Random Thought: Did the vex not foresee the Almighty? (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, November 21, 2017, 19:07 (2355 days ago) @ CougRon
edited by Ragashingo, Tuesday, November 21, 2017, 19:21

hmm. I don't think they did because the cabal where acting/reacting to us, bearers of the light, something they can't predict. Because they can't predict guardians they can't always predict other reactions to us or their actions against us. Does not being able to predict Guardians also extend to the Traveler and it's actions/inactions? i think so but i don't think it's ever stated though their is some indication that the Vex are acting on Mercury because they were waiting for the Traveler to awaken which implies they've factored it's actions into their predictions and they are important to what they want.

I’m not so sure that having access to the Traveler’s Light makes us and everything and everyone we interact with completely unpredictable. In individual combat, a Guardian for the most part has the speed, strength, and reflexes of any other Human. In long term planning, Guardians evaluate objectives and build defenses and generally think like any other human. If you put Guardians in any normal situation and tell them they can’t use their Light, I would expect the Vex to be able to simulate them with 100% accuracy just like they did with the Ishtar Collective scientists.

It’s when Guardians start breaking the laws of physics that all the Vex’s plans fall apart. When a single squishy human biped made of the same flesh and bones as any other Human leaps into the air and crashes down in an arc explosion a million times more powerful than their biological processes should ever be capable of generating... that’s when the Vex begin to get scared. A Guardian can be vaporized only to reappear a moment later completely fine. A Guardian can wade into small arms fire that would instantly disable or kill a regular Human. And Guardians will base their moment to moment combat tactics and their longer term plans on their Light fueled invincibility and destructive capabilities.

For the Vex, who are trying to run perfect simulations into the past and future, a Guardian’s ability to defy the predictions of planet sized Reality Engines must be hugely troublesome. But do we act so differently that the Vex can’t adapt? That’s where I’m not so sure. Maybe they can learn to warp in snipers any time a Guardian is killed in the hopes of destroying its Ghost as it attempts to revive them? Maybe they can learn to track a Guardian’s Light and scatter or teleport their units away right as a Guardian unleashes a Super. Likewise, the Cabal seem to have mostly stuck to their military doctrine until Gary arrived. I’m not convinced that the Vex couldn’t simulate the Cabal on Mars with a almost perfect accuracy. The only thing marring that perfect simulation might have been when we were in the way breaking the laws of the universe.

The only time I can think of where Guardians clear and away defied any and all attempts of the Vex to counter them would be our victory in the Vault of Glass. There, the Vex had unprecedented control of time and space, yet we yanked that control from them and kept ourselves from being erased from all of local reality. I’m not sure how the Vex could possibly adapt to that.

Coming back around to the Almighty, I wonder if the Vex’s apparent surprise at its appearance had more to do with their (current?!) inability to observe and/or simulate the entire galaxy/universe at once. If they did not know of the Almighty’s existence in the first palce, how would they simulate it and its movements? Or, if they knew about it but it exited an area of space they observe, maybe their predictions of where it would go next weren’t accurate enough to allocate the proper forces to the proper star system? Maybe they weren’t surprised because of the Light. Maybe they were surprised because they haven’t yet reached their full potential to simulate everything everywhere at all times.

I fully admit that I may be off mark here. Destiny lore has been pretty direct in saying that there are things the Vex can’t simulate. There are a few firm examples of their inability to simulate the Light and Darkness, like their defeat in the Vault of Glass or their complete inability to figure out how Aurash became Oryx. But for now I’m questioning the exactly what it means when we’re told that the Vex can’t simulate our Light...

With any luck we’ll learn a lot more about the Vex’s true capabilities soon.