One of the most memorable secrets that came along with Destiny's The Taken King expansion was the hidden mission that led to the exotic sniper rifle, Black Spindle. To get it, players had to speedrun through the "Lost to Light" story mission to find an alternate path through an open door, which then led to a strike-like encounter that had to be cleared within 10 minutes to earn the prize.

In the latest edition of Bungie's podcast, one of the developers behind that Destiny mission revealed that it was inspired by a mission in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Bungie's Rob Engeln says that he was impressed by videos of Call of Duty 4 players who would speedrun the "Mile High Club" level of that game on Veteran difficulty. "Mile High Club" unlocks after the campaign of Modern Warfare, and tasks players with clearing a plane of enemies in just a handful of minutes.

That led him to start tinkering with the idea of putting a hidden speedrun section into The Taken King story mission "Lost to Light" when senior gameplay designer, Jon Weisnewski, approached him about the Black Spindle. The rest, as they say, is history—albeit the secret mission evolved a lot from initial concept to the one that shipped.

According to Engeln, Weisnewski said he was working on an exotic version of the Black Hammer sniper rifle, but he wanted players to find it in a really unique way. Engeln thought the speedrun to the secret door in "Lost to Light" would be perfect for the Black Spindle, but at that time in development, the speedrun ended in a chest right at the starting area for the encounter.

Engeln felt that having players sprint to a chest wasn't quite as fun as he had hoped, so the team added enemies in that room. Then, the encounter expanded to take players through multiple rooms of enemies, which culminated in a boss fight. And finally, Bungie added a countdown timer—again, inspired by the time constraints of Call of Duty 4's "Mile High Club"—to add extra stress and challenge to earning Black Spindle.

Bungie looks to be continuing this trend of secret missions, hidden objectives, and exotics earned by quest in Destiny 2. Later in the podcast, the developers went onto say that they are trying to keep as much secrets as they can so as to "surprise and delight" players when they finally get to play the full game this fall.

Destiny is available now on PS4 and Xbox One.

Source: The Bungie Podcast