How Does Bungie Follow Up The Final Shape? | Destiny 2 

In D3, the first raid boss I heard will be Datto. There will be 4 encounters. It’s chamber like structures thru a vast land that lead to “The vault”.

The nine showing up and eating the witness would be the most wild ending and I want it.

I want a Nine-styled raid. I always wanted to see the Nine’s interpretation of us guardians as raid bosses with the penultimate boss being an amalgamation of all three guardians together to fuse a “perfect” image. Would be pretty dope.

There's actually a lot they could do. There's tons of stuff in the lore that they can expand on like taking back the cabal's home world or stuff with the nine. They can always introduce new species as well.

I wonder how they will be able to keep the Dread around, lore-wise, when the Witness is gone. I hope they’re not just for the Final Shape

Bungie tried that “make a decision” quest before. The only thing that changed was what the Drifter called my character.

The problem with this phase of the mcu has been the quality..look at how excited people are about deadpool/wolverine...we just want quality movies...X-Men 97 is getting mad hype right now! Give us quality content

I'm going to safely assume that Episodes are goin to be like the expansions Bungie released when Activision owned then, similar to the size of warmind/CoO

In the final shape collectors edition there’s a bit of lore that states basically that one of the precursors (witness race before the civilisation merged) left their system before the merge happened, meaning there’s a possibility they’re still out there somewhere. It’d be really cool to meet whoever that is and to see what the witness’s race was like

I don't want another cliffhanger or sequel stinger. I want a fucking ending.

FFXIV ended their story with Endwalker and they're still going strong with Dawntrail coming up. Bungie should probably take a look at them since its more applicable.

It’s taken me up to this video to realise that Az is literally just Destiny Alex Jones

2:46 bungie: write that down, write that down!

The lore behind the Nine can be seen as the equivalent of the Void Lords of WoW. They create/manipulate life to do their bidding while they basically sit back and watch. This is what is believed to be the origins of the Ahamkara--the Nine possibly creating them. I don't know if there is anything stating that as fact, but the Nine were pissed at Oryx when he took Riven, and they manipulated the Awoken and the Guardians to kill the remaining Ahamkara instead of destroying them personally. I find them to be the most interesting, but I honestly think having beings that powerful existing outside of the perceptive universe in Destiny makes them feel too OP, but at the same time meaningless because they don't really do anything.

Drifter is one of the coolest character in destiny. I would love a seperate destiny prequel that has you playing as drifter beginning with his first resurrection.

I hope that they make a destiny 3 set far in the future with a new guardian. You’d be able to begin telling a new story that can still tie in old characters. I think what destiny is really missing right now is the part that made the lore so captivating in the first place: mystery. A new story in deep space would bring back a lot of the wonder that has naturally worn off as a result of 10 years of story development.

Guardian wars! What bigger enemies than God killers?

What if day 1 raid is also connected to a community event in Final Shape? Raiders can go and tackle the raid while everyone in the community do public event like activities across all the planets so they can strenghten the raiders or weaken The Withness back in the raid. These can be pretty chill activities like collecting, destroying or even merging light and dark energies, so people can still watch the raid streams and chat about whats going on while playing. Challange can be the amount of activities required. Idk it's probably just copium, but hey they are on a win streak nowadays.

I keep thinking that the next step, after Final Shape, is going out into space. To explore the galaxy and leave this solar system. To be the Vanguard of explorers.

On that Civil War point: Remember back during Season of the Drifter after forsaken, where we had a quest from drifter to choose sides, btw him and the Vanguard? It said it would have huge implications on the future and then absolutely nothing happened with it since.

I really want to believe the rumors of D3 are true, I'm not ready to say goodbye. I just feel like they woudlnt make any these changes/updates for it to be over with next DLC.

Morgan freeman as the gardener would be great 😂😂

I think, from that lore video, that The Witness is the culmination of the civilization's self sacrifice that encountered the Traveller/The Gardener first. They found the Gardener's anithesis in the Veil, and The Winnower is the entity or method they needed to use the Veil to give meaning to the chaotic light that they weilded. So they brought it to the Gardener, and the Gardener refused to interact with the Veil, the thing that gave the people of Lubrae the power to create the Winnower. The Witness is not the Winnower, it is the weilder of it. The Witness is the people of Lubrae, trying to impose order on and orderless universe. The "Traveller", the "Great Machine" and the "Gardener" are just many race's names for the same entity. Im curious to know if the Traveller was conceived on Lubrae. Or if this was only another species trying to control the Light, and chasing it again. Perhaps there are even more ancient enemies searching for it.

I want Rogue guardians especially since it's in the lore. Imagine in open world space like public events which could get a major update as well, where kinda like division where u could get some exclusive stuff for either what side u choose and u could fight it out for a short time to take other exclusives from other guardians

Also one thing you got to consider is that the reason everyone was not interested after endgame wasn't even just the "burnout", it was the fact that everyone we gave a shEt about ended thwir contracts.

Isn't the bit about Vex not having sent their actual fighters something that could just be, like, Calus' opinion, man?

Thing with destiny is theres a ton of lore that hasnt been delved into. The nine is a biggest one but theres so much more. Plus any new adventures outside our solar system can be linked to the existing lore as the light and dark stuff went universe wide so despite us not having met whoever it is before we will have links in terms of experiences

Your breakdown of Destiny Civil War was how we dealt with the Witch Queen. Ikora and Eris had one way and Zavala and others had another.

Eat? Why eat? Ha Ha! man I was so traumatized as you were describing them eating him.

While there can be interesting stuff after it, Idk if ill ever be interested in the story as much as i am currently after TFS, the Witness stuff is what kept me hooked & even made me return to the game after i took a break (Arrivals). Once the Traveler & the Witness are resolved, idk if itll be as enticing to me

Thank you for including the link to the article!!!

Imagine the Traveller and the Veil are two of the Nine. 7 more out there, waiting to be explored in d3

"Destiny 3: Beyond""

Why isn’t Cross on the writing team?

What they could do is either have a few years of story or something about restoring sol or/after that we could go to new/ different systems or planets beyond sol. Could have a dangerous discovery or discover a new race of aliens that we could team up with or something. They could go crazy

Heres the possibility for future stories; Stories about the Nine. Drifter stories because he has some of the unique stories. Eramis stories. Clovis is still around in europa. Lysander aka concordat the faction that gave us the skimmer. Lady efrideet is still out there. And of course the Vex and Xivu. You can do many standalone stories if Bungie needs time to make their next saga standalone stories is probably the better option.

The thing with bungee is though they have a lot of stories that still need answers or etc. Like they could do a DLC that we go to Torabottle and help the Cabal from the hive.

The Gardener and the winnower are not actual characters, they just serve as cosmic metaphors in the Unveiling lore book, likely written by The Witness.

I agree with you cross that I think The Nine will be the next “thing” we are dealing with after the Light and Darkness saga ends. Perhaps they push the Aphelion into our worlds and not just in the Ascendant realm. Prequel episodes would be kinda cool, like going back and getting to be around in the Dark Age or early City Age.

Like you mentioned we have things like the Nine and Xivu, and the exploring places we never been or exploring would be a really good idea, and as for the Civil war idea Byf did make the question on how would organizations within the last city who are super pure about the light react to things like transandence or Osiris's new perspective of what the darkness is? And on one of the lore cards for Into the light, Ada-1 did mention intrest in gathering things in the cosmodrome while she and Shaax were convincing the foundries to start producing the new versions of the brave weapons.

All I wanna know is, is Cayde back, or is he a friggin GHOST in the traveler and he cannot leave?

The only thing we know about the nine is that Jamal needs to calm down.

I agree so much with this, from a drifter episode, to the different ways that they continue the story, and just the speculation on what’s gonna happen in the final shape

They already did that drifter or the vanguard thing and it ment nothing because they didnt follow up on it

This is a perfect example of why Marvel was at its peak during the 2010s. Cross cant even remember that there was never an Avengers:Civil War. It was Captain America:Civil War. But it was so epic and big, that it felt like an avengers movie. And it was written by the Russo brothers who also wrote the Endgame and Infinity War. What a time for movies.

Just wanna remind everyone that the Witness did NOT write the book of Unveiling. The author there does not mach the tone that the Witness has which begs the question on who or what was it that talked to us in that book?

Dang, goes way deeper than I could have ever imagined.

There is a tracker for every vale scattered across the cosmos in galaxies

Personally I'd love to see a civil war thing with the dragon eggs, some think they are too dangerous and now we can back out of our part of the deal and a smaller group wants to keep the eggs and hide or raise the dragons

The start of D3 is us making good on our aliances with House of Light and Caitl and we go get their home planets back and in working order. The overarching story is after Final Shape (whatever it does) it has gotten the attention of The 9, and as the lore has said they have been split into two groups of The 4 and The 5 and players get to pick which group they want to help assist in their goals. The second expansion the Faction leaders come back and have joined to become one faction against Guardians due to the outcome of Final Shape which brings a new enemy faction of humans/exos with light supressing attacks since they know us well. They also have Destiny warlords working with them so they can have revenge on Ikora/Zvala. Also two of Riven's eggs have been found with the 3rd one still missing somewhere, and the found two are starting to hatch... Episodes would be dealing with old battles we never saw, Twilight Gap, Battle of 6 Fronts, and missions working with the Hidden and Fenchurch.

We should have an expansion with the Drifter where we explore outside of Sol 😊

By focusing on the vex, literally could go anywhere with them but if we find out how to take the fight to them and go at their existence would be very cool. They’ve been very underutilized and been benchwarmers for sentient robots that are time travelers.

They lost me when I found out they were using Destiny funds TO MAKE ANOTHER GAME. Constantly talking about attracting a new player base instead of staying loyal to the loyal group of players. To quote lockdown” The problem with being loyal to a cause is, the cause will always betray you.

Marvel went ultra woke and made trash after end game.

if the traveller is the light (bestows the gift of light on those whose virtues and actions reflect its goals) the veil is Prismatic (a blend of light and dark that coexist and allow the user to enhance one or the other or both within an undetermined set of boundaries or guidelines; the witness uses darkness with the veil to LEARN about entering the traveller and LEARN how to continue making strides towards its final shape, and the witness uses the light with the veil to mold the universe into its final shape and maybe was using the light in the process of it MAKING the portal) and this unknown object we havent seen yet but will probably learn about in final shape is the darkness.

the whole "Civil War" idea already sorta happened. Back in season of the drifter, whenwe got to choose Drifter or the vanguard

The precursors called the traveler the gardener but thats not tied directly to the unveiling lore book which is where we get the gardener/winnower dichotomy. Theyre two seperated instances of the term gardener

What ever happened to that drifter quest where we chose sides between him and the vanguard?

I had a theory that because they are bringing back up the concordat recently, that they plan on possibly doing that Civil War as Aztecross said but I was thinking this is what a TV show would be about is building up the lore of the concordat and their motives as we don't know them and it would be much easier to produce since it would rely more on people than having CGI aliens. The finale of that TV show or film or w/e could culminate in the battle of Bannerfall where the Concordat loses and sets up Lysanders return in the actual Destiny game. Basically doing a similar thing to the Fallout TV show where you do a big marketing push through a TV show that reaches a lot more people to get them invested in a universe and story and that means money and lots of players.

They had the whole layout for a year of destiny civil war. There was a mission back in the day where you chose to side with the drifter or the vanguard.

What he described about choosing sides and locking you in to different sides and stories... We already did that over a year ago. "Drifter will remember your choice".

My interpretation of the Gardener and Winnower thing is that the Witness is an emissary of the Winnower which is the capital T capital D “The Darkness” which would mean the traveler is a ship of whatever is the emissary of the Gardener or the capital T capital L “The Light”. Basically that the traveler is kind of a ship or a vessel for whatever directly serves The Gardener

Loved that civil war idea. Would love to see something where we make a decision and it matters. Would be a reason to play on other characters

I could see some parts falling out of the Witness in the Raid, that will become the not-final-encounter Bosses so that once we fought them, the Witness is weakened by the time we reach it and can finally defeat it.

EYYYY Cross just want to say watching your videos always brighten my day 😊

Anything Paul tassi says I expect the opposite. The man will entertain anything that he sees bringing viewers

The Unveiling Lore book that describes the Winower and gardener is not told to us by the witness, its from the perspective of the entity known as "The Winower". As asa said, the traveler and the light causes chaos and destruction to the universe, like how the gardener changed the rules in the game to break the pattern of the final shape that it thought was boring and dumb. This caused all the flowers to wilt and die and be reborn constantly never reaching a true end. Asa says that when the Witness' orgininal people found the veil it taught them how to create the final shape, or restore the flower game to its intended pattern that the gardener had disrupted with the chaos of the light. When the Witness' people tried to use the veil to return reality back to the final shape, the way the flower game was intended to play, the traveler fled not wanting its plans to be ruined because it is trying to change the game of reality. The Winower is just sitting back reaping the dead flowers knowing that eventually the pattern will be restored no matter what the gardener does because entities like the witness will always find the truth and try to restore reality to how it should be in its eyes. So yeah there are still two super cosmic entities out there somewhere that are the winower and the gardener and they do interact with reality through the traveler and the veil. Its possible they are beings similar to The Nine but much older and more powerful since they have been around since before the creation of reailty and The Nine have only been around since the creation of our solar system.

What if things dont end like we think they will, and then at the end we find a way to travel time and the only way to survive now is to go back and stop the witness from even being formed. I know I know time paradoxes but just a thought (I also can’t remember off the top what savathuns truths and lies were)

@8:00 I'm pretty sure Drifter has asked the Guardian for this specifically.

I'd like to see how light and dark bases abilities move forward lore-wise, in the series. Do the gaurdians pass away, finally able to rest? Is there some sort I'd synergy between light and dark? Or do we transcend making use of Cloud Strider tech to forge a new breed of guardian?

From what I understand the nine are beings comprised of dark matter so I don't know if they'll just show up after the raid, but there might be something to do with them in episodes. Per the gardener/traveler issue, the Gardener and winnower would play their game which kept ending in stalemate, thus the Gardener wanted to change the rules and add a degree of chaos/unpredictability in the game. I believe the traveler is the physical manifestation of the gardeners will to inject chaos into the game/existence.

I agree. I would love to have a story about the Drifter and the nine. There is so much potential in the stories of Destiny. I stopped playing for several reasons, but one of those was because the stories started feeling more like a fanfiction or too quick with little explanation around the time the game became a live service. I also may be in the minority with that sentiment, but it would be cool to delve into these stories.

Love you and your content cross ❤

The Drifter's Light/Dark Ambiguity is so good for his alt story line with The Nine and making his banks. I would kill for an episode following him around. I could imagine us taking the HELM on a long mission to get to his Murder Planet and uncovering some crazy stuff.

There's a lot you could do. Like a vex god that eats or absorbs the witness when he's weakened by us at the end of the raid in order to segway into a more "sentience vs ultramind" story

D3- Prologue- We travel around rescuing distant systems from the remaining Witness forces. Xivu and her brood have aligned with the Vex and become cyborg hive. They launch an assault against us.

While a Drifter season specifically wouldn't be my first choice I think the idea is a good one. I'd be down for an espionage related one where we work directly with Ikora's Hidden to uncover some mystery that arises after taking down the Witness. Bungie has always been able to tell good stories, the twisty turny narrative from the Witch Queen being the highlight for me.

All the language we have to refer to the full spectrum of paracausality in the D2 universe comes from the Witness, or whoever is telling the story in the cutscene. It’s controlled how we interpret and interact with forces since the first risen.

In Taken King we went up against Oryx on a one on one then he escaped to his throne room..which is where we did the Kings Fall raid...we doing this same thing in the final shape but in reverse..facing the Witness one on one after the Raid which is why we aren't getting the last mission till after the raid

offscript Aztecross was lowkey cookin' up some ideas right there.

I think its a smart way of doing the story like this. Obviously the Darkness story is the most important, so it gets the big expansion. But if its like I picture, these first episodes will give us the other conclusions/continuations we need.

The traveler and the veil are the classic yin and yang. Total order and utter chaos. Kind a cool narrative that we master the balance with prismatic

There's some neat lore ideas they could play around with. Torobatl needs to be reclaimed from the hive still. There's the whole Eliksni "Kell of Kells" prophecy and potential uniting of the Eliksni as a whole. Clovis Bray is still on Europa, potentially plotting some things. Lysander is still out there obviously keeping an eye on the city and also potentially plotting some stuff. Just a few ideas.

I would love to see The Drifter have a significant role in TFS or a chapter. He seems pretty knowledgeable on the darkness, light and experiments on both but we never see it.

The winnower and the gardener were hypothetical representations of the Philosophies that the witness and the traveler respectively live under. The whole lore book was a metaphor describing that both their ideologies for how reality "should" function are based off of cosmic principles that have existed before either of them existed, not a historical telling of actual events that happened at the start of the universe. They represent real people and entities, but the story is a framework we should use as a method of understanding them, not defining them in any empirical way.

The drifter storyline tangent could also make since if "The Game" the Nine always talk about is over when the Witness is defeated. He could be looking for a new something to do..

They could do the dark age, a whole new universe(multiverse), expand on the nine, go to the vex forge star Volantis 2082 and so much more. The Destiny lore is so deep they could easily keep it going another 10 years imo

No one besides new lights use patrol anymore and I think it’d be a weird but cool thing to revamp the game. What if we did patrol in a division style of gameplay and we have a destiny “dark age” style event. Where going on patrol you get an escalating chance of better loot the longer you’re there BUT other guardians can come in and steal the loot that you’ve gotten during that time period. This idea isn’t polished but having a reason to go to patrol as an end game player would be cool. You could even give each planet unique exotics and legendary drops so you have reasons to go to each planet to grind this gear. I think it’d be a really cool way to revamp a part of the game and it’d fit the lore of “you can use the dark and light for either evil or good as a guardian”

I would love for D3 they would go back to the golden age and show events that lead upto the collapse and the story at the beginning of the collapse. Another option is to show the Darkness side and you get to play as cabal, vex, hive

For me there’s three ways that I feel episodes and the story following Final Shape would actually retain players well. 1. Insane loot + dungeon. 2. A story that further broadens the world view of Destiny, maybe something like new factions or enemies (maybe the Nine) filling in the space the Witness left behind (Xivu will probably fit this, but I can’t help but see it as a downgrade from the scale of the Witness). And 3. Creating more down to the ground, tight stories that focus on character building in a better way than weekly small story drops. This could be following the story of the Drifter, learning more about him (especially because season of the Drifter was years ago and no longer in the game for newer players), then moving onto his links to the Nine, maybe encountering what he and his crew saw on that ice planet (not sure if it was confirmed to be Europa). Y’know, maybe venture down under the ice of Europa where we hear the creature roars coming from. I dunno. Something exciting or well plotted out.

Yo the Mando Drifter thing sounds dope

We've been fishing cross and yes maybe find the other dregons. When the vex gets serious the IX steps in. The best episode

Would love them to revisit siva and fill out that story it could be really cool, an episode about the fallen houses would be good where we have to recruit other fallen houses as allies, to fight rogue fallen houses and leaders in a full scale large battle scenario, depending on who you recruit/kill could have impacts on the world around - or find them a permanent planet of their own etc, the vex could always be the next big bad as well, I’m sure they have possibilities locked away

Whatever the Gardener is ... the Traveler is its equivalent of a garden trowel. Similarly, whatever the Winnower is, the veil is it's idea of a weedwhacker. If those are their simple tools ... imagine their idea of a supercomputer or a combat craft.

On the topic of getting things we never thought we’d get, anyone ever think about a new titan exotic arm piece that basically allows you to call your throwing hammer back to you like mjolnir

I've been saying this for years but civil war would be awesome for D2. Like different human factions going up against each other or some kind of turmoil within the city. Is it really realistic to assume that all the city's people get along? Maybe there's some kind of high level corruption going on that we discover.

The 2 big plot points I want to see in episodes 1.) Xivu Arath never seen her in person and she’s incredibly weak after Eris destroyed her throne world. 2.) Eramis disappeared after the traveler was grounded and she is kinda neutral she hates what the witness does to her fallen kin via scorned but she also hates the light bc of the whirlwind.

9:51 this already was a thing granted there weren’t really any consequences for siding with either drifter or the vanguard last time

Hey I'm still wondering whats the point of gambit bc the nine told drifter to collect motes for a weapon or something and we have no idea about any of that

World of Warcraft has gone through similar struggles in following up the cosmic big bads that had been established in their original titles. Bungie needs to avoid the trap (that Blizzard fell in) of power scaling their villains and trying to make someone bigger and badder than the Witness. There are plenty of loose ends in the Destiny universe that could be tied up (Eramis, Xivu, The 9). Our goals need to shift from saving the universe (again) and struggling to survive, to settling our scores and exploring along the way. My prediction for Episodes will be 1: The Dread attempt to corrupt/kill the Traveler after giving up on the Final Shape 2: Bringing back Fikrul the Fanatic and comparing our immortality to the Scorns 3: Xivu-Arath attempts to resurrect Oryx after colluding with the Scorn