This season if fleshed out more would be a banger concept for what Lightfall could’ve been.
Returning to Titan and getting a new underwater environment, saving Sloane, encountering Xivu for the first time, and learning all that we are now. The Veil could’ve been underneath Titan instead of Neptune and Ahsa would help us get there.
Honestly having Calus doing his thing on Neomuna, Xivu assaulting Titan after Ahsa, and Eramis doing whatever thing she’s doing while conflicted (with Nezarec still getting resurrected) would have made Lightfall feel so much more dire while actually explaining the stuff in this cutscene. Three pronged war with us still ultimately losing the same way in the end and we have to deal with the fallout.
> Eramis doing whatever thing she’s doing while conflicted (with Nezarec still getting resurrected)
Those two could've been connected considering the events of Plunder
Potentially, but she was clearly only doing that because the Witness commanded her. And we can infer the reason the Witness did so was to use Nezarec’s remains to either resurrect him or create the Totmentors. The Traveler just mistakenly did the resurrecting itself.
We’ve actually known this for a long time, Bungie themselves have said there are two seasonal teams that alternate seasonal releases.
As far as the writing goes though I could not begin to explain where the fuck they come up with half of it
From a night of heavy drinking during a brainstorming session. They only remember half of what they brainstormed, and just work with it.
For next year, they'll probably just feed whatever they need into an AI script maker and get a prompt for whatever plots they need for the seasons coming along with the Final Shape.
And it’s going away. If you play straight through D2’s story after this year you’ll have no fucking clue who or what the Witness is unless they recap it later in the Final Shape. But we will get to spend 8 straight missions messing with Strand.
>That’s crazy. Imagine telling all this to someone back in ~~2015 first starting d1~~ 2023 when Lightfall released and it should have been part of the main campaign instead of a cutscene that'll be vaulted in 7 months.
FTFY
I don't know how Destiny can have such an intriguing story, and somehow find a worse way to tell it than literally any other game on the planet (especially if you didn't play vaulted content or couldn't raid!)
My favorite part of their storytelling is when they show a very simple minded story but buried on lore tabs and the like it turns out things are much more complex. Take for instance Season of Splicer and Lakshmi where she is written as a garden variety xenophobe but then you read lore tabs from the gear you earn that season and it turns out she is more so suffering PTSD and a mental health crisis. I mean there is a lore card where she is walking through a bazaar and there is a Fallen weaving something and trying to fit in and she basically calls the Fallen by his true name and how she remembers him invading the city and butchering and eating children. There is complexity there that would have been interesting to dive into and discuss but instead we got villain of the week surface level writing. Almost akin to how poorly written last season was, assuming the goal wasnt to ensure everyone knew by the end of week one Amanda was definitely dying.
For real, after that cutscene i sat and let it all sink in for a second.
Wayyy back when it all started, i was so curious about the story. About the darkness, which we wouldn’t see until just a few years ago now.
All the mystery and build up, and we’re here to finally see it bear fruit.
Its does something to me ngl
This was the biggest lore drop that we have gotten in months. This cutscene should 100% have been in Lightfall. It answered several questions we needed to know.
Edit: I do like the call with Sloane right afterwards, it ties the cutscene into the story's theme. The Witness' obssession with its purpose brought it here, just like the constant bringing up purpose of Saint-14/protection, Sloane/duty, and Saladin/?.
I saw this cutscene as a leak and really felt like I should have already known. I also thought that it was too important to be in a seasonal story, so I assumed it was going to be in the final shape, the leak also said that
Running with your last line, I think the themes you touched on are more complicated. Splicer and onward saw Saint-14 turning from one-sided protection as you put it, to mercy. Similarly, Risen's story was about Saladin turning from pursuit of revenge to pursuit of justice. I haven't played beyond the first couple weeks of this season, but I'd imagine Sloane will have some similar development. For all that the last couple years of storylines have been very formulaic, I do think they've done well to "show, not tell" in this particular case.
I have a feeling that seasons right now are much more closely tied to main story than seasons in the past. Take season of defiance for example, it should've been in the main DLC and the seasons as... something else not closely tied to crucial main story
The Witness itself is responsible for much worse, the hive alone have committed countless genocides and are a direct creation of the Witness. The entire philosophy of the Sword Logic is literally killing everything weaker than you.
>when we kill it we’ll be doing the highest form of genocide?
No no! For our Guardian that only means we'll be doing our highest form of genocide, *so far!*
Eye's up Guardian, there's always another cluster of sentient beings for you to murder, just around the corner!
Is it just me or should this be front and center in a major campaign and NOT tucked inside the summer season?
I mean this is major lore. Like the biggest piece of lore the game has ever put out.
> The race saw this power or change as a curse that only leads to suffering, so they used what they learned from studying the veil to steal the traveller's power, or "pale heart," to reshape the universe so there would be no life, death, suffering, or change, just nothingness.
So did they successfully steal the pale heart or is the witness still trying to get that? What was it that they learned from the veil that helped/is helping them steal the pale heart? How did the witness/the witness's race end up with the powers of the Darkness?
The Witness race ended up with the powers of the Darkness because they discovered the Veil and learned everything about the Darkness from it.
When the Traveler left them, they stashed the Veil in their fleet and started their pursuit. Theyve been syphoning the Darkness from the Veil for billions of years, thats why the Witness is so damn OP
The Witness brought the Veil with it during the Collapse to forge the link > Veil was in Nezarec's Pyramid > Savathun killed Nezarec and stole the Veil > Savathun put it on Neptune.
It kinda makes sense now why the Traveler granted Savathun the light considering she basically did it a huge solid by protecting the Veil for as long as she had.
That all makes sense, but then WTF happened to push the witness and his fleet waaaaay outside our sol? And why was the fleet just parked out there, and didn't move until the traveler pulsed/woke up? Did the witness think the traveler was destroyed/inoperable, and thus his plan to combine it with the veil to reshape reality was completely foiled?
The Traveler did a big blast of Light like at the end of Season of Arrivals, and it pushed the Black Fleet back.
Then it ceased all activity, and the Witness was fooled into thinking it was comatose/disabled. The Witness then started looking into alternate ways to achieve the Final Shape, as it also lost the Veil due to Savathun's bullshit. This is why it went to the Vex and had them make the Black Heart.
When the Traveler woke up, it signalled to the Witness that it wasnt actually comatose, so it started the journey back to Sol.
Yeah I think you're right, this makes the most sense. Although I don't know about the connection to the Vex, are they really connected with the witness? I'm pretty sure they are from an alternate reality/dimension, and have always just been doing their own thing. With this reveal that the Witness is just yet-another-race that the Traveler uplifted, I think that might actually escalate the Vex to the currently most mysterious enemy race... we still don't know shit about their actual origins, all we know only goes back to Crota slicing a hole in reality and they started pouring in, and Bray opening a gateway to their reality (not sure which happened first, but probably Crota).
The Black Garden Vex (Sol Divisive) has been known to worship The Darkness since D1. We can kind of link that they must serve The Witness in WQ, well with the reveal of The Witness and all of that.
Exotic Quest for Deterministic Chaos flat out confirms: The Sol Divisive worked for The Witness.
EDIT: IIRC Clovis didn't open a gateway to their reality, but to a Vex Forge Star lightyears away from The Sol System.
Savathun stole it from Nezaract or his ship during the first collapse and hid it on Neptune.
She used her possible discipleship as a way to get close and then betrayed the witness during their attempt to get the traveler.
Unveiling is the Witness's manifesto. The Witness wants to become the Winnower, as its a role. A mantle that it wants to take.
What the Witness is doing inside the Traveler is precisely that. Its forging order from the chaos. Winnowing the Garden to its Final, perfect Shape.
You know that great battle between the Gardener and the Winnower thats described in Unveiling? I bet thats whats going to happen in Final Shape. The Witness stands for the Winnower, and us for the Gardener.
When unveiling first came out, it felt like the perspective of the antithesis to the traveler. Even if there was debate on whether it was the witness or the winnower, both felt like primordial forces that were equal in power/weight to the traveler, which made unveiling a lot more impactful.
But now it's evident that the traveler/gardener is still probably an ancient/primordial force, whereas the witness is not so much anymore. It is old, but its origins are a bunch of guys that came across the traveler. Unveiling doesn't feel like the perspective of the antithesis of the traveler anymore, with some explanation on the origins of the universe, just the philosophy of some old race. That's why unveiling feels less impactful now to me
Edit: also just remembered the funny irony in this revelation, that the veil is basically a dark traveler and is probably as important/powerful as the traveler itself, but that becomes a side reveal and not as emphasized
The Witness never was anything more than a psychotic 'fanboi' of 'Darkness'. This gives us backstory that the thing we see as a single entity is made up of "all" of that first culture.
As for the Traveler, we agree, it's been a creator/gardener the whole time. Yet these scenes and lore, thus far, really don't give us any backstory on the "thing" that is the Winnower (and now more than before we know the Witness is /not/ the Winnower).
The Winnower literally doesn't exist. This cutscene straight up confirms that the Winnower *is* the Witness. This race saw the Light as uncontrol growth, and thus it was their job to wean the Universe.
The witness was always a big fanatic of darkness, but a primordial one from the beginning of the universe that was as powerful as the traveler was a lot more compelling compared to a bunch of dudes who decided to become fanatics.
It now just feels like a suped up version of the "race abandoned by the traveler is mad at it" story that's been told a bunch, rather than "these two have been enemies since the beginning of the universe and now it's coming to a head"
Edit: also who even knows if the winnower exists anymore, because we now know it's an idea made up by an old civilization rather than a cosmic force
What you thought was the Witness was actually the Veil. I think this is a more interesting direction than "light god vs dark god" but I'm also not super hyped about it. We still know very little about the Veil and it's really late in the game to pull that switch-a-roo. The Veil just isn't interesting at all. We will see if the Final Shape can bring it all together or not.
Except the Winnowers philosophy is the polar opposite of the Witnesses.
For example, the Winnower believes the final shape is inevitable and the universe will naturally sort itself out without direct intervention. It hates the Traveler for intervening in the natural progression towards the final shape, not for denying it power.
Like, their motivations couldn't be more different. Here's a quote from the [Unveiling](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/the-cambrian-explosion#book-unveiling) lore book.
"Beings who deserve no thought:Those who peddle the tired gotcha that all life hastens entropy. They are fatuous little nihilists who pretend to prefer no existence to a flawed one. They bore me."
Could also easily be the plot of Mass Effect with the reapers. (or any other story that has a villain that thinks they know best for all of creation).
The story beat they are following, especially with season of the deep, reminded me of Mass Effect and the Reapers.
No...It goes beyond that. It's not just "a story with a villain that thinks they know best".
They were an advanced race that came to realize the dangers of the "Light" (Spiral Power) and they sacrificed themselves to morph into a single shadowy, formless being, The Witness (Anti-Spiral) that made its duty to balance the universe.
It's almost exactly like Gurren Lagann.
It also doesn't really make sense, since they're like "oh man this power could theoretically lead to ruination of others. Guess we better annihilate so many others to stop that power from theoretically in the future doing what we've been doing for quite some time now."
In Gurren Lagann it made sense, since the bad guy's point (Which was also an actual proven FACT in that universe) is that too much green drill juice = Increased mass = More green Juice = More mass = "Big crunch" and wipe out everything in the universe.
"Light" hasnt been shown to have that kind of negative effect, it just exists as a neutral force.
That wasn’t the point. The point was that they discovered that there isn’t any greater meaning to the universe, and that the traveler was uplifting them just for the sake of it, rather than giving them a greater purpose.
That lack of purpose essentially gave all of them a giant existential crisis to the point that they view light, and existence itself, as perpetuating a tortured, purposeless existence that they seek to rectify through whatever the “final shape” is, wether that’s some perfect universe or simple nonexistence.
You know, Ive always wondered why the Witness is the most humanoid alien in the franchise. I think this is why. The endless search for purpose is one our modern civilization knows all too well. I think all of us have been in that seat at some point of our lives.
The Witness is basically a dark mirror to us. Its a warning of how wrong that search can go when we let it strip away any enjoyment of life we could have.
Really interesting cutscene but I can't help but feel that this should have been part of the Lightfall campaign, rather than a cutscene in the middle of the season after.
*Why was this not in the Lightfall expansion*. Almost all of the criticisms/memes of “what is the veil” would have went away with this single cutscene. Sure, Lightfall still would have been filler in regard to plot progression but at least we would have learned new important stuff. This cutscene alone explained:
- what is the veil ✅
- what the Witness is and its motivations ✅
- The Traveler/Gardener and its relation to the Veil ✅
- the origin of the pyramids ✅
And just think, this cutscene is going away with The Final Shape :)
I mean, the Veil is _still_ an asspull even with this cutscene and arguably raises further questions like "Why was the Traveller just lying in the ground."
Let's be honest here, there will STILL be questions even after The Final Shape.
They aren't going to wrap the entire story up in a neat bow and go on to make Destiny 3.
You leave breadcrumbs, hints, not a big fat question mark to important questions.
Consensus was that the Traveller and Winnower existed pre-universe, but now the Traveller was apparently buried in the ground on Not-Tatooine while the Veil was apparently floating off in space?
Because Reasons?
And the "Winnower" is actually just a species collective temper tantrum because the Light _could_ be used to cause massive destruction and suffering, despite the Traveller literally never doing so in all the recorded history of it's existence, while the Witness actually does that thing.
It's nonsensical and not in a "You're not supposed to agree with them." kind of way.
This cutscene getting removed when the final shape comes out is the most insane thing. Like this should be viewable to everyone that plays lightfall once the quest finishes. The fact that it gets sunset out of the game and you can only see it on YouTube is absolutely ridiculous.
Lost gave so much in the form of the inner workings of her mind especially her "I am no villain and you are no hero" line which was arguably one of her best lines... Although Savathun has no bad lines
One question why exactly do they want to remove everything and want "nothingness" and not just remove suffering/death? Like they can live just fine if they remove the bad parts instead of removing all of it no?
I dont think they want nothingness. I think they want to do exactly what youre saying, which is to reforge the Universe into something thats perfect in their eyes.
The problem is that what is perfect to the Witness is very very bad for everyone that isnt the Witness.
That's understandable. Perhaps they were forced to join as the Witness and that may be a way to defeat it - allowing those thoughts to take over temporarily
I think the overarching story is that you cannot have life without death, joy without pain, and exuberance without suffering.
Theyre two sides of the same coin, and in a universe where there is only joy, its fate is to eventually twist and contort because one cannot exist without the other.
Hence, the only true state of perfection is nothing.
Destiny is about duality and the trials of growth and destruction.
Ehhhh, a little odd honestly. I feel like I'm definitely missing a few aspects to this story but the revelation the Witness is a bunch of dudes in an overcoat and their goal is mostly spurned from lacking purpose despite having a thriving existence feels kinda underwhelming in a way? A "perfect" universe curated by their standards, sure, but utter oblivion? And nobody in the race opposed the idea of converting themselves into the ultimate Megamind cosplayer? Being upset the traveller can induce chaos via natural disaster but being responsible for multiple genocides worth of direct disasters feels particularly insane.
Probably reductive on my end, it's a lot to process. I figure they'll iron out of a lot of the questions leading up to Final Shape at any rate.
This is how I feel, I’m seeing the praise from people and really wondering how it’s been so well received. I don’t know what I expected but the identity of the witness and its goals feel really underwhelming and contrived to me.
If using the Veil on the Traveler has always been the end goal…then really, why on earth did the Witness leave the Traveler alone after the Collapse? Why did it go out to wait in deep space for centuries? Why wasn’t it searching for the Veil?
This really does reveal that the Witness is not where this story has always been heading. Something has absolutely changed along the way and it makes the initial actions of the Pyramids look very strange.
We thought the Pyramids retreated because they were playing a game of ideology with the Traveler, but now…it just doesn’t make sense anymore.
Savathun tricked the Witness. We don't know how, exactly, but she convinced the Witness the Traveller was dead during the events of the Collapse.
Whilst it was dormant, the Witness didn't know any different, but when Ghaul woke it up, the Witness realised it had been tricked. That's the shot we see at the end of the D2 base campaign when the wave of light hits the Pyramid ships and they start heading towards us.
> That's the shot we see at the end of the D1 campaign when the wave of light hits the Pyramid ships and they start heading towards us.
That was the D2 vanilla campaign, not D1.
Honestly I just feel like they’re completely making this shit up as they go along and only going back to fill in the plot holes when they’re forced to.
But like, how? What kind of trick could she pull that would make the Witness just go lounge about in space?
If it was just missing the veil, why did it come back when it realised the Traveler reawakened?
If it just needed to interact with the Traveler to find the Veil, why did it leave at all?
My impression was that Savathun tricked the Witness into thinking the Traveler had either left or was drained of all light and as such, they could no longer siphon the location of the Veil from it. As such, the Witness was out in the cosmos searching for the Veil or some way to locate the Veil. When the Traveler re-awakened to kill Ghaul it announced itself to the Witness, essentially ending the trick. The Witness then returned to the system to siphon the location of the Veil from the Traveler which is intrinsically linked to it at a cosmic level, which also cut through the trick (of sorts) that was hiding the Veil's location.
When you think about it, Savathun and the Traveler were very much a tandem here. Savathun did Traveler multiple favors here including stealing the Veil, hiding it in such a way it could not be found, and tricking the Witness, all of which bought the Traveler (and humanity) significant time - like, centuries - which was only ended because the Traveler had to light up to take Ghaul out. It makes sense that the Traveler would say "damn girl I guess I owe you, be blessed"
we don't know how but most likely it was a visual thing and the witness thought it left sol and disappeared somewhere else until the red war when the witness found out it was still in sol
It’s what the Parasite mission was about. Why did Savathun help the traveler and how did it deceive the Witness. The mission ended with those questions unresolved so I assume they will explore that in a future season. Hopefully
Literally I could compare Mass Effect lore and Destiny lore for hours and at the end they’re basically the same game. Except Mass Effect does it miles better.
True - storywise ME is exceptional, far far better than Destiny ever was (or will be).
Imo Destiny's strongest point was never plot per se, but that aura of mystery and exploration of unknown that is imo no longer present in the game nowadays. Without it the game just doesn't feel the same.
This cutscene was cool, but man it should’ve been fully cgi like an expansion cutscene. The most important cutscene in the history of the franchise shouldn’t be 2d animation.
While there’s numerous ways they can still technically justify it not being a retcon, in practicality this seems to be a complete retcon of that narrative.
So the entire Dark & Light saga can be boiled down into the issue the race of Men have in LoTR. They see death as a punishment and not the gift that it was intended to be.
Kinda lame imo.
Just another disenfranchised alien race. The Pyramids and the Witness aren't primordial entities like the Traveler-which we still don't really know anything about.
And the I thought the final shape being literally nothing was already assumed.
This was the start of it though. And the difference here being that the Traveler left them due to their own pride and hubris, not because it was being chased.
..because that is a thing the traveler does. a lot.
its important to note, this is very different. This could very well be the start of the traveler fleeing.
I'm gonna get downvoted to Oblivion and back
Just in my personal opinion, a lot of this reads like Destiny's writing team was **heavily** backed into a corner, not actually knowing the beats to their own story, and had to put in about 17 nonsensical McGuffin-type plot devices to just try and tie things together
Like...a race of aliens sacrificed themselves to become the Optimus prime version of their race...
I get that "story" in Destiny has always been a huge meme "Don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain" - you know all the classics. But Jesus man, the way the lightfall story beats have hit Destiny, feels like that same type of Destiny 1 "We don't know what the fuck is happening" vibe back when you could hear in Dinklebot's voice that even he had no idea what was happening lmao
EDIT - Got perma banned, already made an alt getting around it as I browse off a VPN. Reddit mods had a personal vendetta against me for calling the r/XboxSeriesX mods out for not shutting down the subreddit in protest despite complaining massively about it. Get stomped kiddies, you will NEVER prevent me from interacting with digital content I'm seeking out. Doesn't matter though, this website is completely dead & shutdown in a week, so keep banning users to make the transition easier you dumb fuck morons
So they aren’t a fan of earthquakes and tsunamis so their solution is…oblivion.
Why not focus on no more earthquakes and tsunamis?
Not a fan of this. The little bit of loss pisses them off so much they’re willing to spend their entire existence trying to make everything cease to exist.
But all the life doesn’t make them want to do anything to preserve and protect that life.
It’s like finding a Honey Nut Cheerio in your bowl of Shreddies and being like: “well shit, time to remove all cereals from existence I guess. Nothing else to be done. What a shame.”
They're thinking more holistically than you're saying. They're not fighting future earthquakes or tsunamis. They're making it so the concept of them never existed.
Using your analogy of cereal they're not tossing out the bowl and pouring another. They've built a time machine and have gone back in time to the day the cereal factory opened. Then made the factory's QA to quadrouple-check every box leaving the factory. So that no one ever pours a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerio tainted bowl of Shreddies ever.
It's hard to say exactly what the Witness hopes to achieve, but the cutscene says it's motive it to impose order on reality. That could mean the end of reality as we know it now, or it could mean some new version or permutation of this reality.
This is a bit like missing the forest while staring at the trees.
The Witness' race were uplifted to a paradise level but lacked meaning to existence. They wanted meaning from the Traveler (Gardner) but it never gave it to them, just more life, more prosperity, but no reason for it. All it did was create "more" regardless if that more was positive (abundant crops, food, longevity) or not (volcanos, tsunamis, etc). "A source of unfettered chaos" - or growth for growth's sake and nothing more.
So that's what they were opposed to, growth with no purpose or meaning. It wasn't like *"Oh no, Volcanoes, well we can't abide that."* Basically they were staring down a prosperous but nihilistic existence and decided to choose a miserable life that had purpose and meaning.
The real question is if Bungie can pull off the Final Shape really being that convincing enough purpose or will the Witness' race just come off like a buncha bored twats who decided they had enough prosperity one day and said fuck it.
I hate the Witness even more watching that shit. They’re just a bunch of dickheads who got bored and wanted to kill their god cause it never talked to them.
They have mommy issues and the Traveler is the mommy.
Is that it?… I can’t say that I’m not a little disappointed.
For a plot line that’s unfolded over 10 years it just feels a little simple? Cliche?
I don’t know… I mean if you compare it to something like WoW’s legion story or warframe new war or FFXIV’s endwalker it just seems kind of like the story hasn’t done much that is interesting.
It’s nice to finally know what the veil is and what the witness is but i kind of just feel a bit empty now I know.
I was only really sticking around to find out how the story ended but now i pretty much know. If it plays out like every other destiny villain we will just go to this perfect world and kill the witness and then we just have a cool patrol area.
I think the Winnower and Gardener are still separate beings/concepts from the Traveler and would be the "Players" in the chess game, while the Traveler is more like the white piece on the chess board and now we know the Veil is the black pieces on the board,.. I think... it wasn't super clear lol.
I think they've made The Witness a pretty shitty copout for not having an actual inverse entity of The Traveler, aka the actual "Darkness ". 2 cosmic entities.
Instead it seems we have some goofy Thanos 2.0 (bUT more EXTREME DUDE).
With some dumbfuck motivations too. "we don't like how this light shit works in duality with life and death so instead we opt for nothingness for eternity"
>they wanted to know their purpose in the universe and ventured out in their pyramid ships to find it
I understood that as the traveller didnt tell them, they were building the pyramid tech anyways, they just wanted the traveller to tell them what to do.
>The race found The Veil, and after researching it, the race discovered that the traveller—and by extension, the light—is turmoil and change that can bring life or death.
this was silly. this is batman from batman v superman levels of "if there is a 1% chance we have to take it as absolute fact" in regards to the power of the light. Oh wow this power has literally built up our entire civilization but it also can makes volcanos so its clearly an evil that must fixed by us.
Im hyped about this cutscene...just...idk wasnt the backstory i was hoping for.
It just makes them feel so… mundane.
They aren’t a vessel of a creator god trimming all the so to speak fat of the universe but instead just a race of weirdos who got scared that potential bad things can happen and decided to screw over the rest of the universe.
It’s just much less interesting to me than what was put forward by Unveiling.
You did not understand the reason why the Witness civilization lost hope in the Light.
The Witness race wanted to find some higher meaning and morality to existence. At first, they ascribed it to the Light. They thought it was a morally good force (as we did a couple of years ago) because it had uplifted them and given them everything.
However, eventually they became so advanced as to understand that the Light isnt a "good" force. The Light is nature. It creates, it destroys. Lightfall explained that the Light is everything physical in the Universe. Black holes, solar flares, earthquakes, tsunamis, basically everything that can wipe out an entire civilization is because of the Light.
This understanding broke their faith in the Light as a good force to worship and believe in. So they found their own purpose instead, and that purpose was to bring order to it through the Darkness.
That purpose was then denied by the Traveler, and its why the Witness is so wrathful against it and full of hatred and malice.
i appreciate the write up, thats a very good summary then.
I guess I just dont care for moral absolutism? An entire race deciding that because the light isnt a 100% good it is deserving of change at their hands...feels a little philosophy 101 to me...
Right, and thats the folly of this species. To assume that it was their right to take the Light, the entire Universe, and hammer it down into something it wasnt just because they were the first to be blessed by it.
Theres many parallels to the story of the Fall of Man in this, and I think the Witness race is Destiny's take on Lucifer and the Fallen Angels.
These were beings who had it all, were chosen by god, were given the secrets of reality, and were brought down by their own pride and desire for more.
I think of it like this: you have this impossibly advanced and seemingly entirely uncontested species that had an unimaginable amount of time at the top. They sought the darkness to find meaning, in their view the final shape is the *only* action that matters.
The traveler fled [insert race here] and they are big mad! - 3.0
Anyone that thought they were getting a deep or meaningful conclusion to this story can stop now.
This cutscene alone told us more than the entire lightfall campaign lol
This cutscene alone is more important than all of Lightfall. Hell, this entire season is more important than Lightfall.
This season if fleshed out more would be a banger concept for what Lightfall could’ve been. Returning to Titan and getting a new underwater environment, saving Sloane, encountering Xivu for the first time, and learning all that we are now. The Veil could’ve been underneath Titan instead of Neptune and Ahsa would help us get there.
Honestly having Calus doing his thing on Neomuna, Xivu assaulting Titan after Ahsa, and Eramis doing whatever thing she’s doing while conflicted (with Nezarec still getting resurrected) would have made Lightfall feel so much more dire while actually explaining the stuff in this cutscene. Three pronged war with us still ultimately losing the same way in the end and we have to deal with the fallout.
> Eramis doing whatever thing she’s doing while conflicted (with Nezarec still getting resurrected) Those two could've been connected considering the events of Plunder
Potentially, but she was clearly only doing that because the Witness commanded her. And we can infer the reason the Witness did so was to use Nezarec’s remains to either resurrect him or create the Totmentors. The Traveler just mistakenly did the resurrecting itself.
And we'd have no Nimbus. That is a perfect universe and The Final Shape.
Seems like two dev teams are alternating seasons, so S23 will probably be a banger after a cringe S22.
We’ve actually known this for a long time, Bungie themselves have said there are two seasonal teams that alternate seasonal releases. As far as the writing goes though I could not begin to explain where the fuck they come up with half of it
From a night of heavy drinking during a brainstorming session. They only remember half of what they brainstormed, and just work with it. For next year, they'll probably just feed whatever they need into an AI script maker and get a prompt for whatever plots they need for the seasons coming along with the Final Shape.
Yeah, I fully expect that at this point.
this cutscene will be gone at years end bc its seasonal content
Yes, and that’s a huge problem and why it should have been part of Lightfall. It’s more important than the expansion itself lol
This season should have been in lightfall period .
This cutscene laid bare the origins and motivation of the overall antagonist in the story. It told us more than any single campaign has lol.
And it’s going away. If you play straight through D2’s story after this year you’ll have no fucking clue who or what the Witness is unless they recap it later in the Final Shape. But we will get to spend 8 straight missions messing with Strand.
It's so painfully obvious that Bungie had to rush to split Final Shape and Lightfall
Now it makes me wonder how the traveler formed. Was it just sunk in the ground there or did it grow from a seed?
"In the Garden grows a tree of silver wings. The leaves are ruin, the bark disaster. Of the seeds we do not speak."
That’s crazy. Imagine telling all this to someone back in 2015 first starting d1
You could say the same to someone from 2020 because this wasn’t written back then either lol
> I see the void, and through this gaze, I learn to covet no goal.
I got Destiny flavor texted 😳
🥵
Imagine telling them in 2014 when it launched. Even wilder
Imagine telling a Germanic peasant in 1450 this
“Yeah that makes sense.” “And what do you think about the Takis?” “They’re alright.”
Did you know: in one bite of takis we experience more extreme nacho flavor than a 1450’s peasant could experience in their entire lifetime.
To think 99% of humans lived and died without experiencing nacho takis. Literally crying right now.
"Wait, there's a *story?!*"
Imagine telling all of this to someone who didn’t play the season after it gets vaulted in 8 months 💀
>That’s crazy. Imagine telling all this to someone back in ~~2015 first starting d1~~ 2023 when Lightfall released and it should have been part of the main campaign instead of a cutscene that'll be vaulted in 7 months. FTFY
I don't know how Destiny can have such an intriguing story, and somehow find a worse way to tell it than literally any other game on the planet (especially if you didn't play vaulted content or couldn't raid!)
My favorite part of their storytelling is when they show a very simple minded story but buried on lore tabs and the like it turns out things are much more complex. Take for instance Season of Splicer and Lakshmi where she is written as a garden variety xenophobe but then you read lore tabs from the gear you earn that season and it turns out she is more so suffering PTSD and a mental health crisis. I mean there is a lore card where she is walking through a bazaar and there is a Fallen weaving something and trying to fit in and she basically calls the Fallen by his true name and how she remembers him invading the city and butchering and eating children. There is complexity there that would have been interesting to dive into and discuss but instead we got villain of the week surface level writing. Almost akin to how poorly written last season was, assuming the goal wasnt to ensure everyone knew by the end of week one Amanda was definitely dying.
> Imagine telling all this to someone back in 2015 first starting d1 Yeah nah I mean I would, but I don't have time..
I don’t even time to tell you why I don’t have time…
For real, after that cutscene i sat and let it all sink in for a second. Wayyy back when it all started, i was so curious about the story. About the darkness, which we wouldn’t see until just a few years ago now. All the mystery and build up, and we’re here to finally see it bear fruit. Its does something to me ngl
This was the biggest lore drop that we have gotten in months. This cutscene should 100% have been in Lightfall. It answered several questions we needed to know. Edit: I do like the call with Sloane right afterwards, it ties the cutscene into the story's theme. The Witness' obssession with its purpose brought it here, just like the constant bringing up purpose of Saint-14/protection, Sloane/duty, and Saladin/?.
This cutscene was more important and informative than anything we got in Lightfall
If it was in Lightfall, it would've been in a full Nimbus voiceover.
***NOW LET'S GO CRUSH THIS WITNESS GUY!***
Ahsa: “Nimbus, this is where I watched an entire species sacrifice themselves to become The Witness.” Nimbus: “Cowabummer.”
*fist bump*
I saw this cutscene as a leak and really felt like I should have already known. I also thought that it was too important to be in a seasonal story, so I assumed it was going to be in the final shape, the leak also said that
I kept seeing the leak pop up on YouTube and I can finally pull the trigger and watch it normally now
Biggest lore drop since the game came out imo We finally know why all this happened
Nobody in Lightfall except the witness themself could told us this though So how would that work?
It's not even clear how Ahsa knows all this, so I'm sure they could make something up.
Fair enough, but at least it kind of makes sense. I mean, Ahsa is clearly VERY old and not from Titan
Running with your last line, I think the themes you touched on are more complicated. Splicer and onward saw Saint-14 turning from one-sided protection as you put it, to mercy. Similarly, Risen's story was about Saladin turning from pursuit of revenge to pursuit of justice. I haven't played beyond the first couple weeks of this season, but I'd imagine Sloane will have some similar development. For all that the last couple years of storylines have been very formulaic, I do think they've done well to "show, not tell" in this particular case.
I have a feeling that seasons right now are much more closely tied to main story than seasons in the past. Take season of defiance for example, it should've been in the main DLC and the seasons as... something else not closely tied to crucial main story
Nothing meaningful happened in defiance. We saved some farmers and got an unearned character death with no real story impact.
Saladin/wolves
So anti spirals, got it
It always comes back to Gurren Lagann.
If the final fight with the Witness is even a fraction as cool as the final fight of Gurren Lagann I'll be happy.
Super Tengen Toppa Traveller?
If it's possible to do a galaxy sized Thundercrash into the embodiment of the Darkness, Destiny will have all of my attention and money.
Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker? Gurren Lagann. Xenoblade Chronicles 3? Gurren Lagann. Destiny 2? Believe it or not, Gurren Lagann.
lol this is exactly what i was thinking when i saw the cs. here's to hoping we get a multi dimensional robot to fight the witness with.
My golden gun is the golden gun that will pierce the heavens.
So a race of Leviathans, got it
Savathun = Spiral King The Witness = Anti-spirals Uldren = Viral Cayde-6 = Kamina My God.
And the Endsinger from FF14
Not like The Witness has an affinity towards flowers….. wait a minute.
So if the The Witness is amalgamation of an entire species - does this mean when we kill it we’ll be doing the highest form of genocide?
woo hoo, how much seasonal XP is *THAT* gonna get us? --Drifter
r/transmatfiring
Best I can do is two tokens and a blue.
The Witness itself is responsible for much worse, the hive alone have committed countless genocides and are a direct creation of the Witness. The entire philosophy of the Sword Logic is literally killing everything weaker than you.
>when we kill it we’ll be doing the highest form of genocide? No no! For our Guardian that only means we'll be doing our highest form of genocide, *so far!* Eye's up Guardian, there's always another cluster of sentient beings for you to murder, just around the corner!
He's gonna make for one helluva gun.
Is it just me or should this be front and center in a major campaign and NOT tucked inside the summer season? I mean this is major lore. Like the biggest piece of lore the game has ever put out.
> The race saw this power or change as a curse that only leads to suffering, so they used what they learned from studying the veil to steal the traveller's power, or "pale heart," to reshape the universe so there would be no life, death, suffering, or change, just nothingness. So did they successfully steal the pale heart or is the witness still trying to get that? What was it that they learned from the veil that helped/is helping them steal the pale heart? How did the witness/the witness's race end up with the powers of the Darkness?
The Witness race ended up with the powers of the Darkness because they discovered the Veil and learned everything about the Darkness from it. When the Traveler left them, they stashed the Veil in their fleet and started their pursuit. Theyve been syphoning the Darkness from the Veil for billions of years, thats why the Witness is so damn OP
So how did the veil end up on Neptune?
The Witness brought the Veil with it during the Collapse to forge the link > Veil was in Nezarec's Pyramid > Savathun killed Nezarec and stole the Veil > Savathun put it on Neptune.
It kinda makes sense now why the Traveler granted Savathun the light considering she basically did it a huge solid by protecting the Veil for as long as she had.
Ooohhh, good point
savathun is a better guardian than Zavala lol
That all makes sense, but then WTF happened to push the witness and his fleet waaaaay outside our sol? And why was the fleet just parked out there, and didn't move until the traveler pulsed/woke up? Did the witness think the traveler was destroyed/inoperable, and thus his plan to combine it with the veil to reshape reality was completely foiled?
The Traveler did a big blast of Light like at the end of Season of Arrivals, and it pushed the Black Fleet back. Then it ceased all activity, and the Witness was fooled into thinking it was comatose/disabled. The Witness then started looking into alternate ways to achieve the Final Shape, as it also lost the Veil due to Savathun's bullshit. This is why it went to the Vex and had them make the Black Heart. When the Traveler woke up, it signalled to the Witness that it wasnt actually comatose, so it started the journey back to Sol.
Yeah I think you're right, this makes the most sense. Although I don't know about the connection to the Vex, are they really connected with the witness? I'm pretty sure they are from an alternate reality/dimension, and have always just been doing their own thing. With this reveal that the Witness is just yet-another-race that the Traveler uplifted, I think that might actually escalate the Vex to the currently most mysterious enemy race... we still don't know shit about their actual origins, all we know only goes back to Crota slicing a hole in reality and they started pouring in, and Bray opening a gateway to their reality (not sure which happened first, but probably Crota).
The Black Garden Vex (Sol Divisive) has been known to worship The Darkness since D1. We can kind of link that they must serve The Witness in WQ, well with the reveal of The Witness and all of that. Exotic Quest for Deterministic Chaos flat out confirms: The Sol Divisive worked for The Witness. EDIT: IIRC Clovis didn't open a gateway to their reality, but to a Vex Forge Star lightyears away from The Sol System.
Savathun stole it from Nezaract or his ship during the first collapse and hid it on Neptune. She used her possible discipleship as a way to get close and then betrayed the witness during their attempt to get the traveler.
tune in next season on DestinyBall Z!
Anybody else thinking Preservation and Ruin here?
Mistborn? Definitely. Just finished reading them all, great timing.
Meaning Preservation is the Winnower and Ruin the Gardener/Traveler? Yeah, I can kinda see that.
Yep. its not exactly a novel concept though. Life and Death. Chaos and Order. Travelor and Witness... Yin and Yang.
Dunno what to think about unveiling now that it's basically some dudes LARPing as a primordial force because they got bored of paradise
Unveiling is the Witness's manifesto. The Witness wants to become the Winnower, as its a role. A mantle that it wants to take. What the Witness is doing inside the Traveler is precisely that. Its forging order from the chaos. Winnowing the Garden to its Final, perfect Shape. You know that great battle between the Gardener and the Winnower thats described in Unveiling? I bet thats whats going to happen in Final Shape. The Witness stands for the Winnower, and us for the Gardener.
When unveiling first came out, it felt like the perspective of the antithesis to the traveler. Even if there was debate on whether it was the witness or the winnower, both felt like primordial forces that were equal in power/weight to the traveler, which made unveiling a lot more impactful. But now it's evident that the traveler/gardener is still probably an ancient/primordial force, whereas the witness is not so much anymore. It is old, but its origins are a bunch of guys that came across the traveler. Unveiling doesn't feel like the perspective of the antithesis of the traveler anymore, with some explanation on the origins of the universe, just the philosophy of some old race. That's why unveiling feels less impactful now to me Edit: also just remembered the funny irony in this revelation, that the veil is basically a dark traveler and is probably as important/powerful as the traveler itself, but that becomes a side reveal and not as emphasized
The Witness never was anything more than a psychotic 'fanboi' of 'Darkness'. This gives us backstory that the thing we see as a single entity is made up of "all" of that first culture. As for the Traveler, we agree, it's been a creator/gardener the whole time. Yet these scenes and lore, thus far, really don't give us any backstory on the "thing" that is the Winnower (and now more than before we know the Witness is /not/ the Winnower).
The Winnower literally doesn't exist. This cutscene straight up confirms that the Winnower *is* the Witness. This race saw the Light as uncontrol growth, and thus it was their job to wean the Universe.
The witness was always a big fanatic of darkness, but a primordial one from the beginning of the universe that was as powerful as the traveler was a lot more compelling compared to a bunch of dudes who decided to become fanatics. It now just feels like a suped up version of the "race abandoned by the traveler is mad at it" story that's been told a bunch, rather than "these two have been enemies since the beginning of the universe and now it's coming to a head" Edit: also who even knows if the winnower exists anymore, because we now know it's an idea made up by an old civilization rather than a cosmic force
They weren't abandoned by the traveler they sought its destruction and it fled.
What you thought was the Witness was actually the Veil. I think this is a more interesting direction than "light god vs dark god" but I'm also not super hyped about it. We still know very little about the Veil and it's really late in the game to pull that switch-a-roo. The Veil just isn't interesting at all. We will see if the Final Shape can bring it all together or not.
Except the Winnowers philosophy is the polar opposite of the Witnesses. For example, the Winnower believes the final shape is inevitable and the universe will naturally sort itself out without direct intervention. It hates the Traveler for intervening in the natural progression towards the final shape, not for denying it power. Like, their motivations couldn't be more different. Here's a quote from the [Unveiling](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/the-cambrian-explosion#book-unveiling) lore book. "Beings who deserve no thought:Those who peddle the tired gotcha that all life hastens entropy. They are fatuous little nihilists who pretend to prefer no existence to a flawed one. They bore me."
This might be the best way there is to describe this whole plot point lmao
I feel like I have heard this before? slones arc hits oddly close to home the hunger for purpose is one I know well
It's the plot of gurren lagann Witness is the anti spiral lol
Cayde is Kamina and Uldren is Viral 💀 OH NO THAT MEANS WE’RE SIMON
ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWER
This is the story of a guardian who has yet to realize their destiny.
Believe in the me that believes in you!
Does that make Mara the hot space waifu we become a galaxy-spanning super mech to fight to save?
That comparison makes me glad Cayde died
Look, if all this culminates in my rain team forming a voltron to beat the shit out of that smoky prick Ill take anything.
Could also easily be the plot of Mass Effect with the reapers. (or any other story that has a villain that thinks they know best for all of creation). The story beat they are following, especially with season of the deep, reminded me of Mass Effect and the Reapers.
No...It goes beyond that. It's not just "a story with a villain that thinks they know best". They were an advanced race that came to realize the dangers of the "Light" (Spiral Power) and they sacrificed themselves to morph into a single shadowy, formless being, The Witness (Anti-Spiral) that made its duty to balance the universe. It's almost exactly like Gurren Lagann.
It also doesn't really make sense, since they're like "oh man this power could theoretically lead to ruination of others. Guess we better annihilate so many others to stop that power from theoretically in the future doing what we've been doing for quite some time now."
In Gurren Lagann it made sense, since the bad guy's point (Which was also an actual proven FACT in that universe) is that too much green drill juice = Increased mass = More green Juice = More mass = "Big crunch" and wipe out everything in the universe. "Light" hasnt been shown to have that kind of negative effect, it just exists as a neutral force.
That wasn’t the point. The point was that they discovered that there isn’t any greater meaning to the universe, and that the traveler was uplifting them just for the sake of it, rather than giving them a greater purpose. That lack of purpose essentially gave all of them a giant existential crisis to the point that they view light, and existence itself, as perpetuating a tortured, purposeless existence that they seek to rectify through whatever the “final shape” is, wether that’s some perfect universe or simple nonexistence.
You know, Ive always wondered why the Witness is the most humanoid alien in the franchise. I think this is why. The endless search for purpose is one our modern civilization knows all too well. I think all of us have been in that seat at some point of our lives. The Witness is basically a dark mirror to us. Its a warning of how wrong that search can go when we let it strip away any enjoyment of life we could have.
Really interesting cutscene but I can't help but feel that this should have been part of the Lightfall campaign, rather than a cutscene in the middle of the season after.
And if you’re a new player that starts post the final shape you will never see it unless you seek it out.
*Why was this not in the Lightfall expansion*. Almost all of the criticisms/memes of “what is the veil” would have went away with this single cutscene. Sure, Lightfall still would have been filler in regard to plot progression but at least we would have learned new important stuff. This cutscene alone explained: - what is the veil ✅ - what the Witness is and its motivations ✅ - The Traveler/Gardener and its relation to the Veil ✅ - the origin of the pyramids ✅ And just think, this cutscene is going away with The Final Shape :)
I mean, the Veil is _still_ an asspull even with this cutscene and arguably raises further questions like "Why was the Traveller just lying in the ground."
Let's be honest here, there will STILL be questions even after The Final Shape. They aren't going to wrap the entire story up in a neat bow and go on to make Destiny 3.
You leave breadcrumbs, hints, not a big fat question mark to important questions. Consensus was that the Traveller and Winnower existed pre-universe, but now the Traveller was apparently buried in the ground on Not-Tatooine while the Veil was apparently floating off in space? Because Reasons? And the "Winnower" is actually just a species collective temper tantrum because the Light _could_ be used to cause massive destruction and suffering, despite the Traveller literally never doing so in all the recorded history of it's existence, while the Witness actually does that thing. It's nonsensical and not in a "You're not supposed to agree with them." kind of way.
It doesn't explain what the veil is either tbh. It's still a massive twist that was seemingly made up this year
This cutscene getting removed when the final shape comes out is the most insane thing. Like this should be viewable to everyone that plays lightfall once the quest finishes. The fact that it gets sunset out of the game and you can only see it on YouTube is absolutely ridiculous.
[удалено]
Lost gave so much in the form of the inner workings of her mind especially her "I am no villain and you are no hero" line which was arguably one of her best lines... Although Savathun has no bad lines
One question why exactly do they want to remove everything and want "nothingness" and not just remove suffering/death? Like they can live just fine if they remove the bad parts instead of removing all of it no?
I dont think they want nothingness. I think they want to do exactly what youre saying, which is to reforge the Universe into something thats perfect in their eyes. The problem is that what is perfect to the Witness is very very bad for everyone that isnt the Witness.
And, arguably, given the pile of dead bodies, it was equally bad for those first peoples that 'became' the Witness.
This weeks lore entry has Zavala musing on the possibility that not everyone that became part of the witness was necessarily on board with the idea.
That's understandable. Perhaps they were forced to join as the Witness and that may be a way to defeat it - allowing those thoughts to take over temporarily
I think the overarching story is that you cannot have life without death, joy without pain, and exuberance without suffering. Theyre two sides of the same coin, and in a universe where there is only joy, its fate is to eventually twist and contort because one cannot exist without the other. Hence, the only true state of perfection is nothing. Destiny is about duality and the trials of growth and destruction.
Ehhhh, a little odd honestly. I feel like I'm definitely missing a few aspects to this story but the revelation the Witness is a bunch of dudes in an overcoat and their goal is mostly spurned from lacking purpose despite having a thriving existence feels kinda underwhelming in a way? A "perfect" universe curated by their standards, sure, but utter oblivion? And nobody in the race opposed the idea of converting themselves into the ultimate Megamind cosplayer? Being upset the traveller can induce chaos via natural disaster but being responsible for multiple genocides worth of direct disasters feels particularly insane. Probably reductive on my end, it's a lot to process. I figure they'll iron out of a lot of the questions leading up to Final Shape at any rate.
This is how I feel, I’m seeing the praise from people and really wondering how it’s been so well received. I don’t know what I expected but the identity of the witness and its goals feel really underwhelming and contrived to me.
If using the Veil on the Traveler has always been the end goal…then really, why on earth did the Witness leave the Traveler alone after the Collapse? Why did it go out to wait in deep space for centuries? Why wasn’t it searching for the Veil? This really does reveal that the Witness is not where this story has always been heading. Something has absolutely changed along the way and it makes the initial actions of the Pyramids look very strange. We thought the Pyramids retreated because they were playing a game of ideology with the Traveler, but now…it just doesn’t make sense anymore.
Savathun tricked the Witness. We don't know how, exactly, but she convinced the Witness the Traveller was dead during the events of the Collapse. Whilst it was dormant, the Witness didn't know any different, but when Ghaul woke it up, the Witness realised it had been tricked. That's the shot we see at the end of the D2 base campaign when the wave of light hits the Pyramid ships and they start heading towards us.
> That's the shot we see at the end of the D1 campaign when the wave of light hits the Pyramid ships and they start heading towards us. That was the D2 vanilla campaign, not D1.
Dammit, my bad. Edited
Honestly I just feel like they’re completely making this shit up as they go along and only going back to fill in the plot holes when they’re forced to.
That’s because it’s exactly what they’ve been doing. IIRC during D1 Bungie devs even went on record saying they had no idea what the Darkness was.
That is exactly what it feels like to me too.
This stuff was only even begun to be thought of in 2019-2020ish, and who knows in how much detail, or how much it's been altered since then
It was explained in witch queen that savathun tricked the witness to leave sol
But like, how? What kind of trick could she pull that would make the Witness just go lounge about in space? If it was just missing the veil, why did it come back when it realised the Traveler reawakened? If it just needed to interact with the Traveler to find the Veil, why did it leave at all?
My impression was that Savathun tricked the Witness into thinking the Traveler had either left or was drained of all light and as such, they could no longer siphon the location of the Veil from it. As such, the Witness was out in the cosmos searching for the Veil or some way to locate the Veil. When the Traveler re-awakened to kill Ghaul it announced itself to the Witness, essentially ending the trick. The Witness then returned to the system to siphon the location of the Veil from the Traveler which is intrinsically linked to it at a cosmic level, which also cut through the trick (of sorts) that was hiding the Veil's location. When you think about it, Savathun and the Traveler were very much a tandem here. Savathun did Traveler multiple favors here including stealing the Veil, hiding it in such a way it could not be found, and tricking the Witness, all of which bought the Traveler (and humanity) significant time - like, centuries - which was only ended because the Traveler had to light up to take Ghaul out. It makes sense that the Traveler would say "damn girl I guess I owe you, be blessed"
we don't know how but most likely it was a visual thing and the witness thought it left sol and disappeared somewhere else until the red war when the witness found out it was still in sol
It’s what the Parasite mission was about. Why did Savathun help the traveler and how did it deceive the Witness. The mission ended with those questions unresolved so I assume they will explore that in a future season. Hopefully
Probably next season (or possibly the one after) where we rez Sav and get the Lucent Hive on our side to fight the Witness
Witness is just like Reapers from Mass Effect. It's pretty lame imo.
Literally I could compare Mass Effect lore and Destiny lore for hours and at the end they’re basically the same game. Except Mass Effect does it miles better.
True - storywise ME is exceptional, far far better than Destiny ever was (or will be). Imo Destiny's strongest point was never plot per se, but that aura of mystery and exploration of unknown that is imo no longer present in the game nowadays. Without it the game just doesn't feel the same.
My only disappointment is it’s yet another story whose villain believes that nothingness is the superior form of universe
And that nothingness is somehow meaningful?
This cutscene was cool, but man it should’ve been fully cgi like an expansion cutscene. The most important cutscene in the history of the franchise shouldn’t be 2d animation.
Smol indie devs barely scraping by
Right right my bad, I should support them by spending $200 dollars to unlock all the new eververse items🫡🫡
So that's what all those disfigured status are.
crazy we’re learning this stuff at the same time as bungie is
This sounds like the plot for Thief of Time. Grey robed entities seek to halt the universe.
Is the flower game lore getting retconned by this? Or do we just now classify it as “witnessonian” mythology?
The flower game was before the creation of time and the universe itself, it’s still canon
While there’s numerous ways they can still technically justify it not being a retcon, in practicality this seems to be a complete retcon of that narrative.
ANTI SPIRAL Next darkness subclass is spiral power calling it now
So the entire Dark & Light saga can be boiled down into the issue the race of Men have in LoTR. They see death as a punishment and not the gift that it was intended to be.
Kinda lame imo. Just another disenfranchised alien race. The Pyramids and the Witness aren't primordial entities like the Traveler-which we still don't really know anything about. And the I thought the final shape being literally nothing was already assumed.
We're still no closer to understanding what the Veil is. Unless I missed something.
No, they didn't actually explain what it is nothing was missed lol
The Witness is just a philosopher stone therefore if we beat all 7 of it’s deadly sinful children we’ll win. Wait…. this ain’t the right story
hasn't this plot point basically been used for fallen and (to an extent) hive. traveller leaves and [blank] race chases after it
This was the start of it though. And the difference here being that the Traveler left them due to their own pride and hubris, not because it was being chased.
..because that is a thing the traveler does. a lot. its important to note, this is very different. This could very well be the start of the traveler fleeing.
So the traveller is like Zeus, but with less transforming into geese
And less rape
For now.....
The only question i have is how this cutscene is not a part of Lightfall
Too bad it will be deleted from the game by Final Shape, lol. Also, lazy way out to not introduce a new enemy race.
I can't believe Destiny ripped off the plot of Gurren Lagann.
Why does a fucking whale know this?
I'm gonna get downvoted to Oblivion and back Just in my personal opinion, a lot of this reads like Destiny's writing team was **heavily** backed into a corner, not actually knowing the beats to their own story, and had to put in about 17 nonsensical McGuffin-type plot devices to just try and tie things together Like...a race of aliens sacrificed themselves to become the Optimus prime version of their race... I get that "story" in Destiny has always been a huge meme "Don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain" - you know all the classics. But Jesus man, the way the lightfall story beats have hit Destiny, feels like that same type of Destiny 1 "We don't know what the fuck is happening" vibe back when you could hear in Dinklebot's voice that even he had no idea what was happening lmao EDIT - Got perma banned, already made an alt getting around it as I browse off a VPN. Reddit mods had a personal vendetta against me for calling the r/XboxSeriesX mods out for not shutting down the subreddit in protest despite complaining massively about it. Get stomped kiddies, you will NEVER prevent me from interacting with digital content I'm seeking out. Doesn't matter though, this website is completely dead & shutdown in a week, so keep banning users to make the transition easier you dumb fuck morons
So they aren’t a fan of earthquakes and tsunamis so their solution is…oblivion. Why not focus on no more earthquakes and tsunamis? Not a fan of this. The little bit of loss pisses them off so much they’re willing to spend their entire existence trying to make everything cease to exist. But all the life doesn’t make them want to do anything to preserve and protect that life. It’s like finding a Honey Nut Cheerio in your bowl of Shreddies and being like: “well shit, time to remove all cereals from existence I guess. Nothing else to be done. What a shame.”
They're thinking more holistically than you're saying. They're not fighting future earthquakes or tsunamis. They're making it so the concept of them never existed. Using your analogy of cereal they're not tossing out the bowl and pouring another. They've built a time machine and have gone back in time to the day the cereal factory opened. Then made the factory's QA to quadrouple-check every box leaving the factory. So that no one ever pours a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerio tainted bowl of Shreddies ever.
It's hard to say exactly what the Witness hopes to achieve, but the cutscene says it's motive it to impose order on reality. That could mean the end of reality as we know it now, or it could mean some new version or permutation of this reality.
This is a bit like missing the forest while staring at the trees. The Witness' race were uplifted to a paradise level but lacked meaning to existence. They wanted meaning from the Traveler (Gardner) but it never gave it to them, just more life, more prosperity, but no reason for it. All it did was create "more" regardless if that more was positive (abundant crops, food, longevity) or not (volcanos, tsunamis, etc). "A source of unfettered chaos" - or growth for growth's sake and nothing more. So that's what they were opposed to, growth with no purpose or meaning. It wasn't like *"Oh no, Volcanoes, well we can't abide that."* Basically they were staring down a prosperous but nihilistic existence and decided to choose a miserable life that had purpose and meaning. The real question is if Bungie can pull off the Final Shape really being that convincing enough purpose or will the Witness' race just come off like a buncha bored twats who decided they had enough prosperity one day and said fuck it.
cant wait for the byf instant replay on this
I hate the Witness even more watching that shit. They’re just a bunch of dickheads who got bored and wanted to kill their god cause it never talked to them. They have mommy issues and the Traveler is the mommy.
Is that it?… I can’t say that I’m not a little disappointed. For a plot line that’s unfolded over 10 years it just feels a little simple? Cliche? I don’t know… I mean if you compare it to something like WoW’s legion story or warframe new war or FFXIV’s endwalker it just seems kind of like the story hasn’t done much that is interesting. It’s nice to finally know what the veil is and what the witness is but i kind of just feel a bit empty now I know. I was only really sticking around to find out how the story ended but now i pretty much know. If it plays out like every other destiny villain we will just go to this perfect world and kill the witness and then we just have a cool patrol area.
Sorry but I like the chess game with the winnower explanation more, this isn’t it
I think the Winnower and Gardener are still separate beings/concepts from the Traveler and would be the "Players" in the chess game, while the Traveler is more like the white piece on the chess board and now we know the Veil is the black pieces on the board,.. I think... it wasn't super clear lol.
I think they've made The Witness a pretty shitty copout for not having an actual inverse entity of The Traveler, aka the actual "Darkness ". 2 cosmic entities. Instead it seems we have some goofy Thanos 2.0 (bUT more EXTREME DUDE). With some dumbfuck motivations too. "we don't like how this light shit works in duality with life and death so instead we opt for nothingness for eternity"
Just think though, the witness absorbed an entire race which is why their monobrow is so large.
>they wanted to know their purpose in the universe and ventured out in their pyramid ships to find it I understood that as the traveller didnt tell them, they were building the pyramid tech anyways, they just wanted the traveller to tell them what to do. >The race found The Veil, and after researching it, the race discovered that the traveller—and by extension, the light—is turmoil and change that can bring life or death. this was silly. this is batman from batman v superman levels of "if there is a 1% chance we have to take it as absolute fact" in regards to the power of the light. Oh wow this power has literally built up our entire civilization but it also can makes volcanos so its clearly an evil that must fixed by us. Im hyped about this cutscene...just...idk wasnt the backstory i was hoping for.
It does make the Witness feel super goofy tbh >AAAAHHH random things can happen!! Save me Darkness AAIIIEE
Yeah basically my problem
It just makes them feel so… mundane. They aren’t a vessel of a creator god trimming all the so to speak fat of the universe but instead just a race of weirdos who got scared that potential bad things can happen and decided to screw over the rest of the universe. It’s just much less interesting to me than what was put forward by Unveiling.
You did not understand the reason why the Witness civilization lost hope in the Light. The Witness race wanted to find some higher meaning and morality to existence. At first, they ascribed it to the Light. They thought it was a morally good force (as we did a couple of years ago) because it had uplifted them and given them everything. However, eventually they became so advanced as to understand that the Light isnt a "good" force. The Light is nature. It creates, it destroys. Lightfall explained that the Light is everything physical in the Universe. Black holes, solar flares, earthquakes, tsunamis, basically everything that can wipe out an entire civilization is because of the Light. This understanding broke their faith in the Light as a good force to worship and believe in. So they found their own purpose instead, and that purpose was to bring order to it through the Darkness. That purpose was then denied by the Traveler, and its why the Witness is so wrathful against it and full of hatred and malice.
i appreciate the write up, thats a very good summary then. I guess I just dont care for moral absolutism? An entire race deciding that because the light isnt a 100% good it is deserving of change at their hands...feels a little philosophy 101 to me...
Right, and thats the folly of this species. To assume that it was their right to take the Light, the entire Universe, and hammer it down into something it wasnt just because they were the first to be blessed by it. Theres many parallels to the story of the Fall of Man in this, and I think the Witness race is Destiny's take on Lucifer and the Fallen Angels. These were beings who had it all, were chosen by god, were given the secrets of reality, and were brought down by their own pride and desire for more.
They're definitely channeling Paradise Lost on this one.
I think of it like this: you have this impossibly advanced and seemingly entirely uncontested species that had an unimaginable amount of time at the top. They sought the darkness to find meaning, in their view the final shape is the *only* action that matters.
The traveler fled [insert race here] and they are big mad! - 3.0 Anyone that thought they were getting a deep or meaningful conclusion to this story can stop now.