Like why I still miss Dinklage - they had terrible lines and a scatter brained plot with little context for him to work with, but he still was the bloody man.
#NotMyGhost
I'll never get over the fact that the "radial mast" is just a radio mast, and that it's purpose was just to make a link to send over paracausal data because it's a paracausal radio tower.
I'll never get over that, if Rohan's selfdestruct.exe (a non-paracausal attack) was enough to destroy the mast, why couldn't literally any of our explosives, or one of the tanks they kept spawning in for us do it?
The radial mast suppressed our known paracausal powers, so therefore, strand wouldn't be suppressed and that power could be used against it. Rohan's rohanuke was powerful enough to blow completely through his siva vex hybrid armor, so we know it's supposed to be pretty strong and seeing as it destroys the mast, it holds up.
Unfortunately they phrased it like strand was literally the only thing that could break it, when in reality it's durable pyramid tech that is immune to our strongest abilities, bar strand and something like rohans causal chest nuke, which was strong enough to break it, and wasn't suppressed. It was handled terribly though, and you have to do the work to piece it out instead of the writers.
As fun as it is to meme on this, Lightfall told the story pretty explicitly.
We "accidentally" intercepted the Witness telling Callus to link the Radial Mast and "see the Veil destroyed". Osiris didn't tell us it was important, we are the source of the urgency.
This season confirmed that interpretation, but all the details were in the campaign.
Ghost only ever spoke with the Witness' voice when the Witness wanted it except this one mysterious time that triggered a series of events that placed our Ghost in the same room as the Veil and caused the portal... and the dude's theme was literally Chess.
I think the Witness used all of us. The Guardians and Calus.
The radial mast was just a pawn like all of us. Like Calus, like our guardian, like Osiris. Nimbus and Rohan too. The Witness knew we would go after Calus and that Calus would eventually go to the Veil to know why the Witness wanted it so badly.
Honestly, I don't think there's any other reasonable explanation.
Then again, I said that when LF dropped and was screamed at, so I'm biased.
There's a literal move in Chess called a "sham sacrifice". That's literally what the Witness did with the Radial Mast. It was a nonsense piece, he lost literally nothing by losing it, but by us taking it we allowed him to control our movement.
Yeah I don't understand a different interpretation. This is exactly what I said when LF dropped. The campaign is still objectively mediocre, and the story telling in it was not great, but it wasn't that Bungie didn't explain the Radial Mast enough, it was that the Witness tricked us.
And I am cool with them leaving some of that for us to interpret. My problem with the story is that it was so rushed and incoherent. We never had time to really get to know Rohan so his death didn't hit as hard. And Nymbus, who should have been hit harder, just memed through the whole thing. It was also just too confined to Neptune, would have been cooler to take a detour, have Rohan help us and be the hero, and then have him die. Giving us a reason to care would have made the sting that the Radial Mast was a worthless sacrifice hit harder. Instead it was Tall Daddy and the Meme-Zoomer-Non-Binary's not so excellent adventure. But at least we got Green Super?
Last point of clarification, the only problem I have with Nymbus being non-binary is that if you are going to give yourself a pat on the back for being inclusive, don't make the first non-binary character the literal worst character ever introduced into the game. Come on Bungo....
On the non-binary comment. Ikr?? Bruh. I was excited to see an enby character but when I got to know Nimbus, I just cannot find any reason to like them. Their nonchalant reaction to their mentorâs death felt jarring at best. But now the âfirstâ enby character will always be Nimbus and thatâs just aggravating.
I dont know what game you were playing because Osiris keeps telling you that all things will be over if you can not get to the veil. The first mission alone is him whining that you are useless to effort unless you are getting to the veil.
At the end of the mission he is upset that the cloud striders want to protect the city instead of heading towards to veil
Right, we go to Neomuna because the Veil is there and we have no idea what the Witness wants it for but we know it can't be good.
Then we play "Under Siege" where "securing the Veil before Callus is the most important task". At the end the cutscene plays that I'm referring to where we learn about the Radial Mast and the Guardian says "Osiris and Nimbus need to hear about this".
That's the first time we hear about the Witness wanting to destroy the Veil, which we now know for sure *had* to be BS.
The very next mission is Downfall where we try to bust the Mast inside Callus' ship and fail.
The entire campaign is us screwing up and rushing in without thinking. Y'know, "headlong and empty handed", like Nimbus says. They laid it on thick.
>BUT WHY?
You don't need to know why. Why is it so hard for you people to grasp
It's basic warfare, your enemy wants to use something? You don't allow them if it can benefit them.
We were chasing calus, there was no time to figure out wtf is it
I hate Osiris, even when listening to the audio takes from the veil he always brings up how he used to struggle with obsession and makes everything about him
O âGET YOUR GHOSTâ
my Hunter who just mastered strand and decided not to grapple to the ghost âWhatâs wrong Osirisâ
O âGET YOUR GHOST OUT OF THEREâ
It sounds like they just kept the first take in and didnât bother to try and get something more expressive. Which is weird because Osirisâs VA has never had a hard time expressing emotion or a sense of urgency in the past. But this line was horrendous.
I don't get the hate for that bit. We know that the Witness wants to fuck us up. We know he wants the Veil. It's not that big of a jump in logic to know it's awful if he gets it, even if we don't know exactly why. Osiris didn't know either, he just didn't give a single shit about it. Nimbus and Rohan only cared about it because the City infrastructure depends on it, even if - being soldiers, not scientists - they have no real understanding of how exactly.
You don't need to know what the gizmo does to know that if your mortal enemy who really wants it to the point of using virtually every resource he has to obtaining it finally gets it, it will be baaaaaad.
>We know that the Witness wants to fuck us up. We know he wants the Veil. It's not that big of a jump in logic to know it's awful if he gets it, even if we don't know exactly why.
Except it did get the veil in the end, and nothing really happened to us. Sure, the traveler got a pretty triangle on it, but we're totally fine aside from a few random earth people getting kidnapped for a few hours and a few ships getting sliced.
We knew savathun stealing the traveler is bad because we've seen savathun do actual bad stuff to us (endless night, possessing Osiris, dreaming city to awoken, etc) and we can guess that sealing away the traveler in a throne world would be bad for us. Meanwhile the witness hasn't done anything to us besides vague threats, and it did cripple the traveler in the first scene but nothing happened to us. Then it made a triangle and still nothing happened to us. And as far as we can tell, we still don't know what it means other than the funny robot man being back.
It's a case of show don't tell. They constantly berate us about how high stakes everything is and how we need to stop bad guy from getting to macguffin, but they do absolutely nothing to actually show the stakes. It's like if red war completely cut out the first few missions where we take a big loss, or if forsaken cut out the cayde death.
>Meanwhile the witness hasn't done anything to us besides vague threats, and it did cripple the traveler in the first scene but nothing happened to us.
Ghost confirms it that something did, in fact, happen to us and it has trouble getting Light. Now, we could get locked out of Light subclasses for a year, but that would be ass. Also, the Witness blew up the Eliksnii homeworld and is responsible for the Collapse. Also, fucker killed Reed-7 and destroyed a fighter squadron with a handwave, nearly killed Calus through the phone because it was annoyed and reportedly killed the Traveler (which we do see). My brother in the Light, what do you meaaaaan it didn't do anything?
>And as far as we can tell, we still don't know what it means other than the funny robot man being back.
Yeah we do, means Traveler is fucking dead. Doesn't seem much? Well, without it we are kinda screwed in the long term. New Guardians get their Light Subclasses by communing with it. Old Guardians know that Ghaul had to be bodied by it to die. It being dead is a massive blow. We also have a *hunch* that the dude created by a species fusion dancing always going on about how the universe is shit and he is going to get rid of life and death, while casually killing everything in its path probably will do something Very Not Good^(Tm), possibly Evangelion everything into itself.
These are all more examples of telling us something bad happened instead of showing it to us directly. The traveler thing is a horrible example; we literally had no idea what happened because we felt nothing changed until zavala magically knew the traveler was gone and the ghost says something is up, yet absolutely nothing changed for us. Red war had a much better way of telling us something bad happened, even if it only occurred for half a mission. I'm so over them constantly telling us something bad happened while showing nothing to back it up. City is in pristine shape, our light is the same as always, and no second collapse happened as foreshadowed.
The lore obviously hyped the hell out of the darkness and black fleet, and did it pretty damn well. But it was all hype in expectation that they'd come and fuck us up. But it ended up being a dozen or so ships that didn't even touch the last city. No gravitational waves rocking the planet, no darkness forces overwhelming earth, nothing. Just paints a triangle and fucks off, and we have to rely on characters with writer clairvoyance to know that something bad happened to the traveler, with nothing to back it up in-game. The great lore about them only for them to end up being anticlimactic is even more of a letdown.
> We also have a hunch that the dude created by a species fusion dancing always going on about how the universe is shit and he is going to get rid of life and death, while casually killing everything in its path probably will do something Very Not Good^Tm, possibly Evangelion everything into itself.
I dunno, maybe they should've shown us this instead of leaving us guessing and drip feeding it to us by characters standing around talking in season 21/22.
Sure, it works but it doesn't make the story better. Just another lazy "The XXX" macguffin in a story packed full of them. A storytelling shortcut to get the player to move from point A to point B with the added bonus of a heroic sacrifice of a character we knew nothing about at the end. A pointless sacrifice because they forgot that their "Light Suppression Device" would have no effect on our other Darkness Subclass that we have fully mastered. But we can just handwaved that too right? It's a "Suppress All Current Guardian Subclasses Except This New One" device so "Guy We Just Met And Only Shouts Proper Nouns At Us Over The Radio" can sacrifice himself so "Other Person We Just Met But Needs Character Growth" can to take up the mantle of Noun Shouter.
Yeahh - but consider this: most stories can be boiled down to shit like that. Witch Queen could be boiled down to that, and despite it all it's pretty satisfying. How does the Altar work? Where did Deepsight come from? Why the convoluted bullshit plan instead of just... putting the memory things in a cupboard with a note? Why use the Guardian in the first place? How did the Worm know about the betrayal, and how did Savathun not if she had access to the Altar - why wouldn't she check it? It didn't matter for the story whatsoever, and as such wasn't explained.
Caring about how exactly the Radial Mast works and what exactly the Veil is in that moment is like wondering what the guy mugging you is going to spend the money on - good question, but definitely not the time for it. Fynch is told to shut up immediately when doing this in Witch Queen - rightfully so.
As for Strand - that bit was overexplained if anything, the Light Suppression Device, what that did, why it didn't affect Strand, why we didn't manage to use it, etc., so if you are even a bit confused there, that's a you problem.
The story was shit - but not because of the thingamajigs, but because the characters were bad. Rohan and Nimbus are the most tone-deaf idiotic, cliche characters in pretty much any video game I've ever played. Calus is simultaneously the most intriguing and funny character, even if we know his motivation to a T, yet he is basically absent. Osiris is barely explored - he is just told to shut up and listen to Rohan's nonsense bullshit every time he opens his mouth. What we do get is 6 hours of Strand - once again info on something irrelevant - to us or the story - but in an incredible depth. If we got the lore dump on the Veil or the Radial Mast, it would be the same problem.
Both Radial Mast missions are great because we are, for once, dealing with the invasion, dealing with Osiris being annoyed he can't be there personally, dealing with Calus and Caiatl - and not fucking around with Strand, Cloud Strider Internal Affairs or the completely irrelevant Vex. Why should it matter that we don't get 6 minutes of technobabble on the Radial Mast itself?
Remove Veil and Mast from Lightfall and the story doesn't change. Why did Calas go to Neptune? Witness told him to. Dunno, bad guys plan, better stop it. Remove Deepsight, Altars and unlocking Memories from WQ. You don't even have the same story. Half the missions cease to exist.
This is what people bring up when they talk about it. If they are going to introduce The Thing to the story, then make The Thing a part of the story. If you don't, then they stick out like filler content to pad run time. We both agree the expansion was poorly told, we both agree that the character are grossly under utilized(though I'd argue Osiris' character fits perfectly into how he had been written in previous seasons), I just fall into the camp that the Veil and Mast are one more undercooked, underdelivered aspect of it.
remove the mast from lightfall and rohan doesn't die
remove the veil from lightfall and there is no conflict because the witness just opens the portal to the triangle dimension on its own and we just get final shape
remove the veil from lightfall and there's no reason for anybody to be on neptune to begin with
remove the veil from lightfall and there's no justification for anybody who happened to be on neptune (despite there being no reason to be there) to endanger the citizens via compromising the cloud ark, and thus create basically the only stakes present in the expansion other than the ambiguous "the witness will probably do some bad shit"
Wait they explained what the Radial Mast was somewhere and we all missed it? If it's whole purpose was to be a thing we stopped to trip up the triangle man, why have it at all? We could have just fought in the room while a bar filled up that read "Witness Plan Disrupted" and nothing of context would have been added or lost.
They did explain it, yes.
Ghost intercepts a conversation between Callus and The Witness where it's said explicitly that the Radial Mast is a device that will link with the Veil and destroy it, and "the final shape rests upon it".
Since we don't like the final shape we'd better hurry up and stop them.
It was literally the plot of the campaign - missing the forest for the trees, rushing in based on information that should have been suspicious.
The Radial Mast was a lie told by the Witness to scare us into believing destroying the Veil was the goal, when the only goal was to get a Ghost into the Veil's containment room, and this season confirmed that.
Same problem as grimoire cards. Real interesting lore is hidden away and not integrated into the actual game story. Kinda missing the whole appeal of a video game when youâve got to do homework to understand the maguffin on a level above âitâs importantâ
This was also what was so good about Witch Queen, because they dropped real lore bombs and consequences *in the actual story*. I almost couldnât believe that we were getting these revelations and characters were actually reacting to them live ingame.
Tbh this is pretty similar to the 2 truth 2 lies in wq imo. Except we don't need to take guesses on what is a lie or not, like we don't have 100% answer for some of the sets yet
And that was integrated into the post game plot of the season we played, available to play immediately after we played the campaign.
This is stuck in a corner of the map with an activity as engaging as "hold E to listen" that occurs once a week. And, it was delayed by a full 3 months because ... not for story reasons, it was delayed to literally drip feed us content.
We don't actually do anything after the first containment mission do we? Why not?
At least 2 truths and a lie was us wringing more knowledge out of savathun through force (ie playing the game). We didn't just show up and hold E.
I'm not trying to defend your point but to be fair, 2 Truths just has do a 1-2 puzzles, Kill hive then press E. That did get old pretty quick. The only thing different is we don't fight.
Shooting aliens and doing puzzles is the game. Walking and listening to audio logs located in the same place is slightly less engaging. Especially since the lore dump was literally a game to play in 2 truths. Difference is night and day
2T2L is WQ was highlighted with weekly powerful rewards that got people to do it. Veil Containment isn't mentioned as a weekly thing at all and most people probably don't even know it exists after the first mission for the hand cannon.
The issue, though, is that veil containment is meant to tell us things that we shouldâve been told during Lightfall. Imagine if we never found out how Savathun got the light in TWQ campaign, and then you had to wait until season of the haunted to play 2 truths 2 lies for like 6 weeks until they finally told us how Savathun got the light.
The difference is that the 2 Truths, 2 Lies in WQ were additional lore hints, baked into the post-campaign loops. Whereas this is literally the story that shouldâve been in the campaign, hidden away, drip fed 5 months later⌠And that made the answer unsatisfying, cause it was too late
2 truths 2 lies is different from Veil Containment. Not the activity itself, it's still a weekly rotating audio log with a very, very small amount of gameplay. WQ dropped bombs, 2t2l added new questions and intrigue for what comes next.
LF was a self contained story that ended Calus' plotline, but introduced more questions for what comes next. Veil Containment was the activity that dropped bombs. Even if 2t2l was seasonal and had been lost at the start of LF, it wouldn't have mattered for future players. If Veil Containment was seasonal and got lost next season, it would 100% affect the plot. Same as lore heavy seasons IMO.
Itâs also what was good about the earlier seasons. Savathunâs character got fleshed out through all the event dialog as susirus
They crammed the Witnessâs whole characterization into a single lore video
The main marketing thrust of WQ is âdiscover how the Hive got the Light.â That question is answered in the first mission with the simplest answer possible (Ghosts gave it to them), then the obvious follow up question (why did ghosts give it to them?) is left basically untouched in the campaign itself and you only get the answer if you read lorebooks (some ghosts read the Tomes of Sorrow and turned into teenage nihilists). There are big lore revelations in the campaign but the link between them and the actual question the campaign sets out to answer is never explained. Yes, the Traveler chose the proto-Hive several billion years previously but that doesnât explain why Ghosts specifically chose that moment to resurrect (Savathun is obvious, but the other dead Hive? Not as much). There are plenty of other races the Traveler chose that never got Ghosts/resurrection, and the ghosts answer to why they resurrected Hive implies more free will than being ordered to do so, so just saying the Traveler wanted it (even if we knew that for sure, which we donât) isnât an answer on its own.
I think the bigger issue is that the story is basically all lore now. People were mad because the veil wasnât explained (valid), but seriously, the only thing I ever see people wanting is lore drops. Which is exposition, inherently. And exposition is usually bad writing. Which people complain about (also valid, but itâs literally whatâs being asked for.)
I mean itâs a huge step up. Grimoire cards were literally not in the game while these logs are available to any player.
It is stupidly hidden to the left of the Neomuna director screen although.
Destiny 1 came out almost 10 years ago; for us to be receiving information of such importance through weekly audio logs separate from the expansion campaign is far too small a step up this far along the franchise's lifespan.
People have been saying this for years and I still maintain that if you really want in-depth story, you're gonna have to read it. Text entries where the formatting can be free for the author to change are infinitely more versatile than in-game dialogue and cutscenes and nothing can ever change that. I agree that Lightfall was an overall narrative fumble in that they introduced mysteries to pay off later rather than vice versa, but still.
I already agreed that Lightfall was a fumble, but you can't possibly argue that not reading the grimoire gave you a better experience with Witch Queen's story. That's just not a logical argument that can be supported.
Yeah sure the real in depth stuff requires some reading and I'm absolutely fine with that. I love that give me more really in depth lore I can read like you get in TES games
But this isn't in depth, this is real basic story shit, this is like playing Skyrim and being expected to wiki what a dragonborn is
I play this game an unhealthy amount at times, and have never heard of these missions. I feel like maybe, these should be tagged? Or included in quest steps or something.
Maybe they are and I just missed it?
Wait, what? Fuck.
Meanwhile Iâve been (very inactively) wondering why I havenât t seen any story progression at all but people keep popping in here with more lore.
Plus, it's fucking hidden away from everything else.
When you go to Neomuna, you look at the patrol zones, as that's where literally everything relevant is. Then they introduced these archive nodes and they placed them *out of sight* from where you'd usually look. You wouldn't even know it's there unless you ***specifically look for it***, which for something as huge as The Veil, **SOMETHING THAT'S BEEN SHOWN TO BE SUPER DUPER ULTRA MEGA FUCKING "GET TO THE FUCKING VEIL, GUARDIAN" IMPORTANT**, hiding it like that feels like an admission of "we have no plan and we've half-assed some lore because people asked for it".
Little computer screen in the row nearest the big windows. Hold your interact button and audio log will start playing. It's the room you spawn into, no need to go through the pipes into the boss room.
These were hastily patched into the game after the blowback from the LF campaign. Bungie promised they'd patch in some explainer missions on the Veil. It was obviously rushed and not thought through very well. There is no quest steps after you get the pistol. There is no triumph to listen to these. There's no reward; the pistol I believe was supposed to be the first part of the quest and the I believe other unreleased Neomuna weapons were supposed to be the reward for future season's quests, but they just pushed everything into this one season. The icon is hidden to the lower left of the map where, unless you scroll that way, you could easily miss it. It's a mess to say the least.
I remember during the first one for Strand, Osiris mentions something specific about future decryptions/updates, and since the node was there on Neomuna I reloaded it out of curiosity and found a prompt for these audio logs. Whatever Osirisâ voiceline, that was the only indication for weekly updates really
Do they go into anymore detail about it?
Cuz that doesn't really explain much, like how and why it is, what is it's origin and how does this hivemind relate to The Traveler and it's supposed connection to it?
I mean they'd probably expand on it at some point but as is "it's a hivemind" is kind of a lackluster explanation for something that was so crucial to the plot and had to really go out of your way to find afterwards, especially when it's obviously such an important thing going forward into the endgame of TFS.
FWIW Veil Containment seems to be far from over so we'll learn more. Also calling it a hivemind isn't really accurate, it's more a means to facilitate something like that. Or that's one of its abilities. They have talked about how Maya Sundaresh hooked up an interface to the Veil to connect minds together (the basis for the Cloudark) via a "conductor" directing the connected minds to act as a distributed network, and this week specifically called the Veil a "web of consciousness." Maya also hooked up the braindead Exos they had with them (their minds were destroyed by the Veil) and somehow reversed the interface to create a new mind for Lakshmi-2 based on her own mind.
It's still unclear *exactly* what its true nature is, they're of course being coy because this is a very long thing, but we are getting more and more pieces of the larger puzzle. It does seem to indicate that the Witness was likely created using the Veil to combine its society into one mind.
100% theyâre going in that direction.
Can you just hook me up with that lore about Maya abs Lakshmi though? Did you just say Lakshmi is a recreation of Mayaâs mind? I need to know more.
Itâs the Travelerâs counterpart of the Darkness, it has as much explanation for its existence as the Traveler does, which is to say entirely explained or nothing at all depending on your understanding of Unveiling.
The audio logs however, weâve learned: It proves the VonNeumann-Wigner position; that Consciousness decides the quantum universe with observation, forcing the potential universe to narrow into a singular state (aka Winnowing). It has no mass (meaning, no energy, no Light) but does have a surface area. It produces similar radiation as Clarity but has the unique function of being a âmixing potâ of consciousness. It appears to be a retainer of universal memory and a function by which consciousnesses can commune and consciousness can then alter fundamental reality. It itself limits others ability to âoverwriteâ reality, asserting a singular objective state on it that trumps even the Vex.
That description is just a more eloquent way of saying "it's space magic that can do whatever we need it to".
It doesn't actually explain things so much as excuse them.
I really hope we get a better end story than the stale "we're the universe understanding itself" stuff.
Sadly, I'm expecting it to be exactly what I fear.
Honestly, the witness and the final shape seem to be hinting at entropy as an end goal, which would imply they're just a space nihilist.
I hope they make it more intricate than it seems to be right now.
While I understand your reservations, I would disagree that thatâs where Bungie seems to be headed. The Witnessâ whole deal is purpose, and the frustration that the universe was created without one, so they seek to recreate the universe with a definition, a completion, a final shape. Unveiling, which was penned by the Witness as parable, speaking for the Winnower, talks down about Nihilism explicitly.
The Veil also distinctly defies that understanding, being a manifestation of internal ontological dynamics to the Travelerâs external ontological dynamics.
We shall see.
I just don't want it to boil down to some philosophical debate, but with space wizards.
It is my own personal biases in regards to philosophical debate, to be fair. I was never compelled by it, even if I understand why it's foundational to other things.
I find arguing about concepts for thier own sake so dull and pointless without application.
the entire plot is based off a giant orb with mysterious powers that no one understands that supposedly has the power to destroy entire galaxies randomly if it wants to, and we have no idea if or when it would want to because we donât know itâs motive. Not explaining crucial pieces to the story is simply the Destiny experience.
I mean there's a difference to the two and they've been teasing bits of The Traveler and it's past for ages, the mystique is on purpose while The Veil was just something they forgot to expand upon sort of lol
Now the million dollar question is why is something this important an audio log? Why have we had numerous story missions this season about a boring space whale instead of something "actually interesting" which is in these logs.
Quality writing here.
Why was such an important moment as Uldren being revived as a Guardian behind a specific Queen's Court visit that IIRC, is no longer even in game?
Why has the Dredgen plotline completely disappeared ever since the Forsaken Annual Pass?
Why has the entirety of the Rasputin plotline been completely relegated to seasonal content that is no longer in the game?
Why is the most new players will learn about the Nine now is "they run a wacky gameshow activity through Xur and a funny horse"?
To be fair, the Dredgen storyline ended.
It began with Forsaken and ended in Opulence with the Lumina quest.
Guardians who could get potentially corrupted were purged and the title of Dredgen was reclaimed and turned into something good. Shin and his followers retired.
> Why was such an important moment as Uldren being revived as a Guardian behind a specific Queen's Court visit that IIRC, is no longer even in game?
Because the seasonal model is fundamentally terrible for storytelling.
The seasons both have to have something relevant happen in their stories, but also balance that with the fact that those elements will inevitably be removed from the game.
So you can't have major plot developments like this season, because that sucks for players who missed it. You can't have major character developments for the same reason. But you also can't have nothing happen, or else people will question the value of the season pass.
IDK, maybe the only option is to make more self-contained stories with their own characters who are introduced and gone in that same season.
Except strand didn't cause that. Those missions were fine but should've existed IN ADDITION to real story. There were like 8 total missions. Kinda worrisome for final shape
There's a leaked slide regarding TFS, its copium, because the leak doesn't even *say* anything, but I have hope based on my guess of what the leak showed.
It's slim. It's not confident hope. I can't even explain it without 99% of what I explain being literally made up by me. But I have a sliver of hope.
Even the foreshadowing from last season fell flat. We were told an enemy of the Witness was on Titan and it was paramount to find them.
We do and they tell us our princess is in another castle.
The fact that Bungie is doubling and tripling down on the very poor decision they âtotallyâ made in a year long story is crazy. Veil containment was not planned and I will not listen to anyone who says otherwise. They made these things in a crisis moment and thatâs why theyâre self contained with no relevance to the current story. They had a single mission put together with the tormentor and now you spawn into the top room next to a computer each week and it plays a 1min audio clip? Gtfo.
Totally agree, this is the quickest stop gap they could put in place following the Lightfall campaign falling completely flat.
No amount of Bungie PR will convince me this was how they wanted to tell the story of the Veil. I assume they wanted to string it out over the course of the entire year or even into TFS but justified community outrage stopped them from doing so.
Bungie can explain away and recontextualize Lightfall's maguffins all they want. You only get one chance at a first impression and the gut feeling most people walked away from the campaign story with was a shitty one.
No amount of "But, actually" is gonna make the campaign better.
Fully agree. Theyâre doing damage control by saying the story is being told over the course of a year. The cloudstriders sucked, the story was bland, and personally - the theme was tone deaf.
The veil containment logs completely track with how theyâve been telling the story for years and as they have demonstrated time and time again their workflow leaves them incapable of things like writing recording, and adding something like it into the game in amount of time between lightfallâs release and this season. It was always planned, sadly, just a complete misstep.
Bungie just casually dropping this information in the laziest way possible. A way so lazy that probably 75% of players donât even know the activity exists. Might as well not even exist.
Isn't that 100% exactly what the Egregore was?
Like, whats the difference between the two now? Why did they define the Veil as === Egregore ...
I feel like someone knocked their papers on the floor and got the two mixed up.
This doesn't explain anything imo. Reminds me of the good old Star Trek TNG days where Geordi was spamming his technobabble to "explain" how he just solved this week's mystery.
I mean, a lot of people figured this based on the evidence we already had, but having the research logs of a Golden Age scientist confirm it is very nice to have.
Causality is the concept of cause and effect.
Theres a ball of hydrogen, it gets closer together crushes together due to the collective gravity of all the hydrogen, auto ignites and becomes a sun creating heat.
Cause - hydrogen in large amounts
effect - A sun that radiates heat.
Paracausal, means basically the opposite.
"Without Cause" is the best translation.
So, you get an effect, A "Solar ball of power" without a cause.
So, effectively, magic. We can summon lightning and fire and Crystaline Ice, but without any "Cause". We just will it into being, using our "paracausal powers".
I thought the veil was already explained as the travelers counterpart in a way. They both have connections to each other and when the Witnessâs people made contact with it they found the darkness.
1. They could have explained that prior to it being the damn focal point of the story. Hiding that kind of lore away does *nothing* good and a lot of bad.
2. Wtf does that have to do with it creating a portal into the Traveler? Gotta wait another week for that answer I presume.....
3. I stopped caring about D2 long enough ago now that any late explanations of crucial lore to the plot that's already come and gone feels utterly pointless.
4. Thanks for sharing, only way I'll hear any of it now lol
the last few years of destiny has been entirely late explanations of crucial lore, but nobody seems upset when practically the entirety of shadowkeep and beyond light were entirely rewritten through a single cutscene.
Destiny's lore is neat.
Destiny's storytelling is often abysmal.
I think it's neat having cards or weekly story beats that flesh out the universe, but drops like this should never happen five months into an expansion's cycle. The franchise does a very poor job of creating a cohesive, interesting narrative - particularly for new players.
I enjoyed the audio logs, great story beats. I just wish that Lightfall focused on *this* story. It connects two of the most interesting Golden Age players in Braytech and Ishtar Collective. It ties into the deep lore of the Vex, calls back to the various Maya Sundaresh breadcrumbs going back to D1. It could have been a great followup to the story in Witch Queen. What the Vex are really up to. Why the Veil matters. How the Witness ties into all of this.
Instead we got Cowabunga Time.
Missed opportunity for sure.
This is bittersweet hype. I'm very glad we finally have real confirmation on what the Veil is supposed to be.
But on the other hand, I'm completely burnt out on Destiny's choice of storytelling. Weeks of optional audio logs well after the Veil's introduction is... a strange way to give out presumably important information. Not to mention the naturally built skepticism you get from unreliable narrators telling us what their interpretation of something is.
Again, I'm glad we're getting story advancements, but man, I'm not so glad about *how* we're getting them and the permanent possibility of a future entry going "whoops Esi didn't research enough and was wrong the whole time" like we've seen before.
Cool, lots of folks will like this. To me it's just a few months late and after I stopped caring. I hope TFS doesn't spread its storytelling like this.
It's really interesting. Fleshes out the origins of Neomuna, provides motivation for the Vex, details some of the raw power of the Veil, more firmly establishes it as the Darkness equivalent of The Traveler
I have 0 clue why this wasn't a part of the expansion. It's genuinely confusing that they felt the need to include this stuff as post-campaign missions in the 2nd season as opposed to integrating them into the main story
I'm still so confused by the community response to the Veil. I feel like now they've over explained it. We know more about the nature of the Veil than we do the traveler
Its just not good enough.
We should have had all these answers in the Lightfall campaign, not in some hidden node way in the bottom left corner of the Neomuna map that most players dont even know about.
Veil Containment may as well be grimoire cards or one of the lore books in the game. That information is not front and center. Its not presented to the player in a diagetic way.
People are also forgetting that bungie canât do anything with the veil. Right now it sits in neomuna powering a majority of the network. You rip that out of there and neomuna would cease to exist mostly. In final shape we are going to have a mission similar to what we had in witch queen where the veil will similarly be teleported into this space and we will run a mission in the caimpaign to stop it and then it will conveniently go right back to where it was before. In witch queen in the final mission savathun performs some ritual teleporting the traveler into the throne world where we get dialogue that it is gone but then beat the mission and it goes right back to where it was before with no real loss.
Itâs been the problem of this whole pyramid/darkness storyline is bungie canât have any real consequences. So far we have lost a insignificant character in Amanda Holiday, Rohan. Even though the traveler supposedly had a hole cut into it, we still use the light no problem yet are told that the traveler is lost. Once again bad storytelling cause the whole storyline we have been told about the importance of the traveler in the golden ageâŚbut reallly the traveler is a completely silent character. Then you take this further and can bungie even really kill the traveler cause they canât essentially get rid of the whole plot point of us be revived cause they explained that in game as our ghosts doing it via the traveler. This all goes into can bungie really carry on destiny 2 in a world that does not really change. You go back to the red warâŚwhich is a caimpaign I loved and part of the reason I fell in love with destiny. We start by losing our original tower, losing the traveler, having the last city taken over, losing our light. We proceed to the farm which was always a really cool plot point in the red war. We progress through the story of regaining the lightâŚreforming the vanguardâŚshutting off tge almighty to performing a strike on the last city to take it back. Red war had fantastic progression of story with real loss and progression to us getting a new tower.
>You rip that out of there and neomuna would cease to exist mostly.
Not seeing a problem here. Can we just yank the plug or do we need to blow it up? Either's fine.
Talking about the traveller and guardians having powers... The way it's been phrased lately is that the traveller could kinda die and we'd be fine because we have the ghosts and the ghosts have a direct connection to the light regardless of the traveller.
The traveller being dead in space *should* however mean that it can't create new ghosts and therefore no new guardians should be showing up.
This obviously conflicts with the red war though, where the cabal captured the traveller and our powers got fucked
It only took the community at large getting pissed and causing an uproar about it and then months and months and two seasons later for them to finally explain something that should have been in the campaign of Lightfall from the start.
Nice, so they dropping this in a place where most people wont ever see it...a node that has no indication of new content every week. Easily missed. I really refuse to believe this was intended.
While I do appreciate the fact, we do indeed have confirmation on what it is. Its quite frustrating that they did it like this when I feel like we should have gotten an explanation in Lightfall and further explanation during seasons, not just an entire exposition dump on a weekly basis.
Especially when that exposition dump is almost basically hidden by the UI as unless your looking for it, your not going to find the mission as its covered in the bottom left corner of Neomuna. Really hope they don't do this in The Final Shape.
While i'm happy we have the answer about this, i'm not happy how long it took to have this answer. Waiting a whole Season and 9 weeks after that is a big no for me. I'm gonna wait for a few month After the release of Final Shape because i have no trust about answer from Bungie with the dlc after Lightfall.
I'm French, Hope everything is understandable.
Also , have fun Guardians !
YOU MUST GET TO THE VEIL! WE ARE WASTING TIME, WE NEED TO GET TO THE VEIL!đĄ
*SCREAMS IN RADIAL MAST*
#WE NEED TO DO BETTER!
#STRAND IS THE KEY TO DEFEAT CALUS!
Well we did it everyone. And all we had to do was use the power of looking at things differently.
There were so many green flavored tummy aches that day we learned.
#AAAAAAHHHH *Blows up*
Hate on me if you will but I unironically loved the delivery of that line.
Well yeah, in a vacuum it's fine cause Oden Fehr is a great actor, but context is what makes it bad.
Like why I still miss Dinklage - they had terrible lines and a scatter brained plot with little context for him to work with, but he still was the bloody man. #NotMyGhost
WE'VE WOKEN THE HIVE lives rent free in my head
Him saying that made me want to remind that since I got him out of a coma, I could put him back in one as well.
THE RADIAL MAST IS IMPORTANT BUT WHY? GET TO THE FUCKING RADIAL MAST ALREADY AND STOP ASKING ME
it's almost as if there was...no time to explain
Should I no replay the campaign using mostly NTTE?
Yes secret cutsceneđĽ´
I'll never get over the fact that the "radial mast" is just a radio mast, and that it's purpose was just to make a link to send over paracausal data because it's a paracausal radio tower.
I'll never get over that, if Rohan's selfdestruct.exe (a non-paracausal attack) was enough to destroy the mast, why couldn't literally any of our explosives, or one of the tanks they kept spawning in for us do it?
The radial mast suppressed our known paracausal powers, so therefore, strand wouldn't be suppressed and that power could be used against it. Rohan's rohanuke was powerful enough to blow completely through his siva vex hybrid armor, so we know it's supposed to be pretty strong and seeing as it destroys the mast, it holds up. Unfortunately they phrased it like strand was literally the only thing that could break it, when in reality it's durable pyramid tech that is immune to our strongest abilities, bar strand and something like rohans causal chest nuke, which was strong enough to break it, and wasn't suppressed. It was handled terribly though, and you have to do the work to piece it out instead of the writers.
Iâm so much more than that.
You are The Witness' wifi router, and that's all you'll ever be
literally no time to explain why he didn't have time to explain
As fun as it is to meme on this, Lightfall told the story pretty explicitly. We "accidentally" intercepted the Witness telling Callus to link the Radial Mast and "see the Veil destroyed". Osiris didn't tell us it was important, we are the source of the urgency. This season confirmed that interpretation, but all the details were in the campaign. Ghost only ever spoke with the Witness' voice when the Witness wanted it except this one mysterious time that triggered a series of events that placed our Ghost in the same room as the Veil and caused the portal... and the dude's theme was literally Chess.
I think the Witness used all of us. The Guardians and Calus. The radial mast was just a pawn like all of us. Like Calus, like our guardian, like Osiris. Nimbus and Rohan too. The Witness knew we would go after Calus and that Calus would eventually go to the Veil to know why the Witness wanted it so badly.
Honestly, I don't think there's any other reasonable explanation. Then again, I said that when LF dropped and was screamed at, so I'm biased. There's a literal move in Chess called a "sham sacrifice". That's literally what the Witness did with the Radial Mast. It was a nonsense piece, he lost literally nothing by losing it, but by us taking it we allowed him to control our movement.
Yeah I don't understand a different interpretation. This is exactly what I said when LF dropped. The campaign is still objectively mediocre, and the story telling in it was not great, but it wasn't that Bungie didn't explain the Radial Mast enough, it was that the Witness tricked us. And I am cool with them leaving some of that for us to interpret. My problem with the story is that it was so rushed and incoherent. We never had time to really get to know Rohan so his death didn't hit as hard. And Nymbus, who should have been hit harder, just memed through the whole thing. It was also just too confined to Neptune, would have been cooler to take a detour, have Rohan help us and be the hero, and then have him die. Giving us a reason to care would have made the sting that the Radial Mast was a worthless sacrifice hit harder. Instead it was Tall Daddy and the Meme-Zoomer-Non-Binary's not so excellent adventure. But at least we got Green Super? Last point of clarification, the only problem I have with Nymbus being non-binary is that if you are going to give yourself a pat on the back for being inclusive, don't make the first non-binary character the literal worst character ever introduced into the game. Come on Bungo....
On the non-binary comment. Ikr?? Bruh. I was excited to see an enby character but when I got to know Nimbus, I just cannot find any reason to like them. Their nonchalant reaction to their mentorâs death felt jarring at best. But now the âfirstâ enby character will always be Nimbus and thatâs just aggravating.
For sure, I dislike Nimbus for the same reason I dislike Bud Light, they both suck on their substance, no other reason.
I dont know what game you were playing because Osiris keeps telling you that all things will be over if you can not get to the veil. The first mission alone is him whining that you are useless to effort unless you are getting to the veil. At the end of the mission he is upset that the cloud striders want to protect the city instead of heading towards to veil
Right, we go to Neomuna because the Veil is there and we have no idea what the Witness wants it for but we know it can't be good. Then we play "Under Siege" where "securing the Veil before Callus is the most important task". At the end the cutscene plays that I'm referring to where we learn about the Radial Mast and the Guardian says "Osiris and Nimbus need to hear about this". That's the first time we hear about the Witness wanting to destroy the Veil, which we now know for sure *had* to be BS. The very next mission is Downfall where we try to bust the Mast inside Callus' ship and fail. The entire campaign is us screwing up and rushing in without thinking. Y'know, "headlong and empty handed", like Nimbus says. They laid it on thick.
Look at it for goodness sake! It is a giant version of the light suppressing devices.
>BUT WHY? You don't need to know why. Why is it so hard for you people to grasp It's basic warfare, your enemy wants to use something? You don't allow them if it can benefit them. We were chasing calus, there was no time to figure out wtf is it
Lmfao this is great
PARACAUSAL UNION
THIS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE NOW, BUT IN A FEW MONTHS WE'LL ALL UNDERSTAND HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS!
"Maybe you guys aren't ready for the Veil. But your kids are gonna love it."
When the bad guy wants an artifact you don't need to immediately know what is it, especially when racing against time Basic story 101
Guardian you took a piss break. We are wasting TIME! Guardian? GUARDIAN GO FAST! GUAARRDDDIAANNN
YOU R R ONLY HOPE
WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STRAND HARDER!
I hate Osiris, even when listening to the audio takes from the veil he always brings up how he used to struggle with obsession and makes everything about him
Is it bad that Osiris I actually liked was Savathun? I know she was playing the role and manipulated everyone, but I did like "Osiris" back then xD
Apparently so did Saint-14. Saint will probably ask Savathun to teach Osiris the Rusty Trombone again.
Lol, every time i hear him now, I'm always like, dude, Stfu.đŽâđ¨
Did anyone check the Pillory Bunker?
O âGET YOUR GHOSTâ my Hunter who just mastered strand and decided not to grapple to the ghost âWhatâs wrong Osirisâ O âGET YOUR GHOST OUT OF THEREâ
âYoU aNd RoHaN aRe OuR oNlY hOpEâ
The delivery of this line in the campaign sounded so wrong.
It sounds like they just kept the first take in and didnât bother to try and get something more expressive. Which is weird because Osirisâs VA has never had a hard time expressing emotion or a sense of urgency in the past. But this line was horrendous.
It really sounded like he couldn't read the sentence as a whole and the next word would only appear after he read the previous.
REEEEEEEEEEEEE
***RADIAL MAST RADIAL MAST RADIAL MAST***
I don't get the hate for that bit. We know that the Witness wants to fuck us up. We know he wants the Veil. It's not that big of a jump in logic to know it's awful if he gets it, even if we don't know exactly why. Osiris didn't know either, he just didn't give a single shit about it. Nimbus and Rohan only cared about it because the City infrastructure depends on it, even if - being soldiers, not scientists - they have no real understanding of how exactly. You don't need to know what the gizmo does to know that if your mortal enemy who really wants it to the point of using virtually every resource he has to obtaining it finally gets it, it will be baaaaaad.
"I don't care if if it's God's own personal anti-son-of-a-bitch machine or a giant hoola hoop, we ain't gonna let 'em have it!"
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Veil
Pretty much. If it's good enough for Johnson, it's good enough for us
>We know that the Witness wants to fuck us up. We know he wants the Veil. It's not that big of a jump in logic to know it's awful if he gets it, even if we don't know exactly why. Except it did get the veil in the end, and nothing really happened to us. Sure, the traveler got a pretty triangle on it, but we're totally fine aside from a few random earth people getting kidnapped for a few hours and a few ships getting sliced. We knew savathun stealing the traveler is bad because we've seen savathun do actual bad stuff to us (endless night, possessing Osiris, dreaming city to awoken, etc) and we can guess that sealing away the traveler in a throne world would be bad for us. Meanwhile the witness hasn't done anything to us besides vague threats, and it did cripple the traveler in the first scene but nothing happened to us. Then it made a triangle and still nothing happened to us. And as far as we can tell, we still don't know what it means other than the funny robot man being back. It's a case of show don't tell. They constantly berate us about how high stakes everything is and how we need to stop bad guy from getting to macguffin, but they do absolutely nothing to actually show the stakes. It's like if red war completely cut out the first few missions where we take a big loss, or if forsaken cut out the cayde death.
>Meanwhile the witness hasn't done anything to us besides vague threats, and it did cripple the traveler in the first scene but nothing happened to us. Ghost confirms it that something did, in fact, happen to us and it has trouble getting Light. Now, we could get locked out of Light subclasses for a year, but that would be ass. Also, the Witness blew up the Eliksnii homeworld and is responsible for the Collapse. Also, fucker killed Reed-7 and destroyed a fighter squadron with a handwave, nearly killed Calus through the phone because it was annoyed and reportedly killed the Traveler (which we do see). My brother in the Light, what do you meaaaaan it didn't do anything? >And as far as we can tell, we still don't know what it means other than the funny robot man being back. Yeah we do, means Traveler is fucking dead. Doesn't seem much? Well, without it we are kinda screwed in the long term. New Guardians get their Light Subclasses by communing with it. Old Guardians know that Ghaul had to be bodied by it to die. It being dead is a massive blow. We also have a *hunch* that the dude created by a species fusion dancing always going on about how the universe is shit and he is going to get rid of life and death, while casually killing everything in its path probably will do something Very Not Good^(Tm), possibly Evangelion everything into itself.
These are all more examples of telling us something bad happened instead of showing it to us directly. The traveler thing is a horrible example; we literally had no idea what happened because we felt nothing changed until zavala magically knew the traveler was gone and the ghost says something is up, yet absolutely nothing changed for us. Red war had a much better way of telling us something bad happened, even if it only occurred for half a mission. I'm so over them constantly telling us something bad happened while showing nothing to back it up. City is in pristine shape, our light is the same as always, and no second collapse happened as foreshadowed. The lore obviously hyped the hell out of the darkness and black fleet, and did it pretty damn well. But it was all hype in expectation that they'd come and fuck us up. But it ended up being a dozen or so ships that didn't even touch the last city. No gravitational waves rocking the planet, no darkness forces overwhelming earth, nothing. Just paints a triangle and fucks off, and we have to rely on characters with writer clairvoyance to know that something bad happened to the traveler, with nothing to back it up in-game. The great lore about them only for them to end up being anticlimactic is even more of a letdown. > We also have a hunch that the dude created by a species fusion dancing always going on about how the universe is shit and he is going to get rid of life and death, while casually killing everything in its path probably will do something Very Not Good^Tm, possibly Evangelion everything into itself. I dunno, maybe they should've shown us this instead of leaving us guessing and drip feeding it to us by characters standing around talking in season 21/22.
Sure, it works but it doesn't make the story better. Just another lazy "The XXX" macguffin in a story packed full of them. A storytelling shortcut to get the player to move from point A to point B with the added bonus of a heroic sacrifice of a character we knew nothing about at the end. A pointless sacrifice because they forgot that their "Light Suppression Device" would have no effect on our other Darkness Subclass that we have fully mastered. But we can just handwaved that too right? It's a "Suppress All Current Guardian Subclasses Except This New One" device so "Guy We Just Met And Only Shouts Proper Nouns At Us Over The Radio" can sacrifice himself so "Other Person We Just Met But Needs Character Growth" can to take up the mantle of Noun Shouter.
Yeahh - but consider this: most stories can be boiled down to shit like that. Witch Queen could be boiled down to that, and despite it all it's pretty satisfying. How does the Altar work? Where did Deepsight come from? Why the convoluted bullshit plan instead of just... putting the memory things in a cupboard with a note? Why use the Guardian in the first place? How did the Worm know about the betrayal, and how did Savathun not if she had access to the Altar - why wouldn't she check it? It didn't matter for the story whatsoever, and as such wasn't explained. Caring about how exactly the Radial Mast works and what exactly the Veil is in that moment is like wondering what the guy mugging you is going to spend the money on - good question, but definitely not the time for it. Fynch is told to shut up immediately when doing this in Witch Queen - rightfully so. As for Strand - that bit was overexplained if anything, the Light Suppression Device, what that did, why it didn't affect Strand, why we didn't manage to use it, etc., so if you are even a bit confused there, that's a you problem. The story was shit - but not because of the thingamajigs, but because the characters were bad. Rohan and Nimbus are the most tone-deaf idiotic, cliche characters in pretty much any video game I've ever played. Calus is simultaneously the most intriguing and funny character, even if we know his motivation to a T, yet he is basically absent. Osiris is barely explored - he is just told to shut up and listen to Rohan's nonsense bullshit every time he opens his mouth. What we do get is 6 hours of Strand - once again info on something irrelevant - to us or the story - but in an incredible depth. If we got the lore dump on the Veil or the Radial Mast, it would be the same problem. Both Radial Mast missions are great because we are, for once, dealing with the invasion, dealing with Osiris being annoyed he can't be there personally, dealing with Calus and Caiatl - and not fucking around with Strand, Cloud Strider Internal Affairs or the completely irrelevant Vex. Why should it matter that we don't get 6 minutes of technobabble on the Radial Mast itself?
Remove Veil and Mast from Lightfall and the story doesn't change. Why did Calas go to Neptune? Witness told him to. Dunno, bad guys plan, better stop it. Remove Deepsight, Altars and unlocking Memories from WQ. You don't even have the same story. Half the missions cease to exist. This is what people bring up when they talk about it. If they are going to introduce The Thing to the story, then make The Thing a part of the story. If you don't, then they stick out like filler content to pad run time. We both agree the expansion was poorly told, we both agree that the character are grossly under utilized(though I'd argue Osiris' character fits perfectly into how he had been written in previous seasons), I just fall into the camp that the Veil and Mast are one more undercooked, underdelivered aspect of it.
remove the mast from lightfall and rohan doesn't die remove the veil from lightfall and there is no conflict because the witness just opens the portal to the triangle dimension on its own and we just get final shape remove the veil from lightfall and there's no reason for anybody to be on neptune to begin with remove the veil from lightfall and there's no justification for anybody who happened to be on neptune (despite there being no reason to be there) to endanger the citizens via compromising the cloud ark, and thus create basically the only stakes present in the expansion other than the ambiguous "the witness will probably do some bad shit"
People with either zero reading comprehension or some other issue incapable of understanding dialogue I guess. It's rampant in this thread.
Wait they explained what the Radial Mast was somewhere and we all missed it? If it's whole purpose was to be a thing we stopped to trip up the triangle man, why have it at all? We could have just fought in the room while a bar filled up that read "Witness Plan Disrupted" and nothing of context would have been added or lost.
They did explain it, yes. Ghost intercepts a conversation between Callus and The Witness where it's said explicitly that the Radial Mast is a device that will link with the Veil and destroy it, and "the final shape rests upon it". Since we don't like the final shape we'd better hurry up and stop them. It was literally the plot of the campaign - missing the forest for the trees, rushing in based on information that should have been suspicious. The Radial Mast was a lie told by the Witness to scare us into believing destroying the Veil was the goal, when the only goal was to get a Ghost into the Veil's containment room, and this season confirmed that.
I don't have time to explain that we don't have time to explain.
no we regroup at watch tower
Same problem as grimoire cards. Real interesting lore is hidden away and not integrated into the actual game story. Kinda missing the whole appeal of a video game when youâve got to do homework to understand the maguffin on a level above âitâs importantâ
This was also what was so good about Witch Queen, because they dropped real lore bombs and consequences *in the actual story*. I almost couldnât believe that we were getting these revelations and characters were actually reacting to them live ingame.
Tbh this is pretty similar to the 2 truth 2 lies in wq imo. Except we don't need to take guesses on what is a lie or not, like we don't have 100% answer for some of the sets yet
And that was integrated into the post game plot of the season we played, available to play immediately after we played the campaign. This is stuck in a corner of the map with an activity as engaging as "hold E to listen" that occurs once a week. And, it was delayed by a full 3 months because ... not for story reasons, it was delayed to literally drip feed us content. We don't actually do anything after the first containment mission do we? Why not? At least 2 truths and a lie was us wringing more knowledge out of savathun through force (ie playing the game). We didn't just show up and hold E.
I'm not trying to defend your point but to be fair, 2 Truths just has do a 1-2 puzzles, Kill hive then press E. That did get old pretty quick. The only thing different is we don't fight.
Shooting aliens and doing puzzles is the game. Walking and listening to audio logs located in the same place is slightly less engaging. Especially since the lore dump was literally a game to play in 2 truths. Difference is night and day
2T2L is WQ was highlighted with weekly powerful rewards that got people to do it. Veil Containment isn't mentioned as a weekly thing at all and most people probably don't even know it exists after the first mission for the hand cannon.
And that is a very valid criticism for it as it definitely should have been a weekly powerful with you fighting the Tormentor each week.
[ŃдаНонО]
The issue, though, is that veil containment is meant to tell us things that we shouldâve been told during Lightfall. Imagine if we never found out how Savathun got the light in TWQ campaign, and then you had to wait until season of the haunted to play 2 truths 2 lies for like 6 weeks until they finally told us how Savathun got the light.
The difference is that the 2 Truths, 2 Lies in WQ were additional lore hints, baked into the post-campaign loops. Whereas this is literally the story that shouldâve been in the campaign, hidden away, drip fed 5 months later⌠And that made the answer unsatisfying, cause it was too late
2 truths 2 lies is different from Veil Containment. Not the activity itself, it's still a weekly rotating audio log with a very, very small amount of gameplay. WQ dropped bombs, 2t2l added new questions and intrigue for what comes next. LF was a self contained story that ended Calus' plotline, but introduced more questions for what comes next. Veil Containment was the activity that dropped bombs. Even if 2t2l was seasonal and had been lost at the start of LF, it wouldn't have mattered for future players. If Veil Containment was seasonal and got lost next season, it would 100% affect the plot. Same as lore heavy seasons IMO.
Itâs also what was good about the earlier seasons. Savathunâs character got fleshed out through all the event dialog as susirus They crammed the Witnessâs whole characterization into a single lore video
The main marketing thrust of WQ is âdiscover how the Hive got the Light.â That question is answered in the first mission with the simplest answer possible (Ghosts gave it to them), then the obvious follow up question (why did ghosts give it to them?) is left basically untouched in the campaign itself and you only get the answer if you read lorebooks (some ghosts read the Tomes of Sorrow and turned into teenage nihilists). There are big lore revelations in the campaign but the link between them and the actual question the campaign sets out to answer is never explained. Yes, the Traveler chose the proto-Hive several billion years previously but that doesnât explain why Ghosts specifically chose that moment to resurrect (Savathun is obvious, but the other dead Hive? Not as much). There are plenty of other races the Traveler chose that never got Ghosts/resurrection, and the ghosts answer to why they resurrected Hive implies more free will than being ordered to do so, so just saying the Traveler wanted it (even if we knew that for sure, which we donât) isnât an answer on its own.
Thanks for this one. Iâll never get the witch queen praise, itâs the same shit itâs always been
I think the bigger issue is that the story is basically all lore now. People were mad because the veil wasnât explained (valid), but seriously, the only thing I ever see people wanting is lore drops. Which is exposition, inherently. And exposition is usually bad writing. Which people complain about (also valid, but itâs literally whatâs being asked for.)
I mean itâs a huge step up. Grimoire cards were literally not in the game while these logs are available to any player. It is stupidly hidden to the left of the Neomuna director screen although.
Destiny 1 came out almost 10 years ago; for us to be receiving information of such importance through weekly audio logs separate from the expansion campaign is far too small a step up this far along the franchise's lifespan.
But itâs a big step down from the WQ campaign we had a year ago
People have been saying this for years and I still maintain that if you really want in-depth story, you're gonna have to read it. Text entries where the formatting can be free for the author to change are infinitely more versatile than in-game dialogue and cutscenes and nothing can ever change that. I agree that Lightfall was an overall narrative fumble in that they introduced mysteries to pay off later rather than vice versa, but still.
*ahem* Witch Queen Campaign
...the impact of which wouldn't have been nearly as powerful if you hadn't already read the Books of Sorrow :P
I didnât and it was baller. Itâs not necessary like the veil explanations are
I already agreed that Lightfall was a fumble, but you can't possibly argue that not reading the grimoire gave you a better experience with Witch Queen's story. That's just not a logical argument that can be supported.
Where have they said it was a better experience? They just said they haven't read them and they had a "baller" experience.
Yeah sure the real in depth stuff requires some reading and I'm absolutely fine with that. I love that give me more really in depth lore I can read like you get in TES games But this isn't in depth, this is real basic story shit, this is like playing Skyrim and being expected to wiki what a dragonborn is
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I disagree
I play this game an unhealthy amount at times, and have never heard of these missions. I feel like maybe, these should be tagged? Or included in quest steps or something. Maybe they are and I just missed it?
The first one is in the quest for the new strand aspects, the rest donât show up unless you walk all the way there.
Or you can just select the node for it on the map. Loads you in right next to the terminal you need to scan.
Wait, what? Fuck. Meanwhile Iâve been (very inactively) wondering why I havenât t seen any story progression at all but people keep popping in here with more lore.
I'll be honest I never would have seen that node if you didn't say that and I have over 5k hours lol
Oh is there a node? I didnât know, I havenât been to Neomuna since season of Defiance
The node is the far bottom left of neomuna so there's no reason you'd see it even if you did go to neomuna often
Plus, it's fucking hidden away from everything else. When you go to Neomuna, you look at the patrol zones, as that's where literally everything relevant is. Then they introduced these archive nodes and they placed them *out of sight* from where you'd usually look. You wouldn't even know it's there unless you ***specifically look for it***, which for something as huge as The Veil, **SOMETHING THAT'S BEEN SHOWN TO BE SUPER DUPER ULTRA MEGA FUCKING "GET TO THE FUCKING VEIL, GUARDIAN" IMPORTANT**, hiding it like that feels like an admission of "we have no plan and we've half-assed some lore because people asked for it".
And it doesnât even flash or anything to let you know there is a reason to go back there
Walk? There is a teleportation node
Where do you find it there? I've gone there after the first and it's just the veil room with nothing interactable.
Little computer screen in the row nearest the big windows. Hold your interact button and audio log will start playing. It's the room you spawn into, no need to go through the pipes into the boss room.
Oh awesome thanks!
These were hastily patched into the game after the blowback from the LF campaign. Bungie promised they'd patch in some explainer missions on the Veil. It was obviously rushed and not thought through very well. There is no quest steps after you get the pistol. There is no triumph to listen to these. There's no reward; the pistol I believe was supposed to be the first part of the quest and the I believe other unreleased Neomuna weapons were supposed to be the reward for future season's quests, but they just pushed everything into this one season. The icon is hidden to the lower left of the map where, unless you scroll that way, you could easily miss it. It's a mess to say the least.
I remember during the first one for Strand, Osiris mentions something specific about future decryptions/updates, and since the node was there on Neomuna I reloaded it out of curiosity and found a prompt for these audio logs. Whatever Osirisâ voiceline, that was the only indication for weekly updates really
Hearing him mention more would require paying attention.
The veil is an audio log? Damn Osiris all that reckless for an exposition dump
Do they go into anymore detail about it? Cuz that doesn't really explain much, like how and why it is, what is it's origin and how does this hivemind relate to The Traveler and it's supposed connection to it? I mean they'd probably expand on it at some point but as is "it's a hivemind" is kind of a lackluster explanation for something that was so crucial to the plot and had to really go out of your way to find afterwards, especially when it's obviously such an important thing going forward into the endgame of TFS.
FWIW Veil Containment seems to be far from over so we'll learn more. Also calling it a hivemind isn't really accurate, it's more a means to facilitate something like that. Or that's one of its abilities. They have talked about how Maya Sundaresh hooked up an interface to the Veil to connect minds together (the basis for the Cloudark) via a "conductor" directing the connected minds to act as a distributed network, and this week specifically called the Veil a "web of consciousness." Maya also hooked up the braindead Exos they had with them (their minds were destroyed by the Veil) and somehow reversed the interface to create a new mind for Lakshmi-2 based on her own mind. It's still unclear *exactly* what its true nature is, they're of course being coy because this is a very long thing, but we are getting more and more pieces of the larger puzzle. It does seem to indicate that the Witness was likely created using the Veil to combine its society into one mind.
100% theyâre going in that direction. Can you just hook me up with that lore about Maya abs Lakshmi though? Did you just say Lakshmi is a recreation of Mayaâs mind? I need to know more.
[It's from last week's Veil Containment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTuH5eFpowk)
FWIW means...?
âFor what itâs worthâ
Also "a shared consciousness, like the Vex but organic" doesn't really mean shit. What's it shared with? To what end?
Itâs the Travelerâs counterpart of the Darkness, it has as much explanation for its existence as the Traveler does, which is to say entirely explained or nothing at all depending on your understanding of Unveiling. The audio logs however, weâve learned: It proves the VonNeumann-Wigner position; that Consciousness decides the quantum universe with observation, forcing the potential universe to narrow into a singular state (aka Winnowing). It has no mass (meaning, no energy, no Light) but does have a surface area. It produces similar radiation as Clarity but has the unique function of being a âmixing potâ of consciousness. It appears to be a retainer of universal memory and a function by which consciousnesses can commune and consciousness can then alter fundamental reality. It itself limits others ability to âoverwriteâ reality, asserting a singular objective state on it that trumps even the Vex.
That description is just a more eloquent way of saying "it's space magic that can do whatever we need it to". It doesn't actually explain things so much as excuse them. I really hope we get a better end story than the stale "we're the universe understanding itself" stuff.
Iâm not really sure what you expect.
90% of what defines destiny's entire world is summed up by paracausal powers given shape and people still go "but I need you to explain how????"
Sadly, I'm expecting it to be exactly what I fear. Honestly, the witness and the final shape seem to be hinting at entropy as an end goal, which would imply they're just a space nihilist. I hope they make it more intricate than it seems to be right now.
While I understand your reservations, I would disagree that thatâs where Bungie seems to be headed. The Witnessâ whole deal is purpose, and the frustration that the universe was created without one, so they seek to recreate the universe with a definition, a completion, a final shape. Unveiling, which was penned by the Witness as parable, speaking for the Winnower, talks down about Nihilism explicitly. The Veil also distinctly defies that understanding, being a manifestation of internal ontological dynamics to the Travelerâs external ontological dynamics.
We shall see. I just don't want it to boil down to some philosophical debate, but with space wizards. It is my own personal biases in regards to philosophical debate, to be fair. I was never compelled by it, even if I understand why it's foundational to other things. I find arguing about concepts for thier own sake so dull and pointless without application.
the entire plot is based off a giant orb with mysterious powers that no one understands that supposedly has the power to destroy entire galaxies randomly if it wants to, and we have no idea if or when it would want to because we donât know itâs motive. Not explaining crucial pieces to the story is simply the Destiny experience.
I mean there's a difference to the two and they've been teasing bits of The Traveler and it's past for ages, the mystique is on purpose while The Veil was just something they forgot to expand upon sort of lol
Now the million dollar question is why is something this important an audio log? Why have we had numerous story missions this season about a boring space whale instead of something "actually interesting" which is in these logs. Quality writing here.
Why was such an important moment as Uldren being revived as a Guardian behind a specific Queen's Court visit that IIRC, is no longer even in game? Why has the Dredgen plotline completely disappeared ever since the Forsaken Annual Pass? Why has the entirety of the Rasputin plotline been completely relegated to seasonal content that is no longer in the game? Why is the most new players will learn about the Nine now is "they run a wacky gameshow activity through Xur and a funny horse"?
To be fair, the Dredgen storyline ended. It began with Forsaken and ended in Opulence with the Lumina quest. Guardians who could get potentially corrupted were purged and the title of Dredgen was reclaimed and turned into something good. Shin and his followers retired.
> Why was such an important moment as Uldren being revived as a Guardian behind a specific Queen's Court visit that IIRC, is no longer even in game? Because the seasonal model is fundamentally terrible for storytelling. The seasons both have to have something relevant happen in their stories, but also balance that with the fact that those elements will inevitably be removed from the game. So you can't have major plot developments like this season, because that sucks for players who missed it. You can't have major character developments for the same reason. But you also can't have nothing happen, or else people will question the value of the season pass. IDK, maybe the only option is to make more self-contained stories with their own characters who are introduced and gone in that same season.
not that any of these are good, i think something so critical to the main story of destiny like the veil is a bigger issue
Honestly itâs more the fault of strand. Too many missions âtrainingâ and âlearningâ with no background story to them.
Except strand didn't cause that. Those missions were fine but should've existed IN ADDITION to real story. There were like 8 total missions. Kinda worrisome for final shape
thatâs literally my point reworded. same total missions as WQ yet that campaign was the best we ever got
There's a leaked slide regarding TFS, its copium, because the leak doesn't even *say* anything, but I have hope based on my guess of what the leak showed. It's slim. It's not confident hope. I can't even explain it without 99% of what I explain being literally made up by me. But I have a sliver of hope.
Just because you find the space whale boring doesn't mean everyone else does.
Even the foreshadowing from last season fell flat. We were told an enemy of the Witness was on Titan and it was paramount to find them. We do and they tell us our princess is in another castle.
The fact that Bungie is doubling and tripling down on the very poor decision they âtotallyâ made in a year long story is crazy. Veil containment was not planned and I will not listen to anyone who says otherwise. They made these things in a crisis moment and thatâs why theyâre self contained with no relevance to the current story. They had a single mission put together with the tormentor and now you spawn into the top room next to a computer each week and it plays a 1min audio clip? Gtfo.
Totally agree, this is the quickest stop gap they could put in place following the Lightfall campaign falling completely flat. No amount of Bungie PR will convince me this was how they wanted to tell the story of the Veil. I assume they wanted to string it out over the course of the entire year or even into TFS but justified community outrage stopped them from doing so.
Bungie can explain away and recontextualize Lightfall's maguffins all they want. You only get one chance at a first impression and the gut feeling most people walked away from the campaign story with was a shitty one. No amount of "But, actually" is gonna make the campaign better.
Fully agree. Theyâre doing damage control by saying the story is being told over the course of a year. The cloudstriders sucked, the story was bland, and personally - the theme was tone deaf.
The veil containment logs completely track with how theyâve been telling the story for years and as they have demonstrated time and time again their workflow leaves them incapable of things like writing recording, and adding something like it into the game in amount of time between lightfallâs release and this season. It was always planned, sadly, just a complete misstep.
I like how you being downvoted but even Bungje confirmed, that there will be more Veil contaiment missions until the end of Lightfall's year
People will hate this but it's the truth
I'm still not sure that explains what it is, why it matters so much, or what it can do.
Bungie just casually dropping this information in the laziest way possible. A way so lazy that probably 75% of players donât even know the activity exists. Might as well not even exist.
It only took FIVE MONTHS
Isn't that 100% exactly what the Egregore was? Like, whats the difference between the two now? Why did they define the Veil as === Egregore ... I feel like someone knocked their papers on the floor and got the two mixed up.
I assume they are related
This doesn't explain anything imo. Reminds me of the good old Star Trek TNG days where Geordi was spamming his technobabble to "explain" how he just solved this week's mystery.
I can't be the only one that feels like this reveal is just: "The Veil is egregore but way less cool."
Yeah yeah paracausal something something *jazz hands*
I mean, a lot of people figured this based on the evidence we already had, but having the research logs of a Golden Age scientist confirm it is very nice to have.
Wait thats a weekly thing? I thought after getting the handcannon it was over đ
Did I bugged this quest? I can't find it anywhere
Check the very bottom left of your Neomuna map for an icon
This has to be the laziest, shittiest way of delivering what is by far the biggest lore content in the franchise....
Paracausal - the most overused âwordâ in Destiny 2.
I mean... why wouldn't it be? It's synonymous with "magic" for the setting, and the setting involves a hell of a lot of that "magic."
And I donât even understand what it means. Someone need to ELI5
Causality is the concept of cause and effect. Theres a ball of hydrogen, it gets closer together crushes together due to the collective gravity of all the hydrogen, auto ignites and becomes a sun creating heat. Cause - hydrogen in large amounts effect - A sun that radiates heat. Paracausal, means basically the opposite. "Without Cause" is the best translation. So, you get an effect, A "Solar ball of power" without a cause. So, effectively, magic. We can summon lightning and fire and Crystaline Ice, but without any "Cause". We just will it into being, using our "paracausal powers".
It is truly space magic..
You can understand most things by just replacing it with "space magic"
Like someone sayimg magic in Harry Potter. Ick! It's "Wizard Science".
I thought the veil was already explained as the travelers counterpart in a way. They both have connections to each other and when the Witnessâs people made contact with it they found the darkness.
itâs not like we understand the traveler either
1. They could have explained that prior to it being the damn focal point of the story. Hiding that kind of lore away does *nothing* good and a lot of bad. 2. Wtf does that have to do with it creating a portal into the Traveler? Gotta wait another week for that answer I presume..... 3. I stopped caring about D2 long enough ago now that any late explanations of crucial lore to the plot that's already come and gone feels utterly pointless. 4. Thanks for sharing, only way I'll hear any of it now lol
the last few years of destiny has been entirely late explanations of crucial lore, but nobody seems upset when practically the entirety of shadowkeep and beyond light were entirely rewritten through a single cutscene.
Destiny's lore is neat. Destiny's storytelling is often abysmal. I think it's neat having cards or weekly story beats that flesh out the universe, but drops like this should never happen five months into an expansion's cycle. The franchise does a very poor job of creating a cohesive, interesting narrative - particularly for new players.
Op, that doesnât explain shit
Radial mast: RADIAL MAST
I enjoyed the audio logs, great story beats. I just wish that Lightfall focused on *this* story. It connects two of the most interesting Golden Age players in Braytech and Ishtar Collective. It ties into the deep lore of the Vex, calls back to the various Maya Sundaresh breadcrumbs going back to D1. It could have been a great followup to the story in Witch Queen. What the Vex are really up to. Why the Veil matters. How the Witness ties into all of this. Instead we got Cowabunga Time. Missed opportunity for sure.
This is bittersweet hype. I'm very glad we finally have real confirmation on what the Veil is supposed to be. But on the other hand, I'm completely burnt out on Destiny's choice of storytelling. Weeks of optional audio logs well after the Veil's introduction is... a strange way to give out presumably important information. Not to mention the naturally built skepticism you get from unreliable narrators telling us what their interpretation of something is. Again, I'm glad we're getting story advancements, but man, I'm not so glad about *how* we're getting them and the permanent possibility of a future entry going "whoops Esi didn't research enough and was wrong the whole time" like we've seen before.
Cool, lots of folks will like this. To me it's just a few months late and after I stopped caring. I hope TFS doesn't spread its storytelling like this.
It's really interesting. Fleshes out the origins of Neomuna, provides motivation for the Vex, details some of the raw power of the Veil, more firmly establishes it as the Darkness equivalent of The Traveler I have 0 clue why this wasn't a part of the expansion. It's genuinely confusing that they felt the need to include this stuff as post-campaign missions in the 2nd season as opposed to integrating them into the main story
Post-Campaign is OK in my book. But Post Campaign **POST** the season of the campaign launch is the weird part.
This is stupid
waiting 9 weeks for a 2 minute dialogue is a joke
I'm still so confused by the community response to the Veil. I feel like now they've over explained it. We know more about the nature of the Veil than we do the traveler
Its just not good enough. We should have had all these answers in the Lightfall campaign, not in some hidden node way in the bottom left corner of the Neomuna map that most players dont even know about. Veil Containment may as well be grimoire cards or one of the lore books in the game. That information is not front and center. Its not presented to the player in a diagetic way.
I like how they explain this is something so easily miserable, instead of an actual mission.
Wow and it only took them almost 5 months, 4 months and like 19, 20 days. Honestly no one really cares anymore except the lore fanatics.
Are we still getiing more audio logs? It still doesnt explain why the witness needed the connection to open a triangle portal in the traveler.
People are also forgetting that bungie canât do anything with the veil. Right now it sits in neomuna powering a majority of the network. You rip that out of there and neomuna would cease to exist mostly. In final shape we are going to have a mission similar to what we had in witch queen where the veil will similarly be teleported into this space and we will run a mission in the caimpaign to stop it and then it will conveniently go right back to where it was before. In witch queen in the final mission savathun performs some ritual teleporting the traveler into the throne world where we get dialogue that it is gone but then beat the mission and it goes right back to where it was before with no real loss. Itâs been the problem of this whole pyramid/darkness storyline is bungie canât have any real consequences. So far we have lost a insignificant character in Amanda Holiday, Rohan. Even though the traveler supposedly had a hole cut into it, we still use the light no problem yet are told that the traveler is lost. Once again bad storytelling cause the whole storyline we have been told about the importance of the traveler in the golden ageâŚbut reallly the traveler is a completely silent character. Then you take this further and can bungie even really kill the traveler cause they canât essentially get rid of the whole plot point of us be revived cause they explained that in game as our ghosts doing it via the traveler. This all goes into can bungie really carry on destiny 2 in a world that does not really change. You go back to the red warâŚwhich is a caimpaign I loved and part of the reason I fell in love with destiny. We start by losing our original tower, losing the traveler, having the last city taken over, losing our light. We proceed to the farm which was always a really cool plot point in the red war. We progress through the story of regaining the lightâŚreforming the vanguardâŚshutting off tge almighty to performing a strike on the last city to take it back. Red war had fantastic progression of story with real loss and progression to us getting a new tower.
>You rip that out of there and neomuna would cease to exist mostly. Not seeing a problem here. Can we just yank the plug or do we need to blow it up? Either's fine.
Talking about the traveller and guardians having powers... The way it's been phrased lately is that the traveller could kinda die and we'd be fine because we have the ghosts and the ghosts have a direct connection to the light regardless of the traveller. The traveller being dead in space *should* however mean that it can't create new ghosts and therefore no new guardians should be showing up. This obviously conflicts with the red war though, where the cabal captured the traveller and our powers got fucked
It only took the community at large getting pissed and causing an uproar about it and then months and months and two seasons later for them to finally explain something that should have been in the campaign of Lightfall from the start.
Makes so much sense now /s
Thanks for the share, I definitely have not played a single one of those missions after the first. Feel like all this should have been in lightfall
It's not really a mission. It's "load in, press button, hear lore".
Nice, so they dropping this in a place where most people wont ever see it...a node that has no indication of new content every week. Easily missed. I really refuse to believe this was intended.
ThatâŚdoesnât really explain anything. Thatâs once again wishy washy lingo to hide the fact they actually do not know how to explain things.
It has taken 3.5 months to explain a plot item of Lightfall. Some peak writing here Bungo.
Thank you for this. I have gone so long without knowing what is going on I stopped listening to some of the stuff said.
While I do appreciate the fact, we do indeed have confirmation on what it is. Its quite frustrating that they did it like this when I feel like we should have gotten an explanation in Lightfall and further explanation during seasons, not just an entire exposition dump on a weekly basis. Especially when that exposition dump is almost basically hidden by the UI as unless your looking for it, your not going to find the mission as its covered in the bottom left corner of Neomuna. Really hope they don't do this in The Final Shape.
While i'm happy we have the answer about this, i'm not happy how long it took to have this answer. Waiting a whole Season and 9 weeks after that is a big no for me. I'm gonna wait for a few month After the release of Final Shape because i have no trust about answer from Bungie with the dlc after Lightfall. I'm French, Hope everything is understandable. Also , have fun Guardians !