Destiny 2 Lore - The Origins of The Witness Revealed at last. The Traveler's Betrayal? 

this literally makes so much sense wtf

I thought they were talking about mercury being a garden world with his gun?

@@ImaginArt24 yeah, my comment is unrelated to what was covered in the video, and more related to the witness and the cutscene

Bungie : write that down write that down

and in a Plunder dialogue Eris says "The Darkness moves just beneath its skin. Do you feel it? It Ruptures. Flows. Envelops." if Ruptures is about Stasis and Flows is about Strand, then The Witness should know about the third Darkness form since it Envelops, which could also be a form of control.

There are an awful lot of urns

@@Boomer-12347 oh dear god you are right LOL

​@@Boomer-12347holy shit fr

You mean flying mausoleums

Self driving hearses

Yeah I don’t get how aztecross said he’s less interested in the witness from the cutscene

@@jacksonduncan142 Aztecross is well intentioned, if... slightly mentally deficient.

@@jacksonduncan142 destiny youtubers are largely braindead, as is most of the vocal community

@@jacksonduncan142 because there's this really annoying trend on the internet where we've all been trained to tear apart stories like puzzles and analyze them piece by piece like a jigsaw to the point that when we assemble our version before the storyteller can reveal theirs, we can only be disappointed by the reveal. Its fckin JJ Abrams 'mystery box' brain, for those who've been in this community for years, the mystery of what the darkness is, what the Witness is and what the Traveler is, is a large part of why people keep playing through the good and bad periods. Though i will say its super fckin funny as someone who quite enjoyed Lightfall to see people get annoyed over a lack of answers in that campaign and now this concrete answer to the Witness. Its very r/DTG of them but thats all just me being petty.

@@Lynch2507 ayo, based department?

fits with them trying to make a pirate copy of the veil though.

​@@SymbioteMulletOne shunned Vex Sect attempting to recreate the Veil and Worshipping the Witness. In the totality of the Vex collective, they are the extreme fringe outliers and a relatively new development in the history of the Vex. Simulations and layering them over sections of space time is essentially the main manner the Vex have always operated. My personal spinfoil hat theory is that the Vex, specifically the semiorganic fluid, is the corpse's left after Witness's creation on the predecessor home world. The predecessor's Golden Age lasted Aeons after all. Consider the fact that the Vex Fluid shares properties with SIVA. Beyond the stated idea that SIVA may have been invented based off of it and the implication that Quicksilver is likely SIVA coated in Exo mind fluid for EMR shielding. Quicksilver, as was SIVA, is used to cybernetically enhance living beings. It would almost be a given that having Aeons of Golden Age prosperity that the same practice wasn't used by the predecessor race. It's also not outside the realm of possibility that the vex simulation technology is also a development of of the predecessor race. It may have been their first attempt to rewrite the history of the universe in fact, but they realised that it cannot account for the infinite variables caused by paracausal entities & forces. The Veil is the key, a compass and map of space time. The Traveller is the means of affecting physical change in the universe. Without both, making the changes they desired would be impossible. Fast forward to the Witness being created and leaving their home world. The next most sentient and sapient thing would be their nanotech, left within the organic body's and with an entire civilisation's aeons worth of advancements in technologies and scientific knowledge. Vex and Pyramid architecture have many similarities, where they mainly differ is in prioritising function and the creativity of form & aesthetics respectively. It's like the Vex have attempted to continue using the predecessor structures but only in the most efficient and practical ways. Leading to a distinct lack of the same aesthetics seen in Pyramid Tech, that and upward flowing fluids to literal lakes on the ceiling. The Vex in general seem to have a similar goal to the Witness, essentially with themselves becoming the final shape of the universe. The fluid also is capable of matter conversion, as seen with Asher Mir. Which is a shared property of both SIVA and Taken matter/energy/blight. All seems to be a bit too connected to simply chalk up to coincidence.

@@SymbioteMullet agree it fits, but wasn’t the copy of the veil (black heart) made by a different faction/group of vex (sol devise) then the group who created the infinite Forrest?

@@l.r8926 yes the Witness made it I believe, though I may be misremembering the lore so take my comment with a grain of salt.

@l.r8926 yeah, the witness apparently set it up, but the Vex knew how to make one - there's a D1 strike where you have to stop a Vex Mind from recreating the Heart. That reminds me... mars is somehow essential. Humanity first met the Traveller there, the Witness stole it and left the Relic there, our portal to savvy's throne world is there, the black garden is there (after d1 vanilla there was a permanent access point in the subway system in meridian bay). I wonder if any of that will be relevant.

The universe's longest, least mature temper tantrum.

@@Technodreamer LMAOOOO

So what happens if we use strand on the Witness? Will we unravel the being as a whole or be entangled into its being?

@@gh0ul2559 We stitch ourselves inside and them rip our way back out.

@lilwindingo1100 it's more terrifying when you think the whole process for them to become one being was forced upon a considerable portion of its species. I like to think when we were first trying to learn how to use stasis is what's left of those who didnt want to become the Witness and their desperate attempt at warning and teaching us.

​@@soundcloudpandapandawa2997I get that impression too, the Witness's predecessor species wouldn't have a homogeneous opinion after all. There is some parallel to Neomuna with how they had to force everyone into cryogenics, regardless of if they wanted to or not. If they went willingly then they were uploaded to the cloud ark, if not they were rounded up and just put in the deep freeze. Seems like the "Sympathisers" among the Witness's collective may have been able to pass it off as a means to lure humanity in with the same temptation that worked on Erimas and her House. A dependence on borrowed power, instead we had been able to use the power without the shard and truly claim it for ourselves without being claimed by it in return. Some guardian's have not been so lucky, just as Erimas and some of her House have doubts and likely attempted to resist succumbing to the power.

@@soundcloudpandapandawa2997 I hope they go with that. It'd solidly differentiate the Witness from another amalgam being I know too much about, the God Emperor of Mankind from Warhammer 40k.

They are representations of that race, and they are wearing veils...

Pretty much

@@everythingsalright1121 ... What would happen if a Ghost picked one?

@@SymbioteMullet That would be pretty fascinating. Maybe that would be how they reveal that not everyone joined the Witness willingly. (While also suggesting how to unravel the Witness itself.)

@@Sorain1 But Ghosts are purely light, so it'd raise one of the Witness People with no memory... we'd have to find a Deepsight master like Savathun to restore their memory, and that might be a _really_ bad idea if it turns out this was one of the people fanatically devoted to the Witness' cause...

I don't blame the Traveler for fleeing. If the Veil can essentially shackle the Traveler, I'd run too. No one wants to be imprisoned or have someone else's will exerted over them. We may not know what the Traveler is, but it has shown time and time again that it is very much a sentient being. No creature wants a life of subjection

Control isn't the opposite of light. Strand is darkness and the lack of control.

@@TerrariaGolem not necessarily, strand is still a form of control. You have to relinquish control to be able to wield it or it will control you and inevitably destroy you. So to use it to control your enemies, suspend/sever, you have to learn to let it flow through you and not control it. So it still is a form of control, but in the sense that it controls others, not the wielder.

Kinda like how Ghaul did when he forcibly attained the light

@@skydefender7554​​⁠I wouldn’t say this is about control but about flow and mindset. “Perspective” as Osiris put it. Stasis is about control. Control over your self and then control over others. Strand is about connection. Void is the connection of all physical things. From pebbles to a black hole. Strand is the psychic connections between living things. The webs of consciousness that flow between all. To wield strand is to relinquish control yes. But more about “flowing with the strands and weaves created from all living things.” The reality is we actually have NO idea why the traveller chose to flea. Maybe it didn’t desire to be controlled. Maybe it didn’t like the predecessors choosing the darkness. We don’t really know.

good? wdym?? they want to erase every living being in existence..

And i think this cutscene and dialogue does really well to BEGIN to explain things but leave a loooot of room for questions and interpretation and allows them to further expand upon this info over time

The Veil is the head, the Traveller the hands. A thinker and a doer, but they are not united.

​@SymbioteMullet so the traveler didn't consciencely choose to leave? The hands just happened to try and escape?

@andrewtackett8351 instinct. Danger - run. Can't run - fight.

I wonder if that is ludonarrative resonance. Destiny has had many missions (at least destiny 1 did) that reminded me of ARGs in that it was up to the community to discover what to do and what was next. We weren't shown by waypoints and minimaps how to get Outbreak Prime, for example.

The traveler see you nothing but a soldier, that you are thankless. The traveler Has been creating soldiers only to fight the witness and those soldiers they all gone expect Guardians and hive lightbearers. We may be lightbearers but we fight for the last city not the traveler. I don't care if he gets destroyed drifter is right the light is more like curse not gift better if he is destroyed or reshaped as new with the weil (personalny i think that the witness wants to combine the light and dark or more like the veil and the traveler as one force that can be controled he wants to do something like awoken all beings in the Universe reshaped as awoken I still remember the xur words "awoken you don't know what role you play in the universe" or something like that).

Really makes you look back at certain things with a new understanding for example : [Shadebinder Warlock] Flavor Text " Reality is chaotic and unruly; bind it and bring order. "

I played through the the DLC's and noticed that "The Deep" is actually a VERY COMMON phrase throughout the series. I think this season may be the most important narratively just because of how much "The Deep" is actually referred too even if not specifically referring to Titan.

@@tachi5408 The deep is just the Hive term for the Darkness. It's about how they dove deep into their homeworld, Fundament, way beyond the light bearing leviathan Ahsa, way down to the Wormgods, which gave them the darnkess. They were deep down below; hence: the deep. You actually get that definitvoin from ingame lore :) deep = darkness

​@@GrotesqueSmurfthe leviathan on Fundament was not Ahsa (unless they retcon that leviathan's death as un reliable narrator) as that leviathan died. Also Ahsa doesn't wield light, she is a being of darkness

@@aidenfanucci9523 I believe one of the dialogue bits you can get in deep dive as of this week confirms ahsa is the leviathan, it talks about having tried to stop the hive from getting to the worm gods.

@@GrotesqueSmurf yeah, Deep is just the hive term for Darkness just as "The Sky" is the hive term for the traveller/light (as shown by Xivu Arath's raging).

same😂 Todd howard interview next. It's a good day for gaming

Exactly. And than Savathun stole the veil during the collapse so the traveler no longer needed to flee. Then it was crippled?

@@TN29571 A shard of it fell into the EDZ and then it stopped wherever the last city is, and created Ghosts, little travellers who make life out of death, but it's only one half of the puzzle, so they have no memory.

⁠@@SymbioteMulletwhich is fascinating because if the Witness isn't a being created by the darkness he's just an entire species of people who worshipped it what is going to be the counterpoint to that does the traveller and veil have someone inside like who made the ghosts how can the traveller fire a massive laser beam like we have one question answered on the witness but what is the traveller I have to know now

​@@SymbioteMulletbecause Light is life and Darkness is mind, that's why Guardians have no memory, that's how Savathun used Darkness to make Crow remember his past life, that's how we use Deepsight to recreate things from the past, that's how the Witness had access to things from Mars' past. Since the Traveler can modify space/life, the Veil can modify time/mind, sum both and you can modify EVERYTHING. That's further hinted with the Sol Progeny, since the Vex want to modify everything to be Vex, they tried to recreate the Veil (Black Heart) so they could try to create a link with the Traveler and do the same thing the Witness wants to do.

Holy shit so the Traveler is literally called the Traveler because it just constantly goes to different worlds chaotically and randomly transforming those worlds and civilisations with the light… It has no method to its madness, no plan. Just mindlessly running away and blessing left and right. In contrast to the Veil which doesn’t travel and instead stays put. The veils power was only harnessed by force in Neomuna, never does it actually just give out power… Oh god I’m beginning to get what the witness is saying 😂

Right, except for Xivu Arath, Panoptes, Xol, Uldren, Eramis, Rhulk, Calus, and literally everyone except Ghaul, The Witness and arguably Savathûn. You’re right, 3/10 is basically every single bad guy.

@@SarcasticDragonGaming ur right some of those guys didn't want that but arguably some do xivu arath wants what the witness wants so u could say that she wants the traveler to talk or communicate in some way as well xol and pranoptes u r right didn't want that they were mostly out to destroy us but they gave us Allies that eventually help in the long haul. Uldren didn't want to talk to the traveler but he did want to talk to Mara but it was actually a taken riven so u could say he wanted to talk to someone but the only one who answered was the darkness. Eramis wanted to destroy the traveler but more than anything she wants a place for her people again and if the traveler spoke she would be the first to kneel to it and join the house of light. And rulhk and Claus were lost hopes before we even met them they had been transformed or tainted by the darkness so of course they didn't want to talk to it but they served the witness so rulhk definitely was ok with talking/ final shaping. But calus hehe he was only in it for the greed and power he was no more than a pawn at the very end.

@@michaelcrandall4853 arguably yeah, I’m mostly just messing around, you are right that it’s a prevalent reasoning for sure.

@@SarcasticDragonGaming yeah ik ur messing around man and I knew someone was going to say all this or more and I wanted them to because it gives me a reason to say all that I did because I'm not the type of person to write a paragraph as a starting comment 😂. As reply maybe 😉😂 but never a starting one.

No the Traveller is definetely way older than that I feel like they are going to tie the Vex or some other ancient race into the story of the traveller and the veil the witnesses people did not create the traveller

I love this theory! But that leaves the question of the veil and how it exists.

​@PT801 If their collective desperation willed The Traveler into existence, perhaps The Veil was born of their collective angst and yearning for purpose.

I don't think that is where they are going with this, but it's a really cool idea in and of itself.

Cool idea. But the traveler has been around since time itself probably.

I've been thinking about this too, glad I wasn't the only one.

Since the Drifter has apparently found the world Egregore came from (or at least one heavily infested with it), is it possible he found the Witness' homeworld?

@@SymbioteMullet yooo my man drifter really is a wild card in this deck.

@SymbioteMullet I thought of that too, that much death all at once is sure to cause a surge. There's a lot Drifter is keeping to himself, too. I also wonder if we'll get more on that planet with the light suppressing beings.

@@AvantleFox Plot twist: The Drifter has been the Witness this entire time. Actually... it's been a long time since we've seen his ghost...

Kinda reminds me of Father from Full Metal Alchemist anime. All those souls in his philosophers stone.

Holy shit.... what is this experiment called??

This infamous experiment was proven to be just animal cruelty with no purpose since it was held under conditions and restrictions where it was bound to fail. There are many critics of it - for example "Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?"

@@manuelaraujo1992 "Calhoun's Rodent Experiment" or "universe 25". Here's an excerpt of some text on it, which is very familiar... By the 560th day, the population increase had ceased altogether as the mortality rate hovered at 100 percent. This marked the start of the "death phase" - aka the "die period" - in which the rodent utopia slid toward extinction. Amidst the violence, hostility, and lack of mating, a younger generation of mice reached maturity, having never been exposed to examples of normal, healthy relations. With no concept of mating, parenting, or marking territory, this generation of mice spent all of their waking hours eating, drinking, and grooming themselves. In reference to their perfected, unruffled appearances, Calhoun called these mice the "beautiful ones." Living in seclusion from the other mice, they were spared the violence and conflict that waged in the crowded areas, yet made no social contributions. According to Calhoun, the death phase consisted of two stages: the "first death" and "second death." The former was characterized by the loss of purpose in life beyond mere existence - no desire to mate, raise young or establish a role within society. This first death was represented by the lackadaisical lives of the beautiful ones, whereas the second death was marked by the literal end of life and the extinction of Universe 25. THE SUN SETS ON UNIVERSE 25 Extending on his observations of the beautiful ones, Calhoun later opined that mice, as humans, thrive on a sense of identity and purpose within the world at large. He argued experiences such as tension, stress, anxiety, and the need to survive make it necessary to engage in society. When all needs are accounted for, and no conflict exists, the act of living is stripped to its barest physiological essentials of food and sleep. In Calhoun's view: Herein is the paradox of a life without work or conflict. When all sense of necessity is stripped from the life of an individual, life ceases to have purpose. The individual dies in spirit. Gradually, the mice that refused to mate or engage in society came to outnumber those that formed gangs, raped and plundered, and fed off their own. The last known conception in Universe 25 occurred on Day 920, at which point the population was capped at 2,200, well short of the enclosure's 3,000 capacity. An endless supply of food, water, and other resources were still there for the mice, but it didn't matter. The behavior sink had set in, and there was no stopping Universe 25 from careening to its self-made demise. Soon enough, there was not a single living mouse left in the enclosure..

An important detail with that that people miss, is that the 'paradise' that was created for the rats lacked space, privacy and any form of entertainment. Literally all the rats had was food and water.

@@triplecastsleep1924 Exactly. Put humans (or other sapients) into that situation and they'd start pursuing art, culture, hobbies etc.

I hope so. I really like the Vex.

You're probably right, but with the Witness being a collective of all of its species, Bungie has the best opportunity to finally add a new species faction to fight if the Witness splits off parts of itself to deal with us. However, knowing Bungie, they'll take the easy route and reuse Vex and Taken rather than actually create new enemies. After all, it's their motto to do what is quick and easy rather than make quality stuff that requires a bit of difficulty.

11:34 If anybody wants to read the prophecy again

yeah and since we've been lied to about the creation of the universe (gardener and winnower), we now don't now anymore how the Vex were created..

I just re-read and re-contextualised them and they forshadow every event leading up to now so well

With their connection to the paracausality of both the Light and Dark, I'm surprised the Vex would have neither. That being said, they certainly are pursuing their own "Final Shape".

I was thinking about that too. Perhaps we go back to the "Beginning" in the place where the Witness was formed.

@@justcallmeness I'm just hoping it doesn't end up being that our actions create the beginning of the Traveller making a causal loop.

I believe they've said it's specifically a technical/resource thing, with it being significantly less resource intensive to do the half-body hologram than a full-body performance.

Hopefully those resources are going into making new armor and guns, updating Gambit…wait.

Exactly I feel like these predecessors are also like the forerunners which some were turned into the flood, a hive mind

Or actually the predecessors are like the precursors from halo

Lore and moment to moment gameplay, those are definitely the strengths of this franchise. So much potential, you can't help but want to see it come to fruition, regardless of how it is being squandered at a given moment.

Lore doesn’t solve an overall bad narrative nor does it make up for the stale gameplay loop

If only that lore was actually shown in the game and not some tiny text you have to read through.

You've just made me think. The witness is an amalgamation of an entire race. The way the hive tribute their power upwards is kind of similar, the amalgamation of an entire race's power into the Hive Gods. Mimicking the witness in another way.