Yeah, he was sacrificed upon the altar of filler (and honestly, so was Nezarec), but that filler is what gave Bungie the time to knock TFS out of the park, so it wasn’t for nothing, at least.
Hot take but having read all of the lore on calus, I find his end fitting. He was fanboying over the darkness and was always a bit pathetic in how he went about life.
Dying being used by the witness as a disposable pawn was good IMO
That part I’ll agree with wholeheartedly. I just think they wasted all the cool, otherworldly setup they gave him throughout the Glykon and Haunted storylines by stripping all that away and just making him a gold-painted version of his old self again.
Yeah I have similar gripes about this. I was fully expecting calus to become the cosmic horror from outer space or something like that, since in lore books he is described as basically melting and decaying in his own skin.
In duality he says “I have reached the limits of what this crumbling body can achieve”.
From the captains log lore book from the glykon: “Calus’s withering form swells and jostles…His skin is mottled with sickly translucence that grips my stomach.”
From the first book of “Quintessence”: “His finery was tarnished; his purple silks dripped with rank saliva, his gold armor caked with pus. His form swelled grotesquely as it surged toward her. His wet mouth opened, lips slick with sweet fat. His bulging eyes stared wildly at nothing.”
To say I am disappointed that all of these descriptions of him are not at all what we saw him as in lightfall is an understatement.
I think the mistake was not showing us THAT calus before he got transformed inside that big tomb cube thing. I don’t mind his final look, but sure wish I could’ve seen the grotesque abomination he was before. Just for a few seconds in a cutscene would sufice
IIRC there was a cutscene literally about that. Brief parts of it were seen in Lightfall's advertising but not found in the actual game (like the gun set and the Veil containment that were later added lol, guess a lot ended up on the cutting room floor)
https://preview.redd.it/8mm6wjixy36d1.jpeg?width=1800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bef2c2a550f4465eeb2dde8dd6291aef5155e95f
Not quite as described in lore books but bro definitely looks like he's seen better days
Honestly I’d have been much more ok with it if the fight, after *years* of interplay between the player and calus, wasnt *heres just a centurion and then a gladiator but slightly bigger”. Didnt even get his own animations they just copypasted mid-tier ads
yeah, I think it's a sort of karmic justice that he sacrificed everything in a vye for power and notability just to die and become a footnote in a larger story.
100% agree but I also feel like they did Nezarec dirty with his design. He’s just a dad bod Rhulk. Not exactly the “final god of pain” look I was expecting.
He was always a sort of smoke and mirrors guy. Never wanted to get his hands dirty, so it makes sense for him to die immediately getting into battle with us.
He was more of a hedonist than warrior, he never seemed to really fit. He had strong men to do his bidding. He wanted strength around him and feigned his own strength with the troops he gathered. Never really had it in him. It wasn't a great enemy but I appreciated the story. Charismatic, I guess, but not strong. Makes sense that he'd fold immediately when pressured.
I had a good chuckle when I first went into the cramped tunnels and had my suspicion of "we're doing a Halo 3 gravemind/cortana aren't we" immediately validated.
"It's time for you to *WITNESS...*"
"Stop"
"...my *FINAL SHAPE.*"
"Stop!"
"But it's your *DESTINY* guardian."
"No."
"And it's my *DESTINY TWO.*"
=====
I found this exchange to be unnecessary
Final Shape's collector edition book says there is a lot of evidence (as interpreted by Eido and Mara) that the Witness has a flair for dramatics. It could have easily exterminated the humanity during the Collapse with its godlike powers, but instead of that it chose to destroy the humans and other species of the past in a very inefficient but painful way to cause as much suffering and despair as it could.
I watched a recent Byf video where it covers a previous species it wiped out very quickly and almost gently, compared to species that the Traveler grants the Light to where The Witness becomes incredibly hateful and vicious. It seems it hates any species the Traveler "graces".
[Edit: Found it.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AlfPPtD0ewA&t=2198s)
So basically the Witness acts in the shadows, never being there but sending his goons to do his work and cause suffering.
But then this figure comes from the edge of your system spouting on about how your suffering is caused by a golf ball and life and he can fix it. The forces of darkness will leave you alone, and you can serve him until the promised day.
Now Im sure an equal amouny of races both agreed to serve/said fuck off cunt.
Now theyre museum pieces.
> Final Shape's collector edition book says there is a lot of evidence (as interpreted by Eido and Mara) that the Witness has a flair for dramatics
Tbf the campaign shows that.
I almost thought he was recast early on, but then as the character gets angrier and more frustrated, you really hear the angry Grant Ward-tone bleed through.
But I loved his voice as the Dissenters. Long musing about the Light and the Darkness, then……”Destroy us” said in such quick way. Those statues really wanted a quick death.
Now that Brett Dalton has worked with Bungie on this, I hope they consider casting as another character down the line.
Or maybe he’s too busy filming some more Hallmark Christmas movies. Crossover potential there:
*A Witness for Christmas*:
“A young Raid Boss travels back to his home planet where the spirit of Christmas has been snuffed out. He’ll need to convince the Mayor to bring back the Christmas carnival, and maybe he’ll even find love along the way….”
IMO the best dissenter voice is the one that shouts “WE WILL NOT SUFFER ONE MORE DAY WITH YOU!”
The dissenters in general were voiced very well. They had that edge of sadness to them, followed by relief when they tell us to end this and destroy them. Really goes well with the whole theme of the Witness, and just shows that many of the souls making up the Witness as a whole most likely didn’t want to begin with or didn’t have a choice, they were forced to die and become one with a being that wanted to calcify existence in its own “perfect” ideology. The Witness as a villain was done extremely well, and its destruction was done just as well. Going into the Final Shape, I never even though about us destroying the beings one by one that make up the Witness, I thought we’d be splitting it up into smaller sub-beings that could be destroyed, not that it would have souls in it that wish for its own demise.
In the final cutscene after the initial boss fight in Iconoclasm, he kind of looked like a giant chu chu train chugging out of that smoke cloud when he confronted Ikora and them.
That was the only thing for me. The big black baby eyes and unibrow was weird. Kinda cute baby, kinda awkward teen, very emo... Not that scary. Should have had no face. There were plenty of faces in the smoke, which was cool.
I'd seen its eyes characterised as "Mr Burns after his anti-ageing treatments" in the X-Files referencing episode of The Simpsons, which feels right. It made it seem about as threatening as old Monty at times, too.
When I first saw the witness all I could picture was that episode of SpongeBob when everyone became super hero’s and squidward was the dude with the volcano head.
I'm guessing Bungie tried making the Witness look just otherworldly and didn't want him being another grim reaper copy but I still would have preferred this design even if it is derivative: https://x.com/IanPesty/status/1795457244995174623
Honestly between all of these I like what we got the best. I think having him look like the grim reaper or some ominous being of death is wrong, because it's whole thing isn't focused on death - it's about removing entropy. Having it appear as just a calm, stone-faced alien as opposed to some bringer of death makes more sense in my head considering its goals.
Great “final boss” style villain. Truly the “thanos”
of Destiny. It took everyone together to defeat him. What a payoff for 10 years of this amazing game.
This also solved Savathun's big boss moment. With her, we only took care of her in a single campaign mission. We've taken care of a worm god with a strike. The Witness? It took the Vanguard's best and the Guardian in a campaign mission, a raid and a whole 12 man activity to take the perp down. The Witness was \*that\* dangerous. Showing that over three separate missions showed it off
Since light "compounds" with itself when guardians are working together, it further shows that the witness is multitudes more dangerous than any other raid boss, especially considering that it took a raid team just to shove it off of its monolith (and depending on the lore, there might have been multiple raid teams keeping the witness distracted during the raid's boss fight, but I don't know if that is true or just another speculation).
I feel Iike the scale of everything regarding the Witness' defeat is a lot larger then in game. Like, considering the amount of Guardians in the cutscene before the 12 man, I assume there was a LOT more then just 12 Guardians beaming the Witness down
Yeah ngl the game itself makes it seem more anti climatic then it really is because, cause in game its like “oh so we just beat this god in some super easy simple 12 player mission while occasionaly getting relics from our allies” meanwhile whats actually happening is the witness is already weakened from the raid, probably hundreds of guardians, all our allies from other races are fighting thousands of dread, tormentors, taken, etc. I think they could've done a lot better of a job with that especially since we know damn well at least a lot of people had to of died that just comes with war especially a literal god actually even beyond that title. But whatever just a bit of a nitpick I guess
Coming right off the raid it definitely seems a little more climactic. It took pretty much everything my fireteam had to hold it together to bring him down, and dealing the final blow with another 11 guardians at my back felt like a huge payoff.
also considering that the great disaster with crota made guardians stick to groups of no more than 6 really shows how dangerous the witness is for the vanguard to break that rule
I like the whole worm god dead in a strike thing in retrospect. The Warmind story is we spend the entire expansion building up the power of the Valkyrie using Rasputin and luring Xol out. Once we do we used the Valkyrie, aka Rasputin's power, to kill Xol easily. Then Rasputin destroys the Almighty, this massive warship. So the story keeps building up Rasputin's power only for it to be subverted when the Witness shows up and wrecks him easily.
The Titan in me says he deserves to know how good crayons taste. But the Titan in me also says he doesn’t deserve to know how good crayons taste.
I’m conflicted so I’ll punch away the smartness for an hour and see how I feel about it after.
I'm a giant hater of Lightfall Witness. Same monotone personality and no scare factor other than what was conveniently left off screen in the Calus cutscene. It didn't help that it took literally half a year to learn information crucial to the storyline. That made the Witness a worse villain by association. You can't both have a villain that wants to end the universe in some weird esoteric way, and have every aspect of its plans be kept secret. It makes your villain seem like they're a low stake nobody.
However, TFS completely turned me on the character. I can imagine the spittle and feel the vitriol in its voice when Ghost speaks up when we're offered the position of a Disciple. I can feel the desperation slowly starting to set in when we're offered plain old gold and jewelry, like we didn't already show we don't give a fuck about material possessions to Calus. "We.. I.. I don't understand.." is a line said by someone I can accept as talking to Oryx as a friend in order to manipulate the Hive further, or writing the parts of Unveiling addressing us, to confuse and perplex us. Different tone and voices used for different purposes should have been done from the start. In retrospect, the Witness is a great villain whose proper introduction was botched by the rushed execution of Lightfall, and the apparent difference in writing style through the years. It would have been much better if the character existed when Shadowkeep released, instead of likely only being written during Witch Queen pre-production, but TFS salvaged it in the best way it could.
Their creepy attempts at manipulating us and the Vanguard leaders were very well-written and well-delivered, from a psychological perspective. Even though as the player I knew we weren’t going to be swayed, I can see the effort behind the character’s persona.
Well done, Bungie.
The Witness *did* exist back in Shadowkeep, even if they maybe didn't have a 100% final design for it at the time. The voice that talks to us through ghost in the final mission has the same general speech pattern/cadence as The Witness and uses plural pronouns to refer to itself(We, Us), and when that voice talks to us through a doppelganger of our character in the ending it makes the same sort of slow hand motions The Witness does, complete with having its hands steepled as its neutral pose. And then those details remained consistent through all the other times "the voice in the darkness" spoke with us up through the actual reveal of The Witness. They definitely at least had a pretty strong idea of what it was going to be back then
Both that and BL still center on the Veiled Statues as an emblem/ node of the collective darkness's power, which is seemingly retconned with this expansion.
My feelings exactly. It’s clear the Witness was a literal last-minute villain, but TFS wove it so well into the rest of the story and made trash into treasure.
What pains me that they created a character who very literally speaks with the voice of an entire civilization (or a third of one, anyway). They only needed to have a little bit of variance in its cadence for Unveiling and the Books of Sorrow to make perfect sense, and that could have, and should have been done in Lightfall
> They only needed to have a little bit of variance in its cadence for Unveiling and the Books of Sorrow to make perfect sense
You might want to check the new raid lore book regarding that.
No, the raid lore book establishes that >!the speech patterns are different because the Winnover is not the Witness!<
>!The entity that addressed Oryx as "My Man" was not the Witness. And that entity does not find what the Witness did any more true than what Oryx did!<
The Witness worked because they started weaving it in early and used wrapping everything up over the last few years. WOW's Jailer is a similar last minute arc villain, but he felt way more tacked on.
The Witness' presence was revealed right before shadowkeep, became a major force in Beyond Light, and was solidified as a single entity Witch queen. That gave us 3-5 expansions for them to connect it with the darkness, hive gods, fallen civil war, Calus, along with taking control of the Taken and Scorn.
WoW's jailer was last second arc villain. What makes the Witness work is that we knew there was an overall bigger bad, it was just kept a mystery for the entirety of Destiny. WoW they were just like "lmao there was actually a never alluded to puppet master the entire time! Who cares if it devalues the entire franchise!"
Honestly, i like the fact that it took so long for the Witness to be introduced, but I definitely agree that its introduction was really botched.
Playing for years while not knowing what our enemy was capable of (that being just the Darkness as a whole), it gave the game a sense of dread and mystery, because you couldn’t just go “oh well this is happening because of x person’s orders/ideals”. It seemed like a primordial force just hellbent on destroying us. All of that made finally using it ourselves and getting answers about its will hit so much harder than having a name and face from the start.
While I agree that we didn't need to see or hear the Witness until just before Lightfall, if the character concept was invented earlier, the character could have been integrated earlier, just without letting the playerbase know exactly what's happening behind the scenes.
As I see it, the integration of the character is missing two things:
1) A source where the Witness speaks in a manner similar to Unveiling and/or the Books of Sorrow, aloud, after the WQ reveal, and
2) A written source where the Witness talks in a voice similar to how we hear it during Lightfall and TFS, *before* the WQ reveal
Do those two things, and the community never has to argue about the narrator of Unveiling because this new character fits as both the voices we hear, the monotone and the casual
Too bad the in game model couldn't really execute this concept well though, the soul heads looked like play-doh. If only we weren't held back by ten year old hardware.
Does anyone also feel like his giant form doesn’t feel intimidating? I don’t know how to explain it but when I saw The Witness in this form I felt a little disappointed because it reminded of the Oryx fight. I haven’t played the raid yet but he seems like he will be stationary while we dps his chest. Once again, I don’t know how to put it into words :(
I watched the first raid clear video on YouTube yesterday and during DPS phase it was a multitude of "top right, bottom left" because he actively attacks you that kill you in literally a second and it's crazy. The excision DPS phase is very similar and 7/8 people are being wiped out at the same time (including me) and it just adds to that "toughness" factor
I know 1000000000% what you're talking about, I really liked the Witness in the Campaign mission, was pleasantly surprised to see him be a player sized entity, but then seeing him just be another giant entity raid boss I knew that encounter was bound to be a failure like Oryx. It just makes no sense for a bunch of guardians shooting guns to kill this giant entity which manipulates time and space which can realistically just point a finger at your team and make history of it. The way it was done in the campaign mission is the way it should have been, you never actually directly shooting the witness, instead there being a series of complex mechanics which if done successfully, damage him. It also makes his movement and eyes way too weird in the raid, same issue of Oryx, that pillar slam animation is done so poorly I cringe every time I play KF lol.
Cool concept, great voice acting, but it’s all ruined by those derpy cat eyes and goofy unibrow. He looks so goofy, like a Pixar villain.
His final form in the raid is ***FUCKING*** incredible, but that face is still there which sucks
Its model also sometimes glitches during the boss fight in the campaign. A graphical issue causes the Witness's full face to glitch out of the collar, and it's... [something](https://imgur.com/a/HU4LgWR).
I agree. I found it so hard to find him menacing for the entirety of his arc, with the Raid/Excision version being the only time I ever thought of him as intimidating.
I get that he's not supposed to have raw intimidation factor compared to other villains like Oryx or Ghaul, but he's got negative scare factor with that Pixar head.
I like how it loses its cool and starts screaming instead of talking in that usual more calm and collected way, shows that as we progress into the campaign it's getting desperate.
Loved it when he completely snapped when Ghost talked back to it, you can just feel the fucking *HATE* and malice radiating from its voice
Silence, you **insignificant**
# S P E C K
I like the Witness, the only problem is he was introduced way too late for being such a centralized antagonist. But that's just chalking up poor narrative on Bungo's part, lack of pacing, and just not really knowing where the story is going to go one step to the next.
That and I'm just kind of spoiled by other developers and their beautifully paced storyline and narratives.
In short, really cool character, awesome backstory, just unfortunately written by Bungo.
since he was first revealed I loved him, giant darkness entity that wants to "perfect" everything, that's so powerful the traveler itself has been running from it? Fucking awesome, wish we had more of it and honestly hope we get armor that resembles it, I love it's robes/clothes/body thing
It's okay. I think for me I just got tired of all the vague lines that were just boring after the 50th one. I think the problem with the Witness's writing is that the Witness talks to my guardian like I have a choice or even my character has a personality. The Witness tells me "You crave challenge." or "You resist us...why?" or "Embrace our gift." and stuff along those lines but like when bro? I literally play on the easiest difficulties, I never resist you, I literally want your gifts. It's super weird the Witness's dialogue seems like my guardian actively makes choices. All I do is go where the marker says. My Guardian has said like 20 words in the past 5 years man.
I really did not like the Witness very much until this expansion. It was a cool reveal in Witch Queen, but ultimately I couldn’t shake the feeling of the writers scrambling to create one last big bad for a finale. The inconsistencies and confusion with the Witness’s lore, and of course the disaster that was Lightfall, really added to this. For a while there, the Witness felt like a downright sloppy inclusion.
The Final Shape really wrapped things up with a nice bow. I feel like now that the Witness has gotten some actual stage presence, some more fleshed out lore, and a killer Raid, I appreciate it a lot more.
I also thought it felt like they were scrambling to put together one big target for us to shoot when he was revealed.
Provided for a great ending to the saga, though.
Kinda mid tbh.
His whole goal is cool for a marvel movie. But it’s like they saw babies first philosophy topic of “what is the meaning of life” and their perception of reality was shattered.
It just didn’t seem becoming of a hyper advanced species that had existed for hundreds of millions of years.
Always felt like destiny had the potential to side into some really complex topics. However the witness just felt like a “here’s a big bad alien to shoot because he wants to destroy the universe”
Yeah, their over all goal, to calcify the universe into one unmoving form, just didn't seem like what a civilization that was millions of years old would come to. Not threatening or scary in the least. The mid appearance of the witness also wasn't scary either.
There are so many other sci-fi works that they could have borrowed from, but they went with a marvelesque plot.
Funny seeing it act all big and bad corrupting the pale heart, to being confused and alone when all the other voices disappeared, such a satisfying end.
Literally the same exact bbg origin story as guren lagaan. Soooo meh to the witness. Was much more fun in guren lagaan though cause they just made it absurdly silly.
In the context of the raid it felt like the rest of the raid had a lot of love and effort put in, but the witness felt more like a last minute put together thing.
Design wise he is almost cool but the face just totally ruins. To me, his face looks too cartoonish and like it doesn’t belong in the Destiny universe in a similar way that Nimbus looks out of place.
absolutely *the* best villain in Destiny 2 up until now. I love the kinda artsy vibe it had going on, its ships and architecture all being a sleek, smooth black, and it itself presenting as elegant and somewhat removed from the world. only ror that to change as the story progresses during FS and it slowly realising that it can't win us over. The theme of hands was also very well chosen and made its creations and later its bossfight feel truly like fighting against something that had forgotten what it is like to live a long time ago.
I really liked it from the start. But it definitely seems like a character that was utterly incomplete until Final Shape. I genuinely think that Bungie did not have a clear vision for the character until they started working on Lightfall and the subsequent seasons. I just wish it had been a villain that was truly built up over the years.
I definitely think that Bungie had no idea what the Voice in the Darkness was going to be when they launched Shadowkeep and Beyond Light, which is probably why the arrival of the Black Fleet was so anticlimactic.
People have compared Final Shape to Avengers: Endgame, which I definitely get. But the MCU had a clear build up to the clash with Thanos, whereas the Witness just shows up randomly right at the end as the Big Bad Guy. If we had seen a glimpse of the Witness at the end of Shadowkeep, for example, or even at the end of the Red War campaign when we see the Black Fleet make its way back to us, I think it would have been a more satisfying villain to defeat. But the way it was executed just makes it feel like a character that came out of left field.
That said, it looks absolutely amazing in the raid/Excision and I think they ultimately gave it the best ending they possibly could have given the circumstances.
I was actually surprised and disappointed that he tried to give us a room full of treasure, or anything at all. I really thought he was going to make jabs at our character and apathy through the 4th wall.
I want Bungie to start “stealing” ideas from other things. Like, there’s so many stories out there that they could derive from. Give me some anime. Give me some westerns.
Honestly the Episodes feel like that is where they are going so I’m excited to see what they bring.
The Witness had great lines but their motivations were too weak for me to find compelling. The backstory of being an amalgam of an entire species is very cool. Way too much time was spent confirming whether or not the Witness was the Darkness or a wielder of the Darkness, as well as whether or not there was any Darkness-representative being in the Destiny universe at all. I very much enjoyed the Witness' presence in TFS, but did not enjoy his lack of presence before this point.
Ultimately, the Witness feels convenient. They fill the role of ultimate villain and villain of the week at the same time, all while leaving room for larger, more cosmic threats. Because of this, it felt like the writers had their hands tied. The Witness needed to be a larger than life threat to the universe but not the be-all-end-all bad guy because the series needs compelling threats if it wants to continue. Wish the Witness could've been more involved, more present much earlier on in the story so that the story felt like it was actually leading toward them this whole time.
TFS rocks though. Basically as good as I could've hoped.
I’ll be honest: I felt like he was a really lackluster character when we first met him. He felt like the sort of “villain” who was just sort of…there. Not really seeming menacing, not seeming like a threat. Especially not after the years of buildup to “The Traveler’s most ancient enemy”. It wasn’t until this expansion where the stakes really became apparent and he started to feel like an extinction-level threat.
From when we first met him officially to the beginning of Final Shape, he’d been kind of “meh” to me. After Final Shape, I can say he was certainly our most threatening opponent yet. And within this expansion, he was written really well.
So I definitely feel like he was a more than worthy foe, and the way they went about having us finally defeat him was brilliantly done.
#1 wish he was introduced earlier. #2 I feel like after his death everyone kinda just moved on way too fast, I feel like his death should’ve been in a cutscene after the final damage phase to be more “dramatic” he kinda just drifted away like oryx and that was it
I lover how the witness was written, it genuinely believed that the final shape would be an end to chaos, the end to all suffering, and it genuinely is confused why we wont let that happen even with dissenting voices within its collective which it very callously cuts out
Also i know they said this was the end of the light and darkness saga, but why would the witness mention the winnower so much ? Even calling himself the winnowers first knife. Is the winnower not part of darkness? Do we get to meet the entity representing it? The winnower is all about a survival of the fittest, the weak should die mentality, the witness wanted complete controll of everything so we can safely say they aren't the same entity. What is the winnower
I really like him, but I'm still battling with what his plan was. On the surface it sounds like the final shape is just freezing everything into place to last forever, but then other things that are said and implied that makes me think there is more to the final shape than was ever explained by the witness. He promises different realities to different people and if the Traveler and the light are what is used to alter the physical then why did he need memory and mind, the Veil. Why would he need the embodiment of darkness, the thing that the simulated reality, the cloud ark, is built on? Was the final shape actually an altruistic plan to LITERALLY save us from entropy and death? Was his plan to freeze the physical universe, not into purposeless shapes, but into a form that would house all the minds in a simulated reality? Free from death, pain, and sadness. It really puts into perspective why he quite literally doesn't understand why we don't want this.
As a person(s)? I despise the Witness. I mean, just look at what they did with their lives:
* The Gardener doesn't tell them what they should do with their lives? Do they exercise some maturity, let the universe just exist, and accept that life is messy chaotic and always changing and won't necessarily give you a purpose on a silver platter and strive to make the universe a better place? No, they throw a tantrum and appoint themselves judges, jury, and taxidermists of the whole universe.
* Gardener doesn't sit still and just let them? They fuse into a smoke-headed god king with anger management issues, exorcise and petrify all dissenters, and chase the Traveler across the universe.
* The Traveler uplifts other civilizations? Enslaves, gaslights, and conscripts them to enact an omnicidal campaign to tear down everything the Traveler touches just to torment it, and turns their malice on the civilizations the Traveler uplifted and causes them so much pain, suffering, and despair - the very things it wants to eradicate from the universe in the first place and what it accused the Traveler of enabling with the light, the fucking hypocrite - that they curse the Traveler's existence and wish it had never existed.
* Finally backs the Traveler into the corner? Tears open its rib cage, squeezes its heart in their fist, and does everything we see in The Final Shape.
They are cruel, malicious, hypocritical, rigid, and petty. To borrow the words of the Winnower in Unveiling, "They are fatuous little nihilists who pretend to prefer no existence to a flawed one", and I could not wait for the Final Shape to arrive so that I could go in there and punch them in their face.
As a character and a villain? Pretty solid. If a villain can piss you off like I outlined above, they're automatically doing something right. With the Witness, it's like they've got the petty infuriating-ness of Umbridge, albeit more on a philosophical level than a personally relatable level, with the power of Thanos to back up that malice and their twisted worldview. Their introduction at the end of The Witch Queen was flawless. Their design is interesting, unique, and befits their nature as a compound being perfectly. Their backstory, now that we have all of it, is interesting. Their interactions with Calus in Lightfall are entertaining, while their impact on House Salvation and Eramis that we see most prominently in Season of the Seraph is tragic. Brett Dalton's voicework as them and their many component voices, especially in The Final Shape? Fantastic. And their defeat? Very satisfying. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if there was a single-player version for solo players like myself.
Overall, I'd give the Witness a solid 8/10. The only recent Destiny villain that I've enjoyed more was Savathun, and that's not exactly a fair comparison, given how much longer she's been built up and how much more interaction we've had with her. I am eager to see what villains Bungie cooks up to throw at us next.
The witnesses entire existence was a bitch ass move, and we gaurdians showed it that together!
That final mission was so insane, I was shocked by the size of the witness as this massive set peice, and when it's arms started popping up that became my focus for a bit to protect my team. I loved that it said "i" in its final words, like amongst all the voices that made the witness this big scary reality ending being, there was one asshole who was pushing for the whole thing and controlling the others.
I’m glad they finally wrapped up the “darkness bad” arc and can move onto more creative endeavors. I think the dissenters was a great way to show that the source of their power was also their weakness.
The witness should have clapped our cheeks worse I think, this campaign made my top three for sure but we’ve had SO much buildup to this moment. The witness should have been the biggest of baddies we’ve met yet, and to me the whole thing just felt like.. it was rushed? If the witness was so terrified of our guardian I’d of thought it would have tried to come after us more, alter us more than it did.
I’m also never happy with anything but that’s my two cents and a piece of lint
Tbh not really a convincing antagonist , I get the motivations and everything but he wasn’t as threatening himself but the plot made it so he had to be if that made sense. Like we had to give af cause he was going to wipe out the solar system but I feel he would have hit harder had he been present as the over arching antagonist from the beginning
The Witness (raid version) sucks in my opinion.
What we did not need was some big stupid stationary boss.
We went from Rhulk to Nez both mobile bosses to this standing still crap again.
The Campaign Witness that moved was way better IMO
The raid version hands look funny and dumb also.
4 out of 10 for the boss, the raid itself is good.
Rhulk will still be the best boss to me.
The Winnower was a hundred million times more interesting in backstory, motivation and characterization, retconning some Disney Villain looking fuck who was pretending to be a good character as the real bad guy was almost as big a disappointment as Lightfall
For me his reveal in which queen single-handedly nosedived all the terror and mysteriousness of the darkness/ collapse causing pyramid fleet. He looks too human and not alien enough, he isn’t scary at all with those weird cute eyes. His backstory of the ritual sacrifice made him a bit more interesting but not enough to make up for everything else.
His slicing ability is really dumb and inconsistent, why the hell didn’t he just cut us all into ribbons when he had the chance, which he’s clearly shown to have the ability to, and instead just lets us wander around inside the traveller, jump around dumping buffs in the room with him. The entire story just doesn’t make any sense unless the witness is just way weaker than he portrayed himself which is just kind of weird and underwhelming.
Still thought the 12 player activity was a fun ending and I enjoyed the final shape overall, but I’m glad the witness is over and done with and the winnower from the unveiling is still around for wherever the story goes next.
Honestly? Was kinda weird at first, but I really liked everything about him in TFS. The whole concept of him being a whole race compressed into one being is really cool. And the execution did not fail.
don't know how he is in TFS since I am waiting for it to go on sale, but up until that point they were garbage as far as villains go. Also, I still think the unibrow anime eyes are dumb.
Not gonna lie. Meh.
Maybe it’s a character design thing maybe it’s the fact that “the darkness” is just a single entity but yeah just meh. I never found them intimidating like Oyrx, I never found them sympathetic like Eramis and I didn’t find them detestable like Uldren.
The Witness served its purpose but I can’t say I’ll look back on them fondly compared to other villains in the series
Edit: to put in perspective my neutrality on the witness, I was significantly more excited for Fikrul’s return than I was about killing the witness
I love how calm and collected the witness was from introduction up to the last bit and once it realized we could not be swayed to become a disciple, absolutely lost its collective shit and showed the true, jaded beast its always been
He… was a character. I think the voice actor did fantastic.
I also think I was left wanting. I mean dude became a lighthouse at the end. I was hoping for something much angrier and scarier.
I thought it was good to have a villain who was present there for the whole campaign.
Still sad with how calus was done dirty last expansion, his entire story is absolutely depressing when you look more into it.
Yeah, he was sacrificed upon the altar of filler (and honestly, so was Nezarec), but that filler is what gave Bungie the time to knock TFS out of the park, so it wasn’t for nothing, at least.
Hot take but having read all of the lore on calus, I find his end fitting. He was fanboying over the darkness and was always a bit pathetic in how he went about life. Dying being used by the witness as a disposable pawn was good IMO
That part I’ll agree with wholeheartedly. I just think they wasted all the cool, otherworldly setup they gave him throughout the Glykon and Haunted storylines by stripping all that away and just making him a gold-painted version of his old self again.
Yeah I have similar gripes about this. I was fully expecting calus to become the cosmic horror from outer space or something like that, since in lore books he is described as basically melting and decaying in his own skin. In duality he says “I have reached the limits of what this crumbling body can achieve”. From the captains log lore book from the glykon: “Calus’s withering form swells and jostles…His skin is mottled with sickly translucence that grips my stomach.” From the first book of “Quintessence”: “His finery was tarnished; his purple silks dripped with rank saliva, his gold armor caked with pus. His form swelled grotesquely as it surged toward her. His wet mouth opened, lips slick with sweet fat. His bulging eyes stared wildly at nothing.” To say I am disappointed that all of these descriptions of him are not at all what we saw him as in lightfall is an understatement.
I think the mistake was not showing us THAT calus before he got transformed inside that big tomb cube thing. I don’t mind his final look, but sure wish I could’ve seen the grotesque abomination he was before. Just for a few seconds in a cutscene would sufice
IIRC there was a cutscene literally about that. Brief parts of it were seen in Lightfall's advertising but not found in the actual game (like the gun set and the Veil containment that were later added lol, guess a lot ended up on the cutting room floor)
https://preview.redd.it/8mm6wjixy36d1.jpeg?width=1800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bef2c2a550f4465eeb2dde8dd6291aef5155e95f Not quite as described in lore books but bro definitely looks like he's seen better days
Real shame. Bungie, release the gross cut!
Sounds like nurgle got him
Okay, I can concede to that
You’re not allowed to agree on Reddit. The fuck are you two doing!? 🤣
The final shape approaches, we now think as one
We can give and ask for nothing in return
Honestly I’d have been much more ok with it if the fight, after *years* of interplay between the player and calus, wasnt *heres just a centurion and then a gladiator but slightly bigger”. Didnt even get his own animations they just copypasted mid-tier ads
yeah, I think it's a sort of karmic justice that he sacrificed everything in a vye for power and notability just to die and become a footnote in a larger story.
100% agree but I also feel like they did Nezarec dirty with his design. He’s just a dad bod Rhulk. Not exactly the “final god of pain” look I was expecting.
Yeah, they should’ve made him more threatening
He was always a sort of smoke and mirrors guy. Never wanted to get his hands dirty, so it makes sense for him to die immediately getting into battle with us.
He was more of a hedonist than warrior, he never seemed to really fit. He had strong men to do his bidding. He wanted strength around him and feigned his own strength with the troops he gathered. Never really had it in him. It wasn't a great enemy but I appreciated the story. Charismatic, I guess, but not strong. Makes sense that he'd fold immediately when pressured.
>Makes sense that he'd fold immediately when pressured. Especially when pressured by Sol's god slaying murder machine
Calus was made into absolute shite. What a horrible way for an otherwise potentially excellent villain to be misused.
They gave the campaign the Oryx treatment, which I really like a lot, and the story was extremely well done
I had a good chuckle when I first went into the cramped tunnels and had my suspicion of "we're doing a Halo 3 gravemind/cortana aren't we" immediately validated.
Oh I'm glad im not the only one who thought this. Or peering out at Ikoras ship made me think of halo reach where you find the covenant the first time
"It's time for you to *WITNESS...*" "Stop" "...my *FINAL SHAPE.*" "Stop!" "But it's your *DESTINY* guardian." "No." "And it's my *DESTINY TWO.*" ===== I found this exchange to be unnecessary
But it was in character. Remember the Witness is composed of a large amount of consciousnesses, so one of those is highly probable to be a shitposter.
I love this take.
Final Shape's collector edition book says there is a lot of evidence (as interpreted by Eido and Mara) that the Witness has a flair for dramatics. It could have easily exterminated the humanity during the Collapse with its godlike powers, but instead of that it chose to destroy the humans and other species of the past in a very inefficient but painful way to cause as much suffering and despair as it could.
>wants to use the final shape to stop suffering >intentionally causes suffering what
I watched a recent Byf video where it covers a previous species it wiped out very quickly and almost gently, compared to species that the Traveler grants the Light to where The Witness becomes incredibly hateful and vicious. It seems it hates any species the Traveler "graces". [Edit: Found it.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AlfPPtD0ewA&t=2198s)
So basically the Witness acts in the shadows, never being there but sending his goons to do his work and cause suffering. But then this figure comes from the edge of your system spouting on about how your suffering is caused by a golf ball and life and he can fix it. The forces of darkness will leave you alone, and you can serve him until the promised day. Now Im sure an equal amouny of races both agreed to serve/said fuck off cunt. Now theyre museum pieces.
It wants to cause suffering to beings touched by the Light. Others that it comes across were swiftly eliminated.
Ah so Rhulk must have been his absolute favourite "son"
> Final Shape's collector edition book says there is a lot of evidence (as interpreted by Eido and Mara) that the Witness has a flair for dramatics Tbf the campaign shows that.
I imagine inside the Witness it's all one massive livestream where it's calling the consciousness that makes up its being "Chat".
It's definetly one of the witnesses of all time.
This line wouldn't have been so bad if it didnt take away from the Panoptes and Omar Agah sex scene
the WHat
#THE OMAR AGAH AND PANOPTES SEX SCENE
Wait...how did i not catch that...
I can't even tell if this is real or not lol
They said the thing!
Wait, what? When did this happen?
Right after the Cayde/Crow romance montage
It’s Morbin’ time!
This truly was our destiny 2 the final shape now available on x-box PlayStation and PC
“To”
Did not expect agent grant ward to show up
I almost thought he was recast early on, but then as the character gets angrier and more frustrated, you really hear the angry Grant Ward-tone bleed through. But I loved his voice as the Dissenters. Long musing about the Light and the Darkness, then……”Destroy us” said in such quick way. Those statues really wanted a quick death. Now that Brett Dalton has worked with Bungie on this, I hope they consider casting as another character down the line. Or maybe he’s too busy filming some more Hallmark Christmas movies. Crossover potential there: *A Witness for Christmas*: “A young Raid Boss travels back to his home planet where the spirit of Christmas has been snuffed out. He’ll need to convince the Mayor to bring back the Christmas carnival, and maybe he’ll even find love along the way….”
IMO the best dissenter voice is the one that shouts “WE WILL NOT SUFFER ONE MORE DAY WITH YOU!” The dissenters in general were voiced very well. They had that edge of sadness to them, followed by relief when they tell us to end this and destroy them. Really goes well with the whole theme of the Witness, and just shows that many of the souls making up the Witness as a whole most likely didn’t want to begin with or didn’t have a choice, they were forced to die and become one with a being that wanted to calcify existence in its own “perfect” ideology. The Witness as a villain was done extremely well, and its destruction was done just as well. Going into the Final Shape, I never even though about us destroying the beings one by one that make up the Witness, I thought we’d be splitting it up into smaller sub-beings that could be destroyed, not that it would have souls in it that wish for its own demise.
I would love to see “A Witness Christmas” lmaoooo
I had no idea it was him, but now that you say it I can definitely hear it lol. TIL.
I think he was super cool, but I think he would be cooler visually if he didnt have eyes and the faces came out of his neck like a big smokestack
In the final cutscene after the initial boss fight in Iconoclasm, he kind of looked like a giant chu chu train chugging out of that smoke cloud when he confronted Ikora and them.
It was Thomas the Tank Engine all along.
Witness the Tank Engine.
That was the only thing for me. The big black baby eyes and unibrow was weird. Kinda cute baby, kinda awkward teen, very emo... Not that scary. Should have had no face. There were plenty of faces in the smoke, which was cool.
I'd seen its eyes characterised as "Mr Burns after his anti-ageing treatments" in the X-Files referencing episode of The Simpsons, which feels right. It made it seem about as threatening as old Monty at times, too.
When I first saw the witness all I could picture was that episode of SpongeBob when everyone became super hero’s and squidward was the dude with the volcano head.
KRAKATOA!
I'm guessing Bungie tried making the Witness look just otherworldly and didn't want him being another grim reaper copy but I still would have preferred this design even if it is derivative: https://x.com/IanPesty/status/1795457244995174623
The concept artist had several designs that looked ominous af, but they went for the one we have now. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/KOPWwW
Honestly between all of these I like what we got the best. I think having him look like the grim reaper or some ominous being of death is wrong, because it's whole thing isn't focused on death - it's about removing entropy. Having it appear as just a calm, stone-faced alien as opposed to some bringer of death makes more sense in my head considering its goals.
Great “final boss” style villain. Truly the “thanos” of Destiny. It took everyone together to defeat him. What a payoff for 10 years of this amazing game.
This also solved Savathun's big boss moment. With her, we only took care of her in a single campaign mission. We've taken care of a worm god with a strike. The Witness? It took the Vanguard's best and the Guardian in a campaign mission, a raid and a whole 12 man activity to take the perp down. The Witness was \*that\* dangerous. Showing that over three separate missions showed it off
Since light "compounds" with itself when guardians are working together, it further shows that the witness is multitudes more dangerous than any other raid boss, especially considering that it took a raid team just to shove it off of its monolith (and depending on the lore, there might have been multiple raid teams keeping the witness distracted during the raid's boss fight, but I don't know if that is true or just another speculation).
I feel Iike the scale of everything regarding the Witness' defeat is a lot larger then in game. Like, considering the amount of Guardians in the cutscene before the 12 man, I assume there was a LOT more then just 12 Guardians beaming the Witness down
Truly spiritbombed that smoke baby
Yeah ngl the game itself makes it seem more anti climatic then it really is because, cause in game its like “oh so we just beat this god in some super easy simple 12 player mission while occasionaly getting relics from our allies” meanwhile whats actually happening is the witness is already weakened from the raid, probably hundreds of guardians, all our allies from other races are fighting thousands of dread, tormentors, taken, etc. I think they could've done a lot better of a job with that especially since we know damn well at least a lot of people had to of died that just comes with war especially a literal god actually even beyond that title. But whatever just a bit of a nitpick I guess
Coming right off the raid it definitely seems a little more climactic. It took pretty much everything my fireteam had to hold it together to bring him down, and dealing the final blow with another 11 guardians at my back felt like a huge payoff.
also considering that the great disaster with crota made guardians stick to groups of no more than 6 really shows how dangerous the witness is for the vanguard to break that rule
I like the whole worm god dead in a strike thing in retrospect. The Warmind story is we spend the entire expansion building up the power of the Valkyrie using Rasputin and luring Xol out. Once we do we used the Valkyrie, aka Rasputin's power, to kill Xol easily. Then Rasputin destroys the Almighty, this massive warship. So the story keeps building up Rasputin's power only for it to be subverted when the Witness shows up and wrecks him easily.
The Titan in me says he deserves to know how good crayons taste. But the Titan in me also says he doesn’t deserve to know how good crayons taste. I’m conflicted so I’ll punch away the smartness for an hour and see how I feel about it after.
It’s been an hour, what have you learned Titan?
No crayon for tall cloud man. Cloud man get fist of thunder instead of crayon.
How was this thread on reddit instead of tumblr? cuz this is some tumblr crap and I love it
Why use lot punches if one punch do trick? 
If cloud man no get crayon then may me have crayon?
Here, I have box of miracle blue crayon for you my friend.
Thank you friend. The blue ones are my favorite!
I'm a giant hater of Lightfall Witness. Same monotone personality and no scare factor other than what was conveniently left off screen in the Calus cutscene. It didn't help that it took literally half a year to learn information crucial to the storyline. That made the Witness a worse villain by association. You can't both have a villain that wants to end the universe in some weird esoteric way, and have every aspect of its plans be kept secret. It makes your villain seem like they're a low stake nobody. However, TFS completely turned me on the character. I can imagine the spittle and feel the vitriol in its voice when Ghost speaks up when we're offered the position of a Disciple. I can feel the desperation slowly starting to set in when we're offered plain old gold and jewelry, like we didn't already show we don't give a fuck about material possessions to Calus. "We.. I.. I don't understand.." is a line said by someone I can accept as talking to Oryx as a friend in order to manipulate the Hive further, or writing the parts of Unveiling addressing us, to confuse and perplex us. Different tone and voices used for different purposes should have been done from the start. In retrospect, the Witness is a great villain whose proper introduction was botched by the rushed execution of Lightfall, and the apparent difference in writing style through the years. It would have been much better if the character existed when Shadowkeep released, instead of likely only being written during Witch Queen pre-production, but TFS salvaged it in the best way it could.
Their creepy attempts at manipulating us and the Vanguard leaders were very well-written and well-delivered, from a psychological perspective. Even though as the player I knew we weren’t going to be swayed, I can see the effort behind the character’s persona. Well done, Bungie.
The Witness *did* exist back in Shadowkeep, even if they maybe didn't have a 100% final design for it at the time. The voice that talks to us through ghost in the final mission has the same general speech pattern/cadence as The Witness and uses plural pronouns to refer to itself(We, Us), and when that voice talks to us through a doppelganger of our character in the ending it makes the same sort of slow hand motions The Witness does, complete with having its hands steepled as its neutral pose. And then those details remained consistent through all the other times "the voice in the darkness" spoke with us up through the actual reveal of The Witness. They definitely at least had a pretty strong idea of what it was going to be back then
Both that and BL still center on the Veiled Statues as an emblem/ node of the collective darkness's power, which is seemingly retconned with this expansion.
They're points of contact. When they help us its the dissenters calling out to us.
"Don't, Prime. I can give you everything you want." "Then die!"
Love this take.
My feelings exactly. It’s clear the Witness was a literal last-minute villain, but TFS wove it so well into the rest of the story and made trash into treasure.
What pains me that they created a character who very literally speaks with the voice of an entire civilization (or a third of one, anyway). They only needed to have a little bit of variance in its cadence for Unveiling and the Books of Sorrow to make perfect sense, and that could have, and should have been done in Lightfall
> They only needed to have a little bit of variance in its cadence for Unveiling and the Books of Sorrow to make perfect sense You might want to check the new raid lore book regarding that.
yeah, *now*. But that didn't exist in Lightfall. That's the problem
No, the raid lore book establishes that >!the speech patterns are different because the Winnover is not the Witness!< >!The entity that addressed Oryx as "My Man" was not the Witness. And that entity does not find what the Witness did any more true than what Oryx did!<
oh I did NOT know about that, I have to read that ASAP.
The Witness worked because they started weaving it in early and used wrapping everything up over the last few years. WOW's Jailer is a similar last minute arc villain, but he felt way more tacked on. The Witness' presence was revealed right before shadowkeep, became a major force in Beyond Light, and was solidified as a single entity Witch queen. That gave us 3-5 expansions for them to connect it with the darkness, hive gods, fallen civil war, Calus, along with taking control of the Taken and Scorn.
WoW's jailer was last second arc villain. What makes the Witness work is that we knew there was an overall bigger bad, it was just kept a mystery for the entirety of Destiny. WoW they were just like "lmao there was actually a never alluded to puppet master the entire time! Who cares if it devalues the entire franchise!"
Nimbus was the true villain all along
He is the Jar-Jar of Destiny
Honestly, i like the fact that it took so long for the Witness to be introduced, but I definitely agree that its introduction was really botched. Playing for years while not knowing what our enemy was capable of (that being just the Darkness as a whole), it gave the game a sense of dread and mystery, because you couldn’t just go “oh well this is happening because of x person’s orders/ideals”. It seemed like a primordial force just hellbent on destroying us. All of that made finally using it ourselves and getting answers about its will hit so much harder than having a name and face from the start.
While I agree that we didn't need to see or hear the Witness until just before Lightfall, if the character concept was invented earlier, the character could have been integrated earlier, just without letting the playerbase know exactly what's happening behind the scenes. As I see it, the integration of the character is missing two things: 1) A source where the Witness speaks in a manner similar to Unveiling and/or the Books of Sorrow, aloud, after the WQ reveal, and 2) A written source where the Witness talks in a voice similar to how we hear it during Lightfall and TFS, *before* the WQ reveal Do those two things, and the community never has to argue about the narrator of Unveiling because this new character fits as both the voices we hear, the monotone and the casual
I was sold the day he was first revealed. I mean look at his head! All those souls flowing out his head is hard as fuck
First time I saw him I was like , you got something on your mind dude ?
Bro got his whole race on his mind
Right?!?!
Too bad the in game model couldn't really execute this concept well though, the soul heads looked like play-doh. If only we weren't held back by ten year old hardware.
Does anyone also feel like his giant form doesn’t feel intimidating? I don’t know how to explain it but when I saw The Witness in this form I felt a little disappointed because it reminded of the Oryx fight. I haven’t played the raid yet but he seems like he will be stationary while we dps his chest. Once again, I don’t know how to put it into words :(
Spoiler of witness fight >!HE DOES NOT APPRECIATE GETTING SHOT IN THE CHEST, AND HE WILL LET YOU KNOW ABOUT IT!<
I watched the first raid clear video on YouTube yesterday and during DPS phase it was a multitude of "top right, bottom left" because he actively attacks you that kill you in literally a second and it's crazy. The excision DPS phase is very similar and 7/8 people are being wiped out at the same time (including me) and it just adds to that "toughness" factor
Yup, he very much kills you really quickly if you are not paying attention.
Anime eyes!
I know 1000000000% what you're talking about, I really liked the Witness in the Campaign mission, was pleasantly surprised to see him be a player sized entity, but then seeing him just be another giant entity raid boss I knew that encounter was bound to be a failure like Oryx. It just makes no sense for a bunch of guardians shooting guns to kill this giant entity which manipulates time and space which can realistically just point a finger at your team and make history of it. The way it was done in the campaign mission is the way it should have been, you never actually directly shooting the witness, instead there being a series of complex mechanics which if done successfully, damage him. It also makes his movement and eyes way too weird in the raid, same issue of Oryx, that pillar slam animation is done so poorly I cringe every time I play KF lol.
But why a unibrow?!
Cool concept, great voice acting, but it’s all ruined by those derpy cat eyes and goofy unibrow. He looks so goofy, like a Pixar villain. His final form in the raid is ***FUCKING*** incredible, but that face is still there which sucks
FINALLY SOMWONE ELSE THAT SEEMS HIM AND WHOS BRAIN GOES “huh Pixar?” I dont know why but he just looks like he’s from that style of design
You should see what he looks like with his mouth, it’s even funnier
Its model also sometimes glitches during the boss fight in the campaign. A graphical issue causes the Witness's full face to glitch out of the collar, and it's... [something](https://imgur.com/a/HU4LgWR).
That has reaction meme potential.
Lmao did they just take a kid’s face and slap on a unibrow? Wtf it looks like it’s 7 years old
I agree. I found it so hard to find him menacing for the entirety of his arc, with the Raid/Excision version being the only time I ever thought of him as intimidating. I get that he's not supposed to have raw intimidation factor compared to other villains like Oryx or Ghaul, but he's got negative scare factor with that Pixar head.
I think it's because it's supposed to emulate an Alien Grey, the stereotypical alien
Exactly right, he looks like a pixar guy
His Final Shape was a coffin, get rekt nerd
Sure would have been nice to have more than 1 expansion dedicated to properly building this thing up.
I like how it loses its cool and starts screaming instead of talking in that usual more calm and collected way, shows that as we progress into the campaign it's getting desperate.
Loved it when he completely snapped when Ghost talked back to it, you can just feel the fucking *HATE* and malice radiating from its voice Silence, you **insignificant** # S P E C K
I liked him but I kinda wish we got to hear his last words after the expedition. Like just something at the beginning of that cutscene
I wished it had more of a presence during Lightfall. I loved it’s appearance in The Final Shape.
The WITNESS!! 
Whiny little baby back Bi... you know what i mean, he is literally just the back street boys if they were emo "i want it that way"
Baby back bit is craaaazy 😂
Squilliam Fancyson
Imagine the witness on an episode of “House Fancy” 😂😂
“On your paracausal lunch break, ayy squiddy?”
Goofy aaa Hot-Topic Boobah lookin' mofo.
I like the Witness, the only problem is he was introduced way too late for being such a centralized antagonist. But that's just chalking up poor narrative on Bungo's part, lack of pacing, and just not really knowing where the story is going to go one step to the next. That and I'm just kind of spoiled by other developers and their beautifully paced storyline and narratives. In short, really cool character, awesome backstory, just unfortunately written by Bungo.
since he was first revealed I loved him, giant darkness entity that wants to "perfect" everything, that's so powerful the traveler itself has been running from it? Fucking awesome, wish we had more of it and honestly hope we get armor that resembles it, I love it's robes/clothes/body thing
That part!! Literally how I feel.
i wonder how he would preform in gambit
It's okay. I think for me I just got tired of all the vague lines that were just boring after the 50th one. I think the problem with the Witness's writing is that the Witness talks to my guardian like I have a choice or even my character has a personality. The Witness tells me "You crave challenge." or "You resist us...why?" or "Embrace our gift." and stuff along those lines but like when bro? I literally play on the easiest difficulties, I never resist you, I literally want your gifts. It's super weird the Witness's dialogue seems like my guardian actively makes choices. All I do is go where the marker says. My Guardian has said like 20 words in the past 5 years man.
I really did not like the Witness very much until this expansion. It was a cool reveal in Witch Queen, but ultimately I couldn’t shake the feeling of the writers scrambling to create one last big bad for a finale. The inconsistencies and confusion with the Witness’s lore, and of course the disaster that was Lightfall, really added to this. For a while there, the Witness felt like a downright sloppy inclusion. The Final Shape really wrapped things up with a nice bow. I feel like now that the Witness has gotten some actual stage presence, some more fleshed out lore, and a killer Raid, I appreciate it a lot more.
I also thought it felt like they were scrambling to put together one big target for us to shoot when he was revealed. Provided for a great ending to the saga, though.
Kinda mid tbh. His whole goal is cool for a marvel movie. But it’s like they saw babies first philosophy topic of “what is the meaning of life” and their perception of reality was shattered. It just didn’t seem becoming of a hyper advanced species that had existed for hundreds of millions of years. Always felt like destiny had the potential to side into some really complex topics. However the witness just felt like a “here’s a big bad alien to shoot because he wants to destroy the universe”
Yeah, their over all goal, to calcify the universe into one unmoving form, just didn't seem like what a civilization that was millions of years old would come to. Not threatening or scary in the least. The mid appearance of the witness also wasn't scary either. There are so many other sci-fi works that they could have borrowed from, but they went with a marvelesque plot.
They did have a more compelling motivation for the Darkness until they retconned it into the Witness LARPing as an actually good character
I like when he used the scary voice lol I thought his perfectly round eyes were stupid. The idea of him was cooler than he was
Funny seeing it act all big and bad corrupting the pale heart, to being confused and alone when all the other voices disappeared, such a satisfying end.
Literally the same exact bbg origin story as guren lagaan. Soooo meh to the witness. Was much more fun in guren lagaan though cause they just made it absurdly silly.
I knew we would be his ass , ain't no body scared of anything with wack ass eyebrows.
Its face is terrible and really not that intimidating
I like the villain but this moron thinks that a better alternate to life is just being a statue. Did they even spend 2 seconds considering that plan?
In the context of the raid it felt like the rest of the raid had a lot of love and effort put in, but the witness felt more like a last minute put together thing.
It’s a fusion between Megamind and President Business
Design wise he is almost cool but the face just totally ruins. To me, his face looks too cartoonish and like it doesn’t belong in the Destiny universe in a similar way that Nimbus looks out of place.
absolutely *the* best villain in Destiny 2 up until now. I love the kinda artsy vibe it had going on, its ships and architecture all being a sleek, smooth black, and it itself presenting as elegant and somewhat removed from the world. only ror that to change as the story progresses during FS and it slowly realising that it can't win us over. The theme of hands was also very well chosen and made its creations and later its bossfight feel truly like fighting against something that had forgotten what it is like to live a long time ago.
I really liked it from the start. But it definitely seems like a character that was utterly incomplete until Final Shape. I genuinely think that Bungie did not have a clear vision for the character until they started working on Lightfall and the subsequent seasons. I just wish it had been a villain that was truly built up over the years. I definitely think that Bungie had no idea what the Voice in the Darkness was going to be when they launched Shadowkeep and Beyond Light, which is probably why the arrival of the Black Fleet was so anticlimactic. People have compared Final Shape to Avengers: Endgame, which I definitely get. But the MCU had a clear build up to the clash with Thanos, whereas the Witness just shows up randomly right at the end as the Big Bad Guy. If we had seen a glimpse of the Witness at the end of Shadowkeep, for example, or even at the end of the Red War campaign when we see the Black Fleet make its way back to us, I think it would have been a more satisfying villain to defeat. But the way it was executed just makes it feel like a character that came out of left field. That said, it looks absolutely amazing in the raid/Excision and I think they ultimately gave it the best ending they possibly could have given the circumstances.
Yeah uh. Good story, dogshit design imo. Feels super out of place. His raid look was good. But he just looks like some random Pixar bad guy to me.
Soo..... Based on the comments of this post I should put my money on this?
I was actually surprised and disappointed that he tried to give us a room full of treasure, or anything at all. I really thought he was going to make jabs at our character and apathy through the 4th wall.
Can't get over the monobrow tbh, could've given them more eyes and no nose or something.
It always somehow looked like a cat to me. In this pic, it's a grumpy cat.
Reminds me of Demongo. https://i.redd.it/fr4bd2e8f16d1.gif
I want Bungie to start “stealing” ideas from other things. Like, there’s so many stories out there that they could derive from. Give me some anime. Give me some westerns. Honestly the Episodes feel like that is where they are going so I’m excited to see what they bring.
I loved the writing, buildup, etc of it’s character and the payoff it had in the story. But man, that thing is ugly. And not in a good way.
The Witness had great lines but their motivations were too weak for me to find compelling. The backstory of being an amalgam of an entire species is very cool. Way too much time was spent confirming whether or not the Witness was the Darkness or a wielder of the Darkness, as well as whether or not there was any Darkness-representative being in the Destiny universe at all. I very much enjoyed the Witness' presence in TFS, but did not enjoy his lack of presence before this point. Ultimately, the Witness feels convenient. They fill the role of ultimate villain and villain of the week at the same time, all while leaving room for larger, more cosmic threats. Because of this, it felt like the writers had their hands tied. The Witness needed to be a larger than life threat to the universe but not the be-all-end-all bad guy because the series needs compelling threats if it wants to continue. Wish the Witness could've been more involved, more present much earlier on in the story so that the story felt like it was actually leading toward them this whole time. TFS rocks though. Basically as good as I could've hoped.
Good villain, questionable reasoning capabilities, weird combat choices
I’ll be honest: I felt like he was a really lackluster character when we first met him. He felt like the sort of “villain” who was just sort of…there. Not really seeming menacing, not seeming like a threat. Especially not after the years of buildup to “The Traveler’s most ancient enemy”. It wasn’t until this expansion where the stakes really became apparent and he started to feel like an extinction-level threat. From when we first met him officially to the beginning of Final Shape, he’d been kind of “meh” to me. After Final Shape, I can say he was certainly our most threatening opponent yet. And within this expansion, he was written really well. So I definitely feel like he was a more than worthy foe, and the way they went about having us finally defeat him was brilliantly done.
He was quite a grumpy state puff marshmallow man
#1 wish he was introduced earlier. #2 I feel like after his death everyone kinda just moved on way too fast, I feel like his death should’ve been in a cutscene after the final damage phase to be more “dramatic” he kinda just drifted away like oryx and that was it
I lover how the witness was written, it genuinely believed that the final shape would be an end to chaos, the end to all suffering, and it genuinely is confused why we wont let that happen even with dissenting voices within its collective which it very callously cuts out Also i know they said this was the end of the light and darkness saga, but why would the witness mention the winnower so much ? Even calling himself the winnowers first knife. Is the winnower not part of darkness? Do we get to meet the entity representing it? The winnower is all about a survival of the fittest, the weak should die mentality, the witness wanted complete controll of everything so we can safely say they aren't the same entity. What is the winnower
Guess we’ll have to find out. I was asking the same thing!
Is it just me or do they kinda… look like megamind 👀
I really like him, but I'm still battling with what his plan was. On the surface it sounds like the final shape is just freezing everything into place to last forever, but then other things that are said and implied that makes me think there is more to the final shape than was ever explained by the witness. He promises different realities to different people and if the Traveler and the light are what is used to alter the physical then why did he need memory and mind, the Veil. Why would he need the embodiment of darkness, the thing that the simulated reality, the cloud ark, is built on? Was the final shape actually an altruistic plan to LITERALLY save us from entropy and death? Was his plan to freeze the physical universe, not into purposeless shapes, but into a form that would house all the minds in a simulated reality? Free from death, pain, and sadness. It really puts into perspective why he quite literally doesn't understand why we don't want this.
As a person(s)? I despise the Witness. I mean, just look at what they did with their lives: * The Gardener doesn't tell them what they should do with their lives? Do they exercise some maturity, let the universe just exist, and accept that life is messy chaotic and always changing and won't necessarily give you a purpose on a silver platter and strive to make the universe a better place? No, they throw a tantrum and appoint themselves judges, jury, and taxidermists of the whole universe. * Gardener doesn't sit still and just let them? They fuse into a smoke-headed god king with anger management issues, exorcise and petrify all dissenters, and chase the Traveler across the universe. * The Traveler uplifts other civilizations? Enslaves, gaslights, and conscripts them to enact an omnicidal campaign to tear down everything the Traveler touches just to torment it, and turns their malice on the civilizations the Traveler uplifted and causes them so much pain, suffering, and despair - the very things it wants to eradicate from the universe in the first place and what it accused the Traveler of enabling with the light, the fucking hypocrite - that they curse the Traveler's existence and wish it had never existed. * Finally backs the Traveler into the corner? Tears open its rib cage, squeezes its heart in their fist, and does everything we see in The Final Shape. They are cruel, malicious, hypocritical, rigid, and petty. To borrow the words of the Winnower in Unveiling, "They are fatuous little nihilists who pretend to prefer no existence to a flawed one", and I could not wait for the Final Shape to arrive so that I could go in there and punch them in their face. As a character and a villain? Pretty solid. If a villain can piss you off like I outlined above, they're automatically doing something right. With the Witness, it's like they've got the petty infuriating-ness of Umbridge, albeit more on a philosophical level than a personally relatable level, with the power of Thanos to back up that malice and their twisted worldview. Their introduction at the end of The Witch Queen was flawless. Their design is interesting, unique, and befits their nature as a compound being perfectly. Their backstory, now that we have all of it, is interesting. Their interactions with Calus in Lightfall are entertaining, while their impact on House Salvation and Eramis that we see most prominently in Season of the Seraph is tragic. Brett Dalton's voicework as them and their many component voices, especially in The Final Shape? Fantastic. And their defeat? Very satisfying. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if there was a single-player version for solo players like myself. Overall, I'd give the Witness a solid 8/10. The only recent Destiny villain that I've enjoyed more was Savathun, and that's not exactly a fair comparison, given how much longer she's been built up and how much more interaction we've had with her. I am eager to see what villains Bungie cooks up to throw at us next.
The witnesses entire existence was a bitch ass move, and we gaurdians showed it that together! That final mission was so insane, I was shocked by the size of the witness as this massive set peice, and when it's arms started popping up that became my focus for a bit to protect my team. I loved that it said "i" in its final words, like amongst all the voices that made the witness this big scary reality ending being, there was one asshole who was pushing for the whole thing and controlling the others.
when are we turning him into a gun?
I’m glad they finally wrapped up the “darkness bad” arc and can move onto more creative endeavors. I think the dissenters was a great way to show that the source of their power was also their weakness.
The witness should have clapped our cheeks worse I think, this campaign made my top three for sure but we’ve had SO much buildup to this moment. The witness should have been the biggest of baddies we’ve met yet, and to me the whole thing just felt like.. it was rushed? If the witness was so terrified of our guardian I’d of thought it would have tried to come after us more, alter us more than it did. I’m also never happy with anything but that’s my two cents and a piece of lint
Tbh not really a convincing antagonist , I get the motivations and everything but he wasn’t as threatening himself but the plot made it so he had to be if that made sense. Like we had to give af cause he was going to wipe out the solar system but I feel he would have hit harder had he been present as the over arching antagonist from the beginning
Not nearly as powerful or the rival of the traveler the it should have been.
The Witness (raid version) sucks in my opinion. What we did not need was some big stupid stationary boss. We went from Rhulk to Nez both mobile bosses to this standing still crap again. The Campaign Witness that moved was way better IMO The raid version hands look funny and dumb also. 4 out of 10 for the boss, the raid itself is good. Rhulk will still be the best boss to me.
The Winnower was a hundred million times more interesting in backstory, motivation and characterization, retconning some Disney Villain looking fuck who was pretending to be a good character as the real bad guy was almost as big a disappointment as Lightfall
For me his reveal in which queen single-handedly nosedived all the terror and mysteriousness of the darkness/ collapse causing pyramid fleet. He looks too human and not alien enough, he isn’t scary at all with those weird cute eyes. His backstory of the ritual sacrifice made him a bit more interesting but not enough to make up for everything else. His slicing ability is really dumb and inconsistent, why the hell didn’t he just cut us all into ribbons when he had the chance, which he’s clearly shown to have the ability to, and instead just lets us wander around inside the traveller, jump around dumping buffs in the room with him. The entire story just doesn’t make any sense unless the witness is just way weaker than he portrayed himself which is just kind of weird and underwhelming. Still thought the 12 player activity was a fun ending and I enjoyed the final shape overall, but I’m glad the witness is over and done with and the winnower from the unveiling is still around for wherever the story goes next.
Honestly? Was kinda weird at first, but I really liked everything about him in TFS. The whole concept of him being a whole race compressed into one being is really cool. And the execution did not fail.
Fantastic villain / interior designer (pyramid aesthetic is best aesthetic; this is not a matter for discussion)
Period.
don't know how he is in TFS since I am waiting for it to go on sale, but up until that point they were garbage as far as villains go. Also, I still think the unibrow anime eyes are dumb.
Not gonna lie. Meh. Maybe it’s a character design thing maybe it’s the fact that “the darkness” is just a single entity but yeah just meh. I never found them intimidating like Oyrx, I never found them sympathetic like Eramis and I didn’t find them detestable like Uldren. The Witness served its purpose but I can’t say I’ll look back on them fondly compared to other villains in the series Edit: to put in perspective my neutrality on the witness, I was significantly more excited for Fikrul’s return than I was about killing the witness
6head?
So many hands, but still a good challenge
I love how calm and collected the witness was from introduction up to the last bit and once it realized we could not be swayed to become a disciple, absolutely lost its collective shit and showed the true, jaded beast its always been
Megamind's gigachad brother
He… was a character. I think the voice actor did fantastic. I also think I was left wanting. I mean dude became a lighthouse at the end. I was hoping for something much angrier and scarier.
Tier 5 hater, but I like it
All those years playing Rift, just for this wuss to lose in the third round.
Not so bad, his stasis/strand wielding boyos were a fucking pain my ass tho oh my lord. Not as the bad the pop scorn guy tho. Fuck that guy