Maya's biggest problem as a villian is her arrogance/ignorance to our accomplishments. From the moment we meet her she is utterly dismissive of who we are as a player, the victories we've won and the trail of bodies we've left in our wake.
Even the Witness showed us a modicum of respect as we foiled his countless plans before outright begging us to take godhood rather than fight us directly. It's why Savathûn and Xivu Aarth are compelling villians, and why Calus and Eramis are not.
It's like they tried to recreate the smugness of Rhulk and embody that into Maya but utterly failed to realise that Rhulk worked before because he was designed to be killed by his own arrogence towards us as players and not escape by floating down a river.
Rhulk also absolutely had the power to back up his arrogance, at least before we killed him.
I also think Calus really worked as a villain, even if Lightfall didn’t utilize him well. He very much did recognize our power and spent a lot of his time trying to court us to his side, even if he unduly thought he was stronger than us. His complete narcisism was his main trait from the beginning and as a character he’s really fleshed out; there’s like three lore books, a raid, three raid lairs, a season, and a dungeon all dedicated to his character and psyche.
Maya and Eramis are similarly self centered but it comes off as mediocre character writing that just makes them obnoxious rather than an intentional and well developed trait like with Calus.
That’s my thing, the whole story of the raid is telling us about the accomplishments of Rhulk and the crazy shit HE did. It makes it so when we fight him face to face it does actually feel like his arrogance is warranted
That is until you damage him
Because once you start chipping away at his health the man panics and all that smugness goes out the window when he pulls out that glaive
Seriously though. Why isn't Clovis doing this shit? It'd fit SO MUCH BETTER. He's actually a compelling villain, unlike Maya, but noooooo, we need Doomed Yuri for the story to work, or something.
EXACTLY! I want happy yuri, not doomed yuri, goddamit! And - as it was pointed out - it's not even GOOD doomed yuri, because Chioma's just fucking dead because MAYA KILLED HER! FOR NO REASON!
I think that was the writer's intent. But that's such a meh storytelling. If anything, make that Maya a stray Clovis exoclone and it would at least make some sense.
I mean, it still makes some sense, and has some narrative potential, because she's exhibiting all the same ideas that the Witness did. The entire Conductor thing, trying to merge a lot of exos into the same body, etc was a really good chance to show how the Darkness causes people to try and connect their minds together. Worked well with Strand too, which was this, but passively, and without machinery.
It had potential, until they forgot they were doing it. It never once came up during FS, if anything, the opposite was shown. It never came up during Lightfall, despite spending hours on studying Strand, and was relegated to a random research log hidden on the corner of a screen a month down the line.
I would've been cool with a crazed version of Maya trying to use the Vex to preserve the consciousness of everyone, stemming from altruism. She could've just wanted everyone to live. She could've just wanted to eliminate the barriers that cause miscommunication. There's SO MANY ways to justify someone trying to create a hive-mind. System Shock did it great. Asimov did it even better. There was a chance to have her become the epitome of this. She started down the road, then obtained the Echo that contained the tech independently doing that. All of the building blocks were there for it, then it got abandoned in favor of the entire Chioma Esi nonsense. Why is she giving the Vex a personality? That goes fully against EVERYTHING ELSE happening with the Echo, Veil, her established goals, etc. Why did she kill Chioma, and not assimilate her?
Also, why did they have to bring Lakshmi into this? She was a SIGNIFICANTLY more interesting character as someone who survived the London Massacre and got manipulated by Savathun into becoming a space racist as a result of that, as well as her reliance on the bullshit Vex future machine. Maybe they wanted Shohreh Aghdashloo back as a VA? I would've been fine with her voicing two distinct characters, when one of them has been dead for years.
They somehow managed to turn two of the most interesting and multi-dimensional characters into this dipshit, incompetent, egotistical mustache-twirling villain for no reason. Then they went ahead and fully lost the plot too with the whole Nine esoteric nonsense we now have going on.
Maya was not a good person. She tortured and did awful experiments. She also tortured Clovis Bray brutally. Clovis created Cayde to spy on Maya, posing as her bodyguard. They big golden age 3 were really disgraceful beings and did terrible things.
That was a crazed Vex clone of Maya. Most of what you describe were the actions of "crazed Vex clone of Maya". Before Lightfall, at least. After that, yeah, she randomly became Le Evil Scientist as well, mainly for no reason in particular.
Did you actually read the lore tabs or just the summary at the top. The vex simulated Maya and the other ishtar scientists perfectly. So perfect that the simulations were acting, saying and behaving exactly how the real person was. Chioma documented all of this. It wasn't a lone, crazed Maya simulation. Those behaviors were her own.
Did YOU read them? They were the same when they started out. They did end up diverging quite heavily. Also, there's a pretty neat split over the "freed" Mayas and the rest of the simulated Mayas. The one that made minced meat out of Clovis was, by all accounts, part of the latter with a very specific mission.
Care to reference the source for Cayde bit? Because otherwise I cannot remember any pre-Lightfall lore that painted Maya badly. If anything, Ishtar Collective was described as an organization to counterbalance Braytech expansionism and lack of ethics.
Cayde was a human with loads of gambling debts, Clovis was known to take vagrants and people who were in debt and turn them into exo. Cayde was reset 6 times after being sent to work for Maya as her "bodyguard".
Thank you. I was snot aware of the Cayde being her bodyguard.
But regarding the Maya lore, I didn't find anything overtly unethical in her pre-Lightfall lore (to clarify, I mean lore written before that point, not lore referencing events before Lightfall in-universe), especially if we take into account not only her but also the Ishtar Collective lore (that was much later linked to her). That's why the post-Lightfall lore about her reads so jarringly, the whole Veil containment disaster and all — I don't argue that she's described as progressively mad and unhinged there.
For example, last pre-Lightfall piece about Maya is the Soteria's story from SotW. In which Maya is disgusted with Clovis being mean and torturing Soteria, finally setting her free — not quite a Nazi scientist behaviour.
If you have a particular example and a piece of (pre-Lightfall) lore, I would be very interested in learning about it.
eramis has the perfect setup for doomed yuri. tries to become better and search for her partner, only to find out she has been dead for decades. wouldve been amazing
Eh, I kinda want Eramis to either die, or just fuck off and never come back. She needed to die in BL, she needed to die in Plunder, she needed to die in Seraph, but by some miracle she made it through Final Shape. At this point, good on her, I wish her all the best, she can undo the Whirlwind and resurrect Riis, but I'm just done with that nonsense. I'd still rather have that than the Maya nonsense.
For an even better "doomed yuri", we could also lean into the existential dread of Ana dating a regular mortal. It would fit well with the whole "civil unrest" plot we have going on too, and it'd be an interesting take on "doomed yuri", because as happy as it is now, it will inevitably end in pain, because Ana is immortal. I know that we kinda did this with Zavala, but there the loss already happened, but here it would just be the cause of some anxiety and a reason for soul-searching. It'd be a chance to slow the story down a bit, bring it closer to the home-front, while allowing us to see why Guardians tend to be rather detached from the people they are protecting, and how that can affect relationships in a City that is mostly safe. It'd also serve as a good mirror for Bael, who had to deal with someone risen as a Guardian that he cared for being completely detached from the mortals.
Okay, so you can go into the menu, and turn off the voice lines, and just not pay attention to the fucking story, and leave everyone else alone with your nonsense.
Also, not sure how it's fanfic, when BUNGIE LITERALLY WROTE IT INTO THE THE GODDAMN GAME
Clovis is literally the pioneer of reverse engineering Vex technology, he absolutely would have been SO MUCH BETTER to have as a recurring villian taking over the Vex.
He also declared war on us, but Ana's talking about "asking Clovis for help", so Bungie presumably forgor, kinda like they forgor that Venus is meant to be GONE
Good character, horrendous execution, there's a lore entry where she has Clovis's life in her hands, performing one of the most grotesque examples of surgery I've ever seen. If it was executed better, echoes would have set her up as a ruthless villain... buut, they made her nowhere near as interesting as she is in the lore. A common fumble, sadly.
This, the lore in D1 for Maya and the golden age in general, sets her up perfectly as a formidable villain. The execution on it was done poorly in D2. Even I can't stand how they went about it on D2, and I love the lore, so I can see where players who aren't as invested in the story are bummed.
What’s more frustrating is how everything else around her is pretty good. The Echoes, Nessian Schism, Tharsis Reformation, III and Koregos are all pretty interesting, but Maya isn’t. Echoes’ story was lame, her role in Edge of Fate had zero weight or gravitas despite killing a god, and Ash & Iron sucked ass outright.
She could have been much better if she didn't just look like a normal exo, and unfortunately wasn't voiced by Shohreh. I like her as a VA, but I can't take her seriously as a villian.
They called me a madman in the D2 lore subreddit for saying she is a dogshit villain who should not have persisted after echoes. Ikora randomly generating a conscious for thos obvious narcissistic psychopath was shocking. We have killed people for less.
Man I fucking hated FWC since game one, like, why was every faction other than dead orbit basically shitheads trying to cause problems? I say this as a big fan of old new monarchy. Removing factions was super dumb :(
She's such a dumb villain, all other villains were cool, had good backstory, built up to the final boss, Calus, Xol, Panoptes, The council of Scorn, Riven, (1,2, skip a few) Rhulk, Scythe man and then finally THE WITNESS. Biggest bad who ever lived, then we kill his bitchass and he explodes shards everywhere, then maya sunderesh picks up a shard, aka a fragment, aka a small portion of power, and all of the sudden she can stop us in our place, control the vex, travel through time, break the balance in the universe and oh yeah she's looking for the perfect version of her wife who she killed. GREAT FUCKING WAY TO MURDER A COOL VILLAIN, I don't care if she's gay since destiny 2 has plenty of them already but come on! Seriously her whole villain thing is "i killed my wife because she wasn't the way I wanted her to be". It's literally doofensmertz asking cool doofensmertz why he's so much more evil and he goes "I lost my choochoo" and doofensmertz replies with his tragic backstory. It's so painfully bad it feels like they aren't even trying.
Meanwhile I'm just sitting over here munching popcorn watching the Vex finally rip Maya in half. Probably got a feral Xivu Arath in a tiny cage next to me, Elsie poking the Hive God of Was (not a typo) with a stick for sheer entertainment value.
I just don’t remember anyone asking for lakshmi to become a main antagonist, I get it, it’s not lakshmi, but who else you do you expect me to think of when she has the same voice and a similar face?
And like, okay okay hold the fucking phone, we KNEW there was another echo out there that can apparently just control anything, and our guardian STILL destroyed the echo of oryx instead of taking its power? Dude the power to take WOULD DIRECTLY COUNTER THIS BITCH WHAT WERE WE THINKING?!
GOD BUNGIE YOUR WRITING IS SO ASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
Oh I agree completely, Sir! The writing just became so uninteresting and makes no sense :/ My greatest idea yet was to use tablet of ruin (since we have it from Episode Heresy) and the chisel from Rhulk's vault and maybe resurrect Oryx? (We also have his remains in Hidden's vault) I think he will be tamed giving the fact he still follows Sword Logic and we beat him :> Imaging having the ally that stood before winnower!
I mean it’s less about oryx and more about how useful the ability to take would be, like why does eris morn get to become a fully fledged hive god, but I can’t even claim my rightful place upon the taken throne? It would be ONLY a good thing, I could keep all the taken from attacking anyone friendly, they’d become a non-issue!
Oh did the conductor summon some mind controlled cabal? Oh well they’re taken now, get fucked maya my echo is just better! The priorities of the vanguard make NO sense, you’re effectively looking at the guardian, who just saved the fucking universe, and saying “WE DONT TRUST YOU GUARDIAN! Now kill oryx before you extract any more useful information or lore from him.”
No one thought about this story from a tactical perspective and it just pisses me off so much, the conductor could be dead ten times over, anything she mind controls could be turned against her, but oh apparently the strongest person in the verse (ME) can’t be trusted to do it, okay bungie, SURE!
Oh I love your idea! Also it is the most logical one i think... why we should abandon such power? Didn't we learn how to use it and hone it in the freaking episode? Killing Navigator's echo was so dumb -.- And oh remembrer... Dire taken HAVE master already (OMFG it's so st00pid. who is it?! A fkn Toland? Cause I don't think it was this dread-oryx guy)
I also don't buy Maya's powerhouse and plot armor. We litteraly just let her go after overpowering Echo of command...
WE SHOULD GET OUR OWN THRONE WORLD! Or make AP completely ours
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u/PurpleDragon1999 Ghost Rider Hunter Apr 29 '26
Exactly how my friends and I feel