So... in infuriating conclusion... your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries. :)

Damn you.

• It showed that the Light started with and expanded out from the Traveler.
  
• It showed the Light specifically affecting Mercury, the Reef, and perhaps Saturn / Oryx's ship.
  
• It showed the Light touching everything in our galaxy and beyond.
  
• It showed the Pyramid Ships waking up after sensing the light and had them move back towards the Light's origin.

Your three main options each have their strengths but each fails to meet at least one of these criteria.

• A universe wide flash fails to show origin and direction and would still need followups to show specific locations being affected.
  
• Having the Light return to individuals / Ghosts directly could look really cool but would fail to show the Light touching the galaxy and might not have a reason to pass to the Pyramid Ships so you'd lose their awakening / moving towards the origin.
  
• A blinking dot on a screen could be combined with the Pyramid ships wakening up and moving in a direction, but it loses out on pretty much everything else. We wouldn't see Mercury affected or get a good sense that the Light touched the rest of the solar system and galaxy, for instance. Plus, you'd have to design a UI for that radar screen and having the first introduction to an alien race be the crappy alien clip art chosen by the underpaid temp alien programmer doesn't feel right to me. :p

The expanding sphere of Light might not make complete logical sense, but visually, it accomplishes a whole lot in a way that is very easily understood by the viewer. Was the cutscene perfect? No... it did very much leave the question open as to whether the rest of the Guardians got their light back, for one. But to call it lazy or a mistake... nah. I don't buy that at all.

So... in infuriating conclusion... your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries. :)

Now, if the expansion took place on a plane (we know this one doesn't, but hey - it's kind of represented that way so I'll go with it), you *could* see the light as expanding if your viewpoint was perpendicular to the plane of expansion. BUT in order to see a galaxy-size pulse from far enough away that you could see the entire milky way in your field of view, you're talking hundreds of thousands, if not millions of light years, which means it would take an equal amount of time for the light to reach you.

The camera is perpendicular to the bubble in the 4th dimension, so you see it expanding AND the viewpoints where you can see the system and galaxy are irrelevant to the time the ships receive the pulse.

For objects moving slower than the speed of light, you would see the light first, and then see the object. For objects moving faster than the speed of light, such as the traveler's pulse as seen in this cutscene, the pulse would hit you first, and then the light would catch up to you, so the actual visual effect would be that it would look like the light was receding away from you as the light from farther and farther away reached you.

Now, if the expansion took place on a plane (we know this one doesn't, but hey - it's kind of represented that way so I'll go with it), you *could* see the light as expanding if your viewpoint was perpendicular to the plane of expansion. BUT in order to see a galaxy-size pulse from far enough away that you could see the entire milky way in your field of view, you're talking hundreds of thousands, if not millions of light years, which means it would take an equal amount of time for the light to reach you.

These two facts make the visual representation weird to me.

Yes, you can always hand wave this and just say "magic" or "artistic license" and those are both valid answers. To me, validity notwithstanding, they are wholly unsatisfying excuses for what appears to be lazy storytelling. To be clear: I don't expect anyone to provide a satisfactory answer here. Even Bungie saying "yeah, we goofed" would not satisfy me, even though it would be confirmation. I'm only pointing out that this was not well done. It looks like a cutscene someone made 10% of the way into the game to illustrate roughly what they wanted to have happen at the end, and then no one bothered to fix it. If that's good enough for everyone else, so be it; I'm in the minority here.

I don't understand this assumption the the Light clearly traveled instantaneously. In fact, that seems directly contrary to the start of the cutscene with Ghaul?

And the more I watch it, the less the speed seems at all strange?

It's accelerating, spreading 'slowly' over progressively larger and larger distances. We see it hit the ships, and, as far as I can tell, it goes over them pretty much instantly, with an effect lingering for a few moments. Or maybe it finally started slowing down, between expanding out of the Milky Way and reaching the triangles in dark space.

No, the light emitted by the Traveler waking up wouldn't travel as fast as the Light would. Unless it doing so was also part of the whole Light thing, I suppose. Putting that aside, it wouldn't have to? All the pyramid ships would need to detect would be the Light washing over them. And the light produced could be a series of waves created by the Light traveling over matter (as has been proposed by someone I in turn forgot), or maybe the light behaved entirely normally and the Light didn't make any more light. And we were just watching the Light spread, artistically represented as light, because duh. It's not like this was ostensibly a home video camera we were looking through, or anything?

I'm not trying to deny you your right to find it bothersome,

I guess I just find it weird to throw our hands into the air and go 'This doesn't make sense', and then argue about whether or not that's a bad thing, when we can make it make sense?

I'm actually like horrifically bad at judging the relative speeds of the bubble expansions and stuff, so I might be missing something with the speeds, and for whatever reason you find my 'Maybe the camera is showing us different rates for effect' idea absurd, but it just doesn't seem inexplicable to me.

(Although the size of the Traveler is pretty unambiguously, unsalvageably exaggeration, so, there's that. I vaguely remember that basically always being the case, but I can't think of any example.)

Nah. My revised, updated, deleted, undeleted, rerevised grand theory is the wave of Light crosses all points in the universe at the same time, we just see it in 5 or whatever views for dramatic effect. :p

So I've considered this as the most likely scenario and also how I would have wanted to show it, visually, if I were the director here.

One option is to just have the screen flash white and then fade to normal, with a little light residue around each of the guardians and ghosts. Then you show that flash from ever widening views. There'd have to be a discussion about how big the flash is - is the universe flashing, or is the traveler flashing - which would determine whether you were seeing the whole screen flash in each view or seeing only the traveler flash (but very brightly). Without a visible corona of spreading light. Very similar to what we saw, but different enough to not make it seem like the camera is tracking the spread of the light, as it currently seems.

Another option would be to animate the light returning, using the same sort of schematic type animations Destiny has always used. This would make a lot of sense to me, though it would necessitate a narrator (Ghost?) to explain, which means the narrator would also need to at least pretend to understand what had happened.

And yet a third would have been to forego the bright flash outside of the galaxy altogether, and just show a screen with a blinking dot, and then the spaceships waking up and moving. We'd understand they'd sensed it somehow.

Probably a myriad of other options.

Cannon-wise, I'm sure the light traveled instantaneously. It's simply the visual representation of it in game that makes me want to slap my forehead.

...Space Magic.

I don't know how you guys didn't know that. It explains everything.

/sigh

I only half jest. I don't know why most of us are assuming this explosion from the traveler is something we could even understand. Why can't people just give in to Destiny and believe in space magic? I mean that's basically what the traveler is to us as Guardians.

This is coming from a software Engineer and a very logical guy. I love things getting explained, but sometimes I feel like you just need to let things go and believe in space magic.

The thing that gets me isn't whether or not it's space magic, it's that shot to shot it's not consistent. The internal logic of the game fails, and that irks me. Someone (raga?) argued that the shots might be timewarped to show matching rates of acceleration regardless of the camera's frame, but that's both absurd and there's direct evidence to the contrary since other, non-traveler-light objects are still moving seemingly normally.

I'm not complaining that the light exists or asking for its nature to be explained. I'm fine with the enigmatic and all-powerful Traveler existing in this universe.

What bothers me, from purely a storytelling standpoint, is that Bungie is making the same thing (in this case, traveler's light) behave differently at different times (and I'm being generous; they're doing it shot to shot to shot, all back to back to back in this cutscene). That's just sloppy work. It's minor, but it's annoying.

I would make a similar post if Ikora suddenly and without in-game explanation started speaking in a man's voice, for example.

...Space Magic.

I don't know how you guys didn't know that. It explains everything.

/sigh

I only half jest. I don't know why most of us are assuming this explosion from the traveler is something we could even understand. Why can't people just give in to Destiny and believe in space magic? I mean that's basically what the traveler is to us as Guardians.

This is coming from a software Engineer and a very logical guy. I love things getting explained, but sometimes I feel like you just need to let things go and believe in space magic.

...Space Magic.

I don't know how you guys didn't know that. It explains everything.

/sigh

I "finished" it in the sense that I beat the main story of the expansion. I haven't done much of the side stuff yet, but I'll get back in maybe this weekend. I want to drain the facility that one woman was talking about.

I really enjoyed the side quests in Frozen Wilds, and made a point to do them all before I beat it. There aren't too many, but they're all worth doing. Almost all of them made me chuckle with the dialogue, and then surprised me with the gameplay.

I also am curious what CYAN has to say if you revisit her at points in the main story. I played the expansion in my NG+ play through, in which I haven't even visited Meridian yet, so Aloy hasn't encountered much yet. With CYAN saying should would be eager to talk if you revisit her, I wonder if she'll have any revelations about other things that happen in the main story of the base game. I'll find out at some point, as I continue my play through.

I was at the final story mission when I started Frozen Wilds, so Aloy is pretty well versed in everything so far, so there were some neat things that she discusses with CYAN. It's sadly not as in-depth and revelatory as I'd hoped, but it makes sense story-wise, since CYAN was put into Standby before Zero Dawn, without ever really knowing what was going on. That said, she does have a unique perspective, all things considered, so I ended up liking her as a character, and I really hope we get more from her down the road, especially given the fact that she's going to become a part of the Banuk culture... the more I think about her potential as a future character, the more excited I am.

Also, this GIF really shows off just how ridiculously amazing the game looks:

I'm on my Ultra Hard runthrough, and I spent well over two hours simply hunting and fishing, since I never bothered to fully upgrade my carrying capacities, and you have to depend on potions quite a bit now (especially since I don't believe in MIDA Shield Weaver armor). Hunting animals helps give you time to appreciate how gorgeous the environments are, since you spend most of your time off of the marked trails, (And the nature of UH requires you to be pretty aware of your environments and alternate routes anyway).

...even a semblance of realism.

Yeah... I think you’ve taken things too far. That wave of space magic? That we’ve seen exactly once in this universe? We don’t know how it works or moves or propagates. You’re imposing rules of realism on something whose rules you have no way of knowing.

We’re talking about a universe where those 500+ years dead are brought back to life, where our Guardians jump three stories in the air and spontaneously manafest the destructive power of a small bomb, where our Jumpships not only break orbit with astonishing ease, they travel across the solar system in what seems to be minutes or hours. None of that fits with the known laws of our universe either. Are you going to start a topic on each of those things next?

The cutscene did it job and it did it in a visually spectacular style. If that wave of Light was left unclear or if it simply didn’t matter, then sure, the cutscene would deserve criticism. But Bungie has now stated that the pyramid ships waking up will be important to the story in a few years and that the Light passing over Mercury plays a part in the Vex’s plans in Curse of Osiris.

At the end of the day, you’re being nitpicky in the extreme about something you have no real justification to be nitpicky about.

That's fair.

I feel like they could have achieved the same effect, storytelling-wise, in a more elegant way, is what it really boils down to. Personal preference, I suppose.

...even a semblance of realism.

Yeah... I think you’ve taken things too far. That wave of space magic? That we’ve seen exactly once in this universe? We don’t know how it works or moves or propagates. You’re imposing rules of realism on something whose rules you have no way of knowing.

We’re talking about a universe where those 500+ years dead are brought back to life, where our Guardians jump three stories in the air and spontaneously manafest the destructive power of a small bomb, where our Jumpships not only break orbit with astonishing ease, they travel across the solar system in what seems to be minutes or hours. None of that fits with the known laws of our universe either. Are you going to start a topic on each of those things next?

The cutscene did it job and it did it in a visually spectacular style. If that wave of Light was left unclear or if it simply didn’t matter, then sure, the cutscene would deserve criticism. But Bungie has now stated that the pyramid ships waking up will be important to the story in a few years and that the Light passing over Mercury plays a part in the Vex’s plans in Curse of Osiris.

At the end of the day, you’re being nitpicky in the extreme about something you have no real justification to be nitpicky about.

I'm not trying to treat it as a comparison or an opinion of details as fact. However, I will stand by the point that if, as a storyteller, you do not communicate to your listener, regardless of how universally accurate your non-communication is, you are not being a good storyteller. This is not to say anything toward the quality of hard or soft sci-fi against each other, that just happens to be context.

Words themselves are imprecise, though. So if that point did come across and you disagree with it or something else then we have a different discussion.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that the story would have been better if Bungie had said nothing. I know that I, for one, simply wish that they used any of the myriad of storytelling devices available to them that could have expressed the universal return of the Traveler's light without the fairly blatant disregard for even a semblance of realism.

What, terraforming Venus into a lush garden world was fine, but working out one measly 'the Sun is pretty close here' problem is a bridge too far? :P

I think you just took this thread to Awesometown. I laughed out loud. Well played!

I also am curious what CYAN has to say if you revisit her at points in the main story. I played the expansion in my NG+ play through, in which I haven't even visited Meridian yet, so Aloy hasn't encountered much yet. With CYAN saying should would be eager to talk if you revisit her, I wonder if she'll have any revelations about other things that happen in the main story of the base game. I'll find out at some point, as I continue my play through.

Also, this GIF really shows off just how ridiculously amazing the game looks:

What seems to have happened in order is:

- Traveler arrives in our Solar System and terraforms several planets and moons including Mercury.
- The Ishtar Collective finds Vex ruins on terraformed Venus and begins to study them and one or more captured Vex units. The IC team finds out that they had it backwards and it's more like the Vex were studying them by simulating them several times over! The IC team breaks free of the Vex simulations with the help of a (the?) Warmind.
- This Ishtar Collective team returns to the Vex ruins to unleash their digital copies of themselves into the Vex network. They approach via primitive remote controlled Exo bodies.
- Sometime later the Vex wake up, convert Mercury from a Garden World to a Vex World. Humanity engages the Vex with Frames and Exos since the Vex and their structures have strange and potentially fatal effects on biological humans.
- The Traveler intervenes and somehow ends the Vex uprising which pauses their attempted takeover of Venus until well after the Collapse. We stop that takeover again during the Venus Strike in D1.

There's just very little else to go on so far. Hopefully a good bit of the Golden Age war against the Vex gets filled in... because that sounds cool!

No the Bridge too Far is the past Mercury is vegetative while the past Venus was barren. This all happened because of a clerical error, ALL the vex gardeners were shipped to Mercury, and it took forever to figure out. Their solution was then to ship them all to Venus and rectify the sandyness but failed to realize that plants need special care and attention which is why present Mercury is sandy. After running many simulations they realized machines are the way of the future, and forgot about the team on Venus, who use tender loving care and miracle-gro to keep it so lush.

I know this is a joke, but Mercury was a lush garden world BEFORE the Vex showed up, then they turned it into a machine world with basically no vegetation. This is in grimoire cards from Destiny 1. (look at Mercury for example)

I don't know how you guys didn't know that. It explains everything.