So starting up the new season, I have no idea what's going on. I'm never in tune with the lore.

Why/How is Mara back?
Did Mara know that Osiris is Savathun?
Are Mara and Savathun working together?
Are we working with Savathun?
Why is Savathun now a rock, and why/how is she talking to us?

Just in general...what is going on?

Did Mara know that Osiris is Savathun?

Wut

Savathun has been posing as Osiris since at least Beyond Light. She has been working as him to direct events over the past year or so at least. She led our fight against Xivu Arath, she helped to bring the Eliksni to the City to defeat Quria and the Long Night. She says in the beginning of this season that she wants to help us defeat the Pyramids. All of this may be true, but surely must be a twisted truth with hidden motivations.

Crow provided dead ghost shells to Osiris, which is probably partly how she makes her own Lightbearers in Witch Queen.

So starting up the new season, I have no idea what's going on. I'm never in tune with the lore.

Why/How is Mara back?

No clue on this one, sorry, but it sounds like she figured out Savathûn was already here and rushed back to strike a bargain to save the Dreaming City?

Did Mara know that Osiris is Savathun?

She definitely didn't look too shocked.

Are Mara and Savathun working together?

Yes.

Are we working with Savathun?

Yes.

Why is Savathun now a rock, and why/how is she talking to us?

Mara cast a spell on her just in case. Savathûn really wants to get rid of her worm, so she's using/collaborating with us to get it done.

Just in general...what is going on?

Lies upon lies upon lies upon lies. It's lies all the way down.

So starting up the new season, I have no idea what's going on. I'm never in tune with the lore.

Why/How is Mara back?
Did Mara know that Osiris is Savathun?
Are Mara and Savathun working together?
Are we working with Savathun?
Why is Savathun now a rock, and why/how is she talking to us?

Just in general...what is going on?

There are certainly a lot of gaps in our knowledge at this point, and I expect those be filled in as the season progresses.

I was a little surprised at the lack of fanfare for Mara's return. In general, it appears that Mara has decided to go along with Savathun's request to remove her worm, and we are going along with Mara's request that we help. Everyone seems generally to understand it's unlikely Savathun's request can be taken at face value, but also understands that Mara plays a pretty deep wheels-within-wheels game.

Outside of the game, obviously we all understand that given the announcement of The Witch Queen, Savathun is clearly not trustworthy at all. So there's a bit of "we all know how this ends, but how we get there is interesting" going on.

I continue to find Eris's absence in these matters to be notable.

Once you do the 6 person mission and the Ascendant Realm challenge for this week, there's a step to talk to Savathun herself, which involves a short exposition cutscene.

Savathun has been posing as Osiris since at least Beyond Light. She has been working as him to direct events over the past year or so at least. She led our fight against Xivu Arath, she helped to bring the Eliksni to the City to defeat Quria and the Long Night. She says in the beginning of this season that she wants to help us defeat the Pyramids. All of this may be true, but surely must be a twisted truth with hidden motivations.

Crow provided dead ghost shells to Osiris, which is probably partly how she makes her own Lightbearers in Witch Queen.

As Osiris, during the Presage mission, Savathun inquires about a crown. I think at the time we were to assume she meant the Crown of Sorrows. However, within the new Awoken lore, it could be that the crown she's really after is the one in Mara's story.

~m

I think it is the Crown of Sorrows. Osiris takes it into the City at the end of that story.

Eris is the big villain behind Savathun and the leader of the Dark Guardians in Elsie's alternate timeline so I wouldn't be terribly shocked if the "Witch Queen" isn't Savathun at all.

Was she pro-Eliksni in this scenario? Evidently the anthrochauv space nationalist song Lakshmi sings during one of her messages, which she states is being sung by people across the city, is the same melody as Savathun's Song. Was also under the impression she was behind Lakshmi's destructive efforts to get rid of them.

So I caught myself up. How much of all this is actually in narrative vs in grimoire? Also the nine are dark matter entities? Uhhhh okay… Between this, all the crazy Hive shit, Callus being whatever he is, and wish dragons it’s seems were are more magic than space these days. Not that that’s a bad thing. But is this a compelling narrative? Genuinely asking how all this is presented and played.

So I caught myself up. How much of all this is actually in narrative vs in grimoire? Also the nine are dark matter entities? Uhhhh okay… Between this, all the crazy Hive shit, Callus being whatever he is, and wish dragons it’s seems were are more magic than space these days. Not that that’s a bad thing. But is this a compelling narrative? Genuinely asking how all this is presented and played.

They are definitely leaning pretty hard into the "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" SF trope. There are rules though - probably the biggest "rule" driving the overarching plot right now is that Hive Sword Logic, powerful though it is, has a huge downside in that it requires an ever-increasing amount of tribute (violence), otherwise the symbiotic/parasitic worm gods will destroy their hosts. Savathun is ostensibly enlisting Mara's (and our) help to avoid that fate.

My threshold for compelling narrative is certainly different than yours, but I can definitely say that I am increasingly excited to log in each Tuesday to experience the new story beats. The way this and the previous 2 seasons have worked, is that each reset day, you are given a small bit of story right off the bat, asked to do an activity (usually the 3-to-6-person seasonal ritual activity), you get another small bit of story, are asked to do another activity (usually a default-solo mission that has some more complex mechanics), then you get a final bit of story for the week. During the missions there is usually character voiceover that helps frame the purpose of the activity, or provides additional context to other events, or simply just fleshes out what is going on with the characters. For instance, a lot of the Osiris voiceovers last season were certainly hinting that he was not who he seemed to be. There may also be other content that provides additional information - during season of the Chosen the Presage mission was released, which provided much of the information about what was going on with Calus outside of the main story beats.

While this may sound like a frustratingly halting or slow way of telling a story, it has had the effect of making Destiny seem like a world where things are actually happening, rather than a disconnected series of dioramas. As a note, if you miss a week you can easily catch up by just doing those sequences of things multiple times.

Lots of it is actually in the game now. The weekly mission requires running the current seasonal activity to do something (in this case, we’re aligning beacons to make the Blind Well work). After that is done, we go into the Ascendant Realm to rescue a Techeun. During these activities, the characters of the season will have dialogue over the comms, which is mostly just flavor, but sometimes it is more. After those missions are done, you go back to the Tower and talk to a character (Mara, this season), who will have actual voiced dialogue with the next story bit. A few times per season we get a real cutscene instead of just talking to someone. This is all accompanied by lore book pages that can provide additional context that’s directly related, or sometimes just about what might be happening elsewhere.

You can absolutely get a complete story without reading the lore books, but they are still great in their own right and provide a more complete understanding of what’s actually happening. It’s a really great balance right now, I think.

While this may sound like a frustratingly halting or slow way of telling a story, it has had the effect of making Destiny seem like a world where things are actually happening, rather than a disconnected series of dioramas. As a note, if you miss a week you can easily catch up by just doing those sequences of things multiple times.

Thank you for the description. I appreciate it.

And do things “reset” each season? Like if you’ve missed 143 weeks can you still go back and do the story in non vaulted content the way it was originally presented? Or have those thing passed by?

To my knowledge, seasonal content gets vaulted after a major expansion. You have an entire year to catch up on the first season of a year, but the one leading into the expansion has a smaller window.

I think that is how it works, but I’m pretty up to date so I haven’t needed to go back and play.

And do things “reset” each season? Like if you’ve missed 143 weeks can you still go back and do the story in non vaulted content the way it was originally presented? Or have those thing passed by?

Right now, you can go back and do all of the stuff that started with the release of Beyond Light. So, the Beyond Light story, Season of the Hunt, Season of the Chosen, Season of the Splicer, and the current partial Season of the Lost are all nominally playable in that you can go back and progress through their stories. What gets confusing, is that sometimes a given area has changed or expanded based on the new seasonal stuff in a way that doesn't quite make sense with the old stuff. A character may seem to be in two places at once (sometimes to humorous effect).

Bungie's original statement is that all the seasonal stuff will stick around for a "year", or until the next big expansion drops, and then some sort of big cleanup will happen. So, you have a lot of time to catch up on the early seasons, but not so much time to catch up on the later seasons. Luckily with Witch Queen getting moved back this season will be extra long, so there is a lot of time to catch up.

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