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

Byf if youre going to say the word paradoxical in videos can you please say it like Jesse Eisenbergs Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman please? 🙏🤣

What happened to the discord server?

The witness as a concept just doesn’t hit as hard after having seen Gurren-Lagan. He’s just Anti-Spiral 2.0, whoever made him definitely watched the show.

What if the Traveler's not what we thought it was?

I do think we’re going to delve into potential vex backstories or if we’re to use the planets room we could restore the infinite forest and mercury

All of this seems familiar. the Witness is like the Precursors from Halo (the first race to ever exist) got mad with power and then eventually turned into the first spores of the Flood.

The Flood would be the Taken, corrupting and consuming everything.

The Precursors, now corrupted by the Flood after being turned into dust for several years, would have formed the Primordial, a being made up of multiple Precursors.

This Primordial corrupted the race of Forerunners, which they created, into letting themselves be killed by the Flood to spread the hive mind galaxy wide.

The Forerunners who would be the Hive in this case, learned how to corrupt and take via the worm gods and the Witness or in Halo the Primordial.

You can even compare Rhulk to Mendicant Bias, One of the Forerunner Ai corrupted by the Primordial into doing there bidding and murdered its own people.

Think about it, Rhulk was manipulated into killing his whole race and destroying his planet. Just like how Mendicant was corrupted to destroy all of its creators, The Forerunners.

It's all the same thing just different entities and titles.

This weeks content got me way more hype to punch the Anti-spiral in the face. I dont need to believe in the traveler to do so, i just need to believe in the me that believes in mysfelf.

Hey byf, do you think it’s safe to assume that the witness’s home world could be what we know as the black garden? We know there is a cradle in the garden, as well as at least one veiled statue.

I wonder.... will the Shard in the EDZ come to play a role again in the future?

I don't understand the origins of the witness...

Yin and Yang are close, but try Shiva and Vishnu for an even deeper similarity.

The staff from this cutscene that the witnesses people were holding is the same as what you see pointing to the traveler from RON. I wonder what that means if anything

If the Final Shape heavily involves the Vex, I'm going to be disappointed.

There's been a circle with a triangle in the middle in the tower for years, yet it wasn't until last year that I really paid it any attention.

Eldritch literally means weird and sinister or ghostly - it just makes a lot of sense is all I'm saying lol

One thing I find curious about this is the wording used to tell the story at one point. “The first to be claimed by the Deep”.
But also “The first to be claimed by the Witness”.
That last line seems to imply something more is to be learned about the Witness’s race.
What exactly did they “witness” to turn against the light in such an extreme way?
There’s another line about them discovering the truth. What is this truth?

The way Destiny try’s to be cryptic about it’s lore kinda sucks. The way it should be done is the way From Software does it in their games. It’s just not good here.

So the origin of the Witness is almost identical to the origin of the Hunger from The Adventure Zone: Balance. That's not even accusatory, I've been a little bit "meh" about the Witness as a villain until this point but I'm a big sucker for "an entire world/galaxy/universe of people wanted something so badly they fused into one awful entity of unimaginable power".

I think someone accidentally launched the season of defiance instead of this one

"The ending of the eldritch race...," might well refer to whatever created/manifested/verb-concept-untranslatable the Traveler and the Veil. Strictly speaking, the Predecessors did not end. They all still live...inside/as the Witness. Which, as an aside, the fact that it is an entire civilization/species gestalt waring a normal-sized morph is...concerning. For contrast, Mass Effect's Reapers at least had the decency to be the size of skyscrapers.

I'm going to go ahead and speculate that the Vex were the robot workers of the Progenitor civilisation. Most we see are designs intended for labour, but the thinking Vex were tasked with higher functions like solving the mysteries of the universe. The Infinite Forest looks like the door into the Traveler because it's an attempt to artificially create whatever the Witness has now succeeded in doing.

When they merged into the Witness, I imagine the Vex were abandoned and over time developed by themselves into what we see now.

Upside down triangle on a circle... and I can only think on the "Upended" and the fact that Rhulk when it appears it's upside down

I am disappointed that The Darkness isn't more of an active entity itself and not even the big bad over the years of Destiny always talking about it being. that its not even making the decisions and is more involved in the big plan instead of it being like the traveler in that it just exists and people use it. Though is it even a thing because the veil is its own thing and so is The Witness.

I just wish this was in the main lightfall campaign. It would of raised the stakes and maybe lightfall would of been better. This gives you a reason why we need to stop the witness.

Just an idea that popped into my head:

What if the ghosts are researchers from the Witness's original civilization that uploaded themselves (similar to Exos) to study the Traveller? They'd take up home inside the Traveller with their small bodies to study its structure and do its "bidding" to understand it's will. Their personalities and memories could fragment over time like Exos. And over time, after all those planets the Traveller kept hopping to, curiosity became worship.

Just an idea.

Imagine it gets to the point the only way to stop the witness is to destroy the veil and cut it off from it's darkness power
Would that make us any better? Destroying there equivalent of the traveler?

Is no one worried that we don't know the big bad of the vex is. Every race has a leader. But who is the vex's? Is there like a central cpu or something?

I am new to the game, what the hell am I getting into?!

I’m happy your still making videos when I used to play destiny obsessively I was addicted to your lore videos..

So it's basically a Mass Effect Reaper? I'm late to the party, I waited until the last day of the season to finish up the story.

So, in short.

All of our enemies are, well, our enemies, because The Traveler left them.

Jealous much?

It takes some real twists of logic to try to say the Traveler betrayed the race that became the Witness by fleeing in the face of what they wanted to do with it. I’m glad we have finally gotten to the point to where all of this “maybe the witness is right and the traveler is bad” has objectively been put to bed.

It's a real shame I found this video today. Was looking all over for the connection between the pale heart, the vex and the black garden and I never thought to check the curse of Osiris expansion 😂

I stopped playing when the savathun dlc came out and I am so lost
lol

Amazing vid as always Byf

I always thought the Winnower and the Deep was just another name for the Veil and the Darkness. Like how the Gardener and the Sky is another name for the Traveller and the Light. Since the Witness isnt the Winnower or the Darkness itself. Kinda crazy how the Vex massively predate even the Witness though.

I can't wait for the guardians to take down the Witness. They're one of the earliest, or the first, race to be blessed by the Traveler and they repaid that blessing by becoming a cancer of the universe. Their perverse motives, actions and hubris must be purged from the universe. They have existed for far too long and destroyed far too much. There is no recourse for them. Their only salvation is absolute annihilation.

The Witness: What is my purpose?
The Traveler: You pass butter.
The Witness: …Oh my god…
The Traveler: Yeah, welcome to the club, pal.

God Emperor of Mankind, but smokey

I forgot all about that how the portal into the forest is the same as the portal into the traveler

The predecessors wanted a purpose a reason to live with the truth is there isn’t one. The universe is uncaring, and in a single moment and entire species can be wiped out in that moment that terrifying realization, they broke and despaired For life has no meaning..……………..……….………………………………………………………but life isn’t just to reproduce, and then die. It is to struggle, to advance to push forward come what may! to forge your own purpose to find fulfillment for you are the master of your destiny and not even the universe can take that away from you. That is the travelers tease and it is one we passed.

I’m convinced that this story is so half baked that even bungee doesn’t even have a clue what is going on and are just making shit up as they go by the second

In this context, the witness seems like the epitome of a boomer.
Given so much to thrive and prosper, but they felt entitled to more, and arrogantly demanded control.
When they pushed the line and were cut off, they were indignant and sought to make it everyone else’s problem too.

The only reason why that I’m disappointed with the witness is that I was really hoping for more of a primordial god,was of a super SUPER advanced species.

So it's more or less the fallen 2.0, what a waste. I hoped for a more ambiguous "bad guy", idk something mysterious, godly and hard to understand in appearance and in nature kind of like the travler itself, instead we got a smokey human looking guy that just holds a grudge....

Also I don’t remember where I read it but somewhere in taken king also mentions “the final shape”

Did it specify that it was referring to the veil ? Bc my understanding of "2 part of a whole split in half" (or something like that) was that it was talking about the light and the deep.

Ill do you one better Byf!

WHY Cayde is?!

Basically the black fleet are literally black coffins