Growth and learning in characters is about what they DO, not what they say. And everybody acts the same as before. There are no consequences. No learning. No real change.

Unless I’m mistaken, most or all of the content in Destiny 2, so far, occurs during the Red War, and little to none of it besides us landing at the new Tower occurs after Gary’s defeat. You can’t rightly claim there has been no learning or growth when approximately zero time has passed. Nobody has yet had a real chance to demonstrate any change in attitude or behavior. Curse of Osiris will be the first actual opportunity for us to see any changes in the strategy or actions of the Vanguard or The City.

Again, the change should take place during the story. The changes are what can bring about the end. For instance, Ikora sacrificing herself or something. It’s not a change if it hasn’t happened yet.

Because of how long it takes to produce new content for games, we are, in a way, frozen in time until Curse of Osiris comes out, so how can we see any changes that results from the Red War until then? I totally agree that with you that a dramatic event like an Ikora sacrifice would have been good, but you can’t just discount it when we hear from the characters that they plan to do things differently. That’s them learning.

I'm sorry, what?

What stories do you know of that only demonstrate character change after the conflict is resolved? That's like saying Luke doesn't have enough time to change during A New Hope and we should only expect character development after he's blown up the Death Star. It just doesn't make sense.

Destiny 2 almost completely failed in that department. Zavala is the only argument I can see against that, and then only slightly. Zavala struggles to figure out what he is without Light, even going as far as to task if he's still a Guardian. He determines that yes, he is, and goes on to fight to take back the city, as much a Guardian as he ever was. But even that is the barest of character arcs. And even then, he doesn't change at all from how we knew him in Destiny 1--it's just a story about the return to the status quo.

I hope we see better with The Curse of Osiris, but I'm not all that optimistic. I don't think we'll ever see more than gestures at a real story within the Destiny universe.

I'm not sure Destiny needs more than that, at the end of the day, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't expect more from it.

Ikora makes the same kind of determination. I’d say she actually goes through an even greater understanding of what it means to be a Guardian. Where Zavala went to Titan to regroup and rearm, Ikora reveals that she basically fled to Io to hide. And that she did so because she was afraid of dying.

Sure, Zavala has his down moments on Titan as he wonders about his place without his Light, but he was still in the middle of things, still calling Guardians to him. It was only after encountering the Hive and not really having an idea of what could even be done next that he reached his low.

Ikora, in contrast hit her low almost immediately. She wasn’t planning to go back. She wasn’t planning to continue the fight. She didn’t even seem to be planning to oppose the Cabal as they harvested the Traveler’s energy from Io. She was just going to stand there on her cliff or hide in the ruins the Traveler left behind because she was paralyzed by her fear.

I’m not saying that there shouldn’t have been more change or that there shouldn’t have been more impactful consequences. I agreed that there should have been. I’m saying that you shouldn’t dismiss it when characters admit their mistakes after a major event a lay out how they plan to do things differently. Really, I’d say there are three areas where the Vanguard showed learning and growth:

1. The realization that they can be Guardians without their super powers.
2. The realization that those who never had super powers can also be Guardians
3. The realizations that they had (basically) become lazy in their strength (Zavala in the strength of the City’s defenses, Ikora in her own power).

In Star Wars terms, Luke is basically a whiny kid up until the fighter run on the Death Star. Sure, he shows moments of heroism, but it’s not until Empire that he’s taken his place as a leader in the Rebellion. It’s not until Jedi that he truly sheds the whiny kid and becomes a calm, collected Jedi, something he had very much not been in the previous two movies. There are some minor demonstrations of change in each movie, but we see the big demonstrations come along with each new work.

Back in Destiny terms, I’m not saying their couldn’t or shouldn’t have been more and better impact shown, I’m just saying that CoO is our first big chance for change. And that it isn’t right to completely overlook some of the smaller changes that we did see.