destiny 2 – Alex Acks: Sound and Nerdery

Well, since I apparently had success back in 2018 when I spoke my Saint-14 conspiracy theories out into the universe, here’s some other things I’ve been thinking about and going on at length at my friends about, particularly when I’ve had something to drink. And since I was recently reminded that this is my blog and I can write whatever dumb stuff that no one else cares about I want here, let’s do this.

Ana Bray, if that is your real name

Not going to lie, I really hated Ana when she was introduced in the Warmind expansion. I’d like to believe it’s not a gamer-with-internalized-misogyny issue and more because the writing in that expansion was embarassingly terrible, and Ana became sort of the figurehead of that. I’ll freely admit that there’s something about the combination of badass hunter plus computer super hacker plus know-it-all about the Hive that really annoyed me. But the thing that annoyed me far more was that… look, the whole interesting thing about Guardians who are basically zombie space wizards is that they’re totally different people from who they were during their first life, even before they start developing the weird indiosyncrasies that come with being effectively immortal and no longer afraid of death, but rather curious and experimental about it.

Now, I get that some Guardians would be really, really curious about who they were when they were alive. That’s only natural, and actually a really interesting character and story feature, I think. (Insert me bemoaning the lack of tie-in prose fiction here. Because honestly, Bungie, what the hell.) But Ana’s journey is in my estimation the least interesting way to go about it, particularly how it was set up in Warmind. Because Ana basically goes to Mars, finds out that she apparently she still has all her super duper old computer skills, and… that’s kind of it?

She’s at least gotten more interesting in Shadowkeep, as she continues to dig into her past and discover that past Ana Bray was really not a good person. (Head scientist/engineer of a massive technology corp conducting unethical experiments. Who’da thought.) Her blind faith in Rasputin is at least a little more interesting because Rasputin is getting a chance to show himself as a being with his own goals, which he may or may not be sharing, as opposed to the sort of gee-whiz girl-and-her-dog effect in Warmind.

But honestly? Still don’t buy it. The one and only Ana Bray gets brought back as a Guardian and just so happens to figure out that’s who she is and remains a total whiz kid? Pull the other one. It’s got bells on.

My conspiracy theory I’ve been nursing since Warmind is that Ana Bray isn’t actually Ana Bray. Rather, she’s someone related or otherwise genetically similar enough that she could unlock all the right doors. Someone desperate enough for an identity (because being a Hunter wasn’t enough, for whatever reason) to go looking. And gullible enough to be the perfect tool for an extremely cunning, intelligent, and patient super AI who needed some human hands to do his bidding. After all these centuries, Rasputin finally found the guardian with the right combination of biology and neediness and made himself a puppet so he could start getting put back together.

Which is not to say I’m on the “Rasputin is evil” band wagon. Rasputin is Rasputin. Hopefully he’s on our side. But he’s getting everything he wants right now, and Ana is also helpfully talking Zavala around, the guy who was the most paranoid about the Warmind.

Anyway, I like Ana way better in this season than I ever liked her before, and the lore’s making her more interesting. I’d just like her even better if she was more… “Ana.”

Eliksni

Not a conspiracy theory. Pure wish list item here. But goddamn I want to see the Eliksni get to be Guardians again. Or at the least, I want some solid, prominent allies. We’ve got Mithrax and the House of Light. We’ve got Variks and his plans for House Judgment. Neither of them want to kill all humans. And yes, I know Mithrax has decided that humans deserve the Traveler (and depending on what kind of mixed blessing you think it is, that becomes a pretty loaded statement) but it would be just the kind of douche move we’d expect from the Traveler to decide that now that there are Eliksni that no longer want it, it’s coming back for them. Of all the non-humans in Destiny, the Eliksni have the most potential to get to be all kinds of different things, because they’re not dedicated servants of the Darkness (unlike the Vex or Hive) and they’re much more likely to want to live their own lives and make peace than the Cabal. They’re just people who got seriously fucked over by the Traveler running its happy little ass away, and they weren’t lucky enough to have a Rasputin on their side at the time. There but for the large number of guns wielded by a scary AI goes humanity. There’s a lot of really cool, meaty story stuff that could happen if a solid, real alliance (not House of Wolves 2.0) got built between the humans and Eliksni, and I want it. And then I want Eliksni Guardians mostly because I want to play one, and I think there’s nothing better for juicing an MMO than giving us another playable race. But hey, I got spoiled by WoW like that.

Calus the Ahamkara

Look, he uses that “O ____ mine” construction several times in the Menagerie. That entire speech pattern was the beautiful moment of “oh SHIT” Forsaken handed us, the clue to what was about to happen to Uldren right before it did. I’m just saying it’s in there for a reason, along with him talking about being imprisoned, etc etc etc. I’m not sure how I feel about there being more Ahamkara lurking around, but it’s not like we dont have plenty of other gross stuff to fight in the meantime. Also, I’m thinking this particular ahamkara is more of a “loser trickster” sort of guy, which is why they’re tooling around on the Leviathan, pretending to be a robot emperor. Just messing with people for funsies. In which case the end game might not be killing them. It could be a lot more fun than that.

I might change my opinion if I ever got to do any of the other raids on the Leviathan, but then again, maybe not.

Uldren

I actually don’t have any conspiracy theories here. I just want to say that 1) I’m mad there isn’t an entire novel about Uldren’s journey as he tries to become a new person while everyone hates his face, 2) I think he should totally be the Hunter Vanguard (don’t @ me), and 3) I think he also totally shouldn’t be the Hunter Vanguard, because if we’re serious about Guardians being entirely new people when they come back to life, then this poor bastard didn’t actually murder Cayde (also don’t @ me).

But please please please let him show up again soon. He’s a drama storm in a cape.

PS: MAKE IT GAYER

Look, we busted our asses to make sure our gay grandads, Saint-14 and Osiris, could have their perfect vacation home. Stop holding back. I’ve got some major Feelings I need to wallow in.

And just, you know. Gayer in general. Trans characters would be A+ too. I appreciated the first “trans” character in Destiny being a literal god, but it would be super nice to have a trans character we then don’t spend an entire raid gloriously murdering.

I’m really fucking tired of dead Guardians in Destiny. This is an in-game trope that has basically haunted us since vanilla D1. Basically every time you get sent to address some kind of distress call, you can rest assured that on the other end of it, the guy you’re helping out is either already dead, or possibly going to die while you’re listening. That’s even the plot of an entire strike in Destiny 2 (Savathun’s Song), where you get to meet the total badass that is Taeko-3 via radio, just to hear her off herself on the line so you can go on to beat the boss.

Exception: You get to rescue Cayde during the D2 campaign. Oh yeah, and then he bites it in Forsaken. Maybe the player character Guardian should just stop trying to rescue people.

I was pretty upset in D1 when there was a story mission where the conclusion was the corpse of Praedyth, a character we’d all gotten to look up to via lore cookies on gear named after him. I haven’t been looking forward to personally adding more legends to the massive pile of dead Guardians we stand on as players.

Which brings us to Curse of Osiris. Where we get sent to see the tomb of my personal favorite legendary Guardian, Saint-14. (Look, I’m a Titan at heart. Bite me.)

To this, I say no. Saint-14 isn’t dead. And this isn’t just me being in denial because I am tired of dead Guardians.

Let me explain.

The entire way you get to Saint-14’s tomb is via the Infinite Forest, which is a giant ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. The entire point of the Infinite Forest is that it’s a simulator that runs on an engine of time travel bullshit that enables the Vex to try to calculate a future where they get all of the things they want. Well, considering what an unholy terror Saint-14 supposedly is, it’s no surprise that the Vex want him dead, right? So right off the bat, you cannot trust anything the Infinite Forest tells you, because it’s only calculating futures and possibility trees; it’s not a picture of current reality, but rather what the Vex could do if they traveled to some other point in time and changed things.

Another factor to consider: we get told repeatedly that the Light of the Guardians is one of the few things that the Vex can’t manage to simulate. So when we get to Saint-14’s tomb, Ghost tells us that there’s no Light here, despite the fact that what’s led us here was “traces of familiar Light.” Which sure, could be a way for the Destiny writers to be yelling, “LOL HE’S SUPER DEAD, TROLLED YOU AGAIN.” Or it could also be an indication that Saint-14’s corpse is just an approximation, an empty shell because the Vex can simulate a mannequin that looks like Saint-14, but they can’t actually make it be him. The fact that this tomb is also in the simulation we’ve seen before, the awful-looking place where the Vex have won (or are about to win) cements that for me as another argument that they’re figuring Saint-14 being super dead is necessary for that to happen.

Also, Saint-14 is a big enough badass that he made a whole rift full of his Light in the Infinite Forest. So what’s that about? We’re following traces of his Light smeared all over the damn place, but he’s simultaneously utterly gone? I don’t buy it. The Vex aren’t known for utterly destroying a Guardian’s Light the way the Hive do. Praedyth kind of survived being dead as a ghost. You can’t do that with no Light. Kabr still had his Light and was able to turn himself into the Aegis, even while he was getting brain-eaten by the Vex. (Kind of like whatever horrible Vex transformation happens to Asher, it’s eating his body from the outside in, not his Light.) So if Saint-14’s Light is utterly gone, it wasn’t the doing of the Vex, that’s for sure. The Perfect Paradox lore says that the Vex created a Mind to drain Saint-14’s Light… and also that he killed it. Like he’s literally talking to you while sitting on its corpse. That Light went somewhere, that’s for sure.

But let’s say, even for the sake of argument that the tomb of Saint-14 is “real,” or as real as anything in the Infinite Forest can be. It’s the goddamn Infinite Forest, and Saint-14’s Light is actively in it. He’s still wandering around in there, and may have even stopped by his own tomb to drop some more Vex corpses on it. It’s a world powered by time travel bullshit; anything and everything is possible in it.

Sagira says it best: “Nothing could stop that old Exo.” As much as it pains me to agree with the Drifter about anything, I’m with him–I don’t believe Saint-14 is dead for one minute. Because what’s the point of building a game out of space magic time travel bullshit if your heroes don’t come walking out of death once in a while to tell you to buck up? He’s going to come walking out of the Infinite Forest some time soon to ask for his shotgun back, and welcome to the new DLC, motherfuckers.

And goodness knows we need some more Exos at the rate they disappear from the main cast.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.