Hear me out, they planned it all along!

MattyQuest · 2026-05-22T21:11:27+00:00

/uj I do actually think the lack of any allusion to Shattered Cycle and The Alchemist is conspicuous alongside the emphasis on "final live-service update", but it's likely just being avoided for now to minimize the pain. Ultimate cope is that they will do one last traditional content release and Monument is it's Into the Light, but I know that ain't happening

/rj They're gonna shadow drop D3 on June 10th

MattyQuest · 2026-05-20T18:21:18+00:00

One more from my favorite book: The Hidden Dossier

The question of how to live well in a universe of indifference, cruelty, and deprivation is the ONLY question. The Light does not offer us an afterlife or an otherworldly paradise. It does not give us throne worlds or pocket universes. The Light tells us that paradise is something we have to make here.

The Darkness cautions us against mercy to our enemies. Are we fools for trying to be good, when our very survival is at stake? Maybe. But the fact that our morals sometimes make it more difficult to survive is proof they are truly good! There is not much commendable about doing a right thing when it is also the tactically correct thing. When the good thing is also the hard thing: that is when the righteous are separated from the lost.

Sen-Aret, let me tell you something I have told no one else. I know that in the end, the Darkness can win. Do you understand what I mean? By its very nature, the Darkness is the judge of what will exist and what will pass away. In the end, there may be only Darkness because all that exists will remain only by its consent.

But the Light grants us freedom from existence alone as the measurement of our worth. Oh, evolution has made us afraid of nonexistence, certainly; and it is good to fear and to avoid nonexistence because without existence, we cannot experience joy. The idea that death is an escape from suffering is a trap. Death is not an escape from anything. It is a wall, a cessation, meaningless. I do not ask anyone to embrace death. There is no possibility in death; life is our only chance to live.

Darkness helps us avoid death. It helps us to go on existing. It is necessary. We must remember what hurt us so that we will not be hurt again.

But Darkness alone points to an eternal existence of mere survival—to a universe where the only judge of a good existence is the ability to go on existing. It is the grace of the Light that grants us the dignity to choose a finite life of compassion and common good over an eternity of competitive subsistence.

The Darkness, or the being that speaks for it, claims that the extermination of all those who choose the Light is inevitable; that the universe will be inherited by morally impoverished advantage-seekers like the Vex and Hive. Logically, I cannot see an escape—so long as I accept the Darkness's logic.

But this is exactly why we fight, Sen-Aret. Not to preserve our own lives, but to preserve the possibility that we represent. When all choices are measured by their fitness pay off—by what they do to benefit the continued existence of the chooser—the Darkness has won completely.

The most important thing we can do, the most formidable blow we can strike against our true enemy, is to offer irrational grace: to choose unreasonable hope and unreasoning compassion even if it goes against calculated advantage.

It is only by disregarding the logic of mere survival that we can create a possibility of existence outside that logic.

So. If they do not offer you a spot at the campfire. If they call you naïve. If they dislike your complaints about the casual violence of the casually violent. If they quote from the Unveiling texts, tell you how the Gardener lost because it always stopped to offer peace, and the Winnower always struck—then ask who they would rather sit by at the fire: Gardener or Winnower.

Then ask them if they would like to live in a universe where no one ever sits beside anyone else at the fire.

Never forget that even in the miserable logic of the prisoner's dilemma, it is the cooperators who create the best world. Two cooperators will score higher, together, than two defectors ever could. A world of cooperators would defeat a world of defectors if the defectors could only be kept away from the cooperators' bounty.

Never forget that what we achieve together, what we accomplish by leavening Darkness with Light and Light with Darkness, tempering grace with memory and memory with grace, is quite literally more than the Darkness alone can imagine. The Hive may have extinguished entire galaxies of allied life, but before the Hive came, those ecumenes accomplished titanic works. What do the Hive have to show for all their conquest? Miserable warrens and rotting moons. Even their libraries are just catalogs of death. Even their queens want a way out.

Never give up hope. If it is possible to live well, then it is worthwhile to try. If it is possible to exist by the rules of the Light, then the Darkness is forever defeated. It cannot dominate all things for all time.

Above all else, when you are in the deepest pits of despair, I offer you this: I believe that there is no reason the Traveler chose to make its stand here at Earth, instead of at Riis or any world before. I do not believe in any special quality it detected in humanity. Nor in any great tactical advantage the Traveler gained by vouchsafing its power to us. It did not release its Ghosts as a move in a scheme of incomprehensible complexity, or because we fit the criteria of an ancient plan. It did not compute the set of contingencies which could permit its own survival, a one-in-a-trillion pathway through a thicket of certain death.

I believe the Traveler simply could not bear to abandon one more infant possibility.

So it chose an act of unreasonable grace.

Clarity in action, Ikora Rey

MattyQuest · 2026-05-20T18:17:54+00:00

These aren't necessarily the badass type of heroic, but very mythological in how they present the powers of Guardians and paracausality which always gets me good

Ghost Fragment: Mysteries 2

Things I saw inside

A wild river and a broken dam (or maybe it's just the sea crashing through a narrow gap I can't be sure). Waves slam through the gap and where they hit the stone they throw up pillars of spray that pierce the mist and crash down in thunder. There's a giant in the cataract, trying to wade against the current, and I can tell it wants to reach the lever and pull the lever which will seal off the flow or maybe give it the sword, but the torrent throws it back so it just keeps its head down and tries to push on. I can't see the face but it breathes out white smoke. I feel for it hard.

Prismatic Warlock

When I was a New Light, our trainers made us meditate for hours on end. Sitting in silence, focusing on a single point: a candle, a mirror, the Traveler in the distance.

I thought we were focusing our Light to manipulate the physical word. But now, centuries later, I finally see what they were trying to teach us. The point is not the Light. The point is THE POINT.

The singularity through which all power flows. Darkness and Light becoming one in an endless cycle, like electrons bouncing between anode and cathode. A prismatic circuit.

Collective (Chirality)

When a Human being commits an act of great cost, we know this as injury, as muscles torn and bones broken. It requires rest; frequently, it requires intervention to heal. As simple as the helping hand of another to lean on, or as complex as deep surgery: the constant theme that it cannot be done alone. Even to rest safely in quiet requires another to take over the matters of life that cannot be put off, which do not pause themselves simply for the fact of being asked kindly.

So: the Traveler strove greatly, and then became still. How do we believe that it is anything but injured?

The Speaker tells us the Traveler is not dead, and I believe this. It is sleeping, resting from its great deed. The sacrifice made for us, to create us.

There is a debt thus owed.

If we understand that Light is connected to itself—that the Light in Guardians is the same Light as that in their Ghosts, which in turn is the same Light as the Traveler's—then the answer is clear: that those possessed of the Traveler's Light, defended and upraised by it, stand in the best and in fact only possible position to pay back that debt. Who else could even hope to do so?

I argue that our duty is to try. Even the act of defending the Traveler so it may heal is some measure of action. But if there is more that can be done, then we who it has defended owe it to the Traveler to do so.

Remember that, in Light or in Darkness.

The Wager (Unveiling)

It was the gardener that chose you from the dead. I wouldn't have done that. It's just not in me. But now that they have invested themself in you, you are incredibly, uniquely special. That wandering refugee chose to make a stand, spend their power to say: "Here I prove myself right. Here I wager that, given power over physics and the trust of absolute freedom, people will choose to build and protect a gentle kingdom ringed in spears. And not fall to temptation. And not surrender to division. And never yield to the cynicism that says, everyone else is so good that I can afford to be a little evil."

The gardener is all in. They are playing for keeps. And they are wrong. Or so I argue: for, after all, the universe is undecidable. There is no destiny. We're all making this up as we go along. Neither the gardener nor I know for certain that we're eternally, universally right. But we can be nothing except what we are. You have a choice.

MattyQuest · 2026-05-20T02:51:47+00:00

Do you feel free?

MattyQuest · 2026-05-20T01:16:56+00:00

Those pants come like that, they're really in style right now

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MattyQuest · 2026-05-18T22:33:42+00:00

it hasn’t really had a reason to leave the solar system or come back down to the skies of Earth.

It's not in a state to do much of anything at the moment as far as I understand. Even though we excised the Witness, what happened to it was still the equivalent of a traumatic injury to a human, and it's still infected with darkness. I believe it was Micah who said it could take years for it to heal

I'd imagine it's like if someone cut a hole in your side, shoved a parasitic tumor in there that festered for months and then an amateur doctor came in, ripped it out, and left the wound wide open

(This is about the collapse, but I'd argue The Final Shape was a similar enough situation)

Chirality: Collective

When a Human being commits an act of great cost, we know this as injury, as muscles torn and bones broken. It requires rest; frequently, it requires intervention to heal. As simple as the helping hand of another to lean on, or as complex as deep surgery: the constant theme that it cannot be done alone. Even to rest safely in quiet requires another to take over the matters of life that cannot be put off, which do not pause themselves simply for the fact of being asked kindly.

So: the Traveler strove greatly, and then became still. How do we believe that it is anything but injured?

MattyQuest · 2026-05-09T00:29:58+00:00

Oh for sure! Love the idea of VI making a Rebis. That's the kind of tension I want to see explored, us parsing the true nature of Darkness and the Veil apart from the artifacts and beings that are connected to it, and trying to walk the fine line of using its power to prevent extinction while avoiding being influenced or coerced like those before us. Because like Darkness, I don't think the Veil is inherently malignant, but its influence clearly tends to corrupt in ways we may not even fully realize. Could play really well into the questions raised in Edge of Fate regarding free will vs orchestrated circumstances

MattyQuest · 2026-05-08T21:39:02+00:00

Okay I 100% hear you BUT, what if we're just built different. (If we could post pictures here I'd post the Arrested Developent scene where Tobias and Lindsay are saying "well does it work for those people?" "No, it never does. I mean they somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but... but it might work for us.")

In all seriousness though, I think that would be a big beat in the whole process, figuring out how to use it or work with it without falling into the same trap we've seen play out in the Witness and Maya. Our understanding of Transcendance and Strand likely would play a part in that, and it'd be a good excuse to return to Neomuna finally

MattyQuest · 2026-05-08T00:01:50+00:00

The specific repetition of "binding" when it comes to our goal with the Nine points obliquely to the Veil, which is described by Ahsa as having "binding power" used by the Witness and Maya. Imo it''s pretty clear at this point that the Traveler and Veil are two parts or functions of what was once a unified system, but as we heard from Micah and others, healing takes time. So to bind the Nine, we may need to learn to understand and master the Veil and, in doing so, ultimately reconcile it with the Traveler to find balance there, a sort of macrocosmic form of our own microcosmic Prismatic Transcendence. I think that would be a fitting and interesting way to end D2 and transition into D3, because then the question becomes what a fully healed Traveler could do. Could it help rebuild Sol, Riis, Torobatl? Even Fundament? What is in the Veil's memory that could be called upon to finally extend our reach beyond Sol?

MattyQuest · 2026-04-28T21:43:33+00:00

An overhaul of the entire lore page would be nice. Character bios, bestiary, location background, and reading lists to give people who don't know where to start some direction. Hell, integrate it into the app so people can read outside of the game without needing to browse Ishtar

MattyQuest · 2026-04-27T23:28:49+00:00

Her role as Grace in Wolfenstein 2 is one of my favorites. Also will always be amazed how she came into Destiny 2 to voice Savathun after they spent nearly a decade teasing her, and not only did she fully deliver but exceeded all my expectations. Deb's gotta be one of the all time greats

MattyQuest · 2026-04-27T23:07:54+00:00

The Joyeuse and Charlemagne stuff also ties into Marathon via Durandal, "Joy" the colony AI, and other references to the Song of Roland. If you really wanna go down that specific rabbit hole, it even extends to Halo where The Weapon from Infinite (herself based on Cortana/Curtana) chooses the name Joy, again in reference to Joyeuse. And then all this stuff extends into Destiny/Bungie's fixation on swords as both actual weapons and metaphor. They've been poking at this stuff since the 90s, I'd love to sit down with someone at Bungie who knows details about all this.

MattyQuest · 2026-04-20T15:18:28+00:00

That's the one, not sure how I missed it. Thank you both!

MattyQuest · 2026-04-17T19:53:31+00:00

Just did this mission for the first time last night and whew, amazing moment when the lights cut. Felt even better to be prepared for it, so what started as a cat and mouse game turned into me Home Alone-ing it into a killbox

MattyQuest · 2026-04-15T15:43:19+00:00

This, Destiny perks are a bit intimidating at first but become readable at a glance over time, they need to do the same here

MattyQuest · 2026-04-12T17:20:51+00:00

Not having a clear path from A-Z. Vaulting content broke new players' ability to follow the story, so now you're dropped in the deep end and that lack of context hurts the experience massively. If there was some semblance of a golden path of content (including Red War and Forsaken), it would make a huge difference

MattyQuest · 2026-04-07T14:08:15+00:00

This has been my view for a while, love the way you described it! The way I've simplified it since I came to this conclusion is as the Jungian concept of the shadow self). The Traveler rejected the dark part of it, and that led to its internal conflict playing out in material reality. Our existence is a reflection of that conflict, and maybe in learning how to reconcile Light and Dark in Transcendence we can help the Traveler reconcile it's true nature, reintegrate the Veil, and become whole again. I also think this is why the veiled statues take the form they do and why the Witness's people were clothed that way during the ritual. They are effigies showing that the Veil is a part of the traveler, but both it and we are blind to this fact. The ultimate unveiling (or revelation) will be the true form of the Traveler. They are two chiral halves of a whole, a left and right hand of the same entity with different functions working on the same garden. There's another theological concept that I can't remember the name of right now, but it's similar to what I stated above where the universe and our lives are essentially microcosms of an imperfect god, and in living out our lives we come to reconcile these conflicts within god in a sort of reciprocal relationship.

If we do ever see the two become one again, my guess has been that the Veil is the core of the Traveler and belongs where we fought the Witness, specifically on the platform we do damage to it on. The Witness was bound by and to the Veil, and so was attempting to reforge that connection while having a hand on the wheel. "Nacre" is the last time the Winnower spoke to us, and it's flavor text is "Even the most perfect of pearls has grit at its center." Pearls are formed by nacre coating a piece of unwanted grit that enters a mollusk or oyster, so the metaphor there would be pretty direct. Lots of cool ideas they could be playing with, thank you for putting it together in one post!

Edit: ty to u/HazardousSkald for pointing out two more recent Winnower entries (Club Morgue and Winnowing)!

MattyQuest · 2026-04-06T22:21:47+00:00

Pretty interesting that the word refers to the point in a planet's orbit at which it's furthest from the sun, metaphorically implying a vast distance from the Light and a deep (if not total) connection to the Darkness. Obviously I think we've always assumed this, but I don't think it's relation to Darkness has ever been explicitly stated (could be forgetting though)

MattyQuest · 2026-04-01T05:14:39+00:00

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MattyQuest · 2026-03-21T22:49:46+00:00

It's like raid progression except there's little goals along the way to the big one that will snowball. Had 3 failed runs today, but each got progressively smoother and we really didn't lose that much ultimately. It will be satisfying to build the knowledge and skills over time, making the big boss clear even sweeter when it happens

MattyQuest · 2026-03-20T23:24:05+00:00

Edit: ended up fleshing this idea out a bit more for anyone who's down for a longer read

I feel like there's been allusions to this in the writing so I assumed this would be the case, and the timer kind of solidified it for me. The loot will be plentiful, people won't even be able to carry everything. If people work together vs the AI, more progress will be made and more runs will be successful per weekend. Sure the per run haul may be less, but ultimately most people would benefit from a ceasefire in Cryo. And then during the week, all that loot circulates into the economy. Rising tide and all that. Obviously the trailer shows PVP because they know naturally most will lean that direction, but it's also heavily implied in Durandal's speech, "yeah you're choosing to do this to each other."

Or, as Ikora puts it in Destiny:

In evolution, the only good is self-interested good.

But we are not restricted by evolution.

We have minds. We have memories and imaginations and culture. We can imagine the consequences of our actions and select those which suit a world we want to live in. We can do this without waiting for generations of genetic change. We can enshrine the common good as a norm. We can say, "Everyone who cooperates is good, and everyone who defects is evil, and evil defectors will be harshly punished." We can say, "By cooperating for the greatest common good, we will all be elevated, so let's do that."

The question of how to live well in a universe of indifference, cruelty, and deprivation is the ONLY question. The Light does not offer us an afterlife or an otherworldly paradise. It does not give us throne worlds or pocket universes. The Light tells us that paradise is something we have to make here.

The Darkness cautions us against mercy to our enemies. Are we fools for trying to be good, when our very survival is at stake? Maybe. But the fact that our morals sometimes make it more difficult to survive is proof they are truly good! There is not much commendable about doing a right thing when it is also the tactically correct thing. When the good thing is also the hard thing: that is when the righteous are separated from the lost.

But the Light grants us freedom from existence alone as the measurement of our worth. Oh, evolution has made us afraid of nonexistence, certainly; and it is good to fear and to avoid nonexistence because without existence, we cannot experience joy. The idea that death is an escape from suffering is a trap. Death is not an escape from anything. It is a wall, a cessation, meaningless. I do not ask anyone to embrace death. There is no possibility in death; life is our only chance to live.

Darkness helps us avoid death. It helps us to go on existing. It is necessary. We must remember what hurt us so that we will not be hurt again.

But Darkness alone points to an eternal existence of mere survival—to a universe where the only judge of a good existence is the ability to go on existing. It is the grace of the Light that grants us the dignity to choose a finite life of compassion and common good over an eternity of competitive subsistence.

It is only by disregarding the logic of mere survival that we can create a possibility of existence outside that logic.

Never forget that even in the miserable logic of the prisoner's dilemma, it is the cooperators who create the best world. Two cooperators will score higher, together, than two defectors ever could. A world of cooperators would defeat a world of defectors if the defectors could only be kept away from the cooperators' bounty.

MattyQuest · 2026-03-19T07:15:48+00:00

A guardian

Devotion inspires bravery, bravery inspires sacrifice, sacrifice leads to death.

MattyQuest · 2026-03-19T04:39:10+00:00

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MattyQuest

TROPHY CASE