#destiny 2 forsaken spoilers

[crispy0nion]

Forsaken and Season of the Wish parallelism

[theforsakenprince]

Forsaken // Season of the Chosen // Season of the Wish

"The line between light and dark is so very thin... do you know which side you're on?"

[abyssalcleave]

forsaken // the final shape

[cannyparagon]

Maya Sundaresh

[fandom-geek]

...don't mind me, i'll just be over here crying

[screenshotserenity]

Destiny 2: Forsaken (2018) vs Destiny 2: Lightfall - Season of the Wish (2024)

[clovis-bray-ate-my-son]

I'm calling it now that's not the real Cayde it's just the witness fucking with us

[thefirstknife]

The destiny reddit is an absolute warzone right now. Do yourself a favor and avoid it like the plague

Oh no. I saw a lot of negative comments overall and while I understand where they're coming from, I think at some point, some people should calm down.

I mentioned some of the issues I had with the campaign and I stand by them, I think some of this stuff definitely felt rushed and that we're sorely lacking basic information to understand the plot. But I can get over that if it's fairly reasonable to believe we'll find out eventually (and it is) and if the rest is solid. And to me, the rest is solid.

I know people have issues with strand taking too much time from the campaign, and I get it. But also to me, strand being such a huge part of the story made the campaign feel more personal and invested for US, the Guardian. To me, that was the point. I do wish the campaign was a bit more expansive, perhaps another mission or two would've been perfect imo. An extra mission could've delved into the history of the Veil and what it means. It's a legitimate complaint that I share, but also some people online have been expressing it... rather explosively.

I'd also add a counter to my own complaint; when it comes to the plot about the Veil and the Witness and the Traveler, it's clear that this isn't the end; it's a setup. Everything that happened here we can learn about retroactively in a month or six months or a year. It may suck because it's content for THIS expansion so we want to know now, but it CAN be explained later.

But strand? Strand can't. We have to learn it NOW. We can't get strand and then have a really cool personal discovery quest about mastering it in a month or six or a year. So if they didn't have time to fit another two missions into the campaign, it's fairly obvious what is being cut.

Is it clumsy? Yeah, definitely. I definitely feel like some crucial information has been deliberately cut away and removed, possibly waiting to be delivered during the year to prepare us for The Final Shape. I'm not a fan of that method, I would prefer a solid chunk of lore about the current story to be delivered in the current story. If anything, then for clarity. Especially because the majority of the players will not be waiting around to read 15 lore tabs during the year to figure out what's the Veil. A major expansion should be self-contained.

But for the love of god, some of what I've seen online is basically some players acting like we have E.T. (1982) on our hands. Like, I agree that there's issues and I've spoken about them and I can do it again at any point, but at the end of the day, I had fun and the good stuff was good. Literally my only true complaint is that it feels like a mission or two are missing. Pretty much every problem I have would've been solved with that. But that's an unknown amount of extra time of work so I cannot make a comment whether they could've done that or not. I will assume they couldn't so they didn't. Generally don't like assuming that they did it maliciously because then we go into dev harrassment territory.

[baede-6]

*uses strand on Cayde so we never get separated during the "Cayde's Fate" quest*

[brittleskyblue]

Ngl, I wasn't too surprised by what happened in the new seasonal story update (it just went down a bit differently than I thought it would), cause I saw that one coming a mile away.

But also, now I'm having more oc thoughts that will inevitably show up in fics.

(Put bellow the cut because of spoilers)

* * *

(Context note: in my lore for my oc group, Tyrell-3 ends up getting together with Crow at the end of Season of the Hunt. So the fact that Crow might go down this vengeance path is... quite worrying for Tyrell. He’s seen it happen before..)

"Is that what you really want, Crow? Vengeance? It doesn't-"

"Don't you? She was your friend too. You've known her longer-"

"Of course Amanda was my friend and knowing that she's gone fucking hurts! But I can't just- argh, Crow just, please hear me out."

"We can't just sit here and do nothing."

"....I know. You may not believe it, but I have been here before. Crow, I was there. On the Shore when Nelan was...."

".....You can say it, you know."

"Look; you want this so badly? Ask Nelan how well that worked out for them."

[14cookiesinajar]

Is this why we finally got the Cayde memorial?!?!

[gothbard]

spoilery and disorganized thoughts for the end of this season of destiny 2 under the cut

HOLY SHIT Y’ALL!

like i didn’t expect rasputin to die, but i really didn’t expect a self sacrifice like that! i thought it would be something more like permanently shutting down his network and just remote detonating the warsats. which i also had no idea had those laser cannons, i thought they were basically just big bombs that he could throw around if need be. but it just so tragically and wonderfully showed how much ana helped him grow into his own person (i’m not crying, you’re crying!) and everything that went into it, today and over the season, the writing, acting, music, and animation was just *chef’s kiss*

also it feels a lot like they’ve been hinting that eramis isn’t so loyal to the witness after all. between how she talked with and saved eido, the way the witness punished her, and the fact that there’s no way she’d become a disciple, it really seems like this is more a matter of just having a shared enemy and needing a way to get an edge on the guardians. like, she almost seemed hesitant to fire on the traveler until she saw the witness on the screen and her surprise that it stayed by earth instead of fleeing makes me hope even more that she’ll wind up joining us eventually

and the veil? wasn’t that an old name for a faction that would have served the darkness even more directly than the hive or even have been born from it? but it’s some kind of “object of immense paracausal power”? since that’s something people have struggled to replicate it could be some kind of relic, but neomuna was created with golden age tech and has only advanced from there so maybe it’s something they created? a name like that doesn’t sound like any sort of weapon unless it’s meant to be evocative of the veil between life and death. or it could be more like peeling back the veil as an expression to learn more about things? no matter what it is i CAN’T WAIT for next season!

i do feel bad for people that are gonna have to do that last mission solo though since that boss battle can be pretty tough

[itsnotthesam]

Destiny 2 The Final Shape Spoilers!

The campaign was slightly disappointing because it felt like it stopped just as it was getting good, but tbh I forgive everything in the main campaign for Wild Card.

I’ve loved Crow and his story from when he was first teased in Forsaken. I’ve loved the drama of how he’s technically the hunter vanguard this whole time because of the dare. I loved when we would get little updates on how miserable he was and how much of an outcast he was when he was a new light. And I’ve loved him even more ever since he’s been on screen, from his reunion with the guardians proper, to his weird relationship with his sister, it’s all been incredible, and rough and great.

The scene where Cayde names him vanguard, and tells him that it’s not because of the dare made me cry. It was such a perfect payoff for the 5+ year journey this character has been on. I can’t get over how happy I am at this outcome. It’s soooo good I can look on the narrative stuff in this dlc I’m less extatique about with better feelings because of how good this was

[mail-me-a-snail]

pls i hope you give us your Vance related PL thoughts one day <3 I’m sure he has a normal time of it

oh man. i could gush for hours about phantom liberty. dlcs dont usually engage me--the most "recent" exception having been destiny 2's last dlc with activision, forsaken--but phantom liberty gripped me by the membrane and throttled me within an inch of my life.

i mean, if it did that to me, imagine what it did to vance.

(spoilers follow)

it isn't 't the first time vance has gotten a holo from an unknown number.

that's the biz; most clients want secrecy. the private type don't trust fixers--they don't do middlemen. they cut straight to the point. vance has dealt with these kinds of clients before. they don't know the streets like he does; they don't give a shit to, either.

they give him the gist of what they want done; the finer details don't matter. job's a job--as long as he takes care of the gonk who needs flatlining, or klep whatever needs klepping, the scratch'll come through, no problem.

that's how it's supposed to go.

but songbird opens with this: she knows what's happening to him. she knows about the relic's slow poison; she knows about vance, who he was, is, and pretends to be; and she knows how to help.

the promise of a cure colors her tone, but she knows better than to make it here and now on the holo. so she asks vance to meet her at the gate to dogtown.

vance is fresh off a gig. he's maybe a kilometer from dogtown proper, can see the open, rounded top of the stadium peeking out from behind the buildings in the distance. black smoke rises over the skyline. seems there's always a fire in dogtown.

he had been nursing a cigarette on his bike--jackie's arch--when songbird had called him. he flicks what remains of the cigarette onto the pavement. grinds it out under his heel. he mounts the arch.

private-types always end up asking to meet at a secondary location.

this--this part of the routine that's been ingrained in him for the past year or so--he knows how to follow.

--

the malfunction tears through his parts with the precision of a ripper's scalpel.

it knows where to curl its long, electric-blue fingers in his internal wires. it knows how hard to tug; it doesn't stop, either. the force of it sours, taut, in the back of vance's throat.

the silver prongs connected to his spine rattle. they shake until they buzz--then that buzz sharpens into ringing. one constant note, ringing into eternity, rising without changing pitch.

it aches from within vance's very teeth. sits heavy on his useless tongue--the same tongue he fears that he'll end up biting during one of these seizures.

there was a time when the relic thought him still human. it's only recently that it's learned the true nature of its host. it's only recently that it's found out how much more it can feed on.

it's only recently that it's started affecting johnny, too.

he doesn't know how it happens--doesn't know if johnny's starting to share his pain, or if they're feeling each other's in a tenuous feedback loop.

either way, the relic is decaying, and it's taking them with it.

vance curls up against the nearest solid mass he can find; remembers he has to breathe; forgets, exactly, how to do that; reaches for johnny, who's seizing right in front of him--

and songbird reaches back.

she touches his shoulder. her hand carries no weight other than that of buzzing static. the sound bleeds into the malfunction's miasma of noise. she speaks, carefully, calmly, but whatever she says, the relic swallows.

her words seem to please it, however--because a few moments later, the malfunction trickles away. it leaves nothing in its wake but a bone-deep soreness and a few blue tessellations crackling across johnny's non-corporeal form.

the large lapels of songbird's jacket curl around her throat. beneath that and a number of colorful pins, she wears a rather nondescript netrunning suit in contrast. vance doesn't miss the cyberdeck attached to her hip.

she looks like any other runner. in fact, vance had traipsed around night city in something similar an eternity ago--only difference being the absence of his team colors of hexagonal red-and-black.

but she's got no symbols of her own. no iconography denoting her allegiance to any one patron. he would've taken her for one of the afterlife's enny-a-dozen netrunners, then--had it not been for the fact that she could see johnny.

she touches him, too. she grasps the ghost's shoulder as easily as if--as if...she were a ghost herself.

data crackles in vance's ear; it's not the relic's tell-tale, almost musical blue purr. he usually welcomes the sound because it means johnny's somewhere around him, some lame-ass quip ready to fall from his lips.

but this data is red and black and angry and alive.

it writhes; spits; it takes johnny with it.

for the first time in the past few months, vance's head falls quiet.

it's so quiet that the absence feels more like a cavity.

it aches like one, too.

she's not like any other runner, if she can do that.

the realization leaves him reeling with more than just the after-effects of a relic malfunction: it's got him dizzy with the idea that she's like him.

--

songbird doesn't win vance over by taking johnny away from him. he can feel her confusion with that underlying her every instruction, but she's got bigger things to worry about.

ask any of the techies from his arasaka days and they'd tell you this: vance is the last person to give a shit about the president of the NUSA.

he's not an NUSA citizen; he's especially not about to lick her heels just 'cause she used to run militech, either. his parents had fought in the war she had started all those years ago--it's in his corpo blood to hate her, or, at least, what she stands for.

but a job's a job, and song's not gonna give johnny up until vance swallows his pride.

he'll do as she says. he's got too much to lose not to.

--

that same red data plays with vance's surroundings as songbird talks to him. she props open doors; gets rusted old elevators groaning back to life; all from the relative safety of--wherever she is.

that takes skill. splitting himself in two like that--he could never pull that trick off, not for lack of trying.

granted, arasaka hadn't built him to be stationary. they had made sure he'd always be on the move. they had grafted an entire torso's worth of realskinn onto him so his machine parts could breathe in the cool, polluted air of night city as he ran through its gutter-like streets.

and that living data--it's as bright as copper and just as conducive; it carries with it that same, rotting taste. it's not just any fancy code. it's not even something that could be called a runner's signature; calling it that would imply it's likely to allow someone ownership.

that code isn't just black with ICE--it is ICE. it's several layers of thick, hostile ICE.

vance had only seen such a thing in cyberspace. way out there, lurking on the horizon, ever-present and closely guarded.

(because of the highly personalized nature of cyberspace, perhaps vance had invited it to stay).

even with his pull in arasaka's ranks, neither the techies or netwatch would've ever let him touch the blackwall.

but song's got it eating out of the palm of her hand.

...which means rosalind myer's been keeping what she doesn't understand on a leash for the past decade, and no one's been the wiser.

not even arasaka.

later, when he looks rosalind in the eye as he digs the tracker out of her neck--his touch comes too soft for someone like her, he realizes, though he doesn't do so on purpose--he wonders if she knows who, or what, he is.

if, if she does, then she must know what arasaka had intended him to be--why wouldn't she, after all, when song had been the one to order him after her?

--

johnny fills their first night in dogtown with doubt.

"this a normal tuesday for ya, v?" he asks vance. the ghost sits backwards on a rusted old folding chair in front of him. "savin' the skin of the fuckin' president of the NUSA?"

"sure," vance answers. he can't sleep. hasn't tried.

they both listen to myers breathing on the next mattress over for few moments.

then, he continues, quieter this time. "way things'll be goin', seems we're punchin' hansen's ticket same time next week."

johnny rests his chin on his crossed arms. his chrome arm gleams in the low, blue light coming from what could generously be called a window.

"think you're gonna be outta here that fast?" johnny shakes his head. "ain't how quick myers and her ilk operate."

"bureaucracy, that it? gotta wait for the paperwork to zero hansen?"

(he's not a stranger to the concept, but he had figured he had left that sort of thing behind.)

the ghost hums as the thought passes through their shared subconscious.

"'s not the NUSA tellin' ya to zero 'im. that's how they do biz: they get an idea in your head, and--'fore ya know it--they're washing their hands of you."

vance sighs; one long, full body sigh, broad shoulders rising and falling with it. this scop again.

he eases backwards into the mattress that he sits on. a spring digs against his back. he runs his hands down his face; the monowire pads pressed into his palms are marble smooth on his cheeks. he sets his hands on his chest.

data purrs--relic blue, this time--as johnny manifests beside him.

the latter turns his head to the former. johnny's eyes remain on the ceiling; his features are hard to discern from the stark shadows falling across his face. his long hair fans out around him. it's easy to forget, sometimes, especially in quiet moments like this, that johnny isn't even really there.

vance takes the illusion as it is, without question, and follows johnny's eyes to the popcorned ceiling.

"don't doubt you know what you're talkin' about," vance offers.

"but you're still gonna help 'er," johnny counters, quickly.

"mmhmm."

he makes a show of sighing. "why am i not surprised?"

"'cause you'd do the same."

"bullshit."

"so, yer sayin'--" vance props himself up on one elbow, dog tags coming to dangle around his neck-- "that even if there's a pretty damn real possibility of gettin' you off the relic--

"--big fuckin' if, don't ya think--"

"--you ain't even gonna stick around to find out if it's true?"

"there it is again--if, v, if."

"but what if it is true?" vance tips his head. "what if song really could help us?"

johnny finally looks at him. his lips are pressed into a thin line; he's not pleased. "what the hell was it that i just said, v? they get an idea in yer head--"

"--then they wash their hands of ya. i know." he lies back down, the motion a concession in and of itself. "heard ya the first time."

"ya got too much hope than what's good for ya, v." johnny turns on his side to face him. "'s how they get their claws in you. promise you one thing, quid-pro-quo, and they'll lead you down a shithole of your own makin'. just can't see how far you've dug yourself 'til you're lookin' up from rock bottom."

"fuck," vance breathes, amused. he meets johnny's eyes with a grin. "run that last line by me one more time, johnny--gotta make sure i got it down for the silverhand doctrine."

"oh--" johnny laughs, dry but warm-- "fuck off, v."

--

vance meets reed in the following days; he had almost missed the pressure of a gun nestling between his ribs. then, alex, if that really is her name this time.

he sees how the years between them have soured--both the time they had spent on the field together, and the time they had spent apart afterwards.

he learns how song had betrayed reed--on rosalind's orders.

just how far does the shithole go?

can't answer that without stopping to look up.

and they can't stop, not yet; hansen's playing diplomat with night city's brightest and boldest, songbird's in her cage, and the black sapphire's looking like the place to be.

--

vance doesn't miss johnny's glance over--doesn't miss how quickly johnny looks away when he catches the ghost staring, either.

the shell of johnny's ear and the red piercings clipped into the cartilage face vance. the latter pale in comparison to the blush dusting johnny's scruffy cheek.

vance sidles up to him--away from reed's eyes--and leans into his space. the black mesh stretching across his stomach and chest whispers with the motion. it's soft against his exposed skin. he tucks his hands behind his back.

"like what you see?" vance teases, in a murmur.

johnny finds the sea of other brightly colored guests very interesting all of a sudden. he's so intrigued by them that he doesn't dignify vance's question with a response.

--

it's at the black sapphire that vance sees so mi for what she really is: little of flesh, all machine. myers had not done for song what arasaka had done for vance; she hadn't deigned to hide the true nature of her prize netrunner.

white, block letters run up song's spine and spell MILITECH. myers hadn't bothered hide the mark of her allegiance, either.

or, perhaps, the mark of her owner.

embossed letters spell ARASAKA on vance's innermost machine parts. when he sees song's back for the first time, he swears he can almost feel those letters start to itch.

--

even after vance learned what song had done to reed; had learned how far she was willing to go; how much she was willing to give; he would have never turned her in.

it's not because reed and alex had needlessly killed the two netrunners they had stolen the identities of. it's not because reed makes his skin crawl, reminding him too much of white, sterile clinics and martyr-like vows of loyalty and the absence of a worthwhile life outside of bureaucratic routine. it's not because of so mi's promise to help him, either.

he doesn't turn her in because if it had been him in her shoes--and it could've very easily turned out that way for him, had arasaka pushed him a little farther--he would've done anything to be free, too.

she is not like him--that implies they're on equal footing.

no, she is exactly what arasaka had wanted. she is what they had spent ten years trying to (unknowingly) replicate. she is the perfection of red and black and angry and alive data.

she had existed this whole time--and vance had had no idea.

he and johnny have a bond that goes beyond flesh and bone and chrome. if there's ever a day where they're finally separated, vance will think that separation only superficial.

but vance and songbird...

songbird is the netrunner vance would've been had arasaka kept going. if they hadn't resigned to throwing him out when they deemed him "obsolete".

if song hadn't chipped through the blackwall of her own volition--would rosalind myers, former ceo of arasaka's rival company militech, still have kept her around?

if vance had gone against arasaka's wishes and interacted with the blackwall--would they have called him obsolete?

would he have even met johnny? so mi?

how deep would they have been willing to dig themselves if it meant having a chance at survival?

it's like johnny had said--can't answer that without looking up from rock bottom.

but all vance sees is song leaving him behind; all he sees is the promise she had never truly made; all he sees are stars.

[haldenlith]

The Road to Giving Ardwynn [a] Head (Pt 1)

So I've been learning Blender, and while the Donut Tutorial was a nice introduction, I learn better with something to hyperfixate on, and I do love my dumb boy, Ardwynn.

Which led to me to make the decision to jump into the deep end and model his head/bust, and learning how to do it all along the way. And not just in a stylized style, but aiming more for realism. My guiding star is the level we see in the Destiny 2 cutscenes. In fact, Forsaken Uldren is my reference for how to approach a lot of Ardwynn's Awoken features, since they (by accident) have similar features.

I figured I'd share this with you guys in segments. (The Discord I'm in gets the annoyance joy of realtime complaining.) A Tumblr Exclusive, if you will.

For the record, I have almost no idea what the fuck I'm doing. I know what UV Maps and Texture Maps are, and what Alpha Maps are, and that's.... about it.

I'm sure it'll be fine. This can't be too complicated, right? Right?

Narrator voice: It's extremely complicated. I highly recommend working your way up to this, not jumping to it like I have.

For the record, this is a lot of cobbling information from Youtube tutorials together. These ones are the ones I can remember that I've had some success with so far. I'll probably mention more as I go/as I remember.

"Sculpt a Realistic Head in Blender" "Ultimate Guide to Realistic Eyes in Blender" "Handpainting Stylized Textures in Blender" "Using a Cage for Perfect Baking" "Face Retopology" (This is in Maya, not Blender, but the concept still applies)

Anyway, long post is long.

Thank goodness Blender lets you make new little windows inside the application, and open up images and stuff. I made a new boring reference sketch of Ardwynn's head just for this. Working from big shapes to fine details is... tough, because I have a tendency to go ZOOM into fine details. I tunnel vision real bad, so this is at least a good practice into NOT doing that.

Progress, but something feels off. Giving more Patrick Stewart, less Ardwynn. The sculpting tools are surprisingly easy to use, by the way. The real trick is knowing when to hit "Remesh".

Spoiler Alert: I don't. This is a problem that bites me in the ass later....

Mmmm, yes, it's all coming together. That looks more like my boy. The scar was easier to do than I expected, though I'm not sure how to approach his split lips, as the way his scar is, it stretches his mouth up, leaving a bit of it perpetually open. I'll just treat it like the eyes and just model a tiny cavity. It's not like anyone's going to see that. I can fix it later if it's an issue. A future me problem, if you will.

Are you seeing a trend here? Because if you're thinking "oh, they've already said they had problems down the line, and now this is another bit of foreshadowing", you're correct. Again, another spoiler alert: it was a future me problem.

I've learned from doing art for forever that focusing too long on one thing gives my brain some sort of creative fatigue. "When you start to hate or feel bored with something, work on something else in the picture" is probably the best advice I've ever gotten, and I'm applying it here, too. I decided to tackle how to model glowing eyes. At this point, I've grabbed Uldren/Crow's low-poly in-game mesh and picked it apart specifically to look at his eyes. I'd kill to get the high-poly cinematic one, but that's not available to the general public, so it'll have to do. I apply a little of what I learned and tada! Budget glowing eyes. They work for the purpose of learning Emission nodes and all that shit in the Shaders section of Blender. They're placeholders for now. I'll make better eyes later. And look! They fit! Mostly.

Do you smell that? More foreshadowing.

I mess around with more than basic flat color shaders for skin, and turn on Subsurface Scattering (SSS). Mm, yes, nice. I also made some teeth for the moment to see if the scar needs tweaking. It did, but overall things are shaping up nicely!

But Blender is starting to crash and run real slow. Weird.

I try out Texture Painting and it just isn't working, so as I start to get really frustrated, I decide to bounce back to the Compositing tab, remembering what I learned about it when doing The Donut Tutorial. Ah, yes, this will make his eyes glow very nicely. Though I'm not super satisfied with it. I move on to seeing if I can't start to decipher the mystery that is hair.

Blender still isn't doing too hot, and though the hair is a fun side-tangent, I'd like to have the skin done and dusted before I move on. With some googling, I find the most common suggestion is make a UV map. Okay. I try that and it's a mess. More googling and I find the common suggestion if you're using a high-poly sculpt is to "retopologize" it. Okay, so I look that up. Fun fact, the first video I follow along with is not what's linked. It's super basic and I found didn't really explain much when I had to redo the mesh.

Redo the mesh you say? Well, you see, I spent 8-9 hours building a low poly version of this bastard's head (with the Mirror modifier, don't worry), and I had an addon suggested to me: RetopoFlow. Curious, I got it, and tried to use it to speed up finishing the mesh up, because I was beyond over it. It was, by far, the most boring fucking process of this whole journey so far.

I, in my infinite lack of wisdom, did not, in fact, make a copy of my work. I somehow end up fucking up the mesh and trying to push too far ahead with it, meaning fixing the fuck-up is too far back to undo to. I also hit save, because I chronically save every five seconds due to paranoia of the program crashing. I lament, delete the mesh, start from scratch, but this time inside of RetopoFlow from the start, and with a new video to guide me. However, I notice a warning pop up from RF that the "mesh was too large (> 1m)". Confused, I check it. I also notice in the video the guy mentions needing a "lower poly version" of the sculpt to work with. "Let's go with 75K."

My sculpt can't be that big right?

Aha. Ha ha. Hm. Ahem.

So I might've hit "Remesh" too many times. I learned why Blender was crashing and having issues, needless to say. I learned how to use the Decimate modifier to... not be at 5M faces/vertices. I have to literally just walk away for it to work, because it took Blender 30 minutes to do, but it did work. Eventually I get to retopo'ing it, this time with a much more organized and nice looking topology. Huzzah! But I lose out on details this way. Oh? I need something called a "normals" map? I learn what that is, but again so many of these videos seem to neglect to mention important information, like how it works and why you're not supposed to have the high-poly mesh showing through the low-poly. I... spent a while working on an issue thanks to lack of information. I eventually make a cage and try baking a new Normals map this time, with much better results exceeeeeeept.

The split in the lip is the new problem to bite Future Me. No pictures for this portion, because I didn't take any screenshots for this. I eventually had to go in and carefully redo the topography of the low-poly mesh around the lip scar area and make it open. I also had to cut it open on the high-poly sculpt. After that, the Normals FINALLY baked right and stopped giving me some very weirdly textured lips.

Finally, I was able to move on. I made a UV map, made a shiny new texture for Ardwynn's skin and face... It was going good.

But that wasn't the end of my problems. When I finally made new eyes, which looked very cool...

Something about the properly sized eyeball no longer worked in the eye sockets I made, and not in a little way, as little fixes never looked quite right. I did manage to fix it, but that meant I had to retopo the eye area, and update the UV and the Normals, and fix the texture because it no longer really looked good. (On the plus side, I painted more details into it, so that worked out.)

I'm really happy with the eyes, though. Bless whoever put close-ups of Uldren's eyes in Forsaken cutscenes. They helped immensely.

The skin wasn't fully sorted out, as I needed to do a few more detail items, but I decided to bounce to something else for a bit after fixing all of that. I needed a break. I took my knowledge from mucking around with hair earlier to start working on eyelashes and eyebrows, to make Ardwynn look a little less odd. I had some success, but hm, they still seemed way too thick. Time to consult Youtube.

(I stumbled upon a video on eye tracking and went ahead and set that up, just to make eye positioning easier later. It's not perfect, but it is easier than trying to position the eyes manually.)

Found a tutorial, by the same guy I went to for figuring out the proper shape of the eyes. Buuuut I also took the time to deal with the weird light leak and SSS issue I was having around the eyes. The pitfalls of glowing eyes on a model, I guess. And now I'm at the "fighting with the eyebrow" stage. I'll probably have to hit up a tutorial for that, too, since it looks less like an eyebrow and more like someone glued a piece of a shag rug to his face.

Also I see more issues that need fixing. This time with the ears. Ugh, this feels like it's neverending... 😩

I'll come back later with more progress in a separate post. Fall classes have started, so my free time to fight work with this is about to diminish considerably.

[a-particular-quetzalcoatl]

Narrative Weight and Desensitization to Death

Thinking about the end of Destiny 2: Forsaken, and an interesting trend that I've noticed concerning the treatment of death in certain media.

What is it about certain games dancing around the concept of taking a life?

A problem with a lot of poor storytelling in games is the inability to give any serious narrative weight to character death, ESPECIALLY if the player character is indirectly or directly responsible. One of the things I'd like to argue in this little essay is how the mitigation of any responsibility is detrimental as a whole, and that the argument for the infantization of the playing audience is ultimately a weak one.

Warning: Discussion of serious topics including death, murder, and executions.

So let's talk about the ending of Destiny 2: Forsaken as an example. For those who don't know the plot of Forsaken, I will quickly review it with minimal spoilers.

Forsaken is a DLC of the mainline of Destiny 2 which follows the player (known as the Guardian), on a quest for revenge after a man by the name of Uldren Sov kills someone that the Guardian had gotten to know fairly well over the course of the game. Hunting down the forces that Uldren has accumulated around himself, you eventually come before the man himself, who reveals that he has been manipulated by an entity disguised as his assumed deceased sister. But he is still responsible for his actions, and as the entity is defeated, the Guardian goes to kill him with a single shot to the head.

Or at least, that's what you would think, right?

Instead, out of nowhere, an NPC that you have been speaking to for a majority of the questline appears out of thin air and essentially agrees to fire their gun at the same time as you. The question I have is: why?

Why was this considered necessary? To understand why this decision was made, we have to go to the mitigation of psychological trauma in firing squads. Or why firing squads exist in the first place on a psychological level.

Firing squads reduce the psychological trauma of each individual by dispersing responsibility. Essentially, by having every person fire at once, it is uncertain who was responsible for ending the life of the person on the other side. There are also cases of blanks being loaded into the majority of the guns to make it difficult to tell who is responsible. As an individual, you can delude yourself into believing you have no responsibility.

By providing the NPC at the end of Forsaken, Destiny attempts to protect the player from the actions of the story following through... which ultimately makes the ending of the story fall flat. Forsaken is a story of revenge, and I think ultimately its futility. Uldren is dead at the end of the day, but what does that really mean? People are still dead, and your mad crusade has not made them live again. It is your revenge, so it is—it should be—your responsibility to see it through. But with the ending as it is, you can ultimately dust your hands off of any responsibility, and thus the narrative weight of the character's decisions is barely felt.

We see this mitigation of any sort of responsibility everywhere. The refusal to have player characters be responsible for deaths, refusing to develop the person on the other end of a narratively heavy death, the lack of any real consequences for decisions... and that point is the most serious of all.

Lack of responsibility for your actions is not a trait you should foster, yet we see it everywhere. Writers choose to infantize their audiences by pulling punches as conceivably (and inconceivably) as possible, preferring to remove any narrative weight of death rather than shock the person on the other end of the controller. But as a result, this only worsens the desensitization to death by adding another layer of dispersed responsibility to the already existing disconnect between player and character.

This isn't always the case, of course. There are games that aren't attempting to tell a serious story, so they choose to keep it light-hearted. But for a game that is trying to tell a story with heavier topics, it's a cop-out to tell the audience that there are no consequences to their actions.

We have grown afraid of hurting our audience. But in telling a painful, sorrowful story, to reach a person's heart is often to hurt them. For if we can hurt them in this fictional moment, perhaps one day when the danger and pain is real they will know sorrow and know that they too can survive