It baffles me how Lightfall has done more damage to the Destiny franchise than all of D2Y1. Even though the game was undeniably in a terrible state, the setup for the future was insane. Vanilla D2 being setup by the action of Oryx and the Skyburners during the Taken King really made the game feel like what happens in the world matters. The Darkness arrived almost 4 years ago and it feels like nothing has really happened outside of off screen events. I really wish Bungie just made a Destiny 3 and ended Destiny 2 with Shadowkeep.
I don’t think not was that bad, I liked the story for what it was. I mean, it is more about circumstances than just standard power which we have been shown to utilize in various fights. So there maybe threats that come along that would require different methods of victory.
First rule of writing is "Know your beginning and know your end. Everything else in-between can fall into place during the writing process." It feels like Destiny was first created without ever knowing how the ending would come and have been making up along the way.
@@TheDungusTV I know. That is why in the first game the line "I could tell you..." is so famous. They didn't even know what the darkness was at that point.
They’ve always been open about not even knowing what the darkness was going to be. If that alone doesn’t speak volumes (not even taking into account the reboot of D1 a year prior to release and then again, the reboot of D2 prior to its release, using the D1 rise of iron dlc to buy more time while they rebooted D2), idk what does. Add to the fact they’re more focused on Marathon and Matter… they are just stumbling their way to the finish line. Nothing good can come of it now.
the story was vastly different even when D1 released. They lost most of their staff during D1 development so the new writers never really knew the ending of the story that someone else made.
This makes even more sense when you realize the scale and map size of the throne world with its tonnes of platforming content, neomuna was barren and flat in comparison.
they literally confirmed it, in a now deleted video, that light 3.0 was the reason element 5 wouldnt be coming with WQ. Lightfalls story got pushed back to TFS (not team four star sorry) so that lightfall could become element 5 the DLC. Bungie never once has come out and told the truth about anything. They constantly lie because they know that they dug the hole to deep to tell the truth now. They stopped enjoying working on the game a long time ago. Hence the motto change.
The problem as I see it is because Bungie didn't fully develop the Witness as a character and instead used the Witness as a plot device to inch the story forward only a tiny bit since The Witch Queen. We still don't fully understand the Witness' goals or motivations. As much grief as I gave Savathun for doing the "That was just as I planned (years/centuries/millennia in advance)." thing that she does so goddamn often, she was an active part of the lore since The Taken King expansion. We understood her manipulations and deceptions to an extent and some of us were eagerly awaiting the confrontation against her. This was partly why The Witch Queen expansion did so well, because Savathun had been an active threat not only within the game itself, but in the lore and even taunting the player directly breaking the 4th wall at times. We don't have that kind of build up with The Witness and unless they somehow make him compelling in The Final Shape, I just don't see it happening in eight story missions plus a raid. I hope they don't pull a "Oh, The Witness isn't the actual big bad. The Winnower is." card like they did with Savathun becoming an anti-hero who saved humanity as a side effect of her actions during the Collapse. That sort of thing only works once.
The days of bungie being able to plot out a story arc are long gone. Whereas the passion my be there, I don't think the narrative team have the experience to be able to craft a story.
actually, I'm worried we DO understand the Witness's motivations. The Traveler took care of all their material needs and built them up to the highest heights a civilization can reach, and the Pyramid civilization being presumably grateful and curious, wanted to talk to their god and hear its answers. It refused, and when they finally had the means to make it talk, it fled. as far as we know, they just want Traveler-senpai to notice them.
I like the general concept of the Witness's motivation, especially considering people like Zavala questioning the Traveler's actions during Witch Queen. I'm not the most updated with the smaller details of the lore, as I'm just a d1/first patch d2 player returning however. I think the missing part of the Witness's motivation for me is the relation of their race and everyone they've encountered along the way? Like there's little zealotry, so the fact the Witness just destroys these races without confronting a morality question is weird.@@xXx_Regulus_xXx
@@xXx_Regulus_xXxYea the main problem with the Witness is not that we know nothing about it, it's the fact that we know how bad and paper thin the character and it's motivations to "rewrite reality" is by now.
I'm noticing a pattern where bungie absolutely fumbles the storytelling, then makes an announcement that gives the players hope, then fumbles everything, then makes an announcement that fills the players with hope, them fumbles everything, then makes an announcem-
Well Witch Queen was extremely good but Beyond Light was crap so if we follow this then fingers cross that The Final Shape is going to be at least as good as The Witch Queen. I really think they used Beyond Light and Lightfall as "extenders" because they didn't have enough time to finish things.
gotta keep players playing and paying games as a service are not meant to "end" yet they want to craft a narrative to it, a narrative has an end eventually
This comment is one of these most truest comments I’ve seen in the past decade about this game. This game is officially dead I buy all the expansions all the time I mean money isn’t a issue for me but lord have mercy $110 per DLC per year for basically nothing just a campaign that was washed off and put together than throw it at them. The fact this company is a Multi Billionaire and some games created by a single development group look way better than this thing.
Imagine how amazing Joe Staten's original story could've been, that's when everything truly went down the toilet. About your outro, the video itself isnt negative. A lot of us fans are upset with the story, theres nothing wrong with expressing that. I love this game, it got me through my high school years, I just hate that something I love is now leaving a bad tase in my mouth.
As I put it back in Season of the Deep: "Imagine having this intricate plot, deep lore, many complex characters and themes about what's right or wrong, choices to make etc. all leading up to this huge confrontation with an unstoppable yet unknown enemy... and then we discover this Witness guy is just discount Anti-Spiral from Gurren Lagann, clearly done this way to avoid creating a new race (which should have been introduced way back in Beyond Light)".
Honestly (probably a sh*t take from me so sorry in advance just in case) they could be so well written in lore and cutscenes to make them look like a threat but gameplay wise guns, abilities and doing the mechanics are a bigger threat to them than us.
The fact we have not gotten an actual new race, one that isn't derived or created from another, in nearly ten years of a game franchise, is so baffling and disgusting it adds a layer of comedy to everything. The higher-ups are so desperate to not add anything actually new and exciting that one has to admire the commitment, if nothing else. The Witness if probably the worst villain someone could make when thinking 'big evil thing that is evil.' I hate them as a character and so desperately wish we had something, ANYTHING more than the literal stale wheat bread that they are.
Shoutout to Warframe introducing not one, but *two* unique enemy factions within the span of less than a year, between the Duviri Dax and the Murmur. On top of multiple major updates that brought more to the table than a single destiny expansion, on top of being completely free with no impending content vault. The more I see what Warframe does, the more astounded I am at how much Destiny manages to utterly fumble.
What disappoints me the most is Bungie had years to build up the Pyramids and design a new race to fill them, but when we visit the Europa Pyramid in WQ, we fight reskinned Red Legion Cabal who fight for Calus, not even Loyalists
The problem isn’t that there wasn’t enough exposure to or explanation of the Pyramids. The problem is that Bungie changed their story halfway through their closing acts: Witch Queen changed the Winnower and its “survival of the fittest” attempt to woo the Guardian to the Witness and its simplistically Thanos-like, nihilistic antagonism - all while effectively slotting in the Scorn as the Pyramid race. The other glaring problem with the story is actually the seasonal story, which should have been the connective tissue toward a better story. Yes, Beyond Light was very problematic (it didn’t build on Shadowkeep’s introduction to the Darkness proper), but Witch Queen’s introduction of the Witness as Destiny’s version of Thanos (and the seasonal story that preceded and followed) was the real element that derailed the ending.
Winnower is likely the entity/meta-entity that put the darkness bulb known as The Veil into the Universe, and the Gardner put the Traveler into the Universe, its still a Evolution/survival of the fittest "thing", whereas the Traveler/Gardner is all about chaotic creation.
@@Shahmane666it changed the "voice in the darkness" from the winnower with the idea of a final shape as the survival of the fittest as a philosophy, to the witness. and the more we learn about the witness the more clear it is that it couldn't actually be the winnower we've seen from before but the game seems to want you to just forget everything that doesn't line up. like even borderline omniscient characters like mara just swaps from like "the voice in the darkness" to "yeah its the witness"
I agree with the title. Really sealed my deal on that when I saw them assasinate Rasputin using suicide, they forced his death because his character concept completely broke up against Xivu’s war concept. I’d have loved to see them fight but the way they set up Xivu’s power made this impossible. Aka Written into a corner.
Rasputin was one of the most powerfull entities in Destiny that was only showed losing Battles. Lost against the Hive in the Escalation Protocol, lost against the Pyramids in Arrivals and Lost again against the Hive and Éramos in Season of the Seraph. I hope we don't hear ever again of Rasputin
@@davialmeida6566 regardless, he represents an interesting force in the universe, much like the Vex. The limits of causal forces vs paracausal always interested me. I like underdogs, and honestly, hearing all the lore surround Rasputin and his raw firepower made me want to see him put to use. If humanity could actually use him, say he came online in season of seraph, we wouldn’t have and real threats outside of hive gods and the pyramids. He could demolish the hive in a battle of attrition, obliterate the fallen with his eyes closed, crush any red legion forces before they knew they were in his sights. It’s why I say they wrote themselves into a corner, along with Xivu’s power trope, he was effectively assassinated because he was too powerful to keep alive. He didn’t have to die, they could have wrote the reconstruction of his operating system any way they want, but they chose to make him too weak to turn off the guns but strong enough to blow them all up, including himself? Yea, that sucks… Edit: I mean shit, even queen Mara was “scared” of Rasputin’s ability to strike anywhere in the system he wishes at a moments notice.
@@davialmeida6566that's because an almost omniscient AI is only as smart as the people writing it. The enemies always managed to shut Rasputin down someway because it was too OP. If Rasputin is operational there's no reason for the player guardian to go do stuff, just nuke the enemies from orbit and move on, so the writers always had to make Rasputin unavailable for some bullshit reason or else he'd just solve everything instantly. That's the issue of writing characters that are too OP, they become an obstacle to the story you're trying to tell and you need ways to circumvent it, do it enough times and it becomes transparent and dumb.
The witness should've been the one to end rasputin, had they kept him alive and the witness had just snuffed him out upon entering the system that would have been far better as a demonstration of power.
I just feel like the story beyond this point will never live up to this magnitude. They literally sold the witness as the most powerful being in the universe. Why should i care about literally anything as a plot going forward? Sure it can be "neat" but nothing will ever be as important or life threatening as this expansion.
I've been saying this for a long time. Any sort of "next saga" has to walk the line of still being significant after Final Shape, i.e. still being threatening and interesting, but it also cant trivialize final shape, IE they cant do something like "oh actually guys this NEW entity is the witness SQUARED!!!! it's the thing that's been pulling the strings this whole time!!!" That line is not an impossible one to walk, but it is very difficult. And i really doubt they'll do it well.
Because there is an entity behind the witness (the voice in the darkness) that could essentially elevate another. You are removing a puppet, not the puppet master. The Taken army will also be without a leader. Mara is a strong enough will to control them becoming the Taken Queen. That’s a massive army at her disposal and someone who has ulterior motives. The vex have yet to reveal a big baddy. Sivu is yet to make her move… there’s plenty of massive threats, and a massive power vacuum is about to erupt.
Forsaken felt like the last expansion that actually moved the story forward a substantial amount. Everything since has crawled along at a snail's pace. Hell, the notable events of Lightfall's entire campaign is a boss fight and a single cutscene. More shit happens in the opening cinematic of Baldur's Gate 3 than in the last like 5 years of Destiny. I can't imagine Final Shape having a satisfying conclusion in any way. There's still so much shit that needs to be resolved and explored. I'm afraid its gonna be a bunch of nostalgia bait from D1 and vaulted D2 stuff, a boss fight against the Witness, and that's it. No explanations, no revelations, nothing. We kill the Witness and then all the pyramid ships self destruct or something and Xivu runs off, never to be seen again.
Hot take: I think shadow keep actually did a very good job at progressing the story. It expertly shifts the destiny story from the whimsical faction killing into "oh, the darkness is coming. It straight up cloned my body and told me." The story changed dramatically. Beyond light is what dropped the ball and went back to "just kill some fallen for a few hours lol, thanks for the $40."
It's fundamentally unbelievable that we're 9 years into a 10 year story and we still have no idea what the traveler is, where it came from, or who ultimately controls it (whether itself, or a "gardener" higher than it).
Destiny's writing feels like a student procrastinating on a project for months and are having to rush and crunch to actually get it done and done well in the last few days before it's due
3:30 This. 1000% THIS. I feel like Beyond Light’s story doesn’t get talked about enough for how much it wasted. All that setup: Shadowkeep, Season of Arrivals, the Stranger’s return from D1, Stasis, all culminating in… us fighting a villain-of-the-week Fallen goon for the millionth time. I haven’t finished the video yet, so mind me if you already said this, but Beyond Light’s conflict is literally just a copy of House of Wolves. A Fallen Kell seeking out to unite all of the Fallen in order to get revenge on the Traveler. Only this time, they’re using Darkness instead of Vex tech. The fact we got this over a story surrounding the Pyramids and what was inside them is baffling.
The Witness was doomed to fall flat from the start. Savathun, Xivu and Nezarec were all built up. Savathun the most. Heck, Eramis was built up. The Witness...literally not one bit. Flicked it's fingers a few time and gone some missions later. This being is supposed to be All Powerful. But we never actually see that. We see Savathuns trickery, we feel Xivu's wrath.
@@alecmitchell5047 The Witness has been mentioned a few times as "The voice in the dark" and that's about it. Good villains have presence in thr story. The Witness appeared, did nothing, and left. Savathun royally fucked us. Xivu kept sending countless armies after us. Nezarec plagued an entire species. And it was all ingame. Witness had nothing other than get angry at Calus once, flick his fingers twice, and leave. Everyone else did it's bidding. Almost 0 presence.
@@ToadimusPrime Isnt that what Oryx did though? Was mentioned a few times, came in during a DLC, made the taken, and dipped until we beat him at the end of Taken king and the raid?
@@alecmitchell5047 No, it wasn't. Oryx has been hinted on Luna since vanilla, and then again in Dark Below. Not only by killing his son, but also in the lore, as well as ingame references and dialogue. We knew who Oryx was and what he could do, from the very start. We saw his brood on Luna. I'd say the "villain" closest to the Witness, in terms of not having little build-up, is SIVA. Just popped there, did nothing, and it's gone.
I understand that you're coming from a place of passion exactly as I am. The most painful part is knowing they wanted this to be up with the lord of the rings, dungeons and dragons, huge ever expanding universe that is tied together well. But then we got retconned stories and half-truths. Not to mention development squeeze and poor leadership. If the final shape doesn't turn out to be what we were promised, in a sense i will feel shame for knowing i was brainwashed into 10 years of servitude.
I think that Lightfall heavily suffered from how shoehorned Strand was in the campaign. Instead of learning about the Witness, its motives, and this being the literal expansion before the end, they focused on a cranky old man screaming "GET TO THE VEIL", surfer bros that have no concept of the scale of things happening in the world, and are content with cracking jokes in front of Caiatl when Calus has just been killed (in an underwhelming fight as well). We got a raid so easy that it has been solo flawlessed, and I've managed to do the first 2 encounters solo, which I never thought I would be doing in a raid (but hey at least I got Day 1 lol). DSC was the perfect intro into raiding, it had simple mechanics that were easy to understand, but now we have Spire of the Watcher: The Raid. They could have put Strand in the season (and kept it around post-TFS), allowing them to purely focus on the story of Lightfall, and put all of the bad stuff in the season, which people wouldn't care about since Lightfall would have been good. I also don't understand why they put The Witness cutscene in Deep, and their justification for that was "Oh we are experimenting with the story", THIS CLOSE TO THE END OF THE SAGA. It's so disappointing to see, as we could have gotten something that was the quality of Witch Queen, but instead, we got an overhyped expansion that didn't trip, but instead face-dived the game into the ground making now at a point that TFS has to be perfect, otherwise Bungie may very well be over. I am very worried for TFS, as 1. They basically did not hype it up (I expect they will in April), 2. It is another 4 and a half months until it comes out, how much better will it be with the extra 3 months attached to it? and 3. TFS collectors edition is the D1 tower, which we haven't gone to for what, 6 years? It is not the perfect symbol of Destiny, it is a symbol but what does it mean to anyone who did not play D1, it is like a souvenir for a place you have never gone to, and if that's what they regard as the perfect symbol, I don't know what to expect for the actual expansion. Sorry for the rant, I am really passionate about Destiny and this past year has just been horrible for it.
For the Witness, we had no means of learning about the Witness since it cut ties with us after Haunted as we refused to join it. We know its motives as a player that it wants to end suffering in the universe, and to do that they would need to get to the Traveler’s pale heart. For Osiris, he has been pushing himself right after a coma, not something someone can normally get over. Cloudstriders and Neomuna are isolationists so it makes sense. Caiatl hated her father and stated to not reconcile with him. Why put strand in a season when it is expansions that give big content? Strand is what was advancing the story of Lightfall as it reveals much about the nature of light and dark, how it is tied to the veil, etc.. how can it fit into LF without anyone knowledgeable to tell us as Guardians, it would feel out of place. Even WQ has its problems with execution. They already have other content for D2 in the works and there is actually small lore from CE of FS
In conclusion: ALWAYS have one backup dude or few more in narration team who can say "Stop!" where and when needed. This can be double-edged sword but it's still better than nothing or letting things go with the flow of fresh blood in the team and ideas "briliant" at paper made without thinking twice.
I think they should have teased the witness in beyond light, revealed more of him and his armies in witch queen and learned what the witness actually is and his motivations in lightfall (at launch not a season after)
After Final Shape the possibilities are absolutely endless, with so many routes for them to take and places to go. The Nine, the vex (as their own group with their own goals), the cabal (taking back their homeworld) and even the possibility of going to fundament but I dont have faith that destiny will live long enough to do all that
Truth. Amazing amount of Destiny content suspended and underutilized. With the current player base erosion, and a declining quality of the player base, they're not going to have the revenue to widen the product
They will never go back to the Vex. They have shown they don't have capabilities to write a good story for the most complex faction. And they're also time-travellers. They have taken over every timeline but ours since we are the paracausal force. What could they do to make them a good villain? Nothing, ain't gonna happen.
I think one of the biggest problems with Destiny was that it was written by many people instead of one person. Let me explain. The original Marathon was written by former Bungie dev Greg Kirkpatrick. Although he says some of the terminals were written by Jason Jones, the overarching story as well as a good majority of the lore were written by Kirkpatrick. Marathon also links to a previous game of Bungie's called Pathways into Darkness which I believe was also written by Kirkpatrick (though not much is known on that front). Myth was written by Jason Jones himself, with co-writing credits given to Robert McLees. Halo's story from the beginning was written by former Bungie writer Joesph Staten as we all know. All Halo games in Bungie's lineup were written by him with minor credits given to Robert McLees and Luke Smith for Halo 3, and Peter O'Brien for Halo: Reach. Destiny has had multiple writers over the years. While Joseph Staten wrote the original Destiny, it was thrown out and others had to come in and write for the game. Luke Smith, Christopher Barrett, Robert McLees, Clay Carmouche, Ryan Ellis, Jason Harris, Christine Thompson, Gerry Duggan, Adam David Miller, Steve Cotton, Robert Brookes, Paul Mastroianni, Scott Taylor and this isn't even all of them. Are we starting to see the picture here?
"Why not have the Pyramids siege Earth? Cause a second Collapse?" I deadass thought that would and WAS originally going to happen; why else call it Lightfall? I thought with their announcement of the BL -> WQ -> LF trilogy, Bungie had finally solidified the narrative they wanted and were finally able to tell the story that Destiny wanted to tell since day 1. I waited years to get answers to the most compelling part of Destiny's setting to me, the nature of the Darkness and the truth behind the Pyramids and their race. I am still waiting.
@@zearcjustice7837 It was actually supposed to be there (hence the wide open nature of the Throne World and the design of Savathun's temples) but covid messed everything up.
@headphonesaxolotl That is very true. Covid f'ed up the studio. I honestly wish they would have delayed everything to a halt and just made everything out exactly the way they wanted. If money was the issue, Bungie could have done a crowd source campaign, and I guarantee they would have gotten support. If they truly went transparent and did the beyond light story as they needed to, with all the necessary story beats and then did the same with witch queen and lightfall. We would all be singing a different tune.
They can’t make the final shape entirely about learning what the witnesses race is, it’s goals, and what all of this has led up to, kill the witness, learn what the traveler is and understand why anything in the Destiny universe happened within one single expansion, it should have been done throughout all three, rather than witch queen being the best and only expansion that really showed what we were up against. Lightfall should have been like the red war, involving us going between neomuna and earth defending the city from the armies invading earth while hunting down the veil and gaining understanding what it actually is, only for us to fail at the final moment with either portions of the last city being taken under siege or neomuna falling to the cabal, I also think they should have had mini pyramid ships that attacked like the trailer showed. The final shape will probably be mediocre at best good but I feel will have rushed elements or parts that are only explored in episodes and random missions like veil containment
bro perfectly explained how i have felt since beyond light im so glad im not the only one who felt this exact way regarding how they should have done it and what we should have got
At this point, it would be nice to see a lore book with plenty of tabs explaining the day to day life of one of the Witnesses predecessors. Their lives, culture and belief systems, technological structure, what their favourite brand of coffee is and hell... whatever brand of toilet paper they prefer. As a Warlock, I have done enough speculation while hitting on the Copium Shes-ha and now it's time to get ALL the answers. Otherwise, I will hang up my bond and pick up a Heavy Eviserator instead.
Nice to see someone else say Beyond Light’s story did a lot of damage. It was the 4th major storyline of Fallen using a power that isn’t theirs (Skolas using Vex Tech, SIVA Fallen, Fallen using Black Armory weapons) which made Eramis uninteresting as a villain. Also the more interesting storyline of Clovis Bray was pushed to the background to the point where Season of The Seraph made him more interesting.
Isn't that kind of the point of the Fallen's story though? They lost everything they held dear from a force more powerful than themselves that gave them gifts. Its very poetic in a way. And then they finally reclaim a piece of those gifts by being in proximity to their god again.
Bro I’m telling you. The only way to save this game would be a reboot. 1. Have the guardian die in the end. 2. Wound the powers that be to explain why they didn’t go ham and wipe out everything. 3. Get a new guardian with a face and a name that has to build themselves from the ground and I. That process explore the world lore wise and give us a feel for everyone in those environment. 4. Rebuild the vanguard.
Destiny 2 peeked in Shadowkeep for me. No, not because the game was perfect, but it had all the content from the first three years all in one. Season of the Worthy was only good narratively because of the pyramids coming... but they nailed it. That ominous screen showing them come in week by week, coming closer and closer. I still get chills. Then in Season of Arrivals (my favorite time of D2 aside from Warmind - you heard me right) we finally saw the pyramids darken our skies. Wow... how cool was that. The seasonal activity needed to play with that idea more, but at least we were left with a foreboding sense that something was about to go down. Then the season ended with the chilling message "The Light cannot save you. Come seek us out on Europa" or something like that. Amazing. Then... Beyond Light happened. I love the whole Deep Stone Crypt and Clovis Bray and the Exo Stranger ... but now was not the time for that. What about the pyramids? Crickets. They give you space ice (Stasis) and then did nothing. Horrible follow-up to a 3-year build up. The seasons were about Uldren - those belonged in Forsaken to put it mildly - and we got no answers... we got filler. I literally quit the game at the end of Beyond Light because I didn't think Bungie can save such a narrative faux pas and I was over the grind and build up to nothing. Beyond Light was not the opportunity to give a filler expansion - especially since Shadowkeep (except for the pyramid stuff) was a filler expansion. I tune in now and again to TH-cam to see how the story is going since I haven't played in two years. From what I can tell, Bungie absolutely sh!t the bed on the narrative. All these good ideas, like the leviathan on Titan (season of the deep), or the actual Reef Wars (season of the plunder) or having the Leviathan get corrupted more and more over time - which should have been a year on its own - all fine ideas, but do NOTHING for the actual Light/Dark story. And that's what Destiny 2 became for me... all build-up, all questions, all hype... and never an answers, never any pay-off for sticking around and lots of punishing grind to rub it in.
Destiny lacks mistery, for all the shit we gave D1, the overall tone was never matched in D2. That said, WQ and Forsaken are incredible, but Lightfall shat the bad so greatly that it’s hard to get excited for Final Shape.
Saw this video the other day with less than 1,000 views and now to see it with 12,000+ is really awesome. Hope this isn’t a one off for him. He deserves everything coming
I really hope they give us a full run down of the Witness’s background. ik we already got that during Season of the Deep, but i want an actual rendered cutscene that shows us more. also, i wished the Witness or the pyramids were the focus of vanilla D2. can you imagine having him showed to us and then have darkness themed dlc’s all the way up till now. i feel like a climatic conclusion would hit so much more harder. also, i have a sneaky suspicion that they had no idea what to do with the pyramids until Season of Arrivals or even before that. The Witness also seems like a last minute thought, in terms of character design and backstory. sorry this was long but i needed to say something
I don’t consider this a “negative blog.” It made a lot of sense. & as a writer myself, they should’ve been flushing out the darkness a way lot better than they did.
As a developing writer myself I wholeheartedly agree. Writing aspects of mysticism is really engaging and Bungie has taught me how to do it well, by not doing what they have done.
I remember loading into the tower at the end of the LF campaign with my buddies and the first thing out of our mouths was "that's it?" I myself am a writer. I write creatively both in my free time and professionally and it makes my head spin just even thinking about how much crap the writers at Bungie have to answer, explain, and divulge all in ~10 story missions. It simply can't be done. It's not a matter of whether TFS will be good or not. It's a matter of how well it can it dig itself out of the hole Bungie has put it in.
I knew as soon as I saw the 80s action movie promo material Lightfall was NOT it 😭 I never could’ve imagined it would completely demolish the culmination of Destiny’s story which was far and away my favorite part of the franchise. I half way don’t even care to play Final Shape tbh but I want some type of closure before I quit the game for good
what gets me is that we traded Rasputin for Nimbus. We traded this Eldritch, unknowable, and ancient machine for... Nimbus. I will continue to call out Season of the Seraph as the moment it all went down hill. Yeah, Beyond Light had its own issues, too.
Bionicle journey in the story was at least good. Destiny 2's journey has been complete dog poo poo garbage, and the only thing that kept the story going was the players HOPES for it to get better eventually, over and over and over. I'm not counting lore or grimoire cards as destiny having a good story. None of the interesting things that go on in 90% the lore has ever been shown through gameplay or cinematics. If I wanted to read all day, i'd go buy a book.
Waiting ten year for a bunch of Empty Ships piloted by Megamind with an Unibrow that only appears in CG cutscenes isn't exactly how you define some antagonists. They just got too lasy to make the Darkness a proper factions.
I always blame Season of Arrivals for the expectations with the Pyramid ships. We saw entire legions of Pyramid Ships, large and small, invading our moons and planets. We saw the power of the pyramid ships. We were told that each pyramid had someone in it, making what's in it incredibly promising. Who was invading us? Who was the commander of these ships? Suddenly, we're told that The Witness controls ALL these ships, and only a FEW have a Disciple in them, not every single one. I also think Bungie tried to write themselves out of the corner, which led to Lightfall as we know it. Rather than another Collapse, they wanted The Witness to have motive. This is why the concept of the Final Shape was created. This is why EVERYTHING we know about The Witness, the Final Shape as a concept, and the Pyramid Civilization, as well as the traveller, came from the Lightfall expansion and its seasons. This is why we had The Veil shoved in our faces. They needed it to make sense, so they introduced The Veil (which, to me, was completely and utterly unnecessary). Season of Arrivals set a mood and tone that Bungie either didn't want to meet or couldn't meet. As much as I loved The Witch Queen, it feels both irrelevant and unnecessary in the light and darkness saga finale. It should have come before Beyond Light.
@@Shoegaze-I agree, Arivals just made it seem like the unfolding threat was more serious than it actually was. However, the true threat was sunsetting, so I guess they were on point in that regards.
It's very clear WitchQueen and lightfall went through substantial rewrites. There is alot of evidence the whole "The Traveler created the hive guardians" wasn't the original story with dialouge suggesting it was instead going to involve Savathun finding a way to ressurect dead ghosts.
Main problem for me is that bungie writes mysterious obscurity until they absolutely have to provide an answer. Usually that narrative answer is either underdeveloped or completely rewrites what we'd known simply because they hadn't actually decided what they wanted to do yet but still delivered lore and story to us like they had. It's like constantly moving a narrative goal post and making savathun an anti hero was the only time since forsaken (outside of the oddly good seasonal story every now and then) where this actually felt good. All the while they're claiming to have an overarching plan. Imo arrivals happened way too early and was only ever a narrative beat to try and justify the content vault. But that literally ruined most of the interest in the pyramid ships and bungie consistently made it harder and harder for themselves to bring this story to a satisfying conclusion.
Fair point! If I can recommend something, the small mini screen to the left of the game play should overtake the whole screen most of the time. Gameplay is just filler but images, examples, trailers, and other things that help your point should be front and center
Ehh, that's no too bad. The Witness is thousands of years old. One year is such a short passage of time. Who knows, it probably takes a lot of time to "Finalize" all of existence.
They really gutted the Witness’ mystique and potential giving it a mortal background. The shadowkeep darkness lore being cosmic and incomprehensible was so much better.
It’s unbelievably tragic how Bungie hyped up the pyramids as this secret, dark presence that could become the next big enemy, yet because of their lazy and laughably incompetent execution the pyramids became basically nonexistent. The darkness doesn’t really change gameplay in any tangible way, we only read about it in lore. They legitimately had the the setup for something interesting and extraordinary, but fumbled the bag the hardest they possibly could
You're not going to get a satisfying conclusion to this 10 year saga. And that's not me being a hater...it's where Bungie is right now. Their creative manpower after either firing their heavyweights or urging them to leave is stretched far too thin. And the sheer amount of gravitas and weight this ONE expansion needs to carry in literally every single moment, in order to do everything it needs to do...both in terms of narrative and content offering...it's more than they can handle. Final Shape needs to both sequel bait the coming "episodes" AND wrap up 10 years of storytelling, and I don't see either being satisfying. It's going to feel like Lost's last season and Mass Effect 3's ending all rolled into one. Rushed, incomplete, and empty.
where we are at in the game now is how the staten cut was supposed to end but the problem is we didnt get the full staten story- bungie dumped part of his story into the game around the time of shadowkeep but we never had a start (this was supposed to be D1). they plopped us into it more than halfway leaving us with videos like this and even more questions
Can I be honest? As a fan of Destiny as a franchise, I loved the direction they were going in with during Shadowkeep, with the Winnower and it's philosophy of "survival of the fittest". They dropped all that for an undead, space magic version of a Mass Effect Reaper who's also a nihilist. I _hated_ the drastic direction switch and I think it's what really turned me off from the story at that point... because the story and lore was why I was sticking around at that point. I'm hoping Bungie can stick the landing, but at this point? I know they won't.
Did I miss something about The Nine and The Emissary? Who and what are they to the story? Will siva return to destroy or help us? I have hundreds of questions that haven't been answered.
Wait, why wasn't Neomuna a city filled with Jovians, Xur's race? They were said to live out past the Awoken, the Light physically hurts them so it would make sense for their society to instead revolve around a Darkness power, the Strand.
That was by far my favorite part of the story. The random drifter-affiliated things; all just kinda pointless. A million starting threads that never got followed up.
The best decision I made was to stop playing after Lightfall, permanently. I won't be back for Final Shape, for the fist time I can say I'll be content watching someone else play the conclusion. GG Bungie.
Its simple, they want a "Game as Live Service" and that doesn't equate to a really story laden game, it equates to dragging it out to keep you coming back, these two goals have failed to jive for a long time, and now we are at the breaking point.
Yeah live service games work really well when the game is just fun to play and then forget about them since they have no major storylines to follow but trying to mix both a compelling story with this live service model is just nonsense that ends up as disjointed plot points no one can even fucking remember unless you watch youtube essays. It's like trying to read a novel while on a treadmill people that are interested in the story are just gonna jump off and stop playing and people that just want a workout are gonna keep playing but just wont give a shit about the story.
Especially when it leads to using FOMO as their MO. I think in hindsight, sunsetting/vaulting was the moment this whole situation became terminal. They couldn’t just keep adding random fluff in with the size of the backlog. That one moment I think really killed any interest in me or my group to come back to the game.
Something I find sad about Destiny’s lore is that it can’t be taken seriously since they just change things or kill off characters/bring them back out of convenience. It’s just a joke
As a player that has been playing since vanilla D1. This game’s story has felt so volatile that I can hardly keep up (some of that has been my lack of involvement in recent seasons but hey the game isn’t fun anymore). I really strongly remember D1 but after red war the cohesion has just not been there imo.
The Witness and the pyramids were actually introduced in ShadowKeep and stasis was teased at that same time too. Bungie also stated after ShadowKeep launched in 2019 that the light and darkness saga began with the ShadowKeep expansion.
IMO Forsaken was the best expansion! Going on a personal vengence trip. Feeling like a outlaw working together with Spider and so on. Also the Drifters Arc ist something I Like the most! But the worst thing was waiting for the pyramid ships and seeing them coming closer inside Rasputin's vaults and when they finally arrived Savathun ruined all! I mean I liked the Savathun Arc too, because it gave us many answers, but this was just unnecissary! In that moment where Savathun portet US away from the pyramid ship, I knew WE would have to wait at least for months to get in! Bungie does the same mistake over and over again!!!
They sacrificed cohesive story, and content in proper context (stasis, strand), as well as the best characters (cayde, rasputin) in order to make up for the fact that they were unable to produce enough content fast enough. And that is because they’ve basically been reverse engineering the game since D2 Vanilla. Undoing the catastrophe, redesigning every major aspect of gameplay and game system while ALSO producing the actual content. Luke Smith screwed this game over. Bungie’s devs have been playing catchup ever since. Beyond Light, instead of an exposé on the pyramids and the pyramid’s race - we got Stasis as a story starring Eramis. Content AS a story. Same for Lightfall. We got the Strand tutorial AS the story, rather than it just being.. Content - in addition to an actual cohesive story. It’s like taking a campaign and breaking it up into 7 pieces and using it as weekly content is… not a good idea. Running back and forth to the vendor and the projector for lore dump.
Im a fairly new fan to destiny 2, I only joined the community in lightfall and even then it was savathun and the science fantasy witchcraft aesthetic that made me look at the game and want to play it, Ive had nowhere near as much build up and attachment to the story unfolding as most destiny fans and I am still after about a year of being invested in the lore of this game still catching up on whats unfolding. Even I am worried about how the final shape will unfold and handle the major ending to the light and dark saga, I cannot imagine how long time destiny 2 fans are feeling.
It's worrying, but my last bit of hope is still there. TFS looks good in its trailers. The pale heart destination looks awesome and the new abilities and build crafting look fun to mess around with. However, I'm just not sure if the story is going to hit all the marks I'm looking for. I am going to almost be playing this campaign with a checklist in my head. It's almost like I'm going to be playing bingo with the avaliable narrative beats. I'm almost setting myself up for disappointment.
I don't believe for a second that they'll wrap up the saga in Final Shape. If the story wraps up all the major story threads, there will be no compulsion to play the episodes.
I hope the end of light v dark gives us a loot/gear reset. Not sunsetting but essentially make the new loot objectively better. That keeps the old loot usable while ushering in new loot.
Hate to be that guy, but my hopes for a great conclusion have faded away. The track record of seasonal and big expansion content has proven how far the mighty bungie have fallen. They’re too focused on their other IPs, not fixing overdue issues in D2, constantly telling side stories that are just filler stories instead of moving the main plot along, even all the leadership that has been shifted around, moved to the other IPs altogether or just flat out left bungie. These are all warning signs that I don’t think ppl are taking into consideration at all! I used to be the biggest Bungie optimist that always thought “they have the bigger picture in mind, they’ll pull it off, the stuff down the road will prove they had it all planned out”…. But the truth has been there in front of us since the beginning of destiny; they rebooted D1 a mere year before release and cobbled together that game’s story & everything since has pretty much been about the bare minimum once certain leadership took over. “Forsaken was great… make sure to never deliver that quality of expansion again.” That’s what they really said to themselves. All the controversies have added up over the years (the xp throttling, the lying about many things & acting like the community can’t possibly be on their level, the backpedaling, the constant changes that didn’t need to happen, etc etc) and ppl have always given them the benefit of the doubt, but the truth is that they don’t even care enough about destiny anymore, so why should we? Gambit was left to die. Crucible was ruined and years of begging only started to get a few maps out of them. Strikes used to be a highlight of destiny. Now they’re recycled crap with battlegrounds thrown in as filler. The campaigns are predictable 8 mission long stories that they jam story and content together in and hope for the best. They prefer to focus on all their other projects outside of destiny while using destiny as the funding source. I’m sorry, I lived destiny since it’s very beginning. I played before it launched and played faithfully thru the years since launch day in sept 2014. You won’t find someone more dedicated to the franchise and a strong supporter of bungie… but as I’ve seen the truth of everything, I just stopped simping for them. I realize we already had the best of destiny and sadly, it won’t get any better. They only have one destination planned for final shape… and that’s inside the traveler? How can that even do a good enough job of anything? No supers? We can’t steal a new subclass from the witness? Come on! It’s just another by the numbers expansion again, just trying to wrap things up. They’ve been telling us this very thing and they’re ready to move on (even tho they said D2 will continue after the light vs dark saga). Destiny is most likely at the end of its life cycle and once the 3 episodes end after final shape, I doubt any major stuff will happen. I could honestly see them stepping back and either saying “we’re taking a break for a while” and they only keep the seasonal events going for a while (dawning, etc) OR they sell off the franchise to another dev appointed by Sony, letting them try to tell the next “big” destiny story. I think bungie is more focused on Matter and Marathon and their inaction to do big things and fixes of destiny the past few years shows how done they are. I hope I’m wrong and TFS is the best expansion ever. I hope they really do a fantastic job, but even with the recent news of Joe Blackburn leaving (or the firing of Michael Salvatori and many other high ranking ppl), that’s the red flag/telltale signs it’s going to be bad. How many great leadership left other franchises right before the release of a game or DLC and those releases were great? Usually none. This is usually how those ppl tell the fans (without saying) how things REALLY are cause they can’t publicly come out and say it or bash those companies. People need to read between the lines here and temper their expectations. Hurts me to say it, but I just don’t see anything good happening from this point on in D2’s life cycle. I hope I’m wrong, I really do, but I just don’t see that bungie magic happening anymore.
I have the same feelings. I am not stoked about facing the Witness at all. Also respect that you are open like that. And respect for trying not to be negative the entire time, despite what's going down recently
I will say two things: I just want to fight new enemies. And neomuna needs more background elements to make it feel alive. In the lore it’s said that the people of neomuna are fighting calus by inhabiting mechs. That shit should be in the game! I should see mechs fighting in the distance. It literally looks like nimbus is the only one in the city that is “fighting”. Are there even other cloud striders?
When you look at the current story and where it looks like it will go, it seems like they just dragged this out because they had nothing else. Like the entire story in terms of what actually matters boils down to the witness is mad that the traveler is running away cuz they wanna combine the traveler and the veil into one entity. Because they think thats the meaning of life. 10 years of story building and thats all it is.
Love how you calmly broke things down and showed me perspective I never considered. Destiny hate bait is all too common on TH-cam so this was very refreshing thank you. Bungie looks to be really resource strapped or just plain cheap to not make a new race of enemies. Beyond Light was the time to do it except they didn’t. This emphasis on putting out a minimum viable product has really caught up to them
I've been thinking for a few months now, what type of story could make the playerbase stay after FS? And after seeing Byfs video on Zavala and stasis I figured that a civil war between guardians would make a good story, think about it, there's two sides: the ones who think that light is good and darkness is bad and we shouldn't use the powers of stasis and strand anymore, and the ones that accepted the light and darkness as a one big thing and not antagonist of each other. Maybe the catalyst for this civil war could be the fact that we defeated the witness and the powers of the dark shouldn't be necessary anymore or even bc this powers cause terror on the normal people thus making guardians question their beliefs. And with this we could finally learn more in depth about the people of the last city and the politics in it. This is just an idea but I really like the possible moral debate that a story like this could create in the community.
Great points, I really hope whatever happens, they set up the next saga and don't just leave the destiny universe in limbo. One of my favorite games of all time.
I don't feel sorry for the writers or anyone at Bungie... I feel sorry for us the community. We naively supported them for so long and all we wanted in return was the game to be as good as we knew it could be. Instead we got higher prices, less content, recycled cookie cutter seasons, and Lightfall was the epitome of NOT "over-delivering". I have very little faith that TFS will be anywhere near what most would accept as "good enough" after so many let downs, issues being ignored, etc. At this point, I have so much disdain for them and everything they've done, idk if TFS being perfect would even matter to me. I want the conclusion and I want to be done with them, that is how I feel right now. That could change, but it would take an insane amount of over-delivery for that to happen and I just don't think they have it in them. If they don't pull this off, I find it hard to believe they would survive it.
I think because of how short Destiny 2 Campaigns are, there is sadly no way for them to give the 10 Year Saga a good Conclusion, we could benefit alot from having more Missions, and Cutscenes for the Final Shape, it reminds me of Final Fantasy 14s Endwalker, its Final Expansion of it’s Storyline which was around 30-50 Hours long JUST for the Final StoryArc which ended it with a huge and satisfying Payoff, meanwhile Destinys 4-7 Hour Long Campaings, i feel like wont cut it😊
To me, all the retconning of the Gardener and Winnower stories hurts the narrative too much. I loved those lore entries, so full of metaphor because the Winnower talked about how metaphor was the only way to convey the ideas in a way a mortal could understand with our limited perspective. Then we find out the Witness's motivation and it's ... Pretty fucking simple. And kind of petty, really.
Beyond Light is what killed all the hopes and faith I had with the story. So much potential with a grey Fallen expansion + uncovering the secrets of the pyramid ships, but instead it was about a comically evil Fallen villain, a unnecessary Stasis training arc and then finally the only piece of good story with the raid.
when i first started playing destiny during shadowkeep this is what i thought shadowkeep is "the cliffhanger," we dont know WHO we are fighting, because at the end of the campaign like we literally see ourself talking to us?? it was a cliffhanger, which is fine. the entire campaign was like "who are we fighting? whats in the pyramid?" and when we get to the pyramid, its a cliffhanger. who are we fighting. like we are looking for a concept, the "root of all evil," who is it? And as someone who like didnt go deep into the lore I thought it was gonna be revealed to be the hive or the taken because those were the only like magic evil forces and stuff beyond light was meant to be the answer ya, right out the gate we see a pyramid, but it ended up basically just being shadowkeep again, we go into a pyramid and still dont know whats up and witch queen was like so cool and we finally got who the darkness guy is, and we know about the hive magic now, and everything was going to be so awesome. and when lightfall was being revealed, I thought Neomunna was going to be the darkness society. I thought the cloudstriders were going to be like the humans who stepped up and took darkness power for themselves, and we were going to fight them on a darkness planet, and by the end of it we were going to have like a cool plot twist or something and it was going to be just like witch queen. and then like a day later I was so disappointed. such a shame man.
Some have also said this but strand feels like it should've been in Witch Queen, but for me its mainly because it would've been *perfect* you know the parts with deepsight? They work PERFECTLY as parts where you could've used strand to go through and sling yourself through, the fight with Savathun would be a PERFECT time for strand to go all out as a element, we could've weaved her spell against her, showing her that while yes the hive have gained the light we have reached even deeper into the self and found something new, sometimes powerful
I think we are giving Bungie a lot of credit when we say that this final shape story will be triumphant. This saga will go out with a whimper and not with a roar. At most it will be " mediocre but good" and thus why i cancelled the pre order, Lightfall was the wetest fart I could ever play.
Finally a good fan. I just want the answers to all of it. Is the traveler a construct of light that carries the will of the original Gardener. Is the winnower the first tree of sacred wings, and the first loading screen of destiny 2 where the circle& square revolve eachother display in the background an outline of The First Garden. Will Eris Morn be killed and returned normal one last time? Does Crota really love pancakes, esp if they be guardian smashed pcakes?
This was a very well constructed video, you hit on every point and every gripe I have had with the game over the past few years and ended up quitting during season of the deep. Which hurts because I have been a Destiny player sense the days of D1 and I miss playing Destiny there is no other game like it however I can't condone what Bungie has been doing and how they have treated us, their community.
God after listening to what could have been in lightfall, god I hate what they did with that story. Instead ofngiving us answers and exploring our enemy.... We got The Veil. The biggest RetCon in destiny history. That made no sense, came out of nowhere, and added nothing to the story, in fact it detracts from it. God I hate The Veil
After The Final Shape story wraps up some time from now, I’m positive there will be dissertation level videos pointing back to the experience that was Destiny, and how Bungie fumbled the bag. And whatever they have planned next will be DoA. I believe the only reason destiny can pull the current numbers it has now is because players have already invested a decade of time into this story, people just are going to finish it. But do so begrudgingly. TLDR: we’re all still here playing violins on this sinking titanic of a game, cause what else are we going to do.
![CAMPปลิ้น | รวม Highlight 2024! PART [1/2]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/6hnvNnvYloU/mqdefault.jpg)
It baffles me how Lightfall has done more damage to the Destiny franchise than all of D2Y1. Even though the game was undeniably in a terrible state, the setup for the future was insane. Vanilla D2 being setup by the action of Oryx and the Skyburners during the Taken King really made the game feel like what happens in the world matters. The Darkness arrived almost 4 years ago and it feels like nothing has really happened outside of off screen events. I really wish Bungie just made a Destiny 3 and ended Destiny 2 with Shadowkeep.
I feel exactly the same. Lightfall destroyed the wonder Destiny offered and put it in a cage.
As Datto said- Bungie could game-design their way out of D2Y1's problems, but they can't do the same with Lightfall's damage to the franchise.
Because it really was just THAT bad 😖
I don’t think not was that bad, I liked the story for what it was. I mean, it is more about circumstances than just standard power which we have been shown to utilize in various fights. So there maybe threats that come along that would require different methods of victory.
In the eyes of a pissed off player of Post-Shift 2:
"I CAME to this GAME TO READ-"
First rule of writing is "Know your beginning and know your end. Everything else in-between can fall into place during the writing process." It feels like Destiny was first created without ever knowing how the ending would come and have been making up along the way.
Ummmm, you DO know that’s exactly what happened, right??
@@TheDungusTV I know. That is why in the first game the line "I could tell you..." is so famous. They didn't even know what the darkness was at that point.
@@trainerred1345 Alright, good. I almost thought you didn't know that particularly hilarious kernel of Destiny truths.
They’ve always been open about not even knowing what the darkness was going to be. If that alone doesn’t speak volumes (not even taking into account the reboot of D1 a year prior to release and then again, the reboot of D2 prior to its release, using the D1 rise of iron dlc to buy more time while they rebooted D2), idk what does. Add to the fact they’re more focused on Marathon and Matter… they are just stumbling their way to the finish line. Nothing good can come of it now.
the story was vastly different even when D1 released. They lost most of their staff during D1 development so the new writers never really knew the ending of the story that someone else made.
No one can convince me Strand wasn't meant to drop with Witch Queen.
Bungie is kind of a mess.
Joe says it wasn't and so many naive people believe him. It's insane.
It absolutely was, it's abundantly clear.
I could have told you that back during the first game.
But it's still going to get better when Bungie leaves Activision right?
This makes even more sense when you realize the scale and map size of the throne world with its tonnes of platforming content, neomuna was barren and flat in comparison.
they literally confirmed it, in a now deleted video, that light 3.0 was the reason element 5 wouldnt be coming with WQ. Lightfalls story got pushed back to TFS (not team four star sorry) so that lightfall could become element 5 the DLC. Bungie never once has come out and told the truth about anything. They constantly lie because they know that they dug the hole to deep to tell the truth now. They stopped enjoying working on the game a long time ago. Hence the motto change.
The problem as I see it is because Bungie didn't fully develop the Witness as a character and instead used the Witness as a plot device to inch the story forward only a tiny bit since The Witch Queen. We still don't fully understand the Witness' goals or motivations.
As much grief as I gave Savathun for doing the "That was just as I planned (years/centuries/millennia in advance)." thing that she does so goddamn often, she was an active part of the lore since The Taken King expansion. We understood her manipulations and deceptions to an extent and some of us were eagerly awaiting the confrontation against her. This was partly why The Witch Queen expansion did so well, because Savathun had been an active threat not only within the game itself, but in the lore and even taunting the player directly breaking the 4th wall at times.
We don't have that kind of build up with The Witness and unless they somehow make him compelling in The Final Shape, I just don't see it happening in eight story missions plus a raid. I hope they don't pull a "Oh, The Witness isn't the actual big bad. The Winnower is." card like they did with Savathun becoming an anti-hero who saved humanity as a side effect of her actions during the Collapse. That sort of thing only works once.
The days of bungie being able to plot out a story arc are long gone. Whereas the passion my be there, I don't think the narrative team have the experience to be able to craft a story.
actually, I'm worried we DO understand the Witness's motivations. The Traveler took care of all their material needs and built them up to the highest heights a civilization can reach, and the Pyramid civilization being presumably grateful and curious, wanted to talk to their god and hear its answers. It refused, and when they finally had the means to make it talk, it fled.
as far as we know, they just want Traveler-senpai to notice them.
I like the general concept of the Witness's motivation, especially considering people like Zavala questioning the Traveler's actions during Witch Queen. I'm not the most updated with the smaller details of the lore, as I'm just a d1/first patch d2 player returning however. I think the missing part of the Witness's motivation for me is the relation of their race and everyone they've encountered along the way? Like there's little zealotry, so the fact the Witness just destroys these races without confronting a morality question is weird.@@xXx_Regulus_xXx
Same general sentiment though.@@xXx_Regulus_xXx
@@xXx_Regulus_xXxYea the main problem with the Witness is not that we know nothing about it, it's the fact that we know how bad and paper thin the character and it's motivations to "rewrite reality" is by now.
I'm noticing a pattern where bungie absolutely fumbles the storytelling, then makes an announcement that gives the players hope, then fumbles everything, then makes an announcement that fills the players with hope, them fumbles everything, then makes an announcem-
You just summarized the entire franchise "modus operandi".
Well Witch Queen was extremely good but Beyond Light was crap so if we follow this then fingers cross that The Final Shape is going to be at least as good as The Witch Queen. I really think they used Beyond Light and Lightfall as "extenders" because they didn't have enough time to finish things.
gotta keep players playing and paying
games as a service are not meant to "end" yet they want to craft a narrative to it, a narrative has an end eventually
This comment is one of these most truest comments I’ve seen in the past decade about this game. This game is officially dead I buy all the expansions all the time I mean money isn’t a issue for me but lord have mercy $110 per DLC per year for basically nothing just a campaign that was washed off and put together than throw it at them. The fact this company is a Multi Billionaire and some games created by a single development group look way better than this thing.
@@Stopspreadingmisinformatio-t2w not to mention they just lock past content behind pay walls and call it “expansions”
Imagine how amazing Joe Staten's original story could've been, that's when everything truly went down the toilet. About your outro, the video itself isnt negative. A lot of us fans are upset with the story, theres nothing wrong with expressing that. I love this game, it got me through my high school years, I just hate that something I love is now leaving a bad tase in my mouth.
I know it’s a major long shot but I’m praying that we get the vision for the Staten cut after Final Shape drops 🙏
@@itsnemako hopefully they hire him again because I think he left 343
@@V.A618He’s a creative director for Netflix Games now.
I hate this game
As I put it back in Season of the Deep:
"Imagine having this intricate plot, deep lore, many complex characters and themes about what's right or wrong, choices to make etc. all leading up to this huge confrontation with an unstoppable yet unknown enemy... and then we discover this Witness guy is just discount Anti-Spiral from Gurren Lagann, clearly done this way to avoid creating a new race (which should have been introduced way back in Beyond Light)".
I feel they HAD to have seen Gurren Lagann and ripped it straight off, they have the exactly same motivation and hive mind entity like avatar.
Honestly (probably a sh*t take from me so sorry in advance just in case) they could be so well written in lore and cutscenes to make them look like a threat but gameplay wise guns, abilities and doing the mechanics are a bigger threat to them than us.
The fact we have not gotten an actual new race, one that isn't derived or created from another, in nearly ten years of a game franchise, is so baffling and disgusting it adds a layer of comedy to everything. The higher-ups are so desperate to not add anything actually new and exciting that one has to admire the commitment, if nothing else. The Witness if probably the worst villain someone could make when thinking 'big evil thing that is evil.' I hate them as a character and so desperately wish we had something, ANYTHING more than the literal stale wheat bread that they are.
Shoutout to Warframe introducing not one, but *two* unique enemy factions within the span of less than a year, between the Duviri Dax and the Murmur. On top of multiple major updates that brought more to the table than a single destiny expansion, on top of being completely free with no impending content vault.
The more I see what Warframe does, the more astounded I am at how much Destiny manages to utterly fumble.
It's enough to make a grown woman cry. @@yosup7400
What disappoints me the most is Bungie had years to build up the Pyramids and design a new race to fill them, but when we visit the Europa Pyramid in WQ, we fight reskinned Red Legion Cabal who fight for Calus, not even Loyalists
The problem isn’t that there wasn’t enough exposure to or explanation of the Pyramids. The problem is that Bungie changed their story halfway through their closing acts: Witch Queen changed the Winnower and its “survival of the fittest” attempt to woo the Guardian to the Witness and its simplistically Thanos-like, nihilistic antagonism - all while effectively slotting in the Scorn as the Pyramid race.
The other glaring problem with the story is actually the seasonal story, which should have been the connective tissue toward a better story.
Yes, Beyond Light was very problematic (it didn’t build on Shadowkeep’s introduction to the Darkness proper), but Witch Queen’s introduction of the Witness as Destiny’s version of Thanos (and the seasonal story that preceded and followed) was the real element that derailed the ending.
I'm never gonna get over how it feels like the Witness was a product of someone watching Endgame once and writing in a Thanos look-alike.
Winnower is likely the entity/meta-entity that put the darkness bulb known as The Veil into the Universe, and the Gardner put the Traveler into the Universe, its still a Evolution/survival of the fittest "thing", whereas the Traveler/Gardner is all about chaotic creation.
@@zjuraeventide8949ngl you need your eyes checked if you think Thanos and Witness look alike
Wdym the Witch Queen changed the Winnower?
@@Shahmane666it changed the "voice in the darkness" from the winnower with the idea of a final shape as the survival of the fittest as a philosophy, to the witness. and the more we learn about the witness the more clear it is that it couldn't actually be the winnower we've seen from before but the game seems to want you to just forget everything that doesn't line up. like even borderline omniscient characters like mara just swaps from like "the voice in the darkness" to "yeah its the witness"
I agree with the title.
Really sealed my deal on that when I saw them assasinate Rasputin using suicide, they forced his death because his character concept completely broke up against Xivu’s war concept. I’d have loved to see them fight but the way they set up Xivu’s power made this impossible.
Aka Written into a corner.
Rasputin was one of the most powerfull entities in Destiny that was only showed losing Battles. Lost against the Hive in the Escalation Protocol, lost against the Pyramids in Arrivals and Lost again against the Hive and Éramos in Season of the Seraph. I hope we don't hear ever again of Rasputin
@@davialmeida6566 regardless, he represents an interesting force in the universe, much like the Vex. The limits of causal forces vs paracausal always interested me. I like underdogs, and honestly, hearing all the lore surround Rasputin and his raw firepower made me want to see him put to use.
If humanity could actually use him, say he came online in season of seraph, we wouldn’t have and real threats outside of hive gods and the pyramids. He could demolish the hive in a battle of attrition, obliterate the fallen with his eyes closed, crush any red legion forces before they knew they were in his sights.
It’s why I say they wrote themselves into a corner, along with Xivu’s power trope, he was effectively assassinated because he was too powerful to keep alive. He didn’t have to die, they could have wrote the reconstruction of his operating system any way they want, but they chose to make him too weak to turn off the guns but strong enough to blow them all up, including himself? Yea, that sucks…
Edit: I mean shit, even queen Mara was “scared” of Rasputin’s ability to strike anywhere in the system he wishes at a moments notice.
@@davialmeida6566 lost against us with just a flaming axe...
he did help us melt a hive god, credit where it's due.
@@davialmeida6566that's because an almost omniscient AI is only as smart as the people writing it. The enemies always managed to shut Rasputin down someway because it was too OP. If Rasputin is operational there's no reason for the player guardian to go do stuff, just nuke the enemies from orbit and move on, so the writers always had to make Rasputin unavailable for some bullshit reason or else he'd just solve everything instantly. That's the issue of writing characters that are too OP, they become an obstacle to the story you're trying to tell and you need ways to circumvent it, do it enough times and it becomes transparent and dumb.
The witness should've been the one to end rasputin, had they kept him alive and the witness had just snuffed him out upon entering the system that would have been far better as a demonstration of power.
I just feel like the story beyond this point will never live up to this magnitude. They literally sold the witness as the most powerful being in the universe. Why should i care about literally anything as a plot going forward? Sure it can be "neat" but nothing will ever be as important or life threatening as this expansion.
It’s like Marvel after Thanos is snapped away. 😂
I've been saying this for a long time. Any sort of "next saga" has to walk the line of still being significant after Final Shape, i.e. still being threatening and interesting, but it also cant trivialize final shape, IE they cant do something like "oh actually guys this NEW entity is the witness SQUARED!!!! it's the thing that's been pulling the strings this whole time!!!"
That line is not an impossible one to walk, but it is very difficult. And i really doubt they'll do it well.
Might be a stretch and seriously doubt they’d do something like this but what if there was a Civil War amongst Guardians?
@@TheBigmanjr2 There is a civili war and its called FUCKING PVP😂😂. Well you really cant imagine zavala trying to kill ikora
Because there is an entity behind the witness (the voice in the darkness) that could essentially elevate another. You are removing a puppet, not the puppet master. The Taken army will also be without a leader. Mara is a strong enough will to control them becoming the Taken Queen. That’s a massive army at her disposal and someone who has ulterior motives. The vex have yet to reveal a big baddy. Sivu is yet to make her move… there’s plenty of massive threats, and a massive power vacuum is about to erupt.
Forsaken felt like the last expansion that actually moved the story forward a substantial amount. Everything since has crawled along at a snail's pace. Hell, the notable events of Lightfall's entire campaign is a boss fight and a single cutscene. More shit happens in the opening cinematic of Baldur's Gate 3 than in the last like 5 years of Destiny. I can't imagine Final Shape having a satisfying conclusion in any way. There's still so much shit that needs to be resolved and explored. I'm afraid its gonna be a bunch of nostalgia bait from D1 and vaulted D2 stuff, a boss fight against the Witness, and that's it. No explanations, no revelations, nothing. We kill the Witness and then all the pyramid ships self destruct or something and Xivu runs off, never to be seen again.
Did you even play Witch Queen?
Hot take: I think shadow keep actually did a very good job at progressing the story. It expertly shifts the destiny story from the whimsical faction killing into "oh, the darkness is coming. It straight up cloned my body and told me." The story changed dramatically. Beyond light is what dropped the ball and went back to "just kill some fallen for a few hours lol, thanks for the $40."
They have so much on their plate to do in a 9-12 mission campaign that we're going to be killing every antagonist each within 3 missions
@@heavyarmoire8... There's only 8 missions.
It's fundamentally unbelievable that we're 9 years into a 10 year story and we still have no idea what the traveler is, where it came from, or who ultimately controls it (whether itself, or a "gardener" higher than it).
Destiny's writing feels like a student procrastinating on a project for months and are having to rush and crunch to actually get it done and done well in the last few days before it's due
3:30 This. 1000% THIS. I feel like Beyond Light’s story doesn’t get talked about enough for how much it wasted. All that setup: Shadowkeep, Season of Arrivals, the Stranger’s return from D1, Stasis, all culminating in… us fighting a villain-of-the-week Fallen goon for the millionth time.
I haven’t finished the video yet, so mind me if you already said this, but Beyond Light’s conflict is literally just a copy of House of Wolves. A Fallen Kell seeking out to unite all of the Fallen in order to get revenge on the Traveler. Only this time, they’re using Darkness instead of Vex tech. The fact we got this over a story surrounding the Pyramids and what was inside them is baffling.
Someone else said a similar thing about the Fallen and it's spot on.
The Witness was doomed to fall flat from the start. Savathun, Xivu and Nezarec were all built up. Savathun the most. Heck, Eramis was built up. The Witness...literally not one bit. Flicked it's fingers a few time and gone some missions later. This being is supposed to be All Powerful. But we never actually see that. We see Savathuns trickery, we feel Xivu's wrath.
Worst take ive ever heard. The witness has been ever present since D2Y1. I feel like people forget that lmao
@@alecmitchell5047 The Witness has been mentioned a few times as "The voice in the dark" and that's about it. Good villains have presence in thr story. The Witness appeared, did nothing, and left. Savathun royally fucked us. Xivu kept sending countless armies after us. Nezarec plagued an entire species. And it was all ingame. Witness had nothing other than get angry at Calus once, flick his fingers twice, and leave. Everyone else did it's bidding. Almost 0 presence.
@@ToadimusPrime Isnt that what Oryx did though? Was mentioned a few times, came in during a DLC, made the taken, and dipped until we beat him at the end of Taken king and the raid?
@@alecmitchell5047there is also D1 tho not in name but in presence in the Books of Sorrow. Plus they took entire planets, something no one else did.
@@alecmitchell5047 No, it wasn't. Oryx has been hinted on Luna since vanilla, and then again in Dark Below. Not only by killing his son, but also in the lore, as well as ingame references and dialogue. We knew who Oryx was and what he could do, from the very start. We saw his brood on Luna. I'd say the "villain" closest to the Witness, in terms of not having little build-up, is SIVA. Just popped there, did nothing, and it's gone.
I understand that you're coming from a place of passion exactly as I am.
The most painful part is knowing they wanted this to be up with the lord of the rings, dungeons and dragons, huge ever expanding universe that is tied together well. But then we got retconned stories and half-truths. Not to mention development squeeze and poor leadership. If the final shape doesn't turn out to be what we were promised, in a sense i will feel shame for knowing i was brainwashed into 10 years of servitude.
I think that Lightfall heavily suffered from how shoehorned Strand was in the campaign. Instead of learning about the Witness, its motives, and this being the literal expansion before the end, they focused on a cranky old man screaming "GET TO THE VEIL", surfer bros that have no concept of the scale of things happening in the world, and are content with cracking jokes in front of Caiatl when Calus has just been killed (in an underwhelming fight as well). We got a raid so easy that it has been solo flawlessed, and I've managed to do the first 2 encounters solo, which I never thought I would be doing in a raid (but hey at least I got Day 1 lol). DSC was the perfect intro into raiding, it had simple mechanics that were easy to understand, but now we have Spire of the Watcher: The Raid. They could have put Strand in the season (and kept it around post-TFS), allowing them to purely focus on the story of Lightfall, and put all of the bad stuff in the season, which people wouldn't care about since Lightfall would have been good. I also don't understand why they put The Witness cutscene in Deep, and their justification for that was "Oh we are experimenting with the story", THIS CLOSE TO THE END OF THE SAGA. It's so disappointing to see, as we could have gotten something that was the quality of Witch Queen, but instead, we got an overhyped expansion that didn't trip, but instead face-dived the game into the ground making now at a point that TFS has to be perfect, otherwise Bungie may very well be over. I am very worried for TFS, as 1. They basically did not hype it up (I expect they will in April), 2. It is another 4 and a half months until it comes out, how much better will it be with the extra 3 months attached to it? and 3. TFS collectors edition is the D1 tower, which we haven't gone to for what, 6 years? It is not the perfect symbol of Destiny, it is a symbol but what does it mean to anyone who did not play D1, it is like a souvenir for a place you have never gone to, and if that's what they regard as the perfect symbol, I don't know what to expect for the actual expansion.
Sorry for the rant, I am really passionate about Destiny and this past year has just been horrible for it.
For the last point, we have seen from the Final Shapes previews thst we will be visiting a recreation of the D1 tower. Presumably inside the Traveler.
@@vaka4541 Yeah, but even so for most people it'll just feel like "oh cool the D1 tower" instead of it being a symbol.
For the Witness, we had no means of learning about the Witness since it cut ties with us after Haunted as we refused to join it. We know its motives as a player that it wants to end suffering in the universe, and to do that they would need to get to the Traveler’s pale heart. For Osiris, he has been pushing himself right after a coma, not something someone can normally get over. Cloudstriders and Neomuna are isolationists so it makes sense. Caiatl hated her father and stated to not reconcile with him. Why put strand in a season when it is expansions that give big content? Strand is what was advancing the story of Lightfall as it reveals much about the nature of light and dark, how it is tied to the veil, etc.. how can it fit into LF without anyone knowledgeable to tell us as Guardians, it would feel out of place. Even WQ has its problems with execution. They already have other content for D2 in the works and there is actually small lore from CE of FS
Tone deaf surfer bro ruined the story for me as well.
Tone deaf?
In conclusion: ALWAYS have one backup dude or few more in narration team who can say "Stop!" where and when needed. This can be double-edged sword but it's still better than nothing or letting things go with the flow of fresh blood in the team and ideas "briliant" at paper made without thinking twice.
I think they should have teased the witness in beyond light, revealed more of him and his armies in witch queen and learned what the witness actually is and his motivations in lightfall (at launch not a season after)
After Final Shape the possibilities are absolutely endless, with so many routes for them to take and places to go. The Nine, the vex (as their own group with their own goals), the cabal (taking back their homeworld) and even the possibility of going to fundament but I dont have faith that destiny will live long enough to do all that
Truth. Amazing amount of Destiny content suspended and underutilized. With the current player base erosion, and a declining quality of the player base, they're not going to have the revenue to widen the product
They will never go back to the Vex. They have shown they don't have capabilities to write a good story for the most complex faction. And they're also time-travellers. They have taken over every timeline but ours since we are the paracausal force. What could they do to make them a good villain? Nothing, ain't gonna happen.
I think one of the biggest problems with Destiny was that it was written by many people instead of one person. Let me explain.
The original Marathon was written by former Bungie dev Greg Kirkpatrick. Although he says some of the terminals were written by Jason Jones, the overarching story as well as a good majority of the lore were written by Kirkpatrick. Marathon also links to a previous game of Bungie's called Pathways into Darkness which I believe was also written by Kirkpatrick (though not much is known on that front).
Myth was written by Jason Jones himself, with co-writing credits given to Robert McLees.
Halo's story from the beginning was written by former Bungie writer Joesph Staten as we all know. All Halo games in Bungie's lineup were written by him with minor credits given to Robert McLees and Luke Smith for Halo 3, and Peter O'Brien for Halo: Reach.
Destiny has had multiple writers over the years. While Joseph Staten wrote the original Destiny, it was thrown out and others had to come in and write for the game. Luke Smith, Christopher Barrett, Robert McLees, Clay Carmouche, Ryan Ellis, Jason Harris, Christine Thompson, Gerry Duggan, Adam David Miller, Steve Cotton, Robert Brookes, Paul Mastroianni, Scott Taylor and this isn't even all of them.
Are we starting to see the picture here?
I like the little red ghost on the right moving while you speak it's a nice touch
"Why not have the Pyramids siege Earth? Cause a second Collapse?" I deadass thought that would and WAS originally going to happen; why else call it Lightfall?
I thought with their announcement of the BL -> WQ -> LF trilogy, Bungie had finally solidified the narrative they wanted and were finally able to tell the story that Destiny wanted to tell since day 1. I waited years to get answers to the most compelling part of Destiny's setting to me, the nature of the Darkness and the truth behind the Pyramids and their race. I am still waiting.
strand fit so well in WQ i wonder why they didnt put it there
@@zearcjustice7837 It was actually supposed to be there (hence the wide open nature of the Throne World and the design of Savathun's temples) but covid messed everything up.
@headphonesaxolotl That is very true. Covid f'ed up the studio. I honestly wish they would have delayed everything to a halt and just made everything out exactly the way they wanted. If money was the issue, Bungie could have done a crowd source campaign, and I guarantee they would have gotten support. If they truly went transparent and did the beyond light story as they needed to, with all the necessary story beats and then did the same with witch queen and lightfall. We would all be singing a different tune.
They can’t make the final shape entirely about learning what the witnesses race is, it’s goals, and what all of this has led up to, kill the witness, learn what the traveler is and understand why anything in the Destiny universe happened within one single expansion, it should have been done throughout all three, rather than witch queen being the best and only expansion that really showed what we were up against.
Lightfall should have been like the red war, involving us going between neomuna and earth defending the city from the armies invading earth while hunting down the veil and gaining understanding what it actually is, only for us to fail at the final moment with either portions of the last city being taken under siege or neomuna falling to the cabal, I also think they should have had mini pyramid ships that attacked like the trailer showed.
The final shape will probably be mediocre at best good but I feel will have rushed elements or parts that are only explored in episodes and random missions like veil containment
bro perfectly explained how i have felt since beyond light im so glad im not the only one who felt this exact way regarding how they should have done it and what we should have got
At this point, it would be nice to see a lore book with plenty of tabs explaining the day to day life of one of the Witnesses predecessors. Their lives, culture and belief systems, technological structure, what their favourite brand of coffee is and hell... whatever brand of toilet paper they prefer.
As a Warlock, I have done enough speculation while hitting on the Copium Shes-ha and now it's time to get ALL the answers. Otherwise, I will hang up my bond and pick up a Heavy Eviserator instead.
Nice to see someone else say Beyond Light’s story did a lot of damage. It was the 4th major storyline of Fallen using a power that isn’t theirs (Skolas using Vex Tech, SIVA Fallen, Fallen using Black Armory weapons) which made Eramis uninteresting as a villain. Also the more interesting storyline of Clovis Bray was pushed to the background to the point where Season of The Seraph made him more interesting.
That's an amazing observation about the amount of times the Fallen have tried to take a power that wasn't theirs.
Isn't that kind of the point of the Fallen's story though? They lost everything they held dear from a force more powerful than themselves that gave them gifts. Its very poetic in a way. And then they finally reclaim a piece of those gifts by being in proximity to their god again.
Bro I’m telling you. The only way to save this game would be a reboot.
1. Have the guardian die in the end.
2. Wound the powers that be to explain why they didn’t go ham and wipe out everything.
3. Get a new guardian with a face and a name that has to build themselves from the ground and I. That process explore the world lore wise and give us a feel for everyone in those environment.
4. Rebuild the vanguard.
kill off our guardian , then have saint-14 gave a speech like in season 9? , this would bring back so much memories and explain why we die
Destiny, from it's beginning, has always been about coaxing you in with potential, then charging you far too much money to not deliver.
Destiny 2 peeked in Shadowkeep for me. No, not because the game was perfect, but it had all the content from the first three years all in one. Season of the Worthy was only good narratively because of the pyramids coming... but they nailed it. That ominous screen showing them come in week by week, coming closer and closer. I still get chills. Then in Season of Arrivals (my favorite time of D2 aside from Warmind - you heard me right) we finally saw the pyramids darken our skies. Wow... how cool was that. The seasonal activity needed to play with that idea more, but at least we were left with a foreboding sense that something was about to go down. Then the season ended with the chilling message "The Light cannot save you. Come seek us out on Europa" or something like that. Amazing.
Then... Beyond Light happened. I love the whole Deep Stone Crypt and Clovis Bray and the Exo Stranger ... but now was not the time for that. What about the pyramids? Crickets. They give you space ice (Stasis) and then did nothing. Horrible follow-up to a 3-year build up. The seasons were about Uldren - those belonged in Forsaken to put it mildly - and we got no answers... we got filler. I literally quit the game at the end of Beyond Light because I didn't think Bungie can save such a narrative faux pas and I was over the grind and build up to nothing. Beyond Light was not the opportunity to give a filler expansion - especially since Shadowkeep (except for the pyramid stuff) was a filler expansion.
I tune in now and again to TH-cam to see how the story is going since I haven't played in two years. From what I can tell, Bungie absolutely sh!t the bed on the narrative. All these good ideas, like the leviathan on Titan (season of the deep), or the actual Reef Wars (season of the plunder) or having the Leviathan get corrupted more and more over time - which should have been a year on its own - all fine ideas, but do NOTHING for the actual Light/Dark story. And that's what Destiny 2 became for me... all build-up, all questions, all hype... and never an answers, never any pay-off for sticking around and lots of punishing grind to rub it in.
Destiny lacks mistery, for all the shit we gave D1, the overall tone was never matched in D2. That said, WQ and Forsaken are incredible, but Lightfall shat the bad so greatly that it’s hard to get excited for Final Shape.
Saw this video the other day with less than 1,000 views and now to see it with 12,000+ is really awesome. Hope this isn’t a one off for him. He deserves everything coming
I really hope they give us a full run down of the Witness’s background. ik we already got that during Season of the Deep, but i want an actual rendered cutscene that shows us more. also, i wished the Witness or the pyramids were the focus of vanilla D2. can you imagine having him showed to us and then have darkness themed dlc’s all the way up till now. i feel like a climatic conclusion would hit so much more harder. also, i have a sneaky suspicion that they had no idea what to do with the pyramids until Season of Arrivals or even before that. The Witness also seems like a last minute thought, in terms of character design and backstory. sorry this was long but i needed to say something
The witness’ intention and background was revealed so why would they revisit and spend resources on that instead of something new
@@burger45 cause i would like to see a full cutscene of the witness’s origins than a slideshow
I don’t consider this a “negative blog.” It made a lot of sense. & as a writer myself, they should’ve been flushing out the darkness a way lot better than they did.
As a developing writer myself I wholeheartedly agree. Writing aspects of mysticism is really engaging and Bungie has taught me how to do it well, by not doing what they have done.
I remember loading into the tower at the end of the LF campaign with my buddies and the first thing out of our mouths was "that's it?"
I myself am a writer. I write creatively both in my free time and professionally and it makes my head spin just even thinking about how much crap the writers at Bungie have to answer, explain, and divulge all in ~10 story missions. It simply can't be done.
It's not a matter of whether TFS will be good or not. It's a matter of how well it can it dig itself out of the hole Bungie has put it in.
I knew as soon as I saw the 80s action movie promo material Lightfall was NOT it 😭 I never could’ve imagined it would completely demolish the culmination of Destiny’s story which was far and away my favorite part of the franchise. I half way don’t even care to play Final Shape tbh but I want some type of closure before I quit the game for good
what gets me is that we traded Rasputin for Nimbus. We traded this Eldritch, unknowable, and ancient machine for... Nimbus.
I will continue to call out Season of the Seraph as the moment it all went down hill.
Yeah, Beyond Light had its own issues, too.
I feel that this is Bionicle all over again 😞 Such a huge and deep lore, given an abrupt and unsatisfying end
Dude same, I'm right there with you.
Damn, i took a hit right in the part of childhood…
Bionicle journey in the story was at least good. Destiny 2's journey has been complete dog poo poo garbage, and the only thing that kept the story going was the players HOPES for it to get better eventually, over and over and over.
I'm not counting lore or grimoire cards as destiny having a good story. None of the interesting things that go on in 90% the lore has ever been shown through gameplay or cinematics. If I wanted to read all day, i'd go buy a book.
Waiting ten year for a bunch of Empty Ships piloted by Megamind with an Unibrow that only appears in CG cutscenes isn't exactly how you define some antagonists. They just got too lasy to make the Darkness a proper factions.
If i dont hear Cayde give the title of Hunter Vanguard this expansion i will scream now is the time to do it.
if he gives it to Crow, that will mean the real hunter vanguard was the friend we made along the way :^)
They have been talking about it for more than 40 months now lol
I always blame Season of Arrivals for the expectations with the Pyramid ships. We saw entire legions of Pyramid Ships, large and small, invading our moons and planets. We saw the power of the pyramid ships. We were told that each pyramid had someone in it, making what's in it incredibly promising. Who was invading us? Who was the commander of these ships? Suddenly, we're told that The Witness controls ALL these ships, and only a FEW have a Disciple in them, not every single one.
I also think Bungie tried to write themselves out of the corner, which led to Lightfall as we know it. Rather than another Collapse, they wanted The Witness to have motive. This is why the concept of the Final Shape was created. This is why EVERYTHING we know about The Witness, the Final Shape as a concept, and the Pyramid Civilization, as well as the traveller, came from the Lightfall expansion and its seasons. This is why we had The Veil shoved in our faces. They needed it to make sense, so they introduced The Veil (which, to me, was completely and utterly unnecessary).
Season of Arrivals set a mood and tone that Bungie either didn't want to meet or couldn't meet. As much as I loved The Witch Queen, it feels both irrelevant and unnecessary in the light and darkness saga finale. It should have come before Beyond Light.
From every perspective arrivals was the best point in the franchise so I don’t think it was all that bad.
@@Shoegaze-I agree, Arivals just made it seem like the unfolding threat was more serious than it actually was. However, the true threat was sunsetting, so I guess they were on point in that regards.
It's very clear WitchQueen and lightfall went through substantial rewrites. There is alot of evidence the whole "The Traveler created the hive guardians" wasn't the original story with dialouge suggesting it was instead going to involve Savathun finding a way to ressurect dead ghosts.
That was just what everyone thought. Savathune being resurrected was an amazing story beat. It genuinely surprised me. Such an awesome cutscene.
Rhulk crawled out of a black solution that had been holding him throughout the conversation
Main problem for me is that bungie writes mysterious obscurity until they absolutely have to provide an answer. Usually that narrative answer is either underdeveloped or completely rewrites what we'd known simply because they hadn't actually decided what they wanted to do yet but still delivered lore and story to us like they had. It's like constantly moving a narrative goal post and making savathun an anti hero was the only time since forsaken (outside of the oddly good seasonal story every now and then) where this actually felt good. All the while they're claiming to have an overarching plan.
Imo arrivals happened way too early and was only ever a narrative beat to try and justify the content vault. But that literally ruined most of the interest in the pyramid ships and bungie consistently made it harder and harder for themselves to bring this story to a satisfying conclusion.
Fair point! If I can recommend something, the small mini screen to the left of the game play should overtake the whole screen most of the time. Gameplay is just filler but images, examples, trailers, and other things that help your point should be front and center
The fact of that the witness is going to be in the traveler for a YEAR I’m supprised lore wise we aren’t dead or failed yet.
Ehh, that's no too bad. The Witness is thousands of years old. One year is such a short passage of time. Who knows, it probably takes a lot of time to "Finalize" all of existence.
@@BladesofElysian new trailer says otherwise 💀
@KingMaltheo The action of Finalization seems instant. The process is what took a whole year.
They really gutted the Witness’ mystique and potential giving it a mortal background. The shadowkeep darkness lore being cosmic and incomprehensible was so much better.
That's possibly due to the fact the shadowkeep lore was based on the Winnower.
@@BladesofElysian
Yeah seeing now that they may be distinct is very nice.
It’s unbelievably tragic how Bungie hyped up the pyramids as this secret, dark presence that could become the next big enemy, yet because of their lazy and laughably incompetent execution the pyramids became basically nonexistent. The darkness doesn’t really change gameplay in any tangible way, we only read about it in lore. They legitimately had the the setup for something interesting and extraordinary, but fumbled the bag the hardest they possibly could
You're not going to get a satisfying conclusion to this 10 year saga. And that's not me being a hater...it's where Bungie is right now. Their creative manpower after either firing their heavyweights or urging them to leave is stretched far too thin. And the sheer amount of gravitas and weight this ONE expansion needs to carry in literally every single moment, in order to do everything it needs to do...both in terms of narrative and content offering...it's more than they can handle.
Final Shape needs to both sequel bait the coming "episodes" AND wrap up 10 years of storytelling, and I don't see either being satisfying. It's going to feel like Lost's last season and Mass Effect 3's ending all rolled into one. Rushed, incomplete, and empty.
Dude this is major! I’m so happy to see your videos finnaly pop off? Huge news!
where we are at in the game now is how the staten cut was supposed to end
but the problem is we didnt get the full staten story- bungie dumped part of his story into the game around the time of shadowkeep but we never had a start (this was supposed to be D1). they plopped us into it more than halfway leaving us with videos like this and even more questions
Can I be honest? As a fan of Destiny as a franchise, I loved the direction they were going in with during Shadowkeep, with the Winnower and it's philosophy of "survival of the fittest". They dropped all that for an undead, space magic version of a Mass Effect Reaper who's also a nihilist. I _hated_ the drastic direction switch and I think it's what really turned me off from the story at that point... because the story and lore was why I was sticking around at that point. I'm hoping Bungie can stick the landing, but at this point? I know they won't.
They didn’t switch up anything tho lol the winnower is just an interpretation of the Darkness
It seems like since the beginning of destiny 2 bungie has made it harder and harder to make a good story
Did I miss something about The Nine and The Emissary? Who and what are they to the story? Will siva return to destroy or help us? I have hundreds of questions that haven't been answered.
Wait, why wasn't Neomuna a city filled with Jovians, Xur's race? They were said to live out past the Awoken, the Light physically hurts them so it would make sense for their society to instead revolve around a Darkness power, the Strand.
That was by far my favorite part of the story. The random drifter-affiliated things; all just kinda pointless. A million starting threads that never got followed up.
The Witness should’ve been introduced in Destiny 3 and add Skimmers to it lol
The best decision I made was to stop playing after Lightfall, permanently. I won't be back for Final Shape, for the fist time I can say I'll be content watching someone else play the conclusion. GG Bungie.
Its simple, they want a "Game as Live Service" and that doesn't equate to a really story laden game, it equates to dragging it out to keep you coming back, these two goals have failed to jive for a long time, and now we are at the breaking point.
Yeah live service games work really well when the game is just fun to play and then forget about them since they have no major storylines to follow but trying to mix both a compelling story with this live service model is just nonsense that ends up as disjointed plot points no one can even fucking remember unless you watch youtube essays. It's like trying to read a novel while on a treadmill people that are interested in the story are just gonna jump off and stop playing and people that just want a workout are gonna keep playing but just wont give a shit about the story.
Especially when it leads to using FOMO as their MO. I think in hindsight, sunsetting/vaulting was the moment this whole situation became terminal. They couldn’t just keep adding random fluff in with the size of the backlog. That one moment I think really killed any interest in me or my group to come back to the game.
Something I find sad about Destiny’s lore is that it can’t be taken seriously since they just change things or kill off characters/bring them back out of convenience. It’s just a joke
As a player that has been playing since vanilla D1. This game’s story has felt so volatile that I can hardly keep up (some of that has been my lack of involvement in recent seasons but hey the game isn’t fun anymore). I really strongly remember D1 but after red war the cohesion has just not been there imo.
The Witness and the pyramids were actually introduced in ShadowKeep and stasis was teased at that same time too. Bungie also stated after ShadowKeep launched in 2019 that the light and darkness saga began with the ShadowKeep expansion.
I know! What I meant was that the Witness was properly revealed in Witch Queen.
IMO Forsaken was the best expansion! Going on a personal vengence trip. Feeling like a outlaw working together with Spider and so on. Also the Drifters Arc ist something I Like the most! But the worst thing was waiting for the pyramid ships and seeing them coming closer inside Rasputin's vaults and when they finally arrived Savathun ruined all! I mean I liked the Savathun Arc too, because it gave us many answers, but this was just unnecissary! In that moment where Savathun portet US away from the pyramid ship, I knew WE would have to wait at least for months to get in! Bungie does the same mistake over and over again!!!
Dude this was an excellent video. Well choreographed and explained thoroughly. Earned a sub from me.
The neomuna storyline completely derailed the story as a whole
They sacrificed cohesive story, and content in proper context (stasis, strand), as well as the best characters (cayde, rasputin) in order to make up for the fact that they were unable to produce enough content fast enough. And that is because they’ve basically been reverse engineering the game since D2 Vanilla. Undoing the catastrophe, redesigning every major aspect of gameplay and game system while ALSO producing the actual content. Luke Smith screwed this game over. Bungie’s devs have been playing catchup ever since. Beyond Light, instead of an exposé on the pyramids and the pyramid’s race - we got Stasis as a story starring Eramis. Content AS a story. Same for Lightfall. We got the Strand tutorial AS the story, rather than it just being.. Content - in addition to an actual cohesive story. It’s like taking a campaign and breaking it up into 7 pieces and using it as weekly content is… not a good idea. Running back and forth to the vendor and the projector for lore dump.
You hit the nail on the head!
Im a fairly new fan to destiny 2, I only joined the community in lightfall and even then it was savathun and the science fantasy witchcraft aesthetic that made me look at the game and want to play it, Ive had nowhere near as much build up and attachment to the story unfolding as most destiny fans and I am still after about a year of being invested in the lore of this game still catching up on whats unfolding. Even I am worried about how the final shape will unfold and handle the major ending to the light and dark saga, I cannot imagine how long time destiny 2 fans are feeling.
It's worrying, but my last bit of hope is still there. TFS looks good in its trailers. The pale heart destination looks awesome and the new abilities and build crafting look fun to mess around with. However, I'm just not sure if the story is going to hit all the marks I'm looking for. I am going to almost be playing this campaign with a checklist in my head. It's almost like I'm going to be playing bingo with the avaliable narrative beats. I'm almost setting myself up for disappointment.
I don't believe for a second that they'll wrap up the saga in Final Shape. If the story wraps up all the major story threads, there will be no compulsion to play the episodes.
“The vail radal mass thah witness strand” - osiris
Venextron... you're putting more effort into the story than Bungie did. :)
Destiny could be so much more. Bungie just won’t let it be.
Zavala and Safi's story is just begging for a live action show.
I hope the end of light v dark gives us a loot/gear reset. Not sunsetting but essentially make the new loot objectively better. That keeps the old loot usable while ushering in new loot.
Hate to be that guy, but my hopes for a great conclusion have faded away. The track record of seasonal and big expansion content has proven how far the mighty bungie have fallen. They’re too focused on their other IPs, not fixing overdue issues in D2, constantly telling side stories that are just filler stories instead of moving the main plot along, even all the leadership that has been shifted around, moved to the other IPs altogether or just flat out left bungie. These are all warning signs that I don’t think ppl are taking into consideration at all!
I used to be the biggest Bungie optimist that always thought “they have the bigger picture in mind, they’ll pull it off, the stuff down the road will prove they had it all planned out”…. But the truth has been there in front of us since the beginning of destiny; they rebooted D1 a mere year before release and cobbled together that game’s story & everything since has pretty much been about the bare minimum once certain leadership took over. “Forsaken was great… make sure to never deliver that quality of expansion again.” That’s what they really said to themselves. All the controversies have added up over the years (the xp throttling, the lying about many things & acting like the community can’t possibly be on their level, the backpedaling, the constant changes that didn’t need to happen, etc etc) and ppl have always given them the benefit of the doubt, but the truth is that they don’t even care enough about destiny anymore, so why should we? Gambit was left to die. Crucible was ruined and years of begging only started to get a few maps out of them. Strikes used to be a highlight of destiny. Now they’re recycled crap with battlegrounds thrown in as filler. The campaigns are predictable 8 mission long stories that they jam story and content together in and hope for the best. They prefer to focus on all their other projects outside of destiny while using destiny as the funding source.
I’m sorry, I lived destiny since it’s very beginning. I played before it launched and played faithfully thru the years since launch day in sept 2014. You won’t find someone more dedicated to the franchise and a strong supporter of bungie… but as I’ve seen the truth of everything, I just stopped simping for them. I realize we already had the best of destiny and sadly, it won’t get any better. They only have one destination planned for final shape… and that’s inside the traveler? How can that even do a good enough job of anything? No supers? We can’t steal a new subclass from the witness? Come on! It’s just another by the numbers expansion again, just trying to wrap things up. They’ve been telling us this very thing and they’re ready to move on (even tho they said D2 will continue after the light vs dark saga). Destiny is most likely at the end of its life cycle and once the 3 episodes end after final shape, I doubt any major stuff will happen. I could honestly see them stepping back and either saying “we’re taking a break for a while” and they only keep the seasonal events going for a while (dawning, etc) OR they sell off the franchise to another dev appointed by Sony, letting them try to tell the next “big” destiny story. I think bungie is more focused on Matter and Marathon and their inaction to do big things and fixes of destiny the past few years shows how done they are.
I hope I’m wrong and TFS is the best expansion ever. I hope they really do a fantastic job, but even with the recent news of Joe Blackburn leaving (or the firing of Michael Salvatori and many other high ranking ppl), that’s the red flag/telltale signs it’s going to be bad. How many great leadership left other franchises right before the release of a game or DLC and those releases were great? Usually none. This is usually how those ppl tell the fans (without saying) how things REALLY are cause they can’t publicly come out and say it or bash those companies. People need to read between the lines here and temper their expectations. Hurts me to say it, but I just don’t see anything good happening from this point on in D2’s life cycle. I hope I’m wrong, I really do, but I just don’t see that bungie magic happening anymore.
I have the same feelings. I am not stoked about facing the Witness at all.
Also respect that you are open like that. And respect for trying not to be negative the entire time, despite what's going down recently
hey, at least we had Uldren's great character arc, from pompous prince, to evil villain, to hunted reborn, to hero of the Vanguard.
Appreciate the subtitles. Good stuff.
I will say two things: I just want to fight new enemies.
And neomuna needs more background elements to make it feel alive. In the lore it’s said that the people of neomuna are fighting calus by inhabiting mechs. That shit should be in the game! I should see mechs fighting in the distance. It literally looks like nimbus is the only one in the city that is “fighting”. Are there even other cloud striders?
So cinematic and eerie. I loved it. All good points too
When you look at the current story and where it looks like it will go, it seems like they just dragged this out because they had nothing else. Like the entire story in terms of what actually matters boils down to the witness is mad that the traveler is running away cuz they wanna combine the traveler and the veil into one entity. Because they think thats the meaning of life. 10 years of story building and thats all it is.
Love how you calmly broke things down and showed me perspective I never considered. Destiny hate bait is all too common on TH-cam so this was very refreshing thank you. Bungie looks to be really resource strapped or just plain cheap to not make a new race of enemies. Beyond Light was the time to do it except they didn’t. This emphasis on putting out a minimum viable product has really caught up to them
Great video. Would love to see more narrative critiques like this def earned my sub!
I dont see a good ending, destiny dlc’s are extremely short and they pretty much quite literally procrastinated everything till this dlc
"Brand new tileset"
I've been thinking for a few months now, what type of story could make the playerbase stay after FS? And after seeing Byfs video on Zavala and stasis I figured that a civil war between guardians would make a good story, think about it,
there's two sides: the ones who think that light is good and darkness is bad and we shouldn't use the powers of stasis and strand anymore, and the ones that accepted the light and darkness as a one big thing and not antagonist of each other.
Maybe the catalyst for this civil war could be the fact that we defeated the witness and the powers of the dark shouldn't be necessary anymore or even bc this powers cause terror on the normal people thus making guardians question their beliefs.
And with this we could finally learn more in depth about the people of the last city and the politics in it.
This is just an idea but I really like the possible moral debate that a story like this could create in the community.
I apologize for the poor redaction and choose of words in the main comment, I'm still learning English 😅
Fantastic video with some great points. What's the background music? Sounds like something from Knights of the Old Republic.
Most of it is from the Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem Extended Soundtrack. In my music playlist I have some of the songs in my one video.
Awesome, thanks a lot!@@Venextron
Great points, I really hope whatever happens, they set up the next saga and don't just leave the destiny universe in limbo. One of my favorite games of all time.
I don't feel sorry for the writers or anyone at Bungie... I feel sorry for us the community. We naively supported them for so long and all we wanted in return was the game to be as good as we knew it could be. Instead we got higher prices, less content, recycled cookie cutter seasons, and Lightfall was the epitome of NOT "over-delivering". I have very little faith that TFS will be anywhere near what most would accept as "good enough" after so many let downs, issues being ignored, etc. At this point, I have so much disdain for them and everything they've done, idk if TFS being perfect would even matter to me. I want the conclusion and I want to be done with them, that is how I feel right now. That could change, but it would take an insane amount of over-delivery for that to happen and I just don't think they have it in them. If they don't pull this off, I find it hard to believe they would survive it.
Bungies has really dropped the ball on everything
I think because of how short Destiny 2 Campaigns are, there is sadly no way for them to give the 10 Year Saga a good Conclusion, we could benefit alot from having more Missions, and Cutscenes for the Final Shape, it reminds me of Final Fantasy 14s Endwalker, its Final Expansion of it’s Storyline which was around 30-50 Hours long JUST for the Final StoryArc which ended it with a huge and satisfying Payoff, meanwhile Destinys 4-7 Hour Long Campaings, i feel like wont cut it😊
this is really put together well
I adored Calus. Bought the Collector's Editions. Read so much Lore. He just... Pop. Done. Oof. Years of buildup for that?
To me, all the retconning of the Gardener and Winnower stories hurts the narrative too much. I loved those lore entries, so full of metaphor because the Winnower talked about how metaphor was the only way to convey the ideas in a way a mortal could understand with our limited perspective. Then we find out the Witness's motivation and it's ... Pretty fucking simple. And kind of petty, really.
Bud they didn’t retcon that
Beyond Light is what killed all the hopes and faith I had with the story. So much potential with a grey Fallen expansion + uncovering the secrets of the pyramid ships, but instead it was about a comically evil Fallen villain, a unnecessary Stasis training arc and then finally the only piece of good story with the raid.
Bungie management is the darkness
when i first started playing destiny during shadowkeep this is what i thought
shadowkeep is "the cliffhanger," we dont know WHO we are fighting, because at the end of the campaign like we literally see ourself talking to us?? it was a cliffhanger, which is fine.
the entire campaign was like "who are we fighting? whats in the pyramid?" and when we get to the pyramid, its a cliffhanger. who are we fighting. like we are looking for a concept, the "root of all evil," who is it? And as someone who like didnt go deep into the lore I thought it was gonna be revealed to be the hive or the taken because those were the only like magic evil forces and stuff
beyond light was meant to be the answer ya, right out the gate we see a pyramid, but it ended up basically just being shadowkeep again, we go into a pyramid and still dont know whats up
and witch queen was like so cool and we finally got who the darkness guy is, and we know about the hive magic now, and everything was going to be so awesome.
and when lightfall was being revealed, I thought Neomunna was going to be the darkness society. I thought the cloudstriders were going to be like the humans who stepped up and took darkness power for themselves, and we were going to fight them on a darkness planet, and by the end of it we were going to have like a cool plot twist or something and it was going to be just like witch queen.
and then like a day later I was so disappointed. such a shame man.
Some have also said this but strand feels like it should've been in Witch Queen, but for me its mainly because it would've been *perfect* you know the parts with deepsight? They work PERFECTLY as parts where you could've used strand to go through and sling yourself through, the fight with Savathun would be a PERFECT time for strand to go all out as a element, we could've weaved her spell against her, showing her that while yes the hive have gained the light we have reached even deeper into the self and found something new, sometimes powerful
I think we are giving Bungie a lot of credit when we say that this final shape story will be triumphant.
This saga will go out with a whimper and not with a roar.
At most it will be " mediocre but good" and thus why i cancelled the pre order, Lightfall was the wetest fart I could ever play.
I hope the final shape story is great. I love this game franchise so much, I just want to see it prosper
Finally a good fan. I just want the answers to all of it. Is the traveler a construct of light that carries the will of the original Gardener. Is the winnower the first tree of sacred wings, and the first loading screen of destiny 2 where the circle& square revolve eachother display in the background an outline of The First Garden. Will Eris Morn be killed and returned normal one last time? Does Crota really love pancakes, esp if they be guardian smashed pcakes?
This was a very well constructed video, you hit on every point and every gripe I have had with the game over the past few years and ended up quitting during season of the deep. Which hurts because I have been a Destiny player sense the days of D1 and I miss playing Destiny there is no other game like it however I can't condone what Bungie has been doing and how they have treated us, their community.
God after listening to what could have been in lightfall, god I hate what they did with that story.
Instead ofngiving us answers and exploring our enemy.... We got The Veil. The biggest RetCon in destiny history. That made no sense, came out of nowhere, and added nothing to the story, in fact it detracts from it.
God I hate The Veil
After The Final Shape story wraps up some time from now, I’m positive there will be dissertation level videos pointing back to the experience that was Destiny, and how Bungie fumbled the bag.
And whatever they have planned next will be DoA. I believe the only reason destiny can pull the current numbers it has now is because players have already invested a decade of time into this story, people just are going to finish it. But do so begrudgingly.
TLDR: we’re all still here playing violins on this sinking titanic of a game, cause what else are we going to do.