Destiny world design lead Niles Sankey recalls that one of the game's early challenges was inspired by Dark Souls.
Maybe not as much in the modern era where we all know what a Souls game is, but the first Dark Souls was a magical moment. After the introduction boss area, you arrive in the Firelink Shrine, and I'd wager a lot of us didn't realize we had to go into the aqueduct behind us first thing, and instead ventured straight into the graveyard in front of us. In said graveyard, you'll inevitably have gotten rocked by a group of skeletons and pondered if the game was really this hard. But this was an important lesson in where not to go in this vast world.
