Questions. (Destiny)

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.