If Panoptes is just a simulation of what's to come, shouldn't we be tracking him down in the real world?

Maybe we did...?

I'm seriously very confused about the line between the Vex' abilities to simulate the world and to time-travel.

perhaps i misunderstood, but isn't Panoptes the big bad that supposed to cool our sun or whatever? Or is he more of a sentinel overseeing the Infinite Forest?

If Panoptes is just a simulation of what's to come, shouldn't we be tracking him down in the real world?

Perhaps an alternate ending to the campaign could've been us tracking down the origins and current day whereabouts of Panoptes, destroying him within the simulation, and then having a Raid focused on destroying him in the real world (inside the mercury machine core). Maybe have a jumping puzzle along the exposed side of mercury where the almighty ripped it apart.

I assumed that Panoptes was a vex controlling the simulations and that we killed him for real.

If Panoptes is just a simulation of what's to come, shouldn't we be tracking him down in the real world?

Perhaps an alternate ending to the campaign could've been us tracking down the origins and current day whereabouts of Panoptes, destroying him within the simulation, and then having a Raid focused on destroying him in the real world (inside the mercury machine core). Maybe have a jumping puzzle along the exposed side of mercury where the almighty ripped it apart.

So, I cannot take any credit for making this connection, but Xenos pointed out to me that in Greek mythology, Panoptes' full name is Argos Panoptes.

Raid Lair spoiler:
In the Raid Lair, the giant Vex hydra boss at the core of Nessus is named… Argos.

perhaps i misunderstood, but isn't Panoptes the big bad that supposed to cool our sun or whatever? Or is he more of a sentinel overseeing the Infinite Forest?

I think it's the 2nd. Panoptes was created to convert Mercury into the Infinite Forest and it oversaw the Vex's search for a set of moves that lead them to a future where they defeat both the Light and the Darkness.

I was poking around at Lore last night and came across a couple of interesting things:

1. Osiris was banished because he suggested that understanding and perhaps even siding with the Darkness was preferable to losing to the Vex:

The unenlightened wonder at my so-called “fixation” upon the Vex. They believe our gravest existential threat is the Hive, for those beings have made a pact with the Darkness itself via the medium of the Worm Gods (according to Toland, at least, and I see no reason to doubt him in this).

But Darkness is not merely absence of Light. Darkness is an entity unto itself. Put simply, Darkness is not Nothing.

But the Vex? The Vex seek neither Light nor Darkness. They seek Convergence, the reduction of all life to its simplest, most meaningless form. An entelechy of zeros and ones.

“Evil” is a word for sentimentalists and fools. But, in the ontology of the sentimental, the Vex are more deserving of the term than the Hive.

Given a choice between Darkness and Convergence, I would choose Darkness. It is a logical choice.

Yet for this they banish me.

Osiris stood at the far end of the Underwatch, his back to her.

"We need to talk," she said.

Sagira turned. He did not.

"I'm surprised you came alone. Have you finally learned confidence?"

"Yes." Ikora clenched her fists, then released them. "Not from you."

He crossed his hands behind his back. "I know why you're here."

"I should hope so."

"This meeting was prophesied. As is my impending banishment."

"Then you had ample warning."

"This is ridiculous!" Sagira snapped. "We're at war. Osiris does what you all are too scared to do, and you banish him? How're you gonna win against the Darkness without him?”

Osiris held up a hand to silence her.

"Ikora knows," he said. "She pretends otherwise, but she knows."

"Winning by your terms is no victory." Ikora's hands were fists again. She unclenched them. "Goodbye, Osiris."

2. Like Osiris said in the ending cutscene, the Vex aren't going to stop looking for a perfect path to victory just because we deprived them of one specific way:

Compartmentalization. Isolate the pieces of a network, so that 1) each subnet may operate independently, and 2) any harm that befalls one subnet will not necessarily befall the rest. The Vex learned this lesson well. Many subnets, many equations, all executing toward the same answer: convergence. They gambled that eventually, one of their subnets will achieve it. Speaking in purely mathematical terms, it's a very safe bet.

In that conceptual framework, you see how the Forest, “infinite” in so many ways, is still only a small fraction of the Vex's true capabilities. Imagine the decimal two-point-one repeating. Its precise value is incalculably infinite, and yet you know that beyond its irrational depths waits two-point-two. Two-point three. Two-point-four…

"I've misplaced Osiris again," Sagira told a Goblin.

The Goblin, being a Goblin, shot at her.

She dodged with a sigh, and continued through the Forest.

"If I was Osiris, where would I go to celebrate Panoptes becoming scrap metal?"

The answer, when Sagira finally tracked him down, surprised her.

Osiris hovered, cross-legged, at the center of a ruined Lighthouse. A dead sun loomed in the lightless sky. Arrayed on the ground below to the horizon, yellow Vex eyes pierced the gloom.

Sagira zoomed straight to Osiris's side. "I thought we averted this future!”

Eyes closed, Osiris shook his head. “Many equations lead to this answer.”

A sound like a drumbeat, but with the impact of an earthquake, shook the Lighthouse.

Sagira darted through the crumbling chamber. "What do we do?"

Another bone-rattling drumbeat kicked up clouds of dust.

Osiris floated to his feet. "We start over."

BOOM. Through the window, a shadow eclipsed the Vex eyes.

"But first," he said. "You'll have to rez me again, old friend."

My question is what did we actually do to prevent the Vex's Dark Future? We killed Panoptes, sure, and I guess we deprived the Vex of that particular perfect set of actions it had figured out via endless simulated trial and error? But did we ruin that path for the Vex by killing Panoptes or did we just deprive the Vex of the knowledge of the exact sequence needed to achieve that victory??

My guess, along with Osiris having to prevent the Vex from achieving their goal again, is that Panoptes itself wasn't the one that was going to do all the work to lead the Vex to victory and just killing it doesn't guarantee our safety. Which is why we're now sending Guardians into the Infinite Forest to poison the various Vex simulations. That way, we make sure they never find that path to victory again.