Savathun has been posing as Osiris since at least Beyond Light. She has been working as him to direct events over the past year or so at least. She led our fight against Xivu Arath, she helped to bring the Eliksni to the City to defeat Quria and the Long Night. She says in the beginning of this season that she wants to help us defeat the Pyramids. All of this may be true, but surely must be a twisted truth with hidden motivations.

Crow provided dead ghost shells to Osiris, which is probably partly how she makes her own Lightbearers in Witch Queen.

As Osiris, during the Presage mission, Savathun inquires about a crown. I think at the time we were to assume she meant the Crown of Sorrows. However, within the new Awoken lore, it could be that the crown she's really after is the one in Mara's story.

~m

Was she pro-Eliksni in this scenario? Evidently the anthrochauv space nationalist song Lakshmi sings during one of her messages, which she states is being sung by people across the city, is the same melody as Savathun's Song. Was also under the impression she was behind Lakshmi's destructive efforts to get rid of them.

So I caught myself up. How much of all this is actually in narrative vs in grimoire? Also the nine are dark matter entities? Uhhhh okay… Between this, all the crazy Hive shit, Callus being whatever he is, and wish dragons it’s seems were are more magic than space these days. Not that that’s a bad thing. But is this a compelling narrative? Genuinely asking how all this is presented and played.

They are definitely leaning pretty hard into the "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" SF trope. There are rules though - probably the biggest "rule" driving the overarching plot right now is that Hive Sword Logic, powerful though it is, has a huge downside in that it requires an ever-increasing amount of tribute (violence), otherwise the symbiotic/parasitic worm gods will destroy their hosts. Savathun is ostensibly enlisting Mara's (and our) help to avoid that fate.

My threshold for compelling narrative is certainly different than yours, but I can definitely say that I am increasingly excited to log in each Tuesday to experience the new story beats. The way this and the previous 2 seasons have worked, is that each reset day, you are given a small bit of story right off the bat, asked to do an activity (usually the 3-to-6-person seasonal ritual activity), you get another small bit of story, are asked to do another activity (usually a default-solo mission that has some more complex mechanics), then you get a final bit of story for the week. During the missions there is usually character voiceover that helps frame the purpose of the activity, or provides additional context to other events, or simply just fleshes out what is going on with the characters. For instance, a lot of the Osiris voiceovers last season were certainly hinting that he was not who he seemed to be. There may also be other content that provides additional information - during season of the Chosen the Presage mission was released, which provided much of the information about what was going on with Calus outside of the main story beats.

While this may sound like a frustratingly halting or slow way of telling a story, it has had the effect of making Destiny seem like a world where things are actually happening, rather than a disconnected series of dioramas. As a note, if you miss a week you can easily catch up by just doing those sequences of things multiple times.

Lots of it is actually in the game now. The weekly mission requires running the current seasonal activity to do something (in this case, we’re aligning beacons to make the Blind Well work). After that is done, we go into the Ascendant Realm to rescue a Techeun. During these activities, the characters of the season will have dialogue over the comms, which is mostly just flavor, but sometimes it is more. After those missions are done, you go back to the Tower and talk to a character (Mara, this season), who will have actual voiced dialogue with the next story bit. A few times per season we get a real cutscene instead of just talking to someone. This is all accompanied by lore book pages that can provide additional context that’s directly related, or sometimes just about what might be happening elsewhere.

You can absolutely get a complete story without reading the lore books, but they are still great in their own right and provide a more complete understanding of what’s actually happening. It’s a really great balance right now, I think.

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