6. Humanity was actually a complete dick during the Golden Age and they rightfully got what they deserved. That is why most of their history has since been lost intentionally to propagate Earth as an innocent bystander in an ancient struggle between the forces of light and dark. With their enemies now huddled all together on a handful of worlds in their solar system, humanity is now poised better than they were before to strike at the heart of their mortal enemies and exert their dominance and perceived birthright to complete dominion of the stars.

Traveller is evil

Sent to weaken us for some greater force.

Before I head off, pick your twist!

1. The speaker IS the real traveler.
2. The Traveler created the Hive.
3. The traveler is actually evil (or else just using humans for some purpose)
4. The Master Chief sent the traveler to Earth.
5. R+L=J

I say #7. The Speaker is the Webmaster under the Travelers influence, The Hive are actually the curious offspring of Ling Ling, the Vex are the fans (seeing as time has no meaning as you play), and the Cabal? Activation goons.

For more information on how this is all a circle, check this post.

Yep.

A mix of 1 and 3, I think in the final battle the darkness corrupted the traveler. The ghosts and the speaker are the traveler's final gasps of light. The traveler went dormant to prevent the corruption, but it's still eating away. The Vault of Glass is inside the traveler, and you must defeat the darkness before it consumes the traveler and the city.

5. R+L=J

I'm glad I'd already heard this theory before I googled it. That's some mean spoiler bait there, Cody.

7. Time travel.

The Darkness is just a bunch of loan sharks coming after the Speaker for his gambling debts.

1. The speaker IS the real traveler.

Whoa. That had never occurred to me.

That would actually be pretty cool if he had a good justification for doing it. Alternatively, the Traveler transferred its life force into the Speaker to save itself from death.

3. The traveler is actually evil (or else just using humans for some purpose)

This is what I thought initially, but Destiny is supposed to be an optimistic and hopeful game, and I don't see Bungie pulling the rug out from under us and going all grimdark at the very end.

I'm going with R + L = J because GRRM

And everyone knows GRRM visited bungie that one time

Twist:

It turns out that the Traveler slowly transforms the species it befriends into bizarre aliens. The Fallen were a previously befriended race. The Awoken are the first step in our transformation. Some humans realized this and created the Exos, to capture humanity in machine form, immune from the powers of the Traveler.

Every Guardian I've talked to in the Tower told me they were raised from the dead outside the Cosmodrome in Old Russia. What are the odds of THAT?

Once we got past the initial shock of this, we discovered further that all of our Ghosts sounded suspiciously similar, as well as the circumstances of getting off-planet.

I mean there just HAPPENED to be a flight-ready spaceship within arms reach of all of our second-birth-places?

And then the Speaker tells me I'm the only one that can save Earth and defeat the Hive? When I got to the Moon, I ran into two other Guardians who were told the exact same thing! We need to get to the bottom of this.

The Traveler isn't evil, but neither is it particularly friendly. It gave technology to humanity in order to give humanity an incentive to defend it against its enemies, who bear it a justifiable grudge. which we'll only find out at the end.

The Traveller and the Darkness are brothers, two sides of the same god-coin. Everywhere the Traveller goes it spawns new and different life. This new and different life eventually rises and enters conflict against each other.

The Traveller (the light) is an agent of chaos, of entropy. The darkness is order and stability.

Or...the Traveller is an infectious agent, and the darkness is meant to contain. Complete moral ambiguity.

Do all the bad guys serve the darkness, or are some of them simply opportunistic?

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