See the Destiny beta's best keep secret - the Seraphim Vault

Destiny containhed at least one secret area that wasn't quite as well-hidden as Bungie had hoped.

Destiny's beta contained plenty of areas players weren't supposed to go, usually guarded by high level enemies. Most of these looped back to other areas or ended in dead ends when brave souls managed to push through them.

However, there was at least one location that players definitely weren't meant to explore even slightly - not that it stopped intrepid beta testers. According to Reddit, players could turn around at the start of the Devil's Lair Strike and backtrack to the area known as the Grottos, and then use a Sparrow to enter the water without dying.

By driving towards the Forgotten Shore, players could ramp off an invisible barrier and land outside and below the map without alerting the game totheir machinations. By wandering back to the Forgotten Shore, they could then access normal level geometry hidden below the surface, gradually working around to an entirely new area called the Seraphim Vault.

This area is presumably higher level Cosmodrome content to be explored in the full game. You can take a look at it in the two videos below, which come courtesy of YouTube TheBanndit.

The Destiny fanbase is going crazy trying to piece together what this area might be for. The best theory so far, I think, is that Seraphim is some kind of AI, perhaps a Warmind like Rasputin, which players encountered during the story missions in the beta.

It's interesting that the Seraphim Vault is underground - of course, that's a good place for a vault, and there's apparently another one buried under Mars called Charlemagne's Vault (another AI?). But Bungie has made a couple of references to descending recently, notably while discussing the first endgame raid on the Vault of Glass. I'm 100% behind the Reddit theory that things buried underground are going to be key to defeating the Darkness and getting out of the solar system.

Destiny is coming to PlayStation 3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One in September. As I noted earlier today in discussing high level Destiny character builds, I'm not going to be caught unprepared.

Thanks, Total Xbox.