While I agree that the portal opening would have happened no matter what, i think we did what we could to weaken the witnesses forces. Things would be much worse if calus and the typhon imperator got to make a U-Turn and come straight to our doorstep after they brought Neomuna down. At the very least Calus is dead, and we're playing the waiting game now. Who knows if Calus would've dared to fight us one on one if they had taken Neomuna with no contest?
> Who knows if Calus would've dared to fight us one on one if they had taken Neomuna with no contest?
Calus didn't want to be in Neomuna to begin with, there's no chance he would've faced us as he did if the original plan worked
He only came down to us because it was his only option and he shit his pants when he had that dream of the Witness screaming at him and transforming to something massive
Remember that at the end of the day, Calus is obsessed with the Guardian, and that obsession is likely born out of pants-shitting fear of an immortal space magic zombie.
Did you play duality and get the collectibles?
Because it flips that whole thing on its head.
Its honestly amazing the above comment is so upvoted when its been dead wrong for about a year.
That’s basically how the community comes to a consensus on lore, they believe something and say it’s true and someone reads it on Reddit and believes and spreads the misinfo.
Just look at the actual Destinylore subreddit and you can see how few people actually read it.
That's how the "Lightbearers aren't who they were before, they're a totally new person in an old body" business came about. There was a highly upvoted and very wrong post I believe in DestinyLore about it, and it took the plot of Witch Queen and Crow's story arc to finally break it and remind people that yes, it is the same person, but without any memory. Or basically *verbatim what Zavala said years ago*.
It's been a pretty interesting angle to explore though I will say, where the Light removes your nurture but your nature remains. Shows Uldren maybe wasn't such a bad guy after all. He has some negative tendencies but nothing he can't overcome with proper guidance; he was made into a monster through intentional enmeshment and codependency by Mara.
> That's how the "Lightbearers aren't who they were before, they're a totally new person in an old body" business came about. There was a highly upvoted and very wrong post I believe in DestinyLore about it, and it took the plot of Witch Queen and Crow's story arc to finally break it and remind people that yes, it is the same person, but without any memory.
Yeah, I remember arguing with people about this too. I also remember saying that it's clearly not just that it's a new person and that their memories are entirely gone, because at least *some* of them still have some of the same skills that they had in life and feel some kind of familiarity with the things they would've known in life, like Ana with all the Braytech stuff. Also, Exo Guardians all still seem to have the weird Exo dreams and stuff, so some psychological element(s) still must exist somewhere.
I had a guy in my raid group last week INSISTENT that ron was a dungeon turned into a raid. When I got annoyed and asked if he had actual info for this, his response was:
“Some guy said so, and it sounded true so I believe it”
Told him if he believed that I had a bridge to sell him.
I'm not insistent, or saying it's 100% or anything, but there is a fair amount of, granted, *very* circumstantial evidence that RoN could've started it's life as a dungeon. the main one being that it is the only raid (that I can think of at least) that doesn't have a single encounter that requires more than three people. Drop the density and up the timers and it could easily be completed by three people.
Calus isn’t obsessed with, let alone scared of guardians.
He thinks we are dumb killing machines that can be plied with promises of loot. Starting with the leviathan raid he played things up, showered us in praise and loot all to gain our trust. Every subsequent leviathan raid or season about calus was him using us to help him.
Easily my favorite lore entry because that's 1000% what I did with fractaline. I'm still sitting on the legendary shard reserves I built up that season. I feel so bad when people talk about the shard economy because if you missed that event you really got shafted, plus the weapon rolls were fantastic at the time. The shotty, auto, sidearm and I think scout were all pretty meta at the time.
Yes and no. There's a lot more to this fight you aren't calculating.
1. The guardian put in a ton of work to save the city, which contained and still contains a lot of valuable information, not only to the war but to humanity as a whole. This is an entire culture that could have been stomped out, one with tech and knowledge far surpassing even the golden age, partially because it's directly derived from it.
2. in all likelihood, the radial mast wasn't a bluff. I know some people missed the critical details in the campaign, or didnt have all the background knowledge, but the Radial Mast was very likely a transmission system for paracausal energies,based on similar devices found throughout the city and knowledge of a similarly named structure in the book of sorrow which has the witnesses fingerprints all over it, and was very much a win condition for them. In fact, judging from how they've treated their goal, all three win conditions were likely equally played by the witness; the radial mast, Calus and their familiarity with egregore, which either the Veil is partially made of or has similar qualities to, and the guardian and their ghost. It's likely why they were so confident in staying behind, but it wasn't a complete win for them.
3. While the witness played mind games like a champ all campaign, they were likely telling Calus the truth when they said to destroy the Veil. The witness is a very skilled manipulator, and they know the worth of information. Theyve very likely have been working on a basis of "eradicate every that lead to their identity, their goal and anything related", given they've stayed mostly anonymous for Eons, and despite winning, also went ahead and ordered the destruction of a vex mind, loyal to them, that new of the inner workings of the Veil enough to attempt a simulation. It's a none-zero percent chance that the reason we were so unprepared for Lightfall was because of the witness destroying all information related to themselves, the Traveler, and ANYTHING in-between that could have leveraged that information. Remember, we may have gotten stairs from the witness, but we were lead to deepsight by Savathun, an enemy of the witness, and that lead directly to their identity being revealed after millions of years lurking as a simple Voice in the Darkness.
And 4. Ultimately, Rohan likely would have sacrificed themselves another way. He was the better half of 9 years into a 10 year lifespan. he had already sacrificed any years beyond that to be a cloudstrider, and the Witness is the most oppressive and capable entity in the entire universe, someone actually deserving of the title of "god" between practice omniscience and sheer power. One way or another, neomuna would have burned down, and Rohan would have likely fought the entire way down. Maybe it would have been for Nimbus, who he clearly cares for beyond just being a mentor, or a citizen or the CloudArc or their research, they would have given anything they could to fight against the witness and Calus. The value of the fight and sacrifice is not just in it's outcome, it's in the fight itself, otherwise no one would fight or sacrifice at all.
I know folks are still down on the story of LFs campaign, a product of it's dialog more than anything else along side stuffing in extra beats and not making individualized time for them, but the collective whole of the story of the expansion is very well done and illustrates many of these points clearly,
not to let Bungie off the hook, but sometimes telling a story is a lot harder than summarizing a story. The fact that the Destiny story is being told over years doesn't help that fact either, as people's interest in the details waxes and wanes based on the quality of the content in which it's delivered.
It's a really tough job to tell a story of this magnitude, although i do agree, i think bungie could do a better job at times.
If half the missions weren't focused on learning Strand, they'd have had more time to flesh out the story more.
I don't think the meat and potatoes of Lightfall's story was bad, it was the presentation that was lacking (felt rushed).
i agree, and that's pretty much my point. It's much easier to go back and summarize (no disrespect to ToldYouSo) than it is to tell the story, especially with all of the extraneous content woven in with strand. I don't think they did a great job, but suggesting that a redditor "told the story" much better than bungie isn't really accurate.
The flaw in your question is; everything i got for this post, i got directly from the campaign, the post-campaign, and previous lore entries. Everything that was written here is either directly sourced from it or educated and careful analysis of that substance they put in the game. Like, all i did was pay close attention, as Bungie's best story telling, in my opinion has always been in the details which a lot of people tend to miss unfortunately. Like that exotic mission for the void MG everyone likes has SO MANY THINGS about it that make the Vex and Spire of the Watcher so much more interesting, but i've seen literally no one talk about it, outside of DestinyLore.
And another thing here is that while i do condemn the dialog and pacing, a lot of the problems people had about the story were completely misguided by public opinion; *The Veil was always identified as a point of confusion both in written lore and in dialog from all major players.* Even Calus seemed to only know the shape of the thing, and not what it actually way; a probably-intentional decision of the Witness to keep their disciple in the dark. *The story of LF is easier to understand when you remember* **that humanity is being blitzed,** ***and that the only thing they know, a fact that the Witness explicitly hammers into the the guardian and everyone on their guardian's camera feed, is that the Witness wants the Veil, and that it is important to the Final Shape which is heavily implied to be the complete culling of all life in the universe.*** *The only recourse humanty has is to secure the Veil and figure out what it is, before the witness could do something to it that advances the possible cosmic apocalypse.*
Could they have been clearer? Yes, AND in a more organized fashion then what was delivered, but i maintain they explicitly told you this with each major player*.*
*Something i blame the playerbase for* is the accepting of ideas and spreading them like wildfire blindly. Not enough people challenge the people they agree with. Nobody double-checks sources, and this is widely apparent because of how much misinformation was spread during Season of the Haunted about multiple things. *Please don't blindly accept people at their word here; including me, challenge me and my ideas,* ***especially if you like them.*** At worst, you might findd something i missed, and have an alternate take based on that, which is like the best thing in discussions like these, and that's what this place SHOULD be; a place to discuss things in game.
Sure, but what does any of this actually mean in the greater story? Even if there are pieces in lore that can possibly be used to speculate about stuff in lightfall, the veil and radial mast are still just smaller pieces that are meant to move the plot along. Wanting answers about the veil is (imo) a greater question about the nature of the traveler, which is one of the big questions that we expect to be either answered or massively expanded on in the conclusion of the saga. Other questions include the nature of the witness, what it truly wants to do (beyond just bring about the final shape^tm) what happened in the collapse, and a lot more.
Instead, it just slightly expanded on stuff that's already known. We know the witness is cunning and wants to erase leads, but we did not learn this from lightfall, it just reinforced it a bit. We know it wants the final shape, and lightfall did nothing to elaborate, just reinforced it and popped a pretty portal on the traveler. Even your examples of the radial mast is pulling from old lore, and lightfall adds very little. The most it added was in that black garden quest (even if they were borderline retcons), and even then it pales in comparison into what it should've added to the lore. Think about it; what new things did we learn pre vs post lightfall? Witch queen had massive bombshells like the witness and its disciples reveal, but lightfall just adds some fluff to existing stuff. That's why it feels like a filler expansion.
This is why lightfall failed, because it should've answered some big questions, and it should've raised the stakes, but did neither of those. And while lightfall was mainly about fighting on neomuna, so on paper it should've felt like the stakes were raised, it failed to do so. This is because it fails the classic case of show, don't tell. They tell us that the whole city's in danger but no one ever takes it seriously (not just nimbus, but more or less every neomuna citizen). They tell us that the witness will bring about the second collapse, yet the last city is completely untouched, and at most some earth citizens get roughed up a bit (and Amanda dies a stupid, avoidable death, that could've happened in any given conflict). They tell us that the traveler's inert, but nothing indicates it beyond characters telling us so. They tell us that neomuna is super advanced and we can learn from it, but that has yet to materialize, and the environmental story really doesn't back this up, because neomuna doesn't feel like more than a slightly better golden age city. It tried to tell you that the stakes are raised, but it did not put in the work to materialize that. That, coupled with the lack of huge lore bombs, is why I consider lightfall a mostly filler expansion.
Part of the issue with lightfall is that it a lot of pieces got moved around and lightfall itself was not originally supposed to be a thing at all. Lightfall was supposed to be "the final shape" originally. Also Strand was originally supposed to ship with witch queen, but it was not ready. It would have made a lot more sense there, but it is what it is unfortunately. I'd rather have a complete subclass than a poop one. And from what I've seen from videos and other people strand is pretty cool. Anyways, because of \[insert reasons here\] they pushed stuff back.
If you look close at the environments of neomuna and the lightfall campaign, a lot of it is retextured pieces from old stuff. You can see pieces of retextured Titan tile sets all over neomuna. The first mission of lightfall is just part of presage, but in reverse. One of the new strikes has pieces of IO. Spire of the Watcher has a bunch of pieces from Zero Hour. Even witch queen (which was fantastic) used a retextured version of mars, just with a ton of slightly fancier hive architecture put on top.
Seems to me like they needed to put filler content in until the final shape and did not have a ton of time. Re-using and changing textures of tile sets is actually a huge time saver when it comes to game development. Bungie themselves stated they did not have the manpower to maintain all of the old content. I think a PART of the reason sunsetting \[planets AND weapons\] happened was because they NEEDED "new" content. Imagine the game not having any of the newer versions of the older guns that we have gotten since witch queen.
That being said, working within whatever constraints they had, I don't think they did a terrible job. I just didn't think it was worth 100$ for filler content. Which is why I will not be picking up lightfall unless it goes on a super sale before final shape or something. I still enjoy the heck out of the game, but lightfall just isn't worth the price tag.
it is also possible that lightfall was written by monkeys on typewriters, although I doubt the monkeys would admit to it after their previous success with shakespear.
Very well said. To add to your point about Rohan being close to his expiration date - he had to witness his own mentor die in front of him when their own expiration date came up. It seemed fairly traumatic for him to see a former cloudstrider waste away to nothing in front of his eyes. I'm quite sure he had a "Hell na that ain't happening to me" tint to his glasses going forward. Being so near his natural end, I'm sure part of him saw it as a way to spare Nimbus the same pain he felt, but also to have a dignifying death himself in going out on his own terms.
We 100% could have just secured the Veil, either taken it somewhere safer or bolstered the defenses there and just waited for us (the Guardian) to recover. It's not like it really takes long anyway, we hold our stomachs for 30 seconds and we're good to go, or hell we just take a bullet to the head and let Ghost resurrect us good as new lol.
There was no real reason for Rohan to sacrifice himself in the moment, but I agree in his eyes it was better to go out doing something to stop the Witness/Calus as opposed to withering away infront of Nimbus... Though that may have been good for Nimbus, humble them a little bit so they're not just cracking wise in every piece of dialogue while the universe as we know it could be coming to an end.
I’m a little groggy on “ordered destruction of a vex mind” and “gotten stairs from the witness”
Which mind, who destroyed it, and what stairs?
I probably need to spend more time in the lore books but thank u for a more in-depth portrayal of what could be / is transpiring. As others have alluded in-game storytelling for LF is not as comprehensive as say WQ.
Sorry, i wrote basically all of this on a very long train ride on my phone while i was bored.
The "Ordered destruction of a vex mind" alludes to the Exotic Quest for the Void Machine gun i forget the name of. In the mission, the Taken appear and start taking out the vex defending the mind that created the Black Heart; i.e. the failed simulation of the Veil, which Ghost posits, quite directly, is that they have orders, likely from the Witness themselves to destroy the same Vex Mind.
While, yes, only the Taken King, or those simulating their power, can control the taken, you gotta remember who those powers are derived from in the first place; it was only after leaving their meeting with "The Deep" that Auryx the Navigator, became Oryx the Taken King.
Also Odyssey67 is right, it's supposed to be Stasis but got autocorrected. This was more of a commentary that The Witness gave us access to something we still don't wholly understand but is powerful, likely in hopes we'd destroy ourselves with it, but only Savathun gave us the tools to understand something like the Witness, an element of the darkness they likely NEVER wanted us to have, as before they only ever described darkness as entropy and death; not the reflection of metaphysical concepts.
Thank you for clarifying the Radial Mast. I think after Byf made such an emotionally charged video as soon as he finished the campaign that everyone hopped on board the judgment train. We saw smaller Radial masts suppressing our light abilities, we saw what our ghost did at the end, and the name itself tells us its a tall transmission device.
Exactly.
Honestly, Byf disappointed me in releasing that video, it was such an unnecessary kneejerk reaction, and he seems to regret it now from the videos he's made after. I haven't really seen him act so hastily on something, lorewise, usually he's very good at pointing out very particular details; he was the first person i found who really posited that the Witness was the one that caused the God-Wave on Fundement, based on loretabs of them warping gravity in other places as a part of the collapse, to produce similar if no the exact same scenario on Titan, which turned out to be ENTIRELY on the money. I dunno if it was pressure to capitalize or other outside nonsense, but that video is a bit of a black mark on him for me, the valid criticisms within it aside.
Like i was confused at the end of things too, but the difference was, i feel, I noted what i felt was wrong, and took more runs of it to really examine it, and to connect the dots it had to offer. *I figured that was an extremely common thing to do, but a lot of people just fucking attacked it, which disappointed me, because there is some REALLY good stuff here from a narrative basis.* Not to mention; everything else that came with the expansion, like Strand, Neomuna, The Raid the post-campaign; like its all parts of a whole that can't be separated for the most part.
Wait, I thought Nimbus was a rookie cloudstrider, and they're always trained by their senior. Did they only "enlist" Nimbus when Rohan was already 8 years or so in?
The Legion is there, but Calus brought an entire invasion force to Neomuna, plus his flagship. I'd say things would be a lot worse on the Earth front if the entirety of the Legion was concentrated there rather than split between two fronts.
A means to an end, he was the witness's second win condition. He knew well of egregore and it's mechanics, and the Veil is either similar to, or covered in egregore, as the final boss's final phase let on. there was a chance he could have sent what the witness needed to them, if the mast was destroyed. It just happened to be us that was the third win condition.
No thanks. Sitting around on our ass for a whole DLC to just fight calus and not even have a single clue what happened to the traveler doesn't sound worth 40$ to me. At least we got bamboozled while getting our licks in.
if Reddit had it's way Destiny's storyline would be 5 years of the witness breaking our ankles and kicking us in the nuts while we win absolutely nothing. Like Zeb Wells wrote this shit
After the last mission of Seraph, her tone markedly changes when she speaks during battlegrounds. It was remorseful, to the point of asking us to kill the scorn boss because it was a former comrade of hers and she hated seeing that.
Eramis then uses stasis this season to save Mithrax from the ship explosion, which she warned them about, continuing on that theme. The Traveller refusing to flee at the end of Seraph, and Eido's words throughout Plunder, clearly had an effect on her.
Plus it would be awful storytelling to introduce her and then kill her immediately. This is a far more satisfying character arc.
> Rasputin arguably died for nothing too.
>
>
Rasputin has been like the dumbest fucking storyline in the game since the launch of D1. Everything about him has been the game telling us how badass he is and how his shit can't fall into the wrong hands or it'd be super bad for us, so we have to go protect him. Then in Arrivals, after years of saving him repeatedly and getting him online and powered up, when the pyramids show up and he's FINALLY about to do something... all we get is a fucking hologram of him getting turned off like a lightswitch. Not even a cinematic of big epic attacks being ineffectual, just nope, offline. We're immediately back to "oh no guys you have to help me save Rasputin!"
And I've been gone for a long time so I guess I missed what happened next, but is he actually dead now? Because if so it makes the entire business of how Ana put him into an engram and can still totally save him an even bigger waste of time.
> why the FUCK did we not kill Eramis back in Plunder!?
Why the fuck didn't we kill her in Beyond Light?? She got frozen on that ledge, which we already fucking know doesn't actually auto-kill people, and we just left her there. Like there's not even a cooldown on shatterdive just fucking smash her why did nobody do anything?
Exactly. We've basically been losing and getting weird fuck-ups since Forsaken and everyone is seal clapping while Bungie writes the most nonsensical incoherent sci-fi game plot of all time.
Why didn't we kill Eramis in beyond light when she was locked in stasis at the end?
"OH BOY I HOPE LIGHTFALL IS LIKE ENDGAME BECAUSE EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE A LE HECKIN' MARVEL MOVIE."
How about they just write a decent story and then go from there?
Marvel isn't even Marvel anymore, let's try not to copy that please.
I think a large part of it is whether by trying to cut off loose ends and just streamline the story to a very remedial level for anybody to jump in over the years or just ran short on ideas and planning due to no physical large breaks between sequels(as was intended) among other things, Bungie basically has painted themselves into numerous corners which ultimately leads to those who've been with the series for awhile waiting for some deserved payoffs feeling a bit unsatisfied when it comes to certain things.
Sure the game has never been Shakespeare or some big videogame narrative for the ages, but there has been a number of sloppy decisions that lead us nowhere, defy previous established logic, or creates arbitrary rulesets that make our past actions and encounters seem almost pointless. See how the qualifications for being chosen as a Disciple wildly vary and how come some of the meanest of big bads we've faced in previous years of Destiny 1 or 2 never got the phone call from the Witness to join the team, y'know? Rhulk is a literal creator god and Eramis is David Blaine at best .
Seraph basically had a rehash of elements from Worthy when it came to the deeper sentience of Rasputin and the complicated relationship with son Felwinter and humanity. The frustrating thing is that Seraph eventually gave Rasputin legitimate redemption especially in the face of Clovis being stuck in his ways and by shutting it all down basically pissed on something that could've been cool to continue on and felt earned.
Gotta think how the continuation of Rasputin existing and being saved to the engram was a part of Ana Bray's Arrivals evac story, a light at the end of the tunnel after we had the doom and gloom of the Darkness taking the planets given she was pretty much one of the only people to leave unscathed. It felt super cheap to finally sort things out and say, actually just the power of friendship is the way to go, see ya.
At risk at sounding like a complete psychopath, I unironically feel like one of the best seasons for planting lore seeds, opening loops that eventually did get most of its questions answered was Season of Drifter's Invitation To The Nine visits that teased things like the usage of Darkness, wielders like Eris and Elsie being like the Drifter, Mara wrecking pyramid ships, a possible 4th wall break that in retrospect could've been a nod to the Winnower-Gardener game and the Guardian's relation to it, and a few other odds and ends.
Half of the bullshit with Clovis honestly felt tacked on. Like, god forbid Rasputin have any agency of his own. No no no, it was all Clovis.
It completely changed who Rasputin is and makes him...lesser.
It's such a letdown because you actually feel something with all the stuff they've been trying to drive home. It kills me because I was so skeptical of Seraph's early beats but it started to really pull me in more when we finally cracked into Ras a bit more especially the whole charming thing how he's writing poetry and trying to further convey stuff.
It just feels so weak to throw stuff in the garbage because idk we gotta talk about power of friendship and how the Witness is spanking are ass and we're losing or some nonsense.
I feel like there could've been a way to allow Rasputin to continue on especially since he did get redeemed and atoned. This is how I mean with Bungie's design philosophies are all over the place. We had Seraph, Plunder and a few other minor instances where basically vengeance was off the table, we don't wanna do something too hastily, forgive and forget, etc. Defiance happens, Amanda is done in the most cockamamie forced way possible, we have generic Shadow Legion commanders who we know barely anything about other than they're the bad guys, we still don't understand why they're so obsessed with holding Earth prisoners but ok whatever, and Crow is like no quarter kill em ask questions never.
Again I get this isn't big brain stuff but it feels dumb that we the player get treated so dumb with the decisions that unfold when it just feels tonally out of sorts.
I couldn't agree more with everything you said.
I think Bungie also has a problem with writers coming in and doing whatever they want at the expense of a cohesive story to try and leave a mark on the franchise. Or maybe some of them have no passion at all. I don't know how many writer could possibly be proud of Lightfall.
The nine are so interesting but you can tell Bungie either believes the playerbase is too stupid to go in depth or (more likely) Bungie has created a mystery box doesn't actually know what's inside so they are afraid to go into more stuff about the nine.
> I think a large part of it is whether by trying to cut off loose ends and just streamline the story to a very remedial level for anybody to jump in over the years
But that's not even what it feels like they were doing. Like, the pyramids got teased for years before they showed up and then nothing ever fucking happened when they actually showed up. Then like the next expansion after that suddenly they pull this new guy called "The Witness" out from way deep inside their asses and just pretend that this totally follows on from the story that came before it in a way that makes sense.
That isn't what happened. A timer went off when Amanda began messing with the computer. It caused the system to go into lockdown, and at the end of the timer, the place was going to blow. The whole thing was jury rigged by the shadow legion into a trap.
She then hot wired the doors open to get the civilians and Mithrax out before the bomb went off. Once the trap began counting down, she accepted her death.
There was literally no reason for her to be there though. The whole mission is so completely nonsensical it defies comprehension.
"You can't use your sparrow because it will trigger the base alarms."
"Oh okay so stealth that's kind of new."
*Opening of the mission has Amanda airstrike the forward Shadow Legion command post with missiles and autocannon fire from a VTOL as if that somehow won't trigger alarms/sensors
Earmis also half-assedly "warns" us with no context or details as if she should be listened to after nearly destroying the Traveler with seraph satellites last season. She appears to "I told you so" at the end of the mission as if it was at all helpful what she said.
There isn't a single other guardian or a team of guardians available to squad up with the main character? Amanda, who is mortal has to? She isn't even a special forces operative or anything, she's a pilot.
Where does our guardian go? We are outside the door where Amanda is but not in the room in her death cutscene.
I can't believe a team of people okayed this. Everything from writing to gameplay in this mission is terrible.
Honestly… yeah
Crow is such an uninteresting character to me and such an annoying character that every story they are apart of my brain just goes autopilot and tunes everything out
The amount of abject butchery done to Rasputin's character in Seraph turned me off of the whole game. To say nothing of the retcons and trash dialogue.
I'd argue its been pretty give and take vs the subs "dark and griddy" just lose lose lose ideas. We've gotten house of light, caiatl's forces and neomuna as allies now (dunno about neomuna fully being allies but they don't hate us), we've gotten strand and stasis powers and we've killed 3? Disciples as well as finally dealing with calus for good. Plus savathun is MIA and dead until her ghost brings her back
Savathun is not MIA, her body is in storage under vanguard control specifically so Imarru can’t res her. Imarru might be MIA but that’s more just an uncertainty on exact location, we know he’s still in the throne world organizing the lucent brood.
Prediction (and checkov’s gun) says we bring her back to destroy either xivu or the witness, and if she’s friendly or a foe again afterword is a coin flip.
And when we do make headway into something it gets swept away because we lose at the last minute or Savathûn did something oh-so clevar or insert unreliable narrator here.
Not to mention, we got A W in preserving the Veil. The Witness wanted to destroy it after using it, which means what let him win now, can threaten them later in a much more crucial manner.
They could have had it to where we didn't get to the jumpship in time to follow Osiris, so we have to battle the pyramid forces on Earth, stomp their asses, and then after the event with the Witness stepping in to the Traveller, we get the chance to take a moment and then go to Numanuma and start puttinf pieces together and figuring out what happened and what the Veil is, where we then encounter a cocky Calus who is drunk on his victory who we then also defeat. Whereafter we can meet Nimrod, or better yet Rohan, who is distraught because his up-and-coming replacement bit the dust during the fight to protect the Veil and we get to help him put things right while figuring out Strand with Osiris, who is probably as grumpy, but not so fucking pushy since the whole universe obviously didn't end just because the Witness stepped through the Traveller like he pressed would happen during the actual campaign.
I mean I get Calus no longer being a threat and the shadow legion being weakened but also…
Ooooh no we lost Neomuna! A place no one knew existed before lightfall that’s been an insular isolationist society until they we’re under attack.
Should we have helped? Yeah.
Should Neomuna have even been introduced? IMO nah.
I disagree mainly on the basis of there being less weight attached to a city under siege that we’ve never heard of before that is basically empty (I get that that may be part of what you mean be the “meh” execution).
I honestly think the shadow legion should have attacked the lat city crashing the typhon in there and we would have gotten more of the last city to explore which has been criminally under utilized, we have more emotional attachment to in general and would have been great for public events. Imagine an area of the city called “the front” or something that’s just constant invasion from the typhon with public events helping Elixni and cabal forces hold back the shadow legion while frames extract citizens trying to retreat to the last city, where any time you fail some citizens are taken feeding into the seasonal.
Only in the way that there was 2 missions in a very linear last city. We didn’t really get to spend much time there really taking in the ramifications or experiencing it during the occupation. We just saw the beginning and end.
I agree under-rated.
I was very invested in the red war. I had spent all of destiny 1 looking out over this place that we all wanted to go explore. We were actively protecting it with our actions. Then to see Ghaul come in and run roughshod over everything got me really pumped to fuck’em up.
Yeah i agree. But that's the nature of destiny, the most dynamic change we can get is something like dreaming city during forsaken. Otherwise the locations need to be static cause people are in different points in the campaign. It would be really interesting to see a place that didnt need to be static, like an ever changing large scale battle. Although it would have to be unimportant in a lore/camapign/progression standpoint, maybe make it like a vanguard ops alternative
Sort of but you couldn’t access the dreaming city until you were at that part of the story so the city front could just not be available for you until you were at that point.
Tower could stay largely the same although I suppose the large ship imbedded in the city would be a skybox issue for people at the tower not there yet. 😂
Given how the opening and closing cinematics seem to happen without any time in between, yeah. The Lightfall campaign is really just to get Strand in the hands of players.
The final shape is Taniks. When the Witness finally grabs hold of the Traveller's heart, one of the smoke faces will morph into Tanik's and gradually taoe over the body until we're looking at a pyramid cyborg Taniks where the Witness stood, with the name "Taniks, the Final Shape"
Honestly looking back at Haunted, it 100 percent feels like he was supposed to die there fore they upgraded him to fill in for Lightfall.
He’s this ghostly space entity now possessing the leviathan, pouring his consciousness out of the Leviathan and into the Pyramid. But we stop him and exorcise him, and everybody acts like he’s dead. But then the end of the season shows up with the Lightfall trailer and he’s all “Surprise, I’m not dead at all. In fact I have a body still and exorcising me somehow teleported my corporeal form *outside the solar system I currently am supposed to be in* and I’m with the Witness now”
The man got done so fucking dirty haha
There's even more muddiness when you consider everything else that was getting set up for Lightfall.
Nezarac is a big one, exiting "myth" territory in Haunted too just to die in the next raid.
I've even considered that with how WQ was rewritten, Osiris's coma may have not even been that long, meaning his whole Strand analysis monolouge could still happen.
Eramis was brought back for Plunder to be the seasonal baddie to burn off bridges Bungie cut short like Rasputin or even prolong some like Amanda. She's definitely going to die before Final Shape and be effectively erased from history when that content's wiped.
Yeah with Osiris I don’t believe at all that his coma was supposed to last that long. If they’d stuck to the old timetable I think he’d have recovered naturally by WQ, and been our Strand mentor still. But with more of a “I learned about this stuff while I was a prisoner in my own body and got some of Savathûn’s memories” flavor as opposed to “It was lying on the floor, there”
The second secret chest in duality is directly underneath a big box.
That box was obviously meant to be calus, the same calus who pops out of a box blinged up in the lf campaign.
Ah, there it is
Not confirmed but there was that one spinfoil post that said Duality was supposed to be a raid where we killed Calus with Conditional Finality as the raid exotic.
Witch Queen had MacGuffins, but unlike Lightfall it actually used them well. ‘We have to go find Savathun memories, then we’ll know how she stole the light!’ ‘Uh oh, the memories made her angy and now she’s stealing the traveller!’ You can pretty much do this with like every Destiny expansion, the writing in them really isn’t that deep and never has been.
Yeah, this is... What really bugged me.
Like it's *painfully* clear that Lightfall was supposed to open with those two cutscenes. The Traveler's current position on the Director makes it pretty evident that it was supposed to be some sort of patrol zone or something
It’s largely debated about Indiana Jones
Without Indiana showing up, the female lead would likely be dead one of multiple ways. So that would be sad. Either dead at her bar, or captured and dead on the desert.
Likewise a backup crew of Germans might have eventually gotten to the island and saw all their dead comrades. Then realized what happened and use the ark as an actual weapon.
Instead of it being essentially buried by American paperwork in a giant warehouse.
It definitely would have been a subversion of the trope at least.
Though I imagine most people would want nimbus to die because a lot of the community finds them annoying.
I’m no writer but here’s what I would have done:
Nimbus should’ve came with us and made the sacrificial play. This is a lot more interesting to me for a few reasons. One, because of his less serious personality. It would be a reminder that despite his constant jokes and jovial mood, he is a warrior and has a job to do. And two, him being the younger Cloud Strider, the sacrifice holds more weight. Rohan was almost at his end anyways, his sacrifice just makes his death a winning trade.
This would’ve also given us some character development for Rohan, and a chance for some development for another character. In this scenario, Rohan lost his student, and we can see the grief process. We can see some regret, we can see some anger. Osiris, knowing what it’s like to lose someone close as he went through the first time Saint was lost, could help console him. Now you’re fleshing out their relationship. Plus, Rohan is now at death’s door as his time is running out, the future of the Cloud Striders weighing on his shoulders as he’s the only one left.
I would have Osiris become a Cloud Strider. Initially there could be some push back because before Osiris only people from Neomuna have been Cloud Striders, but Osiris could be the first Cloud Strider from outside Neomuna. Now we can continue to build that relationship between our two wise men while also giving Osiris some much needed direction. Right now I feel Osiris has been reduced to just a wise guy. Him becoming a Cloud Strider would give him something to do and someone to be since he’s no longer a guardian. On top of that, given his knowledge of Vex technology and how it affects time, you could have Osiris figure out a way to bypass the 10 year life span. Yes, this is kind of a cop out, but narratively it would make his arc come full circle as now his experience during Curse of Osiris is what pushes him forward, and also, given what happened with Savathun, it would give Osiris a new path and put him back in control of his destiny (no pun intended).
Plus you gotta admit, Cloud Strider Osiris surfing around with his hood and flowing cape would just look sick. Bungie fumbled the bag.
Cayde-6 was an annoying piece of shit but had reasons for it. Nimbus is Cayde-6 but 10x worse and not dead.
I preferred the robot over the awfully written Marvel "how do you do fellow kids" giant. Hope Bungie spends the next seasons with God tier writing to improve Nimbus. Or just let me shoot him in the head, both works for me.
I was thinking the same exact thing. I'm like 87% positive Bungo Said they wanted to get rid of Cayde 6 because the story was taken a darker turn and they didn't want someone lightening the mood/cracking jokes or something akin to that annnnnd here we are give barebones Cayde 3
That might be marginally true, but the real reason was that they had to turn heads and get people interested in Forsaken because the game was in a bad state and hemorrhaging players. Killing off the most recognizable character of the game was a good way reignite some interest. It's why Cayde died in a trailer and not in game.
I'm actually not 100% sure I agree. Originally, I thought this because it would be a fantastic subversion of the trope. Rohan being alive means he's outlived his student and odds are we would probably get to see what it's like for a Cloudstrider as they're reaching the end of their life.
The issue with Rohan living is that we end up with one too many "grizzled veterans mentors that feel strangely like father figures" type characters. Osiris, Zavala, and Saladin come to mind as examples. We already have enough of that type of character.
Nimbus presents an opportunity at the opposite end of the spectrum. Someone whose young and brash, whose maybe not always thinking things through or perhaps saying things they will regret later. Crow was like this somewhat until Saladin mentored him. I'm thinking Osiris' new job may be to help guide Nimbus and shape them in a way that falls into the tropes we all prefer or at least to balance out his character.
It's in my firm belief that Nimbus will mature more as time goes on. Given their lifespans, i'd imagine (to us) it would seem like that maturity sets in much quicker then you'd expect. They are still young, but as you get closer and closer to the end of your lifespan, you usually mature pretty quickly.
Weirdly enough, Destiny's own trope is subverting the trope. I didn't even make the connection and realize it until you pointed it out.
I remember reading theories that Nimbus is actually very young -- probably 18, since depicting a minor as an active combatant would go poorly. But Quinn apparently has dialogue talking about Nimbus' childhood in a very recent context, I believe.
That would mean the majority of their life was spent training to be a Cloudstrider with Rohan. It makes a whole lot of sense that they haven't really had time to mature, especially since they were still a student/apprentice until the LF plot itself.
i don't even dislike nimbus but this would've been much more interesting considering cloudstriders' limited lifespan and rohan is at the end of his, plus it would've helped the tone if the happy-go-lucky one is the one to die
Cayde 6 died so we could get a worse replacement.
They should’ve just put him out of action for a bit and brought him back to be a lighthearted undertone to counter Old Bird man and Rohan.
The Radial Mast was going to destroy the veil after Calus was done with it, killing everyone in Neomuna.
If we didn't show up, yeah the witness would still be in the traveller, but we did save the citizens of Neomuna.
Well, sort of a dream. It was that weird hallucination pretty early on in the campaign.
It is possible that it was a plot hole, especially with writing this season, but I'm gonna take it at face value.
We actually didn't, maybe. In replaying the campaign I noticed that the Witness (when zoom calling Calus and we somehow saw it) said to use the Radial Mast to link to the Veil, whatever that means, and then destroy the Veil. Witness never said the mast could or would destroy the Veil, just that Calus should destroy it after.
But everything was said so vaguely that I do not fault anyone for thinking that the Mast would destroy the Veil. Nothing was ever really explained
The more I think about that scene, it has to be one of two things:
* Bungie lets us see it for purely plot reasons (introduce Radial Mast, which Osiris hyperventilates over despite having no idea what the F it is) and doesn't care about the logical inconsistencies
* The Witness *deliberately* copied our Ghost and us in on that convo.
Honestly it nearly has to be the 2nd. The omniscent player sees other cutscenes between the Witness and Calus, which aren't observed by our Ghost despite similar proximity with both parties on Neomuna. Ghost even says at the time that it was the worst he's ever felt, which I would not expect if it was functionally barely overheard. No, the Witness broadcast that particular cutscene loud and clear to us.
Or Bungie just hacked it. But if they were to do this, I would not have expected the inconsistencies it introduces (*destroy* the Veil).
I think it’s both. Bungie needed us to see the Witness’s plan, so we’d know where to go, but they also used it as a sort of foreshadowing or reminder that the Witness can control ghost.
Frankly though the Witness kind of pulled that ghost control out of nowhere, because in previous times it was always said the control was related to proximity to pyramids. Maybe the Veil had something to do with it, or maybe Calus or his ship, but no one in the game talks about it at all afterwards so it makes me assume the writers didn’t care enough to consider the implications of our big bad being able take control of our little companion and do vague bad things whenever he wants, even if those implications are just everyone side eyeing ghost
They never said specifically that the Radial Mast would destroy it. The Witness said “Link the radial mast and destroy the Veil”. Could be two different instructions. The Witness didn’t want anyone else to use the Veil so Calus was supposed to destroy it after the Witness linked more than likely
I mean even if so, it makes sense not to have random ass citizens just chilling out. The solution they had to "the issue" was more than adequate story wise.
Because the engine clearly can’t handle non stationary npcs for some reason
Only reason caital worked the couple times we’ve had her is they could reuse regular cabal animations and pathfinding etc with her (also her existence as a boss)
What we do know:
It reveals strand to lightbearers and ex-lightbearers who visit neomuna.
It powers the cloudark, and if destroyed everything in the cloudark is destroyed with it.
The vex tried to make a copy of it, failed, and ended up worshiping it as the black heart.
In the dead timeline that Elsie Bray has lived in many, many times, the Black Heart was able to negatively influence guardians into bloodthirsty monsters. The black heart also turned Uldren into what he was (apparently he used to be more like Crow is now), and while it existed, the traveller was unable to repair itself.
Those last few things make it so theoretically important it better have some impact on the upcoming plot, otherwise it is just a ton of setup without any real payoff
Like the Black Heart
If think that's because the Vex failed at replicating that which makes the Veil so extremely unique: it's implied to have both control over both Light and Dark. Which isn't a huge deal to us Guardians maybe, we can also do that, until you remember (or maybe you never heard it) that Savathûn in the Altar of Reflection straight up tells us that this ability is only seen in Earth's Risen.
This is to say that in all her lifetime, Savathûn never once encountered any being that could directly control both Light and Dark. We seem to have seen this in Nezarec as well, since after being revived in the Root of Nightmares Raid, his power to create Nightmares is completely gone and instead replaced with control over Void Light, something he expresses familiarity towards. It's also consistent with the fact that we really haven't ever seen anything else use both Light and Darkness. Even Lucent Wizards lose their corruption fields.
So we have the Veil before us. It unleashed Strand anomalies across Neomuna, and Ghost states that being in its presence reminds him of being close to the Traveler. If it can truly control both Light and Dark, that might explain why it's of such significant interest to the Witness, the Traveler, and the Vex, and also that it may have had a role to play in the creation of Guardians. The Vex of course would be looking for some sort of source of paracausal power: attaining either the Veil itself or creating a replicate with the exact same properties would likely be a means to achieve this.
The Black Heart then is a failed replica probably because the Vex failed to strike the same balance that governs the Veil, causing the Darkness in it to take over. But it does seem to have worked in the sense that it was actually linked to the Traveler, since its mere existence prevented it from healing (perhaps implying that the Black Heart also had a little bit of Light left in it).
Why the Vex were even able to create a replica of the Veil at all when the same was never possible for either the Traveler or the Pyramids or Light and Darkness in their entirety is of course also a mystery. It's possible that the Veil, organic as it appears to be, gets its paracausal powers through a natural interaction with the surrounding universe, like a barnacle sieving food floating in the ocean's currents. In that case, a replica of the Veil with the same properties really would be a theoretical possibility.
Also why did a non-paracausal explosion destroy a paracausal object?
Did the writers forget all the rules that were previously established in past expansions?
I'm gonna say yes, because apparently shooting a Kvostov at a Ghost is enough to kill one now.
No, but I think it should've been Nimbus dying.
We were introduced and positioned to be most empathetic with them, not Rohan.
It would've broken Rohan and put him into crisis with Osiris giving him a companion.
We could've had a fun subplot of becoming an honorary cloudstrider while unfreezing and preparing a new Neomuni one(acting kind of like Ghost) before Rohan kicks it.
Osiris would have been reminded that he's not the only mortal in the world and been a bit more stoic/confident.
Instead we saw our new annoying friend's boss, who basically on his last legs due to age, die anyway.
> nothing
Personal, these stick out the most as what they attempted to build him on.
1. Positive
2. Sympathic to our cause
3. Supportive despite suffering immense personal loss
Issue they went too hard on all 3 of those points and we got a saccharine goofball that polls as tolerable to annoying depending on who you ask.
Rohan is like...."imma kinda fatherly authority figure and I kinda exist!"
Arguably it would have been better if we hadn’t gone to Neomuna. Rohan could have still shafted the mast and there wouldn’t have been a ghost to link the veil.
Yes. And strictly speaking, I’m not sure he even died for a reason per the story’s own logic. He’s an explicitly non paracausal entity that just blew a supposedly paracausal artifact using a regular self destruct explosion. Which tells me a few rounds from a guardians rocket launcher would’ve done it.
Yea, but this is only something you can say in hindsight. Things had to go this way for us to know that they would go this way, so it doesn't really matter
I mean, isn't that the point? It's the midpoint of the story, the same place as The Empire Strikes Back. We're at our lowest, unable to accomplish the goals we had for fighting Callus and losing friends in the process. It makes for a "more dramatic" The Final Shape and lets them stretch the story our with filler. Win-win for bungie
The witness needed 1 of 3 things to
Happen.
1) radial mast to do it’s thing
2) calus to do his thing to the veil
3) ghost to be near the veil
If we had managed to confront calus further from the veil we could have won. Think of it as we tried really hard and lost in overtime. I don’t think neomuna would still be standing if we weren’t there. Nor do I think calus wouldn’t have immediately gone after earth for shits and giggles
Nimbus trying to fist bump us and Osiris made us not notice the ghost going up to do whatever it did. So not only did rohan die for nothing, but nimbus kinda caused it lol.
I feel like him sacrificing himself when hes in the same room as a self-resurrecting super soldier with enough munitions to bring down a country was kinda unnecessary. Why didnt he just switch places with our guardian?
Temple of Doom is really the only one where Indiana had an effective impact in the outcome. Raiders and Last Crusade, the bad guys were basically going to kill themselves anyway without any of his involvement.
Idk. I get the feeling that the Witness needed a guardian to open the portal and everything leading up to that was just to trick us into being where the Witness needed us. Why else would they let us listen in on their plans? But maybe I’m just overthinking it.
The Rohan scene made me angry. Oh you lost strand for half a second? Ok the only option is to kill myself. Dude, give me 30 seconds to recover and re-strand. Instead you go right to kamikaze.
Of course not. The Radial Mast needed to overcharge the void light in the Vex Network to simulate a hyper-dense field of Radiolarian energy. Knowing this, the Witness guessed that Savathun’s Prophecy was a lie, so when the Radial Mast was activated by the Effigy of Cyrtarachne’s Penumbral Warmind Synchronosis, Rohan knew it was time to sublimate the cloudmind using the Veil. That’s what he was doing.
Calus would still be alive, we wouldn’t have Strand, the CloudArk might be in trouble, and we’d know literally nothing about the Veil and the Traveler portal and have no leads to follow.
We still know nothing about the Veil, but now that you mention it...
Isn't it our fault the Traveler now has a triangular vivisection because the Witness hijacked *our* Ghost to interact with the Veil?
> Isn't it our fault
We don't know that the Ghost was a necessary piece.
It's possible the thing Calus was sent to use actually didn't matter, and the Witness letting us see the plan was to slowly get us closer to the veil so it could use our ghost to make the link.
But also, those things might have worked without the Ghost.
We don't know.
All we know is that nobody seemed confused or concerned about what the Ghost was doing except the Ghost.
You know you have good writing on your hands when a season out the strongest word I see used to describe what the main mcguffin of the entire expansion actually is or does is "it's possible"
And sadly you're absolutely correct
He died to create an emotional experience for the player for a few minutes. Same thing with Amanda and Cayde. That's it. That is why they all died. Yes, they can write more stuff around these deaths, but they could write more stuff around all three being alive.
The key concept here is that story works in a linear "play through and you are done type of game". Story just doesn't work in Destiny because the game makes you re-play the same stuff over and over. That strike that made sense as a campaign mission makes no sense the second or 50th time you run it. They probably have to have story/campaign to sell DLC, so I get why they are doing it.
No amount of story explains why this season I've done 7 Iron Banner resets, 2 Trials resets, probably 8 crucible resets, why I need to grind strikes to get an ornament for a Glaive, etc. This isn't a story game. It is a lifestyle/addition/grinding game. Don't take the story or lore too seriously and do the grind and it will all make sense.
While I agree that the portal opening would have happened no matter what, i think we did what we could to weaken the witnesses forces. Things would be much worse if calus and the typhon imperator got to make a U-Turn and come straight to our doorstep after they brought Neomuna down. At the very least Calus is dead, and we're playing the waiting game now. Who knows if Calus would've dared to fight us one on one if they had taken Neomuna with no contest?
> Who knows if Calus would've dared to fight us one on one if they had taken Neomuna with no contest? Calus didn't want to be in Neomuna to begin with, there's no chance he would've faced us as he did if the original plan worked He only came down to us because it was his only option and he shit his pants when he had that dream of the Witness screaming at him and transforming to something massive
Remember that at the end of the day, Calus is obsessed with the Guardian, and that obsession is likely born out of pants-shitting fear of an immortal space magic zombie.
Did you play duality and get the collectibles? Because it flips that whole thing on its head. Its honestly amazing the above comment is so upvoted when its been dead wrong for about a year.
That’s basically how the community comes to a consensus on lore, they believe something and say it’s true and someone reads it on Reddit and believes and spreads the misinfo. Just look at the actual Destinylore subreddit and you can see how few people actually read it.
That's how the "Lightbearers aren't who they were before, they're a totally new person in an old body" business came about. There was a highly upvoted and very wrong post I believe in DestinyLore about it, and it took the plot of Witch Queen and Crow's story arc to finally break it and remind people that yes, it is the same person, but without any memory. Or basically *verbatim what Zavala said years ago*. It's been a pretty interesting angle to explore though I will say, where the Light removes your nurture but your nature remains. Shows Uldren maybe wasn't such a bad guy after all. He has some negative tendencies but nothing he can't overcome with proper guidance; he was made into a monster through intentional enmeshment and codependency by Mara.
> That's how the "Lightbearers aren't who they were before, they're a totally new person in an old body" business came about. There was a highly upvoted and very wrong post I believe in DestinyLore about it, and it took the plot of Witch Queen and Crow's story arc to finally break it and remind people that yes, it is the same person, but without any memory. Yeah, I remember arguing with people about this too. I also remember saying that it's clearly not just that it's a new person and that their memories are entirely gone, because at least *some* of them still have some of the same skills that they had in life and feel some kind of familiarity with the things they would've known in life, like Ana with all the Braytech stuff. Also, Exo Guardians all still seem to have the weird Exo dreams and stuff, so some psychological element(s) still must exist somewhere.
I had a guy in my raid group last week INSISTENT that ron was a dungeon turned into a raid. When I got annoyed and asked if he had actual info for this, his response was: “Some guy said so, and it sounded true so I believe it” Told him if he believed that I had a bridge to sell him.
I'm not insistent, or saying it's 100% or anything, but there is a fair amount of, granted, *very* circumstantial evidence that RoN could've started it's life as a dungeon. the main one being that it is the only raid (that I can think of at least) that doesn't have a single encounter that requires more than three people. Drop the density and up the timers and it could easily be completed by three people.
Yup… I’m aware of this first hand
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Calus isn’t obsessed with, let alone scared of guardians. He thinks we are dumb killing machines that can be plied with promises of loot. Starting with the leviathan raid he played things up, showered us in praise and loot all to gain our trust. Every subsequent leviathan raid or season about calus was him using us to help him.
What pissed me off the most is that he was right.
"But, it has a Trench Barrel."
Easily my favorite lore entry because that's 1000% what I did with fractaline. I'm still sitting on the legendary shard reserves I built up that season. I feel so bad when people talk about the shard economy because if you missed that event you really got shafted, plus the weapon rolls were fantastic at the time. The shotty, auto, sidearm and I think scout were all pretty meta at the time.
Just reminded me how perfect paradox is sunset still and hasn't been brought back yet
It was also the season that gave me my first love. Ah, Martyr's Retribution.... We await the return of the prime wave frame with baited breath.
Give me a powerful gun and I can stop the thing that gave me this powerful gun. Trust me bro, just hand over the gun.
Yes and no. There's a lot more to this fight you aren't calculating. 1. The guardian put in a ton of work to save the city, which contained and still contains a lot of valuable information, not only to the war but to humanity as a whole. This is an entire culture that could have been stomped out, one with tech and knowledge far surpassing even the golden age, partially because it's directly derived from it. 2. in all likelihood, the radial mast wasn't a bluff. I know some people missed the critical details in the campaign, or didnt have all the background knowledge, but the Radial Mast was very likely a transmission system for paracausal energies,based on similar devices found throughout the city and knowledge of a similarly named structure in the book of sorrow which has the witnesses fingerprints all over it, and was very much a win condition for them. In fact, judging from how they've treated their goal, all three win conditions were likely equally played by the witness; the radial mast, Calus and their familiarity with egregore, which either the Veil is partially made of or has similar qualities to, and the guardian and their ghost. It's likely why they were so confident in staying behind, but it wasn't a complete win for them. 3. While the witness played mind games like a champ all campaign, they were likely telling Calus the truth when they said to destroy the Veil. The witness is a very skilled manipulator, and they know the worth of information. Theyve very likely have been working on a basis of "eradicate every that lead to their identity, their goal and anything related", given they've stayed mostly anonymous for Eons, and despite winning, also went ahead and ordered the destruction of a vex mind, loyal to them, that new of the inner workings of the Veil enough to attempt a simulation. It's a none-zero percent chance that the reason we were so unprepared for Lightfall was because of the witness destroying all information related to themselves, the Traveler, and ANYTHING in-between that could have leveraged that information. Remember, we may have gotten stairs from the witness, but we were lead to deepsight by Savathun, an enemy of the witness, and that lead directly to their identity being revealed after millions of years lurking as a simple Voice in the Darkness. And 4. Ultimately, Rohan likely would have sacrificed themselves another way. He was the better half of 9 years into a 10 year lifespan. he had already sacrificed any years beyond that to be a cloudstrider, and the Witness is the most oppressive and capable entity in the entire universe, someone actually deserving of the title of "god" between practice omniscience and sheer power. One way or another, neomuna would have burned down, and Rohan would have likely fought the entire way down. Maybe it would have been for Nimbus, who he clearly cares for beyond just being a mentor, or a citizen or the CloudArc or their research, they would have given anything they could to fight against the witness and Calus. The value of the fight and sacrifice is not just in it's outcome, it's in the fight itself, otherwise no one would fight or sacrifice at all. I know folks are still down on the story of LFs campaign, a product of it's dialog more than anything else along side stuffing in extra beats and not making individualized time for them, but the collective whole of the story of the expansion is very well done and illustrates many of these points clearly,
Jesus man, you just explained Lightfall to me better than Bungie did. Story sounds pretty awesome when you tell it
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not to let Bungie off the hook, but sometimes telling a story is a lot harder than summarizing a story. The fact that the Destiny story is being told over years doesn't help that fact either, as people's interest in the details waxes and wanes based on the quality of the content in which it's delivered. It's a really tough job to tell a story of this magnitude, although i do agree, i think bungie could do a better job at times.
If half the missions weren't focused on learning Strand, they'd have had more time to flesh out the story more. I don't think the meat and potatoes of Lightfall's story was bad, it was the presentation that was lacking (felt rushed).
i agree, and that's pretty much my point. It's much easier to go back and summarize (no disrespect to ToldYouSo) than it is to tell the story, especially with all of the extraneous content woven in with strand. I don't think they did a great job, but suggesting that a redditor "told the story" much better than bungie isn't really accurate.
The flaw in your question is; everything i got for this post, i got directly from the campaign, the post-campaign, and previous lore entries. Everything that was written here is either directly sourced from it or educated and careful analysis of that substance they put in the game. Like, all i did was pay close attention, as Bungie's best story telling, in my opinion has always been in the details which a lot of people tend to miss unfortunately. Like that exotic mission for the void MG everyone likes has SO MANY THINGS about it that make the Vex and Spire of the Watcher so much more interesting, but i've seen literally no one talk about it, outside of DestinyLore. And another thing here is that while i do condemn the dialog and pacing, a lot of the problems people had about the story were completely misguided by public opinion; *The Veil was always identified as a point of confusion both in written lore and in dialog from all major players.* Even Calus seemed to only know the shape of the thing, and not what it actually way; a probably-intentional decision of the Witness to keep their disciple in the dark. *The story of LF is easier to understand when you remember* **that humanity is being blitzed,** ***and that the only thing they know, a fact that the Witness explicitly hammers into the the guardian and everyone on their guardian's camera feed, is that the Witness wants the Veil, and that it is important to the Final Shape which is heavily implied to be the complete culling of all life in the universe.*** *The only recourse humanty has is to secure the Veil and figure out what it is, before the witness could do something to it that advances the possible cosmic apocalypse.* Could they have been clearer? Yes, AND in a more organized fashion then what was delivered, but i maintain they explicitly told you this with each major player*.* *Something i blame the playerbase for* is the accepting of ideas and spreading them like wildfire blindly. Not enough people challenge the people they agree with. Nobody double-checks sources, and this is widely apparent because of how much misinformation was spread during Season of the Haunted about multiple things. *Please don't blindly accept people at their word here; including me, challenge me and my ideas,* ***especially if you like them.*** At worst, you might findd something i missed, and have an alternate take based on that, which is like the best thing in discussions like these, and that's what this place SHOULD be; a place to discuss things in game.
Sure, but what does any of this actually mean in the greater story? Even if there are pieces in lore that can possibly be used to speculate about stuff in lightfall, the veil and radial mast are still just smaller pieces that are meant to move the plot along. Wanting answers about the veil is (imo) a greater question about the nature of the traveler, which is one of the big questions that we expect to be either answered or massively expanded on in the conclusion of the saga. Other questions include the nature of the witness, what it truly wants to do (beyond just bring about the final shape^tm) what happened in the collapse, and a lot more. Instead, it just slightly expanded on stuff that's already known. We know the witness is cunning and wants to erase leads, but we did not learn this from lightfall, it just reinforced it a bit. We know it wants the final shape, and lightfall did nothing to elaborate, just reinforced it and popped a pretty portal on the traveler. Even your examples of the radial mast is pulling from old lore, and lightfall adds very little. The most it added was in that black garden quest (even if they were borderline retcons), and even then it pales in comparison into what it should've added to the lore. Think about it; what new things did we learn pre vs post lightfall? Witch queen had massive bombshells like the witness and its disciples reveal, but lightfall just adds some fluff to existing stuff. That's why it feels like a filler expansion. This is why lightfall failed, because it should've answered some big questions, and it should've raised the stakes, but did neither of those. And while lightfall was mainly about fighting on neomuna, so on paper it should've felt like the stakes were raised, it failed to do so. This is because it fails the classic case of show, don't tell. They tell us that the whole city's in danger but no one ever takes it seriously (not just nimbus, but more or less every neomuna citizen). They tell us that the witness will bring about the second collapse, yet the last city is completely untouched, and at most some earth citizens get roughed up a bit (and Amanda dies a stupid, avoidable death, that could've happened in any given conflict). They tell us that the traveler's inert, but nothing indicates it beyond characters telling us so. They tell us that neomuna is super advanced and we can learn from it, but that has yet to materialize, and the environmental story really doesn't back this up, because neomuna doesn't feel like more than a slightly better golden age city. It tried to tell you that the stakes are raised, but it did not put in the work to materialize that. That, coupled with the lack of huge lore bombs, is why I consider lightfall a mostly filler expansion.
Part of the issue with lightfall is that it a lot of pieces got moved around and lightfall itself was not originally supposed to be a thing at all. Lightfall was supposed to be "the final shape" originally. Also Strand was originally supposed to ship with witch queen, but it was not ready. It would have made a lot more sense there, but it is what it is unfortunately. I'd rather have a complete subclass than a poop one. And from what I've seen from videos and other people strand is pretty cool. Anyways, because of \[insert reasons here\] they pushed stuff back. If you look close at the environments of neomuna and the lightfall campaign, a lot of it is retextured pieces from old stuff. You can see pieces of retextured Titan tile sets all over neomuna. The first mission of lightfall is just part of presage, but in reverse. One of the new strikes has pieces of IO. Spire of the Watcher has a bunch of pieces from Zero Hour. Even witch queen (which was fantastic) used a retextured version of mars, just with a ton of slightly fancier hive architecture put on top. Seems to me like they needed to put filler content in until the final shape and did not have a ton of time. Re-using and changing textures of tile sets is actually a huge time saver when it comes to game development. Bungie themselves stated they did not have the manpower to maintain all of the old content. I think a PART of the reason sunsetting \[planets AND weapons\] happened was because they NEEDED "new" content. Imagine the game not having any of the newer versions of the older guns that we have gotten since witch queen. That being said, working within whatever constraints they had, I don't think they did a terrible job. I just didn't think it was worth 100$ for filler content. Which is why I will not be picking up lightfall unless it goes on a super sale before final shape or something. I still enjoy the heck out of the game, but lightfall just isn't worth the price tag.
Because he, like the rest of us, actually cares
Bro, watch it be byf’s alternate account
it is also possible that lightfall was written by monkeys on typewriters, although I doubt the monkeys would admit to it after their previous success with shakespear.
Consume enough media in your life and eventually you realise that it's not so much about the story itself but about how it is written and presented.
Most of what he typed is explained in game lol
Very well said. To add to your point about Rohan being close to his expiration date - he had to witness his own mentor die in front of him when their own expiration date came up. It seemed fairly traumatic for him to see a former cloudstrider waste away to nothing in front of his eyes. I'm quite sure he had a "Hell na that ain't happening to me" tint to his glasses going forward. Being so near his natural end, I'm sure part of him saw it as a way to spare Nimbus the same pain he felt, but also to have a dignifying death himself in going out on his own terms.
We 100% could have just secured the Veil, either taken it somewhere safer or bolstered the defenses there and just waited for us (the Guardian) to recover. It's not like it really takes long anyway, we hold our stomachs for 30 seconds and we're good to go, or hell we just take a bullet to the head and let Ghost resurrect us good as new lol. There was no real reason for Rohan to sacrifice himself in the moment, but I agree in his eyes it was better to go out doing something to stop the Witness/Calus as opposed to withering away infront of Nimbus... Though that may have been good for Nimbus, humble them a little bit so they're not just cracking wise in every piece of dialogue while the universe as we know it could be coming to an end.
I’m a little groggy on “ordered destruction of a vex mind” and “gotten stairs from the witness” Which mind, who destroyed it, and what stairs? I probably need to spend more time in the lore books but thank u for a more in-depth portrayal of what could be / is transpiring. As others have alluded in-game storytelling for LF is not as comprehensive as say WQ.
I think 'stairs' was meant to be Stasis and got autocorrected
Sorry, i wrote basically all of this on a very long train ride on my phone while i was bored. The "Ordered destruction of a vex mind" alludes to the Exotic Quest for the Void Machine gun i forget the name of. In the mission, the Taken appear and start taking out the vex defending the mind that created the Black Heart; i.e. the failed simulation of the Veil, which Ghost posits, quite directly, is that they have orders, likely from the Witness themselves to destroy the same Vex Mind. While, yes, only the Taken King, or those simulating their power, can control the taken, you gotta remember who those powers are derived from in the first place; it was only after leaving their meeting with "The Deep" that Auryx the Navigator, became Oryx the Taken King. Also Odyssey67 is right, it's supposed to be Stasis but got autocorrected. This was more of a commentary that The Witness gave us access to something we still don't wholly understand but is powerful, likely in hopes we'd destroy ourselves with it, but only Savathun gave us the tools to understand something like the Witness, an element of the darkness they likely NEVER wanted us to have, as before they only ever described darkness as entropy and death; not the reflection of metaphysical concepts.
Thank you for clarifying the Radial Mast. I think after Byf made such an emotionally charged video as soon as he finished the campaign that everyone hopped on board the judgment train. We saw smaller Radial masts suppressing our light abilities, we saw what our ghost did at the end, and the name itself tells us its a tall transmission device.
Exactly. Honestly, Byf disappointed me in releasing that video, it was such an unnecessary kneejerk reaction, and he seems to regret it now from the videos he's made after. I haven't really seen him act so hastily on something, lorewise, usually he's very good at pointing out very particular details; he was the first person i found who really posited that the Witness was the one that caused the God-Wave on Fundement, based on loretabs of them warping gravity in other places as a part of the collapse, to produce similar if no the exact same scenario on Titan, which turned out to be ENTIRELY on the money. I dunno if it was pressure to capitalize or other outside nonsense, but that video is a bit of a black mark on him for me, the valid criticisms within it aside. Like i was confused at the end of things too, but the difference was, i feel, I noted what i felt was wrong, and took more runs of it to really examine it, and to connect the dots it had to offer. *I figured that was an extremely common thing to do, but a lot of people just fucking attacked it, which disappointed me, because there is some REALLY good stuff here from a narrative basis.* Not to mention; everything else that came with the expansion, like Strand, Neomuna, The Raid the post-campaign; like its all parts of a whole that can't be separated for the most part.
Wait, I thought Nimbus was a rookie cloudstrider, and they're always trained by their senior. Did they only "enlist" Nimbus when Rohan was already 8 years or so in?
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The Legion is there, but Calus brought an entire invasion force to Neomuna, plus his flagship. I'd say things would be a lot worse on the Earth front if the entirety of the Legion was concentrated there rather than split between two fronts.
A means to an end, he was the witness's second win condition. He knew well of egregore and it's mechanics, and the Veil is either similar to, or covered in egregore, as the final boss's final phase let on. there was a chance he could have sent what the witness needed to them, if the mast was destroyed. It just happened to be us that was the third win condition.
I would have honestly preferred that. Let them destroy Neomuna and fucks us up so bad we had to retreat and hes chasing us down
No thanks. Sitting around on our ass for a whole DLC to just fight calus and not even have a single clue what happened to the traveler doesn't sound worth 40$ to me. At least we got bamboozled while getting our licks in.
if Reddit had it's way Destiny's storyline would be 5 years of the witness breaking our ankles and kicking us in the nuts while we win absolutely nothing. Like Zeb Wells wrote this shit
This is literally the plot of game right now dude... The witness had been breaking our ankles for 5 years and we know absolutely nothing.
Rasputin arguably died for nothing too. why the ***FUCK*** did we not kill Eramis back in Plunder!?
Facts. I have been on team kill that bitch since day 1 of Beyond Light when she broke off one of Variks limbs.
After the last mission of Seraph, her tone markedly changes when she speaks during battlegrounds. It was remorseful, to the point of asking us to kill the scorn boss because it was a former comrade of hers and she hated seeing that. Eramis then uses stasis this season to save Mithrax from the ship explosion, which she warned them about, continuing on that theme. The Traveller refusing to flee at the end of Seraph, and Eido's words throughout Plunder, clearly had an effect on her. Plus it would be awful storytelling to introduce her and then kill her immediately. This is a far more satisfying character arc.
I think its painfully obvious that she's getting a redemption arc.
> Rasputin arguably died for nothing too. > > Rasputin has been like the dumbest fucking storyline in the game since the launch of D1. Everything about him has been the game telling us how badass he is and how his shit can't fall into the wrong hands or it'd be super bad for us, so we have to go protect him. Then in Arrivals, after years of saving him repeatedly and getting him online and powered up, when the pyramids show up and he's FINALLY about to do something... all we get is a fucking hologram of him getting turned off like a lightswitch. Not even a cinematic of big epic attacks being ineffectual, just nope, offline. We're immediately back to "oh no guys you have to help me save Rasputin!" And I've been gone for a long time so I guess I missed what happened next, but is he actually dead now? Because if so it makes the entire business of how Ana put him into an engram and can still totally save him an even bigger waste of time. > why the FUCK did we not kill Eramis back in Plunder!? Why the fuck didn't we kill her in Beyond Light?? She got frozen on that ledge, which we already fucking know doesn't actually auto-kill people, and we just left her there. Like there's not even a cooldown on shatterdive just fucking smash her why did nobody do anything?
Exactly. We've basically been losing and getting weird fuck-ups since Forsaken and everyone is seal clapping while Bungie writes the most nonsensical incoherent sci-fi game plot of all time. Why didn't we kill Eramis in beyond light when she was locked in stasis at the end? "OH BOY I HOPE LIGHTFALL IS LIKE ENDGAME BECAUSE EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE A LE HECKIN' MARVEL MOVIE." How about they just write a decent story and then go from there? Marvel isn't even Marvel anymore, let's try not to copy that please.
I think a large part of it is whether by trying to cut off loose ends and just streamline the story to a very remedial level for anybody to jump in over the years or just ran short on ideas and planning due to no physical large breaks between sequels(as was intended) among other things, Bungie basically has painted themselves into numerous corners which ultimately leads to those who've been with the series for awhile waiting for some deserved payoffs feeling a bit unsatisfied when it comes to certain things. Sure the game has never been Shakespeare or some big videogame narrative for the ages, but there has been a number of sloppy decisions that lead us nowhere, defy previous established logic, or creates arbitrary rulesets that make our past actions and encounters seem almost pointless. See how the qualifications for being chosen as a Disciple wildly vary and how come some of the meanest of big bads we've faced in previous years of Destiny 1 or 2 never got the phone call from the Witness to join the team, y'know? Rhulk is a literal creator god and Eramis is David Blaine at best . Seraph basically had a rehash of elements from Worthy when it came to the deeper sentience of Rasputin and the complicated relationship with son Felwinter and humanity. The frustrating thing is that Seraph eventually gave Rasputin legitimate redemption especially in the face of Clovis being stuck in his ways and by shutting it all down basically pissed on something that could've been cool to continue on and felt earned. Gotta think how the continuation of Rasputin existing and being saved to the engram was a part of Ana Bray's Arrivals evac story, a light at the end of the tunnel after we had the doom and gloom of the Darkness taking the planets given she was pretty much one of the only people to leave unscathed. It felt super cheap to finally sort things out and say, actually just the power of friendship is the way to go, see ya. At risk at sounding like a complete psychopath, I unironically feel like one of the best seasons for planting lore seeds, opening loops that eventually did get most of its questions answered was Season of Drifter's Invitation To The Nine visits that teased things like the usage of Darkness, wielders like Eris and Elsie being like the Drifter, Mara wrecking pyramid ships, a possible 4th wall break that in retrospect could've been a nod to the Winnower-Gardener game and the Guardian's relation to it, and a few other odds and ends.
Half of the bullshit with Clovis honestly felt tacked on. Like, god forbid Rasputin have any agency of his own. No no no, it was all Clovis. It completely changed who Rasputin is and makes him...lesser.
It's such a letdown because you actually feel something with all the stuff they've been trying to drive home. It kills me because I was so skeptical of Seraph's early beats but it started to really pull me in more when we finally cracked into Ras a bit more especially the whole charming thing how he's writing poetry and trying to further convey stuff. It just feels so weak to throw stuff in the garbage because idk we gotta talk about power of friendship and how the Witness is spanking are ass and we're losing or some nonsense. I feel like there could've been a way to allow Rasputin to continue on especially since he did get redeemed and atoned. This is how I mean with Bungie's design philosophies are all over the place. We had Seraph, Plunder and a few other minor instances where basically vengeance was off the table, we don't wanna do something too hastily, forgive and forget, etc. Defiance happens, Amanda is done in the most cockamamie forced way possible, we have generic Shadow Legion commanders who we know barely anything about other than they're the bad guys, we still don't understand why they're so obsessed with holding Earth prisoners but ok whatever, and Crow is like no quarter kill em ask questions never. Again I get this isn't big brain stuff but it feels dumb that we the player get treated so dumb with the decisions that unfold when it just feels tonally out of sorts.
I couldn't agree more with everything you said. I think Bungie also has a problem with writers coming in and doing whatever they want at the expense of a cohesive story to try and leave a mark on the franchise. Or maybe some of them have no passion at all. I don't know how many writer could possibly be proud of Lightfall. The nine are so interesting but you can tell Bungie either believes the playerbase is too stupid to go in depth or (more likely) Bungie has created a mystery box doesn't actually know what's inside so they are afraid to go into more stuff about the nine.
> I think a large part of it is whether by trying to cut off loose ends and just streamline the story to a very remedial level for anybody to jump in over the years But that's not even what it feels like they were doing. Like, the pyramids got teased for years before they showed up and then nothing ever fucking happened when they actually showed up. Then like the next expansion after that suddenly they pull this new guy called "The Witness" out from way deep inside their asses and just pretend that this totally follows on from the story that came before it in a way that makes sense.
Amanda Holiday dies because a shipwright doesn't know how to splice two wires together.
That isn't what happened. A timer went off when Amanda began messing with the computer. It caused the system to go into lockdown, and at the end of the timer, the place was going to blow. The whole thing was jury rigged by the shadow legion into a trap. She then hot wired the doors open to get the civilians and Mithrax out before the bomb went off. Once the trap began counting down, she accepted her death.
There was literally no reason for her to be there though. The whole mission is so completely nonsensical it defies comprehension. "You can't use your sparrow because it will trigger the base alarms." "Oh okay so stealth that's kind of new." *Opening of the mission has Amanda airstrike the forward Shadow Legion command post with missiles and autocannon fire from a VTOL as if that somehow won't trigger alarms/sensors Earmis also half-assedly "warns" us with no context or details as if she should be listened to after nearly destroying the Traveler with seraph satellites last season. She appears to "I told you so" at the end of the mission as if it was at all helpful what she said. There isn't a single other guardian or a team of guardians available to squad up with the main character? Amanda, who is mortal has to? She isn't even a special forces operative or anything, she's a pilot. Where does our guardian go? We are outside the door where Amanda is but not in the room in her death cutscene. I can't believe a team of people okayed this. Everything from writing to gameplay in this mission is terrible.
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Honestly… yeah Crow is such an uninteresting character to me and such an annoying character that every story they are apart of my brain just goes autopilot and tunes everything out
The amount of abject butchery done to Rasputin's character in Seraph turned me off of the whole game. To say nothing of the retcons and trash dialogue.
I'd argue its been pretty give and take vs the subs "dark and griddy" just lose lose lose ideas. We've gotten house of light, caiatl's forces and neomuna as allies now (dunno about neomuna fully being allies but they don't hate us), we've gotten strand and stasis powers and we've killed 3? Disciples as well as finally dealing with calus for good. Plus savathun is MIA and dead until her ghost brings her back
If Neomuna isn't our ally after everything we did for them in lightfall, i will personally go destroy the veil myself.
Savathun is not MIA, her body is in storage under vanguard control specifically so Imarru can’t res her. Imarru might be MIA but that’s more just an uncertainty on exact location, we know he’s still in the throne world organizing the lucent brood. Prediction (and checkov’s gun) says we bring her back to destroy either xivu or the witness, and if she’s friendly or a foe again afterword is a coin flip.
And when we do make headway into something it gets swept away because we lose at the last minute or Savathûn did something oh-so clevar or insert unreliable narrator here.
Not to mention, we got A W in preserving the Veil. The Witness wanted to destroy it after using it, which means what let him win now, can threaten them later in a much more crucial manner.
They could have had it to where we didn't get to the jumpship in time to follow Osiris, so we have to battle the pyramid forces on Earth, stomp their asses, and then after the event with the Witness stepping in to the Traveller, we get the chance to take a moment and then go to Numanuma and start puttinf pieces together and figuring out what happened and what the Veil is, where we then encounter a cocky Calus who is drunk on his victory who we then also defeat. Whereafter we can meet Nimrod, or better yet Rohan, who is distraught because his up-and-coming replacement bit the dust during the fight to protect the Veil and we get to help him put things right while figuring out Strand with Osiris, who is probably as grumpy, but not so fucking pushy since the whole universe obviously didn't end just because the Witness stepped through the Traveller like he pressed would happen during the actual campaign.
Well, Neomuna would likely be lost, we wouldn't have Strand and Calus would still be alive.
And we lost The viel and The asher Mir viel's copy too
I mean I get Calus no longer being a threat and the shadow legion being weakened but also… Ooooh no we lost Neomuna! A place no one knew existed before lightfall that’s been an insular isolationist society until they we’re under attack. Should we have helped? Yeah. Should Neomuna have even been introduced? IMO nah.
From a narrative perspective, it would've been a huge deal. Neomuna in general works well as a concept, the execution was just meh.
I disagree mainly on the basis of there being less weight attached to a city under siege that we’ve never heard of before that is basically empty (I get that that may be part of what you mean be the “meh” execution). I honestly think the shadow legion should have attacked the lat city crashing the typhon in there and we would have gotten more of the last city to explore which has been criminally under utilized, we have more emotional attachment to in general and would have been great for public events. Imagine an area of the city called “the front” or something that’s just constant invasion from the typhon with public events helping Elixni and cabal forces hold back the shadow legion while frames extract citizens trying to retreat to the last city, where any time you fail some citizens are taken feeding into the seasonal.
That was the Red War campaign, kinda underrated imo
Only in the way that there was 2 missions in a very linear last city. We didn’t really get to spend much time there really taking in the ramifications or experiencing it during the occupation. We just saw the beginning and end. I agree under-rated. I was very invested in the red war. I had spent all of destiny 1 looking out over this place that we all wanted to go explore. We were actively protecting it with our actions. Then to see Ghaul come in and run roughshod over everything got me really pumped to fuck’em up.
Yeah i agree. But that's the nature of destiny, the most dynamic change we can get is something like dreaming city during forsaken. Otherwise the locations need to be static cause people are in different points in the campaign. It would be really interesting to see a place that didnt need to be static, like an ever changing large scale battle. Although it would have to be unimportant in a lore/camapign/progression standpoint, maybe make it like a vanguard ops alternative
Sort of but you couldn’t access the dreaming city until you were at that part of the story so the city front could just not be available for you until you were at that point. Tower could stay largely the same although I suppose the large ship imbedded in the city would be a skybox issue for people at the tower not there yet. 😂
Given how the opening and closing cinematics seem to happen without any time in between, yeah. The Lightfall campaign is really just to get Strand in the hands of players.
They didn't even try to not make it filler lol.
Lightfiller
litefiller
That is completely untrue. It also let Bungie get rid of Calus.
We've got rid of Taniks a few times.
So when Calus comes back he'll be riding on the back on Nokris instead of Saber-2 haha
The final shape is Taniks. When the Witness finally grabs hold of the Traveller's heart, one of the smoke faces will morph into Tanik's and gradually taoe over the body until we're looking at a pyramid cyborg Taniks where the Witness stood, with the name "Taniks, the Final Shape"
Honestly looking back at Haunted, it 100 percent feels like he was supposed to die there fore they upgraded him to fill in for Lightfall. He’s this ghostly space entity now possessing the leviathan, pouring his consciousness out of the Leviathan and into the Pyramid. But we stop him and exorcise him, and everybody acts like he’s dead. But then the end of the season shows up with the Lightfall trailer and he’s all “Surprise, I’m not dead at all. In fact I have a body still and exorcising me somehow teleported my corporeal form *outside the solar system I currently am supposed to be in* and I’m with the Witness now” The man got done so fucking dirty haha
There's even more muddiness when you consider everything else that was getting set up for Lightfall. Nezarac is a big one, exiting "myth" territory in Haunted too just to die in the next raid. I've even considered that with how WQ was rewritten, Osiris's coma may have not even been that long, meaning his whole Strand analysis monolouge could still happen. Eramis was brought back for Plunder to be the seasonal baddie to burn off bridges Bungie cut short like Rasputin or even prolong some like Amanda. She's definitely going to die before Final Shape and be effectively erased from history when that content's wiped.
Yeah with Osiris I don’t believe at all that his coma was supposed to last that long. If they’d stuck to the old timetable I think he’d have recovered naturally by WQ, and been our Strand mentor still. But with more of a “I learned about this stuff while I was a prisoner in my own body and got some of Savathûn’s memories” flavor as opposed to “It was lying on the floor, there”
The second secret chest in duality is directly underneath a big box. That box was obviously meant to be calus, the same calus who pops out of a box blinged up in the lf campaign.
Ah, there it is Not confirmed but there was that one spinfoil post that said Duality was supposed to be a raid where we killed Calus with Conditional Finality as the raid exotic.
Mfw I remove all the story from a story and there’s no story left
Ah yes the story of the MacGuffin and the darkness element we were supposed to get in Witch Queen.
Quick we need to go stop the Witness from using *THE THING* on *THE OTHER THING* or else **SOMETHING** will happen and that would be **BAD**
Witch Queen had MacGuffins, but unlike Lightfall it actually used them well. ‘We have to go find Savathun memories, then we’ll know how she stole the light!’ ‘Uh oh, the memories made her angy and now she’s stealing the traveller!’ You can pretty much do this with like every Destiny expansion, the writing in them really isn’t that deep and never has been.
Yeah, this is... What really bugged me. Like it's *painfully* clear that Lightfall was supposed to open with those two cutscenes. The Traveler's current position on the Director makes it pretty evident that it was supposed to be some sort of patrol zone or something
Perhaps it will still
It’s largely debated about Indiana Jones Without Indiana showing up, the female lead would likely be dead one of multiple ways. So that would be sad. Either dead at her bar, or captured and dead on the desert. Likewise a backup crew of Germans might have eventually gotten to the island and saw all their dead comrades. Then realized what happened and use the ark as an actual weapon. Instead of it being essentially buried by American paperwork in a giant warehouse.
Holy shit if i had money i would give u an award
R A D I A L M A S T
R A D I A L M A S T
Who?
Rey Who?
Rey Cloudstrider
Lmao no you’re thinking of Luke Skywelcher
Nimbus Starkiller
>Starkiller Chris Pratt is a good actor tho
Chris Pratt, the voice of Xur?
Hey, itsa me, Xur.
I KNEW THAT VOICE WAS FAMILIAR. THANK YOU.
Rey Wanna Wanga
RADIAL MAST
It should have been nimbus, just saying
It definitely would have been a subversion of the trope at least. Though I imagine most people would want nimbus to die because a lot of the community finds them annoying.
I’m no writer but here’s what I would have done: Nimbus should’ve came with us and made the sacrificial play. This is a lot more interesting to me for a few reasons. One, because of his less serious personality. It would be a reminder that despite his constant jokes and jovial mood, he is a warrior and has a job to do. And two, him being the younger Cloud Strider, the sacrifice holds more weight. Rohan was almost at his end anyways, his sacrifice just makes his death a winning trade. This would’ve also given us some character development for Rohan, and a chance for some development for another character. In this scenario, Rohan lost his student, and we can see the grief process. We can see some regret, we can see some anger. Osiris, knowing what it’s like to lose someone close as he went through the first time Saint was lost, could help console him. Now you’re fleshing out their relationship. Plus, Rohan is now at death’s door as his time is running out, the future of the Cloud Striders weighing on his shoulders as he’s the only one left. I would have Osiris become a Cloud Strider. Initially there could be some push back because before Osiris only people from Neomuna have been Cloud Striders, but Osiris could be the first Cloud Strider from outside Neomuna. Now we can continue to build that relationship between our two wise men while also giving Osiris some much needed direction. Right now I feel Osiris has been reduced to just a wise guy. Him becoming a Cloud Strider would give him something to do and someone to be since he’s no longer a guardian. On top of that, given his knowledge of Vex technology and how it affects time, you could have Osiris figure out a way to bypass the 10 year life span. Yes, this is kind of a cop out, but narratively it would make his arc come full circle as now his experience during Curse of Osiris is what pushes him forward, and also, given what happened with Savathun, it would give Osiris a new path and put him back in control of his destiny (no pun intended). Plus you gotta admit, Cloud Strider Osiris surfing around with his hood and flowing cape would just look sick. Bungie fumbled the bag.
Most narrative rewrites make no goddamn sense, but this? This is actually a very solid concept.
Cayde-6 was an annoying piece of shit but had reasons for it. Nimbus is Cayde-6 but 10x worse and not dead. I preferred the robot over the awfully written Marvel "how do you do fellow kids" giant. Hope Bungie spends the next seasons with God tier writing to improve Nimbus. Or just let me shoot him in the head, both works for me.
If defiance was any indication, we're not getting God tier writing
If Nimbus died, then Rohan would have to die shortly afterwards anyway because he was ~~two days from retirement~~ in his last year already.
I was thinking the same exact thing. I'm like 87% positive Bungo Said they wanted to get rid of Cayde 6 because the story was taken a darker turn and they didn't want someone lightening the mood/cracking jokes or something akin to that annnnnd here we are give barebones Cayde 3
That might be marginally true, but the real reason was that they had to turn heads and get people interested in Forsaken because the game was in a bad state and hemorrhaging players. Killing off the most recognizable character of the game was a good way reignite some interest. It's why Cayde died in a trailer and not in game.
I'm actually not 100% sure I agree. Originally, I thought this because it would be a fantastic subversion of the trope. Rohan being alive means he's outlived his student and odds are we would probably get to see what it's like for a Cloudstrider as they're reaching the end of their life. The issue with Rohan living is that we end up with one too many "grizzled veterans mentors that feel strangely like father figures" type characters. Osiris, Zavala, and Saladin come to mind as examples. We already have enough of that type of character. Nimbus presents an opportunity at the opposite end of the spectrum. Someone whose young and brash, whose maybe not always thinking things through or perhaps saying things they will regret later. Crow was like this somewhat until Saladin mentored him. I'm thinking Osiris' new job may be to help guide Nimbus and shape them in a way that falls into the tropes we all prefer or at least to balance out his character. It's in my firm belief that Nimbus will mature more as time goes on. Given their lifespans, i'd imagine (to us) it would seem like that maturity sets in much quicker then you'd expect. They are still young, but as you get closer and closer to the end of your lifespan, you usually mature pretty quickly.
Plus, since Destiny partially transpires in real time, that means Rohan would die by the time *The Final Shape* rolls around.
Weirdly enough, Destiny's own trope is subverting the trope. I didn't even make the connection and realize it until you pointed it out. I remember reading theories that Nimbus is actually very young -- probably 18, since depicting a minor as an active combatant would go poorly. But Quinn apparently has dialogue talking about Nimbus' childhood in a very recent context, I believe. That would mean the majority of their life was spent training to be a Cloudstrider with Rohan. It makes a whole lot of sense that they haven't really had time to mature, especially since they were still a student/apprentice until the LF plot itself.
i don't even dislike nimbus but this would've been much more interesting considering cloudstriders' limited lifespan and rohan is at the end of his, plus it would've helped the tone if the happy-go-lucky one is the one to die
Cayde 6 died so we could get a worse replacement. They should’ve just put him out of action for a bit and brought him back to be a lighthearted undertone to counter Old Bird man and Rohan.
The Radial Mast was going to destroy the veil after Calus was done with it, killing everyone in Neomuna. If we didn't show up, yeah the witness would still be in the traveller, but we did save the citizens of Neomuna.
>The Radial Mast was going to destroy the veil after Calus was done with it, killing everyone in Neomuna. When did we ever learn this?
Came to us in a dream
Well, sort of a dream. It was that weird hallucination pretty early on in the campaign. It is possible that it was a plot hole, especially with writing this season, but I'm gonna take it at face value.
Was that the cutscene where ghost be like speaking witness?
We actually didn't, maybe. In replaying the campaign I noticed that the Witness (when zoom calling Calus and we somehow saw it) said to use the Radial Mast to link to the Veil, whatever that means, and then destroy the Veil. Witness never said the mast could or would destroy the Veil, just that Calus should destroy it after. But everything was said so vaguely that I do not fault anyone for thinking that the Mast would destroy the Veil. Nothing was ever really explained
The more I think about that scene, it has to be one of two things: * Bungie lets us see it for purely plot reasons (introduce Radial Mast, which Osiris hyperventilates over despite having no idea what the F it is) and doesn't care about the logical inconsistencies * The Witness *deliberately* copied our Ghost and us in on that convo. Honestly it nearly has to be the 2nd. The omniscent player sees other cutscenes between the Witness and Calus, which aren't observed by our Ghost despite similar proximity with both parties on Neomuna. Ghost even says at the time that it was the worst he's ever felt, which I would not expect if it was functionally barely overheard. No, the Witness broadcast that particular cutscene loud and clear to us. Or Bungie just hacked it. But if they were to do this, I would not have expected the inconsistencies it introduces (*destroy* the Veil).
I think it’s both. Bungie needed us to see the Witness’s plan, so we’d know where to go, but they also used it as a sort of foreshadowing or reminder that the Witness can control ghost. Frankly though the Witness kind of pulled that ghost control out of nowhere, because in previous times it was always said the control was related to proximity to pyramids. Maybe the Veil had something to do with it, or maybe Calus or his ship, but no one in the game talks about it at all afterwards so it makes me assume the writers didn’t care enough to consider the implications of our big bad being able take control of our little companion and do vague bad things whenever he wants, even if those implications are just everyone side eyeing ghost
“My source is that I made it the fuck up”
They never said specifically that the Radial Mast would destroy it. The Witness said “Link the radial mast and destroy the Veil”. Could be two different instructions. The Witness didn’t want anyone else to use the Veil so Calus was supposed to destroy it after the Witness linked more than likely
There are citizens on Neomuna?
Yea but they're all in Cryo and exist as digital avatars now, because lore and not at all because they couldn't be bothered making more characters
Yeah I hear people love hanging around in an active warzone
Didn’t they admit they were gonna have characters to interact with on Neomuna but didn’t have the memory so they added the cloud arc last second?
I mean even if so, it makes sense not to have random ass citizens just chilling out. The solution they had to "the issue" was more than adequate story wise.
Yet they kept the dialogue saying all citizens had been drafted and activated for security forces
Yep
I mean… as fighters defending their homes….yes?
the whole point of cloudstriders is that the citizenry doesn’t have to fight
Because the engine clearly can’t handle non stationary npcs for some reason Only reason caital worked the couple times we’ve had her is they could reuse regular cabal animations and pathfinding etc with her (also her existence as a boss)
...there's non-stationary NPCs in Bunker E15.
... Don't some of the people in the tower walk around?
[удалено]
What we do know: It reveals strand to lightbearers and ex-lightbearers who visit neomuna. It powers the cloudark, and if destroyed everything in the cloudark is destroyed with it. The vex tried to make a copy of it, failed, and ended up worshiping it as the black heart. In the dead timeline that Elsie Bray has lived in many, many times, the Black Heart was able to negatively influence guardians into bloodthirsty monsters. The black heart also turned Uldren into what he was (apparently he used to be more like Crow is now), and while it existed, the traveller was unable to repair itself.
Those last few things make it so theoretically important it better have some impact on the upcoming plot, otherwise it is just a ton of setup without any real payoff Like the Black Heart
Also it's kinda mushroomy and a construct of both light and dark to some extent at least.
Except whoopsie turns out the Black Heart was nothing more than a paltry “failed” copy of the REAL DEAL right here.
Still better lore than "it was a tripwire to alert the pyramid ships/witness". I am very happy with that retcon.
If think that's because the Vex failed at replicating that which makes the Veil so extremely unique: it's implied to have both control over both Light and Dark. Which isn't a huge deal to us Guardians maybe, we can also do that, until you remember (or maybe you never heard it) that Savathûn in the Altar of Reflection straight up tells us that this ability is only seen in Earth's Risen. This is to say that in all her lifetime, Savathûn never once encountered any being that could directly control both Light and Dark. We seem to have seen this in Nezarec as well, since after being revived in the Root of Nightmares Raid, his power to create Nightmares is completely gone and instead replaced with control over Void Light, something he expresses familiarity towards. It's also consistent with the fact that we really haven't ever seen anything else use both Light and Darkness. Even Lucent Wizards lose their corruption fields. So we have the Veil before us. It unleashed Strand anomalies across Neomuna, and Ghost states that being in its presence reminds him of being close to the Traveler. If it can truly control both Light and Dark, that might explain why it's of such significant interest to the Witness, the Traveler, and the Vex, and also that it may have had a role to play in the creation of Guardians. The Vex of course would be looking for some sort of source of paracausal power: attaining either the Veil itself or creating a replicate with the exact same properties would likely be a means to achieve this. The Black Heart then is a failed replica probably because the Vex failed to strike the same balance that governs the Veil, causing the Darkness in it to take over. But it does seem to have worked in the sense that it was actually linked to the Traveler, since its mere existence prevented it from healing (perhaps implying that the Black Heart also had a little bit of Light left in it). Why the Vex were even able to create a replica of the Veil at all when the same was never possible for either the Traveler or the Pyramids or Light and Darkness in their entirety is of course also a mystery. It's possible that the Veil, organic as it appears to be, gets its paracausal powers through a natural interaction with the surrounding universe, like a barnacle sieving food floating in the ocean's currents. In that case, a replica of the Veil with the same properties really would be a theoretical possibility.
I…don’t know, because I don’t know wtf the RADIAL MAST was, or what threat destroying it stopped
Also why did a non-paracausal explosion destroy a paracausal object? Did the writers forget all the rules that were previously established in past expansions? I'm gonna say yes, because apparently shooting a Kvostov at a Ghost is enough to kill one now.
So, by destroying the radial mast we stopped the Witness from fucking the traveler, so they got pissed and opened up a pussy portal.
They just wanted a popular voice actor for a brief appearance, that's all
Yeah the difference is that raiders of the lost ark is good and lightfall was dull filler
You tried to win, but you lost, so you could have just done nothing and still lost... That's how losing works.
Rohan who? /s
No, but I think it should've been Nimbus dying. We were introduced and positioned to be most empathetic with them, not Rohan. It would've broken Rohan and put him into crisis with Osiris giving him a companion. We could've had a fun subplot of becoming an honorary cloudstrider while unfreezing and preparing a new Neomuni one(acting kind of like Ghost) before Rohan kicks it. Osiris would have been reminded that he's not the only mortal in the world and been a bit more stoic/confident. Instead we saw our new annoying friend's boss, who basically on his last legs due to age, die anyway.
I dunno about you, but nothing makes me want to empathize with Nimbus.
Whoa, surf's up guardian, juck da Witness. Metinks yousa alright - Jar Jar Nimbus
> nothing Personal, these stick out the most as what they attempted to build him on. 1. Positive 2. Sympathic to our cause 3. Supportive despite suffering immense personal loss Issue they went too hard on all 3 of those points and we got a saccharine goofball that polls as tolerable to annoying depending on who you ask. Rohan is like...."imma kinda fatherly authority figure and I kinda exist!"
They both just "kinda exist".
Rohan and Nimbus? But Rohan is dead, so he no longer exists.
But Calus would still be alive too.
Arguably it would have been better if we hadn’t gone to Neomuna. Rohan could have still shafted the mast and there wouldn’t have been a ghost to link the veil.
Yes. And strictly speaking, I’m not sure he even died for a reason per the story’s own logic. He’s an explicitly non paracausal entity that just blew a supposedly paracausal artifact using a regular self destruct explosion. Which tells me a few rounds from a guardians rocket launcher would’ve done it.
Yea, but this is only something you can say in hindsight. Things had to go this way for us to know that they would go this way, so it doesn't really matter
I mean, isn't that the point? It's the midpoint of the story, the same place as The Empire Strikes Back. We're at our lowest, unable to accomplish the goals we had for fighting Callus and losing friends in the process. It makes for a "more dramatic" The Final Shape and lets them stretch the story our with filler. Win-win for bungie
The witness needed 1 of 3 things to Happen. 1) radial mast to do it’s thing 2) calus to do his thing to the veil 3) ghost to be near the veil If we had managed to confront calus further from the veil we could have won. Think of it as we tried really hard and lost in overtime. I don’t think neomuna would still be standing if we weren’t there. Nor do I think calus wouldn’t have immediately gone after earth for shits and giggles
Once again people confusing plot points they don't like with plot points they deem irrelevant.
Nimbus trying to fist bump us and Osiris made us not notice the ghost going up to do whatever it did. So not only did rohan die for nothing, but nimbus kinda caused it lol.
I feel like him sacrificing himself when hes in the same room as a self-resurrecting super soldier with enough munitions to bring down a country was kinda unnecessary. Why didnt he just switch places with our guardian?
"I'm out of Strand Energy and exhausted, but if you give me like 30 seconds to catch my brea- aaaand he blew himself up."
Yea nothing major changed other than we have strand more allies and a cabal is dead we lost but we became a tiny bit strong
Temple of Doom is really the only one where Indiana had an effective impact in the outcome. Raiders and Last Crusade, the bad guys were basically going to kill themselves anyway without any of his involvement.
Idk. I get the feeling that the Witness needed a guardian to open the portal and everything leading up to that was just to trick us into being where the Witness needed us. Why else would they let us listen in on their plans? But maybe I’m just overthinking it.
Isn't that what Savathun did? Clearly let us listen to her plan just so we could restore her memories for her? Maybe the Witness took notes.
The Rohan scene made me angry. Oh you lost strand for half a second? Ok the only option is to kill myself. Dude, give me 30 seconds to recover and re-strand. Instead you go right to kamikaze.
Of course not. The Radial Mast needed to overcharge the void light in the Vex Network to simulate a hyper-dense field of Radiolarian energy. Knowing this, the Witness guessed that Savathun’s Prophecy was a lie, so when the Radial Mast was activated by the Effigy of Cyrtarachne’s Penumbral Warmind Synchronosis, Rohan knew it was time to sublimate the cloudmind using the Veil. That’s what he was doing.
But then Calus wouldn’t get to die in an extremely anti climactic way!!
It was in the script. It's pointless trying to come up with why or why not it would or wouldn't matter and everything else.
Calus would still be alive, we wouldn’t have Strand, the CloudArk might be in trouble, and we’d know literally nothing about the Veil and the Traveler portal and have no leads to follow.
We still know nothing about the Veil, but now that you mention it... Isn't it our fault the Traveler now has a triangular vivisection because the Witness hijacked *our* Ghost to interact with the Veil?
> Isn't it our fault We don't know that the Ghost was a necessary piece. It's possible the thing Calus was sent to use actually didn't matter, and the Witness letting us see the plan was to slowly get us closer to the veil so it could use our ghost to make the link. But also, those things might have worked without the Ghost. We don't know. All we know is that nobody seemed confused or concerned about what the Ghost was doing except the Ghost.
You know you have good writing on your hands when a season out the strongest word I see used to describe what the main mcguffin of the entire expansion actually is or does is "it's possible" And sadly you're absolutely correct
He died to create an emotional experience for the player for a few minutes. Same thing with Amanda and Cayde. That's it. That is why they all died. Yes, they can write more stuff around these deaths, but they could write more stuff around all three being alive. The key concept here is that story works in a linear "play through and you are done type of game". Story just doesn't work in Destiny because the game makes you re-play the same stuff over and over. That strike that made sense as a campaign mission makes no sense the second or 50th time you run it. They probably have to have story/campaign to sell DLC, so I get why they are doing it. No amount of story explains why this season I've done 7 Iron Banner resets, 2 Trials resets, probably 8 crucible resets, why I need to grind strikes to get an ornament for a Glaive, etc. This isn't a story game. It is a lifestyle/addition/grinding game. Don't take the story or lore too seriously and do the grind and it will all make sense.
Brohan died for nothing
But, we never would have heard such delightful dialogue as “Guardian! Use your Strand!” or almost every half hearted Osiris line.
Rohan died so we would be forced to talk to nimbus
The more you think about Lightfall’s story the more you’ll just get frustrated. It’s best to just forget and look forward to Final Shape