#BUT AFTER LIKE 50 TRIES I FINISHED MAYAS SECRET QUEST

[babymorte]

bro my adrenaline is through the roof holy shit

[thefirstknife]

Man. This week.

There's a few things I want to point out again that are really cool and the first is that once you finish the story and get the radio and the lore tab and everything, speak to Failsafe again. She'll give you an "epilogue" quest which requires you to find secret stuff in Encore. There's 8 of them, and all of them are voice recordings of Maya and Chioma from when they had a normal happy life. And they're all absolutely incredible and devastating. They're not uploaded anywhere that I can find yet, I'll try and put them here later with transcripts unless people put uploads online.

These are really important to me because they keep reiterating that there was a time (and Maya) that used to be fine. It's the woman Chioma loved and her transformation into the Conductor is almost an anomaly of only one of the Mayas. The others, even other copies from the Vex Network seem to be different and fine.

Anyway, we tried to find this Maya's Chioma, but it turned out Maya already tested her and rejected her, thus killing the one she was looking for. But I really like how it's done because Chioma wasn't just helplessly clueless in this; she had her own agency and made her own decision upon realising what Maya had become. More under:

So that's okay. Dies.

But the thing is that this is true only for this one Maya, the Conductor one. Other Mayas and other Chiomas are fine. This is really interesting in the dialogue you get for the last chest:

This is the 87th copy of Maya who is looking for 50th Chioma copy. This is fascinating because it means that .87 Maya lost her Chioma and found another. Multiple others even! She mentions how she's become a widow many times over, which means she bonded with multiple other Chiomas just fine. And now she's looking for the .50 one, hoping she's still out there.

And some of them are still out there! There's more Mayas and Chiomas still in the Network and at the end in the lore tab, it's discussed is that Osiris and Saint are going through the Vex Network looking for them.

But before that, our confrontation with the Conductor! She does manage to control us, but Saint breaks free. And he said the line!

He's the only one ever actually. But the thing is, we didn't exactly kill her. She went back into the Network and she took the Echo with her. So that's probably not good overall.

There's a really nice message after from Failsafe who doesn't really want to say goodbye, but also realises that she doesn't have to rely on other people to feel like there's a point in going on. She can go on for herself. Which definitely didn't make me cry (lie).

And Saint also confirms after that Maya is still around:

And Saint being Saint:

Also from Ikora from the radio message, really important stuff:

Lore tab is really cool as well! Some absolutely hilarious bits with Nimbus and Failsafe and I need more interactions between them now:

She shrewdly routed the message alerts to her external display screen. "Nimbus, buddy—" she began. "Hint taken," Nimbus grinned, spreading their huge hands wide. "I'll let you get back to your whole being-a-ship thing. If you see Osiris, tell him Jisu Calerondo is looking for an interview about his sick bird hat. Or, no, say that the CloudArk is losing integrity and only the biorhythms from, like, a truly old and decrepit dude will save it!" "I'm on it," Failsafe said, and pushed an ASCII image of a thumbs-up to her display. Nimbus laughed and gave Failsafe two enormous finger guns as they transmatted out.

Failsafe's reaction to Eido sending her a message as well:

She puzzled next over a message from House Light Scribe Eido, as it did not appear to contain any discernable requests. She marked it for non-urgent reply and sorted it into one of her new subfolders: SOCIALIZATION (PLATONIC).

Then there's Osiris with the information that he and Saint are looking through the Network for Maya and the Echo. It's a really good one for closing the episode.

But as I said, there's still an epilogue quest which requires going into Encore again and finding "anomalies" which contain recordings between Maya and Chioma that killed me in one hit.

There's also a secret triumph this week that can be unlocked and it relates to the Whisper portal, but it's a secret so if you don't want to google around, basically: load into expert Encore and head to the Whisper portal location. The door will be closed, but there should be the Whisper exotic perk icon above it. If you equip Whisper, the door will open and then you can go through the portal which will be active. Once you do that, you'll have 35 minutes to complete Encore on expert to unlock the secret triumph and get an emblem we were wondering about last week. No need to do the extra puzzles or anything, just complete the mission.

I really enjoyed this episode overall as it hit all the right interests for me. Really good cast, loved the return of Failsafe, absolutely died over everything in regards to Saint and Osiris and how close and physical they were allowed to be on screen so much (which is, btw, the first time they've done so. We've had lore tabs and the kiss cutscene and all, but Saint and Osiris have never actually been together on screen in this way before, as all previous appearances was Savathun or them just standing next each other or just them together on comms; the level of physicality and contact and all the stuff they talked about is so important as we've not really had anything like it before).

Absolutely incredible that we got to see Maya and Chioma, what they looked like and all their interactions, especially the epilogue ones where we got a glimpse into how their life was before everything fell apart. And with the knowledge that there's more of them in the Network, I will continue to believe that somewhere out there they're still living a happy life. And Ikora agrees:

Getting to hear these two together on comms and getting so many updates and information about them was an incredible treat. They've been such foundational and important characters to Destiny since the start. We knew about their relationship since the beginning, even back in the day when queer content was really, essentially, not allowed and pushed under the rug. But Maya and Chioma were there and we got to learn so much more about them. A lot of it really heartbreaking, but a lot of it also really nice.

I hope Maya and her Echo will continue being in the story in some way in the future. There's also a question of her Vex Collective as well and what she's done to the Vex in general, but also specifically the Precursors. I wonder if we'll get more into that eventually when the Vex are back as a threat (because in a way, they have to).