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Gameinformer Article on the Story of Destiny (Destiny)

by Doooskey, Kansas City, MO, Monday, August 24, 2015, 18:43 (3477 days ago)
edited by Doooskey, Monday, August 24, 2015, 18:47

Gameinformer has dropped a very story heavy article on Destiny. They say that the info is from the game story, grimoire and conversations with Bungie. They also say that all the info has been approved by Bungie as canon...

Very interesting read, with lots of tidbits of info and some teasers about future story info.

Gameinformer Story Article

Also worth mentioning, this is a summation of the story so far, so no Taken King spoilers as far as I know.

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This is great

by Kahzgul, Monday, August 24, 2015, 22:02 (3476 days ago) @ Doooskey

And, like all great tellings of the story of Destiny, it makes me melancholy about the game's telling of that same story. C'est la vie, I suppose.

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This is great

by Doooskey, Kansas City, MO, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 01:31 (3476 days ago) @ Kahzgul

I was surprised by how much of this I actually missed having played through the game so much (and thinking I was paying lots of attention). I also feel like I have read quite a bit outside of the game itself, but completely missed the interactions between The Queen and the Nine... Had no idea she gave them Skolas and they let him free... Is this explicit in HoW (or the Grimoire) and I just missed it?

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This is great

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 02:10 (3476 days ago) @ Doooskey

I was surprised by how much of this I actually missed having played through the game so much (and thinking I was paying lots of attention). I also feel like I have read quite a bit outside of the game itself, but completely missed the interactions between The Queen and the Nine... Had no idea she gave them Skolas and they let him free... Is this explicit in HoW (or the Grimoire) and I just missed it?

In game during the mission where you fight the Silent Fang outside the Cosmodrome wall Petra mentions that Skolas had been given to The Nine and wonders in awe how he could have escaped them. Listen as you start getting close to the the outside... I think the dialogue happens in that long narrow room lit red by the big red windows. That The Nine actively released him instead of him escaping is not touched on at all I don't think.

In the Grimoire, the whole story stretches all over the place. The Queen gives The Nine Skolas in what seemed to be compensation or appeasement for her forces crossing into their territory. The Nine then order Xur or someone like him release Skolas and give him a Ketch to command basically turning him lose against The Queen. It's also mentioned that perhaps the Queen is being friendly to the Guardians now because she wants to have an advantage if she is forced into war with The Nine. After you help her recapture Skolas she does learn that The Nine were behind his rampage...

I was sad that the article left out the theory that the Exo Stranger is one of the Ishtar Collective scientists who was trapped in a Vex simulation. See this thread for speculation on that.

This is great

by someotherguy, Hertfordshire, England, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 08:05 (3476 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Except that theory is painfully rampant speculation, bordering on fanfiction.

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This is great

by dogcow @, Hiding from Bob, in the vent core., Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 12:22 (3476 days ago) @ someotherguy

Except that theory is painfully rampant speculation, bordering on fanfiction.

Which theory? The Exo Stranger or the Nine & Skolas?

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Gameinformer Article on the Story of Destiny

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Monday, August 24, 2015, 23:21 (3476 days ago) @ Doooskey

Gameinformer has dropped a very story heavy article on Destiny. They say that the info is from the game story, grimoire and conversations with Bungie. They also say that all the info has been approved by Bungie as canon...

All of it? Even the speculation, fan theories, and apparent errors?

A lot of it isn't explicitly sourced, and some of it is identified as fan theory, so it's a bit hard to spin out what they are saying is "confirmed as canon" and what isn't.

Still, interesting.

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Gameinformer Article on the Story of Destiny

by General Vagueness @, The Vault of Sass, Monday, August 24, 2015, 23:25 (3476 days ago) @ narcogen

Gameinformer has dropped a very story heavy article on Destiny. They say that the info is from the game story, grimoire and conversations with Bungie. They also say that all the info has been approved by Bungie as canon...


All of it? Even the speculation, fan theories, and apparent errors?

No, not all of it. At the very end of the first page they say:

We’ve made a point to fact-check our entire story directly with Bungie prior to publication; as such, we hope this can be an accurate and authoritative glimpse into the existing narrative. Anything not confirmed by Bungie is clearly described as such in the text.

and they thank Bungie again for sitting down with them at the end, and some things are marked as not confirmed, so I assume everything that isn't has been confirmed.
Were there things not marked out as theory that are inaccurate?

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Gameinformer Article on the Story of Destiny

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 01:57 (3476 days ago) @ General Vagueness

Gameinformer has dropped a very story heavy article on Destiny. They say that the info is from the game story, grimoire and conversations with Bungie. They also say that all the info has been approved by Bungie as canon...


All of it? Even the speculation, fan theories, and apparent errors?


No, not all of it. At the very end of the first page they say:

We’ve made a point to fact-check our entire story directly with Bungie prior to publication; as such, we hope this can be an accurate and authoritative glimpse into the existing narrative. Anything not confirmed by Bungie is clearly described as such in the text.


and they thank Bungie again for sitting down with them at the end, and some things are marked as not confirmed, so I assume everything that isn't has been confirmed.
Were there things not marked out as theory that are inaccurate?

I'm going to go back and start looking closely now, but the point is, I don't like the Deep Throat approach to this. I'd much prefer that everything explicitly vetted by Bungie be sourced and quoted, or at least paraphrased, and then I'd know that everything else came from other sources or from the author, because that's what I normally assume anyway.

The situation we've got now is that what the reader thinks is meant by something might be slightly different from what the author intended which might also be slightly different from what a Bungie person thought was meant by it when they signed off on it, and since there are no direct quotes, who the heck knows?

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Gameinformer Article on the Story of Destiny

by Kermit @, Raleigh, NC, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 02:07 (3476 days ago) @ narcogen

Gameinformer has dropped a very story heavy article on Destiny. They say that the info is from the game story, grimoire and conversations with Bungie. They also say that all the info has been approved by Bungie as canon...


All of it? Even the speculation, fan theories, and apparent errors?


No, not all of it. At the very end of the first page they say:

We’ve made a point to fact-check our entire story directly with Bungie prior to publication; as such, we hope this can be an accurate and authoritative glimpse into the existing narrative. Anything not confirmed by Bungie is clearly described as such in the text.


and they thank Bungie again for sitting down with them at the end, and some things are marked as not confirmed, so I assume everything that isn't has been confirmed.
Were there things not marked out as theory that are inaccurate?


I'm going to go back and start looking closely now, but the point is, I don't like the Deep Throat approach to this. I'd much prefer that everything explicitly vetted by Bungie be sourced and quoted, or at least paraphrased, and then I'd know that everything else came from other sources or from the author, because that's what I normally assume anyway.

The situation we've got now is that what the reader thinks is meant by something might be slightly different from what the author intended which might also be slightly different from what a Bungie person thought was meant by it when they signed off on it, and since there are no direct quotes, who the heck knows?

I wasn't as critical, but now that you mention it...

I think the article does a good of informing people that there's more to Destiny than they might have realized.

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Gameinformer Article on the Story of Destiny

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 04:36 (3476 days ago) @ Kermit

I wasn't as critical, but now that you mention it...

I think the article does a good of informing people that there's more to Destiny than they might have realized.

That is true. The narrative that "Destiny has no story" has already been out so long it is accepted fact, even among those still playing the game. I fear it is probably too late to reverse that for many, and to the extent that this article connects the dots on certain things that players might not have noticed, it is a good thing.

I think the author has overstated the degree to which everything presented within is accurate, and I'm also wondering why stuff like this doesn't just appear in a weekly update, and why nearly every damn thing we learn about Destiny comes from GameInformer, which is outright owned by a retailer. Surely digital sales are a large enough portion now that kowtowing to GameStop is no longer mandatory?

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Gameinformer Article on the Story of Destiny

by Kahzgul, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 08:08 (3476 days ago) @ narcogen
edited by Kahzgul, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 08:14

I wasn't as critical, but now that you mention it...

I think the article does a good of informing people that there's more to Destiny than they might have realized.


That is true. The narrative that "Destiny has no story" has already been out so long it is accepted fact, even among those still playing the game. I fear it is probably too late to reverse that for many, and to the extent that this article connects the dots on certain things that players might not have noticed, it is a good thing.

I think the author has overstated the degree to which everything presented within is accurate, and I'm also wondering why stuff like this doesn't just appear in a weekly update, and why nearly every damn thing we learn about Destiny comes from GameInformer, which is outright owned by a retailer. Surely digital sales are a large enough portion now that kowtowing to GameStop is no longer mandatory?

I just need to step in here. When we say that Destiny "has no story" what we mean is "the story in the actual game, Destiny, is really weak." On the internet, Destiny has a setting, and it has a backstory, and it has cannon and lore, but none of those things are a story.

EDIT: I just want to point out that I get that there's an overarching story of the universe of Destiny (not the game, but the setting) that has 9 more years to develop, and *that* story is certainly starting off well, as it includes all of the non-Destiny the game elements, which I find fascinating. BUT Destiny the game is sorely lacking in my esteem and has really done very, very little to further the overarching plot, especially when compared to the information in the grimoires etc..

/rant on.

In the actual game, we have a cutscene of some astronauts on mars looking at an orb and then it rains. Totally unexplained. Then you come back from the dead and are told everything will be explained later (it never is). You kill some guys because they're trying to kill you, and you get a ship because you need it apparently. When you meet the speaker, he tells you that he could tell you the stories, but he won't. And so on until the stranger tells you she doesn't have time to explain why she doesn't have time to explain. And so forth, and then you win in the Black Garden and you get a single mote of light and a gun. No explanation of what you did at all, really, and the effect of your actions on the game world is literally nil. Your character has learned basically nothing and been a mostly passive construct for the entire game. Even though it seemed like some major events took place, they either did so totally off camera or they actually had no real effect on the game world. No one grew, no lesson was learned, no moral was taught, not one of the characters developed in any meaningful way. Hence, no story.

Then the first expansion came, and that had a story! Crota is going to invade earth (instigating event!), you have to stop his invasion (rising action!) and then eventually go kill him (climax!). And then it ends. Halfway through what I would consider to be "the story." BUT, the Taken King is the falling action that results from your killing of Crota (Oryx invading is a direct result of your actions), and you have to deal with the consequences (presumably by killing Oryx), which would neatly end this particular thread of gameplay. Depending on the outcome of TTK and its effect on the game world (hopefully there is one), this could be a full and complete story.

Second expansion! HoW has a complete story within it. Take the backstory of Skolas from the grimoire and throw it out - sadly none of that is in the actual game. But the inciting event is Skolas' escape (happens off camera, but you hear about it at the start of the xpac missions). Then - rising action - you hunt him down. And capture him (climax!). Then he's thrown in prison (falling action), but eventually, when you've grown powerful enough, they need you to go and kill him for good (resolution). The falling action and resolution are not explained in terms of why those things are happening instead of you just killing him at the climax, which puts the end half of this closer to how the original game played (do these things and I refuse to explain why), but since you can see that they directly result from your own actions (and would not be possible had you not taken those earlier actions), their role in the narrative structure is clear. You could even say we earned the trust of the Queen and learned that she is a ruthless leader and capable ally, so there is both character development and a lesson learned.

So certainly the expansions are better about storytelling than the original game, but I find it disingenuous to claim that writings on the internet constitute story within the game. That's like saying Xmen 3 was a good movie because the comic books' Phoenix Saga was awesome, or like saying Dune the movie was good because Dune the book was awesome. They're different entities. Not wholly unrelated, but still distinct from one another. My knowledge of the history of House Atredes from reading the book does not somehow change the movie into a better story. Likewise, the existence of the Grimoire does not magically make the actual game of Destiny have a good story. It makes it have a good setting, and a good backstory, and good lore, but it does not change the actual story of the game, which is very, very weak.

/rant off

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Prediction

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 23:30 (3475 days ago) @ Kahzgul

My prediction is that the story will be better in the Taken King, but that the storytelling will probably be as weak.

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Questions.

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 02:34 (3476 days ago) @ General Vagueness

and they thank Bungie again for sitting down with them at the end, and some things are marked as not confirmed, so I assume everything that isn't has been confirmed.
Were there things not marked out as theory that are inaccurate?

I have doubts about this:

In a heroic last stand that defies its previous encounters with the Darkness, the Traveler fights back rather than abandoning humanity.

I do sincerely hope Bungie isn't going down the "humanity is special in the cosmos" route that Halo ended up with. That is deeply disappointing if true. If not true, then either the author is overreaching or Bungie is deliberately concealing in order to set up a surprise later.

First, the strike team tracks down an exiled and disgraced warlock named Toland, who had been banished for investigating the Darkness and the Hive with a little more fervor than the Vanguard would have liked. In addition to being the guy who knows more about the Hive than anyone else, he is also famous for wielding a deadly and dark pulse rifle called Bad Juju.

Toland's mistake was going up against Crota with Bad Juju instead of Red Death. Assuming one has a pulse rifle fetish, that is.

In particular, at least some part of the conflict arises from the Vex possession of a fragment of the Darkness, which is hidden in a place called the Black Garden, a vast Vex sanctuary locked away on Mars in some forgotten corner of time.

I was going to call this out because of a little conflict I see between "heart" and "fragment" but in retrospect this is a matter of perspective-- for the Vex, their darkness fragment is the "heart of the Black Garden", so it's more important to them than it would be to the Darkness itself, hence the relative inequality in importance between "heart" and "fragment".

One would have thought, though, if this was the case, that the Stranger would know about it. I guess she didn't have time to explain.

The Vex completely overtake Mercury and transform it into a stronghold world, and they start to do the same on Venus, setting up a massive Citadel and beginning to overtake the ruins of humanity’s abandoned colony there.

This strikes me as just straight-up wrong. In game we're told the ruins on Venus are billions of years old, and that includes the Citadel location. Those were ruins when the Golden Age brought humans to Venus, which is long before the Vex return. The Citadel might be being reclaimed, but it isn't being "set up".

The Vex are contriving to conquer and infect reality across all time, hoping to carve themselves into the fabric of the universe. They create the Vault of Glass on Venus in an effort to unite their efforts in the past, present, and future.

Of course it's always difficult to handle tense when talking about time-travel, but this is potentially misleading, making it sounds as if the Vault was set up on Venus post-Golden Age, instead of making it part of the ruins, like the Citadel. Either the Vault was on Venus back when Venus looks like Mars does now, which was a long, long time ago, or else it sits outside of time and space entirely, neither of which is inferred by the way this is written.

Amidst all this, a number of Awoken and Fallen make names for themselves, but one of the most important is a woman named Petra Venj. She rises up from being a soldier in the Awoken army to one of the Queen’s lieutenants, striking numerous victories for her people. In her eagerness to wipe out the Fallen, at one point she calls in an airstrike on some Fallen, not realizing that several of Earth’s Guardians would also be hit and killed, along with their Ghosts. The mistake causes serious tensions between the Awoken and the Guardians on Earth. As penance, Petra is made emissary to the Tower, a role she detests.

This is utterly and indisputably at odds with the voice performance of Petra. She detests bureaucratic work back on the Reef, not working with Guardians. If anything, all during HoW she shows favor towards Guardians and makes sly jabs at Variks.

the Stranger shows up looking for a Guardian to help her thwart the plans of the Vex. She seems to be looking specifically for you, as she shows up right after you’re brought back from the dead, and she secretly follows your subsequent adventures.

This is where I have a problem with the choice of words and the "Bungie has confirmed everything we don't exempt" stance of the article. The author uses "seems" here to indicate they don't know if the Stranger is looking specifically for the player character or not. Presumably Bungie approved this word choice. But they know whether the Stranger was looking for the player or not, so either they're actually refusing to confirm this fact in an article that says everything not exempted is confirmed, or they want to continue to deliberately conceal the Stranger's motives in order to maintain suspense, even while giving the appearance of confirming canonical information.

The author either should not have backed off the assertion by using the word "seems" and gotten Bungie to confirm what the Stranger was looking for, or, failed that, should have removed the assertion entirely so as to avoid ambiguity.

On the bright side, by opening up the passageways into the underground, you finally give poor Eris Morn a chance to escape, and she starts to make her way back to the Tower. You also manage to track down and return a broken shard of the Traveler, which the Hive are using to drain Light from the Traveler.

Out of those two missions, I know which one we got to play, and which one I'd have rather played.

You proceed back to Venus, and get one of these eyes, and then return to the asteroid belt to acknowledge the Awoken Queen’s help, and glean the location of the Black Garden.

Huh? Nobody gleans nothing. Uldren and Sov knew all along, and they give you precise coordinates. They mock you in a prior cutscene for not even knowing where it is. Being unable to correctly characterize information given explicitly in cutscene dialogue does not inspire confidence in the author's ability to convey everything else that is essentially deep background.

To add insult to injury, you then get together with several of your fellow guardians, enter Crota’s dark dimensional hide-out, and destroy his body. In fact, to do so, you take his own sword and hack him apart with it.

I'm really just pointing out the inaccuracy of the game, not the article here, but the Sword of Crota was already destroyed. We get multiple swords from swordbearers, and plus Crota wields his own sword-- one that is appropriate scale to his oversized body.

Somebody somewhere at Bungie fell in love with this "killed him with his own sword" meme and now they've gotten stuck with it, but it just isn't so. I blame Luke Smith.

Why doesn’t the Queen just have you kill him in the first place?

That’s unclear. The Queen is inscrutable sometimes. It’s possible that she wants Skolas to die in disgrace and embarrassment.

Or else because this limits discontinuity between those who played only the main story missions and those that do the endgame activities like Raids and PoE.

In the vanilla game, there's no discontinuity, really, because those endgames have separate bosses. The main objective in the Vex plot in the vanilla game aims at the Heart of the Black Garden, and not at Atheon and the Vault of Glass, which get only a side mention in one Venus mission.

In the Dark Below, though, Crota remains unfinished business if you don't do the raid.

In HoW you can rest easy knowing that Skolas is back in prison, even if you don't go in there to try and kill him. The prison is just weird, anyway, though. The idea of a gladiatorial arena is fine, but the boss idea just breaks it.

an amusing little story about some human scientists on Venus who can’t figure out if they’re real or trapped in a Vex simulation of reality. But most of that is entirely ancillary to the actual narrative.

If the Vex are either the real big bad, or more closely tied to the Darkness than the others, then this might not really be ancillary. It certainly seems to connect to what goes on in the Vault.

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Questions.

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 03:08 (3476 days ago) @ narcogen

and they thank Bungie again for sitting down with them at the end, and some things are marked as not confirmed, so I assume everything that isn't has been confirmed.
Were there things not marked out as theory that are inaccurate?


I have doubts about this:

In a heroic last stand that defies its previous encounters with the Darkness, the Traveler fights back rather than abandoning humanity.


I do sincerely hope Bungie isn't going down the "humanity is special in the cosmos" route that Halo ended up with. That is deeply disappointing if true. If not true, then either the author is overreaching or Bungie is deliberately concealing in order to set up a surprise later.

I don't think that's where the story is going. Really, I think the author's take on what the Traveler did is wrong. I'd have to go research it again, but my take was that The Traveler visited and uplifted the Fallen and then went on its way and only later did the Darkness come along and cause the Fallen's Whirlwind. Ghost Fragment: The Traveler mentions The Traveler leaving without tying it's departure to The Darkness, for instance.

The Vex completely overtake Mercury and transform it into a stronghold world, and they start to do the same on Venus, setting up a massive Citadel and beginning to overtake the ruins of humanity’s abandoned colony there.


This strikes me as just straight-up wrong. In game we're told the ruins on Venus are billions of years old, and that includes the Citadel location. Those were ruins when the Golden Age brought humans to Venus, which is long before the Vex return. The Citadel might be being reclaimed, but it isn't being "set up".

Well... with time travel who can be sure how long it really has been anywhere? More to the point, the Ishtar Collective scientists who were freed from the Vex simulation speculate about the Vex Citadel, one suggesting it had been a part of Venus for a long time but only rose to the surface via geological instability while another thinks that The Traveler did something "paracausal" to Venus and the Citadel's existence don't make any logical sense.

My sense of it is that the Vex stuff has been on Venus a long long time but the Vex's expansion into our solar system was stopped by The Traveler after they took over Mercury (our Ghost says that much at the beginning of one mission) and perhaps driven to dormancy until now where they and their structures are once again awaking. Hence Waking Ruins as a location name.

Amidst all this, a number of Awoken and Fallen make names for themselves, but one of the most important is a woman named Petra Venj. She rises up from being a soldier in the Awoken army to one of the Queen’s lieutenants, striking numerous victories for her people. In her eagerness to wipe out the Fallen, at one point she calls in an airstrike on some Fallen, not realizing that several of Earth’s Guardians would also be hit and killed, along with their Ghosts. The mistake causes serious tensions between the Awoken and the Guardians on Earth. As penance, Petra is made emissary to the Tower, a role she detests.


This is utterly and indisputably at odds with the voice performance of Petra. She detests bureaucratic work back on the Reef, not working with Guardians. If anything, all during HoW she shows favor towards Guardians and makes sly jabs at Variks.

She was assigned a grounded diplomatic posting among a government that hated her for leading an attack that killed their people in the midst of a war. A war which killed one of her relations, Pinar Venj. It was a punishment, keeping her away from the fighting. One she even appeals in a letter to the Queen.

What she liked wasn't us Guardians so much as getting to once again be involved in combat (even from afar) against the race that killed her sisters and destroyed her (space?) station and way of life. That we proved effective and capable did see her taking a liking to us though, I think.

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Questions.

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 04:31 (3476 days ago) @ Ragashingo

and they thank Bungie again for sitting down with them at the end, and some things are marked as not confirmed, so I assume everything that isn't has been confirmed.
Were there things not marked out as theory that are inaccurate?


I have doubts about this:

In a heroic last stand that defies its previous encounters with the Darkness, the Traveler fights back rather than abandoning humanity.


I do sincerely hope Bungie isn't going down the "humanity is special in the cosmos" route that Halo ended up with. That is deeply disappointing if true. If not true, then either the author is overreaching or Bungie is deliberately concealing in order to set up a surprise later.


I don't think that's where the story is going. Really, I think the author's take on what the Traveler did is wrong. I'd have to go research it again, but my take was that The Traveler visited and uplifted the Fallen and then went on its way and only later did the Darkness come along and cause the Fallen's Whirlwind. Ghost Fragment: The Traveler mentions The Traveler leaving without tying it's departure to The Darkness, for instance.

I would also prefer your interpretation, but doing so calls into serious question the author's assertion that everything not explicitly labelled has been confirmed by Bungie as canonical.

The Vex completely overtake Mercury and transform it into a stronghold world, and they start to do the same on Venus, setting up a massive Citadel and beginning to overtake the ruins of humanity’s abandoned colony there.


This strikes me as just straight-up wrong. In game we're told the ruins on Venus are billions of years old, and that includes the Citadel location. Those were ruins when the Golden Age brought humans to Venus, which is long before the Vex return. The Citadel might be being reclaimed, but it isn't being "set up".


Well... with time travel who can be sure how long it really has been anywhere? More to the point, the Ishtar Collective scientists who were freed from the Vex simulation speculate about the Vex Citadel, one suggesting it had been a part of Venus for a long time but only rose to the surface via geological instability while another thinks that The Traveler did something "paracausal" to Venus and the Citadel's existence don't make any logical sense.

My sense of it is that the Vex stuff has been on Venus a long long time but the Vex's expansion into our solar system was stopped by The Traveler after they took over Mercury (our Ghost says that much at the beginning of one mission) and perhaps driven to dormancy until now where they and their structures are once again awaking. Hence Waking Ruins as a location name.

Less expansion and more homecoming, if Ghost is to be believed.

Amidst all this, a number of Awoken and Fallen make names for themselves, but one of the most important is a woman named Petra Venj. She rises up from being a soldier in the Awoken army to one of the Queen’s lieutenants, striking numerous victories for her people. In her eagerness to wipe out the Fallen, at one point she calls in an airstrike on some Fallen, not realizing that several of Earth’s Guardians would also be hit and killed, along with their Ghosts. The mistake causes serious tensions between the Awoken and the Guardians on Earth. As penance, Petra is made emissary to the Tower, a role she detests.


This is utterly and indisputably at odds with the voice performance of Petra. She detests bureaucratic work back on the Reef, not working with Guardians. If anything, all during HoW she shows favor towards Guardians and makes sly jabs at Variks.


She was assigned a grounded diplomatic posting among a government that hated her for leading an attack that killed their people in the midst of a war. A war which killed one of her relations, Pinar Venj. It was a punishment, keeping her away from the fighting. One she even appeals in a letter to the Queen.

What she liked wasn't us Guardians so much as getting to once again be involved in combat (even from afar) against the race that killed her sisters and destroyed her (space?) station and way of life. That we proved effective and capable did see her taking a liking to us though, I think.

I stand by my assertion that the article's statement, that Petra detests her role in the Tower, is completely at odds both with the vocal performance and the Grimoire. The Awoken citizenry might hate her, but there's no evidence the Queen does, nor is there any evidence of enmity between the Queen and her or Prince Uldren and her. If she resents anyone, it's the Fallen, and the voice performance is consistent with that. The article mentions she hates the role, and that the role is emissary to the tower, implying that it's the fact that the role is emissary to the Tower that is what she hates, when we know that is not true.

The author probably needed to use "resents" rather than "detests" and needed to supply details more consistent with what is already in the game and the grimoire-- that Petra wanted to continue field work, but was not particularly opposed to Guardians, at least not more so than any other Awoken. (The opening cutscene is slightly leery of them, but that's it.) The combination of grimoire knowledge (Petra's actions led to the death of Guardians) and the articles assertion (Petra detests her role in the Tower) could lead to the erroneous conclusion that Petra means ill towards Guardians, which is also at odds with the in-game performance.

The author needed to backpedal off the idea that everything he's written is canonical unless it is explicitly stated otherwise, and I think Bungie probably needs to backpedal off this as well.

Questions.

by someotherguy, Hertfordshire, England, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 08:21 (3476 days ago) @ narcogen


I stand by my assertion that the article's statement, that Petra detests her role in the Tower, is completely at odds both with the vocal performance and the Grimoire. The Awoken citizenry might hate her, but there's no evidence the Queen does, nor is there any evidence of enmity between the Queen and her or Prince Uldren and her. If she resents anyone, it's the Fallen, and the voice performance is consistent with that. The article mentions she hates the role, and that the role is emissary to the tower, implying that it's the fact that the role is emissary to the Tower that is what she hates, when we know that is not true.

Are you getting your social spaces mixed up? The Grimoire says she dislikes being Emissary to the Tower (she cant stand being a pencil-pusher, iirc), and she's pleased to be back at The Reef. I don't know that the voice performance has any mention at all of her time at the Tower.

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Questions.

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 10:38 (3476 days ago) @ someotherguy

Right, she hated it being stuck on Earth. She didn't just show up with her fancy ship streamers flying every once in a while. She was permenantly stationed on Earth from that point in the Reef Wars till the Wolves broke free and the Queen called for our help. Her original, pre HoW card says she had long called Earth her home which fits with her writting the letter to the Queen asking to be allowed back. She loves field work and had a serious beef with the Fallen for killing her family and destroying her home which is why she is so enthusiastic about helping us find and stop Skolas.

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Questions.

by Xenos @, Shores of Time, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 04:42 (3476 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Well... with time travel who can be sure how long it really has been anywhere? More to the point, the Ishtar Collective scientists who were freed from the Vex simulation speculate about the Vex Citadel, one suggesting it had been a part of Venus for a long time but only rose to the surface via geological instability while another thinks that The Traveler did something "paracausal" to Venus and the Citadel's existence don't make any logical sense.

My sense of it is that the Vex stuff has been on Venus a long long time but the Vex's expansion into our solar system was stopped by The Traveler after they took over Mercury (our Ghost says that much at the beginning of one mission) and perhaps driven to dormancy until now where they and their structures are once again awaking. Hence Waking Ruins as a location name.

It's actually implied as well that the Citadel was taken from either parallel versions of Venus, or from another time and put into our time. They are never clear on which (probably because they don't know).

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Humanity is special

by Durandal, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 09:26 (3476 days ago) @ narcogen

I would point out that whole "humans are special" thing was invented by 343i. Bungie left the game with the belief that humans took the mantle because they didn't need to kill all life in the galaxy to end the flood menace, they just sacrificed a third of their population. That put them one up on the Forrunner, who saw their use of the halo array as an atrocity barely above that of the flood.

I'm still waiting for 343i to have some multicolor starbursts save the day a-la ME3. They just don't seem to be able to capture the feel of the initial series.

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Humanity is special

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 10:49 (3476 days ago) @ Durandal

I would point out that whole "humans are special" thing was invented by 343i. Bungie left the game with the belief that humans took the mantle because they didn't need to kill all life in the galaxy to end the flood menace, they just sacrificed a third of their population. That put them one up on the Forrunner, who saw their use of the halo array as an atrocity barely above that of the flood.

I'm still waiting for 343i to have some multicolor starbursts save the day a-la ME3. They just don't seem to be able to capture the feel of the initial series.

The original Halo 3 terminals Librarian certianly thought Humanity was special. Special enough to construct one last slipspace portal. Special enough to die with. In Bungie's Halo, Humanity were literally Forerunner descendants. Their being Reclaimers had nothing to do with stopping the Flood. As far as we know Humanity wasn't even found by the Flood before the Forerunner wiped the galaxy. Earth was a peaceful, beautiful place... and then the Didact fired the array.

It was 343i who changed the entire universe, made Humanity into a superpowerful race fleeing the Flood. Who put them in a huge war with the Forerunner... etc.

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Humanity is special

by bluerunner @, Music City, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 11:42 (3476 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Yep, which is the point that 343i lost me on the Halo story.

I've been wondering lately if Bungie would bring back that idea of humanity being reclaimers in Destiny. Humanity is the lost descendants of the civilization that build the Traveler, which is why it brings in the Golden Age start catching them up technologically, and why it puts up such a fight for them.

As far as what the Traveler is, I'm really liking this theory because it takes from their description of Forerunner shield worlds. I just take it a step further and theorize that whoever is inside is closely related to humans.

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Gameinformer Article on the Story of Destiny

by Doooskey, Kansas City, MO, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, 01:27 (3476 days ago) @ narcogen

Gameinformer has dropped a very story heavy article on Destiny. They say that the info is from the game story, grimoire and conversations with Bungie. They also say that all the info has been approved by Bungie as canon...


All of it? Even the speculation, fan theories, and apparent errors?

A lot of it isn't explicitly sourced, and some of it is identified as fan theory, so it's a bit hard to spin out what they are saying is "confirmed as canon" and what isn't.

Still, interesting.

Yeah, sorry, as General Vagueness mentioned they have a few pieces of speculation and fan theory, but I think they mention where it's fan theory or not something Bungie "confirmed"

For the most part, it is accurate and in line with canon, speckled with some speculation/fan theory.

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This is the best thing I've read about Destiny's story.

by Kermit @, Raleigh, NC, Monday, August 24, 2015, 23:27 (3476 days ago) @ Doooskey

- No text -

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Stop it, Brain. Just...stop it!

by DiscipleN2k @, Edmond, OK, Wednesday, August 26, 2015, 14:17 (3475 days ago) @ Doooskey

Because of this little bit of text:

...a screaming Hive witch named Omnigul, who may or may not be Crota’s consort.

Gross.

Yeah.

I've just come to the realization that Rule 34 applies to Crota & Omnigul...and part of me feels the need to verify that.

-Disciple

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Stop it, Brain. Just...stop it!

by iconicbanana, C2-H5-OH + NAD, Portland, OR, Wednesday, August 26, 2015, 14:19 (3475 days ago) @ DiscipleN2k

Because of this little bit of text:

...a screaming Hive witch named Omnigul, who may or may not be Crota’s consort.

Gross.

Yeah.


I've just come to the realization that Rule 34 applies to Crota & Omnigul...and part of me feels the need to verify that.

-Disciple

Well if you think about 'Xyor the unwed', the title implies at least some of them skeletor-meets-crypt-dweller spawn actually get married. Don't think too hard about all those cocoons, though.

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Stab your brain with a Q-tip.

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Wednesday, August 26, 2015, 14:23 (3475 days ago) @ DiscipleN2k

[internet advice] If you start to feel dizzy, it's working. Keep doing it.[/internet advice]

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