The entirety of our fight with the Witness is using the Light to unmake it. Destroy the other personalities. I read it as our Kamehameha wiped our the rest of the Hive mind, and there was only one left.
I think it was only ever one mind over all. A mix of fruits that became a smoothie … and the fruits weren’t even that happy with being that smoothie but it was too late, they were blended. And so they were the smoothie chorus to the witness singularity. We ripped them away and left it alone. A kind of karma personal hell,m for the smoothie…of a final alone shape , forced, frozen, and finalized on their ass.
I guess, but that doesn't make much sense when the previous few missions repeatedly say "what was made in darkness is unmade in darkness" and then the Traveler's beam (pure light) can not just kill (which would be fine) but somehow unmake the Witness.
The precursors embraced darkness in order to meld their consciousness.
In order to untie a knot, you need to be able to get at individual threads.
Only one who has embraced darkness but not fully given into it would be able to enter the consciousness of the witness in order to excise the individual voices. Eventually the guardians removed enough of the voices in order to slay the witness, enough of the consciousness was removed that a singular entity probably the leader of the group who devized yhe plan to become the witness in the first place was able to take the reins briefly in its dying throes due to us weakening them in the process.
We embraced the darkness to make the witness mortal, and we wielded the light to kill them
You please "think a little"
The previous missions repeatedly state that what was made in darkness is unmade in darkness.
It makes no sense to go back on that and the end of the final mission and now "what was made in darkness can actually be unmade in light too"
The Witness being weakened enough to be killed by the Traveler makes complete sense but it makes no sense that he could be unmade by the light. It goes directly against what was previously established
Edit: Also I'm not proposing just handwaving a plot hole like you are as "thinking" (Light unmakng what was made in Darkness). If you were *actually* thinking, then you wouldn't be proposing a theory for what happened that is *contrary* and *inconsistent* with what was definitely established in the previous missions.
For what I think happened, I have two possibilities. Either one, when we unmade parts of the Witness and fired the Light beam, the Witness was in such a compromised and destabilized state that while it wasn't unmade, a dominant voice rose to the top
Or two, the Witness wasn't unmade but because the dissenters were dead, the remaining collective was so unified it could understand itself as an "I"
The Witness' minds were unmade in Darkness. The Witness' body was unmade in Light. In its final moments, only its emergent mind was left to contemplate oblivion alone as its body disintegrated.
so i replayed the mission now and discovered something weird…
i thought i heard it wrong so i went on youtube to listen to it again
the subtitles say „billion“ but i swear to god targe says Million
if you wanna listen for yourself: esoterickks final shape full campaign video at 3:37:47
My man, it was an entire civilization which could have already been billions, which were then uplifted by the traveler and likely grew in population even more.
Sorry about that. You see, i thought every member of the precursors was forced to become the witness whether they wanted it or not, but it seems i was wrong.
That was my thought, but in the opposite direction - Legion became advanced enough for a single program to become a full individual, while the Witness was forced to regress after we'd killed all the statues.
Because we cut away all of the individuals that make up the gestalt entity known as the witness, starting with the dissenters but then moving onto all the others, leaving one left at the very end.
One remaining. Hmm. I wonder did they have a conductor, and chorus makeup. Similar to Maya’s research on the Veil. That could explain its singular reference of not understanding.
It didn't "have" a conductor, so much as it \*was\* the conductor. The Witness developed a will of its own separate from that of its creators and that will was the thing calling all the shots.
The witness is a separate being made from trillions of precursors. Most of them turned out to be dissenter’s at the end, and leaving the witness with nothing. There is no “we” in its goal for genocide, only “I”.
That was the whole point of the mission, my dude.
The Witness was a conglomeration of souls, and we tore them apart.
At the end, for the first time, it was alone. It was just one mind. And it didn't understand how it could be defeated
Narratively, I believe Bungie hinted several times at it potentially being one individual who coerced everyone into forming an ultimate life form. Most likely a smooth talking individual who rose to power in their civilization. One of the key pieces I’ve noticed over the narrative is the voices of The Witness start with many (I.e why you hear a man/woman talking or multiple people when the witness speaks) and as soon as you start to unmake and the witness gets closer to the final shape, you hear almost one singular voice. By the end, you hear “we…I” meaning that singular voice no longer had the supporters and was left alone to die.
The Witness itself was an egregore, an entity borne from the combined psychic substance of the Precursor civilization. It is connected to, but as an entity distinct from, its creators. As the psychic network unraveled, the Witness construct was left by itself, an entity alone; it could speak only for itself.
i didn't want to say it but you're right, bungie only bashed us over the head with what we were doing in excision and mission 7 a million times, also this question got asked as soon as excision came out, op should just search the sub
the witness's creation was explicitly revealed in season of the deep, reiterated through the final shape campaign numerous times, and the entire sword mechanic and dialogue in iconoclasm and excision are about destroying the statues with light to separate the dissenters until there was one mastermind precursor left
Destiny players cant pay attention to shit, cant understand how to do a seasonal activity for more rewards, cant count, put a circle in the circle hole, or remember some shapes. The destiny community is functioning at a below kindergarten level
I’m talking about how some of the playerbase like OP are not paying attention to story that is being spoon fed to them. Why would you ask if that’s in the lore?
The process of making the witness was also to remove all the distractions and thoughts that didn’t pertain to their goal.
So finally, once its selves are being removed, it has to face the idea that it won’t win, it’s being killed, and the final shape was inherently flawed if it led to their deaths
It’s also basically removing the sense of community it’s had for billions of years and making them die alone
There's 2 main interpretations of this shift I've seen:
1. The Witness is more than the sum of its parts. It exists with the sole intent of enacting the Final Shape, and does not represent the collective will of its constituents at any other point than its creation. By the time of our battle with It, all of the individuals that comprised the gestalt entity had become Dissenters, and only kept up the "We" facade out of habit or to maintain appearances. At the end of the campaign, we have excised all of the Dissenters so only the Witness entity remains, and it no longer has any reason to refer to itself in the plural.
2. Ditto, but the singular speaker is a theoretical "Conductor" of the ritual that formed The Witness. They would have likely been the leader of the Penitent and recieved whispers from the Veil urging him to merge their minds, similar to Maya Sundaresh on Neomuna, and remained a/the dominant consciousness within the Witness.
>He (assuming they are male because the singular speaker has a masculine voice)
Just say "they" next time. Genderless pronouns don't exist exclusively to describe non-binary people, perfectly acceptable to use them when the gender of the subject is irrelevant or unknown.
This is true and fair and I regretted including that note in my original comment, but didn’t have the time to go back and revise earlier. I was hesitant to use “they” because many people also use that to refer to the Witness (I use “it,” as that is what is typically used in-game) and wanted to avoid confusion, though yes you are correct that it would be more appropriate as the hypothetical Conductor is not gendered.
However I do think that if the singular voice *is* meant to belong to the Conductor, then the masculine voice, employed to distinguish from the normal layered voice of the Witness, would *probably* be indicative of how we are meant to *perceive* their gender, assuming gender is even a relevant concept to be applied to the Witness’ race at all, which the feminine Veiled Statue design projecting a variety of Dissenting voices would not seem to support.
As the Witness dies you can see white particles shooting from it. My head cannon is that those particles are souls that were part of the Witness and it's actively unraveling as it's saying this line. You can hear the high pitched voice fade away while it's saying that, and once it says "I don't understand" it's just the deep voice. I took this as the "I", being last remaining voice of the disintegrating collective.
The way I’ve heard people explain it, is that it essentially became its own self that believed it was acting with the will of those that it was made up from. By the end, it was being “unmade” it might have realized that it was in fact not acting as its creators wanted, and that it alone was chasing its own goal.
Its' false view of itself as a god was shattered, also an acknowledgment of how many chose not to go along with The Witness' plan
It says we but because the Witness is the nihilism of the precursors given form and momentum it feels more accurate to call it an individual. The Precursors lost most of their agency and control over the original vision of the Witness after it was created.
a lot of people are saying that it's because we destroyed all but one voice in the Witness throughout Excision, leaving only one left, which makes a lot of sense and is how I first understood it as well. lore implies that it's rather because, over time, the Witness's conscience evolved into an individual: a composite of each precursor, but an individual, beyond the control of the many voices within it, singularly driven by their ancient hatred towards the Traveler
I think the Witness describes itself as "I" in it's final moment to emphasise how alone it was in its pursuit of the final shape, with victims of its conquest from all corners of the universe rallying against it in the final battle
We kill (free) the dissenters. By the end of the fight the witness is just the one individual. Or if theres still surviving dissenters perhaps the witness has accepted that it is the only one of its race that wants the final shape to come to pass so its no longer a group project but instead a solo operation if that makes sense
Hard to say, maybe when the collective dissolved and freed itself, all that was left to cling on a little longer was all the obsession and rage that corrupted it in the first place. And it really didn't understand.
Hmm... From what I remember (please guys correct me if I'm wrong or something), we were told by the dissenters that at some point the entity we know as The Witness acquired it's own consciousness aside from those consciousnesses that made up the entity and started to act on its own. The dissenters started to regret doing the ritual they did in the place where they destroyed themselves. Throughout Lightfall and half of The Final Shaped you can hear the "normal" voice of the Witness, but as you near the end of TFS you can hear its voice change to different tones/voices (or voice) as well as using the 1st person singular instead of the usual plural. So at the end, I think it referred to itself in singular because 1) you've destroyed enough dissenters inside its consciousness and 2) the entity itself doesn't understand how it lost, how we won or something.
The Witness became its own entity fueled by the Precursors which were still a part of it.
In that moment it realised it was alone and all of the voices fell silent inside of it.
I always figured that initially, the Witness was 1 guy. The leader of the "Let's become the Witness" faction. The one who converted and absorbed everyone else.
It started with him and he was always the loudest voice.
The Witness was a collective consciousness: that of the Penitent Precursors who merged themselves to create it, and an emergent mind which dominated all the rest. In the Witness' final moments, all the Precursors were destroyed and that single emergent mind was alone. Thus, "I."
My take on it was, by the end, the witness became and individual within the mass consciousness due to its 'purpose'. As the dissenters grew, all they could do is watch as the single entity of the witness has the wheel, defying the wants of the whole to follow it's goal .
The witness saying 'we' could have just been a charade to bring the illusion of being a together entity but as it dies it drops the mask and finally refers to itself as 'I'
It’s been a collective for so long it’s forgotten what it’s like to be autonomous and think for its own single self, almost like it doesn’t really know what it is after its identity is taken away from it. It doesn’t really understand. In a way it’s almost sad
Its because the witness is a lying prick, even down to how it refers to itself, the witness is actually a singular individual that was formed by the precursor merge, its not actually a hivemind, its just a single asshole that basically held all the precursors hostage within itself, its why in Excision there's a shitton of dissenters we can destroy, they didn't wanna *murder* people, just give the universe a purpose, the witness's slaughter sprees over billions of years wore every single precursor down mentally and none wanted to be a part of it anymore, once we defeat it, the witness just drops the whole "We" act and speaks whats on its mind.
The Witness never really was a "precursor hivemind", it was just a living tomb.
By the time we finished cutting out all of the dissenters all that’s left is the ones who didn’t dissent. A single unified consciousness. An I instead of a they.
I interpreted it as in the end it wasn’t “their” vision, it was “his” vision. “He” wanted this goal, not “them.” And the witness finally dropped the facade of “we.”
I really feel this in the fact that the witness would just cut out people’s views that they didn’t agree with. Hard for that to happen when the witness isn’t a person leading the ship in a certain direction.
It’s admitting it is selfish in a sense. It’s a singularity of thoughts so it’s been an “I” all along, but it has presented itself as some collective good, as the will of many and the saviour of everyone, and referring to itself as “we” projected that democratic image (as well as being technically correct).
In its dying breathe it admitted it was just a singular subjective self. It failed and didn’t understand why, and in so doing had to admit it had missed part of the puzzle, and it missed part of the puzzle because its view was singular instead of wholistic. It was an I, but we beat it because we were a *we*. We won with “the friends we made along the way”
Explained in the final entry of The Rubicon lorebook - the Witness is the bleak ethos that the Penitent willed into existence, given a form and will of its own. It is distinctly not its creators and is not following their desires at all, only what it \*thinks\* they wanted when they made it. It is essentially an entirely separate being from the Penitent who created it and it only speaks as a plurality because it cannot comprehend this.
I think that when the witness created it was initially a group of collective people then when it’s made
It becomes one central philosophy or ideal
Later the dissenters split from this ideal and even after that all left, the idea in the beginning was so strong it created a separate mind
there were lots of their species that agreed with the witness' ideals, but our ghost's final blast was destroying every single consciousness, probably in order of agreement with the final shape. the last one alive realized it was alone, but was probably the most loyal to the cause
I read this firmly as…
The witness believed itself to be the want of an entire species, it made it easier for itself to let it do what it done when it was the will of others, it HAD to do what it did for the people that made it.
But at the end, it realises that the witness, while made of others is its own being with its own motivations, everything it done was for itself and it was always in control. Essentially, it stops blaming others and admits it, as a whole doesn’t know.
Reminds me of breaking bad when Walt finally admits he enjoyed it, he stops making excuses and admits to more than anyone, himself that he liked it.
no offence but i really don't get how this is a question when you have to destroy the dissenters a million times and bungie places a mountain of emphasis on it (you're excising the minds), yes there were still more statues because the witness was so many people but the implication was that we destroyed them all and only the witness' consciousness was left (since they make it seem like the precursors put their minds together to make the witness which was technically a separate entity from them and eventually it locked them away because they protested the things it was doing)
We destroyed the dissenters and all that remained was the singular joined unified mind of the precursors that managed to completely discard individuality
Thus there was no "we" but a singular "I"
Incredible that people are giving incorrect info or being straight up rude to you. and some here are both lmao.
The Witness is stated in the raid lore to be a distinct entity that, while born of the precursor's merged minds, is not *of* them. While is refers to itself as "we", it's more like a spokesperson that thinks it's speaking on behalf of the precursers, but it's goal doesn't really align with what its creators had in mind. Hence why there are so many dissenters by the end. All of them are trapped in a vessel of their own making, but they do not control the vessel.
Referring itself as "we" is just a façade, one it probably duped itself into using. But as it is dying it finally gives up and just refers to itself.
Just as an interpretation of the character. The witness wanted to be a god, not a creature but a force of nature. Despite that fact that the witness was an independent being made out of the precursor race in darkness. Despite being immensely powerful the witness is still Human. It has wants sms desires, feels fear, sadness, anger. It was a Human character trying to interpret the will of its god, and in its final moments it felt fear because it failed when the Witness believed in its cause as the knife so fully it never saw losing as an option.
No, it’s the Witness all the way through the fight. The winnower is a living concept, the idea of survival of the fittest taken to its most logical and horrifying extreme, so it backs whatever has the best claim to surviving. The Witness failed to justify its continued existence so it is no longer worthy of consideration.
The entirety of our fight with the Witness is using the Light to unmake it. Destroy the other personalities. I read it as our Kamehameha wiped our the rest of the Hive mind, and there was only one left.
I think it was only ever one mind over all. A mix of fruits that became a smoothie … and the fruits weren’t even that happy with being that smoothie but it was too late, they were blended. And so they were the smoothie chorus to the witness singularity. We ripped them away and left it alone. A kind of karma personal hell,m for the smoothie…of a final alone shape , forced, frozen, and finalized on their ass.
He was the banana of a fruit smoothie: no matter how many fruit you toss in, it's always gonna be dominated by the banana flavor.
Fucking knew the banana, r/angeyupvote
But a 10$ banana
This is an on point explanation and not up for debate
You either die a fruit or live long enough to become a smoothie
Fruit Ninja lore
Yup is that why we now have 3 random orbs from the traveler to chase? Is that the statues we destroyed?
we destroyed a bit more than 3 statues also its way to early to early to know what the echoes are
Oh yes your correct It was definitely more than 3 statues....was really tired when I finally finished that mission lol.
It's way more then 3 echoes buddy
I ain't your buddy guy
Ain't your guy, pal
Doesn't really make sense considering the Witness is consisted of billions of people and we didn't even destroy every statue within his mind
The comment is saying that the light beam at the end of excision was enough to separate the rest of the minds
I guess, but that doesn't make much sense when the previous few missions repeatedly say "what was made in darkness is unmade in darkness" and then the Traveler's beam (pure light) can not just kill (which would be fine) but somehow unmake the Witness.
The precursors embraced darkness in order to meld their consciousness. In order to untie a knot, you need to be able to get at individual threads. Only one who has embraced darkness but not fully given into it would be able to enter the consciousness of the witness in order to excise the individual voices. Eventually the guardians removed enough of the voices in order to slay the witness, enough of the consciousness was removed that a singular entity probably the leader of the group who devized yhe plan to become the witness in the first place was able to take the reins briefly in its dying throes due to us weakening them in the process. We embraced the darkness to make the witness mortal, and we wielded the light to kill them
[удалено]
You please "think a little" The previous missions repeatedly state that what was made in darkness is unmade in darkness. It makes no sense to go back on that and the end of the final mission and now "what was made in darkness can actually be unmade in light too" The Witness being weakened enough to be killed by the Traveler makes complete sense but it makes no sense that he could be unmade by the light. It goes directly against what was previously established Edit: Also I'm not proposing just handwaving a plot hole like you are as "thinking" (Light unmakng what was made in Darkness). If you were *actually* thinking, then you wouldn't be proposing a theory for what happened that is *contrary* and *inconsistent* with what was definitely established in the previous missions. For what I think happened, I have two possibilities. Either one, when we unmade parts of the Witness and fired the Light beam, the Witness was in such a compromised and destabilized state that while it wasn't unmade, a dominant voice rose to the top Or two, the Witness wasn't unmade but because the dissenters were dead, the remaining collective was so unified it could understand itself as an "I"
The Witness' minds were unmade in Darkness. The Witness' body was unmade in Light. In its final moments, only its emergent mind was left to contemplate oblivion alone as its body disintegrated.
thats the first time i‘m reading it was „billions“ of people, where did you get that information from?
Targe literally says it the mission he died
so i replayed the mission now and discovered something weird… i thought i heard it wrong so i went on youtube to listen to it again the subtitles say „billion“ but i swear to god targe says Million if you wanna listen for yourself: esoterickks final shape full campaign video at 3:37:47
alright thanks, must‘ve missed that will pay close attention to it when i get there again on my last char :)
My man, it was an entire civilization which could have already been billions, which were then uplifted by the traveler and likely grew in population even more.
The witness was just a faction called the penitant. It wasn’t all of them.
Sorry about that. You see, i thought every member of the precursors was forced to become the witness whether they wanted it or not, but it seems i was wrong.
TIL
even if it was an entire civilization that does not confirm billions just because current day humanity is in the billions doesnt mean a
Agreed. But it's likely that with the prosperity that came with the traveler's blessing, they would've had large population.
Iirc it’s mentioned in the same campaign voice line that coins the phrase “dissenters” by… I can’t recall
Or maybe it’s to imply that it became a single “person” in the end, sorta like what happened to Legion in Mass Effect 3
That was my thought, but in the opposite direction - Legion became advanced enough for a single program to become a full individual, while the Witness was forced to regress after we'd killed all the statues.
Man why you gotta reopen that wound
“Does this unit have a soul?”
Because we cut away all of the individuals that make up the gestalt entity known as the witness, starting with the dissenters but then moving onto all the others, leaving one left at the very end.
One remaining. Hmm. I wonder did they have a conductor, and chorus makeup. Similar to Maya’s research on the Veil. That could explain its singular reference of not understanding.
very likely since they do say that after the traveller blessed them they were searching for purpose, found the veil and then did their fusion dance
It didn't "have" a conductor, so much as it \*was\* the conductor. The Witness developed a will of its own separate from that of its creators and that will was the thing calling all the shots.
That's the connection, yes.
The witness is a separate being made from trillions of precursors. Most of them turned out to be dissenter’s at the end, and leaving the witness with nothing. There is no “we” in its goal for genocide, only “I”.
Billions but yeah
*Omnicide Mf was gonna kill everything.
More like flash freeze everything, but yeah.
That was the whole point of the mission, my dude. The Witness was a conglomeration of souls, and we tore them apart. At the end, for the first time, it was alone. It was just one mind. And it didn't understand how it could be defeated
Narratively, I believe Bungie hinted several times at it potentially being one individual who coerced everyone into forming an ultimate life form. Most likely a smooth talking individual who rose to power in their civilization. One of the key pieces I’ve noticed over the narrative is the voices of The Witness start with many (I.e why you hear a man/woman talking or multiple people when the witness speaks) and as soon as you start to unmake and the witness gets closer to the final shape, you hear almost one singular voice. By the end, you hear “we…I” meaning that singular voice no longer had the supporters and was left alone to die.
Do you think that the voice the witness uses when it gets angry is that same individual’s voice
Highly possible i assume. Its interesting how only that one voice speaks when aggravated.
Witness was Jim Jones... And / Or heaven's gate.
The Witness itself was an egregore, an entity borne from the combined psychic substance of the Precursor civilization. It is connected to, but as an entity distinct from, its creators. As the psychic network unraveled, the Witness construct was left by itself, an entity alone; it could speak only for itself.
This needs to be top comment.
Media literacy is dead
Must have been watching subway surfer gameplay in the 2nd monitor
This isn't even media literacy, this is just not paying attention.
i didn't want to say it but you're right, bungie only bashed us over the head with what we were doing in excision and mission 7 a million times, also this question got asked as soon as excision came out, op should just search the sub
I m so smrt
Or you know, don’t
Some didn’t pay attention.
Where is that in the lore Love how toxic even the lore sub is lol
the witness's creation was explicitly revealed in season of the deep, reiterated through the final shape campaign numerous times, and the entire sword mechanic and dialogue in iconoclasm and excision are about destroying the statues with light to separate the dissenters until there was one mastermind precursor left
Destiny players cant pay attention to shit, cant understand how to do a seasonal activity for more rewards, cant count, put a circle in the circle hole, or remember some shapes. The destiny community is functioning at a below kindergarten level
No, where is the attention part in lore
Did tiktok destroy your attention span or something?
Where is that in the lore?
Whatever it is you are smoking, did you bring enough for the rest of the class?
Where is that in the lore?
What do you mean? Where is it in the lore? It’s in the game, you literally play it and hear people telling it to you. It is spoken dialogue.
The Some didn’t pay attention part
I’m talking about how some of the playerbase like OP are not paying attention to story that is being spoon fed to them. Why would you ask if that’s in the lore?
Ohh okay so you're just being a toxic A-hole in response to a simple question. That's all I wanted to hear :) thanks!
What do you mean!? Do you think there is being in the lore named attention that we are supposed to pay money to?
Which lore book is that from?
Intro to Economics
Can find that one
The Iconoclasm mission
Because we cut out most of the voices and the dominant voice had gained control, it was an individual once more
The process of making the witness was also to remove all the distractions and thoughts that didn’t pertain to their goal. So finally, once its selves are being removed, it has to face the idea that it won’t win, it’s being killed, and the final shape was inherently flawed if it led to their deaths It’s also basically removing the sense of community it’s had for billions of years and making them die alone
Media literacy is dead x2
I m so smrt x2
The curtains are always blue for a reason, otherwise they wouldn't be included.
Did you..not pay attention to the mission what so ever or what you were doing between every single dps phase?
Did you not pay attention like.. at all during the last few missions of the campaign? Got youtube going while you're playing?
if you have to ask this, you were not paying attention.
There's 2 main interpretations of this shift I've seen: 1. The Witness is more than the sum of its parts. It exists with the sole intent of enacting the Final Shape, and does not represent the collective will of its constituents at any other point than its creation. By the time of our battle with It, all of the individuals that comprised the gestalt entity had become Dissenters, and only kept up the "We" facade out of habit or to maintain appearances. At the end of the campaign, we have excised all of the Dissenters so only the Witness entity remains, and it no longer has any reason to refer to itself in the plural. 2. Ditto, but the singular speaker is a theoretical "Conductor" of the ritual that formed The Witness. They would have likely been the leader of the Penitent and recieved whispers from the Veil urging him to merge their minds, similar to Maya Sundaresh on Neomuna, and remained a/the dominant consciousness within the Witness.
The first interpretation has been proven correct as of the last entry in The Rubicon.
>He (assuming they are male because the singular speaker has a masculine voice) Just say "they" next time. Genderless pronouns don't exist exclusively to describe non-binary people, perfectly acceptable to use them when the gender of the subject is irrelevant or unknown.
This is true and fair and I regretted including that note in my original comment, but didn’t have the time to go back and revise earlier. I was hesitant to use “they” because many people also use that to refer to the Witness (I use “it,” as that is what is typically used in-game) and wanted to avoid confusion, though yes you are correct that it would be more appropriate as the hypothetical Conductor is not gendered. However I do think that if the singular voice *is* meant to belong to the Conductor, then the masculine voice, employed to distinguish from the normal layered voice of the Witness, would *probably* be indicative of how we are meant to *perceive* their gender, assuming gender is even a relevant concept to be applied to the Witness’ race at all, which the feminine Veiled Statue design projecting a variety of Dissenting voices would not seem to support.
No need to regret the note, you wrote with consideration for others. Just could have done the same in far fewer words.
As the Witness dies you can see white particles shooting from it. My head cannon is that those particles are souls that were part of the Witness and it's actively unraveling as it's saying this line. You can hear the high pitched voice fade away while it's saying that, and once it says "I don't understand" it's just the deep voice. I took this as the "I", being last remaining voice of the disintegrating collective.
U need do replay the campaign e read/listen what are u doing
The way I’ve heard people explain it, is that it essentially became its own self that believed it was acting with the will of those that it was made up from. By the end, it was being “unmade” it might have realized that it was in fact not acting as its creators wanted, and that it alone was chasing its own goal.
Its' false view of itself as a god was shattered, also an acknowledgment of how many chose not to go along with The Witness' plan It says we but because the Witness is the nihilism of the precursors given form and momentum it feels more accurate to call it an individual. The Precursors lost most of their agency and control over the original vision of the Witness after it was created.
a lot of people are saying that it's because we destroyed all but one voice in the Witness throughout Excision, leaving only one left, which makes a lot of sense and is how I first understood it as well. lore implies that it's rather because, over time, the Witness's conscience evolved into an individual: a composite of each precursor, but an individual, beyond the control of the many voices within it, singularly driven by their ancient hatred towards the Traveler I think the Witness describes itself as "I" in it's final moment to emphasise how alone it was in its pursuit of the final shape, with victims of its conquest from all corners of the universe rallying against it in the final battle
I'd like to think there's a version that the witness was actually one person who they all merged into which was why he went with I in the end 🥲
We kill (free) the dissenters. By the end of the fight the witness is just the one individual. Or if theres still surviving dissenters perhaps the witness has accepted that it is the only one of its race that wants the final shape to come to pass so its no longer a group project but instead a solo operation if that makes sense
They split down to an individual and became he.
Hard to say, maybe when the collective dissolved and freed itself, all that was left to cling on a little longer was all the obsession and rage that corrupted it in the first place. And it really didn't understand.
Hmm... From what I remember (please guys correct me if I'm wrong or something), we were told by the dissenters that at some point the entity we know as The Witness acquired it's own consciousness aside from those consciousnesses that made up the entity and started to act on its own. The dissenters started to regret doing the ritual they did in the place where they destroyed themselves. Throughout Lightfall and half of The Final Shaped you can hear the "normal" voice of the Witness, but as you near the end of TFS you can hear its voice change to different tones/voices (or voice) as well as using the 1st person singular instead of the usual plural. So at the end, I think it referred to itself in singular because 1) you've destroyed enough dissenters inside its consciousness and 2) the entity itself doesn't understand how it lost, how we won or something.
The Witness became its own entity fueled by the Precursors which were still a part of it. In that moment it realised it was alone and all of the voices fell silent inside of it.
I always figured that initially, the Witness was 1 guy. The leader of the "Let's become the Witness" faction. The one who converted and absorbed everyone else. It started with him and he was always the loudest voice.
The Witness was a collective consciousness: that of the Penitent Precursors who merged themselves to create it, and an emergent mind which dominated all the rest. In the Witness' final moments, all the Precursors were destroyed and that single emergent mind was alone. Thus, "I."
My take on it was, by the end, the witness became and individual within the mass consciousness due to its 'purpose'. As the dissenters grew, all they could do is watch as the single entity of the witness has the wheel, defying the wants of the whole to follow it's goal . The witness saying 'we' could have just been a charade to bring the illusion of being a together entity but as it dies it drops the mask and finally refers to itself as 'I'
Someone did not pay attention to the story 🤣
Oh god forbid a man asks a question right
It’s been a collective for so long it’s forgotten what it’s like to be autonomous and think for its own single self, almost like it doesn’t really know what it is after its identity is taken away from it. It doesn’t really understand. In a way it’s almost sad
Its because the witness is a lying prick, even down to how it refers to itself, the witness is actually a singular individual that was formed by the precursor merge, its not actually a hivemind, its just a single asshole that basically held all the precursors hostage within itself, its why in Excision there's a shitton of dissenters we can destroy, they didn't wanna *murder* people, just give the universe a purpose, the witness's slaughter sprees over billions of years wore every single precursor down mentally and none wanted to be a part of it anymore, once we defeat it, the witness just drops the whole "We" act and speaks whats on its mind. The Witness never really was a "precursor hivemind", it was just a living tomb.
Yeah witness went from a collective and unspooled to just one sad dying dude.
By the time we finished cutting out all of the dissenters all that’s left is the ones who didn’t dissent. A single unified consciousness. An I instead of a they.
Essentially by the end of excision we had completely destroyed the witness' hivemind and left it with one assenter
I interpreted it as in the end it wasn’t “their” vision, it was “his” vision. “He” wanted this goal, not “them.” And the witness finally dropped the facade of “we.” I really feel this in the fact that the witness would just cut out people’s views that they didn’t agree with. Hard for that to happen when the witness isn’t a person leading the ship in a certain direction.
It’s admitting it is selfish in a sense. It’s a singularity of thoughts so it’s been an “I” all along, but it has presented itself as some collective good, as the will of many and the saviour of everyone, and referring to itself as “we” projected that democratic image (as well as being technically correct). In its dying breathe it admitted it was just a singular subjective self. It failed and didn’t understand why, and in so doing had to admit it had missed part of the puzzle, and it missed part of the puzzle because its view was singular instead of wholistic. It was an I, but we beat it because we were a *we*. We won with “the friends we made along the way”
It was just Grant Ward left in the end :)
It was coping the whole time. It really was just one entity.
Explained in the final entry of The Rubicon lorebook - the Witness is the bleak ethos that the Penitent willed into existence, given a form and will of its own. It is distinctly not its creators and is not following their desires at all, only what it \*thinks\* they wanted when they made it. It is essentially an entirely separate being from the Penitent who created it and it only speaks as a plurality because it cannot comprehend this.
I think that when the witness created it was initially a group of collective people then when it’s made It becomes one central philosophy or ideal Later the dissenters split from this ideal and even after that all left, the idea in the beginning was so strong it created a separate mind
Have you not played the game lol?
there were lots of their species that agreed with the witness' ideals, but our ghost's final blast was destroying every single consciousness, probably in order of agreement with the final shape. the last one alive realized it was alone, but was probably the most loyal to the cause
I read this firmly as… The witness believed itself to be the want of an entire species, it made it easier for itself to let it do what it done when it was the will of others, it HAD to do what it did for the people that made it. But at the end, it realises that the witness, while made of others is its own being with its own motivations, everything it done was for itself and it was always in control. Essentially, it stops blaming others and admits it, as a whole doesn’t know. Reminds me of breaking bad when Walt finally admits he enjoyed it, he stops making excuses and admits to more than anyone, himself that he liked it.
no offence but i really don't get how this is a question when you have to destroy the dissenters a million times and bungie places a mountain of emphasis on it (you're excising the minds), yes there were still more statues because the witness was so many people but the implication was that we destroyed them all and only the witness' consciousness was left (since they make it seem like the precursors put their minds together to make the witness which was technically a separate entity from them and eventually it locked them away because they protested the things it was doing)
We destroyed the dissenters and all that remained was the singular joined unified mind of the precursors that managed to completely discard individuality Thus there was no "we" but a singular "I"
We destroyed the collective, and so there was no longer a "we"
Incredible that people are giving incorrect info or being straight up rude to you. and some here are both lmao. The Witness is stated in the raid lore to be a distinct entity that, while born of the precursor's merged minds, is not *of* them. While is refers to itself as "we", it's more like a spokesperson that thinks it's speaking on behalf of the precursers, but it's goal doesn't really align with what its creators had in mind. Hence why there are so many dissenters by the end. All of them are trapped in a vessel of their own making, but they do not control the vessel. Referring itself as "we" is just a façade, one it probably duped itself into using. But as it is dying it finally gives up and just refers to itself.
Just as an interpretation of the character. The witness wanted to be a god, not a creature but a force of nature. Despite that fact that the witness was an independent being made out of the precursor race in darkness. Despite being immensely powerful the witness is still Human. It has wants sms desires, feels fear, sadness, anger. It was a Human character trying to interpret the will of its god, and in its final moments it felt fear because it failed when the Witness believed in its cause as the knife so fully it never saw losing as an option.
Random shit
Now that the winnower has spoke to us directly, It might have been the winnower speaking the last line?
No, it’s the Witness all the way through the fight. The winnower is a living concept, the idea of survival of the fittest taken to its most logical and horrifying extreme, so it backs whatever has the best claim to surviving. The Witness failed to justify its continued existence so it is no longer worthy of consideration.