On Destiny year 10: The Final Shape

First: a new trailer just dropped:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNh1KBRluC0 (Cool, Youtube's Embed feature works in Write Freely)

I've got thoughts on what might happen in Year 10. Whatever happens, I hope it's worth the 10 years of buildup.

The Witness

This is an interesting one. I'm not sure how The Big Bad will go down. Will The Guardian succeed where the Traveler failed? We are good at killing gods after all. Or will we distract the Witness enough for the Traveler to pull a Ghaul on it? Or will we therapy them to redemption?

I've got no clue.

Sacrifice and Victory

One of the more interesting aspects of the past couple of years, is that most of our moves have been sacrificing pieces to remove theirs. Rasputin for power to Xivu Arath, Amada Holiday to save Misraaks, Eris the Hive God for Xivu Arath's connection to her Throne World...I wonder what we'll lose to see us through past the end?

The Dead and the Living

Cayde-6

I wonder what's up with this. At the moment, he seems like the only one resurrected. So why him? I mean aside from the meta of using him to draw some of the playerbase back. That he's returned, only to see the end of everything sounds like it sucks. He seems rather despondent too. Which honestly is apropos.

There will be a lot fewer of everyone remaining after The Final Shape

A big Humpty Dumpty issue with many of the people on and around Earth.

Misraaks and Eramis don't make it out alive.

I've had this thought since the end of the Season of Plunder. For those who didn't play it, (I'll admit that it wasn't the strongest of seasons,) Misraaks coerces Spider to help them steal items of significance to the Darkness. Since there wasn't much plot, most of it's dialog fleshed out the Eliksni backgrounds. It turns out that Misraaks and Spider grew up together and that Misraaks was a violent shit until he found religion.

Eramis tells Eido this as she seems to feel that Eido is the future of the Eliksni. Misraaks feels this way too. Eido is hurt that Misraaks didn't tell her about his past and tries to reconcile the two, but is unable to.

With Misraaks and Eramis personifying their elements, (Misraaks the Light with new chances and new lives, and Eramis with remembering what's come before to try and not make the same mistakes,) they will come to a head again. Eido personifies both, (She does seem to believe in the House of Light's breaking of tradition and removing hierarchies, but is also a scribe, writing down the past to try and have a truthful record,) so I also feel she'll be the one to continue the Eliksni on.

My personal thought/hope with this is that the Witness pits Eramis against Misraaks, but they both realize that there is no future for the Eliksni after the Witness completes the Final Shape and they both try (and fail) to stop the witness. Or do something suicidal to get the Guardian to the Witness.

I don't think Zavala will make it out alive

This is in part a practical matter. With Lance Reddick gone, that would simplify having to voice Zavala. Keith David's good and I like him, and this definitely is not the first recasting of a character, but still. Reddick's Zavala has been the heart of the series for so long, it would be tough with someone else.

The other is that trailer. Zavala looks like the one most likely to crack. He has had a particularly hard row to hoe. As Season Therapy the Haunted showed, he is haunted by the loss of his wife and son. And (seemingly) to a lesser extent, all of those lost under his command. He was grief-stricken with Cayde's death too. I wonder how seeing him alive again will affect him.

My thought was Zavala seeing that he would not be able to resist the Witnesses bargain, would put a bullet in Targe and himself. A friend speculated that he would give in and become the raid boss, allowing us to fight the Witness as the end of the yearly storyline.

Caital is probably safe.

As the only named Cabal I can think of, they probably won't kill her off. Saladin might sacrifice himself for her though.

Pairs

There are two sets that I think will either both live or both die. That's Mara Sov and Crow, and Osiris and Saint-14. Mara was upset at Uldrin's death, and with Crow's resurrection, but they seem a pair, if strained. That said, I could see Crow and Petra left trying to figure out what to do in the aftermath. I feel its more straight forward with Osiris and Saint-14. Both have had their grieving periods at the other being gone, so that likely won't be retread. They'll either both go or survive. Ana and Elise I'd wager will both live. They seem paired and Elise has to survive to know that her loop is broken.

I don't see Savathûn being much in The Final Shape

She'll come up when she wants to, and I'm guessing she sees that her involvement won't change the ending either way.

Eris

Will probably be fine. Like Savathûn, I don't see her directly being helpful against the Witness and moreso against Xivu Arath.

The Guardian lives

Heavy plot armor for the player character. We know they have more stuff to shoot with the chapters coming up.

What's Next?

On how the game will continue past the announced chapters. Light and Dark, The species we know, the Sol system itself have all largely been explored. The Vex and the Nine are the two big unknowns in my opinion. But could a whole new arc be made out of them? Will it be more addons, or Destiny 3? If 3, can I play as an Eliksni? Destiny's been a part of my life for a decade. I don't know what else I would shoot. Will we get a game more like what was intended a decade ago before Activision gave them a big pile of money for a Halo-killer? Or is Marathon it? Corollary, was there more planned, but Sony's job cuts fucked that up?

#Destiny #Destiny2 #DestinyTheFinalShape #Destiny2TheFinalShape #VideoGames #TourmaGaming

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Mostly posting over at [email protected].
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Or how an already squicky premise has been made worse by time.

Its been a hot minute since the Division 2 came out. I finally bought it, $5 used at Gamestop.

I’ll say this up front, the gameplay loop is actually good. A healthy mix of Bungie’s Destiny and Ubisoft’s open world melange. If you’re unaware, it’s an open world third person looter shooter. It’s absolutely an Ubisoft game, it has that flavor. So your mileage may vary right from there. But the shooting is really solid and the looting works well as a loop. Its not gimmicky like Athem or Outriders either.

That said, the premise and plot are...oof.

The game is set in a post-apocalyptic Washington DC. You play a member of the Strategic Homeland Division, or “The Division” that is towing what’s left of the US. The Division’s very concept is not good. They’re sleeper cells with extrajudicial power that answer to no one but the president. This was made in the early half of the 2010’s. As the Youtube series Extra Credit put it, ‘this might seem fine in the hands of [then president] Obama, but think about it with someone less stable. Like say, Trump.’ Trump had not yet won the primaries IIRC at the point of that video.

Trump was bad enough, (knocking on wood that he stays past tense,) but having access to his own trained Sturmabteilung, (aka SA, the stormtroopers that helped Hitler rise to power that he later annihilated and replaced with the more stable/in his control SS,) seems like a goddamn nightmare. I don’t want any head of state to have this kind of military power. Our military at least ostensibly answers to the Constitution over the president.

It feels like a neocon wetdream. Which fits Clancy pretty well to be honest.

Also, the apocalypse was caused by a worldwide pandemic.

Yeah.

This game has a real Cassandra thing going on with the curse of prophecy.

The game is at least a worst case scenario as opposed to what’s happening with Covid. The Chimera Virus/Dollar Flu/Green Poison was a genetically engineered smallpox variant unleashed on Black Friday. I think by a non-governmental actor. This coincided with the destruction of the internet and a lot of other infrastructure. Still, the game coming out late 2019 and Covid happening a few months later was not a good look. Especially after, “hey maybe the president having this kind of power” happening a few months before Trump.

They make the Division seem like the good guys by making all the people you’re killing thoroughly puppy kickers. Of those whom I’ve come across so far, there are the Hyenas, people that took Mad Max to heart, and the True Sons, who would be Nazis, but they have a black commander so it’s totally not that.

But the sheer amount of people you kill to make the peace seems extreme. I know that’s a gameplay thing, but it’s still uncomfortable.

And then there are people whom I’ve seen that are like, level 5900. Given, if Destiny’s current leveling scheme was retroactive and persistent, mine might be somewhere up there, but the game is also almost 10 years old.

So I don’t know. I’ve got mixed feelings on the whole thing. Glad I didn’t give Ubisoft any money at least.

#TourmaGaming #VideoGames #Ubisoft #Division2 #Destiny2 #Review

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Mostly posting over at [email protected].
Find the rest of where I'm at LinkStack.

It's been a year, huh?

Lots of ups and downs. Lost my grandfather, who was my last grandparent, and my uncle, the last uncle on my dad's side, both this year. A coworker's husband died. Lots of struggles with health for both me and my parents.

Work got a new OPAC/Discovery Layer after 20-odd years. III stopped being a thing and SirsiDynex, those who bought III, stopped innovating on Encore/Sierra. So now we use Aspen/Koha and are paying ByWater Solutions to make stuff for us, so that's cool. We're still getting used to it four months on.

On a 100% good note, I also went to Norway again and visited my best friends. Norway is so amazing. I wish I could move there. I'd be more likely to come out as trans there, that's for sure.

Overall...I dunno. I'm feeling ambivalent to the whole thing at the moment.

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Reading

My reading speed has been shit this year. Had I read everything I started, I'd be only at 18 books. As it is, I finished half that. I don't know what happened, but my reading speed has gone to shit since Covid started. (It was probably the trauma from the global pandemic. ~Ed.) Only year worse than '23 or '20 was '16. I blame politics for that year.

Martha Wells. I read two of her books this year. The self-contained effort Witch King, and the newest Murderbot , System Collapse. I read these two faster than most single books that I actually finished. She is just a superb writer. I super recommend The Murderbot Diaries. Witch King is good too, but Murderbot really hits the zeitgeist for me. ...Pat of the back for spelling zeitgeist right the first time.

the first book that I finished was Leviathan Wakes by S.A. Corey. This is harder sci-fi than I usually read, but I really enjoyed it overall. The mix of hard sci-fi with up to date science, and the mix of Space Opera and Noir is really good. That said, motherfucker's long. I worry I'll run out of steam with doorstops this day and age. Biggest reason I haven't continued to read it. Book one is pretty self-contained, I doubt any of them after that are. I don't have the gumption for 4,000 more pages of one story at the moment.

The surprise hit of the year for me was The Warden by Daniel M. Ford. This protagonist necromancer really vibed with me. The story structure is more akin to The Hobbit than most fantasy, by which I mean it is a series of chronological arcs rather than a hard point A to B. I took to this structure here better than with The Hobbit itself. Ford is no Tolkien, but the book is good all the same. Having the book end on a cliffhanger is annoying af though. I tried to read another of Ford's books and ended up setting it down. Didn't jive with the protagonist...or the story of that one. Hopefully I enjoy the sequel.

The queer solarpunk compilation book, “Fix the World” has also been excellent. I've been reading stories out of it between books and by and large I have enjoyed them. Worth looking into if you want some hopeful Sci-Fi.

Less so for the compilations are the two lit magazines I've subscribed to. Clarkesworld and Interzone. They're good! Just what I've read has been more depressing/cishet/darker than the other books I've read, so they tend to get a story or two read out of each edition and that's it. I'm happy to support them anyway, and a story or two I feel is sufficient for my money. Especially with Amazon screwing magazines over so hard. (If you don't know, Amazon made a thing some years back to digitally distribute eMagazines. Like everything else they do, Amazon took in a sizable percentage of the market. Then this year they decided to drop it. Fucking over revenue for all of them rather hard. Between that and getting inundated with AI shit, it's been a hard year for magazines. Weightless Books has some mag subscriptions on it, and others have Patreons. Worth a look.)

Really, everything I actually finished was pretty good. The classic Rendezvous with Rama, the non-fiction of What If? 2, to the sci-fi schlock of Well of Furies. Just need more of that going into 2024 it seems.

Also, shout out to BookWyrm, OpenReads and the OpenLibrary. Really have helped me get a little further away from GoodReads and Amazon. Here's BookWyrm's “Year in the Books” for me.

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Gaming:

Lotta gaming this year.

Honorable mention as always to Destiny 2. Lightfall was okay, but Season of the Witch has been badass enough to make up for that. Eris for goodhood! That said, in spite of Destiny being #1 on multiple Year in Review things I've received, much of my gaming this year has been elsewhere.

I did 100% a game though! Laura Croft GO. Its rare for me to beat a game, let alone get a Platinum Trophy. I learned that there are games that are super cheap in the “deals” section of the PS store and I got that one for ≤ $0.50USD. It got me to want to play more Tomb Raider, though I didn't. Do have porn of her as my tablet's wallpaper and lock screen, but hey. Anyway, it's an excellent puzzle game. Keep an eye out for a sale and grab it when you can. I picked up Hitman GO on steam, (It's not on PSN,) but haven't played it yet. Sadly, Embracer Group shuttered the studio.

I need to play more of Sherlock Holmes the Awakened. I helped Kickstart it, and only got to chapter 2 before getting distracted by something else. I Kickstarted it initially because the developer, Frogwares, is Ukrainian and they needed help keeping the lights on in more ways than just paying the bill. I forget the initial codename for the project, but I remember it’s a Ukrainian dish that was used as a initial pass to see if someone was a Russian spy, as Russians can't/couldn't (they've probably adapted to this,) pronounce it correctly. Frogwares stuff does have some racist shit in it, but they justify it with fitting the time period and the Lovecraftian side of the story. So, heads up about that.

Another excellent game was Ghostwire Tokyo. It’s an open world game, and a stealth game, neither of which are my forte, but I got to chapter 4 and enjoyed what I played thoroughly. Apparently, the in-game Tokyo is very close to the real thing.

I played a lot of Deep Rock Galactic this year. Of all of the PvE games that have tried to be a Destiny clone, it succeeds the best. I think rather than Anthem, Babylon’s Fall, Outriders, Marvel’s Avengers, etc. where it’s just Destiny + gimmick, Deep Rock Galactic combines two whole systems completely. Destiny + Minecraft is excellent.

Bayonetta was a fun side stop. I also beat this one! On Easy. But I was more in it for the story and titilation. The graphics are alright, but considering it’s an 8th generation port of a 7th generation game running on a 9th generation console, it looks pretty good. I had played Bayonetta back on the 360 as a rental, (RIP rental stores,) but never got very far. Now that I'm less of a tryhard, I've learned the joys of easy mode. I only died a few times this way, and mostly to bullshit. Cliffs, stunlocks, etc. Delightfully over the top and a real power fantasy on easy. I want her tits glasses. I saw the twist a mile away, but it was still played well.

This led me to wanting to play the other games. Thus realizing that Gamestop doesn't really carry used games anymore? Not in-store at least. Gotta make room for Funko Pops I guess. Which took me to my first ever bidding for something on eBay. I did not get Bayonetta 2, though it's still on my list, but I did get Cereza and the Lost Demon. VERY different games for the same series. Which is good. For one, none of the titilazation. Which would be creepy as fuck had they went that route. The game reminds me of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons in that you control Cereza and Cheshire at the same time with each stick, but with combat all of its own and a picture book style that reminded me of Okage: Shadow King. Mostly for the eyes. I'm almost to the third act in it. Should try and finish it off soon.

I'm trying to get into Warframe. There's just so much with it being a decade old that it's hard. The cross save should help. I haven't really found the loop yet. Seemingly its mostly the equivalent to Vanguard Ops, but all the missions are significantly longer. Playing a bit more since I first wrote this, I'm getting a better handle on the currencies and the loop. We'll see how long I persist.

Honkai Star Rail has taken up a lot of my time these past couple of months. Trying to avoid the Gatcha mechanics, (I bet MiHoYo is shitting themselves with CCP's new anti-F2P rules,) but the gameplay and story are compelling, and it's got that mindless grind itch Destiny had been scratching. I still say the end boss fight for Belebog is fucking badass. The Echo of War only captures part of it, but being able to replay it is good. Honk Train is worth your while if you have 30GB free and are not susceptible to gambling mechanics.

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Best of the Year

Book of the Year No contest really. I read it in like, 12 days. Even for a novella, that's lightning fast for me. And Murderbot is Goals.

Best Game of the Year

A game I beat and that got me interested and got me actually playing the sequels. The sheer over the top nature of the game makes it worth the play. Platinum can hit and miss, but they absolutely hit with Bayonetta. Cereza and the Lost Demon get an honorable mention too, though I have yet to beat it. Bayonetta the character is also Goals.

The duality of being transgender, Murderbot and Bayonetta are both goals. :P

Best Thing of the Year Visiting my BFFs in Norway. Even with getting stranded in Boston for the night, it was such an amazing trip. I wish I could do it more often. Or that they could come here. Still, I think about it fondly almost every day.

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That's about it. I talk a lot more about games than books, huh? I guess books are just more personal. No music because I use MusicBee with CDs I've ripped from the library. No Spotify or Bandcamp, or whatever.

Hashtag Salad: #Murderbot #WitchKing #LeviathansWake #Koha #Destiny2 #LightFall #SeasonOfTheWitch #Bayonetta #CerezaAndTheLostDemon #LauraCroft #TombRaider #SherlockHolmes #Frogwares #HonkaiStarRail #WarFrame #DeepRockGalactic #BookWyrm #OpenReads #OpenLibrary #Books #VideoGames #YearInReview #Wrapped #BestOf #TourmaReads #TourmaGaming #TourmaPosts

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Mostly posting over at [email protected].
Find the rest of where I'm at LinkStack.