[GameSpot] - Destiny 2's New Lore Anthology Hints At The Return Of Oryx

[343iBot]

Destiny 2's lore is...dense. Anyone who's been following the game over the years of its life know that there are stories within stories, a lengthy history filled with important characters, and even some mythological underpinnings to the alien-shooting you do in the game. One of the biggest and most important parts of Destiny 2 lore for its overall story is the history of the Hive, which concerns three major Destiny villains: the Hive gods Oryx, Savathun, and Xivu Arath.

Savathun is front and center in Destiny 2 right now. The current content season, the Season of the Lost, had players interacting with Savathun after discovering that she had used her powers of deception to impersonate Osiris, a major ally to the player-controlled Guardians. Xivu Arath is hunting her sister Savathun, ostensibly for betraying her commitment to the Darkness, the unknowable, god-like evil force that looms large in Destiny 2's world. But Oryx is out of the picture, thanks to the fact that player Guardians walloped the strongest of all Hive gods way back in Destiny 1's best expansion, The Taken King. We rocked that supposed god, even when he made himself like 100 feet tall somehow, and sent him careening into Saturn.

But there are inklings that we might not be done with Oryx if you pay attention to Destiny 2's lore. There are entries that suggest the Taken King crusaded across the galaxy for millennia, killing and conquering everything in his path, with the expectation that he would one day be beaten--but that death wouldn't be the end of his story. The biggest piece of evidence for the idea that there could be more to Oryx, though, comes in the form of Bungie's latest physical lore book, Grimoire Anthology Vol. 4.

Bungie's Grimoire Anthology books are excellent compendiums of the game's expansive lore, specifically because they're all thematically driven. Each lore book doesn't just pull together random entries or arrange them in chronological order--they're each specifically about a certain topic, or set of people, or major event. The lore book about the Hive also dealt with the Darkness and past Guardian characters who it had corrupted, for instance.

Each lore book is also a bit of a portent of what's coming ahead in Destiny 2's story. The books help add context to whatever's happening in the game when they're released, or whatever will be happening soon after. The book released before the Beyond Light expansion was subtitled "War Machines," and dealt with Destiny's Exo race, humans whose minds had been transferred into robotic bodies. Beyond Light takes place on Europa, the place where Exos were first created, and the story of the expansion deals heavily with the robots' origins. And this isn't the first time Bungie has set the stage with a lore book for what was to come. The book ahead of the Season of the Drifter was full of backstory that informed that character and other key figures, such as Shin Malphur and Dredgen Yor, for instance.

So the contents of the latest lore book are definitely filling in context for the story that's currently unfolding, and what Bungie is choosing to tell us may well hint at where that story is going. Grimoire Anthology Vol. 4 is subtitled "The Royal Will," and deals with the creation of the Awoken race and their queen, Mara Sov. In the Season of the Lost, Mara Sov is a major player, and in fact, she's been gone a long time. Through the space magic machinations of the Destiny universe, Mara died fighting Oryx back in Destiny 1, but wasn't completely destroyed, and used her time on another plane of existence to help orchestrate an elaborate plan to defeat him and the rest of the Hive.

We're getting a lot of info about Mara just as Mara has become a big part of the story--but The Royal Will also has a lot to say about Oryx and the Taken, the army of corrupted creatures he can create. Some lore, as well as fan theories, have suggested that the ultimate goal of Oryx's Hive god sisters, Savathun and Xivu Arath, is to find a way to resurrect their brother. It could be that the reason we're getting so much Oryx info right now is that the Hive's plans are about to come to fruition. After all, February's Destiny 2 expansion is called The Witch Queen and is all about Savathun and her plans.

Then again, the portions of the book concerning the Taken King might be less about Oryx and more about the Taken. Recent story developments have suggested that while Oryx commanded the Taken, he didn't create them. That power came from someone else--someone much stronger and scarier than Oryx. Characters discussing the Darkness lately have been talking about the intelligence behind the strange force, referred to as The Entity. Since that seems to where the Taken come from, it might be that Bungie is gearing us up with a foundation about the Entity's power and capabilities.

You can speculate for yourself about what The Royal Will is all about if you want. Grimoire Anthology Vol. 4 is available for sale in the Bungie Store and at bookstores such as Amazon, but it's also available for free as a PDF during Bungie's Gjallardays event. You can also enter to win a copy of the sold-out collector's edition version of The Witch Queen while you're at it.

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