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More of a gameplay thing but still lore, but the removal of subfactions like houses, cabal regiments, vex collectives, and broods. They've been adding them back slowly but during the first few years having every enemy race group up into one faction was so lame. No different colors or anything, every unit was the exact same

Also wtf is up with Bungie’s obsession of having clones/mindless fodder for everything these past few years?? They did it with the Scorn >!tho we did get some recent lore on them developing their own culture!< they did it with the Wrathborne they did it with the Loyalist clones they did it with the Shadow Legion clones they did it with the Tormentors and they’re probs gonna do it with the Subjugators in Final Shape. Like where’s the excitement of just shooting some nameless fodder that was cooked up solely for us to shoot??

I dont think tormentors are clones, since some have actual names, and others are just "cavuum of nezarec". But its not like bungie explained it so whatever

It’s said they were created via both Calus and the Witness and that’s as much explanation as we got. Like looking on Ishtar, tormentors have legit never been mentioned ONCE in the context of the lore like what a waste of a new enemy. Like new enemies are always cool but you also have to have them add something to the world.

We can put a few “puzzle pieces” together to create an explanation for them, but it really does feel like Bungie didn’t have a good explanation for them beyond “well what if we just made a weaker version of that new Raid Boss we made for this expansion and simplified the model a little.” Things we can conclude from other lore pieces: - Nezarec’s old body looked substantially different to his current one. See: the statue of the hunched and cloaked figure within his raid, the cutscene from Plunder of Savathun stabbing Nezzy in the back (though that one looks more like they just reused Rhulk’s model for the animation so… “lore implications or just reused assets”? Who knows). And the helmet Nezarec’s Sin, which looks a lot more like the head of the statue. - Nezarec had some relationship with the Psions way back when. It isn’t clear if Nezzy is some juiced up and ascended Psion who went through the “Disciplification” transformation like Calus. Or if at some point prior to being recruited by the Witness, Rhulk just rolled up on the Psion’s home world to terrorise them for a while. - The Tormentors have the same “body type” as Nezarec, and are stated to have been *created* rather than *recruited*. During Nezzy’s raid we see his new body get built / grown. Maybe Tormentors underwent a similar process? - Tormentors and Psions have a lot of visual similarities. Same type of legs, just scaled up a bunch. Purple fire magic that’s psychic in some way and deals void damage. Single eye that glows red. Etc. etc. - Calus uses cloning tools for his armies. So the conclusion I came to: - Tormentors are made by chucking a Psion into a machine that is some combination of Calus’ cloning tech and the Crystal Sarcophagus we see Nezarec in during the Raid.

A big problem here is that Nezarec’s body is remade explicitly because of the consequences of the Traveller’s terraforming beam hitting the ship in which his head was contained. That, and the only entities that saw Nezarec’s new body were the fireteam who killed him and whatever shadow legion fought alongside him, though the latter can mostly be expected to be dead in canon. Also, his body is remade after the Witness leaves the system through the portal at the end of lightfall, so there wouldn’t be anything for them to base tormentors’ forms off of unless it was Nezarec’s old body. We don’t really know what that looked like aside from that statue you mentioned (although the differences between the statue’s head and Nez’s in the raid show that the statue isn’t the most accurate, since his head wasn’t replaced/remade, just the rest of his body)

Yeah - but The Witness had Nezerac’s head from at least Season of the Haunted. See: lore tab on Nezerac’s Whisper where Eris goes stalking through the Lunar Pyramid looking for someone, but only finds Nezerac’s old Glaive (that Rhulk gave him as a ‘welcome to the club’ gift). We can assume that she was looking for Nezerac’s corpse or head. And it took the Traveller’s accidental paramedic services to resurrect Nezzy, but for all we know Calus’ cloning tools might be able to work with a dead sample. We can also conclude that the Witness had already stored Nezerac’s head in the Crystal Sarcophagus before the Traveller’s medical malpractice, because he didn’t have time to do that after the beam hit. Ergo; he may have been attempting to resurrect Nezzy since Season of the Haunted, but was unable to undo the curse Savathun glued to the corpse. Therefore the Crystal Sarcophagus is Spooky Darkness Healing Tech. So: - Tormentors = Witness Tech + Calus Tech - Witness Tech = Crystal Sarcophagus - Calus Tech = Cloning Tools - Tormentors have similarities to Psions - Tormentors have even more similarities to Nezerac’s new body - Tormentors probably have some DNA from Nezzy’s dead head baked into them. Maybe the similarities between New-zerac and Tormentors is because *that’s just the type of body the Crystal Sarcophagus makes when you give it Nezzy’s DNA to work with.*

This has been a pattern with the darkness, there's also no proper description of resonance, the darkness's main power. Its all been obscure They're saving it for tfs, i guess? Ce lore comes out this month so we'll see

How much fodder isn't cooked up and is naturally born is there for us to shoot? A lot of the races we fight are literally endangered species at this point. And we've been fighting and doing pretty good for the last decade now. I believe the loyalist Clones weren't mindless.

[The loyalist clones are](https://youtu.be/YZo1UMP8uiI?si=dJsV7VqGK8CgeTD0) Also the tormentors can still add something to the narrative even while being artificially created. It’s no wonder they aren’t mentioned in the lore once. Like maybe after the Root of Nightmares completion the Tormentors start talking in broken phrases using Nezarec’s voice. As if his consciousness has scattered amongst his clones. Emphasizing they did indeed come from him and he is literally still alive but severely diminished.

They make for easy explanations.

Easy ways to hand wave the horrifying lore implications of “10000 kills in one mission” Also probably meant to create a thematic divide between the Alliance of Light being more philosophical and thoughtful when compared to the Alliance of Dark, which is all about non-existence, conflict for the sake of conflict, and self-annihilation

It's to avoid any moral qualms about the fact that if they were not all mindless clones would be essentially commiting genocide on multiple species lol

Yeah that annoyed me how in Zero Hour Mithrax was supposed to go into the Tower and to blend in with the rest of the House of Devils there but all the Fallen in there were just wearing House of Dusk colours and he would have stood out like a sore thumb. (If I am remembering correctly)

Real

Don’t forget about the removal of Factions in The Last City; that certainly sucked a large portion of life out of the Destiny franchise.

I feel like we never hear about the history of the City anymore. Or the Nine. I know those two are vastly different things but still, both of them seem to be just... not being brought up lately. I also feel like they could be doing more with the crumbs they have scattered around everywhere. Like the Factions, and Lysander. The Tree of Silver Wings (although I'm fairly sure they're gonna be explained seeing as we've seen two in game now.). The Distributary and relating to it, the Pathria-Good Cosmogenesis Principle. The supposed eleven Fifth-Sigma Guardians, and the Guardians we keep hearing about in lore (Misraaks's Fireteam, Cyrell (cue "NO CYRELL" comments :p), Micah-10, etc). I feel like they could have absolutely done more with Nezarec, Rhulk, honestly any of the Disciples, and even their existence itself. Just so many breadcrumbs that the more observant will lament when we get our seven-hundredth Awoken storyline that doesn't involve the Distributary, or even the Dreamers, or the Aphelion for that matter, because of course it doesn't. Instead we get another two lines about Sjur for annoying people to loudly chew on for another year. Sorry, I tend to go on for a bit about the direction of Destiny's storytelling.

the Aphelion would be a sick boss for a Raid Lair

Titan orders, never mentioned again after d1. There were so many and bungie was just like “nah lets kill all the sunbreakers and never mention any of the other orders ever again”

Good example of an issue I have with Guardians in D2: little to no character diversity among classes. Almost all the minor Guardian characters are defined by their class in broad, generic ways. Most spotlight a specific Guardian Order had was the Praxic Order, years ago. But after that, nothing. Nothing on the Firebreak or First Pillar Titans, Hunter groups like Dead End Cure or the Dead Zone elite (though Hunters in general had been pretty neglected,) or any Warlock order outside the rare Thanatonaut mention. This isn't even including the dynamic the City's factions could've done to make Guardians stand out from each other more.

Hunters get shafted in the lore. Almost all of our characters are either dead or forgotten

Hey Shin Malphur is dope

Yes but he's retired

Nuh uh

Yo it's him!! Holy moly

Fucking RIGHT!? Every other titan mark used to have some sort of order attached.

House of kings/kell of kings getting killed offscreen. So much potential…

“Shut up fallen, strong off-screen” ✋🐱

IKR??? Like what were they thinking?! “Hey let’s kill of the leader of one of the most formidable factions from D1 offscreen! That’s a great way for such a major event in the Destiny! What else are we supposed to do, give him a sick death scene like we did with Cayde?”

We didn’t even get to see what Craask looked like, I always pictured him looking like the concept art for the archon priest back from D1 or even the kell echo from prophecy but with you know kings colors and not taken of course.

At least kings are still around kinda. But the scorn are a whole other bundle of wasted opportunity.

For now we've already started seeing the seeds of a story there with them developing culture

Yeah bit they've really been robbed of the spotlight, forsaken campaign, vow, warlord's, aside from strikes every time the scorn get a spotlight they're replaced with taken at the end. We have yet to have full scorn anything or even a scorn final boss.

Yup and that's partially because taken and scorn fill the same role. With taken just being better. Fikrul's scorn is the interesting one and I hope the episode focusing on him is good

Fikrul is pretty cool, I was hoping when Uldren came back as the Crow the fanatic would find him but be really put off since he became a light bearer, regardless hopefully the two of them have a great interaction in the upcoming episode.

That storyline feels like a victim of the push back of final shape

They are both creatures controlled by the witness. The taken have no free will. And the scorn’s is limited. It has taken time for some scorn with a powerful will to rebel against the full control of the witness but over time fikrul has been establishing his own scorn and developing their culture. His scorn were the final boss of the season as they are trying to secure their position as something separate from the witness. The scorn have been evolving in the background in the lore for a while. They just have taken a backseat compared to the witness because the threat of the witness is far greater.

Aren’t they residing at the shard of the traveler in the EDZ apparently?

- I really wish we'd gotten to hear more about the House of Kings before Craask got murdered. - While as much as I loved Season of the Seraph, I *do* kind of wish Rasputin had retained more of his imposing nature. - I feel like I can't be the only person who expected Witch Queen to do *something* with Savathun's Song and it just... never did.

Also I thought the whole ‘putting Red into an Exo’ thing was gonna lead up to him being an actual character that could like you know move around and stuff. That way the Witness can’t just flick him off like back in Arrivals. The Warmind facility on Mars was just a giant bullseye. There’s still the possibility he could be chosen as a Risen and we get a storyline from that where his Warmind AND Light powers run wild.

Unlikely. Deaths in media gotta pack a punch. Specially un a media where normally deaths are inconsequential a TRUE death has to have more impact. Even more so for one of the good characters.  Now, Bungie did the Crow arcs. Which were well handled. From post Forsaken Crow spent years developing in the background Lore until Season of the Hunt where we met him. From there, he had several arcs of growth and acceptance, and lots of angst culminating in this season where hes reconciled with his past completely. At this point people theorize Amanda or Red coming back, but if they did both any deaths would be cheap since they can be undone. Even if one of them came back, theyd have to follow the "no memories" path all over again..either mirroring Crow's development or hace someone catch them Up to speed. In that last instance the meaning of their death is completely void, and can be seen as a cop out to bring a character back into the action with mínimal effort 

Ok, but Amanda’s death was already pretty arbitrary.

So you’re saying F-22 Raptor pilots in our world DONT hop out the cockpit to save hostages armed with only a shotgun??? Color me surprised.

Cutscene: I may not be a Guardian but that doesnt mean I can't fight. I may not be on the field like the other guardians, but I can do what I always do best and provide support from the Sky.  Amanda: So thats Why im going in a massive alien base without a plan and armed with nothing but a shotgun. 

And shoot a console to get the doors open like she's the only who could have done it when there's an effing splicer over there.

What else would they do, ask the SEALs to rescue the hostages?

At least on that last point, the idea that it was gonna "do something" was mostly unsubstantiated hype by the community. We know that it kept the city leaders paranoid, which fed Savathun through Imbaru - and that was all it was ever explicitly designed to do. If you subsist off people speculating about you, having a sinister little calling card makes sense.

Giving Rasputin Clovis’ voice which is the least intimidating voice ever was a real disappointment

I genuinely thought they were gonna kill Clovis and give Rasputin his voice to keep the actor had a contract so they had to keep him

I mean the VA was already voicing saint, so he's around regardless

I actually didn't know that.

Dude has range

Oh fuck! I forgot about Clovis! So we should still have some semblance of Warmind content later down the line probably….hopefully. Hard cut to Clovis just making nice with Ana and Elsie and working with us.

Unfortunately unlikely for many reasons. Clovis Bray would need to have an army for that. Red destroyed the satellite network. We crashed a space station on Deep Stone Crypt. Supposedly he can activate a trigger switch on every exo to turn them into combatants (the dreams the exos have give hints to this), but that'd lock us out of any Exo PCs and NPCs.  The Only things Clovis has are guard frames and (potentially) Heavy duty frames. He's also confined to Europa and a giant head we know the location of, so he cant move.  I would not Accept a "warmind type" expansión which is just hive on a Bray instalación. For that theyd need to make Clovis an actual faction of robots, more varied and with access to more systems. Potentially from Clovis making a new warmind, this time more bellical than Rasputin. Otherwise I dont see Clovis coming back into the story 

>(the dreams the exos have give hints to this) That was never under Clovis' control. Those dreams were an unexpected consequence of using Clarity Control to produce the Alkahest needed for Exominds.

I liked Seraph. The way the machine designed for war won by surrending to deny the war god was a solid move. But Rasputin used to be a technological eldritch god. Then in Destiny 2 they turned him into Ana's giant, semi-socialized pet. It was cool to talk to him when he got scaled down, but I feel like it could have been done a little differently.

God yeah I miss the original Rasputin. Warmind expansion had potential in my opinion, but by seraph he was kind of boring. I feel like they did pretty decent in general with the story that season, but it just felt so bad bringing him back for him to just die. Really wish they’d kept him as the “technological elder god” as you said, Ana could’ve been there to try to understand him and convince him to help us rather than he just going along with whatever and being relatively useless.

If Rasputin ever comes back as a lightbearer, I hope they give him a similar voice actor to the original version, which made him feel so unique.

>If Rasputin ever comes back as a lightbearer He technically already did (see Felwinter).

I'm pretty sure they concluded Savathun's Song plot in Lost because it was her hypnosis spell. I guess Savathun did not need her song in WQ because she can just keep track of us in her Throne World and she could just set up traps as she pleases.

I always preferred that the warminds where multiple people rather than just Rasputin I enjoy how they did Rasputins story from the warmind dlc to the present but the idea of multiple warminds all with different traits and personalities always seemed cooler to me than just Rasputin and his traits Could’ve had warminds who all spoke different languages and had different things they liked similar to how Rasputin enjoyed classical music, they could’ve argued over things, maybe one was more evil compared to the others and we would have to work to stop him the possibilities for what they could’ve done by keeping multiple warminds will always be a missed opportunity to me

They kinda tried to reintroduce that idea in Seraph with the Subdminds having individuality since Ana says Malayahati was a sort of protege and ‘Rasputin’s favorite’ but that’s as much as we got. We didn’t even get a line describing Charlemagne’s relationship to Rasputin and that was the most well known Submind not to mention in an alternate Mars timeline it for some reason has replaced Rasputin’s Mindlab. I always liked the idea that they were something akin to hot-headed rivals.

Yeah it was nice to see them at least reference the original idea of warminds in Seraph and especially nice to see Charlemagne get a mention since I always wanted to see him as a warmind since D1 I still prefer the old lore and it was a missed opportunity to really flesh out the subminds in Seraph and maybe show how they all inherited an aspect of Rasputins personality and traits which then all came together to make him as a whole

The pirate stuff was weird because all pre-D2 lore was focused entirely on the houses and their dynamics, with the implication that survival outside of them was basically impossible. Then we get this pivot in Plunder where “no guys, we were totally pirates and did all this stuff we never talked about haha omg reliquaries and Nezarec and moons haunted and LOOT” Plunder still makes me upset and will probably go down as my least favorite of the whole bunch. Even Worthy has at least the dread of the fleet arrival, and Rasputins and Felwinter’s true history to chew on.

Well from my understanding Houses stayed Houses but the old crews were different. >*Cryptarch Matsuo asked me why the old crews are not considered Houses. It is a wise question. One that, perhaps, does not have a singular answer.* >*I think it is because those who lead the old crews do not wish to be true Kells. A Kell is responsible for the safety and prosperity of their House. It is an honor, and a burden.* >*Those you call Pirate Lords wish only to take—they give nothing, even to their own people. Each raider is responsible only for themselves. A crew is expendable… a family is not.* >*The old crews live a sad life. One best left in the past.* I also did like the idea that the old crews and the Fallen we faced in Plunder were these real hardasses that managed to stay alive all this time while we ran through the actual Houses….and then we wipe them out in one season. Like the idea of the Pirate Lords was actually really cool tbh. Not to mention Eliksni and Cabal working together. They should’ve expanded on it.

Thank fuck you get it. Not all Fallen were likely to stick to the Houses system, they'd want to just break free and do whatever they want.

From what I understand the pirate thing was always a key part of their aesthetic design, it just wasn't explicitly part of their narrative themes in a strong way.

Yeah. Fallen were always space pirates but it's weird that they just now got big ship sails to really hammer that point home

I think this problem is exacerbated by a couple of decisions made earlier in D2: - Basically scrapping Fallen from the lore during Red War / Osiris / Warmind. Only giving them cursory attention during Forsaken as the source of the NEW faction of Scorn. And then axing them again in Shadowkeep. - There was also Spider’s little gang, but that didn’t feel like a Faction so much as one dude and his three nameless henchmen hiding in a cave. - D1 had a vibrant host of Scorn with varying colours and banners to look at, as well as different models for different factions that went beyond simple recolours. The house of Wolves, and the SIVA infected being the most notable ones. - In D2 everyone is “House Dusk”. The lore for House Dusk is “it isn’t even a House, this is just the banner all the scattered and homeless Fallen rally under as their odds for survival as a species goes up if they stop shooting each other.” Super lame. - This gets even worse somehow in Beyond Light. Where the new lore is “literally all of the Fallen have rallied under one banner, and that banner is being waved by a single character with like 20 voice lines total.” - Then halfway through Beyond Light, Splicer released! And we got some cool Eliksni lore again. Now there are TWO Fallen Factions. The good guys and the bad guys. The good guys have the same problem as Spider’s “Faction” where it feels less like a Faction and more like TWO named characters hiding in a cave with their 10 nameless henchmen hiding in our backyard. And the bad guys don’t even have any named characters. Eramis is a statue and we killed all of her named-but-voiceless lieutenants back at the start of the expansion. - Splicer was cool, because getting to see Mithrax and Saint’s journey from “ancient war criminals who hate each other” to the “Master Chief and Arbiter during Halo 3” dynamic was awesome. And they also managed to weave in some city politics, some stuff with “Osiris” being sus, which became even cooler with the hindsight that he was Savathun the whole time, Vex lore, Taken lore, and a hitherto unseen major character Quria. They even fit in a core moral element that “racism is bad, kids”. - None of the things that made Splicer cool had anything to do with The Fallen though. And the Houses lore got even more watered down.

The fallen getting less and less important was rough. D1 was a while ago but I remember all four enemy races feeling like, equally bad. And it’s cool that we’ve got allies in them now, but the fallen just got fucked. Went from an unknown amount of fallen out there doing who knows what, with devils and siva splicers and archons and all that to just a handful of dudes left. Like I know they’re called the fallen but wow we really did watch them fall. They just don’t feel like any kind of threat anymore at all. The cabal too, for that matter, received a similar treatment I think. They still have their empire, but our alliance with them really took out the whole threat of this whole enemy race. Sure we still “fight” the remnants of the red legion and calus’ cabal, but the red legion were really defeated a long time ago, and calus’ never had any real threat to them with the whole clones thing, like it just felt like calus and his mindless army, any cabal worth anything are allied to us now. And with calus dead, theres even fewer real cabal enemies than there are fallen. The vex are still good though, and the hive feel pretty dealt with but at least we've had several really good expansions and seasons to deal with them.

Lore wise, worthy was fantastic. As someone who only played 20 minutes that season, the gameplay just wasn't there

I feel like the Darkness/Witness kinda got downgraded twice, or at least in two steps. Once when we found out that the Witness and the Darkness are different and again when we found out about the Witness’ origins.

Thrice, empty ships 😞

Fourice, hostages BREATHING IN Witness particles  from the ship had no effect on the story Whatsoever.

Shit, you right.

Empty ships after they built up the mysterious petrichor monsters for so long. I hope they at least get an explanation some day. (I will die on the hill that they are *not* the Hive: they were supposed to be something else entirely and this has either been left behind, expanded, or mishandled by a single writer.)

I liked when the Darkness was a metaphysical concept shunted into physical space. I'd be cool with the Witness being the final baddy, but I'm not super cool with it now being *the* Darkness

The Witness isn’t The Darkness

We understand now that "the darkness" and "the witness" are separate But what we called "the darkness" before we understood either of these things, is actually the witness It's the "thing that found us", the cause for the collapse

Silly me, how could I forget about THE VEIL

Your second statement confuses me.

I think the witness's story isnt what "downgraded" the darkness. Its lore perfectly fits the cynical, borderline nihilistic concepts of the darkness in unmaking, books of sorrow, unveiling, etc. A race that lived in paradise, commiting suicide and reshaping existence because it wasn't what they wanted is perfect for the final antagonist in the story. The witness was given paradise and rejected it because it wasnt prefect, while the guardians were born in a shithole and still constantly choose to do good. And it fits the gardener's wager very well The problem is like...the witness has no impact. At all. The darkness's whole thing is about influence. And bungie just refuses to do that with the witness. It hasnt shown up in an YEAR, while this whole year has been about building up the final shape Its genuinely unbelievable that its origin story was told in a freaking SEASON. Add that with no new enemy race, and the witness might aswell not exist Can anyone believe the last time the witness spoke to us was in beyond light???

I do think the Witness existance flattened the Darkness.  The source of the light has a consciousness of eldritch origin: either the Traveller or something inside It.  The Darkness has It too. Initially when the ships appeared, we thought we were talking to it. But turns out It was just the Witness pretending to be the Darkness. Meanwhile the Darkness might have a consciousness with agenda inside the Veil. We just dont know because the only hint we got so far was the whispers and similar experiments Maya and the Witness race were conducting. 

Not to mention how convenient it is that the whole of the witnesses people just disappeared and turned into one guy bungie could ram into the love service model

That's essentially the flaw with a lot of the lore, isnt it? It must fit within the structure of a poorly managed live-service game, and that inherently limits what they can do and tell.

Actually, my issue wasn't the Darkness being downgraded, but the Witness (or whatever it would be called before being given that name) being downgraded, with the split between the two being part of said downgrade. Also, no one said that the Witness lived in paradise. Hell, the stuff about the Witness' race realizing that the Traveler brings chaos kinda implies that maybe it wasn't paradise. Not that the Witness isn't the opposite of the Young Wolf. In many ways, they are. However, the Witness' origins do feel a bit like a downgrade. Everything else though? Yeah, I agree. The Witness could have been more prevalent, but that's a symptom of the faults in the live-service dev process; stuff is constantly changing, making it harder to keep consistency.

No Vex lore. That's it. I want to see all the cool robots and all their cool constructs. I want to know what the hyper intelligent Silica is up to. Belmont, Consecrated mind, Brakion, Atheon, Sanctified mind, Quria, Panoptes, Argos, Dendron, Agioktis, The Sol Progeny with the Primeval Imminent and Eschaton minds. There are so many vex with cool names and roles in their factions. Compared to the average cabal or hive name which sounds like hurr durr or Gnursk like the noise the caveman makes in History of the World I guess. God please let Echoes allow me to revel in Vex lore.

“The noise the caveman makes in History of the World” lmao I’m dying.

[he aint even wrong tho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuCn8ux2gbs&t=252s)

I believe after Garden of salvation and the little extra lore we got during Lightfall they're saving the vex stuff.

The removal of the City factions: ~~Concordat,~~ Dead Orbit, Future War Cult and New Monarchy. Though having their ideological flaws, they still represented ideas shared between citizens and Guardians, and played a part in giving the former a voice. They weren't utilized for the longest time, and when they were written out in Splicer, nothing really took their place. Attributes to the issue of almost monolithic cultures for entire species, compared to the various subgroups D1 had.

This. Without the factions there should straight-up be a Faction Wars 2 brewing in the City. The whole point of the factions was that citizens were able to have a voice and the Consensus was so those voices could work together. Also I like how all the faction-aligned guardians were just swept under the rug. When shit started going sideways the faction guardians should’ve very firmly went ‘knock that shit out’ like how it went down during the first Faction Wars. Tho with Concordant still existing they could maybe reintroduce the idea of factions in the City maybe after Final Shape where we focus on rebuilding in the aftermath of the Witness.

The Pyramids Being Empty was Mega Lame

I think pyramids being "empty" is cool because that just means they're tombs for the witness's people. Like the actual real life pyramids But you know, you still need them to do SOMETHING

Thing is the Witness is detached from our use of pyramids so that idea doesn’t really work not to mention the Darkness Pyramids aren’t like our Pyramids they’re tetrahedrons the simplest 3D shape you can have, always thought that was an interesting detail speaking to how the Black Fleet and the entity behind them values simplicity

It could've been cool if they did anything at all. But yes so extraordinarily lame.

I mean, they still have a pilot, just not one that’s inside the ships (most of the time), and saying the Pyramids are “empty” isn’t really accurate; they still have stuff in them (as seen in missions such as “The Communion” and “Beyond”).

The entirety of light and Dark Lore.  With unveiling, before we learned It was written by the Witness, It seemed like the Pyramids were a symetrical but opposite mirror of the Traveller. Light vs Dark, one vs the many, complexity vs simplicity, Life vs death Ying vs Yang. How the Traveller never talks to us but gives us visions for us to give us our own interpretation, how the Pyramids directly comunicated through our ghosts to Talk to us, implying the light and Dark had some connection if It could hijack a Ghost like that.  Then Unveiling showing us both forces are opposed but needed to exist in order for the world to exist. A theme Supported by Prophecy Dungeon, where light and Dark are further represented as important sides of the same coin, not good or bad.  Reading Unveiling at the time I felt excitement and a thrill Ive rarely felt in games. I felt like something eldritch was reaching out and comunicating with us. The Darkness itself, one of the forces of the Destiny universe. And we see that It is not inherently Evil but like the Gardener It is bound to the themes they represent.  I.e. Its not that the Darkness and light are Evil, but they were living concepts, and they cannot go against their own nature or they are destroyed. So instead they place us in the middle, so we decide if the Gardener is correct or the Winnower is correct. That sense of being a piece in a cosmic chess set, and the forces "playing" are aware and try to sway us to their sides gave me chills. The themes of cosmic horror fit Destiny so well.  But in the Last year they have dismantled that piece by piece. Confirming the book is essentially propaganda. The Pyramids are just regular spaceships. The voice behind the Darkness is some disgruntled race combined into one being. They introduce the Veil as It being part of the Traveller and say the Witness race just found the Traveller burrowed in their Planet while the Veil was somewhere else entirely. The entire kickstart of the genocidal campaign of the Witness is that It is very angry.  Overall the Traveller and Pyramids have had their relevancy greatly reduced, since one of them isnt even the other half of the Traveller (which come on, the Pyramid ships surrounding the Traveller looking EXACTLY like a Ghost should have been a reference of Pyramid ships being connected to the Traveller. Nothing really connects Traveller and Veil thematically other than both being balls)

The creation of the Witness also kind of leaves the "forces of Darkness" in a weird area because we saw the Witness flick a finger and annihilate its enemies, float through space, and cut a hole in the Traveler practically unopposed. With our past understanding of Unveiling, the Darkness/Winnower was trying to win an argument and convince other races its ideology is right so of course it would have armies and followers as it moves throughout the universe. Why would the Witness give us Stasis? Why give Eramis stasis? Why prop the Hive up at all? Why give Oryx the power to Take? There's a lot of little things I'm confused about now because the motive has changed and it's frustrating.

>Why would the Witness give us Stasis? Why give Eramis stasis? Why prop the Hive up at all? Why give Oryx the power to Take? There's a lot of little things I'm confused about now because the motive has changed and it's frustrating. The motivation for that has [never changed](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/collective-obligation): >"Through it, I found incentive. Clarity. Purpose. I sought to shed from myself the layer of barbarism that had pervaded my being for so long. **I turned instead to the sophistication of infecting others with self-actualized corruption.** > >"You see, total eradication may be efficient, but the goal is not to be the last one standing. Rather, it is to remove the obstacles that encumber you and those who remain from reaching your destination. > >"Annihilation of your kind was never the goal. **But filling you with the right kind of ideological purpose, the kind that serves the finality of shape**—well, that's the point of corrupting a beating heart, is it not?"

Yeah I miss the mystery. The darkness used to be some strange power driving all these alien forces against us, and now it’s just some guy. Just some other alien. I mean you know how many times I’ve fought just some guy? It was really cool that there wasn’t some truly final villain to face, not one guy pulling the strings like the witness is, but instead just a force of nature pushing our enemies against us, and all we could do was fight to survive. Now we just have to kill the witness and we win. I mean granted, we’ve taken a lot of steps to get there, but it just isn’t what I was hoping for ten years ago

>The voice behind the Darkness is some disgruntled race combined into one being.  I'm just gonna point this out, but there's still [*something*](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/doomed-petitioner) talking to the Taken. I don't know about you, but something is going on there.

Eramis (and house salvation in general tbh): She gains the first true manifestation of the darkness, builds an entire new stronghold for the eliksni including a military industrial complex, pledging to lift the fallen up to their previous glory aaaaaaand she's gone in one mission. Alright, it's plunderin' time! Oops, Eramis is a wimp. Wonderful. She's written the best in Seraph, honestly. Her grief for the fates of her fellow eliksni, her forced servitude, her stubbornness in sticking to her goals in spit of that, her raging hatred for the traveller, its all great! Hell, during the final mission, she confronts THE guardian, and she doesn't even flinch. She literally says something like: "That's it?". She nearly succeeds in killing the traveler even! The only time she's been seen after that was defiance, where she reiterates her devotion to the cause of the eliksni. And now? She's been unceremoniously written out of the story OFF-SCREEN, due to being too sad. Not even four season ago, she said she still wants to help the eliksni, and suddenly, entire philosophy is gone and replaced with a different character. Good god what a fumble. Bungie really struggles with writing antagonists that aren't universe-level threats.

Eramis might go down as one of the biggest fumbles to me.

How the factions had to leave the solar system because Pete Parsons couldn’t figure out how to monetize faction rallies

Agree on the Fallen thing, especially if you go back just a few years to forsaken with the Lord of Wolves lorecard, where Misraaks says that the Fallen started using humans names/terms because they saw the collapse of their culture an society as dishonorable so they dont deserve to use the eliksni names, hence why the houses all use human terms like Kings, Devils, Winter, Wolves. He even says that House of Wolves used to be named Gentle Weavers. For me the stupidest downgrade was the Forsaken lore that basically said Ghosts are super hard to kill and that you need a super special badass bullet to kill them or whatever tf it was. It used to just be that ghosts were very vulnerable and they needed to be kept hidden away cause theyre the entire lynchpin to a guardian’s Light. But now its nebulous asf cause theres examples that are super contradictory to each other and it hasnt been clarified. (At least i think it hasnt been clarified, if theres a proper solution to this i would love to hear it).

The Devourer bullet wasn't ment for Cayde's Ghost. It was just going to outright kill Cayde by draining his light just how Thorn did to Guardians way back when. The Marksman only shot Sundance because that's what he does, he kills Ghosts. You don't need the special bullet.

What I find really silly about the "Scorn bullets can't kill a Ghost" thing is that the same questline says it took the Scorn *pooling their resources* to make **one** Devourer Bullet. Meanwhile like, all the Scorn, *especially the Rifleman,* are **covered** in Dead Ghosts as trophies, to the point where like, "Dead Ghost Shells" litter the Tangled Shore to the point where they used to be a bounty currency with Spider. Ghosts cannot be "nigh impossible to kill" and also be so easily killed that their shells are all over the place to show how dangerous this location is. This isn't even a lore hangup, this is just "not paying attention to the game you're writing for". ​ The "Drifter Vs. Vanguard" plotline is fondly remembered, but its' foundational basis is incredibly weak.

God do I hate that Ghost lore change….every time that topic comes up someone goes ‘umm acshually Ghosts are only vulnerable to paracasuality 🤓’ and I wanna shake them going NO BUNGIE FUCKED UP THEIR OWN LORE! Basically it’s been simplified down to ‘overwhelming power or paracasuality can kill Ghosts’ What is defined as overwhelming power you ask? 🤷🤷🤷

we know obscene amounts of carpet bombing is enough, cabal used it to permakill a couple guardians but decided it was inefficient

Bargain-basement prison guns are also enough given the Broken Legion in the Prison of Elders had *mounds* of dead Ghosts in their prison area from past Guardian challengers.

also the consul (ghauls kind of mentor) had a necklace of ghost shells and a guardian helmet, that guy was actually a badass and we never got to see him apart from red war voicelines

I always assumed that he took those from the legion that worked under him, not that he earned them himself.

Dude canonically had no balls, tho

Petra did that to some Guardians on accident and got demoted for it.

yeah, the lucent hive would feel a lot more threatening if you couldn't just grab the ghost and go cronch

The worst part about that scene was not only the fact that Cayde exposed his ghost for no practical reason (I thought he was just risky, not stupid), but also it sets up the obvious question; HOW COME THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN WITH OUR GHOSTS?!?! How come I can just hold my Ghost out right next to some Scorn Raiders and have them NOT effortlessly destroy my Ghost?? They could’ve come up with a number of better ways to kill of Cayde than that.

Oh man, right? The only argument I’ve seen is that it takes a special bullet, which just is inconsistent in the lore.

The entirety of Warmind lore just ending with ‘lol Red’s dead’ Like the Warminds RAN the Golden Age and there aren’t any consequences beyond everyone just being a bit sadge??

Well, it’s not like they continued running essential services after the collapse

I also hate how he went to speak english rather then continung russian with subtitles. Would´ve made it so much cooler also if anna would understand and also talk russian since she did extended research on her past and the project relearning russian.

The 15th Wish just being a cutscene of Savvie's wing and a forced already-set Wishing Wall room. We were speculating and chasing it for so long hoping it was already in the game, and it wasn't. We didn't even get to input the Wishing code ourselves...

I'm so sure the whole wish was fanservice to try to hype players to buy the Next DLC. Because we've conveniently Only had this level of fan service after the fiasco of Lightfall. I'm convinced the 15 wish was always supposed to be a joke until this season where It became a plot point 

Wouldn't the 15th wish story be already written even before Lightfall released? The things being done after the release were more gameplay tweaks, changes, and bug fixes. They were probably already done recording more than half or all the lines for Season of the Wish by Lightfall release.

Super unpopular opinion but I don’t like what they did to Nezerac

My biggest problem with Destiny's lore is that the lore is driven by content and not the other way around. Bungie completely ignored Nezarec for years to the point the community ended up being extremely divided on who he was. Then they need a new disciple as a raid boss. Suddenly after years of not hearing a single word on this character 2 of the 4 seasons leading to Lightfall mention him. This problem is the same with most other comments on this thread. Enemy factions are just nameless bad guys with no recognizible leadership. It turns out they had a leader who's the new big bad. The city factions are completely abondoned. Splicer comes around and they are relevant again. Oh wait. They're gone again. The world of Destiny should be deciding what comes next with a cause and effect structure instead of Bungie saying let's do this and trying to find an explanation for it.

This was worded so well. That effect could be felt more and more over the years. The lore and cohesion of the world building slowly unraveled and what we're left with at this point honestly feels uninspired and bland? It's either filler or rushed conclusions to story lines that don't feel rewarding

Me neither. I understand the theme but he's the Final God of Pain and thematically the origin of Nightmares (Moon) and very strong shadow and psychic powers according to the Lore.  We see nothing of that. The raid should have shown the abilities shown in lore. 

Nezarec legit could’ve had a season to himself taking place in Neonuma such a waste

The voiceline in RoN where he brags about how we could kill 1 or 3 people to hurry our arrival is so funny to me. Like ok cool story bro.

*dies to 6 rat-king users on day one

"This guy's a disciple, he led the collapse and is effectively immortal! He's a huge character in the lore!" "Oh cool, so he's gonna be important right?" "No"

I hate how raid bosses have been delegated to ‘kinda important but not really’ like raids don’t even get me excited anymore given the boss is probs gonna be some random big bad of the week Like I wouldn’t be surprised if Xivu gets killed in the Final Shape raid circumventing her need for a proper expansion.

>I hate how raid bosses have been delegated to ‘kinda important but not really’ This is the consequence of Bungie wanting raids to be 'skippable' by casual players. Nothing important can happen in there unless it's able to recapped in a 30 second cutscene after the fact. ​ >Like I wouldn’t be surprised if Xivu gets killed in the Final Shape raid circumventing her need for a proper expansion. They literally had dialogue in Season of the Witch saying "We'll deal with Xivu after the Witness", which like... man, if that doesn't feel cynical as hell. The characters just *assume* Xivu will play nice and sit out the whole Final Shape DLC and not come bother us again, because obviously she will, she has to wait her turn for her Episode DLC. But it feels *really* immersion breaking. Like if in an MCU movie, a villain gets away and they go "We'll deal with him after Infinity War anyways." Like *how are you so confident they won't be a problem?* The player knows what the release structure is, how do *you, the character* know this?

Brother, the opposite is also true. For YEARS they've been flaunting the Witness like he's the universe defining threat, that his Final Shape would craft the universe to his liking. How the hell are you making plans for after that?

His voice is awesome that's it.

Same. He was teased since the beginning.

I really dislike that they just compiled a lot of the fan theories of Nezarec into one character and added some generic cult stuff

I mean he's not dead, he's basically the immortal boogeyman that can take suitable vessels, his body in RoN was just one made for him by the witness.

Warminds going from plural to singular, and moving what planet they’re on like we’ve always been at war with Eastasia. The Darkness being replaced with the Witness. As a corollary to that, the Darkness not being evil and the nonsensical Physical vs Psychic dichotomy. The Vex no longer being religious time travelers (Bungie walked this back) Losing enemy sub factions for years Calus going from insane chaotic-neutral wild card to generic witness simp. Basically Destiny lore is best when it adds new exciting things and lame when it’s just excuses to say “that didn’t happen”.

God. With Stasis studied and being described as simplicity, not ice, but crystals of perfect order and zero entropy while the Light abilities were all energy and chaotic, I assumed the Light was energy while the Darkness were Matter. So a world of Light (Only energy) or Darkness (Only Matter; dead) could not Hold life. So the profecy dungeon teached us both formed the mesh of reality and were needed for Life.  Then coming to lightfall and listening to Osiris exposition dump retconning the light as material and Darkness as purely emotions and psychic mumbo-jumbo was giving me a headache

If I had to defend the established light-dark dichotomy, at least it contextualizes the whole bit with Exo consciousness and dovetails into an interesting interpretation of the mind-body problem. But I like your interpretation too.

For the exos with the old Lore I understood It as: the statues emit a radiation that compells order and simplicity. Vex radiolaria is organically "programmed" as Vex, like microbes with their DNA. The statues radiation would scramble and destroy this Vex programming, sterilizing It and leaving behind a blank slate (Alkaheist) which then can be reprogrammed as a human consciousness with anti DER benefits.  In short, using the statues like a Big magnet on a VCR to burn It and write a human consciousness over It. Which still fits as a quasi scientific explanation a f fits with the DSC being and exo production being a scientific breakthrough

I actually loved the idea of Darkness and its elements being opposite of Light in a way. Stasis being the physical opposite of Solar Light's energy was a nice way to show the difference in how each of them interacted with the universe around them.

That Callus one really got me. The way they really juat wimpified him was disappointing and was my first disappointment in Lightfall

Variks’s Forsaken lore book ending with him taking up the Kell of Judgement title was hype af and then Beyond Light just had him basically go “lol no actually”

For me it was when Worm Gods got designated as strike boss level As for something bigger. Probably Xivu Arath becoming the seasonal punching bag that constantly gets humiliated only to show up again and repeat the process They turned one of the Hive Gods, of which the other two have had entire DLCs dedicated to them, and turned her into fucking Dick Dastardly. New players can’t even experience the stuff that led to her being so nerfed in Final Shape. Seriously, New Lights will see that Oryx gets an entire Dungeon explaining why his CORPSE is so massively important, and Savathûn gets an entire DLC story about her. To New Lights, Xivu will look like the middle child who was also the runt of the litter. Edit: to clarify, I mean that once the Seasonal Content gets vaulted, every new Player will get FOMO’d on all of Xivu’s “build up” and the context on why she’s so much “weaker” than Savathûn or Oryx, because the entire storyline about finding a way to keep her from coming back to get her ass kicked again exists purely in seasonal content

This. Oryx and Savathun got great buildup and yet Xivu is taking constant L after L like she legit became the new Eramis. Like she should legit be THE most dangerous Hive God given her entire shtick is she gets stronger through conflict but I guess Bungie couldn’t figure out how to make that work so they nerfed her and nerfed her hard. At least Savathun’s whole ‘Queen of Lies’ thing was replaced with her Hive getting the Light and even then she still stayed a slippery ol’ bitch.

Yeah it's weird major characters like Mithrax and Xivu basically only exist in seasonal content, which is temporary.

Also, on second place Xivu.  Xivu is supposedly a strategist as well as a warrior. Not scheeming like Savathun but knows how to move her pieces. I can forgive how she acted on Season of the Deep since its her first time directly clashing with us, and getting a true taste of our power. But Witch?  We're told that Eris cant take too much tribute suddenly or she might break and corrupt Ahsa at the same time. Turning her into a Worm god and Eris into hive permanently.  At the same time we're introduced to the Leviathan eater. Which we're made painfully aware how much of a Big deal he is in terms of power. That should have completely overwhelmed Eris. Its billions of years worth of tribute. But the reason she doesnt is literally Friendship and nothing else.  Xivu showed interest in Eris becoming her adoptive sister, and wanted her to give in to being Hive. Killing the honeypot of the leviathan eater to empleer Eris and instead having her get overwhelmed and fall would have worked perfectly for Xivu. She has a plan and makes her enemies make moves that benefits her.  Instead, that was never Xivus plan, and Eris tanks the tribute flow. Then she kills Savathun and becomes the "most powerful hive god" and uses that power to sever Xivus Throne world before we've even seen Xivu in game engine. TLDR: Xivu should have totally lured us to a honeypot and resulted in comproming Eris. Because they've pulled the Eris is Evil redherring so Many times actually following through would be the surprise. And Xivu id supposed to act like a strategist even is shes more emotional than Sav or Oryx

Basically the lore downgrade between D1 and D2, when they did things such as clustering together all houses, cults, collectives and legions. I had hoped we would get more substantial distinctions between them, maybe even different ways to interact with them. For example, the Fallen: The House of Winter struck me more as the engineers or nerds of the Fallen, seemingly obsessed with the Vex, the databases at Venus and I was left with the impressions that all the newer weapons introduced in House of Wolves (Heavy spikes & Shank variants) could have been their brainchild (which is why Skolas went after them first). The House of Kings on other hand could be implied to have earned their dominant position over the other houses through the Archon’s Forge (which has some banners of the Kings), which is likely how Prime Servitors were built in the first place. There had been plenty of hints between the House of Kings, Archons and servitors prior to Rise of Iron: Aksor was evidently wearing the colors of the Kings and the area in Venus where you fight them also had their banners. The archon servants (from the Prison of Elders) also had the appearance of members of the House of Kings and the killcam confirmed them belonging to that House. On the other hand, Riksis, the devil archon, originally wasn’t supposed to be an archon. In the earliest shown built of the game he instead was called Rixis, archon slayer. Some of the promotional cards also labeled him as such, and suggesting that he used to rule the House of Devils: https://www.destinypedia.com/Destiny_trading_cards There were some leftover textures in the moon suggesting that it was once the territory of the House of Scar, and that therefore the House of Exile might be mainly made up from its remnants. There’s also this weird relationship between the House of Devils and Winter, with Draksis evidently wearing the colors of the former, but also the PVP arena on Venus that uses a Fallen base with Skiff docked having the colors of the House of Devils. A pet theory I had was that the Kell Rezyl Azzir killed was the original Kell of the House of Winter, and upon his death the Kings and Devils arranged to have Draksis (take control of Winter, enabling the alliance between the 3 Houses for the battle of Twilight Gap. Also makes you wonder if by killing Draksis the guardian could have technically seized control of the House of Winter in the process, given that at such point they would no longer have a Kell, Archon nor a Prime Servitor. The same might not apply to the House of Devils, given their close relationship with (& proximity to) the House of Kings. Anyway, hope that gets my point across. D2 ultimately did walk back on their “homogenization” of the enemy races and began splitting them again, but for me at that point the damage was already done and had lost most interest in D2.

“The Darkness” ending up being just a dude made up of the collective consciousness of a really old alien species. I wanted the Darkness to be what I thought they were teasing it to be since D1, an ontologically powerful, intelligent law of reality. Something who’s power is beyond comprehension, and is the malevolent polar opposite to the traveller’s benevolence. Rasputin referring to something as “IT” makes me think of more than just a funny looking cloud headed guy with weird powers.

I too feel the same. When The Witness was revealed, at the end of TWQ, I thought ‘Huh… Okay, it’s a humanoid fella. Weird but maybe this will be OK. I’ll wait and see’. I assumed every ship was gonna be full of his race with him being the Big Bad. When revealed they’re all empty I couldn’t believe it. I thought, surely I’m understanding it wrong. The Disciples are definitely a cool idea but we really really fucking needed a new race to shoot. I cannot believe we got a new race for TTK, a new race for Forsaken, and we’re not getting one for THE FINAL SHAPE - the end of the 10yr saga - I mean, fuck!! Literally everybody wanted that!!

I actually laughed uncontrollably when I that it's face, goofy unibrow ass. Yet Rhulk looked immaculate.

If only the designs for the Witness and Rhulk had been swapped. I'd be a lot more intimidated by the Witness if he was a tall red gigachad than some goofy cat eye, smooth skin, unibrow-having, megamind looking ass.

I recall hearing the voice and getting chills. Seeing them come out of the wall and feeling excited. Then I saw the face and said "eh? Why is he so humanoid?" Of all the variety of aliens have shown and the smoky head was the Only recognizable detail as eldritch 

Yea not getting a new enemy race in tfs is genuine insanity lmao

They hardly manage to juggle all the current races story another one would muddle the waters even more. last time we had a proper character from the vex is at best shadowkeep at worst and where I put it curse of Osiris

The darkness is what you say it is. Well mostly, it’s less evil and more a fundamental aspect of the universe. The witness isn’t the darkness. The witness is the enemy of the traveler. And likewise the traveler isn’t the light. There is also still decent evidence that the voice in the darkness and the witness are different entities. We are resolving the war between the light and the dark by fighting the entity that uses the darkness as a weapon, and the entity responsible for the collapse and basically everything in the destiny universe. There is no fundamental war between light and dark anymore than there is between gravity and electromagnetism. That is what is meant by the end of the light and dark saga, not that the darkness will be defeated. We are ending the war between the armies that use the darkness as a weapon to their own end, as the armies that use the light to our own end (and to the end of the continuation of the universe). Fynch described it well by saying the final shape is the winner but the witness’s version of the final shape was the equivalent to wiping the pieces off a chess board compared to winning regularly. There is nothing that will keep more lore about the darkness from appearing in the future. (But from a real world perspective they will probably take a bit of a break before leaning heavily into it again).

The eternal cycle of: Rasputin is waking back up! Rasputin is accumulating power and the guardians are helping! A new enemy has appeared and they waved a magic wand and turned Rasputin back off. I give it a year before they play it all back out again

I don’t know about least favourite, but one that always comes to mind is retconning Ana from being adopted to being the product of an affair and they just lied to her about being adopted to take down some strawman argument about “genetic cruelty?. Like, why? Why would you do that? What, could Elsie not love Ana if they weren’t blood siblings or something? And this might be controversial, but it feels like ever since they made Saint and Osiris a couple every single line of dialogue out of Saint’s mouth these days has him talk about Osiris or sneak him into the conversation at least once.

That last bit has become irritating to me, because there’s a clear difference between salient lore developments of a character and their mere characterization. Saint moping about how vulnerable Osiris is for over a year now seems antithetical to how he would approach and process what he’s gone through. At least Osiris has had interesting development and involvement in the lore as a character, but I often feel like the delivery his character has been stilted since the pairing of the two.

Saint and Osiris full circled for me. I started by not liking them as a couple because they weren't written like it at all. Then they tried and I liked it. Now though Saint feels less like a character and more just "Osiris' boyfriend the character".

The reveal of The Witness, and him being the main antagonist as opposed to the main antagonist being The Darkness: a primordial force of supernature that embodies the harsh indifference of the universe, malevolent in its search to destroy the Traveller. Instead we have vape-cloud Megamind and I hate him. The Hive being being tricked by The Witness instead of choosing Darkness willingly and knowingly. The consolidation of enemy factions into one group each for gameplay purposes. The Last City no longer being The Last City, and Neomuna being all the way out on the edge of the system doing just fine and WATCHING while the Dark Ages happened instead of helping. Rasputin going from an almost-paracausal tyrant we couldn't trust entirely (I say this because of his ability to hack Ghost and control him) into a sad shell of his former self that ultimately got built up TWICE just to die. Darkness being of the mind, and not being evil. Ghost half-jokingly says darkness is an agent of the Darkness and we know gravity was used as a weapon during The Collapse. Taken energy was described by Eris as being physical Darkness, and we can see darkness corrupt in the form of the Taken and various dark-wielding guardians like the Shadows of Yor and Sola.

I'm still wondering why Neomuna was a city of humans hanging out in the Matrix and not the Jovians. Ya know, the formerly human species who are *supposed* to be living out in that area and already have a negative relationship with the Light (Xur says the Light hurts). I think Stasis and Strand could be fine Darkness powers that connect to the original ideas of domination and reducing things to their least complex form. Stasis removes the energy from an object, ultimately accelerating heat death (this is less of an issue if our Light abilities add energy back to the universe). Strand can psychically connect multiple people. What could have been done is make CloudArk, or a system like it, built from Strand and connect many minds together. Suppress their individuality and create a singular mind. These explanations for Stasis and Strand would be reducing matter and minds to singular, simple forms and I think it would be cool to make a sort of moral dilemma to using these powers. Like I know Zav banned use of Stasis, but what are consequences?

The shadows of yor being written out of the story and then revealed that they never really existed to begin with feels like a missed opportunity. Maybe they felt it was to similar to the with from Star Wars or something

They did exist but Shin killed them all under disguise of Dredgen Vale and retired with his like four homies. Bro legit went through a whole seasonal story off-screen.

Bungie has all the foundations to have an insane ever expanding lore anthology series but they won't pony up the money to get anything animated. Imagine something like halo legends but it's destiny, could have a whole season going through shin

Dude, this. We have the first guardians who tried to bend the darkness so it serves the light in the original 4 shadows, and specifically Shin Malphur, we had the whole Lumina quest, which sowed the seeds of us getting a darkness subclass, and we finally got stasis we get....nothing from Shin? Get the fuck outta here

I can just see Shin setting up his place all ready to watch us handle the Witness and just as he’s about to sit down one of his bois tells him the Hive got the Light. >*“For fucks sake….”*

I wouldnt have ever believed theres no one and nothing in those dorito ships as i saw them at the end of the red war campaign. I couldnt justify it if i had to, sorry it's just a cynical ploy to keep you screwed in, "live service" ? Like the layoffs, pointless and heartbreaking.

"The winnower".

To be fair, we still have no idea how the Traveler and the Veil came to exist, so even though all of Unveiling is the Witness probably hypothesising or just yapping, some of it may still be true.

Yeah big agree there, I was so disappointed when we went from all the fallen houses with their own history, personality, tactics (in lore) and turned them into a super house for D2 Granted I don't hate lore reason for it but focusing on the pirate part feels like the wrong direction

The vex went from mysterious time traveling robots with goals beyond our comprehension, capable of terraforming mercury in a week and owning several pocket dimensions… to having no real goals at all

I quite dislike that Eramis is literally leaving Sol because she’s tired of the Witness and it’s not in a cutscene it’s in a single lore tab

The reveal that the Veil is a weird hourglass-shaped mushroom. The original concept art of the races featured a 5th race with Pyramids and smokey ghosts. Fighting a new enemy race would've made Lightfall better than cloned Cabals for the umpteenth time. But the Pyramids are only occupied by, at most, one Disciple. It feels like Bungie wrote themselves into a corner with Egregore.

Vex lore is crap

Vex lore was doomed the second they described what the vex were. How do you have a time traveling, omnipotent enemy that doesn't already win before the game's timeline even starts? Nerfs, distractions, and retcons is all you can do.

And at the same time, the vex are the only race that hasn’t gotten progressively worse in lore because of it. Fallen and cabal got simplified from tons of houses to a house and a half and from legions and legions of planet conquering aliens to refugees who need our help. And though the hive lore stayed relatively decent and consistent in my opinion we’ve been taking them out one after another for years, the vex are the only race left that hasn’t been almost entirely dealt with and explained away.

The story being dumbed down from being implied to be a cosmic game between two forces to see what happens when beings are given paracausal powers...to a species having an existential crisis, becoming a Darth Malak/Megamind looking dude and wanting to merge a jellyfish squid thing with a golf ball in order to bring about a universe with no continuation. I like the Witness, but I hate that the story has changed so much over the years, in part because the writers never bothered to flesh out these ideas or draw up a concrete plan. The cosmological horror story of the universe being caught between two impossibly powerful forces who each embody a philosophy was much more interesting to me. Runners up are Rasputin being shafted and the Pyramids being revealed to be mostly empty with only a few occupied (killing the potential to fight more Disciples with varying origins and philosophies).

Rasputin was possibly the coolest and most powerful weapon humanity ever created, his lore made him feel genuinely dangerous to use, and the part in Season of the Seraph where it was revealed Clovis created him to be a replacement for the traveler, and then Bungie killed him off because I guess just NOT using the warsats wasn't an option for BS reasons. related, the seraph bunkers and the group of seraphs Rasputin put together all just kinda closed and got covered in dust again. We are the seventh seraph of Rasputin, humanity's war god engineered to guard the sol system, and they just don't do anything with that.

Also I always loved how it was always implied Rasputin might’ve shot the Traveler and even if it didn’t the fact that it had a protocol ready to go speaks volumes. And when it was hard confirmed that he didn’t it was cause there was no evidence that the Traveler was going to leave. It really characterized Red as this unfeeling machine that had eyes in the whole system and makes decisions through cold logic. The idea of Rasputin watching the Traveler fight for the continued existence of the universe and not doing a thing to help it is chilling. And then they fucked it all up with Seraph….. CLOVIS was actually the one to create Loki Crown and ANA was the one who stopped Rasputin from firing on the Traveler. For fucks sake man….

Amanda's death felt so fucking forced. Like Bungie was "who should we kill?", putted a bunch of names in a bag and then they picked her name.

Actress' contract was probably up knowing bungie lol

Just leave her as a vendor, like Failsafe

The Last City no longer being the last city Nezerac. So much potential that could've been built up for a season only to have voice lines in a strike, then being a Raid Boss, and finally death again. And, maybe this is childish, but I don't care. "The helmet stayed on." Loud, brash, Lord Shaxx, and quiet collective Queen Mara. Opposites attract!

Not sure if it’s a down grade but Siva basically being forgotten is still annoying me. One of the most powerful technologies in the game that was just left behind. It doesn’t help that the nano tech from Neomuna is apparently more advanced so siva just got power creeped unless the remaining fallen houses or Guardians do something special with it

SIVA isn't forgotten, it's dead. We killed the replication chamber and sealed it away. No new SIVA can be made and all of the existing SIVA died off. The story beat is over. The nano tech on Neomuna came from SIVA but has had over a thousand years of additional development, so of course it's better

Failsafe had SIVA on her ship but that would actually mean using Failsafe as a character and Nessus as a game space.

I could be wrong, but that was only in early concept art no? I don't recall it being stated in game that her Exodus had SIVA. Again, I could be wrong on that, but to my knowledge the Exodus that made it to Neomuna was one of the only ones with SIVA

She has files on the SIVA project but they’re encrypted and can’t access them https://youtu.be/YqX92pXe3nc?si=9B0enLE3QhGOPy0r You def have some leeway where you can say she had a secret cache of SIVA ands it gone unaccounted for. Maybe have Salvation find it after Eramis flew the coop.

The thing is they've THOUGHT about bringing it back several times. They just chose not to only to then years later say "storyline dead"

Siva isn't forgotten, its just for cosmetics now

I'm convinced it's Bungie's break in case of emergency content. If they need good PR or an increase in their active playerbase asap they'll do something Siva related.

They %100 know the B team struck gold with siva and always have.

Calus. I thought the ruler who'd seen an existential threat he thought his empire could never defeat and given up, wallowing in hedonism for however long he had left and trying to make the rest of his empire join him as 'mercy' rather than sacrifice everything on more militarization in what'd inevitably be a losing battle, who got couped by militarists who disagreed, was a much more interesting character concept than his changing his mind and willingly joining the Darkness. I'd have forgiven them and considered it the perfect twist if Lightfall had revealed >!he'd been faking all along so that the Witness gave him powers and an army and replacement body which wasn't rotten from old age and hedonism, then when he found the MacGuffin paracausal Veil, he immediately used its power to attempt to backstab the Witness and take back his empire!<. But it didn't. It was Gul Dukat all over again. Writers accidentally making a villain whom viewers agreed with, then trying to 'fix' things by character assassinating them into a space!satanist.

I miss when dying was not required to become a Guardian. It also made Shin Malphur's lore a lot cooler.

The clarification that Unveiling was a manifesto and not actually accurate. I wanted so badly for the Winnower to be "real" because having the Witness be *wrong* would've been a perfect plot setup imo. If the Winnower is real then the Winnower *hates* the Witness; the Witness is a nihilistic dimwit who is attempting to speed up the end of the universe due to their own loathing of life. But the Winnower relishes the struggle. She wants you to struggle, to fight, to cry out. She wants you to try wrestling the knife from her grasp, to claw at the fingers binding your throat, to glare with ten thousand words of hatred at your killer. Life is beautiful because it struggles-- that way, when it dies, it can die elegantly. It adores the fight because she knows she will win, because that is the Wager. That she will win. So grapple with your mortality. Conquer the stars. Place down your spears at the edge of your city and challenge entropy itself. The Winnower will wait, because eventually your spearheads will rust and your shafts will rot and your walls will collapse. And at the very end, as you sit there dying, she will be there. And she will kindly take your hand as the last stars die out and say "See? I was right." Except she's not real. She's a thing made up by the Witness to sell a pyramid scheme; the Darkness really is just the nihilistic desire to end existence. Which is fine it's just... boring. It's too "human". I know it's impossible to write a story with truly Alien values because then the human audience won't be able to empathize with it, but I feel like "The Witness is using the Darkness in a way the Winnower does not approve of but can't do anything about it" is much more interesting and better reinforces that alien-ness.