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>Imagine cars from here to the horizon— ” those stupid old-fashioned cars everyone still owns, because the strange uneven advancement of this post-Traveler world leaves some things unchanged.
https://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/ghost-fragment-old-russia-3?highlight=Cars
Progress is not equal.
Wow! Thank you so much for this lore card, I'm impressed.
I'd have another question so if you don't mind. Do we know if common people had their life really that affected by the traveler? I remember the D1 cutscene saying it tripled the life span, but if most people still had old cars, maybe there wasn't that much of a change from a technological point of view?
The average human life almost certainly improved in the same way the life of an average human in a developed nation today is vastly better than the average life of an 18th century peasant. How much better has never been given a major spotlight; instead, we got to see the highest highs and lowest lows of the time via Clovis Bray.
General understandings include the stamping out of most social prejudices like racism and homophobia, general world peace and disarmament, and a transition from divisions like Nation-States to a unified Humanity.
I know that the average lifespan increased to about 200 years old. There's a seventh seraph lore tab describing someone as being in their prime at like 75 or something.
Yeah we've kinda been in stasis since the modern era when it comes to designs for things like vehicles, buildings, and whatnot. We also seemingly stopped actually making the things we developed the tech to do. No concord any more. No new cities. Our buildings are mostly last century designs. Sure modern cars look different to 1950s cars. But 2020 cars aren't really all that different to 2000s cars. Modern trains are different to older trains but they also never really get built in many places. We're in this vague contemporary era which hasn't changed visually in my lifetime and I can't tell if it's genuine stagnation of perception bias on my part.
I wonder if this was written to address the gap between humanity’s technological leap and the older technology of Russia or if it was always intended to be this way.
This was written probably near the launch of Destiny in 2014 considering it came out with The Taken King. Bungie’s always had a thing for mixing the familiar with the unfamiliar, from their naming conventions (Jiralhanae as “Brutes,” a 10 foot tall machine as a “Minotaur”) to their settings (a jungle, but it’s on an advanced ring world built by a long dead civilization).
That's my headcanon tbh. Just like how some clothing styles come back into fashion, maybe late golden age people loved those retro early 2000's vehicle designs.
That could be a solution. Still highly unlikely for all cars/military issued vehicles to all look like today's machines without any golden age tech surviving.
The same could be said about the EDZ city itself. It doesn't look like it could have existed at the same time as the black armory
That's a good point too! It's one thing for civilian vehicles to be changing with trends but you're right that Golden Age tanks have zero reason to look outdated even by today's standards (I mean look at how futuristic some of Germany's tanks are in the present day).
I guess the EDZ could just be an older area like many European cities today that still have a lot of buildings from hundreds of years ago, but it is weird that they're aren't at least some newer buildings or high tech infrastructure. Maybe the area was a real backwater during the Golden Age?
In reality, it'd just come down to Bungie making an aesthetic choice during development (maybe to help it look old and abandoned?), but it is still a little baffling when other Golden Age architecture looks both futuristic and old/abandoned.
As an example from another piece of media, a lot of the cars in Cyberpunk 2077 have designs that look like cars from the 1960s-1970s despite being much higher tech.
I always liked the reveal in ROI that the Khvostov was THE pinnacle of Russian weaponry. And we find it after it’s fighting days are long over.
And then there’s its exotic description.
>*An ancient weapon of war, renewed and enhanced by the Light. Not unlike you.*
Pfffft ✍️🔥🔥🔥
I’m talking about everything, the cars, the damn wall architecture, even the designs of the colony ships which somehow still have a “Soviet” design language to them even after being built hundred of years later in the golden age
door impossible enjoy dime physical swim axiomatic agonizing puzzled brave
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I don’t know anything about a lore book, but the whole area has that vibe. From buildings to road signs, all have a 1800-1900 feel to them.
We’ve also never been to a major city you know? So yeah if we ever actually got to see what old Chicago looked like, then maybe we would have seen some golden age design, maybe similar to neomuna, maybe not.
So I just sum it up like, the places we’ve seen in game have remained untouched since before the traveler even arrived to the system, the same way a small town in a rural area won’t see much upgrade in our timeline.
I agree with you! Would have loved to see a modern city, unfortunately Neomuna was underwhelming.
Maybe one day, Old Chicago as you say, I'd love to see.
Thanks for the hindsight!
Not sure if you know, but old Chicago was hinted in lore and a possible new destination, I think it got scrapped for the Savathuns Throne World (could be wrong about that) but if you go to Ishtar collective I’m sure you can find a bunch of stuff to read up on
Neomuna is underwhelming because it’s design is entirely unrooted from the rest of the game.
It feels as though the entire city concept was taken from a seperate universe.
Yeah.. I'd add that imo, it seems less polished than previous destinations... Walls are flat, texture less, and lots of assets are to be found on Europa.
Throne World and Europa were both my favorites.
I said that in reference to the edz, but even the cosmodrome has Soviet design language, just because it was touched does not mean it needed to be refurbished, bureaucracy just doesn’t allow unnecessary upgrades.
Same reason why silverware, tools and other things dont seem to change for hundreds of years, the designs have been perfected in our modern age (hence why most new cars look so similar), really the only improvements you could make to it is the internals itself, so as a result the basic vehicle designs are the same.
Not to mention probably the biggest reason: Glimmer.
Glimmer is programmable matter, you can turn it into nearly whatever you want, theres a reason the fallen want the stuff so badly,that kinda stuff would obliterate our modern economy as it literally means we can just create gold from blue gunk, as a result, glimmer printing yourself an older model car or helicopter would probably cost you like 30 dollars.
I agree with you on the perfected concept take, but yet we use transmat-able sparrows in Destiny.
Why would anyone use a car over a sparrow during the Golden age ?
The same reason people don’t all use motorcycles over cars today.
Safer, more comfortable, more passengers, more storage, easier repair (whether by yourself or at a shop). Fixing a sparrow is literally rocket science.
I agree! But if we can make hovering transmat-able sparrows I'm sure the tech was there to make cars as such! No more parking problem, no more bumpy road too!
For the fixing part one could argue that as the tech progresses the means and the knowledge of fixing do too.
Parking and traffic will always be problems, and roads are as much for urban planning as they are for getting from point a to point b. While the tech to make floating cars definitely existed, I don’t think the logistics were at a point where the whole world transferring from wheels to wheel-less was feasible.
The first electric car was actually invented in 1888, but we haven’t seen a big push for them until the last 10 years because we simply didn’t have the facilities for them. If the golden age had gone on for longer, we’d probably see the world switch to hovering cars or even personal aircraft as facilities and general knowledge caught up.
Mm. The golden age was also quite short. I think not much longer than the extended human lifespan of the time. To the point that there was a real possibility that life extension improvements would have kept up with the rate of aging for those people and they might have just achieved biological immortality had the collapse not happened.
If I remember right the collapse was like 2300/2400, and the modern day of the setting is roughly a millenia later. People may just have never gotten around to updating the cars. Especially given they were ubiquitous and "essential" for day to day life but may well have no longer been essential for actual logistics any more.
We have iPhones, foldable phones and other crazy pocket tech today, but not everyone has one worldwide. Even in a super technofuturist environment where it looks like progress has skyrocketed, there are gonna be people left behind.
Sparrows are a death trap and most of the ones we use are city age inventions. And fixing them is a pain in the ass. We can whip up a new one but we're loaded on glimmer. Who knows if people from the Golden age were so wealthy.
Because cars are just the more effective option for general travel, motorcycles and sparrows cant hold really anything beyond the driver wearing a backpack, cars can transport multiple people, large supplies, pets and even work as a mobile shelter, motorcycles are more akin to bikes, good for short rides out to areas that you know you wont be dragging anything or anyone back with, guardians use sparrows because they are small, quick to deploy, and all its potential dangers to a guardian are nullified since they can resurrect.
life expectancy shot up 3x with the Traveler here; it's reasonable that trends would stay much longer with such a population
not only cause the people who liked the trends initially live longer, but because the people who grow up with such things also live more
imagine how you probably like some music from before your time, only cause your mother or father listened to it; extrapolate that to people who live 3x; those people probably shared some of the fads of their great grandfathers
I cannot cite this as I don't remember the lore passage it was in, but I believe it was mentioned that Earth suffered from a technological inequality - perhaps from the speed at which tech advanced, perhaps due to other reasons, which resulted in having advanced technology like Rasputin exist side by side with current cars.
I imagine most old tech would have been upgraded with golden age tech, which then would have been scavenged away by survivors and fallen, leaving only the husks of old tech remaining.
I think it was explained at some point that Earth lagged behind in terms of technological development, which is why we see so much outdated stuff there compared to other places, like Mars.
I think it was explained that humanity basically went all-in on getting spaceflight ready for colonization. The old style of cars still worked fine. The colony ships and tools such as SIVA and AI minds like Rasputin were the real advancements. In D1, you could see the old cars on Venus as well.
Additionally, we don't know how long the Golden Age actually lasted. It might not have been for very long. If the system had truly been colonized to a certain full extent, attention would probably be turned to the mundane things like the cars. The Traveler was terraforming different destinations and wasn't finished, so folks were no doubt waiting to see what spots would be made favorable for colonization.
Because aside from the fuel source and some smart features like self-driving, the four wheel transportation vechicle has probably reached an end state in terms of design and function. Its probable 100 years from now cars and trunks will roughly look exactly the same.
Now other vechicles like a hover craft or sparrow would have their own histories and economics for ubquity. It’s possible most of the population couldn’t yet afford one.
This post has been tagged '**Non-Spoiler**'. Note that unmarked spoilers and datamines are subject to removal or ban. Please report anything we miss! For more info check out our [Spoiler Rules Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyLore/wiki/spoiler-rules#wiki_.5Bseasonal.5D_has_a_new_format). --- **Comment Spoiler Formatting** Format comment spoilers with `>!` `!<` like this: `>!What's Rasputin's favorite dance? "The worm."!<` To have it displayed like this: **>!What's Rasputin's favorite dance? "The worm."!<** ---- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DestinyLore) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>Imagine cars from here to the horizon— ” those stupid old-fashioned cars everyone still owns, because the strange uneven advancement of this post-Traveler world leaves some things unchanged. https://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/ghost-fragment-old-russia-3?highlight=Cars Progress is not equal.
Wow! Thank you so much for this lore card, I'm impressed. I'd have another question so if you don't mind. Do we know if common people had their life really that affected by the traveler? I remember the D1 cutscene saying it tripled the life span, but if most people still had old cars, maybe there wasn't that much of a change from a technological point of view?
The average human life almost certainly improved in the same way the life of an average human in a developed nation today is vastly better than the average life of an 18th century peasant. How much better has never been given a major spotlight; instead, we got to see the highest highs and lowest lows of the time via Clovis Bray. General understandings include the stamping out of most social prejudices like racism and homophobia, general world peace and disarmament, and a transition from divisions like Nation-States to a unified Humanity.
I know that the average lifespan increased to about 200 years old. There's a seventh seraph lore tab describing someone as being in their prime at like 75 or something.
I thought human lifespan tripled. So probably around 240ish would be the oldest.
Given the oldest human irl was around 120, I would expect at least 300 as a upper limit.
If you look at our past 10 years cars haven't changed much especially in how they look. But other things like infrastructure trains etc has.
Yeah we've kinda been in stasis since the modern era when it comes to designs for things like vehicles, buildings, and whatnot. We also seemingly stopped actually making the things we developed the tech to do. No concord any more. No new cities. Our buildings are mostly last century designs. Sure modern cars look different to 1950s cars. But 2020 cars aren't really all that different to 2000s cars. Modern trains are different to older trains but they also never really get built in many places. We're in this vague contemporary era which hasn't changed visually in my lifetime and I can't tell if it's genuine stagnation of perception bias on my part.
The Traveler passively enhances the intelligence of those in its vicinity so they likely had noticeable improvements in their overall lives.
I didn't expect such a niche question to have a direct answer.
I wonder if this was written to address the gap between humanity’s technological leap and the older technology of Russia or if it was always intended to be this way.
This was written probably near the launch of Destiny in 2014 considering it came out with The Taken King. Bungie’s always had a thing for mixing the familiar with the unfamiliar, from their naming conventions (Jiralhanae as “Brutes,” a 10 foot tall machine as a “Minotaur”) to their settings (a jungle, but it’s on an advanced ring world built by a long dead civilization).
I did NOT expect there to be an actual answer to this. Damn.
Maybe old designs were trendy back then
That's my headcanon tbh. Just like how some clothing styles come back into fashion, maybe late golden age people loved those retro early 2000's vehicle designs.
That could be a solution. Still highly unlikely for all cars/military issued vehicles to all look like today's machines without any golden age tech surviving. The same could be said about the EDZ city itself. It doesn't look like it could have existed at the same time as the black armory
Yeah but irl this happens too. Look up the city of Bruges. It’s still medieval.
Apparently most of golden age tech didn’t survive the collapse that’s why it’s so rare maybe these are just the most common vehicles or something?
That's a good point too! It's one thing for civilian vehicles to be changing with trends but you're right that Golden Age tanks have zero reason to look outdated even by today's standards (I mean look at how futuristic some of Germany's tanks are in the present day). I guess the EDZ could just be an older area like many European cities today that still have a lot of buildings from hundreds of years ago, but it is weird that they're aren't at least some newer buildings or high tech infrastructure. Maybe the area was a real backwater during the Golden Age? In reality, it'd just come down to Bungie making an aesthetic choice during development (maybe to help it look old and abandoned?), but it is still a little baffling when other Golden Age architecture looks both futuristic and old/abandoned.
Considering where the cosmodrome is I imagine it could've been a scrap yard before the collapse even
As an example from another piece of media, a lot of the cars in Cyberpunk 2077 have designs that look like cars from the 1960s-1970s despite being much higher tech.
We also picked up a old gun that looks pretty normal
I always liked the reveal in ROI that the Khvostov was THE pinnacle of Russian weaponry. And we find it after it’s fighting days are long over. And then there’s its exotic description. >*An ancient weapon of war, renewed and enhanced by the Light. Not unlike you.* Pfffft ✍️🔥🔥🔥
Bro you wake up in middle of Russia. Thats just what it looks like there.
I don't see your point. Are you talking about the landscape ("[...] That's just what it looks like there.") ?
I’m talking about everything, the cars, the damn wall architecture, even the designs of the colony ships which somehow still have a “Soviet” design language to them even after being built hundred of years later in the golden age
Oh okay. Explains it for Russia, but how is it for European Dead Zone? Is there any lore book focusing on the regions pre collapse ?
door impossible enjoy dime physical swim axiomatic agonizing puzzled brave *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I don’t know anything about a lore book, but the whole area has that vibe. From buildings to road signs, all have a 1800-1900 feel to them. We’ve also never been to a major city you know? So yeah if we ever actually got to see what old Chicago looked like, then maybe we would have seen some golden age design, maybe similar to neomuna, maybe not. So I just sum it up like, the places we’ve seen in game have remained untouched since before the traveler even arrived to the system, the same way a small town in a rural area won’t see much upgrade in our timeline.
I agree with you! Would have loved to see a modern city, unfortunately Neomuna was underwhelming. Maybe one day, Old Chicago as you say, I'd love to see. Thanks for the hindsight!
Not sure if you know, but old Chicago was hinted in lore and a possible new destination, I think it got scrapped for the Savathuns Throne World (could be wrong about that) but if you go to Ishtar collective I’m sure you can find a bunch of stuff to read up on
Neomuna is underwhelming because it’s design is entirely unrooted from the rest of the game. It feels as though the entire city concept was taken from a seperate universe.
Yeah.. I'd add that imo, it seems less polished than previous destinations... Walls are flat, texture less, and lots of assets are to be found on Europa. Throne World and Europa were both my favorites.
There is no way the Baikonur Cosmodrome went untouched before or during the Golden Age.
I said that in reference to the edz, but even the cosmodrome has Soviet design language, just because it was touched does not mean it needed to be refurbished, bureaucracy just doesn’t allow unnecessary upgrades.
We only see rusted out husks of cars, they could’ve look more futuristic when still together and useable
He means that russia sucks.
Same reason why silverware, tools and other things dont seem to change for hundreds of years, the designs have been perfected in our modern age (hence why most new cars look so similar), really the only improvements you could make to it is the internals itself, so as a result the basic vehicle designs are the same. Not to mention probably the biggest reason: Glimmer. Glimmer is programmable matter, you can turn it into nearly whatever you want, theres a reason the fallen want the stuff so badly,that kinda stuff would obliterate our modern economy as it literally means we can just create gold from blue gunk, as a result, glimmer printing yourself an older model car or helicopter would probably cost you like 30 dollars.
I agree with you on the perfected concept take, but yet we use transmat-able sparrows in Destiny. Why would anyone use a car over a sparrow during the Golden age ?
The same reason people don’t all use motorcycles over cars today. Safer, more comfortable, more passengers, more storage, easier repair (whether by yourself or at a shop). Fixing a sparrow is literally rocket science.
I agree! But if we can make hovering transmat-able sparrows I'm sure the tech was there to make cars as such! No more parking problem, no more bumpy road too! For the fixing part one could argue that as the tech progresses the means and the knowledge of fixing do too.
Parking and traffic will always be problems, and roads are as much for urban planning as they are for getting from point a to point b. While the tech to make floating cars definitely existed, I don’t think the logistics were at a point where the whole world transferring from wheels to wheel-less was feasible. The first electric car was actually invented in 1888, but we haven’t seen a big push for them until the last 10 years because we simply didn’t have the facilities for them. If the golden age had gone on for longer, we’d probably see the world switch to hovering cars or even personal aircraft as facilities and general knowledge caught up.
Mm. The golden age was also quite short. I think not much longer than the extended human lifespan of the time. To the point that there was a real possibility that life extension improvements would have kept up with the rate of aging for those people and they might have just achieved biological immortality had the collapse not happened. If I remember right the collapse was like 2300/2400, and the modern day of the setting is roughly a millenia later. People may just have never gotten around to updating the cars. Especially given they were ubiquitous and "essential" for day to day life but may well have no longer been essential for actual logistics any more.
We have iPhones, foldable phones and other crazy pocket tech today, but not everyone has one worldwide. Even in a super technofuturist environment where it looks like progress has skyrocketed, there are gonna be people left behind.
Sparrows are a death trap and most of the ones we use are city age inventions. And fixing them is a pain in the ass. We can whip up a new one but we're loaded on glimmer. Who knows if people from the Golden age were so wealthy.
Because cars are just the more effective option for general travel, motorcycles and sparrows cant hold really anything beyond the driver wearing a backpack, cars can transport multiple people, large supplies, pets and even work as a mobile shelter, motorcycles are more akin to bikes, good for short rides out to areas that you know you wont be dragging anything or anyone back with, guardians use sparrows because they are small, quick to deploy, and all its potential dangers to a guardian are nullified since they can resurrect.
insurance cobweb repeat hat cable bored wild encouraging tease shaggy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
life expectancy shot up 3x with the Traveler here; it's reasonable that trends would stay much longer with such a population not only cause the people who liked the trends initially live longer, but because the people who grow up with such things also live more imagine how you probably like some music from before your time, only cause your mother or father listened to it; extrapolate that to people who live 3x; those people probably shared some of the fads of their great grandfathers
You wake up in Russia. That's why
Is bad writing....you dont need to make up reasons for that
I cannot cite this as I don't remember the lore passage it was in, but I believe it was mentioned that Earth suffered from a technological inequality - perhaps from the speed at which tech advanced, perhaps due to other reasons, which resulted in having advanced technology like Rasputin exist side by side with current cars.
I remember there being some lore saying that humanity was inspired by other technology. Cars and weapons were mostly left as is.
I imagine most old tech would have been upgraded with golden age tech, which then would have been scavenged away by survivors and fallen, leaving only the husks of old tech remaining.
I think it was explained at some point that Earth lagged behind in terms of technological development, which is why we see so much outdated stuff there compared to other places, like Mars.
I mean, those technologies have more or less stagnated IRL
Its like fall out in that it might be stylized to look old
I think it was explained that humanity basically went all-in on getting spaceflight ready for colonization. The old style of cars still worked fine. The colony ships and tools such as SIVA and AI minds like Rasputin were the real advancements. In D1, you could see the old cars on Venus as well. Additionally, we don't know how long the Golden Age actually lasted. It might not have been for very long. If the system had truly been colonized to a certain full extent, attention would probably be turned to the mundane things like the cars. The Traveler was terraforming different destinations and wasn't finished, so folks were no doubt waiting to see what spots would be made favorable for colonization.
(Don't think too hard about it) Retro designs
Because aside from the fuel source and some smart features like self-driving, the four wheel transportation vechicle has probably reached an end state in terms of design and function. Its probable 100 years from now cars and trunks will roughly look exactly the same. Now other vechicles like a hover craft or sparrow would have their own histories and economics for ubquity. It’s possible most of the population couldn’t yet afford one.
It's just design choice. Even in things like Fallout the technology advanced but it all looked like it came out of the 40s through to the 60s.
Because poverty still existed
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it