Underwhelmed with Rise of Iron Story (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, September 23, 2016, 05:05 (2982 days ago) @ BeardFade

To make this worse, inexplicably (literally, it is not explained hardly at all) the Fallen are after it. To be clear what I mean, I mean that the Fallen are pursuing the SIVA technology. This implies a knowledge of its existence, experience with it as a useful force, but there's no explanation as to how the Fallen became aware of it. Just that they are. (Are you noticing a trend, we are constantly just told things are just the way they are, with no actual evidence or reason to support it).

The opening cutscene explains that the House of Devils had been searching through our old research posts system wide. They found records of SIVA at the Clovis Bray facility. And the reason? The Fallen are desperately seeking any technology they think might help them survive. Skolas hijacked Vex technology. The Devils hijacked SIVA.

I think a much more interesting plot direction would have been to make the nano-technology artificially intelligent such that SIVA itself was trying to escape the bunker it was sealed in. Perhaps the SIVA finally found a way through the bunker (it can supposedly meld/penetrate/create some sort of change in whatever it touches, right)? In this way, SIVA would have slowly crept into the Plaguelands, and then perhaps serendipitously, a Fallen may have been "infected" by SIVA. A much more organic (perhaps, gruesome) evolution of the Fallen into Splicers would have taken place.

Having SIVA itself be intelligent would diminish Rasputin's role in the tragedy. His actions have been at the edges of Destiny's story since the beginning and with each new expansion we are slowly moving towards him being revealed as a major threat to humanity and the Traveler.

This "leaking out" of SIVA would also have given more of an explanation as to how the Guardians are currently unaware of its presence. It is absolutely implausible that Guardians who have been patrolling the Cosmodrome for two years would NOT have noticed that something was growing and invading The Divide or The Rocket Yards or The Wall. No sense can be made of this, unless you are trying to argue that every single last guardian was on the Dreadnaught for so long that no one noticed this technological invasion.

What makes you think it took two years for the House of Devils to use SIVA to breach the wall? The Devils had just right then knocked the Rocketyard patrol beacon sensors offline at the end of the second mission. I take that to mean that the invasion of the Cosmodrome is only days old at that point. Having the City completely focused on the alien god who destroyed thousands of civilizations could have been a clever secondary reason that nobody noticed what the Devils were really up to, but the primary reason would seem to be that they moved fast once they took control of the SIVA replication chamber.

My next gripe with this is the complete and utter lack of communication between Lord Saladin and The Vanguard. Why on Earth would The Vanguard not be informed of SIVA? What motivation does Lord Saladin actually have for expunging it from the records? Grief? Bullshit. If your friends all die from an out of control nano-technology, you tell someone about the damn technology so none of their friends die. Am I really to believe that someone as noble as Lord Saladin, an Iron Lord, whose sole purpose is to be a "guardian", a protector, wouldn't tell the truth? That he would just omit some vital information for possibly centuries?

On the other hand, Jolder detonated some kind of explosives and then... everything stopped. For 400+ years there was no SIVA threat. And it wasn't just that SIVA had wiped out his friends. It was that the Iron Lords sought it out and activated it and were destroyed by it. With direct first hand experience on just how bad things can go maybe he felt justified keeping his secrets.

Lastly, did we really just seal SIVA back up? How moronic is this? We know it didn't work once, why on earth would we do it twice? Why not have a mission where maybe things don't go successfully (and that's the point). After we fight the Guardian Reapers (another Mass Effect reference), and we set off a detonation sequence, there should be a cut scene that's already showing the SIVA crawling out as a statement as to the futility of taking such a course of action. It should prove that the jarhead mentality that Guardians who just shoot everything cannot defeat everything. SIVA lives on, as it has for hundreds of years. Then maybe you write some more story (five missions, that's it?) to help us actually scientifically combat SIVA (we used to have tons of scientists right, that's how all this began in the Golden Age?).

No. Neither we nor the Iron Lords ever sealed SIVA away. 400 years ago Saladin and the others fought to destroy the SIVA production facility. Their plan worked, it just had a high cost and wasn't thorough enough.The Devils repaired the facility, notably they used the nuclear reactor from the freighter to power it, and restarted the production of SIVA. Our Guardian came along and input the self destruct codes that destroyed the replication for good. Sealing the doors was never about trapping SIVA somewhere. It was about protecting someone (first Saladin and later our Guardian) from the blast.

SIVA does in fact live on, however. In at least two ways. First, the Devils still have a significant quantity of SIVA. They can't make anymore, but what amount they do have makes them a threat. Second... well the second interesting thing that happened with SIVA wasn't spoonfed via cutscene or voiceover so it's clearly not worth discussing.

Honestly, I'm ready to give it up. The only satisfying reason to play is to play with all of you, which truly is satisfying. Anyone in this forum could have written a better story arc and come up with more creative plot devices than Bungie did with this one. As you can tell, I'm pretty disappointed.

So, what say ye? I didn't write this not to hear your thoughts, so let's hear them.

I liked the story. I liked that we got to see the Fallen accomplish something with all their scavenging. Liked that we learned about the past before the City came into prominence. Liked that we now have a clear example of Rasputin working against humanity.