Legacy | adult | they/them | Bungie name is KyraTheHuntress#1213 | I follow from @marchingbandtshirt Current WIP and Status: Legend of the Phoenix (1st Draft)
With all due respect youtube recommendations I would rather eat a bowl full of broken glass than watch a single āI FIXED Destiny 2ās WORST EXPANSIONā video
I read all the recent news about destiny 2 and bungie and the only thing I want to do is create more art for it. My human spirit is not indomitable but it is a spiteful and paranoid son of a bitch and thatās close enough I guess
I made a new reference sheet for Xira for artfight this year and realized I never shared it here. Also finally figured out how to draw exo bodies properly thanks to the new ornament set, with some extra details. Her casual clothes are mainly inspired by the Tower NPCs and casual work wear since she does mechanics/engineering in her free time
If anyone is interested here's her profile and my user on artfight :]
Not entirely sure how to word this, but Iāve always loved the entire concept of Ghosts as a way to justify a revive/respawn mechanic.
In pretty much every game Iāve ever played that has a revive/respawn mechanic, itās never explained as to how it works. Which isnāt really that big of a deal to me; itās a game mechanic that allows you to keep playing the game, case closed.
And then you have Destiny. Get gunned down by a Cabal turret? Your Ghost will have you up in a hot second. Did another Guardian fire a rocket a bit to close to themselves? Go interact with their Ghost to rez them. Did you finally kill that bastard camping an ammo spawn in Trials? Better make sure their teammates canāt get to their Ghost, or theyāll be back up doming you from halfway across the map in seconds.
Except your Ghost is more than just a flying respawn machine. He can hack stuff, mark things on your tracker/radar thingy, oh and heās an entire character with a personality who reflects the personality of your Guardian, who barely speaks.
The nonverbal communication and interactions in cutscenes between the two are fuckin immaculate. The way Ghost tilts the parts of his shell to express emotions - annoyance, shock, excitement, curiosityā¦ and your Guardian reacts to him usually with a glance or a look, likeā¦ idk they just kinda get each other.
But while he is your Ghost, heās not YOUR Ghost. By which I mean, Ghost is his own, independent character. Heās not a reflection of you or anyone else, and thatās made clear when his opinions and thoughts donāt align with the actions of you as the Guardian. In a lore thing from Forsaken I believe? there is a list of things he wishes he could say to you. One of those things is how he sees that youāre going on a rampage through the Tangled Shore, and justified by the death of Cayde-6 as it may be, he doesnāt like it; it scares him. But he still loves you - thatās also on the list, and even during Beyond Light we see this when he continues to stay by our side even as we start wielding the Darkness in the form of Stasis.
Thatās not to say he canāt be vengeful himself. In the lead up to the final boss battle with Savathun during the Witch Queen campaign, Savathun taunts you and your Ghost. This isnāt anything new - bosses taunt you before and during boss fights all the time in Destiny campaigns - and usually you react by wiping the floor with them, without a word in response. Except this time, Ghost is PISSED, essentially says āhow fucking dare you, you killed my friendsā, lists a bunch of shit the Hive have done to humanity (most of which you personally have been affected by as a combatant against the Hive), and ends off by telling her that he would rather die than serve the Hive.
Speaking of the Witch Queen, we also get to see that Ghost isnāt perfect; he absolutely despises other Ghosts who joined the Hive, and makes that abundantly clear. Heās also extremely suspicious of Fynch, the Hive Ghost who helps you out in the Throne World. Ghost is kind of an ass to Fynch, because to him, the Ghosts who joined the Hive under Savathun betrayed the Traveller and humanity. But when he realizes that most of the Hive Ghosts like Fynch were coerced into helping the Hive in their search for their Guardians, he outright APOLOGIZES to Fynch. Itās actually a pretty cool moment in the story, and it shows likeā¦ yeah, heās capable of making mistakes, but heās also capable of at least trying to fix them.
Also he was really funny that one time when the Drifter didnāt show up to run tactical for you in Beyond Light, so he did an impression of him instead lmao
The traveler in the final shape really was like. āI am not a god I do not have answers for you Iām sorry for placing this burden on you I love you I will give you the tools to defend me and humanity but itās your choice what to do with them Iām scared Iām terrified but I will stand here and wait for the end because Iām done running you are my final argument I love you I love you I love you.ā And I was really supposed to just be okay with that.
Feeling A Way About Destiny And The Games Industry And Art
I've been trying to put into words how the final update of Destiny makes me feel since it was announced. I haven't been able to appreciate it the way I used to since the second round of layoffs after TFS. Every story beat that didn't land or every mission that felt a bit tedious made me wonder - what could this have been if they had kept the whole team? What would have happened if they had been given the time and resources to make something great?
I love this universe, and the characters that hundreds of developers have poured their hearts into creating. But the American games industry feels hostile towards the kind of work that made the Destiny universe feel so special to me - lore entries don't make money, cutscenes are too expensive, every line of dialogue is another budget expense that yields no return on investment in the eyes of the stakeholders. I saw the same thing happening in the game I was working on, where budgets were reduced over and over again, forcing my team to work harder and harder to try and meet a level of quality that was simply unobtainable without sufficient time and money. We spent months scrambling to find solutions to budget cuts, only to be told the budget was being cut yet again, and again, and again. Finally we were told the game was going to be shut down - and the hundreds of people working on the team, including myself, would be laid off. There was no consideration for the success of our final update, or the thousands of people who loved our game and played every single day - years of investment both from developers and players was reduced to a number on a spreadsheet, and someone who makes more than all our salaries combined decided that the number wasn't big enough.
All this to say, the news of Destiny's final update hit very close to home for me, and brought up a lot of grief I've spent the last six months trying to process. I know firsthand how angry the devs must be, and how scared, and how bitter - what could they have done better? What could have prevented this? There may be design decisions you can point towards, misplaced focus on crossovers and cosmetics, but ultimately the decision to end Destiny came from the top, from a number on a spreadsheet that someone decided wasn't big enough, and wasn't interested in trying to fix.
The games industry is feeling increasingly hopeless, with shockingly few jobs being fought over by thousands of laid off devs. Something like 30% of the American games industry has been laid off within the past few years - many have been laid off, fought their way into a new job, uprooted their families and sold their homes to move to a new city, only to be laid off again a few months later. Within my circle, there's been a lot of speculation about what the end of Destiny means for Bungie, especially since Marathon isn't taking off in the way they had hoped. Bungie, for all its faults, will always be the reason I fell in love with games - an industry without Destiny, and potentially without Bungie, is nauseating to think about.
There's so much I have to thank Destiny for. It gave me something to look forward to during an exceptionally difficult time in my life. I got back into Destiny shortly before I started thinking about my gender, and transitioning is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. It caused me to lose my partner of many years, caused a rift between my family, and forced me to look in the mirror and really acknowledge how unhappy I was for the first time in my life. People have written before about how a lot of themes in Destiny strike a particular chord with the trans community, and I don't think it's surprising that exploring the lore and writing about my favorite characters became a safe space for me while the rest of my life seemed to be falling apart at my own hands. The game inspired a creativity in me that I had been suppressing for years, and the community here gave me a glimmer of confidence that there was something I was doing that people liked. Because of Destiny, I became a much better artist, I took on creative projects I never would have dreamed of, and I allowed myself to wonder for the first time what I wanted my life to look like rather than just mindlessly doing what I thought I was supposed to do. My whole life, I've made myself believe that any creative work is just a silly, self-indulgent hobby, something to keep secret from the people around me. This weekend, I'm going to be selling art for the first time in my life, and I don't think I ever would have made it to that point without the joy this community and this game have brought me.
This is a long and rambling message with no real point, but I guess what I'm trying to say is: life is scary, the world is scary, and I'm somehow the happiest I've ever been. I love Destiny, and I love you all - thank you for going on this journey with me.
Destiny is a game series that has been close to my heart since I first started playing it in 2017, at the time on an old Xbox 360 that my mom had to get a uniquely-shaped external hard drive in order to even download the game (she got the one for a different-shaped Xbox at first, why they decided this was a good idea Iāll never know). I still remember coming home after high school and immediately hopping onto Destiny for missions that took me an hour to get through. I remember the first time I defeated the Black Heart, late at night because I just couldnāt quit and it was the last mission, with nothing but primary ammo and a void grenade, and the strangerās rifle never leaving my primary slot afterward. I remember my first time defeating Oryx in Regicide, also left with nothing but primary ammo for a blue auto rifle. I remember trekking through the wilderness, Lightless, with Journey playing at max volume, and its reprise when we return to the City to take it back.
All of that to say, Destiny has meant a lot to me over the many years Iāve been playing it, and Iām sad to see the end of my favorite game. I knew it wasnāt going to last forever, but still. Youād still be sad to see a longtime friend leave, no matter how many happy memories you have of them.
I know I havenāt been an active member of the community for a while now, I found other things that took up my time after The Final Shape felt to me like a fitting conclusion to the Destiny saga. In all honesty I had fell out of love with the game and its state since the Edge of Fate, though it by itself wasnāt a terrible expansion by any means. Iāll always have some rose-colored glasses for the āDestiny of old,ā even as those times were also not the best of times, but definitely still funny (Iāll always remember you, edge transit engrams, laser tag weekend, Iron Bannerās reign of wolves, and of course everyoneās favorite eldritch gun, Telesto). There have been ups and downs and imperfections and things that rewire my brain in every piece of media that I enjoy, and Destiny has been no different.
I havenāt shared a lot of things about my characters or my writing for Destiny here, or anywhere on the internet really, but trust me when I say that these characters have been with me since the beginning; although I still have all the time in the world to write their story because it deserves to be told regardless of the state of the game, I do wish I couldāve shared more while the game had been active. These are characters that have practically grown up with me, their journeys shaped by the game as it had been at the time as well as my own continued growth as a writer (whew boy, have I done a lot of work on my craft that I never noticed until I looked back at my oldest stuff from high school. Unmedicated teenage me was a writing tornado), and I still have plenty of improvement left to go from here. In a way, Iām kinda glad that I chose to keep the bulk of my writing on Destiny to myself, as it now gives me the opportunity to update and rework aspects of their stories that in hindsight hadnāt reflected the best of my abilities as a writer, which in all honesty shouldāve happened long ago. This being the final update also means that there will also be an end to my worrying about what parts of my writing are going to end up retconned or explained in-game in ways that I hadnāt anticipated and gives me a clearer blueprint as to how the overall narrative will end up.
I donāt think this will be an end for my enjoyment of the game as a whole. Ironically, I think this last update reinvigorated my love for the series and the inspiration to continue creating my own spin on this universe and its saga. Whatever audience that has, if any at all, will be welcome. So, in a way, this end is indeed a beginning.
its easy to cut people down they dont tell you this because theyre worried about social cohesion but if you have a sword and the will to keep cutting basically nothing can stand in your way. people are basically like grass lol
Saint took a step closer.Ā Raw feelings, finally breaking free from Mayaās emotional apathy, and for a moment, he saw a glimpse of the shattered woman hidden inside that inflexible shell of a body.Ā
āGrief is unfair. Unforgiving. Brutal. Grief never goes away.ā Saint placed a hand on his chest. āI carry my grief everywhere I go. It is part of me now. With my strengths and weaknesses.āĀ
From what I read, they didn't delete the game, it's just the code is so old that they can't run it on the current engine. Still not great (esp. bc I don't have a lot of screenshots/clips from that era), but it isn't completely lost. š«
Ok now it makes more sense. Like I know first-hand how fucking hard is deleting something from a game is hell, let alone the entire base campaign of it.
The situation is still bad enough that they had to reference Byf in their lawsuit. (Love or hate Byf and other content creators, they really are preserving the game by uploading cutscenes, music, etc. š)
I know the situation was bad but when my friend told me about it he said they straight up deleted everything and I'm here like "yeah that's no mistake".
Gotta give it to the CC for keeping an actual archive of the game, honestly.
To be clear Pete Parsons didn't like, throw the hard drives with the Red War campaign into the pacific ocean, however in its state, and given Bungie's treatment of its staff and subsequent decline in recent years, it's highly unlikely it will ever be accessed again internally, much less available for end-users to play. Extremely sad situation all around. Dashed my hopes of there ever being a D2 Ultimate Collection available in the future, which until recently I would have bet actual money to be the end-game of Destiny 2.
Good opportunity to shoutout Destiny Lore Vault again and again. Abysmally low subscriber count for the only Destiny channel that actually preserved the entire game; all content for both games has been recorded and saved. Campaigns, adventures, other activities, vendor dialogues, exotic missions, seasonal activities, all voice lines, etc.
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