Destiny 2 Lore - The Precursors, The Final Shape & The Witness. The Penitent's Answer.

[juliohurtado]

"If the choise is between the greater and lesser evil, then the choice itself is flawed." HNW was spittin', ngl.

[QuillC]

I can't think of a single other time in lore where a pyramid ship is described as a tetrahedron, which got me curious as to the exact definition, and in the wiki entry I noticed the following:

"For any tetrahedron there exists a sphere (called the circumsphere) on which all four vertices lie, and another sphere (the insphere) tangent to the tetrahedron's faces."

Interesting that the existence of a polyhedron necessitates the existence of a sphere

[TKMuro]

"...that what we will become will be lesser, if it is made without you."
the writers at bungie never fail to craft some truly beautiful lines

[KoPT]

Precursor lore in a nutshell:

Part 1:
HNW: I like gardening. I hope nothing bad happens to my garden 🙂

Part 2:
RS: We should make the universe a better place because suffering is bad. Death of your garden was bad.
HNW: but isn't intervening to stop suffering a little too aggressive?

Part 3:
HNW: I killed all the dissenters and now we will become a hivemind and reset the universe because suffering is bad. Where R U?
RS: . . .

[spacejunk]

Bungies lore writers deserve a massive raise theyll never get. Theyre basically the only reason i play

[jackreynolds]

The fact that with the collector’s edition you can hold in your hands a physical copy of the oldest records known in Destiny lore, recovered from a ketch we infiltrated in a random story mission way back in D1, is mind-boggling. The detail, expansiveness and level of immersion in the Destiny universe is beyond impressive. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I’ve played ever since the beta 10 years ago, and honestly it saddens me that so many people will never truly appreciate how rich this story is.

[SonOfDogHeadMan]

Byf apologizing for taking less than a week to record and edit an 80 minute lore video. What a guy.

[peteraustin]

The "glass minds" predicting a great wave is interesting, because both possibilities for what that could be referring to (fundament's God wave or the collapse hitting titan) were directly caused/planted by the witness. Its precursor species (or at least Hemingway and rorschach) were clearly trying to prevent these outcomes but ultimately caused them. The idea of the main villain of DESTINY, where the tag line of "guardians make their own fate" has been around since vanilla d1, falling victim to a self fulfilling prophecy is a really interesting piece of writing if that's what bungie is going for

[Silencersix]

I like how the community predicted the name “Precursors” before anyone actually said it in the game or lore.

[davidflw]

It’s crazy how precursors had the same three main factions the tower had

Nihilist = Dead Orbit
Swarm = FWC
Conquerers = New Monarchy

[markymark]

Wake up babe, Byf dropped the 80 minute Precursor video.

[boysenbeary]

80 minute lore video. Tonight we feast.

[shagnastyfo]

"...what we become will be lesser if it is made without you...I confess this in selfishness. I do not want to forget you."
I didn't expect to get misty eyed during a MNIB video.

[DemonCipher]

Also, i cant believe that the Eye from the Vex Gate Lord gave us THAT.

Amazing.

[Herobuilder]

you said "time before time" and my bionicle brain lit up

[-uncontested-]

The witness even says "my friend" as he's cutting into the traveler

[SnowOrShine]

I find it interesting that you didn't delve more into "Hemmingway's" personal journey here, as I found that to be the most narratively intriguing story in this book:

They start as an optimistic gardener, seemingly disinterested in the Penitent's philosophical debates. But they turn to outrage that someone would destroy their planetary work without apparent meaning. This has major parallels with Asha's cutscene, where the Precursors felt that the [Gardener/Traveller]'s creation is too chaotic, and they grow frustrated at their lack of control, turning to the Darkness

My take is that "Hemmingway" turned to politics after their garden was destroyed, and they clearly were someone pushing the Penitent towards their final extremes. The Penitent were evidently lacking direction, from "Rorschach's" messages, and a loud passionate new voice can make a big difference in a debate. "Rorschach" seemed to be very against such means, and the Penitent are still conflated with [Merciful/Benefic] in the second exchange. They seem to only have turned fully to winnowing some time after "Hemingway" joined their ranks

For me, the Witness is an embodiment of frustration at a universe that builds and destroys without purpose. It doesn't know what the answer is, what the Final Shape is, and according to these documents it is growing increasingly less curious and more angry at that fact

A wraith of the anger a gardener feels at someone crushing their flowers for seemingly no reason, still trying to create a world in which that can never happen again

[cunaksoy]

What if RS, "Rorschach", is the entity inside the Traveler all this time? We still don't know too much about the collapse. In all other cases the Traveler fled when the Witness caught up, but with humanity it decided to stay and created the Ghosts. Ghosts always fascinated me because they are essentially tiny consciousnesses, which we learn to be a Darkness thing normally. What if during our collapse Rorschach went into the Traveller, pushed away the black fleet and reverse-Witness himself and divided his own consciousness into many many pieces to form the Ghosts to help humanity at an "individual" level. Maybe that is his way of the final shape now. We know he rejected the Consensus. He maybe all for devotion, bravery and sacrifice of individuals rather than a singular consensus. Final Shape trailers shows our Ghost speaking about how he knows his true purpose now. Maybe that is because Ghosts have finally returned to the source, to Rorchach. We all remember the concept Destiny Traveler cutscene where a feminine figure greeted the first team that found the Traveller. Maybe Rorschach is the new version of that idea?

[zperk]

I hope Rorschach is alive, the lore from that would be incredible

[YANASaysHi]

have waited almost a decade for this lore.