Destiny 2has provided players with a rich tapestry of lore and history that fleshes out its universe and the forces within it. The current saga about the Light and Darkness is getting a new chapter in the form ofLightfall, and it is set to end with The Final Shape story expansion concluding the struggle between these two paracausal forces. While the outcome has yet to be revealed inDestiny 2, players can obtain information through the Gardener and Winnower creation myth.
The lore detailing this myth isn’t featured in any playable mission or cutscene, and instead, it’s found in entries in the book Unveiling, which players can acquire fromDestiny 2’s Eris Mornafter completing the Beyond mission in Shadowkeep.While these entries provide comprehensive information on the themes and conflicts seen within theDestiny 2universe, players should remain aware that Darkness is the narrator, making its accounts possibly unreliable.
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The Gardener and the Winnower in Destiny 2
According toDestiny 2’s lore, the Gardener and the Winnower lived in a garden, considered a field of possibility that prefigured existence. This is explained by the fact that the garden existed before a time when time had not begun. The Gardner and the Winnower did not live, but they existed as ontological dynamics of advanced mathematical structures with no antecedents or constituents. The garden, not to be mistaken withDestiny 2’s Black Garden, was the blueprint for all probable space from which possible universes could arise, and these two entities played a game within it called “the flower game.”
Within the garden, the Gardener was the rules that let flowers be placed, spread, and sustained over each tick of game time, representing the Light. The Winnower, meaning the Darkness, is the rule that culled the flowers. Then, the Gardener planted seeds in the morning to see what they would become, while in the evening, the Winnower reaped the crop and separated what would live from what wouldn’t. In this tale, the day is longer than all time, and the night is swift.
What The Flower Game in Destiny 2 Is
As theGardener and the Winnowerexisted in the garden, planting and culling flowers during the morning and evening, they played a game of possibilities during the day. The flower game thus becomes a metaphor to explain the simulated realities the Light and Darkness created within this primordial garden. Governed by a list of rules, the game was played with open and closed flowers representing shaded or empty squares.
The rules as described by the lore book may seem simple, but in terms of lore and according to theDarkness inDestiny 2, the game was intricately complicated as it could describe entire universes with an array of shapes and patterns that spelled out existence, and it almost resembled chess. However, as the Gardener and Winnower played the game, one final self-sustaining shape would eventually emerge, consume all others, and dominate the board.
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The Gardener and The Winnower’s New Flower Game Rules
What the Winnower found was the so-calledfinal shape, the title of the finalDestiny 2expansion about the saga, pleasing with the rules established in the flower game. It saw this sustaining shape as the natural outcome of the game, bolstered by the fact this outcome was always inevitable. On the other hand, the Gardener found this boring, as it believed that life and existence should instead be full of novel, complex patterns that should create a harmonious sense of unity.
To achieve this, the Gardener, asDestiny 2’s Light, became a new rule in the game to promote complexity. The Winnower feared this action as it believed it would create malformed patterns that could not be culled and thus corrupt the game. The Winnower, as the Darkness, also became a rule to execute simplicity to balance the field. The old rules were set aside, believed to be unable to influence the new laws - however, the new rules could invoke the old.
The Final Shape in Destiny 2
With both forces causal in origin now in the game, the Darkness had only one move, which it used to attack the Light. The two fought and devastated the garden, which shattered the simulated universes into real ones through events equivalent to the Big Bang, symmetries, and laws of physics. The final shape, created by the old rules and now hindered by the new, fled into the confines of space and became what is now known asDestiny 2’s Vex, a race that has a lot to do with the concept of time and its manipulation.
While this creation myth is told from the Darkness’s point of view, many parallels detail the nascent universe and the governing laws that now exist. Following its original line of thinking, The Darkness aims to see the final shape restored, insisting that only the strongest, self-sustaining pattern can survive and dominate. This ideology mirrors the Sword Logic that servants of the Darkness, primarilyDestiny 2’s Hive, follow. Within the Sword Logic and the Darkness' belief in simplicity, the idea states that existence is a struggle and that the shape that dominates all others deserves to live, whereas the others deserve to be annihilated.
Since little information has been revealed about The Final Shape story expansion, players are left to ponder this myth and its relevance and outcome in the final struggle between the Light and the Darkness. In the teaser trailer for the upcoming Lightfall expansion,the Witness, seemingly an entity that wishes to serve the Darkness' initial purpose, wants to eliminate both life and death for the final shape to emerge - and it could be none other thanDestiny 2’s Guardians.
With that mindset and the title of the next story expansion being Lightfall, many players anticipate that the Light will suffer heavy setbacks and a major defeat at the hands of the Darkness as it spreads itsBlack Fleet of pyramid shipsthrough the Sol System to usher in a second Collapse. What the final shape may look like, whether the Vex will play an integral role, and what precisely the endgame of the Witness is are all up for theorizing and discussion. The parallels, however, with the wording of the final shape for the story and the creation myth have all been laid out a long time ago, but they are more relevant now than ever.
Destiny 2is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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