We’ve had this discussion before. You don’t pay attention. (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Saturday, May 05, 2018, 23:14 (2631 days ago) @ Korny

I think the past three times that this topic was brought up, it was pointed out that several of the returning vendors have recycled lines from D1 (Saladin is a prime example, as he still has his “power matters” dialogue).

Sure. But the bigger point is that claiming that The Darkness has been phased out of Destiny 2 is a gross misunderstanding of what is happening. Bungie admitted that they overused and misapplied phrases relating to The Darkness in D1. Like how the Fallen, Hive, Vex, and Cabal were all at one point referred to as Minions of the Darkness when that was not really true. Both the Hive and the Vex had dealings with The Darkness at the beginning of D1. So had the Fallen as their civilization was wiped out in what they called the Whirlwind and which was almost certainly an attack by The Darkness. It is somewhere between unclear and unlikely that the Cabal (or at least the main bulk of the Cabal civilization) had yet encountered The Darkness by the start of D1.

For D2, we have that quote from Luke Smith in Game Informer that said:

We’ve never really said what [The Darkness] means,” Smith continues. “Ultimately, we do owe our players a story there – what is The Darkness? – but that’s not this game. We wanted to remove as much of the extra terminology as possible and focus on telling the Destiny 2 story. In so doing, allow Destiny 2 to usher in the rest of the saga. It’s going to start some threads that we intend to carry through.”

This is, again, Bungie being more specific about what the Darkness is and isn’t. It’s not the space pirate Eliksni (Fallen) on the run from the destruction of their civilization trying anything and everything to survive. It’s not even the Hive who are in a temporarily mutually beneficial relationship with the worm gods which draw upon the powers of The Darkness. Bungie wants The Darkness to be something specific instead of being a catch all term for any random thing that opposes Humanity.

So no, we don’t have characters spouting off about The Darkness left right and center. But then, most of the threats in our solar system are not actually The Darkness at the moment. But just because The Darkness is mentioned a lot less in Destiny 2 doesn’t mean that saying something like “the concept of the darkness was phased out of Des2ny“ even remotely correct.

Off the top of my head, Ikora mentions The Darkness directly as part of her rotation of phrases once you retake the City and the Tower. The opening description on the inside cover of the 1st Osiris comic mentions The Darkness directly as well.

Beyond that, The Darkness is still all over the lore. Lore text for things like the Arc Strider and Sentinel subclasses make direct reference to The Darkness. As does the lore text for the Kairos Function armor, the The Conqueror 2 and Sol Pariah 6 SMGs, the Sails of Osiris ship, and the Graviton Forfeit hunter helmet.

And that’s only the direct references to The Darkness that include the word darkness. There are others like the lore on the Calus sword It Stared Back where Calus encountered “the infinite deep” which Calus describes as “a nothing” and “a space that simply did not exist” and “the perfect void” which he would become the herald of.

Even the opening Destiny 2 cutscene which shows the black triangular shadows cross over the City and the Traveler doesn’t say Darkness explicitly, but it does mention the Traveler’s “ancient enemy” which is what the Darkness was referred to as in its original Grimoire card.

TL;DR:

- The idea that The Darkness has been phased out of Destiny 2 is demonstrably false.
- While The Darkness is only mentioned once by a voiced character in Destiny 2, it is referenced both directly and indirectly several times both in-game via the Lore tabs and out of game in the D2 Calus collector’s book and in the more recent Destiny 2 comics on Bungie.net
- The focus away from mention The Darkness comes partially from Bungie’s desire to be more exact about what The Darkness is, and partially because the things we are currently fighting in our solar system in Destiny 2 are not The Darkness.