She forced a lot of wipes from that timer and the ogres were hard as butts. Instant stress when they showed up.

Almost none of the raid bosses are particularly foreboding by themselves. Almost all of them rely on a secondary mechanic that is what actually kills you.

• Templar was just an oversized Hydra - it was the Oracles that were a problem

Who could shoot the shit outta you, and he did kill you when you screwed up the oracles. The Oracles were a safety thing, like if we had to shoot the pillars to save ourselves from Aksis's whatever. The oracles were also lights that dinged. They didn't feel like enemies to me.

[*]Atheon technically teleported you, but didn't do much himself - supplicants and minotaurs were the most common cause of wipes.

Yeah but he looked scary and moved around.

[*]Bridge ogres were a just adds. I don't understand the comparison. They're certainly no harder than the Scorch Captains

They're definitely scarier, and caused more wipes for our team.

[*]Ir Yut does literally nothing. The entire fight is a glorified countdown timer. If Aksis' wipe mechanics don't count, why does hers?

Because hers actually caused tons of wipes for us, so it was scary.

[*]Crota was a forboding boss. Definitely. Giant, with an instakill attack and you had to get right in his face? Scary.
[*]The Warpriest did nothing - Literally stands there shooting at you like any Strike boss

He looks scary and has ruined a lot of runs by shooting the guy on the right.

[*]Golgoroth had the orbs he'd spit at you, which Id say probably count

And he looks scary.

[*]Oryx mostly climbs around like a giant space monkey - again, it's the adds that tend to kill you. He does have the stagger mechanic but so does Aksis.

True, but he looks scary, feels scary, and we have to actually shoot the guy to do damage. For Aksis, it feels more like basketball.

[*]Archpriest, like the Warpriest, just stands there.

Yeah, and he's never killed me. Also doesn't look scary.

[*]Zamboni is foreboding because it will literally crush your puny forms

Death Zamboni is scary, good point.

So out of all of them, we get three bosses where "the bad guy is doing something" (excluding Ir Yut and Oryx, because their "something" is the same as Aksis' something).

I don't think they're equivalent. Aksis's something is

I've heard discussions of fear in video games that revolve around forcing the player to go into an area that they feel is dangerous. When you level up enough and get the routine down, there isn't much in the raid that you would consider dangerous, so it is really tough to make them fearsome.

From a character perspective, a giant robotized fallen archon who replaced his legs with a spider body, teleports around and shoots SIVA swarms that would consume you and return your body under their control al la the fallen Iron lords is a terrifying encounter.

They could have amped things up with evidence of just what SIVA could do to you, in the forms of mutated/altered fallen abominations or something, and making the raid entrance have a more interesting mechanic or have the boss show up there in patrol like the CoO intro where "Something's coming out".

This is an area Bungie has always had trouble with, excepting probably Pathways into Darkness, but I don't think any of the guys are still around from those days.