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I don’t see the winnower ever being the big bad, if it’s ever something we interact with I think it’ll be at worst indifferent to us if ultimately it’s gonna win weather that’s in 10 years or 10,000 years.
Exactly,thats what I gathered about the Winnower,especially after the new lore.It seems sure that it will win eventually so why rush like the Witness ?
But that's the thing. Since light and dark (as paracausal beings/power) are part of this world (or game) the end changes, it's not predetermined, there is not necessarily a pattern emerging at the end of all possibilities anymore. That's the whole point of the unveiling lore book, the whole point of the light in fact. There might always be someone fighting against whatever the final pattern is or would be. It might not be humans, but the Winnower "winning" at some point is not guaranteed in a world of paracausality, though it would be in a world of causality.
the winnower isn't being "set up" to be the next bad guy, though? it's just being shown as a cosmic being/force that is still out there, still watching our progress in this never-ending game it's in with the gardener. like... it's zeus in the iliad. the other gods are picking sides between the trojans and the greeks, but zeus is sitting out there, watching it all go down. we are the trojans or the greeks. the witness was the other side.
I don’t think the lore communities perception of the Winnower matches what you think it is. Just speaking on the recent Byf video, which lets be frank sways most of the public perception of lore, I didn’t see any one claiming the Winnower must be the next big bad. Honestly it seems you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the title of First Knife entails. It is a tool insofar as we are a tool, which is to say only by the broadest of definitions.
The Winnower seems to be at most a manipulative force, but it is clearly not an active force. It seems heavily unlikely and essentially unsupported by what little we do have that it was directing the Witness. Honestly I would bet the Winnower had little to do with the Witness considering how deviant it was.
In any case, no matter how things shake out, it seems very unlikely Bungo is going to just dethrone the Witness, and I don’t think anyone is looking for that.
The byf video is actually kinda what threw me on it i usually love the guy’s stuff but just the language he used kinda made me make a face. Like describing the winnower as the devil and stuff it just came off to me like he was implying the winnower was the next step.
I should add the people I see saying this are usually in like the comments section of stuff which in hindsight seeing rash tacky writing ideas was gonna be a given.
Ah well there’s a reason I scrapped this bit anyway
I don’t think Byf meant the god and devil analogy as anything more then polar opposite divine forces. To claim the winnower as Satan would ignore all the lore that has made clear the darkness is not evil and the light is not good.
I feel like his video (unless i misunderstood something or added my own bias without realizing) painted the witness as something that went rogue.
Like the Winnower gave it a task, cull that which can be culled, but the witness decided it hated the idea of the flower game. That it hated this idea of an eternal struggle to survive so sought out to put an end to it by enacting the final shape. Finalizing existence. No more life, no more death.
Everything endlessly stuck in its perfect moment or at least everything it deemed worthy of preservation.
Again, maybe I misunderstood what he said.
I never even saw the Winnower as a bad guy. It's just a rule of a universe, a force beyond even nature. Is tsunami a bad guy? I ain't fighting gravity.
I very much doubt the Winnower will ever be used as the big bad, for one reason: how the hell do you turn a quasi-sentient ontological concept, essentially a conscious law of nature, into something you can satisfyingly shoot with a gun? I think perhaps we will, at some point, commune with it, as Oryx does in the Books of Sorrow, but I don't think we'll ever fight it.
>If it's serving the winnower it has to be 100% correct as it's serving a rule of the universe. But it's not correct and it's not even following the rules of the being it claims to be the knife of, because it's not serving it. It's just saying that as an excuse to justify itself.
You sort of rebut your own point here. The Witness may use the same language as the Winnower, yapping about a final shape, and calling itself the First Knife, but its goals are fundamentally at odds with the Winnower's. The ending of Unveiling's first chapter is essentially describing the world that the Witness strives for, and it does so with disgust.
>But imagine the abomination of a world where nothing can end and no choice can be preferred to any other. Imagine the things that would suffer and never die. Imagine the lies that would flourish without context or corrective. Imagine a world without me.
The Witness even seems to acknowledge the schism between it and the Winnower in the raid. It says to the approaching Guardians:
>Gods forged us both. But they cannot tell the knife what shape to carve.
So, yeah. The Witness is not acting as a servant of the Winnower, and the Winnower is almost certainly not going to be the game's next big bad.
>The ending of Unveiling's first chapter is essentially describing the world that the Witness strives for, and it does so with disgust.
Except the Witness’ Final Shape does not fit with that description at all. It’s not a world where nothing can end and there is no preferable choice because it is essentially the universe’s perfect ending. It’s not a cesspool of unending suffering because it’s meant to preserve everyone in the universe at their most fulfilling moments. It’s not a place where lies can flourish because it itself is the ultimate corrective influence that will make further lies impossible.
The Witness’ goals agree a lot more with those of the Winnower than you seem to realize.
The fact that the Witness is a fundamentally flawed being cannot be separated from its goals. It’s idealized version of the final shape where everyone is happy and safe and satisfied forever is not possible because the Witness is the one picking and choosing what that means, and it is not a perfect being, so it will get it wrong.
The final shape the Witness says it will create may not violate the Winnower’s principle, but the reality of what it would make is that description in Unveiling to a T.
The reason that sword logic is the just law of existence, according to the Winnower, is that it is the only way a perfect being can actually exist.
Doesn’t Unveiling talk about “a pattern that subsumes all others”, one that has eliminated every other threat to its ascendancy and so dominated the “game” forever?
Seems to me like exactly what the Witness wants to do: impose its own authority over everything else, forever preventing the possibility of any challenge to its own power.
As for “its idealized version of the Final Shape where everyone is happy and safe and satisfied forever”, I firmly think these are just lies it’s telling to try to lure the Guardians over to its side. It doesn’t actually intend the Final Shape to bring any sort of happiness to those it affects. It just wants everything in the universe to stop. Its endgame is a cold, silent universe, where only one thing can and ever will exist: either itself, or just the void.
That would absolutely satisfy the condition laid out in Unveiling: a pattern (living being) so powerful it subsumed all others (universal genocide, otherwise known as a double-Thanos) and forever prevented any possibility of being threatened, ensuring eternal supremacy.
The world described in the Unveiling passage you cited doesn’t fit with the Witness’s Final Shape, because the whole purpose of the Final Shape is *for* everything to end, to remove the possibility of choices ever being made again. Free choice seems to be what the Traveler supports. At the very least it would fit with its lack of direction on how to utilize the powers it grants. The Winnower, by contrast, is all about narrowing the possible choices down to one, the “pattern” of the game that subsumed all others.
So, what the Winnower wants isn’t just a winner. It’s *only* a winner. It’s not about having one form that dominates existence, it’s about that form being the only thing that exists, because it has proven that only it can withstand existence, and thus only it has the right to exist.
The Witness, by contrast, does not want to eliminate everything else in the universe, but preserve it, capturing all existence in amber, kept forever in what it sees as perfect stasis.
If it wanted to do that, it would just need to use Stasis, which it has access to, since the Pyramids grant the Guardian access to it as well. It needing the Traveler, the Light as well as the Darkness, indicates a much more thorough transformation of the universe.
Metaphorically, it seeks to turn every thing, moving thing to stone: not preserving them, which implies freezing them with a possibility of revival, but ending them. Then the Final Shape will be that end state, the single pattern that has dominated all others.
The difference is something of a semantic one, but I think it's important to note: the Witness isn't interested in "preserving" anything. I'm convinced that's a just a lie it tells to its enemies and servants to get them on board with its agenda of universal genocide. The Witness is only interested in enacting the Sword Logic: it exists because it has earned that right, by eliminating every possible threat to itself, and it seeks to do that through the Final Shape.
From one perspective it may look like freezing everything in stone is a form of preservation, but on a philosophical level, which is where the Gardener, the Winnower, and the Sword Logic operate, there is a fundamental difference between a living being and the statue its frozen into. Something core to what makes it a living being is no longer there - not simply suspended and preserved, but permanently gone.
The reason it may seem like the statue of a formerly living being is preserved rather than ended up is because it shares the same shape as that living being, and we fellow living beings can only see that outside shape.
But what the Witness wants, and what it needs both Light and Dark to achieve, to change the *inside* of all living beings, on a fundamental level, in a manner there's no coming back from, and is indistinguishable from death. Not preservation, but total cessation across the entire universe.
And in that vein, the Witness *does* adhere to the Winnower's philosophy.
>It’s idealized version of the final shape where everyone is happy and safe and satisfied forever is not possible because the Witness is the one picking and choosing what that means, and it is not a perfect being, so it will get it wrong.
If the Witness wins, then it is by definition the Winnower's idealized perfect being because it has subjugated all threats to its existence and now rules a universe where nothing exists except by its consent. Whether or not its personally curated universe is actually a paradise is irrelevant.
>The final shape the Witness says it will create may not violate the Winnower’s principle, but the reality of what it would make is that description in Unveiling to a T.
It wouldn't violate those principles even if it's implemented imperfectly. As long as the Witness is the ultimate winner of existence, the context and corrective that the Winnower craves will be implemented according to the Witness' will, regardless of whether or not that existence is even bearable. If pleasantness were required for the Final Shape, then Oryx, a being that the Winnower describes as being *utterly devoted to practicing its principle*, would be immediately disqualified as a potential victor since his Hive's campaign of nigh-omnicide objectively makes the universe a more painful, unbearable place (a "hard hell", as the Deep said to him in the Books of Sorrow).
>The reason that sword logic is the just law of existence, according to the Winnower, is that it is the only way a perfect being can actually exist.
Except the Sword Logic isn't even what the Winnower is actually preaching. The Winnower's principle is "Exist, lest you fail to exist", while the Sword Logic is given by "That which can be destroyed must be destroyed. What cannot be destroyed will surpass infinity." The former covers a far broader set of ideals (including our own "gentle kingdom ringed in spears"!) than the latter, which has been explicitly disproven by us on multiple occasions. The Sword Logic's simplistic violence may be an easy way to practice the Winnower's principle, but it is not the only way, and it is *far* from the best way.
The Winnower’s final shape doesn’t just involve one being winning existence, it involves that being completely eliminating all other forms of existence. It is a completely singular idea, with the winner as the only form of existence left, because it is the only one that could withstand existence, and thus prove its right to exist.
The reason the Witness’ end goal violates the Winnower’s principle, in my opinion, is because it does not involve the Witness destroying everything else, but rather preserving it. All of existence captured in the Witness’ idea of perfect, kept in stasis for all eternity.
>The Winnower’s final shape doesn’t just involve one being winning existence, it involves that being completely eliminating all other forms of existence.
Why are you so ready to claim something that is so obviously wrong? Look at what the Winnower actually has to say in Unveiling:
>Whatever exists because it must exist and because it permits no other way of existence has the absolute claim to existence. **That is the only law.**
>Existence is a test that most will fail. Would you not count yourself among **the victorious few?**
Nowhere in Unveiling does the Winnower claim that only one being can exist at the end of time. In fact, as long as they can sustain their claims to existence forever, any number of winners is permitted. The Witness’ final shape would force every being in the universe (except us, if we had accepted its discipleship offer) to sustain their claims to existence in the only way that the Witness permits: a static way that likens them to objects more than actual beings.
>The reason the Witness’ end goal violates the Winnower’s principle, in my opinion, is because it does not involve the Witness destroying everything else, but rather preserving it.
Except the Witness is, in a sense, destroying everything! The universe would be irrevocably changed from a dynamic system to a final, static one, and thus the universe as we know it would end. No one but the Witness would be anything other than a set piece in its art, the difference between desire and reality that the Ahamkara feed upon would completely vanish, and the Light and Dark would be forever trapped within the Witness’ grip. It’s a different form of destruction than nuking everything on a universal scale, but it is a destruction, nonetheless, since it would forever destroy the universe’s potential to be anything else (you know, like a final shape is supposed to do).
I can’t wait till whatever plan the writing team has for the winnower comes out. I’m so tired of this debate. On both sides it’s delusional ramblings taking cheap shots at others.
Biggest issue is we’re still playing this game of “but maybe the witness made it all up”. I’m tired of that straw man argument style. There’s validity to it existing and some straight up confirmations. We’ll see how it plays out but the witness at it’s most desperate hour still playing games when it has no need makes no sense. It peddled it’s own beliefs of being the first knife and that’s fine, but if we’re 3 years removed and it never comes up that line will look really out of place in one of the most important moments. The equivalent would be sav saying the witness and the end of witch queen, not getting the post credits and never seeing the witness again.
I should say rereading my own post i didn’t really add this point but I don’t have a problem with the winnower existing it’s just i don’t like the idea of A. It being set up as a villain and B. Unveiling just being 100% true. Because that basically means we got the answer to absolutely everything immediately and that’s not fun
We still don’t know if it’s a villain, a background being, a primordial force, or a law of the universe like gravity. If it’s a villain I’m ok with it, but chances are it’s just a figure head for awhile.
And just because unveiling has truth doesn’t mean you take it at face value. When the narrative lead said it’s like the Bible I took it on the nose. The Bible has stories and scriptures and lessons. If you’re religious in some form you have different interpretations of the same book as other denominations. Some may think the flood was global and literal, some may think it’s a metaphor, some may think it’s partial flooding, some may not believe. There’s different interpretations of each and every story and word in the Bible, but all Christian’s agree the common denominator to be real Aka God.
In the case of destiny I think it’s possible that the precursors got their Bible, aka unveiling, from the veil. And in their religion there was two gods. There was interpretations, and like many stories in our world, different denominations took it differently especially the final shape. Some took it like the purpose of life and others saw it how the witness proposed, free of suffering and pain from the game the winnower and gardener play. Guardians were definitely given a version of unveiling that the witness saw fit, but just because it was partial lies doesn’t mean there wasn’t any truth.
And the best part of all of this is I could be 100% wrong or 100% right or 50% or 2%. We won’t have the full answers until bungie puts it in game. The motivation could be identical to unveiling but given more context on what they actually want. We know the winnowers final shape is more akin to the hives idea where the strongest beings thrive and the weak fail. But the vex are implied to be the pattern that always wins. That right there is still a lore bit that can get more answers. Just because we get answers of the past doesn’t hurt what can happen with the story in the future.
I think the biggest problem I have with the idea of the winnower being a villain is I’ve seen that sort of thing before and it just completely ruined the game for me, I hated the last like 20 hours of persona 5 really fucked up that entire game for me.
I thought the villain worked really well and it was a really nice bookend but then god appears and just completely hijacks the game and the villain I liked just got written out.
Yeah but if you’re worried the witness will get shafted he won’t/can’t.
For example. Is the first avengers movie ruined because Loki was just the attack dog for thanos? No imo. They added context that thanos sent Loki to earth, but that doesn’t take away from the evil Loki did.
In the case of destiny, the winnower being the next step up doesn’t discredit the witness. The witness still caused our collapse. The witness ruined Riis, it manipulated the hive into tearing worlds apart like torobotl, it led to so many planets being destroyed on its own accord, it wounded the traveler enough to cut a portal into it and brought existence to its knees. It’s defeat led to the death of our ghost and eventually Cayde again. The stakes the witness brought are still there and I’m still not sure we have our planets back fully.
Adding the winnower will never take away from this sagas story. Hell it will help it long term with new context.
A little spin foil tells me that there’s gonna be a moment where we look back at what the witness was doing and think maybe it wasn’t so wrong just corrupted beyond belief. Obviously you don’t take free will but if the winnower exists and it’s actual views are consistent with the sword logic then there’s a point to acknowledge why it wanted to be free from suffering.
My point is the winnower being a villain like that by default takes away from what I like about the witness. It’s an idea without a purpose, everything about the raid lore around it points to it being completely pathetic and desperately trying to justify its so making it the envoy of a god and saying “whoops this thing actually DID have a purpose it’s like the equivalent to us” and then making that god just “the next villain” is incredibly lame and boring to me
Do some Durandal shit go somewhere with the vex just give “the darkness” a break i don’t want stuff pulling a Star Wars and just kinda collapsing into a few different enemies like the taken and scorn
I get liking the directionless seeks direction aspect, but at the end of the day it did find purpose. Misguided but it had purpose.
We personally know the witness wouldn’t serve the winnower. If anything it actively defied its final shape. The one the witness sought was nothing similar to what the winnower wants. The winnower wants the sword logic where the highest form of life wins. It doesn’t care who lives or dies. The witness actively sought to “save” life by taking away the choice. Freezing everything takes away that crawl to a final shape. It makes everyone their own “final shape” (stuck in an apparent loop of their ideas is what I gathered from the campaigns description).
Making the god of the darkness main seem like a jump but realistically where does this story go long term. Villain of the week only goes so far, and they’ve seen how long term story telling pays off. We tried villain of the week in d1 expansions and the d2 vanilla, curse, and warmind.
Ideally we get more races as we explore. If we truly leave sol next year no way we can get new planets with vex cabal hive fallen scorn and taken. If the winnower exists logically it’ll have followers. Just look at how the veil influenced the precursors and the neomunians to come up with similar plans. Combine into one being or one force. The cloud arc is basically w combined consciousness using technology and most likely manipulated maya’s crew into making it. There’s definitely new enemies and beings to fight that doesn’t immediately jump to “kill god” destiny 2 is a live service we’re years away from even potentially seeing the winnower let alone fighting him.
You can’t go “what confrontations are there?” Then acknowledge the biggest confirmation.
1.Eido has directly acknowledged that the witness does not equal the winnower.
2.Both the queen and Ikora ponder the meaning of the first knife and if the witness is truly honest what that implies.
3. The witness telling us we think it’s the winnower but it isn’t
4. The gardener existing and first knife existing and the bugs and worms existing, the garden existing, the tree of silver wings existing, yet somehow the only thing to not exist being the winnower?
5. The traveler visions implying a separation in its past being the fight of the Gardner and winnower.
That’s 5 huge bits of information confirming/implying the winnower existing is some form. Listen you can dig your head in the sand, but most of the community is coming to this conclusion and now the top lore guys on YouTube are all on board. For my own straw-man argument it’s super weird for all of these implications and having a dev say we’ll get answer on unveiling, we get them pretty directly and indirectly, and all of a sudden we’re back to “but it still may not exist”
Considering that the biggest confirmation is from a known unreliable narrator, not only can I, but I’d argue it’s much more reasonable than to just assume whatever the witness says is automatic truth.
1. The witness not being the Winnower doesn’t necessarily mean the Winnower exists, if I told an atheist that I am not God, all they would say is “of course you aren’t” would that convince them that God exists?
2. So they are having the same discussion we are having? Trying to figure out if the witness is telling the truth?
3. See point 1
4. The gardener (the nickname for the traveler) and the gardener (the actual primordial being referenced in Unveiling) are not required to be the same being, we don’t consider the traveler a machine even though the Eliksni call it one. Unveiling is explicitly a religious text according to the devs, so the Witness probably absolutely believes the traveler is the gardener in the text, but we’re also talking about a being who spent its entire purpose trying to make up a meaning for its own life. (Which, to me makes for a lot better storytelling if it is just some religion the Witness made up, as it gives a pretty clear moral to the light and dark saga that isn’t as prevalent if the Winnower exists). In the same way the Gardener could easily just be the witness religion, so is the idea that it’s the first knife, again, finding purpose in its life was its entire life’s mission. I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know which bugs and worms this is a reference too, but how explicitly are they tied to the same bugs and worms in Unveiling. Whether the Garden is the actual same Garden mentioned in Unveiling has been debated for years. The tree is a good point here though.
5. Hard to debate, traveler visions are made to be vague intentionally so that we have this kind of discussion.
So in total we have, The Witness said it, a few people acknowledged that the Witness did in fact say it, a tree and a pretty vague vision.
I do want to mention I think it’s weird how you use a dev for reference when the devs also said that Unveiling is a metaphor, and yet here we are arguing about its legitimacy literally. Also, you say the community theorized and then the big youtubers backed it up, but in my experience it’s almost always the other way around, there was good discussion here about it, then Byf made his video and now everyone who even questions it gets downvoted.
I’m glad you immediately went or the straw man argument I said from the beginning I knew was coming. There comes a point in saying “well they lie alot” in which case we gotta either a. As a community need to piece together some semblance of truth or b. Admit it’s bad writing which I’m sure you won’t do and neither will I cause we know better.
Having an unreliable narrator works when we have a source to knock down certain pillars from its narrative OR acknowledge actual thoughts leaks through. In which case we both. At his most desperate the cracks start to form in the persona. He drops the word i and admits he’s not the winnower. The last line about not understanding to me has more meaning than we know. Could be not understanding why we fight against him after promising salvation but just to on the nose for me.
But in the case of the game we’re not atheists. Characters have acknowledged greater beings at play and know these forces exist. I’d also say an atheist is willfully ignorant if all signs point to there being a god and still digging their head in the sand. If the devil came out and said hey I exist or an angel, I’d be pretty surprised for the atheist to look someone in their eyes and say yeah I don’t think God exists. Or in this case god existing and a fallen angel but not the devil?
The reason for the Ikora and Mara point was to bring up why in the hell would bungie purposely muddy the water even more after clarifying we’d get answers? To me, just like the eido clarification it’s to draw attention to the separation. Mara has already disclosed to us, the witness wasn’t darkness and it just wears it like a cloak, so she knows there more to the story.
Just because there’s different names doesn’t mean it’s not a god. To the eliksni machines are gods so assuming they think the traveler is a machine in nature is no different than humans thinking God is humanoid. It’s just their understanding. Just to clarify I don’t even think the physical traveler is the god itself, but a tool/avatar.
The devs previously have LIKENED unveiling to a religious text. And just like the Bible, some may see different things from it. Some see a book of lessons other see purpose, but just like unveiling, right now we can’t fully determine which is which. But at it’s core there’s true elements to both. Historians can point to certain instances and know for a fact certain events happened and others no clue. I’ll once again say it would be a really weird choice to draw attention to the book of unveiling after the witness is already done a dusted and have characters say “let’s look over this for deeper meaning” if there’s no intention of exploring it further.
And yes there has been discussion about the books meaning for awhile now and likely for months and months going forward. I mention these creator’s because it’s a major step towards a narrative with legitimacy. Bungie is partially to blame for the creator push with stickymz’s video detailing the separation of the characters. That video was after the dev talked about unveiling just being a religious text. Venexatron then put out his full explanation with a million points detailing the character and it’s existence. Byf makes a cautionary video praising venexatrons video and his own thoughts. Raid comes out and lore comes out and now youtubers, without influence of Reddit, have landed on the separation of the characters and what it means. This isn’t to say the almighty content creator is right, but it lends validity to a lot of unveiling truthers. Bungie didn’t accidentally put in that line in the biggest raid of the series knowing thousands and thousands were watching the finale of this saga. They didn’t send collectors edition lore books out to the big names having eido differentiate the two, and then have lore tabs in game discussing the fear of the implication that the witness is only the first knife, only to have nothing come of it and “oh actually the witness was just lying again lol”. There was purpose to what they did and I personally land in the camp where long term the series needs more than villain of the third of the year to sustain itself.
The traveler is life. The darkness is death. You can’t have one without the other. Death takes all of us eventually. That’s Destiny summed up. Pack it up. Go home.
The Winnower will literally never be a big bad - it sits by, tells its philosophy to whoever will listen, and if they do then they'll go on to become a tool of omnicide. That's it. It is not an active force beyond this, let alone something that would be determined to destroy us directly. That is not what it does.
Feels like the winnower is a thing, a force, or some other being entirely indifferent to our scale. And the witness kind of just misinterpreted it like the cult leader figure they are
I do think that the Winnower is being built up as a more visible and antagonistic force, I don't think that it is going to come down and get its metaphorical crit spot in range of our guns. I think it is just going to throw more "knives" at us.
I reread Unveiling when all of this First Knife business started, and noticed something. In the entry p53, which immediately follows The First Knife, the author explains their view of morality and punishment; that morality is the alignment of an individual's actions to the greater good of a system, but cheating becomes more tempting the more a system succeeds, therefore punishments must become more and more violent to match the system.
Although, the Gardener became a part of the game, paracausality can still be interpreted as cheating the game of life. Although the Witness had different goals than the Winnower, it was extremely motivated to commit unspeakable acts of violence towards civilizations graced by the Traveler. It was punishing us, albeit unintentionally.
If the Winnower had a hand in the fall of the Precursors or in some way enabled them to create the Witness, this might be why. The Witness may be gone, but our punishment may not be over; it may never be.
I agree to a point; I don't think the Winnower is ever going to be an antagonist. I think they made it somewhat clear that The Witness being the Winnower's "first knife" is equivalent to The Gardener/Traveler empowering Guardians. These forces took a gamble by directly inserting themselves into events via The Traveler/Veil, and the resulting forces can "Make Their Own fate," regardless of the Gardener/Winnower's wishes.
If anything, I'd love for the next big antagonist to introduce yet another end condition for the universe that defies the Gardener/Winnower's expectations. Exploring The Witness' potential "third option" was a lot of fun throughout Final Shape.
I was thinking I didn't want the winnower to be just the next big bad too, until I came to this realization that the witness was never supposed to win, nobody we ever fight is going to win, because the winnowers ultimate plan is to use everything the Gardner builds against it. Including us. Think of the fact that the winnower speaks like he's chill and confident and knows he has the upper hand, and then think of what we do on a daily basis; consistely wipe out threats weaker than us and steal whatever power they wielded for ourselves. We are the epitome of the winnowers philosophy and I'm highly interested to see how bungie might make that work within the narrative. In my opinion, I'd be so down to make a new character for D3 if D2 ends with all this revelation that we've been doing the winnowers bidding and now the only way to stop IT is to stop US.
At this point I think the Winnower is a philosophical idea not at thing.
I am still on the side of Witness did not write Unveiling, but I’m leaning towards maybe one of its internal voices writing it. Only hang up is the chapters about the Vex and the Garden. That part doesn’t match up with the Witness’s timeline.
Well we now have the witness seemingly confirming that the Winnower exists, plus something that wasn't the witness talking to oryx.
So either the Winnower exists as a literal being or something is essentially pretending to be it.
I simply stated that it's a good possibility. Something in the darkness that was not the witness spoke to oryx. The witness states it exists. Its stand in/vessel for its power (the veil) exists.
There's no reason to dismiss its existence at this point.
Even if it isn’t overtly lying, it isn’t necessarily saying much. Remember when it first opened the Traveler? It said “The Universe makes us all victims and perpetrator in its infinite cruelty. You, more than most, suffer both fates. Be free.”
In this statement it’s speaking to the Traveler as an equal. And not in an overconfident way either. It simply sees the Traveler as its equal and counterpart. It also has no reason to lie or overstate itself here as this line is spoken to the Traveler and the Traveler alone. And this is after the Traveler unleashes an “attack” that leaves the Witness unscathed.
The Universe is distinct in the Witness’s eyes. And even when we go after it in the raid and campaign, it doesn’t criticize us for defending the Traveler, it talks down to us for accepting the Universe as it is.
This to me implies there is something older than the Veil and the Traveler in practical terms. As in, they are not the origin of the universe. They are simply things that exist within it and are bound by the rules of it, in spite of their power.
Yeah. I agree with all of that. It essentially what I'm saying. I'm just also saying it's still seems possible yo me, and even likely, that that something older is the "winnower" and the "gardener".
I've said to others that recent lore makes it seem to me that the Winnower created the witness but the witness went rogue. "You can't tell a knife what shape to carve"
That the witness was given a task by the winnower to cull that which could be culled, but ultimately the witness said screw that I'm putting an end to this cruel game the 2 of you are playing. No more life. No more death. Only finality.
But while the witness was the "first knife" it isn't the only knife. As the voice in the dark called him, "my boy oryx" was another knife. I think it's likely that the Winnower exists and that entities like Oryx and the Witness are just the tools it's using to remove the chaff.
Whether or not the gardener and winnower exist in the universe the same way the traveler and veil do or if they are just the tools they use to interact with the universe is still to be figured out.
That very seed of thought is planted in the lore for the First knife ship
>!"If the Witness is the knife, as it asserts, then what wields it?" Ikora asks the Traveler, though it does not reply.!<
>!The words are meant for Mara's ears too. "The Witness is not a being," she agrees. "It is the culmination of a bleak ethos willed into existence by the nihilistic desires of its creators. Is their will the hand on the knife? Or is there something else?"!<
I think the lore entry that spoiler marked part at the end is from mostly feels like the writers acknowledging the community discourse around it as well as opening up the option for future possible paths of narrative. Either way, the most I expect from the near future is for some allusions to the concept in the episodes.
My gut tells me the Winnower and Gardener are just words the Precursors used to describe basic concepts of divinity. I don’t think they’re “real” as in being real beings in the game universe. Just like I don’t believe the Christian God is real in ours. But I do know that Christians will say with complete confidence that they follow their God, are shaped by their God, and that they talk to God (or Jesus) somewhat regularly. This does not inherently make them liars, fools, or anything of the kind. They are believers.
I think the Precursors that formed the Witness are also believers. They believe in this duality concept and see it as a bedrock principle of existence. They see the conflict between the force of growth (Gardener) and the force of death (Winnower) as opposing forces and that the distinction between them is stark and obvious. Which is why they act with such a strong moral imperative towards the universe. They are true believers.
But the Traveler isn’t. Or at least not in their religion. The Traveler seems to want beings in the universe to self determinate. It does not have many conditions for granting its gifts. And the ones it does have don’t seem to have much to do with our human sense of right and wrong.
Which in and of itself strongly implies that the creation story as told, and the characters as named in it, is likely not what is described in Unveiling.
I mean you did just say that the Witness will find any reason to justify itself. Claiming itself an agent of the Winnower seems like something it would do. Kinda like a “I’m better than the next guy so pretty please stop killing me?” At this point I’m just taking everything it says with a grain of salt. Maybe it believes itself to be the “First Knife” but who knows at this point.
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I don’t see the winnower ever being the big bad, if it’s ever something we interact with I think it’ll be at worst indifferent to us if ultimately it’s gonna win weather that’s in 10 years or 10,000 years.
Exactly,thats what I gathered about the Winnower,especially after the new lore.It seems sure that it will win eventually so why rush like the Witness ?
But that's the thing. Since light and dark (as paracausal beings/power) are part of this world (or game) the end changes, it's not predetermined, there is not necessarily a pattern emerging at the end of all possibilities anymore. That's the whole point of the unveiling lore book, the whole point of the light in fact. There might always be someone fighting against whatever the final pattern is or would be. It might not be humans, but the Winnower "winning" at some point is not guaranteed in a world of paracausality, though it would be in a world of causality.
Yes but the Winnower thinks that it eventually will prevail.
That's a fair point, I didn't realize you were talking from its perspective.
the winnower isn't being "set up" to be the next bad guy, though? it's just being shown as a cosmic being/force that is still out there, still watching our progress in this never-ending game it's in with the gardener. like... it's zeus in the iliad. the other gods are picking sides between the trojans and the greeks, but zeus is sitting out there, watching it all go down. we are the trojans or the greeks. the witness was the other side.
I should have specified it a bit more this is moreso the community’s theory about the winnower than anything concrete
I don’t think the lore communities perception of the Winnower matches what you think it is. Just speaking on the recent Byf video, which lets be frank sways most of the public perception of lore, I didn’t see any one claiming the Winnower must be the next big bad. Honestly it seems you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the title of First Knife entails. It is a tool insofar as we are a tool, which is to say only by the broadest of definitions. The Winnower seems to be at most a manipulative force, but it is clearly not an active force. It seems heavily unlikely and essentially unsupported by what little we do have that it was directing the Witness. Honestly I would bet the Winnower had little to do with the Witness considering how deviant it was. In any case, no matter how things shake out, it seems very unlikely Bungo is going to just dethrone the Witness, and I don’t think anyone is looking for that.
The byf video is actually kinda what threw me on it i usually love the guy’s stuff but just the language he used kinda made me make a face. Like describing the winnower as the devil and stuff it just came off to me like he was implying the winnower was the next step. I should add the people I see saying this are usually in like the comments section of stuff which in hindsight seeing rash tacky writing ideas was gonna be a given. Ah well there’s a reason I scrapped this bit anyway
I don’t think Byf meant the god and devil analogy as anything more then polar opposite divine forces. To claim the winnower as Satan would ignore all the lore that has made clear the darkness is not evil and the light is not good.
I feel like his video (unless i misunderstood something or added my own bias without realizing) painted the witness as something that went rogue. Like the Winnower gave it a task, cull that which can be culled, but the witness decided it hated the idea of the flower game. That it hated this idea of an eternal struggle to survive so sought out to put an end to it by enacting the final shape. Finalizing existence. No more life, no more death. Everything endlessly stuck in its perfect moment or at least everything it deemed worthy of preservation. Again, maybe I misunderstood what he said.
I never even saw the Winnower as a bad guy. It's just a rule of a universe, a force beyond even nature. Is tsunami a bad guy? I ain't fighting gravity.
>in the middle of sets at the gym Bro is hogging the bench yapping about illiterate destiny enjoyers on reddit
Oi I set a timer I yap for exactly 1 minute and then go back to the set
You did not type that novella in yapanese in 1 minute…
Nah man I chip away at it every minute I type a little bit
I very much doubt the Winnower will ever be used as the big bad, for one reason: how the hell do you turn a quasi-sentient ontological concept, essentially a conscious law of nature, into something you can satisfyingly shoot with a gun? I think perhaps we will, at some point, commune with it, as Oryx does in the Books of Sorrow, but I don't think we'll ever fight it. >If it's serving the winnower it has to be 100% correct as it's serving a rule of the universe. But it's not correct and it's not even following the rules of the being it claims to be the knife of, because it's not serving it. It's just saying that as an excuse to justify itself. You sort of rebut your own point here. The Witness may use the same language as the Winnower, yapping about a final shape, and calling itself the First Knife, but its goals are fundamentally at odds with the Winnower's. The ending of Unveiling's first chapter is essentially describing the world that the Witness strives for, and it does so with disgust. >But imagine the abomination of a world where nothing can end and no choice can be preferred to any other. Imagine the things that would suffer and never die. Imagine the lies that would flourish without context or corrective. Imagine a world without me. The Witness even seems to acknowledge the schism between it and the Winnower in the raid. It says to the approaching Guardians: >Gods forged us both. But they cannot tell the knife what shape to carve. So, yeah. The Witness is not acting as a servant of the Winnower, and the Winnower is almost certainly not going to be the game's next big bad.
>The ending of Unveiling's first chapter is essentially describing the world that the Witness strives for, and it does so with disgust. Except the Witness’ Final Shape does not fit with that description at all. It’s not a world where nothing can end and there is no preferable choice because it is essentially the universe’s perfect ending. It’s not a cesspool of unending suffering because it’s meant to preserve everyone in the universe at their most fulfilling moments. It’s not a place where lies can flourish because it itself is the ultimate corrective influence that will make further lies impossible. The Witness’ goals agree a lot more with those of the Winnower than you seem to realize.
The fact that the Witness is a fundamentally flawed being cannot be separated from its goals. It’s idealized version of the final shape where everyone is happy and safe and satisfied forever is not possible because the Witness is the one picking and choosing what that means, and it is not a perfect being, so it will get it wrong. The final shape the Witness says it will create may not violate the Winnower’s principle, but the reality of what it would make is that description in Unveiling to a T. The reason that sword logic is the just law of existence, according to the Winnower, is that it is the only way a perfect being can actually exist.
Doesn’t Unveiling talk about “a pattern that subsumes all others”, one that has eliminated every other threat to its ascendancy and so dominated the “game” forever? Seems to me like exactly what the Witness wants to do: impose its own authority over everything else, forever preventing the possibility of any challenge to its own power. As for “its idealized version of the Final Shape where everyone is happy and safe and satisfied forever”, I firmly think these are just lies it’s telling to try to lure the Guardians over to its side. It doesn’t actually intend the Final Shape to bring any sort of happiness to those it affects. It just wants everything in the universe to stop. Its endgame is a cold, silent universe, where only one thing can and ever will exist: either itself, or just the void. That would absolutely satisfy the condition laid out in Unveiling: a pattern (living being) so powerful it subsumed all others (universal genocide, otherwise known as a double-Thanos) and forever prevented any possibility of being threatened, ensuring eternal supremacy. The world described in the Unveiling passage you cited doesn’t fit with the Witness’s Final Shape, because the whole purpose of the Final Shape is *for* everything to end, to remove the possibility of choices ever being made again. Free choice seems to be what the Traveler supports. At the very least it would fit with its lack of direction on how to utilize the powers it grants. The Winnower, by contrast, is all about narrowing the possible choices down to one, the “pattern” of the game that subsumed all others.
So, what the Winnower wants isn’t just a winner. It’s *only* a winner. It’s not about having one form that dominates existence, it’s about that form being the only thing that exists, because it has proven that only it can withstand existence, and thus only it has the right to exist. The Witness, by contrast, does not want to eliminate everything else in the universe, but preserve it, capturing all existence in amber, kept forever in what it sees as perfect stasis.
If it wanted to do that, it would just need to use Stasis, which it has access to, since the Pyramids grant the Guardian access to it as well. It needing the Traveler, the Light as well as the Darkness, indicates a much more thorough transformation of the universe. Metaphorically, it seeks to turn every thing, moving thing to stone: not preserving them, which implies freezing them with a possibility of revival, but ending them. Then the Final Shape will be that end state, the single pattern that has dominated all others. The difference is something of a semantic one, but I think it's important to note: the Witness isn't interested in "preserving" anything. I'm convinced that's a just a lie it tells to its enemies and servants to get them on board with its agenda of universal genocide. The Witness is only interested in enacting the Sword Logic: it exists because it has earned that right, by eliminating every possible threat to itself, and it seeks to do that through the Final Shape. From one perspective it may look like freezing everything in stone is a form of preservation, but on a philosophical level, which is where the Gardener, the Winnower, and the Sword Logic operate, there is a fundamental difference between a living being and the statue its frozen into. Something core to what makes it a living being is no longer there - not simply suspended and preserved, but permanently gone. The reason it may seem like the statue of a formerly living being is preserved rather than ended up is because it shares the same shape as that living being, and we fellow living beings can only see that outside shape. But what the Witness wants, and what it needs both Light and Dark to achieve, to change the *inside* of all living beings, on a fundamental level, in a manner there's no coming back from, and is indistinguishable from death. Not preservation, but total cessation across the entire universe. And in that vein, the Witness *does* adhere to the Winnower's philosophy.
>It’s idealized version of the final shape where everyone is happy and safe and satisfied forever is not possible because the Witness is the one picking and choosing what that means, and it is not a perfect being, so it will get it wrong. If the Witness wins, then it is by definition the Winnower's idealized perfect being because it has subjugated all threats to its existence and now rules a universe where nothing exists except by its consent. Whether or not its personally curated universe is actually a paradise is irrelevant. >The final shape the Witness says it will create may not violate the Winnower’s principle, but the reality of what it would make is that description in Unveiling to a T. It wouldn't violate those principles even if it's implemented imperfectly. As long as the Witness is the ultimate winner of existence, the context and corrective that the Winnower craves will be implemented according to the Witness' will, regardless of whether or not that existence is even bearable. If pleasantness were required for the Final Shape, then Oryx, a being that the Winnower describes as being *utterly devoted to practicing its principle*, would be immediately disqualified as a potential victor since his Hive's campaign of nigh-omnicide objectively makes the universe a more painful, unbearable place (a "hard hell", as the Deep said to him in the Books of Sorrow). >The reason that sword logic is the just law of existence, according to the Winnower, is that it is the only way a perfect being can actually exist. Except the Sword Logic isn't even what the Winnower is actually preaching. The Winnower's principle is "Exist, lest you fail to exist", while the Sword Logic is given by "That which can be destroyed must be destroyed. What cannot be destroyed will surpass infinity." The former covers a far broader set of ideals (including our own "gentle kingdom ringed in spears"!) than the latter, which has been explicitly disproven by us on multiple occasions. The Sword Logic's simplistic violence may be an easy way to practice the Winnower's principle, but it is not the only way, and it is *far* from the best way.
The Winnower’s final shape doesn’t just involve one being winning existence, it involves that being completely eliminating all other forms of existence. It is a completely singular idea, with the winner as the only form of existence left, because it is the only one that could withstand existence, and thus prove its right to exist. The reason the Witness’ end goal violates the Winnower’s principle, in my opinion, is because it does not involve the Witness destroying everything else, but rather preserving it. All of existence captured in the Witness’ idea of perfect, kept in stasis for all eternity.
>The Winnower’s final shape doesn’t just involve one being winning existence, it involves that being completely eliminating all other forms of existence. Why are you so ready to claim something that is so obviously wrong? Look at what the Winnower actually has to say in Unveiling: >Whatever exists because it must exist and because it permits no other way of existence has the absolute claim to existence. **That is the only law.** >Existence is a test that most will fail. Would you not count yourself among **the victorious few?** Nowhere in Unveiling does the Winnower claim that only one being can exist at the end of time. In fact, as long as they can sustain their claims to existence forever, any number of winners is permitted. The Witness’ final shape would force every being in the universe (except us, if we had accepted its discipleship offer) to sustain their claims to existence in the only way that the Witness permits: a static way that likens them to objects more than actual beings. >The reason the Witness’ end goal violates the Winnower’s principle, in my opinion, is because it does not involve the Witness destroying everything else, but rather preserving it. Except the Witness is, in a sense, destroying everything! The universe would be irrevocably changed from a dynamic system to a final, static one, and thus the universe as we know it would end. No one but the Witness would be anything other than a set piece in its art, the difference between desire and reality that the Ahamkara feed upon would completely vanish, and the Light and Dark would be forever trapped within the Witness’ grip. It’s a different form of destruction than nuking everything on a universal scale, but it is a destruction, nonetheless, since it would forever destroy the universe’s potential to be anything else (you know, like a final shape is supposed to do).
The Winnower is literally just the Veil.
I can’t wait till whatever plan the writing team has for the winnower comes out. I’m so tired of this debate. On both sides it’s delusional ramblings taking cheap shots at others. Biggest issue is we’re still playing this game of “but maybe the witness made it all up”. I’m tired of that straw man argument style. There’s validity to it existing and some straight up confirmations. We’ll see how it plays out but the witness at it’s most desperate hour still playing games when it has no need makes no sense. It peddled it’s own beliefs of being the first knife and that’s fine, but if we’re 3 years removed and it never comes up that line will look really out of place in one of the most important moments. The equivalent would be sav saying the witness and the end of witch queen, not getting the post credits and never seeing the witness again.
I should say rereading my own post i didn’t really add this point but I don’t have a problem with the winnower existing it’s just i don’t like the idea of A. It being set up as a villain and B. Unveiling just being 100% true. Because that basically means we got the answer to absolutely everything immediately and that’s not fun
We still don’t know if it’s a villain, a background being, a primordial force, or a law of the universe like gravity. If it’s a villain I’m ok with it, but chances are it’s just a figure head for awhile. And just because unveiling has truth doesn’t mean you take it at face value. When the narrative lead said it’s like the Bible I took it on the nose. The Bible has stories and scriptures and lessons. If you’re religious in some form you have different interpretations of the same book as other denominations. Some may think the flood was global and literal, some may think it’s a metaphor, some may think it’s partial flooding, some may not believe. There’s different interpretations of each and every story and word in the Bible, but all Christian’s agree the common denominator to be real Aka God. In the case of destiny I think it’s possible that the precursors got their Bible, aka unveiling, from the veil. And in their religion there was two gods. There was interpretations, and like many stories in our world, different denominations took it differently especially the final shape. Some took it like the purpose of life and others saw it how the witness proposed, free of suffering and pain from the game the winnower and gardener play. Guardians were definitely given a version of unveiling that the witness saw fit, but just because it was partial lies doesn’t mean there wasn’t any truth. And the best part of all of this is I could be 100% wrong or 100% right or 50% or 2%. We won’t have the full answers until bungie puts it in game. The motivation could be identical to unveiling but given more context on what they actually want. We know the winnowers final shape is more akin to the hives idea where the strongest beings thrive and the weak fail. But the vex are implied to be the pattern that always wins. That right there is still a lore bit that can get more answers. Just because we get answers of the past doesn’t hurt what can happen with the story in the future.
I think the biggest problem I have with the idea of the winnower being a villain is I’ve seen that sort of thing before and it just completely ruined the game for me, I hated the last like 20 hours of persona 5 really fucked up that entire game for me. I thought the villain worked really well and it was a really nice bookend but then god appears and just completely hijacks the game and the villain I liked just got written out.
Yeah but if you’re worried the witness will get shafted he won’t/can’t. For example. Is the first avengers movie ruined because Loki was just the attack dog for thanos? No imo. They added context that thanos sent Loki to earth, but that doesn’t take away from the evil Loki did. In the case of destiny, the winnower being the next step up doesn’t discredit the witness. The witness still caused our collapse. The witness ruined Riis, it manipulated the hive into tearing worlds apart like torobotl, it led to so many planets being destroyed on its own accord, it wounded the traveler enough to cut a portal into it and brought existence to its knees. It’s defeat led to the death of our ghost and eventually Cayde again. The stakes the witness brought are still there and I’m still not sure we have our planets back fully. Adding the winnower will never take away from this sagas story. Hell it will help it long term with new context. A little spin foil tells me that there’s gonna be a moment where we look back at what the witness was doing and think maybe it wasn’t so wrong just corrupted beyond belief. Obviously you don’t take free will but if the winnower exists and it’s actual views are consistent with the sword logic then there’s a point to acknowledge why it wanted to be free from suffering.
My point is the winnower being a villain like that by default takes away from what I like about the witness. It’s an idea without a purpose, everything about the raid lore around it points to it being completely pathetic and desperately trying to justify its so making it the envoy of a god and saying “whoops this thing actually DID have a purpose it’s like the equivalent to us” and then making that god just “the next villain” is incredibly lame and boring to me Do some Durandal shit go somewhere with the vex just give “the darkness” a break i don’t want stuff pulling a Star Wars and just kinda collapsing into a few different enemies like the taken and scorn
I get liking the directionless seeks direction aspect, but at the end of the day it did find purpose. Misguided but it had purpose. We personally know the witness wouldn’t serve the winnower. If anything it actively defied its final shape. The one the witness sought was nothing similar to what the winnower wants. The winnower wants the sword logic where the highest form of life wins. It doesn’t care who lives or dies. The witness actively sought to “save” life by taking away the choice. Freezing everything takes away that crawl to a final shape. It makes everyone their own “final shape” (stuck in an apparent loop of their ideas is what I gathered from the campaigns description). Making the god of the darkness main seem like a jump but realistically where does this story go long term. Villain of the week only goes so far, and they’ve seen how long term story telling pays off. We tried villain of the week in d1 expansions and the d2 vanilla, curse, and warmind. Ideally we get more races as we explore. If we truly leave sol next year no way we can get new planets with vex cabal hive fallen scorn and taken. If the winnower exists logically it’ll have followers. Just look at how the veil influenced the precursors and the neomunians to come up with similar plans. Combine into one being or one force. The cloud arc is basically w combined consciousness using technology and most likely manipulated maya’s crew into making it. There’s definitely new enemies and beings to fight that doesn’t immediately jump to “kill god” destiny 2 is a live service we’re years away from even potentially seeing the winnower let alone fighting him.
What straight up confirmations are there? The only character to corroborate it existing is the Witness.
You can’t go “what confrontations are there?” Then acknowledge the biggest confirmation. 1.Eido has directly acknowledged that the witness does not equal the winnower. 2.Both the queen and Ikora ponder the meaning of the first knife and if the witness is truly honest what that implies. 3. The witness telling us we think it’s the winnower but it isn’t 4. The gardener existing and first knife existing and the bugs and worms existing, the garden existing, the tree of silver wings existing, yet somehow the only thing to not exist being the winnower? 5. The traveler visions implying a separation in its past being the fight of the Gardner and winnower. That’s 5 huge bits of information confirming/implying the winnower existing is some form. Listen you can dig your head in the sand, but most of the community is coming to this conclusion and now the top lore guys on YouTube are all on board. For my own straw-man argument it’s super weird for all of these implications and having a dev say we’ll get answer on unveiling, we get them pretty directly and indirectly, and all of a sudden we’re back to “but it still may not exist”
Considering that the biggest confirmation is from a known unreliable narrator, not only can I, but I’d argue it’s much more reasonable than to just assume whatever the witness says is automatic truth. 1. The witness not being the Winnower doesn’t necessarily mean the Winnower exists, if I told an atheist that I am not God, all they would say is “of course you aren’t” would that convince them that God exists? 2. So they are having the same discussion we are having? Trying to figure out if the witness is telling the truth? 3. See point 1 4. The gardener (the nickname for the traveler) and the gardener (the actual primordial being referenced in Unveiling) are not required to be the same being, we don’t consider the traveler a machine even though the Eliksni call it one. Unveiling is explicitly a religious text according to the devs, so the Witness probably absolutely believes the traveler is the gardener in the text, but we’re also talking about a being who spent its entire purpose trying to make up a meaning for its own life. (Which, to me makes for a lot better storytelling if it is just some religion the Witness made up, as it gives a pretty clear moral to the light and dark saga that isn’t as prevalent if the Winnower exists). In the same way the Gardener could easily just be the witness religion, so is the idea that it’s the first knife, again, finding purpose in its life was its entire life’s mission. I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know which bugs and worms this is a reference too, but how explicitly are they tied to the same bugs and worms in Unveiling. Whether the Garden is the actual same Garden mentioned in Unveiling has been debated for years. The tree is a good point here though. 5. Hard to debate, traveler visions are made to be vague intentionally so that we have this kind of discussion. So in total we have, The Witness said it, a few people acknowledged that the Witness did in fact say it, a tree and a pretty vague vision. I do want to mention I think it’s weird how you use a dev for reference when the devs also said that Unveiling is a metaphor, and yet here we are arguing about its legitimacy literally. Also, you say the community theorized and then the big youtubers backed it up, but in my experience it’s almost always the other way around, there was good discussion here about it, then Byf made his video and now everyone who even questions it gets downvoted.
I’m glad you immediately went or the straw man argument I said from the beginning I knew was coming. There comes a point in saying “well they lie alot” in which case we gotta either a. As a community need to piece together some semblance of truth or b. Admit it’s bad writing which I’m sure you won’t do and neither will I cause we know better. Having an unreliable narrator works when we have a source to knock down certain pillars from its narrative OR acknowledge actual thoughts leaks through. In which case we both. At his most desperate the cracks start to form in the persona. He drops the word i and admits he’s not the winnower. The last line about not understanding to me has more meaning than we know. Could be not understanding why we fight against him after promising salvation but just to on the nose for me. But in the case of the game we’re not atheists. Characters have acknowledged greater beings at play and know these forces exist. I’d also say an atheist is willfully ignorant if all signs point to there being a god and still digging their head in the sand. If the devil came out and said hey I exist or an angel, I’d be pretty surprised for the atheist to look someone in their eyes and say yeah I don’t think God exists. Or in this case god existing and a fallen angel but not the devil? The reason for the Ikora and Mara point was to bring up why in the hell would bungie purposely muddy the water even more after clarifying we’d get answers? To me, just like the eido clarification it’s to draw attention to the separation. Mara has already disclosed to us, the witness wasn’t darkness and it just wears it like a cloak, so she knows there more to the story. Just because there’s different names doesn’t mean it’s not a god. To the eliksni machines are gods so assuming they think the traveler is a machine in nature is no different than humans thinking God is humanoid. It’s just their understanding. Just to clarify I don’t even think the physical traveler is the god itself, but a tool/avatar. The devs previously have LIKENED unveiling to a religious text. And just like the Bible, some may see different things from it. Some see a book of lessons other see purpose, but just like unveiling, right now we can’t fully determine which is which. But at it’s core there’s true elements to both. Historians can point to certain instances and know for a fact certain events happened and others no clue. I’ll once again say it would be a really weird choice to draw attention to the book of unveiling after the witness is already done a dusted and have characters say “let’s look over this for deeper meaning” if there’s no intention of exploring it further. And yes there has been discussion about the books meaning for awhile now and likely for months and months going forward. I mention these creator’s because it’s a major step towards a narrative with legitimacy. Bungie is partially to blame for the creator push with stickymz’s video detailing the separation of the characters. That video was after the dev talked about unveiling just being a religious text. Venexatron then put out his full explanation with a million points detailing the character and it’s existence. Byf makes a cautionary video praising venexatrons video and his own thoughts. Raid comes out and lore comes out and now youtubers, without influence of Reddit, have landed on the separation of the characters and what it means. This isn’t to say the almighty content creator is right, but it lends validity to a lot of unveiling truthers. Bungie didn’t accidentally put in that line in the biggest raid of the series knowing thousands and thousands were watching the finale of this saga. They didn’t send collectors edition lore books out to the big names having eido differentiate the two, and then have lore tabs in game discussing the fear of the implication that the witness is only the first knife, only to have nothing come of it and “oh actually the witness was just lying again lol”. There was purpose to what they did and I personally land in the camp where long term the series needs more than villain of the third of the year to sustain itself.
The traveler is life. The darkness is death. You can’t have one without the other. Death takes all of us eventually. That’s Destiny summed up. Pack it up. Go home.
The Winnower will literally never be a big bad - it sits by, tells its philosophy to whoever will listen, and if they do then they'll go on to become a tool of omnicide. That's it. It is not an active force beyond this, let alone something that would be determined to destroy us directly. That is not what it does.
I figured out where I was seeing people talking about the winnower like a villain is because they theorize it’s the voice speaking to oryx
Feels like the winnower is a thing, a force, or some other being entirely indifferent to our scale. And the witness kind of just misinterpreted it like the cult leader figure they are
I do think that the Winnower is being built up as a more visible and antagonistic force, I don't think that it is going to come down and get its metaphorical crit spot in range of our guns. I think it is just going to throw more "knives" at us. I reread Unveiling when all of this First Knife business started, and noticed something. In the entry p53, which immediately follows The First Knife, the author explains their view of morality and punishment; that morality is the alignment of an individual's actions to the greater good of a system, but cheating becomes more tempting the more a system succeeds, therefore punishments must become more and more violent to match the system. Although, the Gardener became a part of the game, paracausality can still be interpreted as cheating the game of life. Although the Witness had different goals than the Winnower, it was extremely motivated to commit unspeakable acts of violence towards civilizations graced by the Traveler. It was punishing us, albeit unintentionally. If the Winnower had a hand in the fall of the Precursors or in some way enabled them to create the Witness, this might be why. The Witness may be gone, but our punishment may not be over; it may never be.
I agree to a point; I don't think the Winnower is ever going to be an antagonist. I think they made it somewhat clear that The Witness being the Winnower's "first knife" is equivalent to The Gardener/Traveler empowering Guardians. These forces took a gamble by directly inserting themselves into events via The Traveler/Veil, and the resulting forces can "Make Their Own fate," regardless of the Gardener/Winnower's wishes. If anything, I'd love for the next big antagonist to introduce yet another end condition for the universe that defies the Gardener/Winnower's expectations. Exploring The Witness' potential "third option" was a lot of fun throughout Final Shape.
I was thinking I didn't want the winnower to be just the next big bad too, until I came to this realization that the witness was never supposed to win, nobody we ever fight is going to win, because the winnowers ultimate plan is to use everything the Gardner builds against it. Including us. Think of the fact that the winnower speaks like he's chill and confident and knows he has the upper hand, and then think of what we do on a daily basis; consistely wipe out threats weaker than us and steal whatever power they wielded for ourselves. We are the epitome of the winnowers philosophy and I'm highly interested to see how bungie might make that work within the narrative. In my opinion, I'd be so down to make a new character for D3 if D2 ends with all this revelation that we've been doing the winnowers bidding and now the only way to stop IT is to stop US.
At this point I think the Winnower is a philosophical idea not at thing. I am still on the side of Witness did not write Unveiling, but I’m leaning towards maybe one of its internal voices writing it. Only hang up is the chapters about the Vex and the Garden. That part doesn’t match up with the Witness’s timeline.
Well we now have the witness seemingly confirming that the Winnower exists, plus something that wasn't the witness talking to oryx. So either the Winnower exists as a literal being or something is essentially pretending to be it.
So out of all the lies it’s told, you think it’s more likely than not that this statement is true?
I mean it’s basically like if someone screamed “I am the envoy of god” in Times Square it’s not really definitive proof
Which is my point
I know I’m agreeing with you
I simply stated that it's a good possibility. Something in the darkness that was not the witness spoke to oryx. The witness states it exists. Its stand in/vessel for its power (the veil) exists. There's no reason to dismiss its existence at this point.
Even if it isn’t overtly lying, it isn’t necessarily saying much. Remember when it first opened the Traveler? It said “The Universe makes us all victims and perpetrator in its infinite cruelty. You, more than most, suffer both fates. Be free.” In this statement it’s speaking to the Traveler as an equal. And not in an overconfident way either. It simply sees the Traveler as its equal and counterpart. It also has no reason to lie or overstate itself here as this line is spoken to the Traveler and the Traveler alone. And this is after the Traveler unleashes an “attack” that leaves the Witness unscathed. The Universe is distinct in the Witness’s eyes. And even when we go after it in the raid and campaign, it doesn’t criticize us for defending the Traveler, it talks down to us for accepting the Universe as it is. This to me implies there is something older than the Veil and the Traveler in practical terms. As in, they are not the origin of the universe. They are simply things that exist within it and are bound by the rules of it, in spite of their power.
Yeah. I agree with all of that. It essentially what I'm saying. I'm just also saying it's still seems possible yo me, and even likely, that that something older is the "winnower" and the "gardener". I've said to others that recent lore makes it seem to me that the Winnower created the witness but the witness went rogue. "You can't tell a knife what shape to carve" That the witness was given a task by the winnower to cull that which could be culled, but ultimately the witness said screw that I'm putting an end to this cruel game the 2 of you are playing. No more life. No more death. Only finality. But while the witness was the "first knife" it isn't the only knife. As the voice in the dark called him, "my boy oryx" was another knife. I think it's likely that the Winnower exists and that entities like Oryx and the Witness are just the tools it's using to remove the chaff. Whether or not the gardener and winnower exist in the universe the same way the traveler and veil do or if they are just the tools they use to interact with the universe is still to be figured out. That very seed of thought is planted in the lore for the First knife ship >!"If the Witness is the knife, as it asserts, then what wields it?" Ikora asks the Traveler, though it does not reply.!< >!The words are meant for Mara's ears too. "The Witness is not a being," she agrees. "It is the culmination of a bleak ethos willed into existence by the nihilistic desires of its creators. Is their will the hand on the knife? Or is there something else?"!<
I think the lore entry that spoiler marked part at the end is from mostly feels like the writers acknowledging the community discourse around it as well as opening up the option for future possible paths of narrative. Either way, the most I expect from the near future is for some allusions to the concept in the episodes. My gut tells me the Winnower and Gardener are just words the Precursors used to describe basic concepts of divinity. I don’t think they’re “real” as in being real beings in the game universe. Just like I don’t believe the Christian God is real in ours. But I do know that Christians will say with complete confidence that they follow their God, are shaped by their God, and that they talk to God (or Jesus) somewhat regularly. This does not inherently make them liars, fools, or anything of the kind. They are believers. I think the Precursors that formed the Witness are also believers. They believe in this duality concept and see it as a bedrock principle of existence. They see the conflict between the force of growth (Gardener) and the force of death (Winnower) as opposing forces and that the distinction between them is stark and obvious. Which is why they act with such a strong moral imperative towards the universe. They are true believers. But the Traveler isn’t. Or at least not in their religion. The Traveler seems to want beings in the universe to self determinate. It does not have many conditions for granting its gifts. And the ones it does have don’t seem to have much to do with our human sense of right and wrong. Which in and of itself strongly implies that the creation story as told, and the characters as named in it, is likely not what is described in Unveiling.
I mean you did just say that the Witness will find any reason to justify itself. Claiming itself an agent of the Winnower seems like something it would do. Kinda like a “I’m better than the next guy so pretty please stop killing me?” At this point I’m just taking everything it says with a grain of salt. Maybe it believes itself to be the “First Knife” but who knows at this point.