How do you feel about the Witness? Personally I wish we had more build up with the character leading up to the Final Shape (making the situation seem more dire to humanity physically and our Guardian), but the Final Shape may change this! I get the point of the Witness is to enact the shape and to shake the guardians off its boot, but I hope the Final Shape pays off what Bungie has been building for years. It (imo) is not a “bad” villain, the story being it and its race is very intriguing. We just need a good pay off come June. The Witness may turn out to be the best villain this games ever had.. guess we’ll have to wait and see!
Ngl i had hoped we would see more of him throughout the years. But the closest was the 2 lightfall cutscenes (and not with our guardian but the others). I had hoped that we would fight the witness at the end of lightfall and lose (story and gameplay-wise, i know this probably sounds clichee, but an Avengers: Infinity war type of scene with our guardian and the witness would be cool).
You're comparing apples to oranges. The Witness is not OUR villian...because his conflict isn't with us. Its with the Traveler. He is HER ancient enemy. We are simply collateral damage. So comparing him to other enemies what were in direct conflict with us....or imagined conflict with us (The Darkness) is not a fair comparison. But like so many, you seem to have forgotten just how powerful The Witness is....because Bungie hasn't directly developed that story in almost a year. That is a pacing problem....but one that likely wasn't created by the writers. The Witness literally killed a squadron of Guardians with a GESTURE of his hand. Shrugged off a direct attack on him by the Traveller....then carved his way INTO a Traveler who was helpless to stop him...and who we are (for now) powerless to follow. (Not to mention that he literally snatched several planets of the Solar System out of this plane of existence). If it weren't for Savathun's foresight and cunning? We'd (once again) be sitting beneath a BROKEN Traveler helplessly waiting for whatever end The Witness has planned. For the first time we are truly up against an opponent of god-like power. Against whom we are literally no match in a direct confrontation. Ultimately, I think that is what you---and others---have an issue with. There is a lack of dramatic tension because we ARE so over-matched. We continue to exist only because The Witness didn't consider us worth the effort to put an end to. So there is no sense of drama (except in the abstract) concerning our immediate survival. Because the real conflict and danger is going on INSIDE The Traveler where we cannot see it for now.
That is actually another pain point about the whole thing. For a story to work, the audience / players have to care. Which is why keeping the witness as alien and distant would have worked better from a story stand point. It makes little sense for us to get a story about how relatable the witness was before when all they are doing is bypassing us. We should not even register to it, and conversely, in order to keep it as a ultimate evil it has to remain abstract. Motivating us to care via the hunger to know, to face the unknown, monster, god or whatever it may be. For the dread and danger to work, there have to be mysteries, otherwise we get a story where we feel comfortable with the facts. Again, this is entirely my opinion on if the witness is a good antagonist, and I do find it lacking.
To this day I think having the pyramid ships not have its own army of unique abstract monsters was such a fumble, I think at the least the witness should have a new enemy class of taken but with races we never had seen in them to show just how much of a universal force they are. The rhulk and god of pain mini bosses are a great idea but they deserve some infantry and special forces under them unique to the witness
Yes I’ve been saying this for the longest time. The Pyramids being empty and showing no sign of it’s own army was such a letdown. Would of been cool if the Pyramid race were its own seperate race that got conquered by the Witness and became corrupted by his version of the darkness to serve him as his army. Almost like Thanos in the MCU
They've always been lazy, this game has had 3 factions since D1, and everything else has just been a reskin of those factions. Idk why anyone would expect a new faction this deep into destiny's timeline.
Oooooor the Witness had no need for its own army because it(they) was all about manipulation. Why waste resources on an army(typical, cliche villain that we've seen with countless villians) when one can manipulate other rulers to attack with their armies.
The final cutscene after the Red War with the pyramids was one of the best foreshadowing for something grand. especially with all the ships they showed en masse. But now that they’re here and most are empty it just fills me with disappointment for what could have been.
@@adamboy0559yeah they did a good job explaining it away, but it's still a waste to have this new explorable setting with a very well defined visual language, and they're always either empty or we're fighting the usual suspects, same as always.
Darkness couldn’t remain as an intangible thing forever. But, The Witness suffered from being a crutch. They literally made him an excuse for them to vault content. Instead, The Witness should have WRECKED those planets in terrifying fashion. Then the world should have evolved with horror inspired, hellish versions of those planets. This would have made him more ominous and believable. Also, him having been The Witness since forever ruined the buildup. Once again, all the most important characters since D1 their stories are told Off-Screen. We should have fought The Witness as his own race all through that season, before the planets are taken. And then actually lose at the end, and he completes the ritual from the cut-scene, devouring all of those people and transforms into this crazy looking mega mind. Then he destroys the planets that we lost and maybe “takes” ONE of them, just so they could still use their Savathun “power of the darkness” story. Lightfall, we’d explore the planets he wrecked exploring and collecting the vestiges of his crystallized darkness and that leads us to The Veil. The whole Rasputin storyline was meh. They killed him off for no reason, I would scrap that whole thing. Rasputin should be the one helping Osiris figure out the Veil right now. All of that computational power and secrets held. The vaults. The sub minds. They could have even brought back The Library on Venus. Scrap the Strand tutorial. Adventure and Horror are what made D1 lovable despite none of the story being in-game.
I really really like the idea of us fighting the witness, or ig proto-witness race, before they all merge to become the big bad witness. Seriously a cool concept
@@LordBruuhthere was even an 5th darkness race planned, even called the veil, but it was scrapped before beyond light. Notice how they constantly refered to lightfall as the endgame moment and made other marvel references. They got lazy and copied marvel.
I remember in season of the worthy getting hyped as I saw their ships slowly enter the solar system, and even season of arrivals watching them set up on Mercury, Titan, io, mars. And then nothing happened. Never felt more disappointed in my life when I found out there was nothing inside them
Oryx was a much better villain, he showed up because we killed his son. So he had strong motivations, he taunted us, he put the fear of God in Eris. The taken were crazy at the time, as they were new and freaky. Oryx killed mara, and his effects hurt the awoken substantially that savathun got in on it. His first defeat was unprecedented in his eyes and his final defeat has left a vacuum that nobody's been able to fill. Savathun came the closest with how many things she had her claws in. The lucent hive tried to resurrect him and lets not forget his worm is mia. The witness just pales in comparison. It just showed up and is like I'm the big bad. Just shows how weak the writing and presentation of the character has been for now. 10 years for that as of now is a huge let down. The witness should've been showing more signs of aggression with the guardian resisting the allure of stasis and corruption of darkness, shown something when we defeated rhulk after it's reveal after we defeated savathun. When it entered the traveler, there should've been some tangible thing to happen to all guardians and ghosts where they felt pain or a temporary loss connection to the light that shook them to the core. That reoccurred with each season to remind the guardians and the players of the stakes. But nothing, nothing at all is just bad all around. Bad writing bad storytelling bad presentation. Final shape has to do all of that in order to make the witness feel like a threat and that's a tall task already. Could bungie do it, sure. Will they, that remains to be seen. This saga will either go out with a bang and blaze of glory or show the continued fizzling out of this saga and probably destiny as a whole. Witch queen ended on such a high note to where light fall has been a huge letdown and the effects are still lingering.
I don’t by that the witness was planned as the culmination of destiny’s 10 year story. To me, the witness seems like the flagbearer of a narrative shift that occurred sometime during early witch queen. I mean, when you look at the rest of destiny’s story it’s kind of obvious. Everything else, especially going back to d1, borders on being cosmic horror. Every character has their narrative, motivation, and actions based in some way on some theoretical scientific concept or philosophical idea, which made them all really feel like they knew what they where doing and why they where doing it, but all that sort of went away once we started looking at the witness and it’s disciples. I know a lot of people like vow, I do to, but we have to acknowledge that Rhulk has essentially no character. He isn’t doing what he does for any real reason, he arbitrarily idolizes the witness, and kills because I guess he likes too? He talks using a lot of darkness buzzwords, but if you look at his story he is clearly not an adherent to any of the actual ideologies associated with the darkness (for instance, Rhulk’s power is given to him by the witness, he didn’t earn any of it. Remember the time Oryx discovered that the reason the hive where loosing was that their power was given to them, so he killed his god to take that power for himself?). Things like this are true with the witness and all of its disciples, they are morally hollow characters who stand for nothing but being antagonists to the marvel-esque cavalcade of “heroes” that bungie has been piecing together over the last couple years. Even the witness himself is guilt of this, it’s entire motivation boils down to “being alive can hurt so no one should live anymore”, I appreciate that bungie is at least trying to give one of their characters an actual reason to do anything on the story, but to be honest this has to be the most shallow motivation this franchise has ever seen.
AGREE. It definitely isn't part of a 10 year plan, I remember leading up to the release of D2 they were talking about how they wanted to step away from the darkness for a bit, because for the development of D1 they didn't even really know what it was. Maybe someone could make an argument for D2 credits with the ship, but we didn't meet him until shadowkeep, in which he...talked at us. That's it.
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx Unfortunately no, I am just a person who leaves the occasional, highly opinionated, comment on a destiny video. I can take a crack at going deeper into why I feel that the end credit scene to the witch queen was the death of destiny's story at a later date, and if I do I will probably leave it here since you asked about it. Thanks for complimenting my ability to complain though!
You are right, the witness was never a thing till the early witch queen Story drafts. Till then they ran with the idea of an 5th darkness race, they had it even planned out, they where called the veil funnily enough. Since before d1 Release they teased the pyramid ships and the 5th darkness race, but they scrapped all of it after the Activision Split. In the original Story of destiny, the one that gor scrapped the pyramids would have played a bigger part in d1 and its dlc's, one could argue that the attack on the last City was originally planned to be carried out by the pyramids and their army and not ghaul. There is even concept art to support this. But in the end they scrapped that whole plotline of an darkness race, all the teases during the forsaken year where meant to be for a darkness race, but after the Activision Split they scrapped it, and they came up with the witness and a lot of lazy excuses
For me, witch queen was a double-edge sword. On one side, we had the greatest narrative campaign ever in destiny history. On the other side, the main overarching antagonist, the darkness, was completely and utterly destroyed. The original lore doesn’t make sense anymore. The whole idea of the collapse happening to many species before humanity doesn’t make sense anymore; the new explanation doesn’t make sense. Elsi’s alternate timeline doesn’t make sense; the veil was never a factor in that timeline and in the end the traveler is destroyed, which isn’t what the final shape is. Nothing makes sense. The only thing that makes sense is why Destiny is hemorrhaging players.
Actually, it was by not being revealed to the Witness, they even hinted that with why Elsie could time travel when the Traveler and the Witness clash, that it is intentional by the Traveler. The point of the Final Shape is not to destroy but to reap what causes suffering, which would be death of those who wouldn’t survive it while those how can will no longer suffer.
@@MW2proification but if the traveler was destroyed (which Savathun was trying to prevent, originally), then the witness couldn't achieve the final shape. Which it is now using the traveler to do, rather than destroying it. The veil not even existing in alternate timeline is still also an eyebrow raiser, and Bungie not even knowing what their main overarching villain was, especially after rewriting the story a year before Destiny released shows a rocky foundation for the story. There have been some great story beats and characters, but when the foundation crumbles and the story changes, the main villain becomes less compelling, especially when we don't get much personality from it. I feel nothing when I look at the Witness outside of "future raid boss." It felt like what was an incomprehensible eldritch horror became something much less.
@@ThePaulper It's not that it didn't existed, it just wasn't in the Witness' possession at the time, which is why the Traveler projects light to counter the darkness which ends that point in a timeline. I think that with the establishment of the Era of Darkness they got their villain down, it was a manner on how to introduce it. They stated that the Witness is suppose to be this calm, collected being who is above the universe, in it's own plane sort of existence, something it sees the universe's efforts as trivial, and that is sort of what Eldritch horror is, outside the universe kind of comprehension.
I enjoy the Witness as a concept, but to me the character suffers from the lack of proper foreshadowing and the writing I guess. I would have also loved if the Disciples were a bit more menacing, more foreboding instead of mostly being contained in a single raid. I had an idea for a raid encounter a while back where the raid team would attempt confront a disciple head on, then be forced to retreat because the disciple decided to take us seriously. Could even have a similar layout to the wicked implement mission from the Season of the Deep. The guardians getting chased through a dark labyrinth attempting to survive until they finally reach a safe zone, or maybe the disciple was again merely toying with us. Idk i thought it was interesting lol.
That was th Final Stand moment for Rhulk. He didn't take us seriously because he thought of us as weak wielders of the Light, and would taunt us with lines like "You drew blood, good." Or "Take your time." His Final Stand was when he realized that we were a threat, and tried to smother us with his overwhelming Darkness.
That sounds like a fun raid But that would require a desperate non badass scramble to get out of dodge and that wouldn't enforce the power fantasy which Bungie and its stories have consistently provided. Which I don't really think would work with how bungie writes stuff. Guess they could pull from the work'canorter (or whatever it's called) from marathon but that thing was a legitimate "I kill everyone" object which really wasn't that interesting.
@@Wormy_fren I get what you mean, but if these are the big bad's henchmen then I feel like the stakes should be higher. Even the heroes in power fantasies need to struggle a bit so they can grow stronger, make it a little more realistic. However, like you said it's not Bungie's thing. I just think there's so much potential that is not being realized.
Personally if not for the arrogance debuff, I found Rhulk to be pretty intimidating. I would even go so far as to say you could have swapped his design with the Witness's and just have him be the main antagonist. Rhulk looks absolutely predatory.
They showed the Pyramids in the loading screen for the D1 open beta, and from then up until the end of Red War I thought they must be an unused concept. Glad they're still canon, but man I wish a lot of the endgame stuff had been handled differently
I always felt as though pre-Destiny 2 the writing simply had a much different and darker, grimier tone. It helped that in Destiny 1 the graphics had that older, darker look, and the general aesthetics of things were much more post apocalyptic and all that. I loved that darker tone.
I think it would be sick if the witness stayed the witness until we defeated it, only for it to explode and release all of the members of it's race across the system, leading to the new race: The witnesses (or witness for short) (and no, I don't mean the people who knock at your door) they are not as powerful as the Witness as a whole, but still terrifying, and trying to piece themselves back together to get revenge on the guardian hat defeated them
Nah thats ass..this game needs to end after the light and dark saga nobody will give a shit,just like avengers after end game..the witness looks fucking trash,and I don't get how he is equal to traveller wen traveller bestowed him with powers 😂😂😂
i think the issue is that we went from terrifying cosmic horror that we didn't understand and were always one step behind. now we have found out that the witness is really just another stereotypical villain that's a megalomaniac and is mad at the traveler. it's just not as intimidating. the witness now has a clear motive that we can comprehend, whereas before the voice within the darkness was a force of nature that we couldn't just shoot at to make it go away. they really trapped themselves in a corner with their writing, especially when they made the reveal of who the witness really is in that one cutscene. ik it's hard to make a video game villain that players will eventually need to interact with in some capacity, but bungie has proven before that they are capable of tackling a task like that with their writing. even though nezarec was ultimately pretty lame in the raid, the lore surrounding him was actually quite good and interesting. the witness, however, just requires a plot mcguffin to defeat. like for all we know all the guardians could just stand in a circle together and sing about the power of friendship and boom the witness is dead or something. nobody is very interested in the witness because there are entities like the nine that we know much less about. it just leaves a painfully obvious opportunity for bungie to write in that the nine finally reveal themselves as a last ditch effort to save the universe. to sum this all up, bungie blew their load way too quick.
I mean we had “big monster “ antagonists in Destiny 2 before. I think it’s refreshing to see a weak looking antagonist that even the hive queens are terrify of.
@@nokturn882I can appreciate that that was the intent, and that's what they originally had planned for Calus. Back around the time of the Glykon we knew his body was in a state of severe degradation and only his inner circle were ever allowed to see his true form. I'm fine with physically weak villains. I just don't like the Witness's design, I think it needed a few more revisions. I won't break all of my problems with it down now, but just one example: they wanted to visually hint at it having multiple people in one body. They could have accomplished that with just the afterimages, the smoke coming out of his head is a bad design choice.
@@nokturn882 The witness is just badly designed. Nothing really do with "weak looking" it has to do with the face of the witnes that just ruins the charecter completely. They managed to make the main super villain of the whole Destiny universe look incredibly derpy and each time i see the witness i just straight up laugh and that sucks becouse bungie is amazing when it comes to charecter art design. Bungie simply dropped the ball
The Witness as a villain is a bit... off, if you ask me. For years, we didn't know what it was or what its intent was. All we thought was that it was another army to fend off when the time came. But learning about the pyramids, speaking to The Witness itself through our ghosts, all to just outright learn a large chunk of the truth from Savathun... Bungie was definitely cooking, but I'm not sure where their recipe was going once we learned about The Witness. Right before and during Lightfall, The Witness finally found us and decided to turn our initial showdown with it into a one-sided playground brawl. Our Guardian may have slain gods in the past, but to walk up to an entity that could LITERALLY cut you down with a simple thought... Finally! An ACTUAL challenge!... Except we didn't get that. Instead, we go protect a McGuffin on the far side of Sol, just to lose and watch the one being we could've enjoyed killing right then and there, go inside our Giant Magic 8-Ball... This didn't feel like a loss. This was just a disappointment... like "your girlfriend falling asleep halfway through a session" kind of disappointment. Learning that The Witness is just an entire civilization, butthurt over the fact they couldn't get a purpose from The Gardener and called in a McGuffin to make one, just waters down this "villain" further. At this point, we might as well just take a queue from Warframe's spaghettified narrative arc. Let's treat The Witness like "The Indifference". I wonder what'll happen if we show it compassion instead of a fight? As for this "final shape"... in Bungie's terms, it's the "nightmarish calcification of the universe." Okay, but what IS it? Bungie's great with mysteries, don't get me wrong, but it's not much of a mystery when it falls pretty flat. Everyone believes it's either just a massive ZA WARUDO! for the entire universe or led to believe that it's the greatest thing to happen since sliced bread. Is The Witness even a villain anymore? Or are they trying to play God and isekai everyone into a reality where everything is their interpretation of "perfection"? Who's side are you even on? Bungie, throw us a damn bone already, and not one of Riven's please. If you're gonna foreshadow a "grand force" like The Witness, don't just retcon everything else that's happened and say "Oh, it was all just more of Savathun's deceptions. This is what actually happened!" cuz I think we can all agree that everyone's gotten bored of the whole deception arc by now. We're trying to slay a multi-facted entity, not play "I Spy" with The Hive or the Vex or...whatever. I know this just seems like a long-winded rant, but to make a point out of all this... Is the Witness a good or bad villain for Destiny? With all the shit we've been through, the concept of "villain" is just out the window. The Witness isn't a villain. Infact, I'd go as far as to say The Witness isn't anything... atleast, right now it isn't anything. Until we develop The Witness as a character in the next DLC, they're just an oxymoronic existence. A simple complexity that had no reason to exist, but it did.
I always thought that The Final Shape was a complete and utter rejection of chaos - which The Light represents. Chaos can't be modeled, as The Vex fail to do over and over again. It's complex and uncertain and random. Life reflects this. So, I've always thought that The Final Shape was the opposite of Life: Death. No humans, no ghosts, no species. No entropy, no energy, no change. A frozen universe waiting to be designed from the ground up and cast on a stage where all events are known: past, present, and future. We'll see what story they tell though.
Since the Hive were our introduction of the Final Shape, I always figured that it'd be something similar to Sword Logic ie; all life being cut down to just one, all-powerful entity. Which the Darkness believed to be itself. I mean to The Darkness, to prove that you must exist you have to defeat anything that threatens your existence. It offers an interesting view on an alien morality. We see the Darkness as evil because it wants to kill us, but It sees us as unwilling to face the truth.
I liked the Darkness as a race rather than a single individual. When you make the villain one big super villain, then it becomes relatively straightforward as to how to proceed, storywise; find a way to beat them. And they have to do so, because Destiny is a live service game and unless they decide to shut down Destiny, the Witness literally cannot win against us. We ARE going to win, whether that's satisfying narratively or not. I do not believe for a single second Bungie is going to have us lose or be on the back foot at all. When the villain is an entire race, like the Hive and the Taken, they are still threats, even after their boss is taken care of, relatively speaking. They're still running around as a species and are still threats in-universe. With the Witness, we beat Megamind, the Pyramids shut down, because no one's controlling them. With the Pyramids gone, the Nightmares, the actual shadow figures depicted in Race 5, will also dissipate. There's no chance of continues for the Darkness as a threat when the Witness goes down. I feel it's an incredibly disappointing outcome for the Darkness as a race and a concept. The Darkness began as an enigmatic force with fingers in seemingly every pie, its true nature unknowable, uncountable. The Witness feels limited; it controls everything. It's the actual power behind the Pyramids, behind the Nightmares, it was responsible for the Hive's existence. To be honest, I feel like it's laziness on the part of Bungie. Why make an entire new race when you can make a handful of bosses that won't be seen outside of their respective environments? I also think they realized that bringing the original idea behind the Darkness; a smooth, suave talker that wanted us on its side and was willing to talk first, instead of fighting, requires a bit more effort narratively speaking. We COULD have had the Witness communicating with us through the Unknown Artifact we picked up from Shadowkeep, and have it try to persuade us philosophically speaking. Then, we'd have a choice come it's arrival; join it and turn on the Last City, or stay true and stand against it. That was the vibe I originally got when Lightfall was revealed, way back when; "A side must always be chosen, even if it's the wrong side," and Bungie I would guess canned that concept.
Straight up they were too lazy to make a new race so they made a single guy with a smoke-stack head and came up with some "every member of the species combined themselves into one body" bs. The dude literally shrugged off a full blown attack from the traveler at what was basically point blank range, and yet 6 guardians are supposed to kill him in a raid next expansion? Lazy writing all around man, thats all there is to it. We literally hold only a fraction of the travelers power within ourselves, whereas the witness is so powerful that it literally forced the traveler itself on a never-ending retreat throughout the cosmos. I'd also like to point out that the ONLY reason the traveler didnt abandon us is because rasputin shot it down to prevent it from leaving, and by the time it healed itself the darkness was already here so it HAD to fight.
"Couldn't think of an accurate criticism, so I resulted to a stupid meme." Surprised you didn't go with the cat meme too The Witness is very alien in appearance. What other alien species has smokey faces billowing out of it's head, and being over 200 feet tall?
One of the criticisms of the D1 story was the lack of a villain we care about fighting. The Black Heart and the Darkness were faceless entities were told were threats but we didn't feel threatened by. This lead them to focus on having a villain that you can see, hear and fight for every story they tell, and I believe is this what lead them to create the Witness and a stand in for the ambiguous Darkness
I remember being so hyped when I saw the pyramid ships at the end of the Red War campaign. Nothing in Destiny's history has been as disappointing for me as how the Darkness/Witness turned out. The Black Fleet arrived over 3 and a half years ago. They arrived to cause sunsetting, do basically nothing for 3 expansions, and then screw off once we defeat the Witness. The overreliance on lazy seasonal content and playing it safe has not only caused issues for the game, it has made a massive dents into the story. Just like when Bungie wrote out every faction in the story so people would stop asking for faction rallies to return, making the Witness a culmination of it's entire race was done so people couldn't ask why there wasn't a new race. The destination was planned out, but a horrible route was taken to get there. It is one thing to slightly retcon very old lore, the amount of retcons to relatively new lore in order for events to play out over the last two expansions has worsened the story. Needed Splicer tech to get into the Vex Network, now we can just do it ourselves. Zero real explanation for this. Rhulk is the last of his kind yet we have a new enemy type that is basically just tiny Rhulk with a different color scheme. I could list many other problems like this but we would be here all day. I'm tired of the "you weren't given the full story" style of writing. When it works, it works really well, like the reveal that the Witness circumvented the Traveler from empowering the Krill. The problem is that it has been done too many times which makes lore harder to keep up with. You never know when established lore is just going to change because Bungie needs it to work differently to push the story forward.
I remember the very first time when we defeated Ghaul, and the blast of Light slinging across the space area and then covering the Pyramid ships, and then the ships came alive I remember so vividly like it was yesterday I was so actually kind of nervous and scared about what kind of enemy we have awoken
Just from a storytelling/ plot perspective, an massive fleet of ominous looking ships with unknown purposes only to find out there they’re completely empty, and don’t hold any crew or anything else, just completely invalidates the entire storyline they are included in. WHY do I care if a fleet of these ships shows up? It’s like a Used car lot showing up overnight. You’re not confused or scared, you’re more like “oh, ok I guess”.
I feel like if there was no Witness and Bungie didn’t explicitly say the pyramid ship were it wouldn’t as bad, plus then they could’ve had it were you explore the ships only to stumble across enemies like the disciples or just something that is actually intimidating. But instead we have Megamind’s inbred uncle.
Something i think could've been cool was if instead of merging into 1 being, each ship was controlled by the members of the race; they've had millenia to discover and practice with the darkness AND golden age tech, maybe if they saw us starting to succeed against them *then* they start to worry and merge into the witness. Idk just a thought i had
I've been looking back at old expansions now that we know they were trying not to overdeliver, and hear me out on this. I think that's what the Nightmares were going to be originally. If you do 5 seconds of searching, you can see a _lot_ of the original concept art of the Witness gave it a red aura. The Nightmares are red and are associated with the pyramids. What if, instead of the smokestack coming out of its head, the Witness could just release some of the personalities stored inside itself to carry out specific tasks, like pilot or guard the Pyramids? I think we almost got a new enemy race but got bungie'd out of it.
@@xXx_Regulus_xXxthat’s probably very likely honestly considering shadowkeep was supposed to be the last dlc before D3. The nightmares could’ve been a sneak peak at the new enemy race that would’ve been the main focus of D3.
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx yeah they ran with the idea of an enemy darkness race but they scrapped it. It was called the veil, and there is concept art for it, but they scrapped it, maybe because they didnt wanna overdeliver or it was too much work.
The good and memorable villains in this game are ones that simply hearing their name is a threat. Oryx being a threat due to his sheer power, and the fact our name was on his hit list. Savathun is debatably even more so of a threatening and meaningful villain because of her constant involvement in the background coupled with her ability to deceive and be one step ahead for her own agenda. I’d even say SIVA, on its own, was a villainous threat due to using the fallen and boost them to a new level of power at the time. The Witness I felt was initially threatening because of the idea of its armada of power. With what encounters of the pyramids we’ve had beforehand, from a narrative perspective, the pyramid’s push the idea of doom, as each time we’ve been in contact with them, we have never come out on top. And after finally going in an active one in Witch Queen and fighting Rhulk, each and every pyramid’s mystique and capability was brought up to that standard in our minds. But knowing what we do now about the Witness and its pyramids, it’s like a lot of them are just empty vessels for the Witnesses goals, which just feels so shallow. And I don’t get the sense that this is what caused the collapse, since when the Witness finally confronts us at the beginning of LightFall, literally nothing happened to us outside of the Witness going into the Traveller. There is no ‘second collapse doom’ actions going on since then, where the everyday actions we do have not changed, the dynamic of the game has not shifted since that moment because the threat is ‘delayed’ until we go to another expansion, and that just does not feel like a living, breathing world in the way Savathun, Oryx, and Rhulk did. Heck, even the idea of the worm gods and what they could do was threatening, until we find out they are a bunch of pushovers, which was really disappointing for me personally. The Witness does not feel like the ultimate villain this world has been building up to
D1 rise of iron was the pinnacle of awe for me. I loved the franchise and the possibilities kept me hooked. The aesthetic and mystery that was D1 was the magic I fell in love with. Along came D2 vanilla and it was like a kick in the nuts. They fixed most things with Forsaken but unfortunately the adults left afterwards and we’ve not seen that level of quality since. I hope Sony forces Bungie to abandon the laziness of EV and the Fortnite model and get back to quality content. Here’s to hoping!
Yes... Oryx also directly changed the game world, by introducing taken everywhere. The Witness just hid some planets away. Less instead of more... I actually felt a bit cheated by that. And we still have he Red Legion running around in the EDZ for some reason. :D
Honestly (I’m probably going to get my a*s kicked here and most likely deserve it too XD) I felt nothing with Oryx when I was younger all I saw in him was a boss to kill. Unfortunately a lot of the bosses or characters in the games I have played made me feel nothing too. Only certain ones I could connect with that made me feel something.
Look, I'll be blunt, the Witness is a mediocre villain as it currently stands. It had potential, and they squandered it... but frankly, that's not entirely the Witness' fault. In fact, I think the Witness being the big bad suffers from that whole "The Darkness" thing. If it was clear there was an entity behind the Darkness from the get-go, and not teased 6 years into the games' story, I bet your ass people would instead be saying "oh, hey, this big bad has had a lot of pretty good teasers, too bad the execution wasn't there" instead of saying the Witness was a bad villain from the beginning. I remember the old criticisms of Destiny's story, things really only started getting fully cohesive in the last few years. Previously it was just "villain of the week", and say what you want about the Witness (and to an extent, Eramis), but he is NOT that, and immediately puts it a step above most Destiny villains. Obviously, there's better ones who had their impact known (see: Oryx, Riven, the Fanatic (yes, I'm serious), Savathun, Xivu Arath, and Calus. I'm not counting Rhulk here because he showed up for all of 5 minutes, and as cool as he was, he really only served to give insight into the Witness and serves as nothing more than an errand boy). Yes, the Witness story-wise acts as that "fifth race" everyone keeps clamoring for yet Bungie seems to be unable or unwilling to delivery on, and it does suck you out of it. That said, I think the Witness CAN be redeemed in the Final Shape if we finally get insight into its thoughts directly from the Witness itself. That's why I think the writing for the Witness was better pre-Lightfall, its because we and characters in the story interacted with it directly and saw its power. Heck, there's a reason why everyone cites the scene where the Witness utterly terrifies Calus as the best scene in Lightfall or even in recent expansions. What we need is functionally Dominus Ghaul 2, but we need to interact with it much more. Have it poking and prodding us as to why we continue to fight, throughout the story, with it increasingly doing so as we approach. Have it ask the real existential questions, show it breaking, its rage over what it views as seemingly pointless existence, and best yet, don't answer any of those questions in-game. In fact, one of the ways the Witness could probably become instantly a great villain is if it shows us a world where we get everything we want if we just submit to it. Have it ask the question of who we are and what our fate really is. That, on top of Destiny's already pretty good Legendary campaign, would make the Witness one hell of a final villain. That said, I don't know if there truly is any redeeming the Witness in the eyes of the community, because this community is already so burned on the game, and the Witness has been the overarching villain for the main duration people started to really take issue with the game in recent years. They will likely point to the Witness and say that its fundamentally a bad villain at the core of its idea, which I would have to seriously disagree with. I think the Witness is a good idea, but just like everything else, it failed on an execution level because Bungie was having management and direction problems from within, and they didn't let the writers cook. Hopefully the Final Shape changes that.
13:15 no, that is absolutely the right wording. Lightfall (the current incarnation) was definitely thrown together. You don't even need to look at the many, MANY narrative failings to see it, all you need to do is look at the art direction itself. The neon, vaguely cyberpunk aesthetic of Neomuna does NOT fit with the art style of the rest of the game and sticks out like a sore thumb. It's pretty obvious that Neomuna was a reaction to the sudden popularity of the cyberpunk genre (just like the city Neon in Starfield).
I was so mad when we got Rhulk and another level in the hierarchy. I knew then that the Witness was just going to be some dude. I wish they had left it as some cosmic force.
Honestly, I love the concept behind the Witness and they are an interesting character. But they weren't really used that well, especially in _Lightfall._ But since their story isn't over yet, we'll just have to wait and see.
I was intriguied by The Witness when it was introduced, but I lost all respect for it as a villain in Lightfall when it screamed 'ENOUGH' when Callus was ranting at it, that came across to me like Kylo Ren and his trantrums when you expected something more like Darth Vader and his Force Choke to shut someone up.
But Darth Vader can get angry too, and we do see the Witness breaking Calus’ mind enough that he bleeds through his nose when he calmed down while showing his true form, and it does speak to Calus’ character that he could get someone like the Witness who is calm to get angry, to his own fault.
If was something in between vader's rage and Kylo's tantrum snap, would have been good. A lower but course raised tone of command with a snap/instant of a hand motion (with that delayed animation we see on his introduction... maybe even showing the follow through motion looking fractured/glitched) with Calus's reaction would have cemented it with a slow look back then just moving on once Calus folds. would have cemented that the witness is strictly business and not to be questioned... It really doesn't help that the witness is just.. looks like Megamind's little bro with a smaller skull and a unibrow with UWU eyes... Like even if each Pyramid is empty... could easily have had a Delamain treatment from Cyberpunk, just individuals (possibly the strongest) within the witness acting out via said pyramids... Cause it doesn't make sense how they were so... helpful...
Wouldn’t you get angry if someone much lower than you in power and rank tried to speak up to your plan. Calus didn’t see the plan of connecting to the veil worth his time and wanted more. He done something to calus as we see his head starts to bleed in whatever nightmare he was in likely had a part of nezarec involved
Ever known a parent to hit you before they warned you? Calus believed he was the reason he was successful in his conquests, when it was the Witness providing the resources The Witness got mad and shouted "Enough!" As a warning not to overstep If Calus had continued talking smack, he would've got smacked for real
I’ve heard the original devs talk about the original darkness “villain” and how truly evil and mysterious it was. Since darkness is more conceptual than physical or visible. Really makes the witness seem underwhelming since he’s just another boss. Feels like a huge waste of potential.
I just want to put this out there, The Witness is kind of a lackluster villain because it wasn't planned out ahead of time. On normal social media I'd link the article I'm quoting, but this is YT so that's not really possible. Anyway, here's a quote from Luke Smith back in 2017: "So, I think that at a point, just totally candidly? We had no idea what it was. Straight up. We had no clue," Smith said. "We didn’t know what it was, and we, for a period, we chose [that] we’re going to lump all the races [in together], and you see this in the tooltips in the game. 'Minions of the Darkness.' And we had taken all the races and said, 'Ah, they’ll just be the Darkness.' But that’s not what the IP deserves." So based on that, if there was any defined notion of what the Darkness was, it was this otherworldly force that the alien races were doing the bidding of. They wanted a face for the Darkness, which was a good idea and would make it easier to understand when we had beaten it, but the Witness doesn't really have the same iconic appearance as the "face," if you can call it that, of the Light, which is the Traveler. The pyramid ships are a good foil to the Traveler design-wise, but again since they wanted a single face an entire fleet has the same effect as the aliens being minions of Darkness. There can only be one. So they went with an iconic Grey alien for inspiration, but they knew enough to alter it, but the alterations they went with needed more work. His outfit is absolutely ridiculous and so are his baby eyes, unibrow tattoo, and smokestack head.
The concept for the witness as a whole people as one being is cool but I feel that it was lazy and they didn’t want to make a new enemy race for us to fight. I wished the witness would take its souls within themselves out and use the darkness subclasses against us to me that’s what the tormentors and subjugators should be the people of the witness not reskins of rhulk and nezerac. It would feel that they’ll be more dangerous as if they’re always there watching, hunting, and wanting to destroy us and that’s how I feel that’s what the final race should’ve been.
it makes me so happy seeing people talk about the old art and trailers. It still blows my mind we were supposed to met crow essentially where shay han is now, and crow not uldren, was supposed to be our rival type ally throughout the game. I love seeing that crow now
I haven’t even watched the video yet but I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR AGES!! I literally fell off Destiny entirely because of their release, I was so fucking disappointed they were revealed because it felt like everything we learned about the old darkness was ruined. Why couldn’t have the darkness ships just been a primordial force the exact same way as the traveller? I was so invested in Destiny lore but the second the witness was shown, it almost felt like a light switch went off in my head Also the “foreshadowing” of their reveal is shown throughout the game, yes. But when it feels like the only form of foreshadowing we got was in Forsaken, Shattered Throne, Shadowkeep, and the raid, and then what felt like nothing for literally 2 years? It feels kinda lazy ngl. Me personally? I didn’t connect that those statues and the witness were even the same until literally this video, especially because we didn’t actually get the witness’s origin revealed to us properly until another year later after more vague hinting
When designing the witness, they should’ve pounded the shrooms harder. It appearing as a mirror of ourselves was actually genius, because it was so eerie to see our character model acting so… out of character. Theatrical and smug. Should’ve kept that eerie mystery going.
You know, when I was playing Warframe the other day, it made me realize something; the Man in the Wall (the current main antagonist of Warframe) is literally just the Witness, but better as a character and villain in every single way. Unlike the Witness, the Man in the Wall doesn't just give us dark powers for literally no reason, he coerces us into a deal to get those powers under the idea that we owe him a debt that he eventually intends to collect, and we accept the deal out of pure desperation to save our friends. This makes him an interesting villain for multiple reasons: for one, he has a direct connection to us, the player, but he also clearly has some kind of goal he wants to achieve by forcing us into his "debt", even if we don't yet know what it is. As a result, the mystery of the Man in the Wall is actually intriguing and leaves the player excited to find out what he's planning. On the other hand, the mystery of the Witness is absolutely aggravating because despite being the "main antagonist" of the series, he literally doesn't interact with anyone whatsoever, outside of one interaction with us in Shadowkeep where he acts like the most generic bad guy anyone's ever seen, then giving us darkness for no reason in Beyond Light, and then a few talks with Calus in Lightfall. That's it. That's literally every single thing the Witness as done in our story, so the fact that we're now supposed to treat him like some complex character in the Final Shape as if we know him in any capacity is just downright insulting.
What makes me especially frustrated is the witness would’ve had a way more intriguing design if they simply just moved his head down so it’s only the plume of smoke/faces where a head should be. That would’ve at least made him come across more that he’s not just one entity but many. Having a solid face just makes him way more tangible than he should have been.
It was trying to tempt us with power, and where to find it on Europa where humanity was practicing darkness too, and Neomuna is where Savathun stored the Veil which was key to it’s plan.
I think the Darkness always worked better as a nebulous, faceless evil at the corners of awareness in older seasons. It made it much more spooky and intimidating, as you really had no idea what it could do and if it was going to suddenly throttle you to death without warning. I think Lightfall and Final Shape would have been vastly improved by keeping the Darkness as it used to be before the Witness, and essentially having Darkness Zones become omnipresent across the system as a lore thing and not just a gameplay mechanic, and rather than just preventing resurrection, the Darkness would be actively choking the life from the Sol system just like it did during the Collapse. It would really give you the feeling that the Darkness is omnipotent and omnipresent, and really put the hopelessness in fighting against it. It would be more like fighting an eldritch horror than trying to fight some guy.
Joseph Staten’s original story was far better. A shame it was cut up and relegated to grimore cards. What we have now is a phoned in story more dictated by poor management and engine restrictions. Killing off faction vendors, rasputin and others because they could no longer fit them into this mess of a story.
When I first saw the Witness’ design, I’ll admit, I thought it looked a little goofy, but he also looks extremely out of place in the Destiny universe. I think in an abstract way, it works.
Before I watch, imma leave my opinion on what we should've been fighting in the final DLC: We should've been facing something shapeless, Eldritch horror type shit. Similar to the feeling we got on that mission for the cowboy rifle. Not what we fought there, but rather that feeling we got. Something was moving and we can't see it, the ship is dead silent with creaks. The darkness foe at the end shouldn't have a shape. It should redefine our understanding of a god. Example, anyone remember the big bad at the end of the Green lantern movie? Big space monster thing? That. That right there, in a final battle, at the star pools location. It should utilize every mechanic at random making the fight more diverse and intense, forcing half the team to control zones while the other half splits to collect and bank motes; unfettered chaos. And an enemy that has no shape. The only way to kill them or do damage is by accomplishing said mechanics to get powered ammunition that fire in every reality, damaging them.
I don't think we need The Witness to interact with our guardian 1 on 1, I think the kind of character the witness is should be defined by its minions and disciples like Rhulk. It should be like that one lore entry where the unnamed Disciple ruminates on the final shape, and how the witness is unknowable to even its followers, who all have their own idea of the final shape. There should have been a whole rogue's gallery of disciples acting as our main antagonist while the witness is just giving the orders. If Rhulk was actually a prominent actor in WQ rather than only interacting with the guardians in his first and last appearance, it would have been great. Rhulk is the only one of the Witness' cronies that actually wants to pursue the final shape, and through him we actually got to learn what the witness wants. Everyone else in the cast of villains either betrays the witness, doesn't care. or has a flawed understanding of the final shape that runs counter to its true goals. Imagine like a cutscene where all the big bad guys are in a room arguing over the final shape with Rhulk while the witness just goes "ENOUGH" like that cutscene in lightfall, leaving all the disciples silent and obedient and showing that the witness only cares about its own idea of the final shape. Rhulk should have been like the final boss before the final boss of the witness, not some janitor sent to keep savathun in line who can't even do that job.
The fact that the witness can straight up possess our ghost, that possession caused the veil to link with it to go inside the traveler and none of this brought up through the seasonal storylines that whatever plan the vanguard alliance would come up with would already be seen by it with how much our guardian and by extension, ghost? There's also no pressing issue on how that plan can be sabotaged by the witness using ghost to put a wrench in the works? This should have come up by now after the light fall finale with this season being the one where they stop the witness possessing ghosts.
The witness is an extremely bad villain. The darkness should have been something dark and terrifying, a whole new species with extreme power, not a pale guy with a smoking head. The witness looks like something out of a kids movie.
The witness as a whole reminds me of those aliens in mass effect Andromeda, a big nothing burger of disappointment. I can't even remember the name of them. But as Ryder was using that mysterious alien tech and terraforming planets you had those things trying to stand against us and for what, for who. That's what the witness feels like.
I feel like giving The Witness a face was a bad idea. It talking through the ghost was pretty cool and same goes for it speaking to the Guardian as their doppelganger in Shadowkeep's ending. A formless entity, a voice in the Dark. Either way, I do like it is something that uses the Darkness as a weapon just as the Guardians use the Light. Makes the Light and Dark more neutral and more just forces natural to the universe.
Honestly the last raid boss who caused the collapse should’ve been the main villain he loooks like something that could bring the end to the known universe while the witness looks like a minion of him tbh
The hive were the original darkness in a sense. Xivu shouldve been built up to be thanos, with savathun being used as a loki type. The witness just came out of left field
I mean, I like the Witness, and there’s definitely more to it than we’ve seen, but I wish they had gone with more of a cosmic horror approach. Between the goofy ahh face and knowing ahead of time that we’ll win, it’s hard to be very intimidated by it.
I think the idea of The Witness is a great idea for a villain. The problem with The Witness is that we have only just met the guy. We have heard *about* the things he has done. But we have yet to *experience* the things he has done for ourselves. That's where his villany drops for me. We have experienced Ghaul, we have experienced Savathun, we have experienced Oryx. Their names still give us that satisfying, ohh snap. We don't get that with The Witness or his disciples. We just get the ohh, I heard about that guy vibe. Perhaps if the Witness would actually lead a race or a contingent of races enslaved to it or otherwise unable to resist his power with Rhulk and his other disciples in command of this army; then there would probably be more to tell. Because empty ships that look cool is only a fraction of displaying ones intergalactic power. Having an army is another. Is he written to need an army? Well no, but The Witness isn't displaying his power enough. When he does it shows how powerful he is, but we need to see more of that. Perhaps instead of having empty ships we are fighting aspects of his people in the ships or at the very least see them hovering about like how we see nightmares hover about causing darkness to sabotage/torment players as they venture through the corridors of the Pyramid ships. Now wouldn't that be a great display of his power? I'd think so. It just goes to show a great villain isn't one who is simply all powerful, but one who can demonstrate to the audience what their strengths, influence, and their motives and reasoning. All the villains I had mentioned prior demonstrated all of those things to us. The Witness has yet to truly show us all of that; we have seen, but a glimpse of it. Which would sound cool if we weren't already in the last expansion of this saga.
its poetic that our guardian describes the pyramid ships as "empty". the pyramids should have brought a new race into the game but arrived empty, and lore wise feel empty with them slapping the "this pyramid belonged to _________ disciple of the witness" even the witness's own pyramid ship really doesn't add anything to it as a character which you think it would considering how much you learn about Rulk in his own pyramid ship, Rulk came out of nowhere in witch queen and his story was amazing, the witness's story feels like a 10 year plan that isn't going anywhere, hope bungie can amend this issue
The Witness Sucks. Making your Main Antagonist Megamind with an Unibrow has had to be one of the worse move Bungie could have done. We waited years to finally get a new race, but Bungie was too lasy to make one, so instead we have a CG Cutscene Villain with dumb motivations and no on-screen presence, and a couple darkness themed enemies here and there... And big empty pyramid ships you never really spend much time in...
To me The Witness is just a visual representation of the darkness we are fighting. Like you said it doesn't feel threatening, we have been fighting many things that had felt like if we didn't surpass them humanity would have been doomed, and although this might be the case too, it really doesn't feel like it. The Witness hasn't really been present in the game, every other villain has been doing its bidding so It's a little hard to feel scared of something that isn't really there or hasn't caused us any harm.
Honestly I liked the aspect of the pyramids being just an un killable god with a hive mind vs the traveler. A god that has no form so it takes one. Take the final battle of the original d1 campaign but on a larger scale basically. Now the pyramids just seem pointless and now darkness isn't even truly darkness and is just some knock off of the traveler it's disappointing
If only the writers we're great at narratives in Destiny... I like the yin-yang concept that originally was The Traveler & The Black Fleet but that was changed to The Veil not that long ago. The Witness doesn't feel like an end all be all villain to me.
Well,, as i look at the Witness he reminds me of Mara and the Awoken. Maybe if Mara was to combine with all her people, a Witness type entity is what u may get
I actually liked D1 a lot better in that regard. Yes, the story was confusing and vague, but "the darkness" felt overwhelming and almost like we would not be able to comprehend it. Whe Witness is a lot less complex. His motives are pretty basic. I hope he is just a puppet or one aspect of the darkness. There just has to be something more.
@@oryxfirstnavigator4795 Sorry, I should have said "motivation'". We know that the race of the Witness was looking for purpose. That is why they tried to connect the Veil to the Traveler. The final shape is likely the combination of light and dark. Maybe with the Witness as a host? Something like that. Regardless I find the light and the darkness way more appealing as concepts. The "game" they are playing. I understand it as a clash of philosophies. Reminds me a bit of Babylon 5 with the Shadows and Vorlons. Two ancient races that simply have different visions for the universe, but in the end have to leave the fate of the galaxy to the younger races and disappear. In Destiny it feels even more epic, as we know less about the Traveler and the Darkness than we know about The Witness.
@@vjfxtheoryNot in a traditional sense. Things didn't seem random though. It felt more like there was a big story and nobody told you anything. The locations hinted many things. Like in old horror movies. You didn't get to see the monster. That worked better as today, as it was left to your imagination. D2 reveals too much. It does not feel mysterious and grand anymore.
I feel like the Witness is a case of monks who have used the dark arts to make themselves immortal in their pursuit for the meaning to life. It's stoic because they don't care about individual life or grandiose schemes like Ghaul, Oryx, and Savathun did. It's also why they don't make any grand showings of force because they see Guardians and Lightbearers in general insignificant fleas compared to their plan to shape the universe in their image. Calus so far is the only known Disciple to have seen what the Witness may truly look like after pissing them off and I honestly don't want to know what Calus saw that frightened him as badly as it did. I find it strange that Calus described the Witness quite well when he was insulting them.
Personally I think the witness is written brilliantly, his stoic demeanor makes him emotionally impenetrable making him feel fiscally impenetrable.I also feel like him somewhat ignoring the guardian and making us feel like lesser of a threat, gives some scale to his power.
I was hoping the witness would have an army similar to the covenant where it was multiple races in one. we could get some new races mixed with the old but not with a stinky taken paint or wrathborn
Finding out more about the witness should be worth the wait I hope. But that being said, he’s still mysterious and what makes him terrifying is he didn’t have to blow anything up or cause I ton of damage. He just stole our planets opened up the our source of power and just went right through like it was nothing. We talk about salvathun being tricky but the witness literally used cailis , had him do his dirty work and find the veil knowing we were going to go after him and once were there he used our ghost to connect the veil and open the portal.
It's been SO long since red war that i actually did not remember this scene at all. I remember the pyramid in shadowkeep but otherwise it's been too long, and without access to older dlc i cannot appreciate it for what it truly was
I've been saying this for soon long, before the introduction of the witness, this game is following an old book I read back in elementary school, I can't remember the name, but the premises of the story of peace and chaos are two sources of power (light and dark) and there is a character (originally perceived as the big bad meanie) and the entire story this this person trying to being forth the final shape (literally called that in the book) basically you eventually learn that peace (the light) isn't as good as everyone thinks and is actually extremely only caring about preserving itself and avoiding chaos, where chaos is causing chaos looking for peace, it finds it and they inevitably merge and everyone thinks it's over but it reveals the true intentions of the bad guy is to merge peace and chaos and create harmony (ying and yang) the idea is that you cannot have one without the other and then being seperate was actually not good and was creating an imbalance and overflow of pease in certain areas and unending chaos in others, when they merged it was able to balance out and everyone was able to experience harmony
I like what they’ve done to an extent. I like the design, I like the multiple voices going on. I like the distance we have between the witness and us as it gives this menacing boss feel. However, the lack of specific darkness enemies and lack of population inside the pyramid ships is kinda disappointing. Hoping this might change soon
Back in d1 their was so much mystery even tho the stories themselves were poor, the grimoire cards kept u interested and answered questions we wanted to know.
The witness can’t see the guardians as a threat, it’s way too confident that its plans won’t go sideways, and it also always welcomes us to take the darkness path, that’s why we can’t see it as a threat either. But maybe if we know what is the final shape will look like we might be a little more afraid of its outcomes.
i think we shouldn't have been able to weild the darkness at all. maybe stasis could be a neat exception, since it has more of a reason. lightfall and witch queen really desensitized the darkness, which is terrible for the story. the darkness should've stayed faceless, the witness shouldn't have existed at all. it would've been much better if it were just a cult of disciples that all followed a "god" which would be something similar to the traveler, just manifesting in a non-physical way. A voice that will speak through others, something that can control others, something more mysterious.
Honestly while the Witness itself damages and retcons most of the og darkness lore, i find lightfalls structure to be the most damaging. Bungie admitted that they experimented in the year of Lightfall when it came to story structure, pretty much just being a testing subject. Of course this heavily backfired being the year before the final chapter of a saga. Instead of drip-feeding a whole dlcs worth of lore over a year, i believe had they stuck to their original way of story telling - the witness wouldve been fleshed out much more. Seasons could've been made about the Witness, its past, its motive, the disciples, the fleet, ultimately giving bungie a window to smooth out the storys new retcons...but no its just, how do you go through the portal (forget about the witness stop asking questions, heres a cutscene about it that shouldve been in lightfall). I wouldve loved to see more discipes like Rhulk and Nazarec, hell i reckon instead of saying the ships are empty say, "yeah every ship has a disciple - like Rhulk - each one is a champion, a lone survivor from each and every uplifted race the Witnesses has wipedout. Theyre just asleep until theyre called upon by their master. That would already be such a cool concept. Its just disappointing really, what Bungie has snubbed.
Not gonna lie, having played God Eater 2 a ton recently makes me sad knowing what could've been for the Darkness and Witness. God Eater is relatively obscure but the enemy designs have some creepy and uncanny looks, with some Eldritch and badass ones also sprinkled in. Ouroboros, Dyaus Pita, Kyuubi, Hannibal, etc. all looked cool or uncanny in appearance. Ouroboros is even referred to as "an affront to nature" due to what it is, a mass of legs that can split into multiple tentacles with numerous eyes on its face. I wish the Witness looked like that, like a face that resembled a ceramic head similar to the Demiurge in God Eater instead of Megamind. Something uncanny would've made the Witness more interesting, though I did enjoy the memes that came from their reveal
The darkness and story of Destiny has changed so much over time. Most of the people who made Destiny 1 worked for years only for the story to get scrapped last minute and they had to delay the game from 2013 to 2014. Most of the og members who worked on Destiny 1 eather left or changed their work for other DLC's or ideas. After Destiny 2 almost 2/5 of the og members left Bungie and new people had to fill in the gaps. The story has changed a lot from the original story. The darkness was supposto be the spawn of the traveler in the original story from the 2013 version of Destiny 1 and the traveler was going to be the big enemie much like the Halo story (halo rings) with the speeker telling lies about the traveler in wich we would meet Crow. Later they changed the "darkness" from a real enemie race to something new and bungie got stuck on ideas on what the darkness was going to be after the lunch of Destiny 1 in 2014. Bungie did want to make the darkness as a real threat during the time of Forsaken leading up to the aphelion as the real darkness with the weekly visit of mara sov and the Forsaken season like Season of Gambit and Penumbra (Season of Opulence). We were supposed meet them later on but that changed after beyond light. Bungie have had many ideas for the darkness but sadly the impact and threat have faild story and gameplay wise and I belive this has to do with the shift they made during shadowkeep. From what I understand from countless people I have spoken about game studios. Bungie has most likely had diffrent menagement teams on the story and later on a new writers or lore author's had taken up the old workes of the story, making their own spin on what the darkness or what ever the topic could be. This is not surprising considering that the people who made the original story made it around 14 years ago and people have left and joined during that time. Tbh from what I ennvisioned the darkness to look like it would be like a walking shadow monster with two small eyes and a body that can change it''s shape with dark fog coming out from it's body. The darkness supers where going to be just one. With it suppressing light by engulfing light from other guardians and shaping weapons from the darkness much like Hel from the Thor movie. This is just what I would have wanted to see from the darkness supers. Maby something more like fog or shadow like but never Ice or green rope. RANT OVER
I’m gonna go ahead and say right away- *yes* the Witness is a *very* bad character, as it was _never_ referenced in any way in the context of the lore up until WQ. The Darkness was definitely referenced, for sure, but there was never the intent to present it as a physical character (just like the Traveler). Many theories about the voice in the darkness came about during D2, but they were (thankfully) aimed mostly towards characters we knew, so it gave some mystery, and some more intensity. I for one, prefer what the Darkness *was* in D1 and pre WQ D2; a mysterious fleet of pyramid ships, made by the Darkness to be used by its emissaries- specifically, in my opinion, *the hive.* But whatever, it’s all retconned nonsense now that isn’t that interesting.
It would have been cool if the seasons this year had shown some indication of the Witness's progress within the Traveler. Like if each season the Traveler looked increasingly poisoned or dimmer, and then for that to somehow manifest in the various patrol zones, like constant storm clouds in the skyboxes instead of bright blue skies.
Between harvesting guardians to make void crystals, Oryx, Savathun, and state of Earth’s moon the Hive always felt like our most personal enemy as Guardians. Everyone else had their issues but the Hive felt anti-us.
Something as simple as changing the traveler entryway each week. Changing the design or color that is observable from the con of the ship and it registering in lore as creating panic in the city would go a very long way. All the main characters could be depicted, in their own ways, trying to calm the city by announcing the long shot plan and trying to carry on with seasonal stuff despite it creating a looming doom effect.
I’m interested in The Witness as a character because of the few times we see the stoic facade fade. It makes me think of other moments in the game. Rhulks final words could very well be a disciple feeling guilt for failing the one he believes in or could be that he glimpsed the Witness’s rage before.
I get this feeling that The Witness was a cry for help from Bungie. I remember watching the vidoc of Lightfall, and a Bungie studio member said (paraphrasing): "We finally know our enemy, at it is The Witness". You could almost hear the emphasis on the word, "we". Like Bungie themselves finally have an idea on the true villain of Destiny, after 7 YEARS!
They should show our battle through the traveler. Like maybe it becomes different shades of colors while we’re battling or maybe pulsating as we break the reality within it
It's like Bungie watched Bleach and saw Aizen Sosuke and thought, "hey, we can make a villain like that", but completely failed to understand what made Aizen such and intimidating and interesting villain in the first place and that being he actually had a personality besides 'cold and stoic'.
It just feels very generic sci fi villian. I love savathun’s whole design theme with moths and the three green eyes being her distinct thing. The witness is just so… bland? The little lore snippet we got breaking down how the witness’ civilization melded themselves together, but nothing really after that.
Bill Nighs speaker talking about the Traveler bring back great memories. D2 should’ve never been a thing they should’ve just continued adding DLC and updates.
I’ve just had a crazy thought. What if the first guardians were so strong nothing stood in their way and they were craving for a challenge. They come across their first Ahamkara dragon and it offers them a wish. The guardian wishes for a challenge worthy of their power and something to test them and their abilities as much as possible. The Ahamkara grants this wish but only in a generic and confusing way, by creating an unknown enemy that can extinguish the life and light of a guardian in the right circumstances. No-one else knows about the wish so they assume a new major enemy which has no real form or name, has attacked them. But instead it is the formless “Darkness”, a complete contrast to the Light wielded by guardians. Imagine it is then found out the Ahamkara created the Darkness to test the guardians based on their wish - this would be a valid reason to start the Great Hunt, especially if an Ahamkara refused to reverse the original wish. Now eons later an entity has appeared with similar powers which we all label as the Darkness just because we’ve never been able to put a face to the name. But think about it. If the Traveler is the Gardener, and the Veil is the Winnower, they aren’t enemies, just 2 sides of the same coin like day and night. The Witness also isn’t the Darkness as he is an amalgam of all his people in one body, with all their knowledge and power. Also, the Traveler has been above Earth for thousands of years, and if the Witness and Pyramid ships were the Darkness, why would they arrive, kick the guardians and Traveler’s backside then disappear to the far end of the galaxy for millennia? I’ve never thought of this as an idea but when it hit me, it seemed logical to some extent. I know there’s loads of holes in this theory and there’s probably loads of lore and in-game information on it, but I just found this idea to be interesting.
For me, after the witness opens the portal and we go around talking to everyone it didn't feel like the "infinity war" everyone was expecting it to be. The mood doesn't feel like what it should be either, the entire universe is about to be blinked out of existence and here we are celebrating guardian games, solstice and baking cookies for Eva.
I mean he’s just mysterious at the moment, overall every presence of him I’ve liked, he seems so powerful it’s undefeatable The bit where he gets angry at calus is brilliant. The darkness is still mysterious and I think once we’ve “hurt” him we’d see a new form. As for his army, a weird combination of scorn cabal taken and hive and vex and even some house salvation. Could make for fun interesting combat without fighting the same enemies I can only pray for more cabal to fight and that the subjugates are fun And I hope he gets really damn angry in the campaign when we start messing with his whole life goal
I would not say that it was not around for like 2 expansions we have to look at the Taken King too with how it spoke to Oryx, indoctrinated him in the idea that the way to be saved is to end universal suffering, and the only to do that is to end everything that would cause it. I like him as well because he looks humanoid, very out of place compared to other villains, they look too alien, but to see something that is like us yet not at all shows something existentially dreadful. And the lore team described the Witness as being above the universe, that it was so powerful that it cares not for the affairs of those who struggle against it, can solve it’s problems with a flick of it’s hand.
Personally a fight with the witness doesnt even make sense, as seen in the cutscene, one flick of a wrist and your dead... how do we even compete with that? logically a fight with the witness is pointless to me
I actually think The Witness as a villain is totally fine. He's powerful and the embodiment of pure evil. However, I'm disappointed that there isn't really some "darkness army" invasion inside those ships to face...I think that was a total miss by Bungie.
I think they could have made it better. For example, in the intro to SOT Deep, we saw a Guardian try to venture into the portal, however, he was later found mangled with his ghost dead (not sure if it was in the Traveller or not, all we saw was space behind him). They could have shown us the Guardian getting mangled by the Witness, as we see the Pale Heart in construction and how it is not yet shaped by the Witness, but is slowly changing. That would have been so much more interesting, and while we would have lost the mystery of how the Guardian died, I'd rather we have that to show us the Witness's brutality and how life is almost meaningless compared to it's goals.
![[Free] Hard Trap Beat - "Astro" |Hard Trap |Freestyle Instrumental 2024](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/iq3A1yCWjOo/mqdefault.jpg)
How do you feel about the Witness? Personally I wish we had more build up with the character leading up to the Final Shape (making the situation seem more dire to humanity physically and our Guardian), but the Final Shape may change this! I get the point of the Witness is to enact the shape and to shake the guardians off its boot, but I hope the Final Shape pays off what Bungie has been building for years. It (imo) is not a “bad” villain, the story being it and its race is very intriguing. We just need a good pay off come June. The Witness may turn out to be the best villain this games ever had.. guess we’ll have to wait and see!
I agree would love to see more videos about what you think would be beyond Sol or our universe about what the drifter saw or along that type of line
I thought the titka said "The witness is a bald villain?!"
Ngl i had hoped we would see more of him throughout the years. But the closest was the 2 lightfall cutscenes (and not with our guardian but the others). I had hoped that we would fight the witness at the end of lightfall and lose (story and gameplay-wise, i know this probably sounds clichee, but an Avengers: Infinity war type of scene with our guardian and the witness would be cool).
You're comparing apples to oranges. The Witness is not OUR villian...because his conflict isn't with us. Its with the Traveler. He is HER ancient enemy. We are simply collateral damage. So comparing him to other enemies what were in direct conflict with us....or imagined conflict with us (The Darkness) is not a fair comparison. But like so many, you seem to have forgotten just how powerful The Witness is....because Bungie hasn't directly developed that story in almost a year. That is a pacing problem....but one that likely wasn't created by the writers.
The Witness literally killed a squadron of Guardians with a GESTURE of his hand. Shrugged off a direct attack on him by the Traveller....then carved his way INTO a Traveler who was helpless to stop him...and who we are (for now) powerless to follow.
(Not to mention that he literally snatched several planets of the Solar System out of this plane of existence).
If it weren't for Savathun's foresight and cunning? We'd (once again) be sitting beneath a BROKEN Traveler helplessly waiting for whatever end The Witness has planned. For the first time we are truly up against an opponent of god-like power. Against whom we are literally no match in a direct confrontation.
Ultimately, I think that is what you---and others---have an issue with. There is a lack of dramatic tension because we ARE so over-matched. We continue to exist only because The Witness didn't consider us worth the effort to put an end to. So there is no sense of drama (except in the abstract) concerning our immediate survival. Because the real conflict and danger is going on INSIDE The Traveler where we cannot see it for now.
That is actually another pain point about the whole thing. For a story to work, the audience / players have to care. Which is why keeping the witness as alien and distant would have worked better from a story stand point. It makes little sense for us to get a story about how relatable the witness was before when all they are doing is bypassing us. We should not even register to it, and conversely, in order to keep it as a ultimate evil it has to remain abstract. Motivating us to care via the hunger to know, to face the unknown, monster, god or whatever it may be.
For the dread and danger to work, there have to be mysteries, otherwise we get a story where we feel comfortable with the facts.
Again, this is entirely my opinion on if the witness is a good antagonist, and I do find it lacking.
To this day I think having the pyramid ships not have its own army of unique abstract monsters was such a fumble, I think at the least the witness should have a new enemy class of taken but with races we never had seen in them to show just how much of a universal force they are. The rhulk and god of pain mini bosses are a great idea but they deserve some infantry and special forces under them unique to the witness
Yes I’ve been saying this for the longest time. The Pyramids being empty and showing no sign of it’s own army was such a letdown. Would of been cool if the Pyramid race were its own seperate race that got conquered by the Witness and became corrupted by his version of the darkness to serve him as his army. Almost like Thanos in the MCU
It's the biggest miss in Destinys history imo
Bungie got lazy as always
They've always been lazy, this game has had 3 factions since D1, and everything else has just been a reskin of those factions. Idk why anyone would expect a new faction this deep into destiny's timeline.
Oooooor the Witness had no need for its own army because it(they) was all about manipulation. Why waste resources on an army(typical, cliche villain that we've seen with countless villians) when one can manipulate other rulers to attack with their armies.
The final cutscene after the Red War with the pyramids was one of the best foreshadowing for something grand. especially with all the ships they showed en masse. But now that they’re here and most are empty it just fills me with disappointment for what could have been.
Is kinda disappointing tho it makes sense when you look at it like it used to be the fleet of a species now made into one body.
@@adamboy0559yeah they did a good job explaining it away, but it's still a waste to have this new explorable setting with a very well defined visual language, and they're always either empty or we're fighting the usual suspects, same as always.
Yes. Yes it is. They 100% made the lore of “an entire species into one being” to avoid overdelivering with a new enemy species.
😂😂😂😂
They had planned a new enemy race, but it got scrapped around beyond light
what? that makes no sense. Why would that take away from the character itself??
@@Luckydave123 See that takes effort and modern Bungie hates that.
Darkness couldn’t remain as an intangible thing forever. But, The Witness suffered from being a crutch. They literally made him an excuse for them to vault content. Instead, The Witness should have WRECKED those planets in terrifying fashion. Then the world should have evolved with horror inspired, hellish versions of those planets. This would have made him more ominous and believable. Also, him having been The Witness since forever ruined the buildup. Once again, all the most important characters since D1 their stories are told Off-Screen. We should have fought The Witness as his own race all through that season, before the planets are taken. And then actually lose at the end, and he completes the ritual from the cut-scene, devouring all of those people and transforms into this crazy looking mega mind. Then he destroys the planets that we lost and maybe “takes” ONE of them, just so they could still use their Savathun “power of the darkness” story. Lightfall, we’d explore the planets he wrecked exploring and collecting the vestiges of his crystallized darkness and that leads us to The Veil. The whole Rasputin storyline was meh. They killed him off for no reason, I would scrap that whole thing. Rasputin should be the one helping Osiris figure out the Veil right now. All of that computational power and secrets held. The vaults. The sub minds. They could have even brought back The Library on Venus. Scrap the Strand tutorial. Adventure and Horror are what made D1 lovable despite none of the story being in-game.
I really really like the idea of us fighting the witness, or ig proto-witness race, before they all merge to become the big bad witness. Seriously a cool concept
@@LordBruuhthere was even an 5th darkness race planned, even called the veil, but it was scrapped before beyond light. Notice how they constantly refered to lightfall as the endgame moment and made other marvel references. They got lazy and copied marvel.
I remember in season of the worthy getting hyped as I saw their ships slowly enter the solar system, and even season of arrivals watching them set up on Mercury, Titan, io, mars. And then nothing happened. Never felt more disappointed in my life when I found out there was nothing inside them
Oryx was a much better villain, he showed up because we killed his son. So he had strong motivations, he taunted us, he put the fear of God in Eris. The taken were crazy at the time, as they were new and freaky. Oryx killed mara, and his effects hurt the awoken substantially that savathun got in on it. His first defeat was unprecedented in his eyes and his final defeat has left a vacuum that nobody's been able to fill. Savathun came the closest with how many things she had her claws in.
The lucent hive tried to resurrect him and lets not forget his worm is mia.
The witness just pales in comparison. It just showed up and is like I'm the big bad. Just shows how weak the writing and presentation of the character has been for now. 10 years for that as of now is a huge let down. The witness should've been showing more signs of aggression with the guardian resisting the allure of stasis and corruption of darkness, shown something when we defeated rhulk after it's reveal after we defeated savathun.
When it entered the traveler, there should've been some tangible thing to happen to all guardians and ghosts where they felt pain or a temporary loss connection to the light that shook them to the core. That reoccurred with each season to remind the guardians and the players of the stakes. But nothing, nothing at all is just bad all around. Bad writing bad storytelling bad presentation.
Final shape has to do all of that in order to make the witness feel like a threat and that's a tall task already. Could bungie do it, sure. Will they, that remains to be seen.
This saga will either go out with a bang and blaze of glory or show the continued fizzling out of this saga and probably destiny as a whole. Witch queen ended on such a high note to where light fall has been a huge letdown and the effects are still lingering.
I don’t by that the witness was planned as the culmination of destiny’s 10 year story. To me, the witness seems like the flagbearer of a narrative shift that occurred sometime during early witch queen. I mean, when you look at the rest of destiny’s story it’s kind of obvious. Everything else, especially going back to d1, borders on being cosmic horror. Every character has their narrative, motivation, and actions based in some way on some theoretical scientific concept or philosophical idea, which made them all really feel like they knew what they where doing and why they where doing it, but all that sort of went away once we started looking at the witness and it’s disciples. I know a lot of people like vow, I do to, but we have to acknowledge that Rhulk has essentially no character. He isn’t doing what he does for any real reason, he arbitrarily idolizes the witness, and kills because I guess he likes too? He talks using a lot of darkness buzzwords, but if you look at his story he is clearly not an adherent to any of the actual ideologies associated with the darkness (for instance, Rhulk’s power is given to him by the witness, he didn’t earn any of it. Remember the time Oryx discovered that the reason the hive where loosing was that their power was given to them, so he killed his god to take that power for himself?). Things like this are true with the witness and all of its disciples, they are morally hollow characters who stand for nothing but being antagonists to the marvel-esque cavalcade of “heroes” that bungie has been piecing together over the last couple years. Even the witness himself is guilt of this, it’s entire motivation boils down to “being alive can hurt so no one should live anymore”, I appreciate that bungie is at least trying to give one of their characters an actual reason to do anything on the story, but to be honest this has to be the most shallow motivation this franchise has ever seen.
AGREE. It definitely isn't part of a 10 year plan, I remember leading up to the release of D2 they were talking about how they wanted to step away from the darkness for a bit, because for the development of D1 they didn't even really know what it was. Maybe someone could make an argument for D2 credits with the ship, but we didn't meet him until shadowkeep, in which he...talked at us. That's it.
Solid analysis, have you written more about this anywhere? You seem like you'd be able to write a good postmortem on what happened to Destiny's story.
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx Unfortunately no, I am just a person who leaves the occasional, highly opinionated, comment on a destiny video. I can take a crack at going deeper into why I feel that the end credit scene to the witch queen was the death of destiny's story at a later date, and if I do I will probably leave it here since you asked about it. Thanks for complimenting my ability to complain though!
You are right, the witness was never a thing till the early witch queen Story drafts. Till then they ran with the idea of an 5th darkness race, they had it even planned out, they where called the veil funnily enough. Since before d1 Release they teased the pyramid ships and the 5th darkness race, but they scrapped all of it after the Activision Split. In the original Story of destiny, the one that gor scrapped the pyramids would have played a bigger part in d1 and its dlc's, one could argue that the attack on the last City was originally planned to be carried out by the pyramids and their army and not ghaul. There is even concept art to support this. But in the end they scrapped that whole plotline of an darkness race, all the teases during the forsaken year where meant to be for a darkness race, but after the Activision Split they scrapped it, and they came up with the witness and a lot of lazy excuses
For me, witch queen was a double-edge sword. On one side, we had the greatest narrative campaign ever in destiny history. On the other side, the main overarching antagonist, the darkness, was completely and utterly destroyed. The original lore doesn’t make sense anymore. The whole idea of the collapse happening to many species before humanity doesn’t make sense anymore; the new explanation doesn’t make sense. Elsi’s alternate timeline doesn’t make sense; the veil was never a factor in that timeline and in the end the traveler is destroyed, which isn’t what the final shape is. Nothing makes sense. The only thing that makes sense is why Destiny is hemorrhaging players.
Actually, it was by not being revealed to the Witness, they even hinted that with why Elsie could time travel when the Traveler and the Witness clash, that it is intentional by the Traveler. The point of the Final Shape is not to destroy but to reap what causes suffering, which would be death of those who wouldn’t survive it while those how can will no longer suffer.
It always been told to us that other civilizations had a collapse before us
@@MW2proification but if the traveler was destroyed (which Savathun was trying to prevent, originally), then the witness couldn't achieve the final shape. Which it is now using the traveler to do, rather than destroying it. The veil not even existing in alternate timeline is still also an eyebrow raiser, and Bungie not even knowing what their main overarching villain was, especially after rewriting the story a year before Destiny released shows a rocky foundation for the story. There have been some great story beats and characters, but when the foundation crumbles and the story changes, the main villain becomes less compelling, especially when we don't get much personality from it. I feel nothing when I look at the Witness outside of "future raid boss." It felt like what was an incomprehensible eldritch horror became something much less.
Who would have thought one of the best lores in games of the 2010s would die cause of all these retcons, how sad
@@ThePaulper It's not that it didn't existed, it just wasn't in the Witness' possession at the time, which is why the Traveler projects light to counter the darkness which ends that point in a timeline. I think that with the establishment of the Era of Darkness they got their villain down, it was a manner on how to introduce it. They stated that the Witness is suppose to be this calm, collected being who is above the universe, in it's own plane sort of existence, something it sees the universe's efforts as trivial, and that is sort of what Eldritch horror is, outside the universe kind of comprehension.
I enjoy the Witness as a concept, but to me the character suffers from the lack of proper foreshadowing and the writing I guess. I would have also loved if the Disciples were a bit more menacing, more foreboding instead of mostly being contained in a single raid. I had an idea for a raid encounter a while back where the raid team would attempt confront a disciple head on, then be forced to retreat because the disciple decided to take us seriously. Could even have a similar layout to the wicked implement mission from the Season of the Deep. The guardians getting chased through a dark labyrinth attempting to survive until they finally reach a safe zone, or maybe the disciple was again merely toying with us. Idk i thought it was interesting lol.
That was th Final Stand moment for Rhulk. He didn't take us seriously because he thought of us as weak wielders of the Light, and would taunt us with lines like "You drew blood, good." Or "Take your time." His Final Stand was when he realized that we were a threat, and tried to smother us with his overwhelming Darkness.
@@oryxfirstnavigator4795 I agree, and don't get me wrong I love Rhulk because he's cool af, but all he did was mostly speed walk.
That sounds like a fun raid
But that would require a desperate non badass scramble to get out of dodge and that wouldn't enforce the power fantasy which Bungie and its stories have consistently provided. Which I don't really think would work with how bungie writes stuff. Guess they could pull from the work'canorter (or whatever it's called) from marathon but that thing was a legitimate
"I kill everyone" object which really wasn't that interesting.
@@Wormy_fren I get what you mean, but if these are the big bad's henchmen then I feel like the stakes should be higher. Even the heroes in power fantasies need to struggle a bit so they can grow stronger, make it a little more realistic. However, like you said it's not Bungie's thing. I just think there's so much potential that is not being realized.
Personally if not for the arrogance debuff, I found Rhulk to be pretty intimidating. I would even go so far as to say you could have swapped his design with the Witness's and just have him be the main antagonist. Rhulk looks absolutely predatory.
I was interested in the concept of the pyramids and darkness in d1s time
They showed the Pyramids in the loading screen for the D1 open beta, and from then up until the end of Red War I thought they must be an unused concept. Glad they're still canon, but man I wish a lot of the endgame stuff had been handled differently
I always felt as though pre-Destiny 2 the writing simply had a much different and darker, grimier tone. It helped that in Destiny 1 the graphics had that older, darker look, and the general aesthetics of things were much more post apocalyptic and all that. I loved that darker tone.
I think it would be sick if the witness stayed the witness until we defeated it, only for it to explode and release all of the members of it's race across the system, leading to the new race: The witnesses (or witness for short) (and no, I don't mean the people who knock at your door) they are not as powerful as the Witness as a whole, but still terrifying, and trying to piece themselves back together to get revenge on the guardian hat defeated them
I like tht idea
Sounds like a good idea, which means Bungie won't do it in order to save resources.
If you're talking Jehovahs Witnesses, nah those guys are heretics and quite occult
I wonder what they shouldn't look like individually
Nah thats ass..this game needs to end after the light and dark saga nobody will give a shit,just like avengers after end game..the witness looks fucking trash,and I don't get how he is equal to traveller wen traveller bestowed him with powers 😂😂😂
i think the issue is that we went from terrifying cosmic horror that we didn't understand and were always one step behind. now we have found out that the witness is really just another stereotypical villain that's a megalomaniac and is mad at the traveler. it's just not as intimidating. the witness now has a clear motive that we can comprehend, whereas before the voice within the darkness was a force of nature that we couldn't just shoot at to make it go away. they really trapped themselves in a corner with their writing, especially when they made the reveal of who the witness really is in that one cutscene. ik it's hard to make a video game villain that players will eventually need to interact with in some capacity, but bungie has proven before that they are capable of tackling a task like that with their writing. even though nezarec was ultimately pretty lame in the raid, the lore surrounding him was actually quite good and interesting. the witness, however, just requires a plot mcguffin to defeat. like for all we know all the guardians could just stand in a circle together and sing about the power of friendship and boom the witness is dead or something. nobody is very interested in the witness because there are entities like the nine that we know much less about. it just leaves a painfully obvious opportunity for bungie to write in that the nine finally reveal themselves as a last ditch effort to save the universe. to sum this all up, bungie blew their load way too quick.
I was SO hoping for such a more sinister character. Some like “Sauron Smoke Dark monster that seems crazy terrifying” not this.
I mean we had “big monster “ antagonists in Destiny 2 before. I think it’s refreshing to see a weak looking antagonist that even the hive queens are terrify of.
@@nokturn882I can appreciate that that was the intent, and that's what they originally had planned for Calus. Back around the time of the Glykon we knew his body was in a state of severe degradation and only his inner circle were ever allowed to see his true form. I'm fine with physically weak villains. I just don't like the Witness's design, I think it needed a few more revisions.
I won't break all of my problems with it down now, but just one example: they wanted to visually hint at it having multiple people in one body. They could have accomplished that with just the afterimages, the smoke coming out of his head is a bad design choice.
@@nokturn882 The witness is just badly designed. Nothing really do with "weak looking" it has to do with the face of the witnes that just ruins the charecter completely. They managed to make the main super villain of the whole Destiny universe look incredibly derpy and each time i see the witness i just straight up laugh and that sucks becouse bungie is amazing when it comes to charecter art design. Bungie simply dropped the ball
The Witness as a villain is a bit... off, if you ask me.
For years, we didn't know what it was or what its intent was. All we thought was that it was another army to fend off when the time came.
But learning about the pyramids, speaking to The Witness itself through our ghosts, all to just outright learn a large chunk of the truth from Savathun... Bungie was definitely cooking, but I'm not sure where their recipe was going once we learned about The Witness.
Right before and during Lightfall, The Witness finally found us and decided to turn our initial showdown with it into a one-sided playground brawl. Our Guardian may have slain gods in the past, but to walk up to an entity that could LITERALLY cut you down with a simple thought... Finally! An ACTUAL challenge!... Except we didn't get that. Instead, we go protect a McGuffin on the far side of Sol, just to lose and watch the one being we could've enjoyed killing right then and there, go inside our Giant Magic 8-Ball... This didn't feel like a loss. This was just a disappointment... like "your girlfriend falling asleep halfway through a session" kind of disappointment.
Learning that The Witness is just an entire civilization, butthurt over the fact they couldn't get a purpose from The Gardener and called in a McGuffin to make one, just waters down this "villain" further. At this point, we might as well just take a queue from Warframe's spaghettified narrative arc. Let's treat The Witness like "The Indifference". I wonder what'll happen if we show it compassion instead of a fight?
As for this "final shape"... in Bungie's terms, it's the "nightmarish calcification of the universe."
Okay, but what IS it? Bungie's great with mysteries, don't get me wrong, but it's not much of a mystery when it falls pretty flat. Everyone believes it's either just a massive ZA WARUDO! for the entire universe or led to believe that it's the greatest thing to happen since sliced bread. Is The Witness even a villain anymore? Or are they trying to play God and isekai everyone into a reality where everything is their interpretation of "perfection"? Who's side are you even on?
Bungie, throw us a damn bone already, and not one of Riven's please. If you're gonna foreshadow a "grand force" like The Witness, don't just retcon everything else that's happened and say "Oh, it was all just more of Savathun's deceptions. This is what actually happened!" cuz I think we can all agree that everyone's gotten bored of the whole deception arc by now.
We're trying to slay a multi-facted entity, not play "I Spy" with The Hive or the Vex or...whatever.
I know this just seems like a long-winded rant, but to make a point out of all this... Is the Witness a good or bad villain for Destiny? With all the shit we've been through, the concept of "villain" is just out the window. The Witness isn't a villain. Infact, I'd go as far as to say The Witness isn't anything... atleast, right now it isn't anything. Until we develop The Witness as a character in the next DLC, they're just an oxymoronic existence. A simple complexity that had no reason to exist, but it did.
Well said!
I always thought that The Final Shape was a complete and utter rejection of chaos - which The Light represents. Chaos can't be modeled, as The Vex fail to do over and over again. It's complex and uncertain and random. Life reflects this. So, I've always thought that The Final Shape was the opposite of Life: Death. No humans, no ghosts, no species. No entropy, no energy, no change. A frozen universe waiting to be designed from the ground up and cast on a stage where all events are known: past, present, and future.
We'll see what story they tell though.
Since the Hive were our introduction of the Final Shape, I always figured that it'd be something similar to Sword Logic ie; all life being cut down to just one, all-powerful entity. Which the Darkness believed to be itself. I mean to The Darkness, to prove that you must exist you have to defeat anything that threatens your existence. It offers an interesting view on an alien morality. We see the Darkness as evil because it wants to kill us, but It sees us as unwilling to face the truth.
I liked the Darkness as a race rather than a single individual. When you make the villain one big super villain, then it becomes relatively straightforward as to how to proceed, storywise; find a way to beat them. And they have to do so, because Destiny is a live service game and unless they decide to shut down Destiny, the Witness literally cannot win against us. We ARE going to win, whether that's satisfying narratively or not. I do not believe for a single second Bungie is going to have us lose or be on the back foot at all.
When the villain is an entire race, like the Hive and the Taken, they are still threats, even after their boss is taken care of, relatively speaking. They're still running around as a species and are still threats in-universe. With the Witness, we beat Megamind, the Pyramids shut down, because no one's controlling them. With the Pyramids gone, the Nightmares, the actual shadow figures depicted in Race 5, will also dissipate. There's no chance of continues for the Darkness as a threat when the Witness goes down.
I feel it's an incredibly disappointing outcome for the Darkness as a race and a concept. The Darkness began as an enigmatic force with fingers in seemingly every pie, its true nature unknowable, uncountable. The Witness feels limited; it controls everything. It's the actual power behind the Pyramids, behind the Nightmares, it was responsible for the Hive's existence.
To be honest, I feel like it's laziness on the part of Bungie. Why make an entire new race when you can make a handful of bosses that won't be seen outside of their respective environments? I also think they realized that bringing the original idea behind the Darkness; a smooth, suave talker that wanted us on its side and was willing to talk first, instead of fighting, requires a bit more effort narratively speaking. We COULD have had the Witness communicating with us through the Unknown Artifact we picked up from Shadowkeep, and have it try to persuade us philosophically speaking. Then, we'd have a choice come it's arrival; join it and turn on the Last City, or stay true and stand against it. That was the vibe I originally got when Lightfall was revealed, way back when; "A side must always be chosen, even if it's the wrong side," and Bungie I would guess canned that concept.
its crazy to think that at the end of the red war the pyramids were on the edge of our galaxy
The old darkness was more ominous. It seems to me that they changed things, around the same time as when they decided to end the saga with FS, not LF
The problem was in the beginning of D1 Bungie even said they didn't really know what the darkness was. Which is why it took so long to give it a face.
@@vjfxtheoryand a gray alien isn’t generic?
Straight up they were too lazy to make a new race so they made a single guy with a smoke-stack head and came up with some "every member of the species combined themselves into one body" bs.
The dude literally shrugged off a full blown attack from the traveler at what was basically point blank range, and yet 6 guardians are supposed to kill him in a raid next expansion? Lazy writing all around man, thats all there is to it.
We literally hold only a fraction of the travelers power within ourselves, whereas the witness is so powerful that it literally forced the traveler itself on a never-ending retreat throughout the cosmos. I'd also like to point out that the ONLY reason the traveler didnt abandon us is because rasputin shot it down to prevent it from leaving, and by the time it healed itself the darkness was already here so it HAD to fight.
@@josephcool981rasputin did not shoot the traveler down
@@Daboy804lovecraft beings are generic to kid
Witness should have looked more cosmic and more terrifying. Instead we got a pale megamind
the design is alien, weird and out of place. In my opinion its perfect. We dont need another cliche bad alien monster.
"Couldn't think of an accurate criticism, so I resulted to a stupid meme." Surprised you didn't go with the cat meme too
The Witness is very alien in appearance. What other alien species has smokey faces billowing out of it's head, and being over 200 feet tall?
@@coasterplay1062 you better not be talking about the fallen, cabal, vex and hive cause none of those are even close to cliche.
Isn't the witness a former guardian
@@AmeliaRomanov no
One of the criticisms of the D1 story was the lack of a villain we care about fighting. The Black Heart and the Darkness were faceless entities were told were threats but we didn't feel threatened by. This lead them to focus on having a villain that you can see, hear and fight for every story they tell, and I believe is this what lead them to create the Witness and a stand in for the ambiguous Darkness
I remember being so hyped when I saw the pyramid ships at the end of the Red War campaign. Nothing in Destiny's history has been as disappointing for me as how the Darkness/Witness turned out. The Black Fleet arrived over 3 and a half years ago. They arrived to cause sunsetting, do basically nothing for 3 expansions, and then screw off once we defeat the Witness. The overreliance on lazy seasonal content and playing it safe has not only caused issues for the game, it has made a massive dents into the story. Just like when Bungie wrote out every faction in the story so people would stop asking for faction rallies to return, making the Witness a culmination of it's entire race was done so people couldn't ask why there wasn't a new race. The destination was planned out, but a horrible route was taken to get there. It is one thing to slightly retcon very old lore, the amount of retcons to relatively new lore in order for events to play out over the last two expansions has worsened the story. Needed Splicer tech to get into the Vex Network, now we can just do it ourselves. Zero real explanation for this. Rhulk is the last of his kind yet we have a new enemy type that is basically just tiny Rhulk with a different color scheme. I could list many other problems like this but we would be here all day. I'm tired of the "you weren't given the full story" style of writing. When it works, it works really well, like the reveal that the Witness circumvented the Traveler from empowering the Krill. The problem is that it has been done too many times which makes lore harder to keep up with. You never know when established lore is just going to change because Bungie needs it to work differently to push the story forward.
I remember the very first time when we defeated Ghaul, and the blast of Light slinging across the space area and then covering the Pyramid ships, and then the ships came alive I remember so vividly like it was yesterday I was so actually kind of nervous and scared about what kind of enemy we have awoken
Just from a storytelling/ plot perspective, an massive fleet of ominous looking ships with unknown purposes only to find out there they’re completely empty, and don’t hold any crew or anything else, just completely invalidates the entire storyline they are included in.
WHY do I care if a fleet of these ships shows up? It’s like a Used car lot showing up overnight. You’re not confused or scared, you’re more like “oh, ok I guess”.
I feel like if there was no Witness and Bungie didn’t explicitly say the pyramid ship were it wouldn’t as bad, plus then they could’ve had it were you explore the ships only to stumble across enemies like the disciples or just something that is actually intimidating. But instead we have Megamind’s inbred uncle.
Something i think could've been cool was if instead of merging into 1 being, each ship was controlled by the members of the race; they've had millenia to discover and practice with the darkness AND golden age tech, maybe if they saw us starting to succeed against them *then* they start to worry and merge into the witness. Idk just a thought i had
I could 100% work with that
I've been looking back at old expansions now that we know they were trying not to overdeliver, and hear me out on this. I think that's what the Nightmares were going to be originally. If you do 5 seconds of searching, you can see a _lot_ of the original concept art of the Witness gave it a red aura. The Nightmares are red and are associated with the pyramids. What if, instead of the smokestack coming out of its head, the Witness could just release some of the personalities stored inside itself to carry out specific tasks, like pilot or guard the Pyramids?
I think we almost got a new enemy race but got bungie'd out of it.
@xXx_Regulus_xXx aww, that would've been cool and thematically fitting too! Damn it xD
@@xXx_Regulus_xXxthat’s probably very likely honestly considering shadowkeep was supposed to be the last dlc before D3. The nightmares could’ve been a sneak peak at the new enemy race that would’ve been the main focus of D3.
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx yeah they ran with the idea of an enemy darkness race but they scrapped it. It was called the veil, and there is concept art for it, but they scrapped it, maybe because they didnt wanna overdeliver or it was too much work.
The good and memorable villains in this game are ones that simply hearing their name is a threat. Oryx being a threat due to his sheer power, and the fact our name was on his hit list. Savathun is debatably even more so of a threatening and meaningful villain because of her constant involvement in the background coupled with her ability to deceive and be one step ahead for her own agenda. I’d even say SIVA, on its own, was a villainous threat due to using the fallen and boost them to a new level of power at the time. The Witness I felt was initially threatening because of the idea of its armada of power. With what encounters of the pyramids we’ve had beforehand, from a narrative perspective, the pyramid’s push the idea of doom, as each time we’ve been in contact with them, we have never come out on top. And after finally going in an active one in Witch Queen and fighting Rhulk, each and every pyramid’s mystique and capability was brought up to that standard in our minds. But knowing what we do now about the Witness and its pyramids, it’s like a lot of them are just empty vessels for the Witnesses goals, which just feels so shallow. And I don’t get the sense that this is what caused the collapse, since when the Witness finally confronts us at the beginning of LightFall, literally nothing happened to us outside of the Witness going into the Traveller. There is no ‘second collapse doom’ actions going on since then, where the everyday actions we do have not changed, the dynamic of the game has not shifted since that moment because the threat is ‘delayed’ until we go to another expansion, and that just does not feel like a living, breathing world in the way Savathun, Oryx, and Rhulk did. Heck, even the idea of the worm gods and what they could do was threatening, until we find out they are a bunch of pushovers, which was really disappointing for me personally. The Witness does not feel like the ultimate villain this world has been building up to
Think outside the box.
Bugie did such a good job at keeping the darkness a mystery, so much so that even Bungie doesn't know what it is lol
bungie admitting that all the pyramid ships were empty showed that bungie is just too lazy.
D1 rise of iron was the pinnacle of awe for me. I loved the franchise and the possibilities kept me hooked. The aesthetic and mystery that was D1 was the magic I fell in love with. Along came D2 vanilla and it was like a kick in the nuts. They fixed most things with Forsaken but unfortunately the adults left afterwards and we’ve not seen that level of quality since. I hope Sony forces Bungie to abandon the laziness of EV and the Fortnite model and get back to quality content. Here’s to hoping!
Oryx was way more terrifying.
Yes... Oryx also directly changed the game world, by introducing taken everywhere. The Witness just hid some planets away. Less instead of more... I actually felt a bit cheated by that.
And we still have he Red Legion running around in the EDZ for some reason. :D
Yes, Oryx was terrifying... but you are forgeting that Oryx power to take was gifted to him by the Witness -- the *_real_* master of all Taken.
@@rosesareredbutzerglingssti9290 he wasn't directly involved
Honestly (I’m probably going to get my a*s kicked here and most likely deserve it too XD) I felt nothing with Oryx when I was younger all I saw in him was a boss to kill. Unfortunately a lot of the bosses or characters in the games I have played made me feel nothing too. Only certain ones I could connect with that made me feel something.
@@DragonKnight90001 destiny is just a looter shooter so it makes sense, every boss is just a repeatable enemy that drops goodies
Look, I'll be blunt, the Witness is a mediocre villain as it currently stands. It had potential, and they squandered it... but frankly, that's not entirely the Witness' fault. In fact, I think the Witness being the big bad suffers from that whole "The Darkness" thing. If it was clear there was an entity behind the Darkness from the get-go, and not teased 6 years into the games' story, I bet your ass people would instead be saying "oh, hey, this big bad has had a lot of pretty good teasers, too bad the execution wasn't there" instead of saying the Witness was a bad villain from the beginning.
I remember the old criticisms of Destiny's story, things really only started getting fully cohesive in the last few years. Previously it was just "villain of the week", and say what you want about the Witness (and to an extent, Eramis), but he is NOT that, and immediately puts it a step above most Destiny villains. Obviously, there's better ones who had their impact known (see: Oryx, Riven, the Fanatic (yes, I'm serious), Savathun, Xivu Arath, and Calus. I'm not counting Rhulk here because he showed up for all of 5 minutes, and as cool as he was, he really only served to give insight into the Witness and serves as nothing more than an errand boy). Yes, the Witness story-wise acts as that "fifth race" everyone keeps clamoring for yet Bungie seems to be unable or unwilling to delivery on, and it does suck you out of it. That said, I think the Witness CAN be redeemed in the Final Shape if we finally get insight into its thoughts directly from the Witness itself. That's why I think the writing for the Witness was better pre-Lightfall, its because we and characters in the story interacted with it directly and saw its power. Heck, there's a reason why everyone cites the scene where the Witness utterly terrifies Calus as the best scene in Lightfall or even in recent expansions.
What we need is functionally Dominus Ghaul 2, but we need to interact with it much more. Have it poking and prodding us as to why we continue to fight, throughout the story, with it increasingly doing so as we approach. Have it ask the real existential questions, show it breaking, its rage over what it views as seemingly pointless existence, and best yet, don't answer any of those questions in-game. In fact, one of the ways the Witness could probably become instantly a great villain is if it shows us a world where we get everything we want if we just submit to it. Have it ask the question of who we are and what our fate really is. That, on top of Destiny's already pretty good Legendary campaign, would make the Witness one hell of a final villain.
That said, I don't know if there truly is any redeeming the Witness in the eyes of the community, because this community is already so burned on the game, and the Witness has been the overarching villain for the main duration people started to really take issue with the game in recent years. They will likely point to the Witness and say that its fundamentally a bad villain at the core of its idea, which I would have to seriously disagree with. I think the Witness is a good idea, but just like everything else, it failed on an execution level because Bungie was having management and direction problems from within, and they didn't let the writers cook. Hopefully the Final Shape changes that.
13:15 no, that is absolutely the right wording. Lightfall (the current incarnation) was definitely thrown together. You don't even need to look at the many, MANY narrative failings to see it, all you need to do is look at the art direction itself. The neon, vaguely cyberpunk aesthetic of Neomuna does NOT fit with the art style of the rest of the game and sticks out like a sore thumb. It's pretty obvious that Neomuna was a reaction to the sudden popularity of the cyberpunk genre (just like the city Neon in Starfield).
I was so mad when we got Rhulk and another level in the hierarchy. I knew then that the Witness was just going to be some dude. I wish they had left it as some cosmic force.
I think the Seasons formate pretty much blunted the impact of the Witness as a villain in my opinion.
i don’t know what The Witness’ final form will be, but that arm monster from The Final Shape’s trailer was pretty creepy and horrifying …
Definitely feels like the campaign in that moment. I see that being the start of the campaign or near the end of
Honestly, I love the concept behind the Witness and they are an interesting character. But they weren't really used that well, especially in _Lightfall._ But since their story isn't over yet, we'll just have to wait and see.
I was intriguied by The Witness when it was introduced, but I lost all respect for it as a villain in Lightfall when it screamed 'ENOUGH' when Callus was ranting at it, that came across to me like Kylo Ren and his trantrums when you expected something more like Darth Vader and his Force Choke to shut someone up.
But Darth Vader can get angry too, and we do see the Witness breaking Calus’ mind enough that he bleeds through his nose when he calmed down while showing his true form, and it does speak to Calus’ character that he could get someone like the Witness who is calm to get angry, to his own fault.
If was something in between vader's rage and Kylo's tantrum snap, would have been good. A lower but course raised tone of command with a snap/instant of a hand motion (with that delayed animation we see on his introduction... maybe even showing the follow through motion looking fractured/glitched) with Calus's reaction would have cemented it with a slow look back then just moving on once Calus folds. would have cemented that the witness is strictly business and not to be questioned...
It really doesn't help that the witness is just.. looks like Megamind's little bro with a smaller skull and a unibrow with UWU eyes...
Like even if each Pyramid is empty... could easily have had a Delamain treatment from Cyberpunk, just individuals (possibly the strongest) within the witness acting out via said pyramids... Cause it doesn't make sense how they were so... helpful...
Wouldn’t you get angry if someone much lower than you in power and rank tried to speak up to your plan. Calus didn’t see the plan of connecting to the veil worth his time and wanted more. He done something to calus as we see his head starts to bleed in whatever nightmare he was in likely had a part of nezarec involved
@@RurouniHiro wouldn’t you want nigh indestructible vessels that are part of your will to ravage entire worlds?
Ever known a parent to hit you before they warned you?
Calus believed he was the reason he was successful in his conquests, when it was the Witness providing the resources
The Witness got mad and shouted "Enough!" As a warning not to overstep
If Calus had continued talking smack, he would've got smacked for real
I’ve heard the original devs talk about the original darkness “villain” and how truly evil and mysterious it was. Since darkness is more conceptual than physical or visible. Really makes the witness seem underwhelming since he’s just another boss. Feels like a huge waste of potential.
I just want to put this out there, The Witness is kind of a lackluster villain because it wasn't planned out ahead of time. On normal social media I'd link the article I'm quoting, but this is YT so that's not really possible. Anyway, here's a quote from Luke Smith back in 2017:
"So, I think that at a point, just totally candidly? We had no idea what it was. Straight up. We had no clue," Smith said. "We didn’t know what it was, and we, for a period, we chose [that] we’re going to lump all the races [in together], and you see this in the tooltips in the game. 'Minions of the Darkness.' And we had taken all the races and said, 'Ah, they’ll just be the Darkness.' But that’s not what the IP deserves."
So based on that, if there was any defined notion of what the Darkness was, it was this otherworldly force that the alien races were doing the bidding of. They wanted a face for the Darkness, which was a good idea and would make it easier to understand when we had beaten it, but the Witness doesn't really have the same iconic appearance as the "face," if you can call it that, of the Light, which is the Traveler. The pyramid ships are a good foil to the Traveler design-wise, but again since they wanted a single face an entire fleet has the same effect as the aliens being minions of Darkness. There can only be one. So they went with an iconic Grey alien for inspiration, but they knew enough to alter it, but the alterations they went with needed more work. His outfit is absolutely ridiculous and so are his baby eyes, unibrow tattoo, and smokestack head.
The concept for the witness as a whole people as one being is cool but I feel that it was lazy and they didn’t want to make a new enemy race for us to fight. I wished the witness would take its souls within themselves out and use the darkness subclasses against us to me that’s what the tormentors and subjugators should be the people of the witness not reskins of rhulk and nezerac. It would feel that they’ll be more dangerous as if they’re always there watching, hunting, and wanting to destroy us and that’s how I feel that’s what the final race should’ve been.
it makes me so happy seeing people talk about the old art and trailers. It still blows my mind we were supposed to met crow essentially where shay han is now, and crow not uldren, was supposed to be our rival type ally throughout the game. I love seeing that crow now
I haven’t even watched the video yet but I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR AGES!! I literally fell off Destiny entirely because of their release, I was so fucking disappointed they were revealed because it felt like everything we learned about the old darkness was ruined. Why couldn’t have the darkness ships just been a primordial force the exact same way as the traveller? I was so invested in Destiny lore but the second the witness was shown, it almost felt like a light switch went off in my head
Also the “foreshadowing” of their reveal is shown throughout the game, yes. But when it feels like the only form of foreshadowing we got was in Forsaken, Shattered Throne, Shadowkeep, and the raid, and then what felt like nothing for literally 2 years? It feels kinda lazy ngl. Me personally? I didn’t connect that those statues and the witness were even the same until literally this video, especially because we didn’t actually get the witness’s origin revealed to us properly until another year later after more vague hinting
When designing the witness, they should’ve pounded the shrooms harder.
It appearing as a mirror of ourselves was actually genius, because it was so eerie to see our character model acting so… out of character. Theatrical and smug. Should’ve kept that eerie mystery going.
You know, when I was playing Warframe the other day, it made me realize something; the Man in the Wall (the current main antagonist of Warframe) is literally just the Witness, but better as a character and villain in every single way.
Unlike the Witness, the Man in the Wall doesn't just give us dark powers for literally no reason, he coerces us into a deal to get those powers under the idea that we owe him a debt that he eventually intends to collect, and we accept the deal out of pure desperation to save our friends. This makes him an interesting villain for multiple reasons: for one, he has a direct connection to us, the player, but he also clearly has some kind of goal he wants to achieve by forcing us into his "debt", even if we don't yet know what it is.
As a result, the mystery of the Man in the Wall is actually intriguing and leaves the player excited to find out what he's planning.
On the other hand, the mystery of the Witness is absolutely aggravating because despite being the "main antagonist" of the series, he literally doesn't interact with anyone whatsoever, outside of one interaction with us in Shadowkeep where he acts like the most generic bad guy anyone's ever seen, then giving us darkness for no reason in Beyond Light, and then a few talks with Calus in Lightfall. That's it. That's literally every single thing the Witness as done in our story, so the fact that we're now supposed to treat him like some complex character in the Final Shape as if we know him in any capacity is just downright insulting.
What makes me especially frustrated is the witness would’ve had a way more intriguing design if they simply just moved his head down so it’s only the plume of smoke/faces where a head should be.
That would’ve at least made him come across more that he’s not just one entity but many.
Having a solid face just makes him way more tangible than he should have been.
Just imagine a whole race killing guardians in the last city. Going to Europa and Neomuna still make no sense. Idk if it’s redeemable
It was trying to tempt us with power, and where to find it on Europa where humanity was practicing darkness too, and Neomuna is where Savathun stored the Veil which was key to it’s plan.
I think the Darkness always worked better as a nebulous, faceless evil at the corners of awareness in older seasons. It made it much more spooky and intimidating, as you really had no idea what it could do and if it was going to suddenly throttle you to death without warning. I think Lightfall and Final Shape would have been vastly improved by keeping the Darkness as it used to be before the Witness, and essentially having Darkness Zones become omnipresent across the system as a lore thing and not just a gameplay mechanic, and rather than just preventing resurrection, the Darkness would be actively choking the life from the Sol system just like it did during the Collapse.
It would really give you the feeling that the Darkness is omnipotent and omnipresent, and really put the hopelessness in fighting against it. It would be more like fighting an eldritch horror than trying to fight some guy.
Joseph Staten’s original story was far better. A shame it was cut up and relegated to grimore cards. What we have now is a phoned in story more dictated by poor management and engine restrictions. Killing off faction vendors, rasputin and others because they could no longer fit them into this mess of a story.
When I first saw the Witness’ design, I’ll admit, I thought it looked a little goofy, but he also looks extremely out of place in the Destiny universe. I think in an abstract way, it works.
Before I watch, imma leave my opinion on what we should've been fighting in the final DLC:
We should've been facing something shapeless, Eldritch horror type shit. Similar to the feeling we got on that mission for the cowboy rifle. Not what we fought there, but rather that feeling we got. Something was moving and we can't see it, the ship is dead silent with creaks. The darkness foe at the end shouldn't have a shape. It should redefine our understanding of a god. Example, anyone remember the big bad at the end of the Green lantern movie? Big space monster thing? That. That right there, in a final battle, at the star pools location. It should utilize every mechanic at random making the fight more diverse and intense, forcing half the team to control zones while the other half splits to collect and bank motes; unfettered chaos. And an enemy that has no shape. The only way to kill them or do damage is by accomplishing said mechanics to get powered ammunition that fire in every reality, damaging them.
I don't think we need The Witness to interact with our guardian 1 on 1, I think the kind of character the witness is should be defined by its minions and disciples like Rhulk. It should be like that one lore entry where the unnamed Disciple ruminates on the final shape, and how the witness is unknowable to even its followers, who all have their own idea of the final shape. There should have been a whole rogue's gallery of disciples acting as our main antagonist while the witness is just giving the orders. If Rhulk was actually a prominent actor in WQ rather than only interacting with the guardians in his first and last appearance, it would have been great. Rhulk is the only one of the Witness' cronies that actually wants to pursue the final shape, and through him we actually got to learn what the witness wants. Everyone else in the cast of villains either betrays the witness, doesn't care. or has a flawed understanding of the final shape that runs counter to its true goals. Imagine like a cutscene where all the big bad guys are in a room arguing over the final shape with Rhulk while the witness just goes "ENOUGH" like that cutscene in lightfall, leaving all the disciples silent and obedient and showing that the witness only cares about its own idea of the final shape. Rhulk should have been like the final boss before the final boss of the witness, not some janitor sent to keep savathun in line who can't even do that job.
Because if they don't add a darkness boss then people will say reused
dude, YES. this would have been so much better
The fact that the witness can straight up possess our ghost, that possession caused the veil to link with it to go inside the traveler and none of this brought up through the seasonal storylines that whatever plan the vanguard alliance would come up with would already be seen by it with how much our guardian and by extension, ghost? There's also no pressing issue on how that plan can be sabotaged by the witness using ghost to put a wrench in the works? This should have come up by now after the light fall finale with this season being the one where they stop the witness possessing ghosts.
The witness is an extremely bad villain. The darkness should have been something dark and terrifying, a whole new species with extreme power, not a pale guy with a smoking head. The witness looks like something out of a kids movie.
The witness as a whole reminds me of those aliens in mass effect Andromeda, a big nothing burger of disappointment. I can't even remember the name of them. But as Ryder was using that mysterious alien tech and terraforming planets you had those things trying to stand against us and for what, for who.
That's what the witness feels like.
I feel like giving The Witness a face was a bad idea. It talking through the ghost was pretty cool and same goes for it speaking to the Guardian as their doppelganger in Shadowkeep's ending. A formless entity, a voice in the Dark.
Either way, I do like it is something that uses the Darkness as a weapon just as the Guardians use the Light. Makes the Light and Dark more neutral and more just forces natural to the universe.
Honestly the last raid boss who caused the collapse should’ve been the main villain he loooks like something that could bring the end to the known universe while the witness looks like a minion of him tbh
The hive were the original darkness in a sense. Xivu shouldve been built up to be thanos, with savathun being used as a loki type. The witness just came out of left field
I mean, I like the Witness, and there’s definitely more to it than we’ve seen, but I wish they had gone with more of a cosmic horror approach. Between the goofy ahh face and knowing ahead of time that we’ll win, it’s hard to be very intimidated by it.
It's even got a little button nose!
I think the idea of The Witness is a great idea for a villain. The problem with The Witness is that we have only just met the guy. We have heard *about* the things he has done. But we have yet to *experience* the things he has done for ourselves. That's where his villany drops for me.
We have experienced Ghaul, we have experienced Savathun, we have experienced Oryx. Their names still give us that satisfying, ohh snap. We don't get that with The Witness or his disciples. We just get the ohh, I heard about that guy vibe.
Perhaps if the Witness would actually lead a race or a contingent of races enslaved to it or otherwise unable to resist his power with Rhulk and his other disciples in command of this army; then there would probably be more to tell. Because empty ships that look cool is only a fraction of displaying ones intergalactic power. Having an army is another. Is he written to need an army? Well no, but The Witness isn't displaying his power enough. When he does it shows how powerful he is, but we need to see more of that. Perhaps instead of having empty ships we are fighting aspects of his people in the ships or at the very least see them hovering about like how we see nightmares hover about causing darkness to sabotage/torment players as they venture through the corridors of the Pyramid ships. Now wouldn't that be a great display of his power? I'd think so.
It just goes to show a great villain isn't one who is simply all powerful, but one who can demonstrate to the audience what their strengths, influence, and their motives and reasoning. All the villains I had mentioned prior demonstrated all of those things to us. The Witness has yet to truly show us all of that; we have seen, but a glimpse of it. Which would sound cool if we weren't already in the last expansion of this saga.
its poetic that our guardian describes the pyramid ships as "empty". the pyramids should have brought a new race into the game but arrived empty, and lore wise feel empty with them slapping the "this pyramid belonged to _________ disciple of the witness" even the witness's own pyramid ship really doesn't add anything to it as a character which you think it would considering how much you learn about Rulk in his own pyramid ship, Rulk came out of nowhere in witch queen and his story was amazing, the witness's story feels like a 10 year plan that isn't going anywhere, hope bungie can amend this issue
The Witness Sucks. Making your Main Antagonist Megamind with an Unibrow has had to be one of the worse move Bungie could have done. We waited years to finally get a new race, but Bungie was too lasy to make one, so instead we have a CG Cutscene Villain with dumb motivations and no on-screen presence, and a couple darkness themed enemies here and there... And big empty pyramid ships you never really spend much time in...
To me The Witness is just a visual representation of the darkness we are fighting. Like you said it doesn't feel threatening, we have been fighting many things that had felt like if we didn't surpass them humanity would have been doomed, and although this might be the case too, it really doesn't feel like it. The Witness hasn't really been present in the game, every other villain has been doing its bidding so It's a little hard to feel scared of something that isn't really there or hasn't caused us any harm.
Honestly I liked the aspect of the pyramids being just an un killable god with a hive mind vs the traveler. A god that has no form so it takes one. Take the final battle of the original d1 campaign but on a larger scale basically. Now the pyramids just seem pointless and now darkness isn't even truly darkness and is just some knock off of the traveler it's disappointing
If only the writers we're great at narratives in Destiny...
I like the yin-yang concept that originally was The Traveler & The Black Fleet but that was changed to The Veil not that long ago. The Witness doesn't feel like an end all be all villain to me.
Well,, as i look at the Witness he reminds me of Mara and the Awoken. Maybe if Mara was to combine with all her people, a Witness type entity is what u may get
I actually liked D1 a lot better in that regard. Yes, the story was confusing and vague, but "the darkness" felt overwhelming and almost like we would not be able to comprehend it.
Whe Witness is a lot less complex. His motives are pretty basic. I hope he is just a puppet or one aspect of the darkness. There just has to be something more.
It's motives are pretty basic? How? We don't know exactly what The Final Shape actually is. Everything is speculation.
@@oryxfirstnavigator4795 Sorry, I should have said "motivation'". We know that the race of the Witness was looking for purpose. That is why they tried to connect the Veil to the Traveler.
The final shape is likely the combination of light and dark. Maybe with the Witness as a host? Something like that.
Regardless I find the light and the darkness way more appealing as concepts. The "game" they are playing. I understand it as a clash of philosophies. Reminds me a bit of Babylon 5 with the Shadows and Vorlons. Two ancient races that simply have different visions for the universe, but in the end have to leave the fate of the galaxy to the younger races and disappear.
In Destiny it feels even more epic, as we know less about the Traveler and the Darkness than we know about The Witness.
@@vjfxtheoryNot in a traditional sense. Things didn't seem random though. It felt more like there was a big story and nobody told you anything.
The locations hinted many things.
Like in old horror movies. You didn't get to see the monster. That worked better as today, as it was left to your imagination.
D2 reveals too much. It does not feel mysterious and grand anymore.
I feel like the Witness is a case of monks who have used the dark arts to make themselves immortal in their pursuit for the meaning to life. It's stoic because they don't care about individual life or grandiose schemes like Ghaul, Oryx, and Savathun did. It's also why they don't make any grand showings of force because they see Guardians and Lightbearers in general insignificant fleas compared to their plan to shape the universe in their image. Calus so far is the only known Disciple to have seen what the Witness may truly look like after pissing them off and I honestly don't want to know what Calus saw that frightened him as badly as it did. I find it strange that Calus described the Witness quite well when he was insulting them.
Personally I think the witness is written brilliantly, his stoic demeanor makes him emotionally impenetrable making him feel fiscally impenetrable.I also feel like him somewhat ignoring the guardian and making us feel like lesser of a threat, gives some scale to his power.
I was hoping the witness would have an army similar to the covenant where it was multiple races in one. we could get some new races mixed with the old but not with a stinky taken paint or wrathborn
The portal to the traveler looks like one of those wall-eyes that track you in Savathûn's throne world
Finding out more about the witness should be worth the wait I hope. But that being said, he’s still mysterious and what makes him terrifying is he didn’t have to blow anything up or cause I ton of damage. He just stole our planets opened up the our source of power and just went right through like it was nothing. We talk about salvathun being tricky but the witness literally used cailis , had him do his dirty work and find the veil knowing we were going to go after him and once were there he used our ghost to connect the veil and open the portal.
It's been SO long since red war that i actually did not remember this scene at all. I remember the pyramid in shadowkeep but otherwise it's been too long, and without access to older dlc i cannot appreciate it for what it truly was
I've been saying this for soon long, before the introduction of the witness, this game is following an old book I read back in elementary school, I can't remember the name, but the premises of the story of peace and chaos are two sources of power (light and dark) and there is a character (originally perceived as the big bad meanie) and the entire story this this person trying to being forth the final shape (literally called that in the book) basically you eventually learn that peace (the light) isn't as good as everyone thinks and is actually extremely only caring about preserving itself and avoiding chaos, where chaos is causing chaos looking for peace, it finds it and they inevitably merge and everyone thinks it's over but it reveals the true intentions of the bad guy is to merge peace and chaos and create harmony (ying and yang) the idea is that you cannot have one without the other and then being seperate was actually not good and was creating an imbalance and overflow of pease in certain areas and unending chaos in others, when they merged it was able to balance out and everyone was able to experience harmony
I like what they’ve done to an extent. I like the design, I like the multiple voices going on. I like the distance we have between the witness and us as it gives this menacing boss feel. However, the lack of specific darkness enemies and lack of population inside the pyramid ships is kinda disappointing. Hoping this might change soon
Back in d1 their was so much mystery even tho the stories themselves were poor, the grimoire cards kept u interested and answered questions we wanted to know.
The witness can’t see the guardians as a threat, it’s way too confident that its plans won’t go sideways, and it also always welcomes us to take the darkness path, that’s why we can’t see it as a threat either. But maybe if we know what is the final shape will look like we might be a little more afraid of its outcomes.
i think we shouldn't have been able to weild the darkness at all. maybe stasis could be a neat exception, since it has more of a reason.
lightfall and witch queen really desensitized the darkness, which is terrible for the story.
the darkness should've stayed faceless, the witness shouldn't have existed at all. it would've been much better if it were just a cult of disciples that all followed a "god" which would be something similar to the traveler, just manifesting in a non-physical way. A voice that will speak through others, something that can control others, something more mysterious.
Honestly while the Witness itself damages and retcons most of the og darkness lore, i find lightfalls structure to be the most damaging. Bungie admitted that they experimented in the year of Lightfall when it came to story structure, pretty much just being a testing subject. Of course this heavily backfired being the year before the final chapter of a saga. Instead of drip-feeding a whole dlcs worth of lore over a year, i believe had they stuck to their original way of story telling - the witness wouldve been fleshed out much more. Seasons could've been made about the Witness, its past, its motive, the disciples, the fleet, ultimately giving bungie a window to smooth out the storys new retcons...but no its just, how do you go through the portal (forget about the witness stop asking questions, heres a cutscene about it that shouldve been in lightfall). I wouldve loved to see more discipes like Rhulk and Nazarec, hell i reckon instead of saying the ships are empty say, "yeah every ship has a disciple - like Rhulk - each one is a champion, a lone survivor from each and every uplifted race the Witnesses has wipedout. Theyre just asleep until theyre called upon by their master. That would already be such a cool concept. Its just disappointing really, what Bungie has snubbed.
Not gonna lie, having played God Eater 2 a ton recently makes me sad knowing what could've been for the Darkness and Witness. God Eater is relatively obscure but the enemy designs have some creepy and uncanny looks, with some Eldritch and badass ones also sprinkled in. Ouroboros, Dyaus Pita, Kyuubi, Hannibal, etc. all looked cool or uncanny in appearance. Ouroboros is even referred to as "an affront to nature" due to what it is, a mass of legs that can split into multiple tentacles with numerous eyes on its face.
I wish the Witness looked like that, like a face that resembled a ceramic head similar to the Demiurge in God Eater instead of Megamind. Something uncanny would've made the Witness more interesting, though I did enjoy the memes that came from their reveal
The darkness and story of Destiny has changed so much over time. Most of the people who made Destiny 1 worked for years only for the story to get scrapped last minute and they had to delay the game from 2013 to 2014. Most of the og members who worked on Destiny 1 eather left or changed their work for other DLC's or ideas. After Destiny 2 almost 2/5 of the og members left Bungie and new people had to fill in the gaps.
The story has changed a lot from the original story. The darkness was supposto be the spawn of the traveler in the original story from the 2013 version of Destiny 1 and the traveler was going to be the big enemie much like the Halo story (halo rings) with the speeker telling lies about the traveler in wich we would meet Crow. Later they changed the "darkness" from a real enemie race to something new and bungie got stuck on ideas on what the darkness was going to be after the lunch of Destiny 1 in 2014. Bungie did want to make the darkness as a real threat during the time of Forsaken leading up to the aphelion as the real darkness with the weekly visit of mara sov and the Forsaken season like Season of Gambit and Penumbra (Season of Opulence). We were supposed meet them later on but that changed after beyond light. Bungie have had many ideas for the darkness but sadly the impact and threat have faild story and gameplay wise and I belive this has to do with the shift they made during shadowkeep.
From what I understand from countless people I have spoken about game studios. Bungie has most likely had diffrent menagement teams on the story and later on a new writers or lore author's had taken up the old workes of the story, making their own spin on what the darkness or what ever the topic could be. This is not surprising considering that the people who made the original story made it around 14 years ago and people have left and joined during that time.
Tbh from what I ennvisioned the darkness to look like it would be like a walking shadow monster with two small eyes and a body that can change it''s shape with dark fog coming out from it's body. The darkness supers where going to be just one. With it suppressing light by engulfing light from other guardians and shaping weapons from the darkness much like Hel from the Thor movie. This is just what I would have wanted to see from the darkness supers. Maby something more like fog or shadow like but never Ice or green rope. RANT OVER
I’m gonna go ahead and say right away-
*yes* the Witness is a *very* bad character, as it was _never_ referenced in any way in the context of the lore up until WQ.
The Darkness was definitely referenced, for sure, but there was never the intent to present it as a physical character (just like the Traveler).
Many theories about the voice in the darkness came about during D2, but they were (thankfully) aimed mostly towards characters we knew, so it gave some mystery, and some more intensity.
I for one, prefer what the Darkness *was* in D1 and pre WQ D2; a mysterious fleet of pyramid ships, made by the Darkness to be used by its emissaries- specifically, in my opinion, *the hive.*
But whatever, it’s all retconned nonsense now that isn’t that interesting.
It would have been cool if the seasons this year had shown some indication of the Witness's progress within the Traveler. Like if each season the Traveler looked increasingly poisoned or dimmer, and then for that to somehow manifest in the various patrol zones, like constant storm clouds in the skyboxes instead of bright blue skies.
Between harvesting guardians to make void crystals, Oryx, Savathun, and state of Earth’s moon the Hive always felt like our most personal enemy as Guardians. Everyone else had their issues but the Hive felt anti-us.
Something as simple as changing the traveler entryway each week. Changing the design or color that is observable from the con of the ship and it registering in lore as creating panic in the city would go a very long way. All the main characters could be depicted, in their own ways, trying to calm the city by announcing the long shot plan and trying to carry on with seasonal stuff despite it creating a looming doom effect.
I’m interested in The Witness as a character because of the few times we see the stoic facade fade. It makes me think of other moments in the game. Rhulks final words could very well be a disciple feeling guilt for failing the one he believes in or could be that he glimpsed the Witness’s rage before.
I get this feeling that The Witness was a cry for help from Bungie. I remember watching the vidoc of Lightfall, and a Bungie studio member said (paraphrasing): "We finally know our enemy, at it is The Witness". You could almost hear the emphasis on the word, "we". Like Bungie themselves finally have an idea on the true villain of Destiny, after 7 YEARS!
They should show our battle through the traveler. Like maybe it becomes different shades of colors while we’re battling or maybe pulsating as we break the reality within it
It's like Bungie watched Bleach and saw Aizen Sosuke and thought, "hey, we can make a villain like that", but completely failed to understand what made Aizen such and intimidating and interesting villain in the first place and that being he actually had a personality besides 'cold and stoic'.
It just feels very generic sci fi villian. I love savathun’s whole design theme with moths and the three green eyes being her distinct thing. The witness is just so… bland? The little lore snippet we got breaking down how the witness’ civilization melded themselves together, but nothing really after that.
Bill Nighs speaker talking about the Traveler bring back great memories. D2 should’ve never been a thing they should’ve just continued adding DLC and updates.
I honestly like the witness as a villain. That moment where they lost composure with Calus was pretty chilling.
I’ve just had a crazy thought.
What if the first guardians were so strong nothing stood in their way and they were craving for a challenge.
They come across their first Ahamkara dragon and it offers them a wish.
The guardian wishes for a challenge worthy of their power and something to test them and their abilities as much as possible.
The Ahamkara grants this wish but only in a generic and confusing way, by creating an unknown enemy that can extinguish the life and light of a guardian in the right circumstances.
No-one else knows about the wish so they assume a new major enemy which has no real form or name, has attacked them. But instead it is the formless “Darkness”, a complete contrast to the Light wielded by guardians.
Imagine it is then found out the Ahamkara created the Darkness to test the guardians based on their wish - this would be a valid reason to start the Great Hunt, especially if an Ahamkara refused to reverse the original wish.
Now eons later an entity has appeared with similar powers which we all label as the Darkness just because we’ve never been able to put a face to the name.
But think about it. If the Traveler is the Gardener, and the Veil is the Winnower, they aren’t enemies, just 2 sides of the same coin like day and night.
The Witness also isn’t the Darkness as he is an amalgam of all his people in one body, with all their knowledge and power.
Also, the Traveler has been above Earth for thousands of years, and if the Witness and Pyramid ships were the Darkness, why would they arrive, kick the guardians and Traveler’s backside then disappear to the far end of the galaxy for millennia?
I’ve never thought of this as an idea but when it hit me, it seemed logical to some extent.
I know there’s loads of holes in this theory and there’s probably loads of lore and in-game information on it, but I just found this idea to be interesting.
For me, after the witness opens the portal and we go around talking to everyone it didn't feel like the "infinity war" everyone was expecting it to be. The mood doesn't feel like what it should be either, the entire universe is about to be blinked out of existence and here we are celebrating guardian games, solstice and baking cookies for Eva.
I mean he’s just mysterious at the moment, overall every presence of him I’ve liked, he seems so powerful it’s undefeatable
The bit where he gets angry at calus is brilliant.
The darkness is still mysterious and I think once we’ve “hurt” him we’d see a new form.
As for his army, a weird combination of scorn cabal taken and hive and vex and even some house salvation. Could make for fun interesting combat without fighting the same enemies
I can only pray for more cabal to fight and that the subjugates are fun
And I hope he gets really damn angry in the campaign when we start messing with his whole life goal
As a being of thr darkness i was hoping for something more eldritch maybe
I would not say that it was not around for like 2 expansions we have to look at the Taken King too with how it spoke to Oryx, indoctrinated him in the idea that the way to be saved is to end universal suffering, and the only to do that is to end everything that would cause it. I like him as well because he looks humanoid, very out of place compared to other villains, they look too alien, but to see something that is like us yet not at all shows something existentially dreadful. And the lore team described the Witness as being above the universe, that it was so powerful that it cares not for the affairs of those who struggle against it, can solve it’s problems with a flick of it’s hand.
Honestly the dlc’s don’t hit the same ever since they stopped making the main villain of the expansion also be the boss of the raid
Personally a fight with the witness doesnt even make sense, as seen in the cutscene, one flick of a wrist and your dead... how do we even compete with that? logically a fight with the witness is pointless to me
I actually think The Witness as a villain is totally fine. He's powerful and the embodiment of pure evil. However, I'm disappointed that there isn't really some "darkness army" invasion inside those ships to face...I think that was a total miss by Bungie.
The wittness would be right at home in Fortnite (visually).
I think they could have made it better. For example, in the intro to SOT Deep, we saw a Guardian try to venture into the portal, however, he was later found mangled with his ghost dead (not sure if it was in the Traveller or not, all we saw was space behind him). They could have shown us the Guardian getting mangled by the Witness, as we see the Pale Heart in construction and how it is not yet shaped by the Witness, but is slowly changing. That would have been so much more interesting, and while we would have lost the mystery of how the Guardian died, I'd rather we have that to show us the Witness's brutality and how life is almost meaningless compared to it's goals.