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thefirstknife · 4 months ago

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The Infinite Forest

Sighs. This post has been on my mind since we saw the trailer for Echoes, because they showed us the gate to the Infinite Forest and I thought: how many people even recognise that? Let alone have been there? Or know stuff about it? It's not been in the game for over 4 years, outside of a few pvp maps.

The Infinite Forest was a victim of the yoinkening of planets at the end of Arrivals. Unlike Mars and Titan that have since returned, Mercury has not (and neither has Io) so there was really no reason to think about it until they decided to do something with that. And it appears they've decided, something I hoped they might do in Echoes, given that we've speculated from the start that it would be a Vex season.

But now that we did get the proof that we'll be dealing with it somehow, I want to get into it, and mostly because they gave us zero explanation about how is it even possible for us to consider the Forest. I'm going to have a normal time with this one. I know we'll get at least some answers in a few days, but I need to cook in the meantime so I don't descend into madness (too late). Obviously spoilers for this week under the cut, and also a long post:

What is the Infinite Forest?

How does it all work and why?

What happened to it?

Echoes

What is the Infinite Forest?

The best, and arguably only, source for this is unfortunately a vaulted campaign, Curse of Osiris. Here's a link to the campaign from Destiny Lore Vault, but there are also playthroughs around from the time it launched. It's not needed to watch the whole thing, although it is fairly short, but this is where most of the information about it comes from.

There's also the Osiris comics that accompanied the DLC; first two are available on Bungie's site. The third is only in the physical book, helpfully scanned here.

Probably the most concise explanations are from the campaign:

Reflection of Osiris: Behold — the Infinite Forest! A planet sized prediction engine, simulating trillions of realities in parallel, all geared towards a single Vex purpose. Keep going, and you'll see. Sagira: The Vex are simulating reality in here. Brute forcing the future. And before you ask: everything in here IS real enough to kill you.

And this entire lore tab:

Physically, I am beneath the surface of Mercury. That is what Sagira's sensors say. The Vex hollowed out the planet, replaced its molten heart with cold right angles. But that is not what I see. I see infinity. An infinity of possible worlds, so perfectly simulated as to be indistinguishable from the experiences I once called "reality." I can touch them, taste them, pass lifetimes in them! They grow within this machine like fruit upon a tree—no, a forest of trees, its fractal expansion nigh unmeasurable.

Essentially, the Infinite Forest is a simulation engine that the Vex use to make predictions and find possibilities that suit their goals. It's physically located inside of Mercury; the Vex dug into the planet and replaced its insides with the engine. So far it has only been accessible from Mercury, from a single gate. Putting my 7 year old screenshots here like grabbing pictures of loved ones from a photo album:

Ikora noted that Osiris spent a long time studying that gate back in the day, believing it's the entrance. And he was correct.

There is a Vex gateway near your location. Osiris spent years studying it. He was convinced it was the door to the infinite Forest. If it is still possible to find Osiris, we need to open that door.

Osiris, or rather, his reflection, also said:

First, I will show you where it all began. Mercury, untold centuries ago, before the Vex arrived. Here, the Vex planted the seed that became the Infinite Forest, and its Mind, Panoptes. Panoptes has a single purpose — reshape reality for the Vex.

To keep things simple, the campaign revolved around us stopping Panoptes from achieving the Vex' goals by using the Infinite Forest. We ended up killing it, of course. We did so by hopping around through the Forest, going to simulated pasts and futures.

But the Forest largely consists of a really weird constantly shifting space that looks like this:

Thank you past me for this really helpful screenshot. It looks like it's an open sky, but it's not; the ceiling is a solid flat surface. That is the surface of Mercury, seen from the inside of the planet. On the edges of the picture, there's two tall structures; one looks worn down and destroyed, the other looks newly built. These are the gates leading to the actual simulations. The left one leads to a simulated future and the right to a simulated past.

These structures are called "trees" and are the reason why this place is called the Infinite Forest. Each of these "trees" generates a simulation and leads there, but you have to go through this shifting reality with ever-changing platforms to reach them. This is the physical space needed to essentially "run" the Forest.

You can still see this on pvp maps Fragment and Convergence:

A lot of the stuff about how the Vex actually made this was not entirely confirmed at the time; the stuff about Mercury being converted back during the Collapse was something that's been in the lore since literally D1, but not much was known about how true any of that was or how it started and how it was done. This was somewhat cleared up later, in the first page of Trials and Tribulations (from Worthy). I say "somewhat" because like. Reading this page is an exercise for sanity:

Yeah. What this whole thing seems to be implying is a confirmation of Mercury being converted by the Vex during the Collapse. The Vex flooded the planet with radiolaria and drilled into it, changing its terraformed environment into a Vex world. Some of this is shown in Curse when we first visit the simulated past. The Vex appeared and started raising the spires and transforming the surface of Mercury into what we know it as. Its core was eventually fully replaced by the Infinite Forest.

After we killed Panoptes, Osiris essentially claimed the Forest for himself and returned there sort of indefinitely. He would leave years later, when he contacted us in Season of Dawn, though we know that he was periodically leaving anyway, since he was building the Sundial. It's not really been used for anything else, outside of various adventures and the quest for saving Saint which I went into in this post.

How does it all work and why?

It's always been kinda weird that the Forest was not a bigger deal, though it makes sense if we consider the out-of-game factors and the fans' general dislike of Mercury as a whole (which I personally think is a skill issue). The Forest was also difficult to work with so it was difficult to make new content for it which is probably why it was never really done, even though realistically, setting-wise, it should've.

It's mentioned in lore here and there, and Osiris spent his time there a lot up until Dawn. The Infinite Forest also alerted him that our actions drastically changed the Vex predictions which was serious and important enough for him to finally leave. So for all intents and purposes, the Forest was always a big deal, just difficult to implement into gameplay. This is quite unfortunate because it should've reasonably been something to use more, including explaining its danger a bit more in-depth over time. While Osiris did have a major influence over it post-Panoptes, the place was still largely Vex-controlled and they still had access to it.

So why is that dangerous in the first place? After all, it's just a simulation engine. That's true, but the danger is in how the Vex were using those simulations. By having access to a place that generates trillions of situations and possibilities, it allowed them to explore options that would normally be almost impossible to explore in-person, physically. Even the Vex, who can exist outside of time, would need to spend... well... time and resources to explore these options by simply time travelling. With the Forest, they could just generate them all at once, instantly, with no time passing outside of the Forest.

They could use this to simulate anything and then explore what would happen if they followed that possibility, which allowed them to predict more accurately. It allowed them to essentially run a certain scenario through every single possible iteration and see the outcome of all of them, then pick the option that suits them best and act accordingly. It could also let them study their enemies; by simulating many situations and observing how the enemies react in those situations, they could learn about the strategies their enemies use.

This is incredibly powerful and dangerous. But are there limitations to their simulations? Sort of... As we know, the Vex can't simulate Light or any other paracausality, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can't try. This is where things get complicated because we lack a lot of the details about how this all works.

From what we can tell, the Forest can include simulations that feature paracausality and Guardians; it's seen in the intro cutscene for Curse where Osiris casually wanders into the Guardians raiding the Vault of Glass. It was also briefly mentioned in Lightfall's CE (page 28), where Elsie explores different timelines. In one of them, she finds Osiris wielding Stasis who tells her that he saw her wielding it:

"I saw glimpses of you wielding this power during my time in the Infinite Forest."

This is where things get complicated because we don't truly know if there are meaningful differences between normal simulations and simulations produced by a planet-size machine. The Vex, for all intents and purposes, can't really simulate Light and Guardians, but could they create simulations based on what they've personally experienced? After all, the Vex from the Vault of Glass experienced the Guardians raiding them; can they load up their memories and simply replay it? Would that even count as a simulation or is that simply just a recording that you can access within the Forest?

Is it accessible in other Vex spaces or is the Infinite Forest unique in some way? After all, there is also the Vex network as well as corridors of time. There's also some sort of overlap between them, according to Osiris:

...Vex security measures where the network intersects with the corridors of time.

There's even the implication that a simulation from the Forest could potentially escape the engine and enter the real world.

Sagira: Hey, team! Copies of the Cabal invasion are trapped inside the Infinite Forest. On the, uh, off chance one of them escapes, possibly armed with world-breaking Vex tech… Ghost: Wouldn’t be the first time. We’ll handle this.

There is also the whole question about timelines and realities and how that works in the Forest. Can you use the Forest to look into real timelines and realities, those that might be happening somewhere, or are they just projections and simulations of possibilities? Could you interact with them, and affect other timelines? This is an interesting question now that Echoes is going on with all the stuff about the Conductor and what's happening to Saint, but we currently don't know the answers.

What I think is the most likely is that the Infinite Forest is somehow unique and can offer a lot more than the normal Vex network; its simulation options are so well-developed and so powerful that it can genuinely simulate a lot more than the Vex usually would be able to, including showing glimpses of paracausality, especially glimpses that the Vex have themselves recorded in their interactions with Guardians. Then, they can use the Forest to try and build on that, essentially train the engine by feeding it trillions of data points to attempt to make accurate simulations that lead to good predictions.

And these seem to be the key words: accurate and prediction. The point of simulations is not just to look at things, it's to use them to be able to predict things, giving the Vex an advantage. This is directly referenced and discussed in the lore:

There's just one thing: if Osiris used the Infinite Forest to develop his prophecies, and the Infinite Forest cannot accurately simulate Light, how did Osiris predict the Traveler would wake? The Forest's very inability to predict this very thing is what prevented Panoptes from breaking ground with its apocalyptic calculations.

So what exactly is the Forest capable of? It can definitely show the past even if it involves paracausality. It can also show the future, though the accuracy of any future predictions may be in question, depending on the amount of paracausality involved. It's very much implied that it can also show other timelines and/or realities. And of course, it can simulate future possibilities, as well as show simulations of anything from the past; events or places alike. For example, Osiris simulated the Fundament, apparently:

Ghost: The Forest can generate so many Hive - it might as well be their homeworld. Sagira: We've thought about that. Ghost: Have you simulated the Hive homeworld? Sagira: Didn't go well.

If there are specific limitations, we're not sure what they may be. There probably are, but they're most likely deliberately not spelled out to prevent any kind of conflict with stuff they might want to add to the Forest later; like for example now, with Echoes. Because there's a lot of questions right now about the Forest now that Ikora has so casually told us we're going to be going back in there. So...

What happened to it?

As has been established, the Forest is physically located on Mercury. Or rather, in Mercury. Its one and only entrance is on Mercury as well. And Mercury has been eaten by the Witness over 4 years ago. So that's it then? Well no. Not only is the Forest on an inaccessible planet, it has actually been sealed, from the inside, before the planet was taken.

He struggled with his pack as a tempest beat on his eardrums. He withdrew his Infinite Simulacrum, impossibly small in this immense space, and with trembling fingers synchronized it to the frequency of the crack in the Forest. It ticked like a metronome and then… Silence. The Forest was sealed.

Instead of evacuating, Brother Vance decided to stay on Mercury, go into the Forest, and seal it. I go about it for a long time in this post, but basically he believed that it would be really bad if the Pyramids gained access to the Forest. He also believed that the Sundial did something to the timelines and that the Pyramids could exploit that, as well as the Infinite Forest being somehow "the key to all of this."

He also wanted to use the Forest to... spread hope. Through the timelines?

"I will walk into the Infinite Forest and spread hope, Guardian."

He essentially wanted to do something and prove that even Lightless people can still help. He appeared to be willing to die for this, which is quite strange mostly because this whole idea and endeavour wasn't in the name of Osiris. Hell, in a way, it was about doing something to fix the unknown consequences of Osiris' meddling with the timelines.

You notice Vance's hands are balled tightly at his sides. "The Pyramids draw close. Through this system and beyond, the Lightless are filled with fear. I am no Osiris, true, but in my small way, I will bring light to their darkness." There is clarity in his voice. "I will tell them they must believe."

Since I've gone into it in the other post in a lot more details, I won't go into it here again, although I could. But the point that I want to get across is that the sealing of the Infinite Forest was quite a significant part of Arrivals and the whole plot of the evacuation of Mercury (or rather the non-evacuation of Mercury; the sole reason for Vance staying was to seal the Forest).

In another post (you'll have to scroll through the back-and-forth insanity) I also mentioned how much of Vance's story in Arrivals seemed to be connected to him losing his mind about the effects of the Sundial on the timelines. It also directly links to the Perfect Paradox. All of these things have been quite prominently connected to this episode, especially the stuff with the Sundial and what Osiris has done with it and how it may or may not have affected the timelines and, most of all, Saint and the whole ordeal of saving him.

It's fairly unclear how many characters know what happened to the Forest though. The YW knows obviously because Vance told us directly. I do believe that Zavala would also know as we reported back to him, which also most likely extends to Ikora as well. Another issue is that we don't really have any specific proof that the sealing was successful or permanent. It seems like it was, but a lot of stuff could've happened in the past 4 years of Mercury being in an anomaly.

As I've mentioned many times before, Mercury is the last unsolved plot from Arrivals; as in, we genuinely don't know anything about it. Mars has returned in WQ and Ana's side of the story was concluded in Seraph. While Io is still gone, Asher's story was concluded in Defiance through Avalon. Titan returned in Deep, which solved the story of the planet and also Sloane. We know why these planets were taken (with the exception of Io, though it's fair to assume it had something to do with the Pyramidion because of Asher's story being tied to it), and we know what happened to all of the vendors. Except Mercury and Vance; two things inherently connected to the Infinite Forest.

We don't truly know why Mercury was yoinked, though it's once again fair to assume it was most likely for the Forest. But you know. It got sealed so the Witness couldn't do anything with it and we have no idea what it was doing with Mercury all this time. We also don't know what the hell was Vance on about when he talked about the "anchored timelines" and how the Forest is incredibly important to everything. Due to how unreliable he is, it could just be his usual cringefail. After all, Osiris himself did not have any plans for the Forest himself; he was upset that he'd lose it, but he didn't think anything more about it, even if during Dawn he insisted that the Forest cannot be sealed or destroyed yet.

But also I think dismissing it all is an easy mistake to make, and possibly a deliberate one. Everything with Vance is written to be as easy to dismiss as possible, but he did know certain things that were absolutely correct and real. Not to go on about the tones again, but. Yeah. And given the current situation...

Echoes

Failsafe has come up with a plan for which she needs data from the Vex. She specifically needs data that can be compared to the altered Vex on Nessus, so we need large amounts of information that hasn't been changed or messed with. She concluded that the best source of that data would be Saint's dead body. It exists in a specific space (and time) and would have this information; information that has not been altered or influenced by anything else because that Saint is dead and preserved as is.

Failsafe explained this to Ikora and Ikora agreed that this is the best source, she's just worried about how this will affect Osiris and Saint. She doesn't want us to tell them. So next reset, we're going to the Infinite Forest to find Saint's tomb again. Yay!

But like. How?

They presented this so casually, with Ikora even saying that the best "accessible" source of this data is the Forest and Saint's tomb. And I know that they know that we know that Mercury is gone and that the Forest was sealed. But they've already showed us the gate to the Forest on Nessus, twice: in the mini showcase and then in the intro to the season in-game:

The first picture is showing the gate when it's open. And yes, this specific portal effect has only ever been used for the Forest. The second image shows the gate when it's closed with that impenetrable barrier. The structure itself is different from the original; it's worn down, coloured differently and doesn't have the same tip - instead there's the weird orb and the statue. It looks far more Nessus-like, and closer to present-day Vex, or maybe future Vex. But it's guarded by Precursors, so I don't know. It definitely doesn't look like the original however.

We clearly aren't going to Mercury. And even if we were, how would we enter? Neither Failsafe nor Ikora have mentioned this little problem and it seems as if they already know that the gate is on Nessus; I assume they'll discuss the details of this in the Act 2 finale next week. But the problem is that without all of this context, how do they even explain the issue with the Forest? They can always shorten this to some reasonable quick explanation, but they still have to explain how are we entering the Forest. There's a few key problems.

Obviously, number 1 is that the Forest is on Mercury and as of now Mercury is still in the anomaly.

The Forest itself is sealed from the inside.

So far it has not been possible (or at least not known to us) to enter the Forest from any other location. As we've seen, Osiris spent years looking for the entrance and back in Arrivals he was quite upset about losing the Forest. If he simply had the ability to enter it without being physically on Mercury, then why bother or lament Mercury's loss?

It is, to our knowledge, one of a kind. It took quite a tremendous effort to build it and it requires a lot of power to run; a whole planet.

Possible solutions:

Mercury is back and Ikora hasn't told anyone yet because she doesn't want anyone to go there yet; perhaps it's in quarantine. I don't think this is very likely, but it's possible.

Opening a gate to the Forest from another location IS possible and we just didn't know about it.

Opening a gate to the Forest from another location is possible only because of the situation with the Echo; a powerful source of paracausal power can maybe help us do this remotely. So this simply wasn't an option before the Echo's existence.

The Vex and the Conductor have built or are still building a new Forest inside of Nessus this time. The Vex lost access to the original, either simply because of the anomaly or because it was sealed or both, so now with the Echo they're just doing it again, and better. So the Forest we're going into is not the original, but a new one; the assumption being that the data from the old Forest is accessible to the Vex so the new Forest can essentially run the same code as the old one, allowing us access to Saint's tomb.

The Vex and the Conductor only have to build a new gate that can lead us to the old Forest, despite it being in an anomaly and despite it being sealed. It essentially just brute forced another door.

And the possibilities in regards to it being sealed:

As I mentioned before, maybe the sealing wasn't as successful as we (or Vance) thought.

Vance is somehow still alive and he will open it for us from the inside, essentially concluding his role from Arrivals.

Maybe the sealing wasn't permanent; either the Vex could eventually counteract this, or Vance couldn't hold it closed for very long. He's a Lightless man and it's quite dubious how long he could survive inside. Maybe the seal automatically broke when (if?) he died.

If we're going with the option that this is a new gate to the old Forest, then as I said before, this may simply be able to counteract the seal.

If we're dealing with a completely new Forest, the seal may simply not even be in effect. The old Forest is sealed, but we're not going to the old one so it doesn't matter.

What I'm assuming is that Osiris could open the gate if he saw one again, so if the gate is simply now on Nessus (either to a new Forest or connecting to the old one), Osiris can just use his cubes as he did before and open it again, counteracting the seal. Vance's device used to seal it was made from Osiris' notes anyway, so I'm assuming it's something similar to the cubes. In that case it can just be opened with the same thing.

Ikora will just blast it open like she did back in Curse. Seal or no seal, new or old Forest, she doesn't give a shit,

There's an option for all of these that's basically just they don't mention it all. I don't think this is very likely, but hey. It's possible!

I've been running these scenarios in my head for days. Actually, I've been running them ever since the showcase for Echoes showed us the gate to the Forest, but this significantly increased when this week confirmed that we are indeed heading in there. And it was delivered so matter-of-factly as if there aren't any of these problems and scenarios I listed above. This is baffling me. I know there will be some explanations offered, but the setup completely blindsided me with how it was delivered. Ikora with the simple "Oh yeah the best place to grab data from is the Infinite Forest. Pack it up boys." And I'm standing there with a 8 hours long presentation asking her to explain how. She blocks my number on vannet.

Perhaps the situation is far simpler than I'm making it out to be. It would be really easy to just write the old Forest and Mercury away as being permanently lost. That way you don't have to explain or deal with any of the stuff with the anomaly or the yoinkening or Vance's shenanigans. I will obviously remain forever unhinged about it if that's the case because I simply need to know what happened, but it's the easiest way to deal with this. The Echo allowed the Vex to make a new Forest, they're using massive amounts of radiolaria and the core of Nessus to just recreate it all, then they copied all the data from the old one into it, booted it up and that's it.

But what if the seal is in effect? Or what if we're dealing with the old Forest on Mercury that's still in the anomaly? How do they plan to deal with that in a single mission? Well... We have no clue.

Bungie article lore time, but back last year in the State of the Game article, they said this about the pvp map Multiplex:

Although many of us had been thinking about a lo-fi Vex map for the Crucible, the challenge of this palette was the possible lack of player orientation in the play space. We thought bringing the Mars palette into the Vex Network realm would be a great way to mitigate this while adding an evocative look. Narratively, the space is in the middle of compiling the Infinite Forest, so this is what you’ll see in action.

Yes, while everyone was losing their mind about this article, I was looking for lore about the Infinite Forest. But yeah. It seems like they have information about it in the network and they were using it to compile that information; perhaps preparing to make a new one? Or simply using it for data.

So essentially, the Vex could have enough information about the Forest to recreate it, and better now with the Echo, which would allow us to simply bypass the anomaly and the Forest being locked, while allowing us to enter and still find Saint's tomb. This is by far the easiest solution.

But I want a conclusion on Mercury and Vance. I feel like this episode is the only time to really do that and they've been giving us so many Mercury things already, clearly showing that it was a big inspiration for it all. The music, the assets, the enemies. This includes the stuff about Saint and his grave, as well as the whole thing with the Perfect Paradox. There's still Act 3 of course and some still unknown exotic mission, but I feel like the quest that has us literally going into the Infinite Forest to revisit a place not even from Dawn, but from Curse, is the best spot to also deal with this.

I just have no idea how that's going to happen and I wanted to list out the stuff that would have to be somehow addressed and solved, even if the solution ends up being the simplest one. I also wanted to try and list some information about the Forest itself since this thing has not been in the game for years. I hope this was useful and that it explains things well.

Anyway, I've spent the whole week pacing around my room like a wild animal. Help.

In conclusion:

#destiny 2 #echoes #infinite forest #vex #nessus #osiris #brother vance #long post #lore vibing #i've been having a normal one this week #and yes that's me in the photo. don't even worry about it #needed to get this out to prepare my brain with all scenarios for tuesday #most likely it'll be something wild that i've not considered #but i'm really really interested to see how they'll explain the forest stuff. i'm very excited for tuesday #and scared for my emotions of course

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