Seriously though, if we don't get some new enemy array and instead we just fight Taken, Vex, Fallen, Cabal, or Hive in Final Shape I'm gonna commit Tower jump. Edit: Forgot Scorn, they're pretty much just Fallen but on zombie steroids anyway.
My honest headcanon is that the Witness was orginally to the darkness what the Traveler was to the Light, but because of their differing natures the Witness realizes this and acts with a separate goal. The Gardner and Winnower's game was always to create and destroy, a never ending cycle. The Witness wants to end all of this because it knows that it's just a cog in the cycle it wants to break. I truly think the Final Shape is going to be whatever form Guardian's take when they learn to form the dark and light into one singular paracausal ability
Someone else and I have theory. In order to avoid the next Collapse and stop this war the Traveler and the Witness started, the Guardian will have to use the power of Light and Dark fused together to destroy the Traveler and the Witness. The Light and the Dark cannot die, since they're essences that keep the balance in the universe, but the Traveler and the Witness are like a bridge, an intermediary that provide that power to it's followers/warriors/disciples. And since both of them learned to hate each other, they used these followers as soldiers to fight against each other, causing many deaths in both sides. None of the sides (Traveler's followers and Witness's disciples) are neither good or evil, but are just following orders from their masters, the ones who provide this power. So, I believe that in order to end this war and stop an intergalactic genocide, the Guardian must fuse the power of Light and Dark that they have to destroy the Traveler and the Witness. And this moment, would mean the end of the endless fight against these two, and the ultimate sacrifice from the Guardian. Because is like one wise man said: Devotion inspires bravery. Bravery inspires sacrifice. Sacrifice leads to death.
I believe the witness and the traveler used to be the same entity and the witness seeks to revert to this state and become the final shape which at the same time is also the first shape of the universe
"The Witness seeks the Final Shape . . . and the Final Shape is . . . *nothing* " "The Universe makes us all . . . both Victim and Perpetrator . . . in it's infinite cruelty" These two lines came back up in my head, and i think it actually very clearly states the intent of the Witness. The Witness wants to not only *take* the ability to move time, but also to utterly destroy it. It wants to remove ALL life, to go back to the start of it all. Where it would render a final solution to the puzzle of life and death. And that solution in its' mind is that both should be destroyed. No more life, no more death, just a blank void of nothingness where time no longer has a meaning. It doesn't want to simply *kill* whatever the entity known as the Gardener is. It wants to erase it, and the winnower. To stop a war before a war even happens.
That, then, tells us why the Coalition (us) don’t want that to happen. Not just for survival, and that we want the Withess to pay for the suffering our system endured, but the ideal that the Coalition and our allies seem to live for and fight for: hope, and a better future. Yes, we would all probably die one day billions of years when Sol’s sun were to die out. But, we’d love fullfulled lives, and the memories we’d carry after someone, or ourselves are dead and gone, would touch those that still live. Just as fire spreads to other places after older embers have gone out. The Coalition of Sol, the Reefborn Awoken, Caital’s Ascendancy, House Light, Neomuna, and the Last City of humanity and it’s Guardians, all fight for a future where we can live, love, and learn. Sol may be snuffed out one day, generations later by some unstoppable natural disaster. But, unlike the cruel logic and nihilism of the Witness, and the extreme Darwinism of “kill or be killed” like the Hive, we don’t allow that negative logic and possibility of nihilism consume us.
the taken shiver always creeped me out, it gave me the impression being taken is true misery. it's not that the real you dies in the process, you're in there and the entire time you know you can do nothing but what the taken king demands of you, and that's just the way it is.
From the words of the Witness at the end of the Lightfall campaign, it is convinced that the Traveler is trapped in an existence where it can't be what it is supposed to be. That the universe forces the Traveler into a course of action that causes it grief and that it is the purpose of the Witness to enact the Final Shape to free the Traveler so it is able to do what it was alwas supposed to do.
From The Witness's ideological stance this is entirely true, even if that's not what The Traveller wants. Pain, grief and death are all what we would consider a natural part of life and things that The Witness thinks are unnecessary once the perfect Final Shape has been achieved, which it thinks has already been achieved once before. IF The Witness is The Winnower it saw the creation of our Universe as entirely unnecessary and described what it thought would occur as "Your new rule will only make great false cysts of horror full of things that should not exist that cannot withstand existence that will suffer and scream" As far as It is concerned The Traveller only exists so that it can be killed / drunk / communed with therefore showing the correctness of the Witness's position with the realisation of the Final Shape. I don't think that The Traveller if left alone by The Witness would be full of grief as it could tend The NEW Garden (our Universe) and encourage complexity and growth without The Witness coming along and quashing said complexity every single time.
Also from the words of the Witnesses: "We will tell the most cunning sibling of a cataclysm. A prophecy… of great loss. We will feed her fear. Her pride. We will say… Young Sathona. The end is coming. A great cataclysm. A God-Wave. In the Sky… there is only death. But salvation… lies in the Deep. Lead your sisters down. Your cunning will spare their short lives. And you… will be reborn." Seems to me that the Witness is all over the place with lies. His lie to Sothuna was out of desperation because he didn't want the Traveler to claim them.
"Beyond. It is a place, a place casting shadows and emotion. It's a real place, I know. ... The point is that the residents of this hidden realm live inside a bottle so perfectly hidden that they can't see beyond their own borders. Which shapes a mind in very specific ways."
I feel like this is connected to that one Altar of Reflection where Savathun was talking about reading between the lines of the Tablets of Ruin. Oryx's understanding only went so far as to create an army of Taken. Savathun probably got close to deciphering the extent of the Witness' power if she was able to delve deeper than her brother.
Maybe the witness itself is the final shape. At the lightfall ending cutscene, we see a clearly defined witness. A black, sharp bottom half, and a white/light grey, cloudy head
We know the Witness couldn't do it conventionally. Otherwise, it would have done that already. That's why it needed the veil to get in a position to do it
I was watching your video from Forsaken dealing with Mara and the Nine's relationship and I feel like there's a chance we dive more into them by the final shape if not during.
I concur that the Witness probably does desire ultimate control. A tell that I noticed for that was when he talked to Calus, and Calus dared to talk back. You could see how upsetting that was to the Witness. He completely lost it, quite a human emotion I'd say for someone playing as a God
Reminder that calus talked back after losing the radial mast, and still not securing the veil, that'll be similar to a parent telling their child to do chores, only to come home from work and nothing got done. The other disciples know to keep quiet when they goof, calus was pompous and tried to bite the hand that helped him because he felt his newfound power was doing things for him
If that’s the case then why doesn’t he just take Calus and the other disciples if he’s so obsessed with blind obedience? It’s almost like Bungie doesn’t know their own lore
@@azraelwolfsblood2902 the witness knows it needs autonomos leutenants of some form, paradoxically it needs free will inorder to enact a scheme of toatal control
First off, I think it's important to understand that eschatology is the study of finality, judgement, death, and the end of the world in theology. With the Eschaton Mind, I believe that perhaps it's focused on the finality of the universe, not the future in general, which is our current understanding of the Final Shape, which would also be why they're so focused on achieving control over time. Secondly, I believe that the Final Shape to the Witness is the prevention of life ever beginning. In the Garden metaphor, the Winnower sees the Gardener/ Traveler as a source of needless suffering, as regardless of what the Traveler does, the universe will still end and the sentient life it helped will still suffer. If taking changes the past, present, and future of a being to follow the will of the taker, I believe that the Witness may be attempting to take control of all things before suffering by preventing the Light from ever existing, as Light is the paracausal force of creation, life, and rebirth. The Witness also exploits Eramis' and Rhulk's experiences with the Traveler to control them and regularly refers to the Traveler and the Light as forces that create suffering. I also think its name of "The Witness" might imply that it has experienced or seen all of the universe's suffering which stems from sentience.
I've been thinking for a while that the Final Shape may essentially be factory-resetting the universe and the Witness replacing (or Taking) the Gardener in order to remake all life that ever was or will be according to its own design... and given that Byf has been doing this for a long time and is right more often than he's wrong I'm feeling even more confident in that now. Also, imagine how rad a boss fight against a Taken Traveller would be?
having to mercy kill a Taken Traveler would actually tug at my heartstrings, ngl. it'd be like if you were in a zombie apocalypse and had to kill your own mother because she turned
Asking again to please do a video or at least look into the "pollution" present in the pyramids that the captives had to deal with. I can't remember if it was Misraaks or Devrim, but one of them said that Amanda had told them that the captives were treated humanely except for a "pollution" in the air. The bottom left of the hud also states that a "dark fetor" enters the boss room before you place down your Balefire, and the dark fetor is what causes damage over time when you're outside of the balefire for too long. I feel like this "pollution" is the crux of the Witness' plan with the captives, as it knows that we will rescue them and bring them back to their homes, and I feel like the "pollution" could somehow be infecting the civilians and that the Witness is waiting for the perfect moment to do something to those who were infected. Could you see if there's any reference to this in the lore?
Destiny's referencing Balefire now? If that's a reference to Balefire from wheel of time that's badass, in that story Balefire was a destructive force so strong it could erase whatever you shot it at so thoroughly from existence that it would erase some of its past as well.
The Witness seeks the Final Shape, I suspect it's more likely the Witness want's to DETERMINE the nature of the Final Shape in it's image, according to his desire, his world view.
Byf said around 0:35 that we learned from season of the lost and Mara sov that the taken kings power was learned directly from the witness, but we did not onow about the witness at this time. Am I missing something or was that just a mistake?
@@acidburn1979the final shape is the end of the sword logic Ever noticed how the Taken don't fight each other, while all organic life forms battle and kill to become stronger All life forms we battle have leaders and usurpers, but what if all life forms don't need to fight each other, what if instead of having different factions with their endless change in leaders, all life forms are unified, stripped of their will to fight each other, no death no suffering Just a universal unified group of taken that doesn't die because there's nothing to kill it (like we do in Taken based fights)
I think the Witness is actually not seeking control but rather liberation and control may simply be a nessesity to achieve this. Its dialogue seems to indicate that it wants to be free of the universe, perhaps even escape it. In Witch Queen we learn that Savathun sought to escape the Destiny universe by jumping into ours (4th wall break) however her process seemed to involve Mantling (In that acting exactly like an individual you actually become them) and/or possesion, where the Witness may seek to physically enter our universe as it is and not rely on others to bring it forth. In doing so it escapes and predetermined fate because the creators of destiny decide what happens in it, thus allowing the Witness to finally make its own destiny.
That just answers one of my biggest questions, if we have defined the Witness, victim, and perpetrator, who is the judge? the log answers that, it's at least tied to the taken
I keep telling people that Oryx did not create the power to take because he's The Taken King and they kept arguing with me about it. Now instead of searching for the lore cards, i can link them your video.
Another hint toward the Veil being a wormole, is a mural that is in Strider's Gate, on the way to the street leading to the concourse, there's a mural on the wall showing a tunnel leading to space, with Viking-inspired boats traveling in it. I don't know if the Bifrost was compared to a wormhole before Marvel made the comparison, but this could be a clue.
I do wonder if Strand is ultimately closely connected to the function of the Taken and the Ascendant Plane. Same with egregore and Throne Worlds. Since they all involve consciousness and the Darkness. Maybe not directly plucking at them like our Guardians but through a more indirect means.
Fantastic video. I'd contend that the primeval, imminent, and eschaton minds translate better to "beginning, present, and end" rather than "past, present, and future." Eschaton in particular is the (often divine) final, unchangeable shape of the universe in whatever philosophy is utilizing the concept - essentially the manifestation of heaven on earth. Even more granularly, I'd argue that those three concepts represent temporal actions and not the concepts of beginning, present and end: the first possible action, the current one, and the last, tying back into the Witness trying to "take" the will of the universe and enforce its own preferred eschaton not just in the present (the imminent) but going back to the very first (the primeval). Tangentially, it's also interesting to me that they used the "imminent" mind (present or soon to be) as opposed to "immanent" (constant, ever-pervading) since immanence is another divine/spiritual concept that's more often paired with the eschaton/eschatology compared to the imminent/imminence.
I think our ability to wield both light and dark without serving either, shows that we are the final shape, we will prove stronger than the witness , he will try to take us, and he will meet his end
This gives me even more of a reason to think that the next subclass is taken and not resonance since taking is the power given by the deep and can be used as a very powerful tool in our arsenal.
I swear that’s such a retarded comparison. Fromsoftware games are leagues above anything Bungie could even imagine. At least their games are consistent with their lore and don’t fuck over their customers every chance they get unlike Bungie and their cracker ass mindset
Even the disciples reflect this even still they are champions of it. Through Rhulks interaction with the witness he became aligned to the idea that his fate was deterministic because of how the witness took control of Rhulks story shaping his memories into an identity, a tool for the witness to use
Glen Cook, author of the Black Company series, had characters called The Ten Who Were Taken and describes the process of Taking like being ripped apart and rebuilt over and over until you are completely subservient or have no will left to disobey.
before I speculated about a correlated entity to stasis like how we have the veil for strand, and while there is still a small possibility that may be the case, I suppose the idea doesn't make too much sense off topic, the D1 materials drop gave me psychic damage
This has me thinking, is the Witness's "Final shape" could be referring to resetting the whole universe. Our hunch is that the Witness is "The first blade". The tool for a possible reset to undo what the Gardener has done and in a sense reset the board/playing field.
What if our last darkness subclass has to do with the power of the taken? Like some power to use your "Taken Super" on Ex. An Ogre to have it fight FOR you.
so the game is called Destiny because its about preserving free will and ultimately define yourself through your own actions? i guess Joe Staten thought, "how to make a good story about heroes and villains? oh yeah let's make it a battle for the greater force of will" just a random thought ofc but it's what i believe right now
I think the portal might lead somewhere "other" - at first I thought it lead physically inside the Traveler, but now I'm thinking its more symbolic - The Witness needed components of Light and Dark to create the portal, and its speech about "Enough Life and Death" tells me it seeks to re-write the rules if the flower game itself. I do not think the Witness is the Winnower, nor to I think the Traveler is the Gardener. They are both physical aspects of their respective concepts, acting in accordance with the greater wills of both.
Everything paracausal runs on video-game logic. The final shape is "what's left when everything that *can* be removed *has* been removed. The Witness has taken (ha) efforts to limit the possible actions of the denizens of the universe. Following this thread, the Witness likely intends to "100%" reality, but first needs to undo the Gardener's final rule in the flower game so new items stop being added.
Reminds me of the Green lantern story where the Ai Aya came to believe that sentient beings with emotion were ultimately a mistake, and tried to traveled back in time to the creation of the universe to alter it to prevent that life from ever forming, only artificial life she could control...
I love the paradoxical nature of the Witness and how it uses the darkness. The visual language and philosophical ideals seem not to even acknowledge that form and formlessness, shape and shapelessness are contradictions in our very materialistic conception of the universe. Forgive me for saying so but there is beauty in the sword logic even if it’s myopic and misguided.
What if the traveler is just a paracausal prediction engine? It could explain its inactivity predicting what the witness could or would do and taking steps so the guardians could stop it. A sort of ultra infinite forest.
I see threads here. Another “game” they’re working on is codenamed Matter, but this could actually just be the next saga. We haven’t explored more of the IX, and they’re existence is dark matter and paracausal. With this idea of Taking redefining the will of matter, it could very well be where we go after Light/Darkness. The Veil’s theme is even called Tenebrium, some fictional matter that I guess it and the Pyramid tech is made of. The Witness wants to fast forward to a final shape, and how you redefine that starts with changing wills.
Thanks again Byf for amazing lore Still what bothers me is the mess lore about black heart in the game says that it vex copycat of the veil which is weird when we know vex can’t simulate paracausalty I will rather have you opinion as the witness planted because it makes more sense
I hope we get a third subclass for the final shape, if it's the one after understandable but I'd love it to be similar to how guardians got their third subclass
@@Bipolar.Baddie This is naturally something Byf and others have missed, but not all Shadow Legion are mindless. Caiatl says in the Typhon Imperitus Lost Sector that although many of them are Clones, many more are more deserters and traitors from her ranks, they still have their minds and joined the Shadow Legion out of choice.
@@Loderyod This is naturally something Byf and others have missed, but not all Shadow Legion are mindless. Caiatl says in the Typhon Imperitus Lost Sector that although many of them are Clones, many more are more deserters and traitors from her ranks, they still have their minds and joined the Shadow Legion out of choice.
I get the implication that the Witness had been able to control Ghost ever since we first went to Nezarec's pyramid and cemented it's control when we took Stasis for ourselves. Why, then, did it try to get Calus to capture the veil and use the Radial Mast at all? It wasn't necessary since we already had a Ghost on Neptune that was touched by Darkness. It didn't step in to assist until Calus lost control of the situation. Was it some weird, "I have this minion under my control, I will demonstrate by having it succeed for me?" IT could easily have just had Calus rush the Veil and we would have ran headlong to stop him. If we failed, it could still have subverted control over Ghost and used him to make the connection. But it continued to let Calus dick around and lose control of things.
"And what if you saw a different future? One in which you could defeat all that stood before you and become as a lord of all existence, a necessary feature of the universe? Would you not also pursue the desirable path? And not only earn your salvation, but your exaltation? Would you not dedicate your life, your form, your intellect, and strength to such a cause?"
Lol. It’s Hellraiser basically. Like, this all sounds like how the Cynobytes get made, shuffled around in a higher dimension then popped back out ‘more real’. Plus they move slow since they live in 4d space, like the witness maybe? I personally posit that we’re talking about 4d creatures on Light and Dark ‘poles’ like Osiris said who can’t actually touch each other normally (check out quaternion planes visualized, but basically in 4d the equivalent of a sphere with two ‘pole’s in 3d would be two infinite planes that never touch), and the Witness used a creature that naturally bridges that hyper-dimensional gap to make a wormhole allowing passage from one to the other for a 4d creature but not a 3d one (famously the Einstein-Rosen prediction said nothing in our dimension could pass the threshold just be destroyed). I think it’s a ‘where’ not a ‘when’ or things would have already changed from our perspective. I also think darkness is probably quantum field shenannigans and relates to 4d being a whole interconnected imprint able to ignore 3d distance thingy, it’s essentially string theory manifest and again involves dimensional bullshit
Iirc there’s this tiny alcove on the Dreadnaught that drains your health over time if you stand in it. A message above your Super meter says something about Oryx trying to Take you while this happens. This probably means that it’s possible for the process of Taking to be at least started on a Guardian, although I have no clue what the result of that would be.
Just played final shape, can't believe after the witness tried to take the guardian, the guardian said "I can make my own Destiny Too" and then guardianed on him
A scary thought could be that this has happened each and every time the Gardener and the Winnower, and now the Winnower is doing its normal finishing blow, but since we as guardians could be part of the new rule the gardener implemented, he could pull his metaphorical "trap card" being us?
You know... the scary thing is I came to this conclusion after a while thinking about it. I mean, you don't even need to look that far into Destiny in order to come to that conclusion. Just like our world, so many people have suffered needlessly throughout the Destiny universe, sometimes meaninglessly. The Warlords make that incredibly clear. Many people were born into that situation with no recourse and no way to remedy it. They were dealt a bad hand, and the hand kept getting worse. The one thing they all have in common is a lack of control. We celebrate those who manage to lift themselves out of such situation, but spare no thought for those who aren't, same as the universe. Sure, the "winners" put in the effort and exercised their power... but in the end, no one has total control of their lives. Pain of growth is one thing, but constant bad luck leads to suffering all the same. While this "luck" might be the random factor that helps sprout new possibilities, it goes both ways. I think the Witness recognizes that and wishes to exert total control over the universe as a way to solve that exact problem. If everything has a clearly-defined purpose in the grand scheme, then no one truly needs to suffer - they can relish in having had purpose in something greater than themselves. If this sounds incredibly nihilistic, its because it is. For one person to exercise control, another must lose it. No person can have total control, for that requires a lack of control on everyone else's part. If there can only be 1 "final shape", one singlular endpoint and universe, then it stands to reason there can only be one person in total control in the Witness' universe. That might also be why the Witness strips control from the Taken but gives them power in turn, it follows that exact philosophy I laid out. The Taken are defined by the Witness through the Taken King grimoire cards to have been given power and purpose anew, albeit with their will stripped. It's one thing for everyone to have their own personal "heaven", but ultimately you'll be alone in that heaven by accordance of the laws of our universe. Everything must be finite for a final shape to occur. The cost of achieving that heaven is too high for almost everyone... unless you care little for other life to flourish. The Witness doesn't really want to end "pain", it just wants to end what it deems "pointless" pain. An admirable goal, if such a thing were even possible in our universe without killing almost everything. Its easy to see why Eramis, Calus, Rhulk, and Nezarec sided with the Witness; they all want their own personal heaven, in their own minds. The only way to truly counteract the Witness' philosophy, then, is to stand together and push towards a better future. That overpowering will, intellect, and empathy is something that, if put together, can overcome the Witness. Control can come from taking, yes, but it can also come from uniting together. Its something that not only can be, but has been shown time and time again by the Guardians. Of course, it can go both ways, like I said the Warlords showed that in spades. But we have a choice, not only to stop the Witness, but to be better than who we were yesterday, and that alone is worth fighting to defend.
That's It! The Witness is trying to 'take' the light or something that could empower it. Paracausality means something can exist without reason, but if you can rewrite the past, present, and future of something, then it will bend to your will, and you can control whether it can 'exist'. The traveler was simply a conduit of the Light, granting us ghosts and terraforming planets, but the Witness, in contrast, can 'take' planets, rewriting their history so they never existed, since 'taking' is an art of 'darkness'.This power could even rewrite the 'memory' of the entire universe. And if you can rewrite the universe... you can achieve a perfect, unchanging 'final shape.'
Escaton's name could be pulled from Escatology which is the study of end-times. So maybe its not just the future in general but perhaps the specific end The Witness is looking and working towards?
One intressting thought is that one of the things Oryx used his tablets of ruin for was turning his throneworld inside out and projecting it into real space from the ascendant plane, thus making the dreadnought. And if the macrocosm encounter in root of nightmares is looked at closer we se the stolen planets shrunken down in the middle trio. Something very peculiar about pyramid structues is that they look the same both in realspace and in the ascendant plane unlike everything else that lack "uninportant" sections. I speculate that pyramids aren't originally "real" things but mental projections built by the witness in the ascendant plane like throneworlds and then transported into our reality.
In other words, the Witness seeks absolute control over every being in the universe. According to its vision, this is the only way to "end pain", so no one has to suffer. That's why in a Lightfall cutscene with Calus, it says "We know pain. Our purpose is to end it."
Actually I have a much more simple answer here: The Witness is lying. I dont know why everyone is taking the Witness at its word here. We already know that the Witness lied about the Traveler creating a God-Wave, just to free the Worm Gods and create the Hive, who went out and caused massive amounts of suffering across the Galaxy. Nezarec, its own Disciple, also caused our own First Collapse, which caused immense amounts of suffering across the Solar System. The Witness preached about wanting to end pain but very clearly doesnt care when its own minions cause it in massive amounts.
The control thing makes a lot of sense, it finds strong beings across the universe to have power over being the disciples, and it only talks to us through our ghost, after taking control of it. I have always wondered why it bothered with the disciples in the first place especially if it clearly has the power to do everything they did. But seeing that they are just powerful things he can exert his will over makes sense. Heck even with calus he didn't even need him, he was just waiting for us to get close to the vail. All Calus was just a strong entity that he could take control over l. And it also explains why he got so incredibly mad after calus started questioning him and his motives.
Small theory based on what is learned through this video. What if the guardians are the light version of Taken because we serve the Traveler as best we can and our being is entirely shaped to turn out that way.
So a little late on this one but quick question. When you refer to past, present, future, it seems as a linear path through time. But Elsie has been through multiple timelines where we always lose. Would the veil contain history on all timelines? Can the witness influence not just this one time he left from but all times back to the flower game?
Someone else and I have theory. In order to avoid the next Collapse and stop this war the Traveler and the Witness started, the Guardian will have to use the power of Light and Dark fused together to destroy the Traveler and the Witness. The Light and the Dark cannot die, since they're essences that keep the balance in the universe, but the Traveler and the Witness are like a bridge that provide that power to it's followers. And since both of them learned to hate each other, they used these followers as soldiers to fight against each other, causing many deaths in both sides. None of the sides (Traveler's followers and Witness's disciples) are neither good or evil, but are just following orders from their masters, the ones who provide this power. So, I believe that in order to end this war and stop an intergalactic genocide, the Guardian must fuse the power of Light and Dark that they have to destroy the Traveler and the Witness. And this moment, would mean the end of the endless fight against these two, and the ultimate sacrifice from the Guardian. Because is like one wise man said: Devotion inspires bravery. Bravery inspires sacrifice. Sacrifice leads to death.
Every example we have of the Traveler doing anything is "Helped build a society, abandoned them when the Witness showed up to kill everything". It's cosmically callous, but we haven't seen anything to suggest it's engaged in the Light/Dark war in any capacity other than it defending itself. It cares about creating and uplifting life, not ours specifically. "It's the Traveler's fault we exist and are getting attacked by the Darkness, so it has to die too" is some Destiny doomsday cult stuff, and I struggle to see how that'd be pulled off narratively without us being the villains.
I agree with most of what you have said here, but total control is not it's only motive. The Witness believes that all life forms are pawns and that it is doing what it believes is right even if we see it as flawed. I believe I know the point in time where the Witness has returned to and why it will be imperitive for us to stop it. It all has to do with the most important location in all of Destiny. All I will say for now is the clue is in the art direction on its flagship in Root of Nightmares in one specific artifact. Bungie also let a little bit too much slip through with the other concept art for The Witness itself; if you know you just know.
honestly a little bit upset that they gave stasis the description that they did. Because Stasis is the element of Will and Control, as Osiris puts it, its highly likely that we will never get the ability to Take for ourselves. I remember in the days of D1 how there were always rumors of Bungie thinking about releasing a Darkness subclass and how it was going to be the same as the Taken, or at least themed around them. Then when we heard Stasis was coming and all of us thought the Darkness elements were going to be opposites of the light ones, Ice and Fire, Lightning and Radiation, Void and Strand. While they still have the Core opposites of eachother, that leaves out the Ability to Take, unless they decide to throw a MASSIVE curveball with TFS and give us the mysterious Blood Red element ALONG with the ability to take, but thats never going to happen
There's something missing in this speculation - and it's the part where the Taken themselves are being interacted with, given a Knife to Shape themselves, except the Knife is 'cursed' to work in favour of the one who Gave it to the Taken (in all cases aligned with Oryx, the pasts/presents/futures of the one who cuts themselves with the Knife are redefined gradually into one abiding him as King of Shapes). Witness wants control so it can reach to the first conflict, and stop it - to show Gardener and Winnower what became of their Game when the rules were changed, and lie/plead/beg/trick them into not making that decision, effectively ending the pain of everything in the universe, and ending their conflict. ...Though I don't believe it'd want to finish itself before trying a hand at the Game, with us-in-gestalt-totality as their opponent; the new Gardener and Winnower for this match. Or not. On an unrelated note a bit of speculation I have for the firey-ish Darkness element (dubbed 'resonance') is as follows: The element class (to us) could follow the bias of S-starting words (Stasis, Strand, S?), I believe 'Sunder' would fit. It would tie in the sharpness of Sword Logic, and be about medians, divisions, raw calculation and indifference. Something between the absolute dominion of Stasis and the flow-with-it of Strand. This would manifest as tools to narrow down how the enemy may proceed (something like lethal laser fences that force enemies into a specific spot for ease of destruction, but not as absolutely controlled with Stasis or as 'woven-together' as Stand, it's narrowing the possibilities and giving them a simple set of options), and how to divide them from existence (0 divided by 0 kills the machine; apply it to a being at the existential level). The supers it could possess could reflect the existing Dark-class abilities with another twist (i.e: a broad greataxe for the Titan that can be flung and held onto, a conjured glaive for Warlocks, another bow for Hunters - if not a different sword) based on enemies faced (Alak-hul, Rhulk, Oryx). Other than that, that's all I had in memory about the idea of Sunder.
Maybe it wants to take (controlling past/present/future) because if the witness controls everything, then there can be no para causal guardians to stand in the way?
You have me thinking about how Elsie kept finding herself in a loop, is she soon to be finding herself going back again? This is all starting to feel LOST 👀
The veil being described as some window into the heart and mind of the universe may confirm what's been in our faces all along. The veil is an eyeball. Now if it's an eye, who's eye is it? Someone huge for sure. 😂
I think the witness is simply an accelerationist. It sees existence as only leading to inevitable suffering, and the entropy of the universe as inevitable. It wishes to reach that end point as fast as possible, by remove all suffering (life) from the universe.
In the lore card that introduced the gardener and the widower, the gardener wanted life to thrive. The widower wanted to repeat the cycle of life and death. The traveler prevented the natural conclusion of many civilizations like the gift mast preventing the black hole from swallowing one. The reason the traveler is mute is it doesn't want to guide or control life. Instead, the traveler wants these civilizations to grow. The witness, on the other hand, wants something called the final shape, and the vex and taken are helping it. The vex are creatures of pattern that dominated the flower game while the taken are creatures of preprogrammed will with past, present, and future already defined. Theoretically, through mathematics, we could predict everything in the universe. However, the light is paracasual meaning it can't be predicted. Because of the light, the vex can't predict the future, and that would trouble the vex. The taken have no choice and no freedom. If the traveler disrupts natural destiny, the witness with the help of the vex is trying to reestablish fate or the flower game.
What make you so sure that Taken are Witness minions. Have you read lore books regarding Awoken? Highly recommended to refresh that Mara actually planned her death to get into Oryx Throne World, what was her goal? , What she want to get from there?. Why the only race seen in Mara Ascendant Plain are Taken. What if she steal the ability to take from dying Oryx?
My current running theory is that what we know as the traveler is really a machine built by the gardener. A way to gardening the universe. Teraforming every planet it goes to. The gardener is the source of light. But it is weak and cannot fight on its own. So it built a tool to channel light through and hid itself. Controlling the tool through the light. When it was damaged, the light would have slowly healed the tool, but the black heart cut the connection from the source. The power we had was from the light already stored, used as a defensive mechanism since it could not heal. So moving was not an option. That's why the traveler doesn't seem to have some grand plan or will. It's not programmed to. Only teraform and survive. We use our light in ways it was never meant for. That's why the traveler has no way of attacking. We say that in the fight with the witness. So the portal connected the traveler to the point in which it was created, a time where the witness knows he can fight the gardener. If he can take the gardener, he can control the physical world and teraform it to his will
Through Deep Sight or Vault of Glass, or a combination of the two, we learn how to take, but we take in the Light. Thus the return of Cayde. I am throwing my prediction in the ring.
Can’t wait for the final shape to be a big taken ogre.
It will stun lock us with it's eye beams and yeet us beyond our solar system with it.
Final shape is definitely taniks
Taken Taniks
Maybe they just change the color of it an give it a boss hp bar... Wouldn't put it past Bungie
Seriously though, if we don't get some new enemy array and instead we just fight Taken, Vex, Fallen, Cabal, or Hive in Final Shape I'm gonna commit Tower jump.
Edit: Forgot Scorn, they're pretty much just Fallen but on zombie steroids anyway.
My honest headcanon is that the Witness was orginally to the darkness what the Traveler was to the Light, but because of their differing natures the Witness realizes this and acts with a separate goal. The Gardner and Winnower's game was always to create and destroy, a never ending cycle. The Witness wants to end all of this because it knows that it's just a cog in the cycle it wants to break. I truly think the Final Shape is going to be whatever form Guardian's take when they learn to form the dark and light into one singular paracausal ability
Someone else and I have theory. In order to avoid the next Collapse and stop this war the Traveler and the Witness started, the Guardian will have to use the power of Light and Dark fused together to destroy the Traveler and the Witness. The Light and the Dark cannot die, since they're essences that keep the balance in the universe, but the Traveler and the Witness are like a bridge, an intermediary that provide that power to it's followers/warriors/disciples. And since both of them learned to hate each other, they used these followers as soldiers to fight against each other, causing many deaths in both sides. None of the sides (Traveler's followers and Witness's disciples) are neither good or evil, but are just following orders from their masters, the ones who provide this power. So, I believe that in order to end this war and stop an intergalactic genocide, the Guardian must fuse the power of Light and Dark that they have to destroy the Traveler and the Witness. And this moment, would mean the end of the endless fight against these two, and the ultimate sacrifice from the Guardian. Because is like one wise man said: Devotion inspires bravery. Bravery inspires sacrifice. Sacrifice leads to death.
@@kronost06 fucking poetic
I believe the witness and the traveler used to be the same entity and the witness seeks to revert to this state and become the final shape which at the same time is also the first shape of the universe
"Eclipse subclass let's goooo!" **blows self up with mini solar eclipse**
maybe the Final Shape was the friends we made along the way
"The Witness seeks the Final Shape . . . and the Final Shape is . . . *nothing* "
"The Universe makes us all . . . both Victim and Perpetrator . . . in it's infinite cruelty"
These two lines came back up in my head, and i think it actually very clearly states the intent of the Witness. The Witness wants to not only *take* the ability to move time, but also to utterly destroy it. It wants to remove ALL life, to go back to the start of it all. Where it would render a final solution to the puzzle of life and death. And that solution in its' mind is that both should be destroyed. No more life, no more death, just a blank void of nothingness where time no longer has a meaning. It doesn't want to simply *kill* whatever the entity known as the Gardener is. It wants to erase it, and the winnower. To stop a war before a war even happens.
That, then, tells us why the Coalition (us) don’t want that to happen. Not just for survival, and that we want the Withess to pay for the suffering our system endured, but the ideal that the Coalition and our allies seem to live for and fight for: hope, and a better future. Yes, we would all probably die one day billions of years when Sol’s sun were to die out. But, we’d love fullfulled lives, and the memories we’d carry after someone, or ourselves are dead and gone, would touch those that still live. Just as fire spreads to other places after older embers have gone out. The Coalition of Sol, the Reefborn Awoken, Caital’s Ascendancy, House Light, Neomuna, and the Last City of humanity and it’s Guardians, all fight for a future where we can live, love, and learn. Sol may be snuffed out one day, generations later by some unstoppable natural disaster. But, unlike the cruel logic and nihilism of the Witness, and the extreme Darwinism of “kill or be killed” like the Hive, we don’t allow that negative logic and possibility of nihilism consume us.
@@garrettviewegh677 lol you sound like The Speaker
the vex be like are you sure about that?
And the game (and Bungie as a whole) dies before our eyes.
@@garrettviewegh677thank you, Nietzsche, fuck the Megga and it's pointless over complicated Yandere plot gone ironically wrong.
Luv how the taken shake and convulse like they're fighting back for control of they're very own being.
Also Bungie needs to give us the Taken Armor from D1 back, along with the Taken Shake Emote.
I always figured they shook because they were constantly between dimensions, or at least, always on the precipice of another
@@markricheard1870 I'm still bitter about losing my taken armor.
the taken shiver always creeped me out, it gave me the impression being taken is true misery. it's not that the real you dies in the process, you're in there and the entire time you know you can do nothing but what the taken king demands of you, and that's just the way it is.
@@markricheard1870 this, I concur.
From the words of the Witness at the end of the Lightfall campaign, it is convinced that the Traveler is trapped in an existence where it can't be what it is supposed to be. That the universe forces the Traveler into a course of action that causes it grief and that it is the purpose of the Witness to enact the Final Shape to free the Traveler so it is able to do what it was alwas supposed to do.
From The Witness's ideological stance this is entirely true, even if that's not what The Traveller wants.
Pain, grief and death are all what we would consider a natural part of life and things that The Witness thinks are unnecessary once the perfect Final Shape has been achieved, which it thinks has already been achieved once before.
IF The Witness is The Winnower it saw the creation of our Universe as entirely unnecessary and described what it thought would occur as "Your new rule will only make great false cysts of horror full of things that should not exist that cannot withstand existence that will suffer and scream"
As far as It is concerned The Traveller only exists so that it can be killed / drunk / communed with therefore showing the correctness of the Witness's position with the realisation of the Final Shape.
I don't think that The Traveller if left alone by The Witness would be full of grief as it could tend The NEW Garden (our Universe) and encourage complexity and growth without The Witness coming along and quashing said complexity every single time.
Also from the words of the Witnesses: "We will tell the most cunning sibling of a cataclysm. A prophecy… of great loss. We will feed her fear. Her pride. We will say… Young Sathona. The end is coming. A great cataclysm. A God-Wave. In the Sky… there is only death. But salvation… lies in the Deep. Lead your sisters down. Your cunning will spare their short lives. And you… will be reborn."
Seems to me that the Witness is all over the place with lies. His lie to Sothuna was out of desperation because he didn't want the Traveler to claim them.
"Beyond.
It is a place, a place casting shadows and emotion.
It's a real place, I know.
... The point is that the residents of this hidden realm live inside a bottle so perfectly hidden that they can't see beyond their own borders. Which shapes a mind in very specific ways."
good callback
Wait where is this from?
I feel like this is connected to that one Altar of Reflection where Savathun was talking about reading between the lines of the Tablets of Ruin. Oryx's understanding only went so far as to create an army of Taken. Savathun probably got close to deciphering the extent of the Witness' power if she was able to delve deeper than her brother.
Perfect timing. Just before I was about to go to sleep.
Fr man same here
Bro what time is it for you
At half past 3 in the afternoon?
@@wazopaio It's not half-past three for everyone. Some people live halfway across the world, and live in different timezones.
It was only 4pm where the hell do you live
I like this speculation, plus it kind of makes you think about the game itself, "Destiny", and what it means
Bungie loves using their favorite themes so it feels we will be surprised, but also maybe never doubt the eventual outcome.
Maybe the witness itself is the final shape. At the lightfall ending cutscene, we see a clearly defined witness. A black, sharp bottom half, and a white/light grey, cloudy head
9:36, Woah its absolutely crazy that Byf mentioned the word destiny. I am shocked, and amazed
Holy crap, taking the traveler??? I never even considered that as a possibility, man I love these videos, so thought provoking and interesting.
We know the Witness couldn't do it conventionally. Otherwise, it would have done that already. That's why it needed the veil to get in a position to do it
I was watching your video from Forsaken dealing with Mara and the Nine's relationship and I feel like there's a chance we dive more into them by the final shape if not during.
Perhaps. We still don’t know what the “asset”, is that Mara spoke to the Emissary about moving far out to Neptune.
Hey, it's almost like our ghost "Takes" us whenever we, as lightbearers, die. Or whatever the light version of "Taking" is.
I concur that the Witness probably does desire ultimate control. A tell that I noticed for that was when he talked to Calus, and Calus dared to talk back. You could see how upsetting that was to the Witness. He completely lost it, quite a human emotion I'd say for someone playing as a God
Reminder that calus talked back after losing the radial mast, and still not securing the veil, that'll be similar to a parent telling their child to do chores, only to come home from work and nothing got done. The other disciples know to keep quiet when they goof, calus was pompous and tried to bite the hand that helped him because he felt his newfound power was doing things for him
If that’s the case then why doesn’t he just take Calus and the other disciples if he’s so obsessed with blind obedience? It’s almost like Bungie doesn’t know their own lore
@@azraelwolfsblood2902 the witness knows it needs autonomos leutenants of some form, paradoxically it needs free will inorder to enact a scheme of toatal control
First off, I think it's important to understand that eschatology is the study of finality, judgement, death, and the end of the world in theology. With the Eschaton Mind, I believe that perhaps it's focused on the finality of the universe, not the future in general, which is our current understanding of the Final Shape, which would also be why they're so focused on achieving control over time.
Secondly, I believe that the Final Shape to the Witness is the prevention of life ever beginning. In the Garden metaphor, the Winnower sees the Gardener/ Traveler as a source of needless suffering, as regardless of what the Traveler does, the universe will still end and the sentient life it helped will still suffer. If taking changes the past, present, and future of a being to follow the will of the taker, I believe that the Witness may be attempting to take control of all things before suffering by preventing the Light from ever existing, as Light is the paracausal force of creation, life, and rebirth. The Witness also exploits Eramis' and Rhulk's experiences with the Traveler to control them and regularly refers to the Traveler and the Light as forces that create suffering. I also think its name of "The Witness" might imply that it has experienced or seen all of the universe's suffering which stems from sentience.
I've been thinking for a while that the Final Shape may essentially be factory-resetting the universe and the Witness replacing (or Taking) the Gardener in order to remake all life that ever was or will be according to its own design... and given that Byf has been doing this for a long time and is right more often than he's wrong I'm feeling even more confident in that now.
Also, imagine how rad a boss fight against a Taken Traveller would be?
a Taken Traveller wouldn't be merely a boss fight or even just a simple single Raid; it'd be an entire Season's worth of content!
having to mercy kill a Taken Traveler would actually tug at my heartstrings, ngl. it'd be like if you were in a zombie apocalypse and had to kill your own mother because she turned
Asking again to please do a video or at least look into the "pollution" present in the pyramids that the captives had to deal with. I can't remember if it was Misraaks or Devrim, but one of them said that Amanda had told them that the captives were treated humanely except for a "pollution" in the air. The bottom left of the hud also states that a "dark fetor" enters the boss room before you place down your Balefire, and the dark fetor is what causes damage over time when you're outside of the balefire for too long. I feel like this "pollution" is the crux of the Witness' plan with the captives, as it knows that we will rescue them and bring them back to their homes, and I feel like the "pollution" could somehow be infecting the civilians and that the Witness is waiting for the perfect moment to do something to those who were infected. Could you see if there's any reference to this in the lore?
Destiny's referencing Balefire now? If that's a reference to Balefire from wheel of time that's badass, in that story Balefire was a destructive force so strong it could erase whatever you shot it at so thoroughly from existence that it would erase some of its past as well.
The Witness seeks the Final Shape, I suspect it's more likely the Witness want's to DETERMINE the nature of the Final Shape in it's image, according to his desire, his world view.
Byf said around 0:35 that we learned from season of the lost and Mara sov that the taken kings power was learned directly from the witness, but we did not onow about the witness at this time. Am I missing something or was that just a mistake?
The Final Shape has to do something with the Flower Game, The Gardener, and the Winnower
@@ObiTheHomie Oryx spoke with The Deep itself. It is highly likely that he spoke with The Voice In The Darkness at that point. AKA The Witness
@@acidburn1979the final shape is the end of the sword logic
Ever noticed how the Taken don't fight each other, while all organic life forms battle and kill to become stronger
All life forms we battle have leaders and usurpers, but what if all life forms don't need to fight each other, what if instead of having different factions with their endless change in leaders, all life forms are unified, stripped of their will to fight each other, no death no suffering
Just a universal unified group of taken that doesn't die because there's nothing to kill it (like we do in Taken based fights)
I think the Witness is actually not seeking control but rather liberation and control may simply be a nessesity to achieve this. Its dialogue seems to indicate that it wants to be free of the universe, perhaps even escape it. In Witch Queen we learn that Savathun sought to escape the Destiny universe by jumping into ours (4th wall break) however her process seemed to involve Mantling (In that acting exactly like an individual you actually become them) and/or possesion, where the Witness may seek to physically enter our universe as it is and not rely on others to bring it forth. In doing so it escapes and predetermined fate because the creators of destiny decide what happens in it, thus allowing the Witness to finally make its own destiny.
That just answers one of my biggest questions, if we have defined the Witness, victim, and perpetrator, who is the judge? the log answers that, it's at least tied to the taken
I keep telling people that Oryx did not create the power to take because he's The Taken King and they kept arguing with me about it. Now instead of searching for the lore cards, i can link them your video.
Another hint toward the Veil being a wormole, is a mural that is in Strider's Gate, on the way to the street leading to the concourse, there's a mural on the wall showing a tunnel leading to space, with Viking-inspired boats traveling in it. I don't know if the Bifrost was compared to a wormhole before Marvel made the comparison, but this could be a clue.
I do wonder if Strand is ultimately closely connected to the function of the Taken and the Ascendant Plane. Same with egregore and Throne Worlds.
Since they all involve consciousness and the Darkness. Maybe not directly plucking at them like our Guardians but through a more indirect means.
Fantastic video. I'd contend that the primeval, imminent, and eschaton minds translate better to "beginning, present, and end" rather than "past, present, and future." Eschaton in particular is the (often divine) final, unchangeable shape of the universe in whatever philosophy is utilizing the concept - essentially the manifestation of heaven on earth. Even more granularly, I'd argue that those three concepts represent temporal actions and not the concepts of beginning, present and end: the first possible action, the current one, and the last, tying back into the Witness trying to "take" the will of the universe and enforce its own preferred eschaton not just in the present (the imminent) but going back to the very first (the primeval).
Tangentially, it's also interesting to me that they used the "imminent" mind (present or soon to be) as opposed to "immanent" (constant, ever-pervading) since immanence is another divine/spiritual concept that's more often paired with the eschaton/eschatology compared to the imminent/imminence.
I think our ability to wield both light and dark without serving either, shows that we are the final shape, we will prove stronger than the witness , he will try to take us, and he will meet his end
Learning strand proves this, due to us not desiring total control we discover strand.
@@jadenyuki2031and I don't think the witness has the power of strand
Man I’m still holding out for us to get Taking as our third darkness power, the more we learn about it the more unnerving it gets.
The witness looks like the veil, with his smoke head and long robes.
This will help me slow down before bed. Thank you Byf!
This gives me even more of a reason to think that the next subclass is taken and not resonance since taking is the power given by the deep and can be used as a very powerful tool in our arsenal.
Man I just picked up Destiny 2 this weekend and you're basically my VaatiVidya for this game, love your lore vids.
I swear that’s such a retarded comparison. Fromsoftware games are leagues above anything Bungie could even imagine. At least their games are consistent with their lore and don’t fuck over their customers every chance they get unlike Bungie and their cracker ass mindset
Even the disciples reflect this even still they are champions of it. Through Rhulks interaction with the witness he became aligned to the idea that his fate was deterministic because of how the witness took control of Rhulks story shaping his memories into an identity, a tool for the witness to use
Am going to love seeing the explanation for why Taniks is in the raid for the final shape.
EXCUSEMEWHATNOW
Taniks the Taken.
Glen Cook, author of the Black Company series, had characters called The Ten Who Were Taken and describes the process of Taking like being ripped apart and rebuilt over and over until you are completely subservient or have no will left to disobey.
before I speculated about a correlated entity to stasis like how we have the veil for strand, and while there is still a small possibility that may be the case, I suppose the idea doesn't make too much sense
off topic, the D1 materials drop gave me psychic damage
This has me thinking, is the Witness's "Final shape" could be referring to resetting the whole universe. Our hunch is that the Witness is "The first blade". The tool for a possible reset to undo what the Gardener has done and in a sense reset the board/playing field.
The Witness’s plan is that he has no plan, just making it up as he goes.
What if that's what happened to Cayde-6 in the new Final Shape trailer?? The lore of the gloves perfectly explains how Cayde is alive
What if our last darkness subclass has to do with the power of the taken? Like some power to use your "Taken Super" on Ex. An Ogre to have it fight FOR you.
so the game is called Destiny because its about preserving free will and ultimately define yourself through your own actions? i guess Joe Staten thought, "how to make a good story about heroes and villains? oh yeah let's make it a battle for the greater force of will" just a random thought ofc but it's what i believe right now
Seems like the power to take is among the strongest of the darkness abilities in terms of scale of application.
I think the portal might lead somewhere "other" - at first I thought it lead physically inside the Traveler, but now I'm thinking its more symbolic - The Witness needed components of Light and Dark to create the portal, and its speech about "Enough Life and Death" tells me it seeks to re-write the rules if the flower game itself. I do not think the Witness is the Winnower, nor to I think the Traveler is the Gardener. They are both physical aspects of their respective concepts, acting in accordance with the greater wills of both.
Yessss I live for more witness videos!!
Everything paracausal runs on video-game logic. The final shape is "what's left when everything that *can* be removed *has* been removed. The Witness has taken (ha) efforts to limit the possible actions of the denizens of the universe.
Following this thread, the Witness likely intends to "100%" reality, but first needs to undo the Gardener's final rule in the flower game so new items stop being added.
The final shape is inevitable as is its collapse
seeing d1 gameplay is unimaginably nostalgic for me
Reminds me of the Green lantern story where the Ai
Aya came to believe that sentient beings with emotion were ultimately a mistake, and tried to traveled back in time to the creation of the universe to alter it to prevent that life from ever forming, only artificial life she could control...
I love the paradoxical nature of the Witness and how it uses the darkness. The visual language and philosophical ideals seem not to even acknowledge that form and formlessness, shape and shapelessness are contradictions in our very materialistic conception of the universe. Forgive me for saying so but there is beauty in the sword logic even if it’s myopic and misguided.
Great choice for background music 5:00
What if the traveler is just a paracausal prediction engine? It could explain its inactivity predicting what the witness could or would do and taking steps so the guardians could stop it. A sort of ultra infinite forest.
didnt somebody say this in another comment section of another video explaining what the veil is lol.
I think the Traveler was disembodied and the Veil ripped out from itself by Savathun. The shard of the Traveler is also the biggest mystery
I see threads here. Another “game” they’re working on is codenamed Matter, but this could actually just be the next saga. We haven’t explored more of the IX, and they’re existence is dark matter and paracausal. With this idea of Taking redefining the will of matter, it could very well be where we go after Light/Darkness. The Veil’s theme is even called Tenebrium, some fictional matter that I guess it and the Pyramid tech is made of. The Witness wants to fast forward to a final shape, and how you redefine that starts with changing wills.
Thanks again Byf for amazing lore
Still what bothers me is the mess lore about black heart in the game says that it vex copycat of the veil which is weird when we know vex can’t simulate paracausalty
I will rather have you opinion as the witness planted because it makes more sense
I wish I could understand the Skrank Gang, but someone still hasn't fulfilled his promise on that yet.
Are they still a threat?
I hope we get a third subclass for the final shape, if it's the one after understandable but I'd love it to be similar to how guardians got their third subclass
The final shape will be a circle. Then it will be a circle. Then a circle. A circle. Circle. Circle.
If the Witness wants total control, why are the Shadow Legion still Cabal and not Taken?
I'm pretty sure that its stated that the Shadow Legion are husks who have no will of their own, which would make it redundant to turn them into Taken.
It already got total control over them, just like with scorn
Why turn them into Taken if they've already complied? No need to bend the will of someone who already chose to side by you.
@@Bipolar.Baddie This is naturally something Byf and others have missed, but not all Shadow Legion are mindless. Caiatl says in the Typhon Imperitus Lost Sector that although many of them are Clones, many more are more deserters and traitors from her ranks, they still have their minds and joined the Shadow Legion out of choice.
@@Loderyod This is naturally something Byf and others have missed, but not all Shadow Legion are mindless. Caiatl says in the Typhon Imperitus Lost Sector that although many of them are Clones, many more are more deserters and traitors from her ranks, they still have their minds and joined the Shadow Legion out of choice.
I get the implication that the Witness had been able to control Ghost ever since we first went to Nezarec's pyramid and cemented it's control when we took Stasis for ourselves. Why, then, did it try to get Calus to capture the veil and use the Radial Mast at all? It wasn't necessary since we already had a Ghost on Neptune that was touched by Darkness. It didn't step in to assist until Calus lost control of the situation. Was it some weird, "I have this minion under my control, I will demonstrate by having it succeed for me?"
IT could easily have just had Calus rush the Veil and we would have ran headlong to stop him. If we failed, it could still have subverted control over Ghost and used him to make the connection. But it continued to let Calus dick around and lose control of things.
I wouldn't be surprised if Calus was being tested, he did become a Disciple through an accelerated program after all. And in the end he failed.
The witness is traveling into the past to stopthe creation of telesto
"And what if you saw a different future? One in which you could defeat all that stood before you and become as a lord of all existence, a necessary feature of the universe? Would you not also pursue the desirable path? And not only earn your salvation, but your exaltation? Would you not dedicate your life, your form, your intellect, and strength to such a cause?"
NGL the idea of a Final Shape raid being a race to stop the Witness before it Takes the Traveller sounds like an amazing concept
Lol. It’s Hellraiser basically. Like, this all sounds like how the Cynobytes get made, shuffled around in a higher dimension then popped back out ‘more real’. Plus they move slow since they live in 4d space, like the witness maybe?
I personally posit that we’re talking about 4d creatures on Light and Dark ‘poles’ like Osiris said who can’t actually touch each other normally (check out quaternion planes visualized, but basically in 4d the equivalent of a sphere with two ‘pole’s in 3d would be two infinite planes that never touch), and the Witness used a creature that naturally bridges that hyper-dimensional gap to make a wormhole allowing passage from one to the other for a 4d creature but not a 3d one (famously the Einstein-Rosen prediction said nothing in our dimension could pass the threshold just be destroyed). I think it’s a ‘where’ not a ‘when’ or things would have already changed from our perspective.
I also think darkness is probably quantum field shenannigans and relates to 4d being a whole interconnected imprint able to ignore 3d distance thingy, it’s essentially string theory manifest and again involves dimensional bullshit
Iirc there’s this tiny alcove on the Dreadnaught that drains your health over time if you stand in it. A message above your Super meter says something about Oryx trying to Take you while this happens. This probably means that it’s possible for the process of Taking to be at least started on a Guardian, although I have no clue what the result of that would be.
Just played final shape, can't believe after the witness tried to take the guardian, the guardian said "I can make my own Destiny Too" and then guardianed on him
A scary thought could be that this has happened each and every time the Gardener and the Winnower, and now the Winnower is doing its normal finishing blow, but since we as guardians could be part of the new rule the gardener implemented, he could pull his metaphorical "trap card" being us?
Or going deeper….we the players.
@@Girkon true, but all we can do is wait and see lol
You know... the scary thing is I came to this conclusion after a while thinking about it. I mean, you don't even need to look that far into Destiny in order to come to that conclusion. Just like our world, so many people have suffered needlessly throughout the Destiny universe, sometimes meaninglessly. The Warlords make that incredibly clear. Many people were born into that situation with no recourse and no way to remedy it. They were dealt a bad hand, and the hand kept getting worse. The one thing they all have in common is a lack of control. We celebrate those who manage to lift themselves out of such situation, but spare no thought for those who aren't, same as the universe. Sure, the "winners" put in the effort and exercised their power... but in the end, no one has total control of their lives. Pain of growth is one thing, but constant bad luck leads to suffering all the same. While this "luck" might be the random factor that helps sprout new possibilities, it goes both ways.
I think the Witness recognizes that and wishes to exert total control over the universe as a way to solve that exact problem. If everything has a clearly-defined purpose in the grand scheme, then no one truly needs to suffer - they can relish in having had purpose in something greater than themselves. If this sounds incredibly nihilistic, its because it is. For one person to exercise control, another must lose it. No person can have total control, for that requires a lack of control on everyone else's part. If there can only be 1 "final shape", one singlular endpoint and universe, then it stands to reason there can only be one person in total control in the Witness' universe. That might also be why the Witness strips control from the Taken but gives them power in turn, it follows that exact philosophy I laid out. The Taken are defined by the Witness through the Taken King grimoire cards to have been given power and purpose anew, albeit with their will stripped.
It's one thing for everyone to have their own personal "heaven", but ultimately you'll be alone in that heaven by accordance of the laws of our universe. Everything must be finite for a final shape to occur. The cost of achieving that heaven is too high for almost everyone... unless you care little for other life to flourish. The Witness doesn't really want to end "pain", it just wants to end what it deems "pointless" pain. An admirable goal, if such a thing were even possible in our universe without killing almost everything. Its easy to see why Eramis, Calus, Rhulk, and Nezarec sided with the Witness; they all want their own personal heaven, in their own minds.
The only way to truly counteract the Witness' philosophy, then, is to stand together and push towards a better future. That overpowering will, intellect, and empathy is something that, if put together, can overcome the Witness. Control can come from taking, yes, but it can also come from uniting together. Its something that not only can be, but has been shown time and time again by the Guardians. Of course, it can go both ways, like I said the Warlords showed that in spades. But we have a choice, not only to stop the Witness, but to be better than who we were yesterday, and that alone is worth fighting to defend.
That's It! The Witness is trying to 'take' the light or something that could empower it. Paracausality means something can exist without reason, but if you can rewrite the past, present, and future of something, then it will bend to your will, and you can control whether it can 'exist'. The traveler was simply a conduit of the Light, granting us ghosts and terraforming planets, but the Witness, in contrast, can 'take' planets, rewriting their history so they never existed, since 'taking' is an art of 'darkness'.This power could even rewrite the 'memory' of the entire universe. And if you can rewrite the universe... you can achieve a perfect, unchanging 'final shape.'
"After we've learned of the Veil"
I dont know, Byf....Have we? XD
Escaton's name could be pulled from Escatology which is the study of end-times. So maybe its not just the future in general but perhaps the specific end The Witness is looking and working towards?
One intressting thought is that one of the things Oryx used his tablets of ruin for was turning his throneworld inside out and projecting it into real space from the ascendant plane, thus making the dreadnought. And if the macrocosm encounter in root of nightmares is looked at closer we se the stolen planets shrunken down in the middle trio. Something very peculiar about pyramid structues is that they look the same both in realspace and in the ascendant plane unlike everything else that lack "uninportant" sections.
I speculate that pyramids aren't originally "real" things but mental projections built by the witness in the ascendant plane like throneworlds and then transported into our reality.
I'm gonna witness this lore byf
In other words, the Witness seeks absolute control over every being in the universe. According to its vision, this is the only way to "end pain", so no one has to suffer. That's why in a Lightfall cutscene with Calus, it says "We know pain. Our purpose is to end it."
Actually I have a much more simple answer here: The Witness is lying. I dont know why everyone is taking the Witness at its word here. We already know that the Witness lied about the Traveler creating a God-Wave, just to free the Worm Gods and create the Hive, who went out and caused massive amounts of suffering across the Galaxy. Nezarec, its own Disciple, also caused our own First Collapse, which caused immense amounts of suffering across the Solar System. The Witness preached about wanting to end pain but very clearly doesnt care when its own minions cause it in massive amounts.
The control thing makes a lot of sense, it finds strong beings across the universe to have power over being the disciples, and it only talks to us through our ghost, after taking control of it. I have always wondered why it bothered with the disciples in the first place especially if it clearly has the power to do everything they did. But seeing that they are just powerful things he can exert his will over makes sense. Heck even with calus he didn't even need him, he was just waiting for us to get close to the vail. All Calus was just a strong entity that he could take control over l. And it also explains why he got so incredibly mad after calus started questioning him and his motives.
I wanna get into lore but don’t know where to start when I know the basic plot but this is a good one
"[The Power of Taking] could perhaps be used to alter a moon's orbit, devastating the planet below..."
No fucking way.
that's basically what happened to Titan during the collapse, or reminds me of it at least.
Maybe we're gonna get taken powers, since savathun said we will gain the power to move worlds
@@eliaspanayi3465 Already done in the Root of Nightmares raid.
Yup indeed I suspect it was used in this way on fundament as part of the lie to bring savathun and the hive under the witnesses control
Small theory based on what is learned through this video. What if the guardians are the light version of Taken because we serve the Traveler as best we can and our being is entirely shaped to turn out that way.
I really hope the final shape is literal. Like we have a sphere, a bunch of pyramids, I want a massive cube to fight.
I never considered the Witness traveling back in time to exercise control over the cosmos by Taking everything. Goodness.
So a little late on this one but quick question. When you refer to past, present, future, it seems as a linear path through time. But Elsie has been through multiple timelines where we always lose. Would the veil contain history on all timelines? Can the witness influence not just this one time he left from but all times back to the flower game?
I don't know if it's intentional but it's funny how almost every time he goes "take a listen/look at this" it immediately goes to an ad. Lmao
The final shape will just be bungie taking our money
Someone else and I have theory. In order to avoid the next Collapse and stop this war the Traveler and the Witness started, the Guardian will have to use the power of Light and Dark fused together to destroy the Traveler and the Witness. The Light and the Dark cannot die, since they're essences that keep the balance in the universe, but the Traveler and the Witness are like a bridge that provide that power to it's followers. And since both of them learned to hate each other, they used these followers as soldiers to fight against each other, causing many deaths in both sides. None of the sides (Traveler's followers and Witness's disciples) are neither good or evil, but are just following orders from their masters, the ones who provide this power. So, I believe that in order to end this war and stop an intergalactic genocide, the Guardian must fuse the power of Light and Dark that they have to destroy the Traveler and the Witness. And this moment, would mean the end of the endless fight against these two, and the ultimate sacrifice from the Guardian. Because is like one wise man said: Devotion inspires bravery. Bravery inspires sacrifice. Sacrifice leads to death.
Every example we have of the Traveler doing anything is "Helped build a society, abandoned them when the Witness showed up to kill everything". It's cosmically callous, but we haven't seen anything to suggest it's engaged in the Light/Dark war in any capacity other than it defending itself. It cares about creating and uplifting life, not ours specifically. "It's the Traveler's fault we exist and are getting attacked by the Darkness, so it has to die too" is some Destiny doomsday cult stuff, and I struggle to see how that'd be pulled off narratively without us being the villains.
I agree with most of what you have said here, but total control is not it's only motive. The Witness believes that all life forms are pawns and that it is doing what it believes is right even if we see it as flawed. I believe I know the point in time where the Witness has returned to and why it will be imperitive for us to stop it. It all has to do with the most important location in all of Destiny. All I will say for now is the clue is in the art direction on its flagship in Root of Nightmares in one specific artifact. Bungie also let a little bit too much slip through with the other concept art for The Witness itself; if you know you just know.
honestly a little bit upset that they gave stasis the description that they did. Because Stasis is the element of Will and Control, as Osiris puts it, its highly likely that we will never get the ability to Take for ourselves. I remember in the days of D1 how there were always rumors of Bungie thinking about releasing a Darkness subclass and how it was going to be the same as the Taken, or at least themed around them. Then when we heard Stasis was coming and all of us thought the Darkness elements were going to be opposites of the light ones, Ice and Fire, Lightning and Radiation, Void and Strand. While they still have the Core opposites of eachother, that leaves out the Ability to Take, unless they decide to throw a MASSIVE curveball with TFS and give us the mysterious Blood Red element ALONG with the ability to take, but thats never going to happen
The Witness likes himbos, got it
There's something missing in this speculation - and it's the part where the Taken themselves are being interacted with, given a Knife to Shape themselves, except the Knife is 'cursed' to work in favour of the one who Gave it to the Taken (in all cases aligned with Oryx, the pasts/presents/futures of the one who cuts themselves with the Knife are redefined gradually into one abiding him as King of Shapes).
Witness wants control so it can reach to the first conflict, and stop it - to show Gardener and Winnower what became of their Game when the rules were changed, and lie/plead/beg/trick them into not making that decision, effectively ending the pain of everything in the universe, and ending their conflict. ...Though I don't believe it'd want to finish itself before trying a hand at the Game, with us-in-gestalt-totality as their opponent; the new Gardener and Winnower for this match.
Or not.
On an unrelated note a bit of speculation I have for the firey-ish Darkness element (dubbed 'resonance') is as follows:
The element class (to us) could follow the bias of S-starting words (Stasis, Strand, S?), I believe 'Sunder' would fit.
It would tie in the sharpness of Sword Logic, and be about medians, divisions, raw calculation and indifference. Something between the absolute dominion of Stasis and the flow-with-it of Strand.
This would manifest as tools to narrow down how the enemy may proceed (something like lethal laser fences that force enemies into a specific spot for ease of destruction, but not as absolutely controlled with Stasis or as 'woven-together' as Stand, it's narrowing the possibilities and giving them a simple set of options), and how to divide them from existence (0 divided by 0 kills the machine; apply it to a being at the existential level).
The supers it could possess could reflect the existing Dark-class abilities with another twist (i.e: a broad greataxe for the Titan that can be flung and held onto, a conjured glaive for Warlocks, another bow for Hunters - if not a different sword) based on enemies faced (Alak-hul, Rhulk, Oryx).
Other than that, that's all I had in memory about the idea of Sunder.
Maybe it wants to take (controlling past/present/future) because if the witness controls everything, then there can be no para causal guardians to stand in the way?
"Your Destiny ends now."
-The Witness in Final Shape, probably
You have me thinking about how Elsie kept finding herself in a loop, is she soon to be finding herself going back again? This is all starting to feel LOST 👀
The veil being described as some window into the heart and mind of the universe may confirm what's been in our faces all along. The veil is an eyeball. Now if it's an eye, who's eye is it? Someone huge for sure. 😂
I think the witness is simply an accelerationist. It sees existence as only leading to inevitable suffering, and the entropy of the universe as inevitable. It wishes to reach that end point as fast as possible, by remove all suffering (life) from the universe.
finally. lore on the taken!!!
In the lore card that introduced the gardener and the widower, the gardener wanted life to thrive. The widower wanted to repeat the cycle of life and death. The traveler prevented the natural conclusion of many civilizations like the gift mast preventing the black hole from swallowing one. The reason the traveler is mute is it doesn't want to guide or control life. Instead, the traveler wants these civilizations to grow. The witness, on the other hand, wants something called the final shape, and the vex and taken are helping it. The vex are creatures of pattern that dominated the flower game while the taken are creatures of preprogrammed will with past, present, and future already defined. Theoretically, through mathematics, we could predict everything in the universe. However, the light is paracasual meaning it can't be predicted. Because of the light, the vex can't predict the future, and that would trouble the vex. The taken have no choice and no freedom. If the traveler disrupts natural destiny, the witness with the help of the vex is trying to reestablish fate or the flower game.
What make you so sure that Taken are Witness minions. Have you read lore books regarding Awoken? Highly recommended to refresh that Mara actually planned her death to get into Oryx Throne World, what was her goal? , What she want to get from there?. Why the only race seen in Mara Ascendant Plain are Taken. What if she steal the ability to take from dying Oryx?
My current running theory is that what we know as the traveler is really a machine built by the gardener. A way to gardening the universe. Teraforming every planet it goes to. The gardener is the source of light. But it is weak and cannot fight on its own. So it built a tool to channel light through and hid itself. Controlling the tool through the light. When it was damaged, the light would have slowly healed the tool, but the black heart cut the connection from the source. The power we had was from the light already stored, used as a defensive mechanism since it could not heal. So moving was not an option. That's why the traveler doesn't seem to have some grand plan or will. It's not programmed to. Only teraform and survive. We use our light in ways it was never meant for. That's why the traveler has no way of attacking. We say that in the fight with the witness. So the portal connected the traveler to the point in which it was created, a time where the witness knows he can fight the gardener. If he can take the gardener, he can control the physical world and teraform it to his will
I love me a Byf video 1st thing in the morning
Taking element confirmed
That Third Paragraph is Terrifying.
The Witness being able to take would destroy us.
Through Deep Sight or Vault of Glass, or a combination of the two, we learn how to take, but we take in the Light. Thus the return of Cayde. I am throwing my prediction in the ring.
As savathun said, the final shape is nothing