help you sleep any better at night, but the game really cranks up the creep factor when you and a fireteam descend into the Crota's End raid for the first time.

It's there that you're asked to traverse the Abyss.

The Abyss is a poorly lit puzzle — an area so consumed by the in-game evil known as the Darkness that said Darkness literally weighs on you. It slows you down. And you're forced to huddle next to lamps scattered around the space that help lift some of the Darkness off of you. All while you're being chased by various Hive enemies: from Thrall, to Knights, and ultimately, to large ogres.

It's one of the first areas in Destiny that felt more like a horror experience than a first-person shooter. And for that reason, you won't want to hang around in the Abyss for very long.

Destiny's Taken King expansion arrived one year after the original game launched, and at that point, Guardians had a whole lot of experience battling Cabal. For that reason, a mission to the Martian moon Phobos didn't seem like that big a deal. Phobos housed a Cabal base — not unlike the many Guardians had cleared out on Mars proper. You could probably zip in, lay waste to some Space Turtles, and still make it back to the Tower in time for lunch. Easy peasy, right?

Not so much.

You arrived on Phobos to find Cabal running scared. They were retreating — but not from you. Making your way through the Cabal base, you saw black goo splattered on the walls. And Cabal who were right in front of you were suddenly and seemingly removed from existence: there one second and gone the next. Only when you reached the heart of the base did you discover what frightened the Cabal so.

It was the Taken — a faction made entirely of other enemy races who'd been robbed of their will. They now served Oryx, the Hive king. And the world of Destiny would never be the same again.

There's deep lore inside Destiny that describes the formation of the Hive, one of the most storied races in the game. This alien race evolved from another species after pledging fealty to powerful Worm Gods, and has existed for millennia, conquering everything in sight. Oryx, the Hive king, earned his crown by slaying one of the very Worm Gods he served, consuming its power. And he's led the Hive across the stars ever since, his survival reliant on the slaughter of all other beings.

The Worm God that Oryx killed was named Akka. And from the worm's husk, Oryx carved out his ship — the Dreadnaught.

The Dreadnaught's origin story is creepy by itself. But step inside Oryx's massive ship and you'll find plenty else to be scared of. Hive and Taken enemies abound. Small worms feeding in caves. Relics of a race that existed far before humanity came into existence. And of course, Oryx himself.

It's a destination that gives off some seriously bad juju. If that's not your cup of tea, you should probably avoid the Taken King expansion altogether. 

Oryx was nothing if not well prepared. Even though he'd crisscrossed the galaxy and driven countless other races into extinction, he knew that someday, his time would come. And it did. As a Guardian in Destiny: The Taken King, you defeated Oryx on the Dreadnaught. And in the King's Fall raid, you bested a more powerful Oryx one last time.

But Oryx had a backup plan: the Touch of Malice.

Once you take down Oryx in the King's Fall raid, a quest kicks off for a mysterious weapon. You're sent all around the Dreadnaught to collect Calcified Fragments — small blueprints that also contain lore about the Hive. After collecting at least 45, you're sent on a special mission to kill a powerful Taken Wizard. And once you've completed that last task, you're gifted with the Touch of Malice — a weapon constructed using Oryx's own soul.

You may have conquered a king. But every time you kill using the Touch of Malice, Oryx lives on — just as he intended.

The first non-Hive entry on the list belongs to the Fallen. But these Fallen weren't the kind you encountered in the first two years of Destiny — not by a longshot. This breed discovered a long-lost human technology called SIVA and started to augment themselves with it. They became half-organic, half-machine hybrids. And in the Wrath of the Machine raid, you enter the Perfection Complex that serves as the home of the SIVA Fallen leader, Aksis.

There are few moments in the first Destiny that are as eerie as the journey to the Perfection Complex.

It starts in a hillside cave, where you must drop from rock to rock until you reach a hallway. From there, you enter a server room of sorts. It's dimly lit, leaving you unsure of which direction to go. Once you do find the path forward, you come upon a chamber that houses large computer cores, further driving home the point that technology — not ancient beings — built this house. And finally, you reach the catwalk. A long walkway with a door at the end and red beams of light that shoot out in multiple directions. It's ominous. It lets you know you're heading into the boss room.

And it creeps you out.

Fans can argue as to whether or not Destiny 2 was truly an improvement over the original Destiny. But the second game did seem to step it up on the narrative front — particularly in the way it teased future content, answering some questions while raising others. And early in the Destiny 2 campaign, one of those instances played out in a mission on Titan, a moon of Saturn.

But only if you were paying attention.

In the story mission Utopia, you're asked to journey deep into the Arcology on Titan and obtain a powerful CPU. Once you've progressed through the mission and picked up said CPU, you're asked to jump inside a tank and high-tail it to the surface for extraction. But if you hang around the CPU's location for a minute or two, you'll catch a very unsettling sight. A large worm-like creature swims by the lower levels of the Arcology, its silhouette visible through the foggy windows.

What is this creature? Is it a Hive worm, or something else entirely? The game hasn't answered that question just yet. But it undoubtedly will in the future.

Humanity's Golden Age — which took place centuries before the events of the original Destiny — saw great achievements and advances in technology. The citizens of Earth lived longer. They colonized other planets and moons. And they managed to build a massive system-wide defense network comprised of Warminds — powerful AI systems.

The most powerful of the Warminds was Rasputin. We met him early in the first Destiny's campaign. And then he went silent. That is, until Destiny 2.

The Arecibo adventure is, arguably, one of the best missions inside Destiny 2. Throughout this Io-based adventure, you come into contact with Vex enemies who seem to be controlled by small, diamond-shaped nodes that play music. You eventually track the source of the music back to a Warmind bunker, and it's there that things really get creepy.

Ghost decodes a strange message. "Never ask for anything. Never for anything, and especially from those who are stronger than you. They'll make the offer themselves, and give everything themselves."

He's then overridden by an unknown entity. In a distorted voice, he yells, "Red sand! Mars! Ice caps!" — before suddenly snapping back, having no recollection of what he just said.

We now know that Rasputin controlled Ghost in this instance. And the reference to Mars and the ice caps was a tease for the Warmind expansion that would arrive later the next year.

In the summer of 2018, Bungie shadow-dropped a questline into Destiny 2 that introduced one of the series' most powerful weapons. And also creeped everyone out in the process.

It all started in the Lost Oasis area of Io. On the day the quest launched, a few Guardians were there simply doing what Guardians do. Killing things. Knocking out patrols. Completing public events. But something strange happened when the Taken Blight public event arrived — a brand-new Taken boss spawned with it. Upon defeating this new boss, a portal appeared, and players who entered it were whisked away into a never-before-seen mission called The Whisper.

The Whisper starts inside the Grove of Ulan-Tan lost sector. But from there, it descends into a Vex-built maze deep below Io's surface. Players running it for the first time are given no directions, as the navigation marker has disappeared. And those who manage to find the end of the puzzle are greeted by three waves of powerful Taken enemies — enemies that, at the time the quest launched, were far above the level of most Guardians.

If you managed to see your way through to completing The Whisper, you were granted an exotic sniper rifle called Whisper of the Worm. And true to the creepiness factor of the Hive and the Taken in Destiny, the gun is built from the remains of Xol, a Hive Worm God.

If you've played through Destiny 2: Forsaken, you have some experience with the Ascendant Plane. It exists as a dimension other than the real world inside the game. And it's where Hive and Taken are at their most powerful.

It's also one of the most unsettling parts of not just Destiny 2, but either Destiny game.

The color palette in the Ascendant Plane is, for the most part, grayscale. Taken enemies seem to spawn infinitely and uncontrollably. The Plane can sometimes take on the shape of a real-world location, as it does when you're flipped between a certain locale and its Ascendant opposite in the Dreaming City. But it can also take on the form of a floating abyss — a space traversed via moving rocks and pathways, where falling off promises a quick death.

You'll almost certainly grow to hate your time inside the Ascendant Plane, as it seems designed specifically to elicit that response. It's Darkness at its darkest — and Guardians, as bearers of Light, just don't belong there.

There is a being who appears at the conclusion of the Forsaken campaign. The one who shows up for the final battle and nearly denies your opportunity for vengeance.

It's the Voice of Riven. And this cutscene will show you exactly why this creature is one of the more disturbing ones we've come across in the Destiny universe.

The Voice of Riven is an extension of Riven, the raid boss inside the Last Wish raid. As Riven is able to assume many voices, he uses his Voice to speak to Prince Uldren, taking on the sound of Mara Sov, Uldren's sister. Riven tricks Uldren into opening a portal between the Dreaming City and the real world. And it's then Uldren discovers that the voice he's been hearing all along was not his sister's. Things don't end well for him.

That twist — the Voice of Riven showing up, and the Riven reveal it provided — thoroughly creeped out those who completed the campaign. And it made the promise that more would certainly come later on.