Weather Conditions in Destiny 2 (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Thursday, March 08, 2018, 18:47 (2689 days ago) @ Ragashingo

For a long time now, I’ve wanted to do something of a survey of each of Destiny 2’s Destinations to see if I could find anything that would point to the temperature of each location. I undertook that survey last night and... here’s what I found.

Interesting thought experiment. I like it!

First, here’s what I was looking at:

• Different states of water. (Ice, Liquid, Gas/Fog)
  
• The types of clothing Human characters are wearing
  
• Steam and Condensation around objects that are hotter or colder than their environments
  
• Light-bending heat waves / air currents
  
• Red hot metals or burning materials

The Results:

The Tower & The Farm

• Virtually everyone is wearing long pants and long sleeves, but nothing particularly heavy.
  
• A number of people are wearing hoods or other head coverings, but these seem to be more cultural than for warmth

Conclusion: Temperature is likely in the 50s-60s given the amount of time those on guard duty probably have to stand outside.

European Dead Zone

• Absolutely no ice anywhere
  
• Devrim Kay is dressed in a long sleeve, coat-ish outfit.
  
• There is sometimes some light fog around the river that flows from the dam

Conclusion: Temperature is likely in the 40s or even upper 30s, but could be in the 50s as well.

These two make sense to me.

Titan

• Methane melts at -296 °F and boils at -258 °F. The sea is a “methane sea.”
  
• An overhead announcement in the Archology makes it clear that Humanity, not the Traveler, did work to terraform Titan.
  
• Though there are some air locks on the rig, there’s also a lot of open air doorways.
  
• There is an icy “hail” near the bridge to the Archology, but none of the drizzle is sticking or building up on structures.

Conclusion: Though the methane ocean is liquid, it seems likely that temperatures are not nearly so low as -258 °F. At least not on the rigs or in the New Pacific Archology. Perhaps the rigs themselves are heated and maintain a nearby warmed, breathable atmosphere? No Space Magic, but perhaps good ole Golden Age ingenuity?

Ahh, but the Titan quest npc doesn't even bother with a helmet, so that means there must be both a breathable atmosphere and reasonable temperatures for a human's whole head to be exposed, right? It would be one thing if she were an exo, but she's not; she's just a normal run of the mill human.

Nessus

• Milk is liquid, but its boiling and melting points are unknown.

It also contains electricity, which is... weird.

[*]It is not entirely clear that the atmosphere is breathable or the correct temperature for life as we know it. The only humanoid creatures are Guardians (who come in sealed armor), Eliksni (who breath Ether), Cabal (who’s armor is pressurized with an alternate environment even on Earth), and Vex (who are mostly robot).
[*]Even more telling, all the findable crew of the Exodus Black were still in their space suits. Some have cracked helmet faceplates.
[*]Those trees and birds and butterflies? They’re alien (Vex?) trees and birds and butterflies. Standard rules of pressure and temperature may not apply.

I don't believe the life forms are Vex, since one of the things the vex do "in the future" is eliminate all life on the planet as part of their machine making process.

[*]That said, there does appear to be liquid water near Failsafe’s section of the Exodus Black.
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Conclusion: Temperatures are likely above 32 °F. Grenades and bullets still work normally, so pressure and gravity are probably earth standard. All else is essentially unknown or unknowable.

Io

• Io was partially terraformed by the Traveler. Environmental conditions are likely safe for Humans
  
• There are some pools of water here and there
  
• There are few if any other indicators of weather

Conclusion: Very hard to say much. Since there appears to be some liquid water the temps are probably above freezing, but that’s about all that can be known.

Unknown if Awoken have similar breathing and temperature requirements to normal humans, but the quest NPC here uses no mask or helmet to breathe/maintain temperature.

The Almighty

• Is substantially closer to the sun than we ever get in any other part of Destiny.
  
• The sun facing side is hot enough to harm Guardians and Cabal in their environmental armor.
  
• The Almighty is firing a massive beam and is crunching a ton of the crust of Mercury... it’s probably generating a lot of heat all on its own.

Conclusion: Temperatures are likely somewhere between hot and disentigrating, depending on where you are at the time.

The Leviathan

• There are exterior “waterfalls” that might even be flowing water. The “water” is black and you die if you jump in it.

Conclusion: No idea.

lol well played.

Mercury

• The sun is large overhead.
  
• It is Mercury.

Conclusion: Hot.

Depends on where you are - Mercury is tidally locked and so half of the planet is very very cold while the other half is very very hot. There is a band around the edges that would be perfectly habitable, though it obviously wouldn't be in the sun, which our mercury area most certainly is.

BUT... The almighty is hotter than Mercury, which the Almighty is using as fuel? Maybe the sun is providing some sort of massive heat-feedback in response to the Almighty's beam? No way to really know. I'm sure we could guess at how big the sun is in the skybox, compare it to earth's skybox, and then guess at how far away we actually are for every world, but that seems both time consuming and excessive.

ultimately, I think I'm with Cody on this: No efforts were made to make any of this believable or realistic outside of normal Earth norms.