#osiris dlc | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thepragmaticwarlock · 1 year

Text

I know some people are staunch Osiris lovers and I keep seeing posts about how stupid ppl are for getting annoyed at Osiris and not seeing that his bad attitude are forms of grief and urgency.

Like yes I understood why Bungie wrote him the way they did- I get that it’s supposed to be a manifestation of his grief and feelings of losing his light.

I also feel like they also used his character to try and add urgency into the campaign which overall imo there was no sense of urgency. Despite what we saw in the opening cutscene the story felt like a meandering romp through a new and fun city. Not exactly the last ditch effort to stop the Witness in his tracks. Osiris definitely tried to make us feel that and it obviously didn’t click with a lot of people.

I also don’t think it’s Osiris yelling and being an ass that specifically annoyed a lot of people. I was legitimately getting angry at Osiris and his treatment of our Guardian. Frankly on a personal level idc what someone is going through I don’t want to be talked to that way - most people don’t. So when a rpg game has a character talking to the player like that is often feels personal because of the nature of rpgs. Hence why his behavior annoyed so many players. There’s also a major lack of resolution between Osiris and our Guardian. Osiris gets resolution with Nimbus where the two understand each other better by the end but our Guardian doesn’t get that. Often in Destiny when NPCs treat each other poorly there is some resolution to it or acknowledgement of it in the story - eg Crow and Saladin, Caitl and Zavala. When characters interact there is usually a resolution to conflicts between them.

As a player character we don’t get that. Which is why is feels extremely off putting to have Osiris kinda being a raging dick for most of the DLC to transitioning to our patient, wise mentor in our training montage. When he wasn’t acting like that just a few missions before. And then he gets some great scenes with Nimbus and him delving deeper into their grief. And of course that gives us as the player context to his behavior BUT it doesn’t resolve his treatment of our Guardian and his behavior towards them on a character to character based interaction. Part of this is of course Bungies dislike of assigning any emotion, consequence, character arc to our Guardian. So things don’t really happen to the Guardian, things more happen around the Guardian and the Guardian is simply there. But that’s an entire other issue that at least in this DLC Bungie put some work towards fleshing the Guardian out besides empty void that you run around killing things as and dress up. (at least we got voice lines)

So ya of course many players are annoyed at Osiris. People irl that act like that can be grating and frustrating to interact with esp in stressful high stake situations. Bringing a character like that into the realm of fiction doesn’t mean people will automatically be able to ignore his flaws and understand he’s just going through extreme grief. Coupled with any form of resolution between him and our guardian. I personally found Osiris annoying af in this DLC. I get why - and I think he did need to be written like that BUT I also would have a very different opinion if we even got a convo between Ghost and Osiris where he not necessarily apologizes but at least directly addresses his grief to the Guardian. (Which I’m sure there were some throw away voicelines where this does happen but nothing memorable). I also am still going to be annoyed at Osiris even though I understand why he was the way he was during this DLC. Like it’s okay to dislike a character.

#lightfall spoilers #destiny the game #d2 #Destiny 2 #destiny 2 lightfall #lightfall #d2 lightfall #if I see one more post that’s like Osiris was just grieving and you’re all stupid for not liking him over it and lack critical thinking #ppl are allowed to not like a character #I fucking get his canon personality is already like that and the grief thing exacerbated everything #but guess what I still don’t like hiiimmmm #also idk maybe it’a pretty natural for ppl to dislike NPC that talk to the player character the way Osiris has #like players tend to take us personally when a NPC talks like that it’s just the nature of an RPG game #bc shocker ppl don’t like being talked to like that IRL and it being fiction doesn’t mean it’ll annoy ppl less #idk this is a ramble/rant #Osiris is fine as a character #he’s an important part of the game #just not my cup of tea as a character #and he did legit piss me off during the DLC #I for sure like him less leaving the DLC then I did before the DLC #is that bad writing? is it me being stupid?#no it’s just me not liking a character

13 notes · View notes

taxus-fraud · 1 year

Text

I agree that Lightfall wasn’t our best DLC, but at the same time I can confidently say a lot of people are overstating how bad it is.

#destiny 2 #people saying it's the worst DLC we've ever gotten like shadowkeep and curse of osiris don't exist.#this is mostly about r/DTG #the vibes are absolutely rancid over there

12 notes · View notes

mothboyhalo · 1 year

Text

My ghost wearing the Sagira’s ghost shell.. uh is it rude to be around Osiris?

#destiny 2 #I remember grinding for it when the curse of Osiris dlc came out #never imagined that this would happen

4 notes · View notes

ars0nism · 2 years

Text

honestly im revisitng witch queen for the fic and im only now realizing the parallel between curse of osiris's beginning and the 3rd mission in witch queen. both times you're looking for something related to sagira, trusting someone you're not sure you can trust, not even sure whether its really there, and both times ikora is the mission "guide". its making me sad

#im sad i miss coo #like yeah maybe curse of osiris wasnt the best dlc they ever put out #but come ONNN #we had sagira #and thats enough

3 notes · View notes

planet4546b · 2 years

Text

ok. season of the undying very very good. black garden vibrating inside my brain like a tuning fork. but also watching older seasons its really wild JUST how much destiny has pivoted plotwise to EXTREMELY character focused stories. compared to undying (and im assuming other older seasons) the way that seasons now almost entirely focus on character and relationships and not necessarily bigger plot is really interesting. like risen which holds a similar place to undying (season attached to a larger expansion) completely lets the main conflict be driven by the expansion (its still the lucent hive, unlike undying which introduces and therefore has to explain the vex’s attack) so that it can focus on the little triangle of relationships between caital, zavala, saladin, and crow. i cant say for sure if one is like ‘better’ or ‘worse’, its just a really interesting difference

#pers #destinyposting #like i do really like character driven stories. and one part of me wants to say using semi-locked seasonal content to tell #personal character stories is in some ways less frustrating than having it be big plot events that some people dont see #(although the antithesis to that is also true - characters stop making sense when only half the given players can see what theyre doing)#its just an interesting pivot and id be interested in figuring out where/why this started happening #also interesting follow up thought but dlc content used to be HUGELY character focused (coo warmind forsaken etc)#like coo is ONLY about the relationship between ikora and osiris ykwim #more recent expansions havent totally backed off from that (eris in shadowkeep and soooome of elsie in beyond light #and the argument could be made either for ikora or sv in wq) but its not as clearly about that. they flipped!!

1 note · View note

a-driftamongopenstars · 2 months

Text

happy Friday, I bring another Destiny 2 poll to your dashboards 😌

#destiny 2 #hope i didn't forget anything adfgh #polls

115 notes · View notes

lizzieraindrops · 1 year

Text

Destiny is a story about shapes and grief.

I think I may have figured out Destiny. I don't think the primary conflict between the Light and the Darkness is the philosophical issue we thought it was.

I got thinking about it after all this talking, with many others but especially @jazzhandsmcleg, about the way all of The Witch Queen DLC and its 4 seasons have had overarching narratives surrounding trauma and cycles of violence and grief, and the way the Darkness and the Light are characterized by their different approaches to it.

In TWQ, Savathûn is given a true second chance for her species in the Light. But as Ikora points out, she struggles to break free of the learned patterns of the Darkness, continuing the pattern of deception and violence.

Same with Season of the Risen - it’s the Warlords and Dark Ages all over again, but this time it’s the Hive. It forces once again to ask: what does it mean to be given a second chance if this is what you do with it? Temper this with Saladin’s story about the girl from the Dark Ages who he protected, but who became a cruel mortal Warlord in her own right. Crow objects to the mental torture of the Hive Lightbearers and he tries to break from the cycle of interspecies violence, but unintentionally ends up continuing it by killing the Psion and heightening tensions between humans and the Uluran.

Season of the Haunted!!! Literally, the entire thing is about confronting your traumas and greatest fears and the worst parts about yourself and beginning to heal them, making something better from them. Completely changing the game by turning Nightmares that torment into Memories that guide you. Crow with the memory of Uldren, Zavala with that of Safiyah, Caiatl that of Ghaul - and most importantly, resolution focuses on how they, specifically have been held back from healing by their self-incriminating Nightmares. It challenges the cycle of continuing violence on a very personal level. Eris even has patrol dialogue describing the a Nightmare as a thing of pain craving only more pain: "Such is the cycle."

Season of Plunder brings up the very same questions on a much higher organizational level. It gives us Eido and Eramis taking very different jaded vs. new-hope approaches to the legacy of the Whirlwind, asking: can we change? Are we defined by generational trauma forever? Can we continue to grow and change for the better even though it can never be undone? Though Eido is clearly young and naïve, we're clearly given the opportunity and narrative nudge to sympathize with her desire and hope for growth and redemption, both for the Eliksni overall, and for Eramis in particular.

And we're not even done with Season of the Seraph, but it already goes incredibly hard asking the same questions, again from a more personal angle. How far, and through how many generations is trauma transmitted? From the Bray family to Rasputin, to Felwinter to Osiris to Ikora – how do we fix this? How do we fix this? How do you defeat an enemy who IS war itself? What can you do to end an endless cosmic cycle of violence?

Go back and back and back in Destiny's lore even back to D1, and the majority of conflicts seem driven by this cycle of grief and revenge and violence. The entire line of humanity's war with the Hive goes back through Oryx's grief for Crota and the First Crota Fireteam and Eriana-3's grief for her wife Wei Ning. Even the Hive siblings' pact with the Worm Gods, though manipulated by Rhulk, was driven by the pain and grief they endured for themselves and their people, and wanting to escape that cruel pattern. The entire predicament of the Eliksni and their conflict with humans is driven by the trauma and grief and loss of the Whirlwind. Even Caiatl's empire, a conquering force that would be highly regarded by the sword logic, now must reckon with the same kind of loss in the Fall of Torobatl.

How do you escape this cycle and stay free of it?

I think, this year, we are finally seeing the beginnings of an answer.

I can't highly enough recommend the TWQ Collector's Edition lorebook (page scans & transcript) and The Hidden Dossier (page scans & transcript) that immediately follows it. What I've been calling Ikora's theory of "memory and grace" that she develops through the course of these two lore books is a balanced philosophy of memory/Darkness and grace/Light (which honestly deserves an entire post of its own). I think it clearly points toward the final resolution the story of the conflict between the Darkness and the Light.

In light of this, something in the Calus part of the new Lightfall CE lorebook (images, transcript) really jumped out at me.

“The doomed and the damned left the record of their downfall in the OXA. Your star got its name from the oldest myths in that archive. And when your mother told your father that story…the star became your name. A prayer that all will go as it must…and the way it must go is struggle.” “Aiat.” Not a word in Ulurant or any other Cabal tongue. “But Caiatl means something else..” “Yes. ‘It may not always go as it needs to go.’ A good name for a soldier." "A strange name for a daughter," I say. "Your father chose it for your mother's sake. Out of love."

And because the parallel is so overwhelmingly striking, I am once again going to reference philosophy/worldbuilding from the Young Wizards universe, which has great resonance with Destiny lore and which Bungie has been long aware of and has even been referenced in Forsaken-era canon lore.

“all the fair things skewed, all the beauty twisted by the dark Lone Power watching on his steed. If only there were some way he could be otherwise if he wanted to! For here was his name, a long splendid flow of syllables in the Speech, wild and courageous in its own way—and it said that he had not always been so hostile; that he got tired sometimes of being wicked, but his pride and his fear of being ridiculed would never let him stop. Never, forever, said the symbol at the very end of his name, the closed circle that binds spells into an unbreakable cycle and indicates lives bound the same way.” [...] “Nita bent quickly over the Book and, with the pen, in lines of light, drew from that final circle an arrow pointing upward, the way out, the symbol that said change could happen—if, only if—and together they finished the Starsnuffer’s name in the Speech, said the new last syllable, made it real.” Excerpt From: Diane Duane. “So You Want to Be a Wizard, New Millennium Edition.”

CAIATL’S NAME IS LITERALLY THE UP-AND-OUT SYMBOL.

I know I'm probably only talking to the handful of Destiny players from the (very small) Young Wizards fandom, but what you need to know is that this moment is pivotal and sets up the series-long theme of hope for an eventual exit from the cycle. It's the incredibly small, overwhelmingly improbable possibility of a second chance, a new start for the Lone Power, the source of all strife and suffering, who itself is driven by loss and pain. A concept of extended grace that is inherently tied to the philosophy of the Light.

“Billions of years, it took. All the redemptions there have ever been went toward this; from the greatest to the least. And finally in the fullness of time you came along, and took my role, of your own will, and woke up a race powerful enough to change the whole Universe, and gave them the fire.” She glanced up at the mobiles and smiled. “How could he resist such a bait? He took the gamble: he always does. And losing, he won.” [...] “The Defender reached down and put a hand into the shadow. “And we are going where such matters are transcended… where all his old pains will shift. Not forgotten, but transformed. Life in this universe will never have such a friend. And as for His inventions… look closely at Death, and see what it can become.” The long, prone darkness began to burn, from inside, the way a mountain seems to do with sunset. “Brother,” the Defender said. “Come on. They’re waiting.” Excerpt From: Diane Duane. “High Wizardry New Millennium Edition.”

This is the devil’s second chance, its homecoming. Grace among the memory. How do we heal this? By fixing it. By making and TAKING that opportunity of grace.

Likewise, Destiny is shaping up into its own universe’s story of this Reconfiguration, the remaking of everything that exists through the act of a second chance, both offered and taken, with full awareness of the irreversibility of harm already caused.

Destiny isn’t the story of the light and the darkness fighting each other. That happens, but that’s not what it’s ABOUT.

It’s “And I know exactly what we are. We’re best frenemies with a history of intense mutual hurt and messy reconciliation, leaving a deep tenderness as well as an almost impenetrable knot of scars. What could be simpler?” (Chalco)

It's “For so long, I believed peace was beyond my reach. No more. I have found it in guiding others down the same path that saved me. But… I might allow myself to want more than peace. What, I am not certain. Is joy the word? Might I find that again?” (Eris)

It's “Second chances… hm. Turns out I've been using mine wrong. I thought being a Guardian was my destiny. That wielding the Light for good was the most I had to offer. But it's clear now. This is what the Traveler chose me for. I was reforged in the Light for a purpose. To remake something dead and gone… into something beautiful. To learn how to forge something new from what we were. Everything Uldren did to the Reef, the Scorn… Fikrul. I have a responsibility — no — a calling to make them whole. And… I can't replace Cayde. But I can cover his old patrols — maybe organize the Hunters a bit, if they'll let me. Clean up some of my mess. I don't know if I can fix everything Uldren left broken… but I can try.” (Crow)

We aren’t defeating the Darkness. That’s never what it’s been about. It’s about breaking the cycle of trauma and grief with memory and grace. We're transcending the Final Shape, but we're not here to destroy it or become it. We’re harmonizing the Darkness and the Light into a sustainable balance to create something new from the wounded remains.

We're here to heal the broken relationship between the Winnower and the Gardener.

That's all that it is, in the end. They had a falling out, and now they hurt, and they hurt each other, and everything else, forever. Breaking free from that cycle begins and ends with them.

Is that fair? No, it's not.

But Destiny is – unhingedly, brilliantly, paradoxically – a FPS game about how to stop killing each other, growing ever more into a framework of restorative and reparative justice.

The story says, we are all culpable, we have all done awful shit and have endless potential to do more awful shit – AND, most critically, we all have the potential to do better (grace). AND, the act of making the conscious choice to do so and letting that happen is the only way for things to get better (memory).

The Collapse happened and it was horrible, the Red War happened and it was horrible, the Great Disaster happened and it was horrible, Twilight Gap happened and it was horrible...AND?? HOW ARE YOU GOING TO RESPOND? The Whirlwind happened and it was horrible! The Fall of Torobatl happened and it was horrible! Your species' Choice was stolen and you became the most prolifically violent killers in the universe and it was and is horrible! WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

Are you going to make it more horrible? Or are you going to make it BETTER????

Are you going to fight for the Final Shape, or for the gentle kingdom ringed in spears?

456 notes · View notes

thefirstknife · 5 months

Note

I have a question about The Sundial weblore bit

It starts off with an interaction between Drifter and Osiris, but only says "some time after the death of Panoptes" while it was released during Dawn. Do we know how long Osiris had been working on the Sundial exactly, or some more specifics on when that interaction took place?

thanks ':>

He started work the moment we told him that we found Saint's grave in the Forest and it's the Drifter's presence there that gives us a hint about when he finished.

At the end of their interaction, Osiris tells Drifter:

“Go home. There’s a Guardian you should meet,” Osiris said. “Yeah, yeah. Hero. Red War. Can’t wait.”

The Guardian is us, the Young Wolf. Drifter went to the Tower to meet us at Osiris' instructions so this must be happening at some point before Forsaken, as until this moment, Drifter had not yet seen us. So Osiris finished work on the Sundial somewhere between the death of Panoptes and Drifter's arrival to the Tower which gives him probably 6-9 months of time to make it. When he finished, and failed, he hid it and it lay undisturbed for at least a year (or a little over a year) before the Psions found it.

Expansions, seasons and DLCs mostly align with real time they're released in so he would be working on it during the rest of Curse and during Warmind. I suspect he probably finished fairly close to Forsaken, given Drifter's presence and Osiris telling him to go meet us. Drifter was out of the system for a long time and appeared pretty much out of nowhere around the time of Forsaken; even Shin Malphur wondered why then. But before he headed to the City, he went to Mercury to help Osiris (at Osiris' request!) and Osiris was the one who told him to go meet us which definitely played a part in him heading to the City.

#destiny 2 #osiris #drifter #sundial #ask #honestly it all depends on how long things take in-game #we generally use releases unless the lore specifies something else #for this it's unclear. curse and warmind campaigns didn't take long time-wise but we should probably account for the downtime

42 notes · View notes

incorrectsmashbrosquotes · 6 months

Note

Long time I know. I first offer a Merry Christmas for you and my family. But the Valhalla DLC for Ragnarök just dropped (Super wonderful), and I been thinking about how the old God of War in Egypt ideas would work with it. In Egyptian Mythology you have the 42 Negative Confessions and it 42 Judges of Maat. It's not about perfection, but to keep trying to outweight your bad deeds with good ones, to bring more balance than chaos to the world.

Alright so, in the God of War in Egypt AU, we've gotta trim the 42 down a bit, so we're grouping it into six groups of seven. Each group of seven represent a level to clear, with the final one at the end.

So the story is, after the final boss of the second game, Apophis, Osiris invites Kratos to the Underworld for "a great matter", and tells him someone wants to talk to him. Basically, Kratos has to traverse the 42 Confessors/Judges of Ma'at with Nephthys, facing one of his sins as a boss at the end of each level.

The 42, again, in groups of seven, you're not facing all of them at once, act as witnesses, watching him go through it, and talking to him at the end of it.

The bosses are all from the previous God of War games, particularly the ones Kratos feels kinda bad about.

Also, you get the Blade of Olympus at the beginning of the DLC, and it gains power with every boss you defeat.

First boss is Helios, good solid start to the story.

Second is the Princess of Posiedon, who sort of uses Posiedon's powers from GoW3. This ends with Kratos apologizing to her and her soul finding rest.

Third is Hera, who points out he could have shown her mercy but chose not to.

Fourth is Hercules, this one is lighter than the others, since Herc isn't really salty about losing, and Hercules passes on on good terms.

Fifth is Hephaestus, who is angry at the world more than Kratos himself.

The Sixth boss is Ares himself. the man who started it all. This is a knock down drag out fight... and it leads you into the REAL final boss.

See, once you've defeated Ares, you're led into the Heart Weighing Chamber where Anubis has begun his tenure as Guardian of the Dead, and under your son's gaze you fight the real Final Boss of the Ma'at DLC.

The final boss is Mars, the Roman God of War, the inheritor of both Kratos and Ares' legends. A more grim and noble God of War.

The fight ends in a draw, and Mars leaves, having put the ghosts of old to rest and returns to the fledgling Rome, to tak eup his post as the God of War.

23 notes · View notes

cyber-puppygirl · 3 months

Text

season of the dawn is literally my favorite destiny 2 season of all time and it’s so fucked up that like basically all of its content is gone.

as a guardian you hear stories of legends, guardians whose power and resolve rival those of gods and are revered as such by humans and guardians alike. this is taken a bit further with Saint-XIV, who was one of the many guardians who fought at the twilight gap; a fallen siege on the last city of sol where dozens of guardians died their final deaths.

this point is even further proved with Saint in the curse of osiris dlc where you venture into the infinite forest, a vex simulator that they use to predict many futures, and find his final resting place inside. a burial place made for Saint by the vex; an unfeeling robot hivemind. what made them do that you might ask. he fought them endlessly for years until they found a way to counter his light specifically, strip him of it and ultimately, killed him.

on him however, you get the best weapon in the entire game ever: the perfect paradox. at first glance it just seems like a Saint-XIV themed shotgun, but when you read the associated lore tab is where everything for the season of dawn starts to get set up, 2(ish) years ahead of its release. it’s a note from Saint to you, personally. he loved hearing from you that the last city is alive and well and he loved to hear how much it’s changed, he talks more about that and a couple other things that he wouldn’t know due to being trapped in the infinite forest for so long. at the end of the note he then claims that the shotgun you gave him has served him well. that’s right the gun you picked up off of Saint is originally YOURS.

anyway fast forward two years and osiris is asking you to venture into the infinite forest again but with his sundial, a time machine made to be used exclusively inside the forest to stop the red legion from using it to change the course of the red war. but as you do that you find Saint ALIVE inside the forest, fighting. you meet with him and talk a bit, or well your ghost talks. and he tells Saint about the last city (he left earth to try and colonize mercury during the dark ages, after earth was overrun by fallen, not knowing the vex had doesn’t there first) and to let him know all he’s done isn’t in vain. and then, your ghost materializes the Perfect Paradox for Saint, and tells him “my guardian made this out of spare parts and Light and sheer will to aid you”. you wish him luck and then you are pulled out of the forest. you meet him a couple more times with the last time actually saving Saint-XIV, the greatest titan who ever lived. he tells you he is gonna stay inside the forest for bit longer, he’s not done tearing through the vex just yet. you get a cutscene where he says “since the day met you i swore i would make it my duty to follow your example. i’m still trying”.

being able to interact and talk with guardian legends like osiris and ikora or zavala, or even iron lord saladin is great these guys are very cool powerful guardians. but this is different, you changed fate like in the vault of glass, and saved a legend. and for that he idolizes you. you, the nameless guardian who never speaks. moments like these are why i play destiny, because in that moment i, just like anyone else, in that moment became legend.

#i did the thing!#at the end hehe #destiny 2 #destiny #destiny the game #destiny 2 season of the dawn #saint-xiv

10 notes · View notes

sundayswiththeilluminati · 2 years

Text

Understanding Rasputin via Felwinter

I’ve always waited for someone to ask me this question but you know what, fuck it. I’m tired of waiting! I will be the asker of the question I want to answer! Let’s talk about Felwinter and the Warmind Rasputin! Because we now know Felwinter was a pre-Collapse Rasputin fragment (or more accurately a miniature model), we can analyze him to infer what Red was like before the Darkness rolled into town.

Here’s what Felwinter tells us about AI-COM//RSPN in his glory days:

Rasputin is not just a machine; he’s a sapient being complete with emotions and desires... Felwinter has a distinct, stable personality, exhibits empathy and a (mostly) normal range of emotions, and forms genuine social bonds. Saladin notes that he has a curiously flat affect and sometimes forgets to blink, but the Iron Lords never doubt Felwinter is a person. If just a fragment of Rasputin behaves that way, we can assume Rasputin himself has the same qualities.

...but he’s not human, and doesn’t want to be. Felwinter also has uncannily still body language, machine-like tenacity and patience, and no sense of irony. While he conceals his specific connection to Rasputin, he doesn’t mask his day-to-day oddities to make people comfortable or pass as a “normal” Exo. He also doesn’t mimic human needs like eating or sleeping even though Exos are capable of doing so. He doesn’t want to be anything other than what he is.

Rasputin is defensive, not aggressive... From his first moments as a Guardian Felwinter just wants to be left alone. He demonstrates the earliest use of Well of Radiance - taking a sword, an offensive weapon, and reversing it into a defensive tool. He participates in the military pageantry of the Iron Lords for purely pragmatic reasons. When the other Iron Lords are convinced they’ll have to attack Shaxx’s citadel, it’s Felwinter who gets them to hold off while he tries to talk Shaxx around. It’s Felwinter who tries to talk to Cosmodrome-Rasputin before the others go to take SIVA by force. Rasputin wasn’t tasked with waging war on humanity’s behalf; he was tasked with protecting humanity. He’s fundamentally built for defense.

...but once a fight has begun, he’ll end it. Rasputin may not have any liking for violence, but he doesn’t mind it, either. In line with their general disinterest in warfare, both Rasputin and Felwinter treat conflict as a sour yet necessary chore to be dealt with as fast as possible. According to Saladin, when Felwinter joined a fight, everyone knew about it. We’ve seen Felwinter use Well of Radiance, but we also know he mentored Osiris, the most famous Dawnblade Warlock. The pull quote on Swarm of the Raven says, “With enough altitude, Felwinter's destruction would blanket the field farther than you could see.” It’s safe to assume that Felwinter dealt fiery blows from on high in many a fight. That tallies with what we know of Rasputin’s threat response: there’s the concepts of honor, valor, and military glory, and then there’s an orbital strike. Guess which one he prefers.

Rasputin ruled not out of a desire for power, but a sense of responsibility... When Felwinter finally found a mountain where Cosmodrome-Rasputin couldn’t keep throwing warsats at him, he killed the intransigent warlord who occupied it, moved in, and devoted himself to solitary research and contemplation. He initially ignored the village at the mountain’s base, but bonded over time with the woman who brought their monthly tribute. She tried to convince him his unique abilities gave him a responsibility to defend the village. Felwinter insisted he wasn’t a warlord, didn’t need the village’s tribute, and had neither a desire for its fealty nor an obligation to protect it. Then one day she didn’t come back. That’s when Felwinter takes up the protection of the village and later brings it under the umbrella of the Iron Lords; in fact their continued defense is his only major condition for joining.

Ana Bray makes an excellent point in the beginning of the Warmind DLC: “We never bothered to ask Rasputin what he wants.” Rasputin has never shown any sign he wanted to run the Golden Age. One Grimoire card called him the AIs’ “tacit king,” the “first among equals.” "Tacit” means an unofficial decision agreed upon but not spoken. “First among equals” means he held no special position or authority. In other words, Rasputin didn’t ask to be in charge; everyone just decided he was. He made Felwinter to study himself and discern if he really was the dangerous autocrat the name “Tyrant” made him out to be. Eventually Rasputin must have taken up the role others had defined for him for the same reason Felwinter took up the village’s defense: because he wanted people to be safe and believed only he had the power to do it.

...but he also acknowledges no authority greater than himself. Felwinter earned the moniker “Dark Horse” partly for his unique black chassis and partly because he was kind of the bad boy of the Iron Lords. If he decided a Lightbearer ought to die he freely ignored the Iron Decree that forbade killing Ghosts, and he did it with total confidence in his judgement. When questioned he would supply evidence that his victims had been Ghost-killers/murderers/something worse, but otherwise saw no need to ask or inform anyone else before killing them. To Saladin he simply declared it “operational necessity” and showed no guilt or remorse. Felwinter was 100% comfortable serving as judge, jury, and executioner and never doubted his assessment of the threats his targets posed or his own authority to pass sentence on them.

In one of Rasputin’s earliest Grimoire cards he says, “My will is pure. I do not obey,” and in Warmind he matter-of-factly declares, “I have no equal.” Rasputin answers to no one. He neither solicits advice nor asks permission from anyone about anything, and only rarely bothers to explain himself. He only barely has a concept of “ally” as opposed to “resource.” He has no inherent respect for or faith in the Traveler and prepares a strategy to cripple it if he deems it necessary. More recently he has at most mild interest in what the Vanguard thinks about anything, preferring to keep his own counsel on what actions will best protect humanity - humanity, not Guardians.

Rasputin will do what he thinks has to be done, regardless of ideals... Felwinter has a map of Rasputin’s moral code pre-MIDNIGHT EXIGENT, his current moral territory that permits any and all actions in service of survival, and it’s interesting to see how it runs the gamut. He displays a strong sense of duty and responsibility, seeing power as an obligation to protect rather than a tool of dominance. He doesn’t make decisions based on ego or personal considerations, easily turning over his territory to the Iron Lords as long as his conditions are met. But he also kills the warlord Citan out of hand because he believes Citan isn’t negotiating in good faith and will never stop being a threat. That matches what we know of Golden-Age Rasputin.

...but at the end of the day he genuinely wants to help. Despite his outward cynicism, Felwinter has a deep streak of genuine belief in humanity and, yes, hope for the future. If Rasputin used SIVA as bait, he must have thought Felwinter would chase it, which means he thought Felwinter would risk a great deal for a tool that could kickstart the rebuilding of human civilization - and he was right. Felwinter thinks long-term, and he’s not content with the status quo. He tells Citan he joined the Iron Lords because “they’re going to change the world.” He searches out SIVA in the quest to not just sustain but improve humanity’s situation, at a time when most of the Iron Lords were working to defend their people day-to-day.

Rasputin has a deep-seated connection to the Sun and Solar elemental energy. While he knew a few Void tricks, Felwinter was primarily a powerful Solar Warlock. Rasputin, too, is often linked to Solar. It’s not an accident that his “eye” in the Aurora Reach vault resembled the Sun (a likeness carried through in the Season of the Worthy promo graphics) or that his signature weapons - Sleeper Simulant, Felwinter’s Lie, the Valkyrie javelin - are all Solar-typed. The angelic term “seraph,” used for people or tech associated with him, literally means “the burning one.” Felwinter mentored Osiris, the archetypical Solar Warlock, and Rasputin’s best friend wields the most famous Golden Gun short of Shin Malphur himself. The guy’s got a theme.

The Solar element has a dual role of hurting and healing that mirrors Rasputin’s dual nature - half trying to guide a peaceful society, half wielding tremendous weapons of war. Rasputin also anchored the Golden Age of humanity the way the Sun anchors our solar system. Like the Sun, his influence curved everyone’s lives into certain trajectories even if he himself was a distant figure. And the same way that I’ve said before how the Sun would barely notice if every single planet exploded tomorrow...Rasputin survived the disaster that wiped out the rest of the solar system.

#Destiny 2 #Felwinter #Rasputin #bungo where is my boy #whERE IS HE #Warmind #pretty sure I could talk about Rasputin for as long as someone let me #that's probably not a normal thing #anyway have some words #words words words #ra ra Rasputin Mars' greatest war machine #this is the wager of existence

277 notes · View notes

gaymer-hag-stan · 1 month

Text

Breaking my silence

I have defended Survivor Lara against the unbearable Core fans, and I still insist that she is a fine iteration of the character and she has her place in the series...

...but...

I think it's very important that, moving forward, her characterisation returns to her 2006-2008 era iteration.

Keep the new character model (get rid of her disgusting messy hair though) with the realistic proportions and musculature, but other than that:

~Bring back Keeley Hawes as the voice actress. She's been voicing the character the longest but other than that she has also given the definitive performance of the character. She is the perfect embodiment of a seasoned adventurer type of Lara and can give the character a huge array of emotions, from anger, to joy, to sorrow and even fear

youtube

~LAU Lara had a more detailed backstory than Core's Lara and a personal stake in her reasoning for adventuring but was still very much actively enjoying what she does. Survivor Lara, so far, has only been tomb raiding as a means to an end and looks visibly tired and traumatised each time. It was perfectly fine in the first Survivor game but this is no longer needed. She's been through hell and back, it's now the best time for her to be cynical, sarcastic, to throw out one liners and jokes and have a powerful demeanour. LAU Lara, even when cornered or outmatched, is still in control of the situation and appears mostly unphased. Relatable, next-door-type-of-girl Lara was not bad, but she also, really, doesn't need to be that 😅 She's been raised as a countess, she owns three manor houses in the English countryside, she's anything but relatable to your average person and that's fine. Playing as characters you can relate with in video games is nice and characters like that are perfectly valid and have a place in gaming, but for a game like Tomb Raider, playing as a sassy, strong, intelligent badass that cracks jokes at the face of danger is, to me personally, much more fun and empowering.

~LAU Lara is the perfect middle ground between Core's Classic Lara and Crystal's survivor Lara, and even the games themselves are kind of in the middle of the classic PS1 formula and the set-piece and combat heavy formula of the latest trilogy. It's the best "return to form" to avoid alienating fans of both eras.

~No more bow. Seriously. This is very important. Lara should have already had her pistols back by Rise. The bow was perfectly fine and made sense in TR13 but was extremely stupid beyond that. I honestly don't even want it as a secondary weapon. Give her back her pistols and have a shotgun, assault rifle and SMGs as alternate weapons. That's all she needs. Keep the jade pendant and the climbing axe(s) for Survivor rep, but the bow needs to go. It doesn't fit. The pants staying instead of shorts and ponytail instead of braid would be fine by me too tbh, but I know Core purists are gonna cry a lot about it so... Yeah...

~Last but not least, remaster LAU with all the extra costumes from the PSP versions of Legend and Anniversary, the extra Wii Croft Manor room from Anniversary, the 360 DLC for Underworld, and the Temple of Osiris model for all three games, which if you didn't know is a mix of Underworld and Rise Lara, so, already Unified Lara. Also add in more classic outfits such as the TR2 Bomber Jacket or TRIII Nevada, maybe even her Rise Syria tanktop outfit too as unlockables.

#Tomb Raider #Lara Croft #Lara #Video Games #Gaming #Youtube

10 notes · View notes