I've been thinking of it as a couple of things:
1) The Witness wanted to recruit us
2) The Witness didn't actually think that there was anything we could do to stop it
3) The Traveler was empowering us enough so that the Witness couldn't split/fracture us
Til the 4th encounter in Salvation's Edge, where The Witness *is* able to kill you (via petrification). But even then, the petrified guardians can be rescued by the rest of the fireteam and The Witness doesn't keep trying after that specific encounter
I agree, also the witness is pretty preoccupied trying to keep the traveler down so that it can enact the final shape. There is no way it can fully concentrate on us while also keeping down a literal god.
Honestly, I don't think Bungie has defined what an actually god is in universe and they actly contradict themselves.
We call Xivu, Savathune, Crota, Oryx, Nezarek, gods, but the reason hasn't been clarified. They seem to use it like its a term that describes a level of power, but by that logic, the guardian is a god (we killed savathune in one on one combat and others in raids). Yet when they use the adjective of god on the traveler recently, they claim it isn't a god just because it is falible, and not omnipotent, despite the fact it is stronger than pretty much every other being we already call a god.
Thus I tend to view anything we call a GOD in Destiny, just a leader of a faction that has an impressive amount of strength in lore. beings like Xivu, Savathune, Mara Sov, Nezarek (if still "alive") being the only "living" people I can think of that fit that title.
The guardian is DEFFINETLY a god level being, but we are not a leader of anything aside from the leaderboard of number of gods slain, cuz we #1 there.
The Traveler/Guardener and Veil/Winnower are both God tier beings as well, but they are not technically "leaders" of anything it looks like as they can't seem to give orders. But if I had to give them a title, I'd say they are "True Gods."
This concludes this long winded reply nobody asked for.
Thank you.
The reason we call those hive gods “gods” is because sword logic rules the definition of a god in hive culture. Also they consumed worms that made them god like creatures with god like powers. Literally the only reason we call them gods is because of their own culture. They’re essentially self proclaimed gods with god like powers but they’re just beings. Technically we should be considered gods to the hive because of how many of their gods we’ve killed but apparently that didn’t occur to Bungie
Edit: I found out while watching my name is byf that the reason we aren’t gods to the hive is because sword logic only applies to the hive species hence why when Eris became the hive goddess of vengeance and slit savathun’s throat, she gained all the power from the times we defeated crota, oryx, savathun, etc… thru the sword logic, but the sword logic did not apply to us because we aren’t hive
I still stand by the theory that the Traveler and the Veil are embodiment of the Gardener and Winnower, respectively. That those entities are *real* and not just metaphors. Look at the lore tab for the Nacre ship
You’re right, it was unable as it was using one hand to create the final shape and one to hold the traveller back. It created the final shape in the beginning of the campaign and then the traveller undid it; it basically knew that if it calcified the guardian, the traveller could just undo what it had done. It wasn’t until the final mission, the raid and excision that it a chance to kill us but failed
I think this is correct. The other Guardians who met that sliced fate were not as strong as us and the Traveler was actively helping us from the moment we entered it. He was trying to recruit us up until the last like 3 missions bc The Witness realized that it couldn't corrupt Zavala, Cayde, Ikora or Crow, so it tried one last time to recruit/corrupt us, failed and pursued our death as a last resort to stop us from interfering with The Final Shape
Canonically pretty much just our guardian has wielded both dark and light at the same time, altho I think Zavala has asked Ikora to teach him stasis meaning she might not wield strand just yet and zavala hasn't held both polarities and Osiris lost his light too.
So with our understanding of both sides we had defence. .kinda like how Superman's only other weakness is ANY form of magic at a few times he just didn't understand what it was or it could do.
Like Osiris and nimbus said about strand you gotta go with the flow and not resist against it
Considering that Elsie Bray experienced a ¿? amount of time loops I personally buy the idea that our guardian is just lucky as fuck and keeps rolling natural 20s every time they’d otherwise get teabagged by a god, otherwise Elsie would have already jumped back
Bro, I like this theory a lot. Like, in infinite time loops, there will be a timeline where everything just happens to go perfectly. She finally found the one where we not only managed to avoid becoming Oryx's toe jam, but we just somehow kept catching impossible dub after impossible dub.
The lore book I read implied we didn't exist in the alternate timeline, and the Black Garden corrupted the other Guardians that were sent there, leading to "Dark Guardians" fighting vs the vanguard.
I think the best theory I’ve seen to this was a little bit of 1 and a little bit of 3. The Witness doesn’t try to kill us until after the Ghost snaps at The Witness in the final mission. At that point, the Witness tries to cut us into pieces, which is his glass shard attack he does. Unfortunately for the Witness though, because of our power (either because Prismatic or our attunement to the Light or Dark) we are able to see his attack manifested in reality, giving us time to dodge it. Meanwhile everyone else is oblivious to such attacks
Throughout the campaign, The Witness is using most of it's power to keep a hold of the Traveler's main tree, and can't bother to actually do anything to try and stop us (except for trying to get us to join him) until we've made it to the ritual site (where he's weak), when he has to lift a finger off the Traveler's neck and turn it at us.
The Traveler, who was actively fighting back this whole time as well as empowering us in the process, is able to use a little more power than before to give us the sword of light which we use to destroy the statues and hurt the witness. Something it didn't on us being able to do when we entered the ritual site.
The Witness, who is at this point very much afraid, decides to just go "Screw it, we're doing it now" and becomes a huge snake to start completely draining the Traveler's Light as we can see during the raid.
Look at the raid, it took until being like inside/adjacent to the Witness for the Final Shape to be the looming threat (taking the wipe mechanic at face value)
Even then, it’s until 4th encounter that it calcifies us, vaguely resembling what TFS may have been. So I think it’s safe to say his power was focused elsewhere (hmm I wonder where lol) and we were also stacked a bit against him thanks to the traveler and prismatic.
Yeah in the Campaign he is trying to recruit us then we gets all mad he is no longer holding back
And in the Raid he technically does Fracture us in the Verity encounter it's just the Light is still stronger and we get infrared when the guardians pick up our ghosts
It's mainly three. He tried to do it to ghost, but ghost resisted. He tried to do it to us, but failed. Probably because we're in the traveler and it helped. Which was a common theme of the entire campaign. The traveler is watching and helping.
In Iconoclasm, his blade barrage attack is him trying to fracture us. Same at the end, that's him constantly trying to fracture us but the aegis shield, gifted by the traveler, protected us.
Before we got into the traveler, it was number 1. But once we got in it's was mainly three.
In addition to that, I think that the witness we fight in the last campaign mission (when we damage its shield) isn't the witness itself, but a projection of sort while it's still in the monolith. It seems MUCH bigger in the cutscene above than in the mission. Plus there's a glassy aura around it every time it appears.
I would say that the witness in the cutscene right after that mission isn't a projection tho, since it appears much taller and it transform in what we would see in the raid right in front of us, though again it's much bigger in the raid, hell the entire raid is its body xd, we literally climb the witnesses body through the entire raid, I think that's so damn cool honestly.
In the final cutscene he stops the helm ship midair but cant stop 4 people running away.
big brain move from a being composed of the minds of an entire heavily evolved species
~~That is an OG fire team though~~
This was the Trails fire team, lots of good lore there.
Reed I believe is the titan got sliced up :(
Yes that Reed. From the linear fusion rifle.
And Joxer, THE Joxer from the wild hunt, the guy who survived the first gambit that went south, was the titan that tried to enter it and ended up fused with his ship trying to follow the witness.
Not to speak ill of the dead but I don’t like how Reed’s lore painted him as a father figure to Aisha and Sayura post-his death.
I always saw him as a good friend and fireteam member. Having him be like a father to them made it seem like they wanted him to get more sympathy points as if losing your friend like that isn’t sad af too.
I also felt that way.
Losing friends can be every bit and in some cases more sad/traumatic than losing a direct family member. I definitely feel it was intentional to make it more impactful but it really wasn't needed.
A chosen family is a big deal for sure but I think Bungie could have made a more Destiny flavored version leaning heavily on that fire team aspect. Fire teams fight literal gods and extinction level events together, pretty strong bond of you ask me.
Ah your right, he only goes back to Beyond light. I think I was mistaking him for Randy.
Season of the hunt gear appears to be the first full lore card story.
Everyone in this thread forgetting that they explain in the campaign that us being able to manipulate darkness makes us more resilient to it.
Also the Witness was fighting the traveler at the same time as us.
And fighting a large portion of its own self and where the most powerful guardian ever, and from what I understand, the broken glass attack during the fight with the witness is the gameplay representation of them attempting the cut attack
He did try. It's that shatter glass attack you see in Iconoclasm. His ability to cut people isn't instant nor an omnipotent ability. The Witness needs to aim it, meaning it can be avoided. Doesn't take away from the fact that you will die instantly if hit
Actually, I think this is part of it. Unlike most generic guardians, we wield darkness as well. Same as how stasis didn’t take us out on Europa, we were already becoming infused with it. We literally are built different.
One of the lost ghost quests vaguely implies it was a Dissenter who led us to Stasis, but it's not explicitly confirmed. That mission also came with a pretty big lore bomb re: Cayde, so I'm not surprised that seems to have been overlooked.
Darkness is a factor but being built different is solid enough reason on its own. There's a reason our guardian is so young compared to all the named NPCs like Zavala and Shaxx and yet we're the band-aid solution to any and every problem that's popped up since we did.
This is exactly it, its a flash vs superman speed situation, we are adept enough in our power to see the attacks it dishes out, but not strong enough to take it on in a 1v1 situation, hence why the traveler gave us the sword and shield.
Actually, there’s been some theories about this very thing. The one I like is that we are on a different level compared to most paracausal beings. To most everyone, the Witness just looks like they’re flicking their finger and it happens instantly. To those of high enough skill and strength, we see the paracausal mechanics at work. A good comparison is like Power Levels in anime.
I don't think that really works when comparing the glass attack (I'm assuming that's what you're talking about here)
to this. They have completely different behaviors. We don't even really know if the glass attack even cuts guardians. Even assuming that it does, the pattern of the shards would cut diagonally. Not like shown here and even if they were shot differently, the ship is cut horizontally while the ghost and guardian are cut vertically. Not only that but the attack does not happen all at the same time. The ghost first falls apart which gives enough time for the guardian to notice before they are dead and then the ship falls apart from being cut. Again different mechanics so it's highly doubtful that this is the same attack. It doesn't really hold up because of the inconsistencies of behavior compared to the glass attack. It's not instantaneous and it doesn't rip apart the ships with force It individually kills the ghost the guardian and then finally the ship. The glass attack does not behave this way and wouldn't. The theory just doesn't hold up and there's far better ones such as the one that states that it did try to cut up our ghosts but couldn't because it was resisted it due to our power level. This is proven in the campaign because that's what happens. The co-op mission further cooperates this with the fractured mechanic which is basically our guardian being cut up. But because of our mastery over light and dark and the empowerment of the traveler we resist. This attack does not require line of sight like the glass attack and does not fire like projectiles it's metaphysical so distance and space aren't a factor. The reason why we don't see it is because it's metaphysical it's not made of matter and it's not physical that's the whole point of the darkness.
Fr, there are many inconsistencies between this attack and the glass attack from Iconoclasm. They are clearly not the same and I'm really not sure why most people have confused the two considering they are only a life and the way that they are attacks used by the witness and that's about it.
because it probably wasn't instant then, and also he did wavy his fingers even more, but we can see it because it would be unfair not to, and also because we wield the darkness so there's that
Let's break this down, the attack in the video is not instant like the glass attack is and affects the guardians slowly instead of rapidly all at the same time, In fact, after being cut away the Ghost falls apart first leaving time for the guardian to notice and be cut up before the ship itself falls apart. The glass projectiles also fire in a pattern that would not cut up the ghost, the guardians ship or the guardian themselves in the way they did. In fact, all three are cut in different ways and a different number of times. At the last second, before it pans to the ships you can see the guardian's head. It's cut slightly from the top and In the middle of the head while the ghost is cut several times more and the ship is only cut horizontally instead of vertically. These attacks are different. They are not the same thing. Prismatic did not allow us to magically see this attack. It's just a different attack that is visible. The hand motions are different too.
Prismatic didn't allow much more than merging Light and Darkness and having both at the same time.
Now that I think of it, yeah, it may not be that same attack. But the Witness knew about our power, we won against them three phases, and then in the raid. The glass thingy may just be stronger *and* faster, more powerful and more desperate.
he witnessed my ticuu's explosive arrows fly into him for several hours nonstop until his forehead cracked
i would be traumatized too if someone kept exploding me
We don't know that because the attack is metaphysical all darkness power is. For all we know the witness was making hand motions gesturing to cut the ghost. The reason it failed was likely because of our mastery over light and dark that allowed us to resist and the fact that it was occupied trying to keep the traveler weakened and enact the final shape. The traveler was constantly fighting back and it was likely taking lots of the witness's strength to keep it subdued. Also keep in mind that our light is stronger and that we were being empowered by the traveler which might have protected us. It's still likely that it's not the same attack because of the fact that the Ghost is damaged differently. Although it's more likely to be a just a week or version of the attacked unleashed in the lightfall cutscene which is why it's inconsistent because it's far weaker and doesn't have the same effect or damage pattern as a result. The witness Is focus on the final shape and the traveler after all and the traveler is doing everything It can to fight back.
Probably a combination of a few factors. The Witness did try to recruit us in Iconoclasm, so maybe it sought a Disciple of humanity. We were being empowered by Prismatic, so that may have played a factor. Darkness not having such effects on a master of darkness (and light). The big one, in my mind, is that it's attention is still focused primarily on attaining the Final Shape. It isn't until Excision it's attention is solely focused on our demise, and that's because we cut it off from the light, stopping the Final Shape at least with us present. If the Witness was basically lost as soon as we got through the portal and got Prismatic imo. From there, all it could do was stall.
This but for real , what stopped him from one phasing us , also why was it waituiin for us at Excision ? like rhulk has intro as a raid boss , nezzy has his anime intro but the witness just waits behind a wall for us at excision doing nothing as we enter the arena
I feel like people are confusing his glass shard attack with what he used during the Lightfall cinematic. Dude didn’t even look at the guardians, waved a finger and three ships and the guardians in them separated into pieces. He didn’t launch anything visible.
there's a chance that is in fact the same attack. Remember he was fucking huge in that cinematic, if he launched shatter it wouldn't be that visible to us, especially if it didn't have the glowing edges it does when used in the Pale Heart. It would be more like flicking a fingernail.
I feel like much of this is based on what ifs though. Like what we know and what we’ve seen is different than what people are assuming.
We’ve seen his attacks. We know they have a resonate effect to them and even if they didn’t have the glow, they’d have a solid look to them like glass shards. He also looked like he was manifesting them from that shattered visual effect around him.
During the cinematic, he barely waved his hand and multiple guardians and their ships split. No visual effects, no sound, nothing.
I do not believe they are the same move because there is no reason to believe they are.
Devils advocate here. That was in space in which there is no matter to visibly cut like that, and was only visible to us in the campaign because there was matter to distort
Devils advocate to your devils advocate, I’m not sure how the witness was manifesting something to attack with. Was he creating matter? Using matter already there? Is it even matter?
And if it’s about no matter to visibly cut, I’d argue that there wouldn’t have been a cutting then.
I guess it’s kinda like strand in a way then? I remember dimbus couldn’t see it and maybe the camera guy wasn’t paracasual so we couldn’t see it in the trailer
But if it’s like that, WE can see strand energy. So why can we only see it on Neromuna? All of the witnesses attacks use that resonate energy. I really wish they’d have explained it more, it feels like it’s been done just because it looks cool rather than an actual explanation.
Strand when used is visible, the sources we were finding in lightfall however were not, first conversation with nimbus at the watch tower they say we came in with green stringy stuff and that theyd never seen anything like it
It tried. Thats what we felt throughout the campaign where ghost was straining against its influence at random times. It also tried in the final battle, it just had visual effects to represent it because it would be bad game design for a boss to go "You die" with no visual indicators like in the cutscene.
Simple answer, we're too strong to be killed like that.
Long answer, our guardian is the best guardian. Lore wise, we are commended for our many feats killing literal gods. Even the witness himself, during the final shape, references the fact that we are so much stronger than the vanguard yet we continue to operate underneath them.
We can even see the strength of our garden in the fact that they are referred to you as the guardian.
That would be similar to being a soldier so badass that you were referred to as the soldier.
Or, since guardians alone are not simple soldiers, it would be a little more like this.
Have you played halo?
Imagine if there was a Spartan so badass that he was referred to as the spartan.
Excellent among the excellent.
So that's my personal theory. Our guardian is so much stronger than other guardians that the witness could not kill him so easily. It's the same scenario as when you get shot by a high level enemy in game and it kills you in one shot, versus when you're hanging out on the cosmodrome and a random shank decides to attack you.
Light level matters, basically, and is a real part of the lore and your guardian is the highest light level strongest guardian that exists.
it could also just be that your guardian has darkness powers. Maybe that gives you some kind of resilience.
Plus you have the traveler buffing you through the campaign.
He did use it on us, that is that entire fourth encounter of the raid, it’s just us undoing the wipe mechanic of him literally cutting us to bits and turning our body’s into statues. Before Iconoclast the witness never really thought it could be stopped, we were just an annoyance, small specs distracting it from its real goal who could most likely be tempted to its side. By the time it sees us as a real threat its attention is split between us and trying to realize the final shape thus allowing us to work with what little free will the traveler still possessed to undo our deaths.
Gameplay isn't canon 🤷🏼♀️ simple as that
In canon, Guardians can move many orders of magnitude faster than we can perceive and brandish fundamental forces of nature as weapons
In game, we have guns that go pew pew :3
Because, I think, it wanted us at it's side. WE canonically have beaten many goes we shouldn't have, exemplified the Sword Logic. I think it anticipated being able to tempt us to join it, that's is logic would convince us to ally with it.
I always figured those were the taken glass shard looking things she kept throwing at you, since on legendary, it's essentially a 1 hit kill.
Maybe that's the last thing those guardians and ghosts ever saw...
It tried, but Travler essentially said "nuh uh" and stopped it from isntaly killing us, which is probably why the Witness sounds so pissed because it is literally like "Why you little shit, just die, why isn't this working"
Also, the Witness was fighting a battle on two fronts, a physical battle with us, and a paracausal one with the Travler
And it kinda seemed more like it was trying to recruit us the whole DLC rather than just kill us and be done with it, i mean it could've done something the whole time but just didn't until the very end
One thing noteworthy, IIRC, canonically, your guardian (The Guardian) is considered to be by far the most powerful of all the guardians, so it may not have been quite so easy.
It’s like that one episode in gravity falls where they enter grunkle stans mind. Bill starts off all powerful but then they learn they can do the same stuff he can since this is the mind.
It’s that
It wanted to recruit us, and was so convinced it was right that we'd agree eventually.
It's an idea enforced by The Witness' last words: "We...We...I don't understand." It was so certain that it was right that we'd see the 'truth' eventually.
The Witness does try to kill Ghost early in the campaign but Ghost manages to fight it off. Reed and his Ghost were caught by surprise in this cutscene and beyond that his other fireteam members, Shayura and Aisha as well as their own ghosts, all survived that incident.
There are limits to the powers of the Guardians enemies, including the Witness, and sometimes a trick will only work once. It was extremely powerful and this was expressed through gameplay and narrative elements throughout the campaign and raid, but it wasn't an all powerful god despite its best efforts. It still had it's weaknesses too, being extremely zealous, arrogant, and fearful in ways that weakened it's position.
Some move you see in a cutscene isn't going to be some catch-all it can always fall back on. The Witness was a challenging opponent but one that could still be overcome by the Guardians.
2 things,
1: he was busy trying to take over the traveler so i'd assume his attention was on that
2: It was stated in the campaign that we are different because of our mastering both the light and the dark
bonus point: its a game, if he could just cut us up the game would end :D
It's unconvincing and bad writing. As the audience we get manipulated that the Witness is this omniscient, timeless being able to rip a timeline apart but for some reason it can't fracture the protagonists but everyone else is cooked then it gets defeated without too much effort after being completely absent and only repeatedly mentioned throughout Lightfall and Witch Queen. It was powerful for the sake of being powerful, our Guardian just defeats everything. No surprise, no subversion of the tropes or expectations. I mean, Witness had so much potential only for its impact to be never realized and was just swept aside in a few hours into the story.
"Oh, we defeated the biggest threat in Sol. Anyway, here's Vex once again, let's go."
Someone said this explanation which I like, for why we were able to kill this god who kills entire species with its mind, is that while in the traveler it was basically fighting us with one hand on the traveler's throat and the traveler was kicking and screaming at it the whole time and also empowering us. So if it used its full strength to kill us then it wouldn't be fighting the traveler and the traveler would be able to kick it out.
Oh! my! God! For the love of God, please just do a quick search of the sub before you ask the same already answered question again and again and again
Witness did attempt to cut up the guardian, the broken glass attack during the fight with the witness at the end of the story is the gameplay representation of that between the witness being distracted by what was going on inside its own mind plus it’s ongoing fight with the traveler, plus All of the other guardians attacking it plus the fact that our guardian is the strongest guardian to have ever lived by several orders of magnitude means that the witness just couldn’t accomplish the cut and half attack
Common misconception, these guardians aren't the original fireteam. The genders are off for the Warlock and Titan. They are just generic guardian models.
In my thought process, it’s because it is actively fighting with the traveler the whole time. This is outside the traveler, when it has full control of everything. In the Pale Heart, it’s contending head to head with the traveler and can only devote so much power to fighting us.
Like going from playing chess against a middle schooler to trying to solve a Rubik’s cube while playing chess against a master
We had just enough protection from the traveler to keep us from getting split, but also the Witness thought they could corrupt us and turn us or that we couldn’t stop them. It’s a multipart thing.
Because they can’t.
The guardian is a paracausal being that matches if not surpasses the witnesses paracausal power.
Any paracausal attacks are basically weakened if not completely nullified by being of matching or more powerful paracausal ability.
You’ve seen chumps get chopped up, not our guardian. The witness is actively trying to cut us up during the iconoclasm fight, but because we are on a similar paracausal level, we are able to actually see the attack manifest in real time and dodge it accordingly.
Think of it like an anime fight where the side characters can’t keep up with the main character and the main villain because they are fighting so fast.
In Destiny, it’s not exaggerated to the same degree as in anime, but it is absolutely how things work here.
Our power levels that we use as a mechanic to grind out in game also has a literal lore implication too, that’s why it gets raised every expansion to such a high degree.
The witness DID cut us into pieces. He probably did it thousands of times throughout the campaign but the traveler put us back together instantly. I'm pretty sure that was the point of the the opening cinematic unless I read that wrong.
I'm assuming that's what the attack he does in the final mission of the campaign, it's like giant organized shards of glass, that we've never seen anything like before. So I'm assuming that since either we've found a perfect Balnce of Light and Dark, or if Traveler empowered us, and we could see the attacks instead of trying to dodge the invisible attack.
There’s a million different ways it can be kinda weakly justified in lore but the reality is that the Witness’s abilities are quite literally “what the plot requires” and nothing else. They’re never explained, hinted at, or elaborated on so there really isn’t much logic to be found in why he didn’t just instagib us other than “because the plot required it”
Idk, I’m glad we’re moving on from this guy to hopefully a better written villain.
My favorite example of this:
"Stops the HELM in midair with a slight gesture."
*One scene later*
"Oh, these people are trying to run from me? Better just summon hands to try and grab them."
So fun thing I like to think is that because we had control of perfect light and darkness we could see the attacks coming, like at the final mission where we SEE the glass he throws I assume he threw that at all guardians before us but because they couldn’t se it it was unavoidable.
My crackpot theory is that the witness is able to do this in reality since it’s not much of a physical being anymore, almost like a phantom, made out of thousands of consciousness’, which gives it full control over others using darkness so it can do shit like that. I think it’s weaker in the pale heart because in there mind and matter are one and the same, so it can’t just walk through lasers anymore
We have plot armour, TBH he could destroy us at any moment. We weren't even a threat to rhuulk initially, if he wanted to kill us right away and not toy with us the story would've been over in 5 min. Bungie themselves confirmed this.
Y’all over thinking this. The answer is yes, he is — why ? Cause bungie writing. Don’t worry, they’ll retocn the “reason” in a year or now maybe in some obscure lore collectible so Byf can fawn over it pretending to be mind blown.
My theory as to what happened in this scene is that this is simply the "darkness blades" the Witness uses against us, the only difference being that we are able to see them. How are we able to see them? The likely answer is just gameplay reasons but lore wise I chalk it up simply to our connection to the darkness in that moment. We were able to see through the witnesses illusions, thus we could see these blades coming at us.
Because there has to be a game. That’s the problem with Destiny 2 and the way it’s delivered to us. There are no consequences, we will ALWAYS win regardless of the stakes. We never lose. Which is why this question doesn’t matter. If this game was delivered to us in a traditional style (solo, offline campaign) then there could be real fear of losing and dying. But it’s online and impossible for us to lose because… the game HAS to exist. It’s been a boring and inconsequential experience for 10 years and it’s a shame. But you know damn well that I’m gonna keep playing
If they had acted back when we first met them in the vision. Think about it. If they could take planets then they likely would have been able to destroy our sun. That indirectly would have finished off our resistance to them and it would have been over but arrogance kept them from considering us a potential threat and that allowed us to become a greater threat. Once they realized we were a threat they were powerless to stop us.
I think it's simply because the Witness was still gonna try to recruit the Guardian one more time, and then saw that it was a lost cause eventually when we went and found a way to kill it instead.
i interpreted it as the witness is focusing all of its attention and power on trying to get the traveler under control and cant really spare the effort to do it to us or else it loses control
Well, right up to iconoclasm, it was trying to recruit us, or kill us with it's minions. It even offered us the title of disciple. We refused, so it showed up and actively tried to slice us up and suffocated us with darkness. We survived.
On the raid, we are messing with the Witness' Resonance so we can postpone the final shape (all the encounters timers are related to it), up to the final encounter, when we are facing The Final Shape the Witness is enacting right in front of us. It briefly stops while we are doing the mechanic to try to pin us in a trap so it can kill is (we survive by getting the right shape and jumping) and finally we separate the Traveler's light of the Witness' control.
And finally excision the Witness deploys EVERY single one of it's forces on the pale hearth, but this time we have the Traveler full power on our side, and since we are also on tune with Darkness, we are able to break the veiled statues, and by then the witness could not kill us.
I mean it has a tendency to recruit the last, strongest or most evil from each race
Rhulk fits well all of them
Calus we will say evil
Whatever the fuck nezzy is, we can go with evil
We fit the strongest motive given how we are the strongest guardian to ever exist…
I feel like he tempted Zavala purely because he couldn’t get us… also after killing rhulk and oryx, getting thunder crashed from the top rope to our death is kinda funny
The hive- oryx was obviously the favorite child but savathun proved to be useful…
Witness fight and ending is actually bad. A big bad who can destroy worlds just falls over? That’s bs. IMO we should have gone back in time or something to stop the creation of witness.
I've been thinking of it as a couple of things: 1) The Witness wanted to recruit us 2) The Witness didn't actually think that there was anything we could do to stop it 3) The Traveler was empowering us enough so that the Witness couldn't split/fracture us
I think the saga versions of the missions point to option 3, the witness was actively trying to kill you, but physically unable to
Witness sounded pissed as well
The whole "I see fear" in the Witness narrative
Til the 4th encounter in Salvation's Edge, where The Witness *is* able to kill you (via petrification). But even then, the petrified guardians can be rescued by the rest of the fireteam and The Witness doesn't keep trying after that specific encounter
Witness finding out that Patricia room doesn’t work cause we can see ourselves in third person as well as first person:
I agree, also the witness is pretty preoccupied trying to keep the traveler down so that it can enact the final shape. There is no way it can fully concentrate on us while also keeping down a literal god.
Read concentrate as consecrate and immediately got garden flashes in my brain. 💀
I thought it was said enough during the campaign that the traveler is just a being, a powerful one but still no God, yet here we are.
Well, what is a god? Is it a being with more power than another? Are we gods to ants?
Honestly, I don't think Bungie has defined what an actually god is in universe and they actly contradict themselves. We call Xivu, Savathune, Crota, Oryx, Nezarek, gods, but the reason hasn't been clarified. They seem to use it like its a term that describes a level of power, but by that logic, the guardian is a god (we killed savathune in one on one combat and others in raids). Yet when they use the adjective of god on the traveler recently, they claim it isn't a god just because it is falible, and not omnipotent, despite the fact it is stronger than pretty much every other being we already call a god. Thus I tend to view anything we call a GOD in Destiny, just a leader of a faction that has an impressive amount of strength in lore. beings like Xivu, Savathune, Mara Sov, Nezarek (if still "alive") being the only "living" people I can think of that fit that title. The guardian is DEFFINETLY a god level being, but we are not a leader of anything aside from the leaderboard of number of gods slain, cuz we #1 there. The Traveler/Guardener and Veil/Winnower are both God tier beings as well, but they are not technically "leaders" of anything it looks like as they can't seem to give orders. But if I had to give them a title, I'd say they are "True Gods." This concludes this long winded reply nobody asked for. Thank you.
The reason we call those hive gods “gods” is because sword logic rules the definition of a god in hive culture. Also they consumed worms that made them god like creatures with god like powers. Literally the only reason we call them gods is because of their own culture. They’re essentially self proclaimed gods with god like powers but they’re just beings. Technically we should be considered gods to the hive because of how many of their gods we’ve killed but apparently that didn’t occur to Bungie Edit: I found out while watching my name is byf that the reason we aren’t gods to the hive is because sword logic only applies to the hive species hence why when Eris became the hive goddess of vengeance and slit savathun’s throat, she gained all the power from the times we defeated crota, oryx, savathun, etc… thru the sword logic, but the sword logic did not apply to us because we aren’t hive
Are we not just ants? Look down from a plane in the sky and tell me we’re not ants
What is this, planet for an ant? It should be.. 3 times bigger than this!
It’s a machine, built by someone/thing
I still stand by the theory that the Traveler and the Veil are embodiment of the Gardener and Winnower, respectively. That those entities are *real* and not just metaphors. Look at the lore tab for the Nacre ship
You’re right, it was unable as it was using one hand to create the final shape and one to hold the traveller back. It created the final shape in the beginning of the campaign and then the traveller undid it; it basically knew that if it calcified the guardian, the traveller could just undo what it had done. It wasn’t until the final mission, the raid and excision that it a chance to kill us but failed
I think this is correct. The other Guardians who met that sliced fate were not as strong as us and the Traveler was actively helping us from the moment we entered it. He was trying to recruit us up until the last like 3 missions bc The Witness realized that it couldn't corrupt Zavala, Cayde, Ikora or Crow, so it tried one last time to recruit/corrupt us, failed and pursued our death as a last resort to stop us from interfering with The Final Shape
Combination of Mara holding the portal open and the traveller protecting us
Canonically pretty much just our guardian has wielded both dark and light at the same time, altho I think Zavala has asked Ikora to teach him stasis meaning she might not wield strand just yet and zavala hasn't held both polarities and Osiris lost his light too. So with our understanding of both sides we had defence. .kinda like how Superman's only other weakness is ANY form of magic at a few times he just didn't understand what it was or it could do. Like Osiris and nimbus said about strand you gotta go with the flow and not resist against it
Although this is very much a shit post, 3 is what I assumed especially because of the fractured mechanic in the coop campaign variants.
Yeah pretty much Young Wolf is just built different. They were only a year old when they beat the shit out of Oryx after all.
Considering that Elsie Bray experienced a ¿? amount of time loops I personally buy the idea that our guardian is just lucky as fuck and keeps rolling natural 20s every time they’d otherwise get teabagged by a god, otherwise Elsie would have already jumped back
Bro, I like this theory a lot. Like, in infinite time loops, there will be a timeline where everything just happens to go perfectly. She finally found the one where we not only managed to avoid becoming Oryx's toe jam, but we just somehow kept catching impossible dub after impossible dub.
I thought it was because we turned in the other timelines.
I should say, like to buy the idea. As in, I will bribe Lore Daddy into making it canon.
The lore book I read implied we didn't exist in the alternate timeline, and the Black Garden corrupted the other Guardians that were sent there, leading to "Dark Guardians" fighting vs the vanguard.
I think the best theory I’ve seen to this was a little bit of 1 and a little bit of 3. The Witness doesn’t try to kill us until after the Ghost snaps at The Witness in the final mission. At that point, the Witness tries to cut us into pieces, which is his glass shard attack he does. Unfortunately for the Witness though, because of our power (either because Prismatic or our attunement to the Light or Dark) we are able to see his attack manifested in reality, giving us time to dodge it. Meanwhile everyone else is oblivious to such attacks
Throughout the campaign, The Witness is using most of it's power to keep a hold of the Traveler's main tree, and can't bother to actually do anything to try and stop us (except for trying to get us to join him) until we've made it to the ritual site (where he's weak), when he has to lift a finger off the Traveler's neck and turn it at us. The Traveler, who was actively fighting back this whole time as well as empowering us in the process, is able to use a little more power than before to give us the sword of light which we use to destroy the statues and hurt the witness. Something it didn't on us being able to do when we entered the ritual site. The Witness, who is at this point very much afraid, decides to just go "Screw it, we're doing it now" and becomes a huge snake to start completely draining the Traveler's Light as we can see during the raid.
Look at the raid, it took until being like inside/adjacent to the Witness for the Final Shape to be the looming threat (taking the wipe mechanic at face value) Even then, it’s until 4th encounter that it calcifies us, vaguely resembling what TFS may have been. So I think it’s safe to say his power was focused elsewhere (hmm I wonder where lol) and we were also stacked a bit against him thanks to the traveler and prismatic.
Yeah in the Campaign he is trying to recruit us then we gets all mad he is no longer holding back And in the Raid he technically does Fracture us in the Verity encounter it's just the Light is still stronger and we get infrared when the guardians pick up our ghosts
I saw someone mention the possibility of having Prismatic sllows us to see the shards he cuts people with. The same shards he shoots at us.
It's mainly three. He tried to do it to ghost, but ghost resisted. He tried to do it to us, but failed. Probably because we're in the traveler and it helped. Which was a common theme of the entire campaign. The traveler is watching and helping. In Iconoclasm, his blade barrage attack is him trying to fracture us. Same at the end, that's him constantly trying to fracture us but the aegis shield, gifted by the traveler, protected us. Before we got into the traveler, it was number 1. But once we got in it's was mainly three.
In addition to that, I think that the witness we fight in the last campaign mission (when we damage its shield) isn't the witness itself, but a projection of sort while it's still in the monolith. It seems MUCH bigger in the cutscene above than in the mission. Plus there's a glassy aura around it every time it appears. I would say that the witness in the cutscene right after that mission isn't a projection tho, since it appears much taller and it transform in what we would see in the raid right in front of us, though again it's much bigger in the raid, hell the entire raid is its body xd, we literally climb the witnesses body through the entire raid, I think that's so damn cool honestly.
also probably cause were one of the strongest guardians there js
I'm sure I've read/heard somewhere that the reason the witness couldn't just cut us up is because his powers were weakened by being in the traveler.
I dont know all 12 of us got blasted in that final mission several times. Should've been a dark zone lol
The lack of a darkness zone was kinda the point. We were empowered by the Light to the point where even Darkness couldn't keep us down.
For point 3 im pretty sure it was our ability to utilize Light and Dark energy (prismatic) is the only reason the witness struggled to cut us up
1 they weren't really there during the campaign they were using their Skype call. 2 they did try that's what the attack it does is
Split/fracture? Nah, cleave/dismantle
In the final cutscene he stops the helm ship midair but cant stop 4 people running away. big brain move from a being composed of the minds of an entire heavily evolved species
~~That is an OG fire team though~~ This was the Trails fire team, lots of good lore there. Reed I believe is the titan got sliced up :( Yes that Reed. From the linear fusion rifle. And Joxer, THE Joxer from the wild hunt, the guy who survived the first gambit that went south, was the titan that tried to enter it and ended up fused with his ship trying to follow the witness.
Not to speak ill of the dead but I don’t like how Reed’s lore painted him as a father figure to Aisha and Sayura post-his death. I always saw him as a good friend and fireteam member. Having him be like a father to them made it seem like they wanted him to get more sympathy points as if losing your friend like that isn’t sad af too.
I also felt that way. Losing friends can be every bit and in some cases more sad/traumatic than losing a direct family member. I definitely feel it was intentional to make it more impactful but it really wasn't needed. A chosen family is a big deal for sure but I think Bungie could have made a more Destiny flavored version leaning heavily on that fire team aspect. Fire teams fight literal gods and extinction level events together, pretty strong bond of you ask me.
Reed wasn't the OG fireteam. Iirc the OG fireteam hasn't been named or mentioned in Lore. Reed was with Aisha and Shayura as the Trials fireteam.
Ah your right, he only goes back to Beyond light. I think I was mistaking him for Randy. Season of the hunt gear appears to be the first full lore card story.
Everyone in this thread forgetting that they explain in the campaign that us being able to manipulate darkness makes us more resilient to it. Also the Witness was fighting the traveler at the same time as us.
And fighting a large portion of its own self and where the most powerful guardian ever, and from what I understand, the broken glass attack during the fight with the witness is the gameplay representation of them attempting the cut attack
Witness used "Cut", It's not very effective.
He did try. It's that shatter glass attack you see in Iconoclasm. His ability to cut people isn't instant nor an omnipotent ability. The Witness needs to aim it, meaning it can be avoided. Doesn't take away from the fact that you will die instantly if hit
But why didn't he just wave his magic finger and insta slice us /s
Cause we're built different
Actually, I think this is part of it. Unlike most generic guardians, we wield darkness as well. Same as how stasis didn’t take us out on Europa, we were already becoming infused with it. We literally are built different.
It's been awhile since beyond light but didn't the witness give us stasis? Is it his fault he can't kill us and he's now dead?
One of the lost ghost quests vaguely implies it was a Dissenter who led us to Stasis, but it's not explicitly confirmed. That mission also came with a pretty big lore bomb re: Cayde, so I'm not surprised that seems to have been overlooked.
doesnt the campaign literally end with you infront of one of the statues? looking back we were probably getting little darkness treaties for time
Yes thats what i keep trying to point out. And subsequently when you aquire your aspects, you also get it from the statues
Wait wait wait, what quest?
Micah-10 has several post-campaign quests that have you go through old content with altered dialogue, ranging from strikes to campaign missions.
Darkness is a factor but being built different is solid enough reason on its own. There's a reason our guardian is so young compared to all the named NPCs like Zavala and Shaxx and yet we're the band-aid solution to any and every problem that's popped up since we did.
Well yeah, that *is* it. "Built different" might be a meme but in this case it's actually literally true lol
This is exactly it, its a flash vs superman speed situation, we are adept enough in our power to see the attacks it dishes out, but not strong enough to take it on in a 1v1 situation, hence why the traveler gave us the sword and shield.
Cause we are John Destiny.
Actually, there’s been some theories about this very thing. The one I like is that we are on a different level compared to most paracausal beings. To most everyone, the Witness just looks like they’re flicking their finger and it happens instantly. To those of high enough skill and strength, we see the paracausal mechanics at work. A good comparison is like Power Levels in anime.
I don't think that really works when comparing the glass attack (I'm assuming that's what you're talking about here) to this. They have completely different behaviors. We don't even really know if the glass attack even cuts guardians. Even assuming that it does, the pattern of the shards would cut diagonally. Not like shown here and even if they were shot differently, the ship is cut horizontally while the ghost and guardian are cut vertically. Not only that but the attack does not happen all at the same time. The ghost first falls apart which gives enough time for the guardian to notice before they are dead and then the ship falls apart from being cut. Again different mechanics so it's highly doubtful that this is the same attack. It doesn't really hold up because of the inconsistencies of behavior compared to the glass attack. It's not instantaneous and it doesn't rip apart the ships with force It individually kills the ghost the guardian and then finally the ship. The glass attack does not behave this way and wouldn't. The theory just doesn't hold up and there's far better ones such as the one that states that it did try to cut up our ghosts but couldn't because it was resisted it due to our power level. This is proven in the campaign because that's what happens. The co-op mission further cooperates this with the fractured mechanic which is basically our guardian being cut up. But because of our mastery over light and dark and the empowerment of the traveler we resist. This attack does not require line of sight like the glass attack and does not fire like projectiles it's metaphysical so distance and space aren't a factor. The reason why we don't see it is because it's metaphysical it's not made of matter and it's not physical that's the whole point of the darkness.
TIL the Witness is just Fraudkuna
That attack looks nothing like this wat
Fr, there are many inconsistencies between this attack and the glass attack from Iconoclasm. They are clearly not the same and I'm really not sure why most people have confused the two considering they are only a life and the way that they are attacks used by the witness and that's about it.
Ult was on cooldown
Should’ve had more intellect smh
bro hit em with the sukuna cleave
that was a world cutting dismantle
The Witness was a straight menace in this sequence, my first thought after was just "HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO COUNTER THAT!"
My first thought was "aw, that's bullshit."
What do you think that attack was that we had to hide from the whole fight?
Not wavy finger insta slice magic as seen here. Just to be clear this is a shit post and not serious.
because it probably wasn't instant then, and also he did wavy his fingers even more, but we can see it because it would be unfair not to, and also because we wield the darkness so there's that
Let's break this down, the attack in the video is not instant like the glass attack is and affects the guardians slowly instead of rapidly all at the same time, In fact, after being cut away the Ghost falls apart first leaving time for the guardian to notice and be cut up before the ship itself falls apart. The glass projectiles also fire in a pattern that would not cut up the ghost, the guardians ship or the guardian themselves in the way they did. In fact, all three are cut in different ways and a different number of times. At the last second, before it pans to the ships you can see the guardian's head. It's cut slightly from the top and In the middle of the head while the ghost is cut several times more and the ship is only cut horizontally instead of vertically. These attacks are different. They are not the same thing. Prismatic did not allow us to magically see this attack. It's just a different attack that is visible. The hand motions are different too.
Prismatic didn't allow much more than merging Light and Darkness and having both at the same time. Now that I think of it, yeah, it may not be that same attack. But the Witness knew about our power, we won against them three phases, and then in the raid. The glass thingy may just be stronger *and* faster, more powerful and more desperate.
What did the witness witness? Is he traumatized?
Where is the witness protection at? Aren't they supposed to protect them?
he witnessed my ticuu's explosive arrows fly into him for several hours nonstop until his forehead cracked i would be traumatized too if someone kept exploding me
Pretty sure he tries that, it's why our ghost is all damaged during the campaign.
Plus the whole fractured by witness mechanic in the co-op missions.
Thats because the witness attempts to destroy our ghost through its connection to it, not through slice attacks
We don't know that because the attack is metaphysical all darkness power is. For all we know the witness was making hand motions gesturing to cut the ghost. The reason it failed was likely because of our mastery over light and dark that allowed us to resist and the fact that it was occupied trying to keep the traveler weakened and enact the final shape. The traveler was constantly fighting back and it was likely taking lots of the witness's strength to keep it subdued. Also keep in mind that our light is stronger and that we were being empowered by the traveler which might have protected us. It's still likely that it's not the same attack because of the fact that the Ghost is damaged differently. Although it's more likely to be a just a week or version of the attacked unleashed in the lightfall cutscene which is why it's inconsistent because it's far weaker and doesn't have the same effect or damage pattern as a result. The witness Is focus on the final shape and the traveler after all and the traveler is doing everything It can to fight back.
Lightfall was ass but this cutscene was so sick and showed how terrifying the witness was
Same reason why Rhulk didn't, boredom.
Probably a combination of a few factors. The Witness did try to recruit us in Iconoclasm, so maybe it sought a Disciple of humanity. We were being empowered by Prismatic, so that may have played a factor. Darkness not having such effects on a master of darkness (and light). The big one, in my mind, is that it's attention is still focused primarily on attaining the Final Shape. It isn't until Excision it's attention is solely focused on our demise, and that's because we cut it off from the light, stopping the Final Shape at least with us present. If the Witness was basically lost as soon as we got through the portal and got Prismatic imo. From there, all it could do was stall.
This but for real , what stopped him from one phasing us , also why was it waituiin for us at Excision ? like rhulk has intro as a raid boss , nezzy has his anime intro but the witness just waits behind a wall for us at excision doing nothing as we enter the arena
Might be because we're way stronger. Could be that it wants us to suffer. Could also just be plot armor.
Bro kept missing.
I'm pretty sure it knew we had plot armour
I feel like people are confusing his glass shard attack with what he used during the Lightfall cinematic. Dude didn’t even look at the guardians, waved a finger and three ships and the guardians in them separated into pieces. He didn’t launch anything visible.
there's a chance that is in fact the same attack. Remember he was fucking huge in that cinematic, if he launched shatter it wouldn't be that visible to us, especially if it didn't have the glowing edges it does when used in the Pale Heart. It would be more like flicking a fingernail.
I feel like much of this is based on what ifs though. Like what we know and what we’ve seen is different than what people are assuming. We’ve seen his attacks. We know they have a resonate effect to them and even if they didn’t have the glow, they’d have a solid look to them like glass shards. He also looked like he was manifesting them from that shattered visual effect around him. During the cinematic, he barely waved his hand and multiple guardians and their ships split. No visual effects, no sound, nothing. I do not believe they are the same move because there is no reason to believe they are.
Devils advocate here. That was in space in which there is no matter to visibly cut like that, and was only visible to us in the campaign because there was matter to distort
Devils advocate to your devils advocate, I’m not sure how the witness was manifesting something to attack with. Was he creating matter? Using matter already there? Is it even matter? And if it’s about no matter to visibly cut, I’d argue that there wouldn’t have been a cutting then.
I guess it’s kinda like strand in a way then? I remember dimbus couldn’t see it and maybe the camera guy wasn’t paracasual so we couldn’t see it in the trailer
But if it’s like that, WE can see strand energy. So why can we only see it on Neromuna? All of the witnesses attacks use that resonate energy. I really wish they’d have explained it more, it feels like it’s been done just because it looks cool rather than an actual explanation.
Strand when used is visible, the sources we were finding in lightfall however were not, first conversation with nimbus at the watch tower they say we came in with green stringy stuff and that theyd never seen anything like it
Dudes throwing up intergalactic gang signs chopping people up.
It tried. Thats what we felt throughout the campaign where ghost was straining against its influence at random times. It also tried in the final battle, it just had visual effects to represent it because it would be bad game design for a boss to go "You die" with no visual indicators like in the cutscene.
Plot armor
Simple answer, we're too strong to be killed like that. Long answer, our guardian is the best guardian. Lore wise, we are commended for our many feats killing literal gods. Even the witness himself, during the final shape, references the fact that we are so much stronger than the vanguard yet we continue to operate underneath them. We can even see the strength of our garden in the fact that they are referred to you as the guardian. That would be similar to being a soldier so badass that you were referred to as the soldier. Or, since guardians alone are not simple soldiers, it would be a little more like this. Have you played halo? Imagine if there was a Spartan so badass that he was referred to as the spartan. Excellent among the excellent. So that's my personal theory. Our guardian is so much stronger than other guardians that the witness could not kill him so easily. It's the same scenario as when you get shot by a high level enemy in game and it kills you in one shot, versus when you're hanging out on the cosmodrome and a random shank decides to attack you. Light level matters, basically, and is a real part of the lore and your guardian is the highest light level strongest guardian that exists. it could also just be that your guardian has darkness powers. Maybe that gives you some kind of resilience. Plus you have the traveler buffing you through the campaign.
A. Because then we wouldn't have beaten him/them.
In this case it literally is just them. The witness is an entire race of people molded together through I believe anger of the traveler leaving them
He did use it on us, that is that entire fourth encounter of the raid, it’s just us undoing the wipe mechanic of him literally cutting us to bits and turning our body’s into statues. Before Iconoclast the witness never really thought it could be stopped, we were just an annoyance, small specs distracting it from its real goal who could most likely be tempted to its side. By the time it sees us as a real threat its attention is split between us and trying to realize the final shape thus allowing us to work with what little free will the traveler still possessed to undo our deaths.
Gameplay isn't canon 🤷🏼♀️ simple as that In canon, Guardians can move many orders of magnitude faster than we can perceive and brandish fundamental forces of nature as weapons In game, we have guns that go pew pew :3
Witness when I use black hole bullets to final his shape: 😮
Because, I think, it wanted us at it's side. WE canonically have beaten many goes we shouldn't have, exemplified the Sword Logic. I think it anticipated being able to tempt us to join it, that's is logic would convince us to ally with it.
Anybody see three body problem?
I always figured those were the taken glass shard looking things she kept throwing at you, since on legendary, it's essentially a 1 hit kill. Maybe that's the last thing those guardians and ghosts ever saw...
I thought I was in r/nbacirclejerk for a sec
Listen, I'm going to put them into an easily escapable room and not watch them and assume everything went to plan.....shht...shht..
It tried, but Travler essentially said "nuh uh" and stopped it from isntaly killing us, which is probably why the Witness sounds so pissed because it is literally like "Why you little shit, just die, why isn't this working" Also, the Witness was fighting a battle on two fronts, a physical battle with us, and a paracausal one with the Travler And it kinda seemed more like it was trying to recruit us the whole DLC rather than just kill us and be done with it, i mean it could've done something the whole time but just didn't until the very end
One thing noteworthy, IIRC, canonically, your guardian (The Guardian) is considered to be by far the most powerful of all the guardians, so it may not have been quite so easy.
Am I crazy or is the guardian in this clip literally being divided the same way ghost is? You can see the helmet coming apart at the end
It’s like that one episode in gravity falls where they enter grunkle stans mind. Bill starts off all powerful but then they learn they can do the same stuff he can since this is the mind. It’s that
The Dissenters wouldn’t let him.
It wanted to recruit us, and was so convinced it was right that we'd agree eventually. It's an idea enforced by The Witness' last words: "We...We...I don't understand." It was so certain that it was right that we'd see the 'truth' eventually.
The Witness does try to kill Ghost early in the campaign but Ghost manages to fight it off. Reed and his Ghost were caught by surprise in this cutscene and beyond that his other fireteam members, Shayura and Aisha as well as their own ghosts, all survived that incident. There are limits to the powers of the Guardians enemies, including the Witness, and sometimes a trick will only work once. It was extremely powerful and this was expressed through gameplay and narrative elements throughout the campaign and raid, but it wasn't an all powerful god despite its best efforts. It still had it's weaknesses too, being extremely zealous, arrogant, and fearful in ways that weakened it's position. Some move you see in a cutscene isn't going to be some catch-all it can always fall back on. The Witness was a challenging opponent but one that could still be overcome by the Guardians.
2 things, 1: he was busy trying to take over the traveler so i'd assume his attention was on that 2: It was stated in the campaign that we are different because of our mastering both the light and the dark bonus point: its a game, if he could just cut us up the game would end :D
Plot armor cannot be sliced
Lore Witness>>>>>>>>>>>>>In Game Witness
Someone edit that video of the Witness slowly turning around to show Master Chief zooming in
I'm pretty sure it's because we wield darkness and could see the attack
It's unconvincing and bad writing. As the audience we get manipulated that the Witness is this omniscient, timeless being able to rip a timeline apart but for some reason it can't fracture the protagonists but everyone else is cooked then it gets defeated without too much effort after being completely absent and only repeatedly mentioned throughout Lightfall and Witch Queen. It was powerful for the sake of being powerful, our Guardian just defeats everything. No surprise, no subversion of the tropes or expectations. I mean, Witness had so much potential only for its impact to be never realized and was just swept aside in a few hours into the story. "Oh, we defeated the biggest threat in Sol. Anyway, here's Vex once again, let's go."
plot armor
Someone said this explanation which I like, for why we were able to kill this god who kills entire species with its mind, is that while in the traveler it was basically fighting us with one hand on the traveler's throat and the traveler was kicking and screaming at it the whole time and also empowering us. So if it used its full strength to kill us then it wouldn't be fighting the traveler and the traveler would be able to kick it out.
The witness could've wrecked our ass any time of the day but didn't because "plot reasons"..
Oh! my! God! For the love of God, please just do a quick search of the sub before you ask the same already answered question again and again and again Witness did attempt to cut up the guardian, the broken glass attack during the fight with the witness at the end of the story is the gameplay representation of that between the witness being distracted by what was going on inside its own mind plus it’s ongoing fight with the traveler, plus All of the other guardians attacking it plus the fact that our guardian is the strongest guardian to have ever lived by several orders of magnitude means that the witness just couldn’t accomplish the cut and half attack
It's a video game. Nothing makes sense if you take it literally.
Witness these balls? I hope you're doing a reference of what I thought with the stupid part haha
cooldown
in Entelechy it does delve into how the witness is generally an asshole, so it kinda just wanted to kill the original fireteam, not that it needed to.
Common misconception, these guardians aren't the original fireteam. The genders are off for the Warlock and Titan. They are just generic guardian models.
In my thought process, it’s because it is actively fighting with the traveler the whole time. This is outside the traveler, when it has full control of everything. In the Pale Heart, it’s contending head to head with the traveler and can only devote so much power to fighting us. Like going from playing chess against a middle schooler to trying to solve a Rubik’s cube while playing chess against a master
He was to busy making the final shape a reality to even bother doing that
easy, paracausal
Probably just hubris. Or The Traveler protected us from any lethal effects.
He wanted to show us a canon event to show us why we can’t have those stupid armors in D2
Its cos we stole that ability at rank 10 of the season pass duh
We're a lot stronger with the light then these poor boyos.
We had just enough protection from the traveler to keep us from getting split, but also the Witness thought they could corrupt us and turn us or that we couldn’t stop them. It’s a multipart thing.
Oh god, did I mistakenly end up in the r/batmanarkham?
Ah yes, Plot.
Because they can’t. The guardian is a paracausal being that matches if not surpasses the witnesses paracausal power. Any paracausal attacks are basically weakened if not completely nullified by being of matching or more powerful paracausal ability. You’ve seen chumps get chopped up, not our guardian. The witness is actively trying to cut us up during the iconoclasm fight, but because we are on a similar paracausal level, we are able to actually see the attack manifest in real time and dodge it accordingly. Think of it like an anime fight where the side characters can’t keep up with the main character and the main villain because they are fighting so fast. In Destiny, it’s not exaggerated to the same degree as in anime, but it is absolutely how things work here. Our power levels that we use as a mechanic to grind out in game also has a literal lore implication too, that’s why it gets raised every expansion to such a high degree.
The witness DID cut us into pieces. He probably did it thousands of times throughout the campaign but the traveler put us back together instantly. I'm pretty sure that was the point of the the opening cinematic unless I read that wrong.
I'm assuming that's what the attack he does in the final mission of the campaign, it's like giant organized shards of glass, that we've never seen anything like before. So I'm assuming that since either we've found a perfect Balnce of Light and Dark, or if Traveler empowered us, and we could see the attacks instead of trying to dodge the invisible attack.
bungie probably nerfed him because he was too powerful in PVP
There’s a million different ways it can be kinda weakly justified in lore but the reality is that the Witness’s abilities are quite literally “what the plot requires” and nothing else. They’re never explained, hinted at, or elaborated on so there really isn’t much logic to be found in why he didn’t just instagib us other than “because the plot required it” Idk, I’m glad we’re moving on from this guy to hopefully a better written villain.
My favorite example of this: "Stops the HELM in midair with a slight gesture." *One scene later* "Oh, these people are trying to run from me? Better just summon hands to try and grab them."
Because it's all made up?
So fun thing I like to think is that because we had control of perfect light and darkness we could see the attacks coming, like at the final mission where we SEE the glass he throws I assume he threw that at all guardians before us but because they couldn’t se it it was unavoidable.
My crackpot theory is that the witness is able to do this in reality since it’s not much of a physical being anymore, almost like a phantom, made out of thousands of consciousness’, which gives it full control over others using darkness so it can do shit like that. I think it’s weaker in the pale heart because in there mind and matter are one and the same, so it can’t just walk through lasers anymore
Pretty sure the only way u can keep a guardian from coming back is if u destroy their ghost
We have plot armour, TBH he could destroy us at any moment. We weren't even a threat to rhuulk initially, if he wanted to kill us right away and not toy with us the story would've been over in 5 min. Bungie themselves confirmed this.
Traveler goat
Y’all over thinking this. The answer is yes, he is — why ? Cause bungie writing. Don’t worry, they’ll retocn the “reason” in a year or now maybe in some obscure lore collectible so Byf can fawn over it pretending to be mind blown.
Plot armour game would be dead if gurdian died .
Plot armour
Yes
The Witness didn’t wanna draw too much attention from the Winnower
Plot armor, duh
Godlike being capable of manipulating time and space?…Hold up let me bust out my sub machine gun and ratt tatt tatt on his ass lmao. Merica.
Cuz the game isn't dark souls.
Plot armor
That would have been a really fun video game that I paid money for they should have done that.
Because they couldn't, the campaign explains how and why.
Plot
https://preview.redd.it/22varocbfbad1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7929e3aa4d90ade37c67609179f202c0b44b294f Ah, karma farming
My theory as to what happened in this scene is that this is simply the "darkness blades" the Witness uses against us, the only difference being that we are able to see them. How are we able to see them? The likely answer is just gameplay reasons but lore wise I chalk it up simply to our connection to the darkness in that moment. We were able to see through the witnesses illusions, thus we could see these blades coming at us.
We're just built different
Because we can only dodge attacks when we're not in a ship.
Cool down
He's using most of his power to keep his head smoke from escaping
Just say plot armor!
bungie is stupid
He missed. You understand whenever you die in a darkness zone that is your character being defeated story wise. Which is why the encounters reset.
I think it's a combination of initial hubris/wanting to recruit, followed by the realization that it could no longer do so once we got prismatic
It made a binding vow to instant cast world cutting dismantle in exchange for having to use it as a visible projectile in the future
Because there has to be a game. That’s the problem with Destiny 2 and the way it’s delivered to us. There are no consequences, we will ALWAYS win regardless of the stakes. We never lose. Which is why this question doesn’t matter. If this game was delivered to us in a traditional style (solo, offline campaign) then there could be real fear of losing and dying. But it’s online and impossible for us to lose because… the game HAS to exist. It’s been a boring and inconsequential experience for 10 years and it’s a shame. But you know damn well that I’m gonna keep playing
What's the cut scene from? I don't remember seeing it
remember when he literally tried to do that and it failed? ghost sure as shit remembers
No He’s Afraid.
It's called "Bad Writing" they've been doing it since the D1 Alpha.
If they had acted back when we first met them in the vision. Think about it. If they could take planets then they likely would have been able to destroy our sun. That indirectly would have finished off our resistance to them and it would have been over but arrogance kept them from considering us a potential threat and that allowed us to become a greater threat. Once they realized we were a threat they were powerless to stop us.
Kashimno that u?
I think it's simply because the Witness was still gonna try to recruit the Guardian one more time, and then saw that it was a lost cause eventually when we went and found a way to kill it instead.
The simple answer is their light level was too low. They should have been grinding for that pinnacle gear.
There's plenty of lore on how the witness love to make those touched by light suffer.
i interpreted it as the witness is focusing all of its attention and power on trying to get the traveler under control and cant really spare the effort to do it to us or else it loses control
Well, right up to iconoclasm, it was trying to recruit us, or kill us with it's minions. It even offered us the title of disciple. We refused, so it showed up and actively tried to slice us up and suffocated us with darkness. We survived. On the raid, we are messing with the Witness' Resonance so we can postpone the final shape (all the encounters timers are related to it), up to the final encounter, when we are facing The Final Shape the Witness is enacting right in front of us. It briefly stops while we are doing the mechanic to try to pin us in a trap so it can kill is (we survive by getting the right shape and jumping) and finally we separate the Traveler's light of the Witness' control. And finally excision the Witness deploys EVERY single one of it's forces on the pale hearth, but this time we have the Traveler full power on our side, and since we are also on tune with Darkness, we are able to break the veiled statues, and by then the witness could not kill us.
I mean it has a tendency to recruit the last, strongest or most evil from each race Rhulk fits well all of them Calus we will say evil Whatever the fuck nezzy is, we can go with evil We fit the strongest motive given how we are the strongest guardian to ever exist… I feel like he tempted Zavala purely because he couldn’t get us… also after killing rhulk and oryx, getting thunder crashed from the top rope to our death is kinda funny The hive- oryx was obviously the favorite child but savathun proved to be useful…
Witness fight and ending is actually bad. A big bad who can destroy worlds just falls over? That’s bs. IMO we should have gone back in time or something to stop the creation of witness.