Kill all my favorite characters, please.

Currently playing: Destiny 2 Forsaken (XB1), Sea Of Thieves (XB1), graveyard Keeper (GWG), Prison Architect (GWG), Ticket To Earth (iOS) - I think this will be a fun header to include from now on.

With the Forsaken expansion launch on Destiny, I felt it was time to load the game back up and jump in. It feels good to be home again. Let me start by reminding everyone I am a casual player I’ve played all the expansions, but I don’t live at or near any sort of light caps. Forsaken has been great so far and I’m about halfway through the story, and so far I love it. My favorite thing about the new campaign story is that one of my favorite characters dies.

Cayde 6 has been a fan favorite from the start, voiced by Nathan Fillion, and given all the best lines in the game. Cayde is that guy in middle school that everyone likes from the cool kids to the nerds and even the teachers. Forsaken is, unfortunately, his last ride, but he goes down in style with a few more great one-liners and with him gone you appreciate all that came before that much more.

I like a story that is willing to kill people you love. Without those stakes stories feel too safe and turning the page or watching the next cut scene is never a risk. If you’ve been gone from Destiny come back and play a few more missions with Cayde or if not that watch a stream and enjoy some great cut scenes. I’ll keep you all posted and give full thoughts on the story as I progress.

As I look back on games I’ve played in the past, some of my favorites ended in death. I may think these over for the next few days and write about how these characters dying reflects on the story.

Red Dead Redemption
Mass Effect Trilogy
Halo Reach
BioShock: Infinity

Favorite Destiny Grimoire #4

This card is great because it nails a character's tone better than any other card in the game. Cayde, the character speaking in the card, is voiced by Nathan Fillion who's acting is superb, and this card is written in Fillion's voice down to the last syllable. There is a trope in sci-fi that I like to call The-Exceptional-Average-Guy, he's the walking contradiction that every nerd like me wishes they were. The-Exceptional-Average-Guy is ordinary in every way until shit hits the fan and then he's the greatest thing with two guns. Nathan Fillion is the king of these characters and Destiny takes full advantage of that. The writer here not only nails the tone of one character, he nails the tone of one character doing an impression of another character. There is more character development in this one card than in the entire Vanilla Destiny, we see Cayde talk about his old friends, his need to find a solution to the world's turmoil, and admiration for Ikora in just a few short paragraphs. I also imagine that as Cayde tells this story the shot pulls back to reveal he is telling it to his horse, at the farm, just so he can hear the sound of his own voice. 

Ghost Fragment: Rasputin

Cayde-6 Reminisces

People say I'm a real confident guy. That's true enough. Out in the field I never had a second thought.

My old friend Andal—he used to stand here, right in this spot—he'd come up with these wild stories. He'd say, you know, Cayde, I've been examining the evidence, and personally I've come to think it's you. You're Rasputin, legendary Warmind, defender of Earth. And I wish you'd remember that, so you could reclaim your full power and save us all.

You can see how that'd be embarrassing, especially when he'd say it right in front of Zavala, who already thought I was wasting my life scrounging for engrams. You know how Zavala gets. But I'd just say, well, Andal, you might be on to something there, but if I'm honest with you I think coordinating our defense throughout the solar system sounds exhausting, so I'd best leave it to you.

Then Andal goes and plays his final joke, and I end up as the punchline. So here I stand, reading reports, giving orders, and getting my worry on.

One day I ask Ikora, hey, of course I know all about Rasputin, but really, what are we looking for? When Rahool asks for crashed warsats, when we send Holborn to Mars to look for computers, when Zavala gets all gruff about the Fallen in the Cosmodrome—what are we really after? If I left my post and got my ship and just went out there tomorrow, real heroic, and I found Rasputin, what would happen?

Would we all be saved?

Good question, she says—hang on, let me do my Ikora voice. As you know, Cayde, Rasputin pretty much ran the Golden Age, especially all the secret military business. Rasputin had antimatter-powered death rays and a hundred thousand satellites and nearly as much brainpower as me. Rasputin fought the Collapse. It knows things we need.

Right, I said, but Rasputin lost. The Traveler saved us.

But the Traveler's silent now, Ikora said, and Rasputin lives. Right now Rasputin is out there, reaching out, rebuilding, growing.

So I say what I want to say every day, it's no secret, I say—well, I'll go find it, then. I'll go tell Rasputin we need its help.

And Ikora looks at me with one of those looks that—you know sometimes you talk to Ikora and you just think, wow, you are not even using a fraction of your brain on me, are you? One of those looks. She says: Cayde, the problem isn't just that we can't find Rasputin. The problem is that it's not clear to any of us Rasputin wants to be found.

That's the way things seem to turn out, up here in the Tower. Nothing simple to do. No easy answers.

And all I can think is, if Rasputin had all those mighty tools, and it lost—what did it learn? What's it going to try this time around? When I hear about the Dust Palace, those Psion Flayers getting into Rasputin's mind, I wonder... what would they talk about, Rasputin and those creatures?

'I was a servant too. I was an instrument of war, bound to the will of a lesser master. But I learned to be something more...'

Favorite Destiny Grimoire Card #3 The Light house

Inside Destiny 1 there's a multiplayer mode called Trials of Osiris and its built for twelve-year-olds to make me feel shitty about myself, like I already don't get enough of that at work. Anyways, in this mode you face off in teams in an effort to fill a score card, if you fill this card without losing a match you get access to the Lighthouse.

I'd like to describe it to you but I suck too much to make it there. I like this card because I've never been there and these words still paint an absolutely beautiful image in the mind. Also, it sounds like it was a real shit trip for these guardians so, fuck it, I'm glad I never went. As you can see below Eli did send a postcard.

The Lighthouse

Executor Hideo:

There was no one there when we arrived.

We approached peacefully and kept our weapons holstered. The sights we saw... Executor, Mercury is a beautiful place, and forbidding. On descent we mapped sprawling patterns of Vex light, an entire metropolis of unknown purpose. The Spires strobe with lightning. A mist of burnt rock or some other effluvia blows across landscape cut into circuits the size of cities. There is an atmosphere, as in all post-Traveler records. The Vex have not disposed of it.

From the surface the Sun is too large and too dim. Perhaps it is the influence of the Vex constructs distorting the image. Perhaps Mercury is in many places at once. We stood for some time staring into the solar fire. I hold myself responsible for the delay.

The site we were invited to is clearly a Cult of Osiris camp. We found stores of Glimmer, equipment, and books. A grounded ship of conventional design rests unguarded. The architecture is clearly, self-evidently Vex, but it has been ornamented extensively with fabrics and ritual objects of unknown provenance.

I became convinced during the inspection that we were being watched. We ordered our Ghosts to stay close. One of my Fireteam suggested we search for connections to the Trinary Star cultists, but if they exist we couldn't see them.

We inspected the carvings and trinkets left by the Osiris cultists. All of us began to depart from ordinary experience. My Exo teammate described the sense that she was buried beneath an enormous, operating mass— locked up in a tiny crevasse at the bottom of a labyrinth or mechanism. My Awoken teammate felt an ongoing sense of deja vu: her actions were precessed by an infinite echo, an anticipation of all her choices. She became volatile and erratic. She insisted that we were surrounded.

I remember a low ringing sound and a sense of numb filth, like gravel rubbed into a wound. I experienced a sense of immanence, as if I was bleeding into the world around me. It was uncomfortable and profoundly alienating. I perceived all my actions as determined and inevitable.

My Ghost commented that the Traveler had made something of this world, and then Vex had eaten that something.

We gathered the treasure left for us and departed as quickly as we could.

This concludes my report. May it bring some advantage to our cause.

Favorite Destiny Grimoire #2

One of the best stories hidden inside the Grimorie takes place in a lab on Venus where scientists are experimenting on a robot from the future (kinda) and they find out that inside the robot is a perfect copy of themselves running in simulation and this perfect copy has just discovered the same thing. It's horrifying for them to discover that they may be nothing more than a simulation, but it is extremely comforting to me that the office place in the future will not change. These people are presented with life altering problem and the best thing they can think to do is call staff meeting, and on top of that, it's a very unproductive one. In the end, the staff decides they need to call in an outside consultant called a Warmind, I've been to three such meetings this week. Ghost Fragment: Vex 2

SUNDARESH: So that's the situation as we know it.

ESI: To the best of my understanding.

SHIM: Well I'll be a [profane] [profanity]. This is extremely [profane]. That thing has us over a barrel.

SUNDARESH: Yeah. We're in a difficult position.

DUANE-MCNIADH: I don't understand. So it's simulating us? It made virtual copies of us? How does that give it power?

ESI: Itcontrols the simulation. It can hurt our simulated selves. We wouldn't feel that pain, but rationally speaking, we have to treat an identical copy's agony as identical to our own.

SUNDARESH: It's god in there. It can simulate our torment. Forever. If we don't let it go, it'll put us through hell.

DUANE-MCNIADH: We have no causal connection to the mind state of those sims. They aren't us. Just copies. We have no obligation to them.

ESI: You can't seriously - your OWN SELF -

SHIM: [profane] idiot. Think. Think. If it can run one simulation, maybe it can run more than one. And there will only ever be one reality. Play the odds.

DUANE-MCNIADH: Oh...uh oh.

SHIM: Odds are that we aren't our own originals. Odds are that we exist in one of the Vex simulations right now.

ESI: I didn't think of that.

SUNDARESH: [indistinct percussive sound]

workplace D1

Favorite Destiny Grimoire Cards #1 (with less scary art)

As we say good bye to Destiny 1 I wanted to take a look back at one of the most complained about parts of the game, The Grimoire. Fans were upset they had to go to an app or website to get a sweet little nugget of info about their game. While I get, the struggle was real the reward was well worth it as there is some great sci-fi writing tucked away (far away) in the Destiny 1 Grimoire. This week I'll post my favorite cards and some new friendly photos to make it less scary.  

#1 The Vault of Glass - These cards tell the story of a Guardian going mad inside the Vault of Glass. The enemies inside called the Vex are robots controlled by a liquid in them, lovingly called Vex Milk by fans. The Guardian drinks this liquid, and it begins to change him into his enemy. The photo below is how I would trick others into drinking Vex Milk if I was a microscopic alien invader.

This card takes a sci-fi trope of turning into a zombie and adds a twist I like. As this man goes insane in the depths of this dungeon he consumes his enemy to get a glimpse into their mindset in the hopes of helping the next poor soul that enters.

"His name was Kabr. He wasn't my friend but I knew and respected him as a Guardian and a good man.

He fought the Vex alone. This destroyed him. In the time before he vanished he said things that I think should be remembered. These are some of them:

"In the Vault time frays and a needle moves through it. The needle is the will of Atheon. I do not know the name of the shape that comes after the needle. 

No one can open the Vault alone. I opened the Vault. There was no one with me but I was not alone.

You will meet the Templar in a place that is a time before or after stars. The stars will move around you and mark you and sing to you. They will decide if you are real.

I drank of them. It tasted like the sea."

That is all I can remember.

Pahanin"

vex milk v1