#episode revenant spoilers

[kayzean]

My tired ass was not listening...

Help i genuinely forgot i had the cat petting emote equipped. That was completely unintentional. Never has an emote been more perfect tho.

Bonus:

Me whenever I see Crow:

[bladecyberstrike]

I thought it started out funny with Variks and Eramis sniping at each other, then the Apothecary told Crow to do... This lmao.

Everybody was being so mean to each other on comms, it was great

[nevertrustanoracle]

The HELM starts crashing and I’m immediately crying “*gasp* Captain Jacobson! Not the frog! 😱”

Not worried about anyone else, just the frog.

[haldenlith]

So, just me rambling about Revenant Act III and the ending we got, but... man... I don't know.

That was... really undercooked and underwhelming, narratively speaking, and the gameplay loop just did not hit right at all for me. I gave up and just watched the damn ending stuff on Youtube. I genuinely did not find running the Exotic mission over and over again enjoyable, at all. It was, in essence, the exact same mission each time. Almost nothing changed outside of dialogue and a different Scorn boss at the very end.

This was not helped by the fact I got error coded and kicked out, and had to run the mission multiple times just in an attempt to finish the damn thing and move on with the story mission.

I think that exacerbated how unsatisfied I felt with the story, too. If I'm throwing myself at a brick wall multiple times, the story better be compelling as fuck, and it just... wasn't. Not to mention how things were segmented out just made the episode as a whole weaker. The Apothecary? Her whole story thread? For how important she was? That shit should not have been in the (extremely buggy) Fieldwork missions. It should have been part of the main quest chain. That was not optional information for the narrative.

Also, Misraaks's ascension to Kell of Kells? Weak. Bizarrely so. We've had a prophecy being drilled into us ever since the days of Skolas's first appearance. It damn near sounded biblical. I expected... more. Maybe Misraaks would die, protecting his daughter or something -- the what isn't important, the death is -- and then, by a stroke of The Light (NOT a Ghost), he breathes life once again, chosen. Heck, maybe Eramis could've even brought him back with The Light from the Echo? I don't know. Something more, something leaning on The House of Rain prophecy, something more interesting, more worthy than the guy being the only guy left on the lineup, and we shrug and go "guess you win by default, my man."

Like come on. Really?

And then there's, for me, the elephant in the room: Fikrul. On one hand, I am pleasantly surprised they let us kill him for reals. No bait and switch. No "oh no he escaped! *snaps fingers* Darn!" like with Maya. Not even a dubious fade-to-black death. He died right on screen. It's nice to get actual finality to a boss like this without it being some big Raid or Expansion thing. THAT SAID, I am disappointed in how he was handled. Or, rather, how the loose-end side of him was handled.

Crow is in the episode, trying his best to do his job as the new Hunter Vanguard, and it's endearing, and it would've been perfectly fine for that to be his only role....... If it weren't for the sheer amount of HISTORY between him and Fikrul. He's the entire reason Fikrul exists. We get a little of it in Act I and then... nothing else. It's weird and unsatisfying. It also feels inconclusive. For me, that was a loose thread that just never got tied off. Hell, talking to Crow at the end is optional, which blows my mind. Fikrul and Crow are characters that are intertwined. We hear this in Fikrul's boss lines! He references these things! And yet it feels kind of ignored. It also felt weird to hear so little from Crow on the matter, when Fikrul was enough of a regret, enough of a major pain point for him, that his form is what the Pyramid Nightmare manifested as in Season of the Haunted. I don't know, I guess just some kind of closure would've been nice. Some kind of "and now the cycle Uldren started is finally, truly over." I'm actually going to point at a very short fanfic for this. That there? If we had gotten that as a very short little cutscene at the tail end, after Eramis's "goodbye and good riddance" message, it would've been a perfect tie off point. It's over. It's truly, finally, over. Instead all we got was just a bit of dialogue that was easily missable. Feels Bad Man.

All of my complaints about the lukewarm narrative aside, my bigger complaints are the bugs. Jfc, the bugs. It almost feels like there isn't a QA team anymore, it's ridiculous. Everything combined just makes me not confident for the future. This isn't a game I want to stick with and spend money on, because I can't confidently say that I feel like I'm getting bang for my buck. It doesn't feel worth it. I don't know what I'm going to get -- a game that runs, or a game that might break under mysterious circumstances at a variety of points and for a variety of reasons. I'm sticking with my original plan of bowing out after finishing Revenant. Maybe Heresy will be good, who knows? I just know that I'm not super interested in playing this circus.

It's just not fun anymore, and it's not worth the monetary cost for me.

[unlucky-phantom]

Slight act 3 spoilers below!!

Anyone else think Bungie missed a trick in having us fight the Barron's.

Like it was very cool having to fight the Barron's.

But the whole time I was thinking

"Holy shit... we're gonna have to fight Taniks!!"

And then we didn't. I just thought it would have been cool.

[crimsonmischief]

Oh please Crow, like you've never done something stupid for the greater good 🙄

EPISODE REVENANT ACT 2 SPOILERS ❗️❗️

now why did he say that like it was a slur 😭

+1 to Guardian nicknames tho

[tarakanpaintedpurple]

Building the world anew takes resources, ok?

[abyssalcleave]

AHHH CROW HAS GROWN SO MUCH!!! i am in tears and shambles.

[snooze-mode]

One final thing for today, this being a bunch of lines that I kinda sorta stitched into something coherent. Someone has a crusshhhhhhhh

[zalia]

And this is why I had to delete my Reddit account to stop myself getting into fights about lore because the lack of understanding (and interest in) about how story *works* and about characters etc. was just... infuriating.

In the wider lore community, it does feel like there's a lot of people who see the narrative as a puzzle to be solved which has an objectively correct 'answer'. Or perhaps more, they see the narrative as a set of objective 'facts' that are stated clearly and can be learned so that they can list them off (as well as a perspective that they are the main character, so *obviously* the world must conform to their views and anything else is bad story). I think this is why you also get a lot of people who complain when characters aren't 'logical' or choosing the most objectively correct course of action 100% of the time. To this brand of fan, the story is a puzzle and *they* have solved it (while sitting at home on their computer in relative safety and comfort, with a surplus of time to spend thinking and dissecting every bit of info) and they don't get why the characters haven't (y'know, because of the trauma, living in a high stress situation under threat of apocalypse, where there are actual consequences for their choices - in the case of Eramis specifically... the Vanguard executing Eramis while leaving, say, Saint-14 alive, would really make it clear that the Eliksni in the City are second-class citizens who can expect harsher treatment legally, which doesn't really look great from the standpoint of ending violence). It's really frustrating to deal with, especially when it leads to 'loremasters' putting out information that is wrong or misleading, because they cannot do anything but the most surface level reading of a text - for example, one specific loremaster having a short video about how incredible Lord Shaxx is and how he's the strongest and best because he defeated Felwinter easily so many times! Ignoring that the lore is pretty clear that Felwinter was not trying to win. He was not there with the purpose of winning a fight. He was buying time and working to get Shaxx to trust him enough to side with the Iron Lords (and get access to the Seraph Bunker beneath his fortress). (I love Lord Shaxx, he is great, but we do not know how he would fare in a fair fight against Felwinter). It does feel like anything that isn't spelled out in block caps in a way a 3-year old could easily understand gets ignored or just... not understood. So I am absolutely unsurprised that Eramis and her story is being misunderstood so badly. (apologies for the rant, it is something that has been bugging me basically since I got into Destiny).

Eramis Executors are up in arms that our favorite, bitter, lesbian crab didn’t receive a bullet to her head to no one’s surprise. What happened to the overarching themes involving forgiveness and mending the wounds of the past to build a better future for everyone resonating with people? Does the Traveler and what it has been representing for 10 years mean nothing when it comes to Eramis? Were we supposed to abandon the power of friendship? Is punishment with no consideration the only way of dealing with those who have committed wrong acts that people know of?

[ripe-beetle]

Revenant prediction

[raillue]

First vanguard op

[wobbbiy]

Alright! I have my ketch transmat, my hatchlings, Slayer Baron title, and my Skolas emblem. I'm quite eliksni-fied. ::) Trying to think of what else I could do to add to the theme...

[kelgorath]

my beautiful wife waiting for me at the altar

[a-driftamongopenstars]

a gift for the departed; Crow & Fikrul ficlet;

i finally finished Act III and the resolution was interesting and I'll think about it more, I really wanted some closure for Crow (and Uldren!) and Fikrul. So I wrote my own :D also on ao3

It is a pilgrimage. Crow ascends the ruins of the would-be Kell's hideout as the remaining Scorn watch him out of sight. There is respect for him, yes, but there is more. There is scorn. It is something that cannot be undone, far too many wrongs.

Crow walks safely through the courtyard, through the tunnels that burrow through the rocky dungeon. With the last Scorn Barons dead, nothing but tainted cinder left in their wake, there is no need for violence.

His destination lies far ahead, across the dark maws of the Reef. Every room is an homage to Uldren's and Fikrul's dream. Awoken statues left in shambles, their sacred designs corrupted and perverted. All that the Prince and the Fanatic wanted to see but never lived to.

But the crown to that dream, the final destination, is where Fikrul's body lies. Crow's footsteps echo in the massive throne room, and he cannot look away from the pointed arch of his Sister's seat.

But that will have to wait.

Crow finds Fikrul's remains untouched. The only mark of his defeat is the poison-green webbing at his chest, where the Guardian has filled his Ether with Light and reverted what the Darkness has done. Crow is struck with a flashback, his fingers trembling, his eyes wetting with tears, as he remembers Fikrul's Ether-bleeding wounds from times ago. How he wished, oh how he wished with his whole heart, that Fikrul be spared from the Guardians' violence.

A wish granted, a son born. That is how he became a Father.

Crow shakes his head, wishing that memory away. The part of him which is Uldren weeps, and he lets it. It, too, deserves to mourn the loss.

He was not a good Father. He left his wish-made off-spring into a bodyguard, a weapon, an undying font of loyalty. And when he himself was put into the ground, his son was left stranded, bound forever to live on. Perhaps, such is the fate of children, however they come to be.

But in this outcome, Crow feels happier. The other part of him, righteous and bold, is glad that the Fanatic's rule is over. No more tortured Eliksni. No more death and rebirth, not for him, not like this.

So he turns to the other thing that calls to him. The throne that looks like a dark fork against the blood-red window.

He seats himself upon it. He reaches up for the pin in his hair and removes it, letting black strands fall in a familiar fashion down his head. His eyes, shining brightly in this dark, scout the room where everything is dead, still and unmoving.

His vision feels out of bounds and distant, yet focused entirely on this throne room. A memory once again, or, perhaps, something that never happened. A gift for the departed, a vision and a dream come true, if only for a moment.

Strange, how in order to move on, one has to return to the origins of pain. Crow finds himself in that situation more often than he wishes to. And yet, it is cathartic.

He feels Uldren's voice coat his vocal cords with bitter honey, his words elevated with the Awoken slant.

"I release you from my service," he says quietly, royally, aiming at nothing in particular and everything at once. "Now go. Be free."

The silent room echoes.

[ahamkara-apologist]

Here- I made a playlist of all the different Eramis monologues that I've gotten when visiting her so far. I'll probably add more if more get updated, but either way I'm having an absolute blast with this- I feel like I'm watching the Vanguard try to give a beat up old alley cat a dose of dewormer and a flea bath