The story of Destiny is one that you create, and each individual mission is a story within itself. Bungie has built an enormous world with deep lore that they don’t necessarily want you discovering all of within a matter of only days.
Destiny is simply a palette for guardians to adventure and explore. Even with this enigmatic setting, though, you still find a story unfolding. Killworthy Gaming, now partnered with DestinyNews.net (soon to be PlanetDestiny.com), has an excellent overview of Destiny’s story so far.
Video: The Story so Far
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A Theory
As we mentioned a few weeks ago, a player overheard a Fallen enemy say “The Darkness!” as the player attacked him. On Reddit, user EveningTGI replied to this discovery saying:
“Maybe the Traveler has been to their worlds and caused great destruction. Maybe he needed a new army, we think we fight for the light but we are actually making the universe a much darker place. The Speaker has always seemed like a shady guy to me. It’s an interesting point of view.”
Reddit user monsterpants goes on to note that while the Guardians are given class names that sound vaguely villainous, the enemies are called things like Knights and Wizards which have generally heroic connotations.
To expand on the idea, there are almost no humans left when we arrive in the world of Destiny. All we see is the Tower, one last refuge that seems to solely exists to outfit and aid Guardians in their quest to help the Traveler. Could it be because everyone else is dead other than the Guardians and those who help them, and they’re being used as a weapon by the Traveler to wipe out all other forms of life in the system? Could the “collapse” that wiped out most of mankind been initiated by the Traveler itself. The majority of the Speaker’s body is usually in shadow, is that intentional?
The Black Garden Grimoire card gives us insight
This is the vision I had when I leapt from the Shores of Time and let myself sink:
I walked beneath the blossoms. The light came from ahead and the shadows of the flowers were words. They said things but I will not write them here.
At the end of the path grew a flower in the shape of a Ghost. I reached out to pluck it and it cut me with a thorn. I bled and the blood was Light.
The Ghost said to me: You are a dead thing made by a dead power in the shape of the dead. All you will ever do is kill. You do not belong here. This is a place of life.
The Traveler is life, I said. You are a creature of Darkness. You seek to deceive me.
But I looked behind me, down the long slope where the blossoms tumbled in the warm wind and the great trees wept sap like blood or wine, and I felt doubt.
When my Ghost raised me from the sea there was a thorn-cut in my left hand and it has not healed since.
Are we being deceived?
The Bible describes Satan as an “angel of light” and a “lightbringer.” Bungie’s past history in Halo with the “Ark” and the “Flood,” along with them using Guilty Spark to deceive players, makes the theory that we’re being ‘used’ even more plausible.
Players are able to easily wield darkness-infused weapons, which clearly draw on dark energy for their power, such as Thorn.
Again, please check out this article where we talked about this in greater detail; it’s all just speculation at this point. As we mentioned in that article, Master Chief was called a “Demon” and this could easily explain the Fallen’s alleged remark. I don’t think Bungie wants to give us any easy explanations though, and would prefer to keep people guessing and thinking about what’s going to unfold.
In The Dark Grimoire card, we can see that the Binary Star cult doesn’t have the most popular opinion about the Traveler.
“Certain positions – often labeled heretical – imply that the Traveler itself triggered the Collapse, or that it knew the Darkness was coming for it and hoped to use the Solar System as a sacrifice or a proxy army.”
It seems the Trinary Star cult is another group that’s displeased with the Traveler. [divider]
It’s a beginning
The Story has just begun. The adventures you have with your guardian will be small seeds to much larger stories that will uncover countless secrets prevalent within the world of Destiny. How will we earn Rasputin’s trust? What will happen to the House of Winter now that it has no Kell? What will the Queen require of us? What was their ulterior motive in us destroying the heart of the Black Garden? [divider]
What do you all think?
Did Bungie drop the ball or is Activision forcing them to hold content back? Many people, despite the fun they have in Destiny, share the sentiment that future content does not excuse a lack of content today.