I think the speaker and traveler are lying to us.

I've studied concept art, so I could be of some help here, but first, I need to make two points out of it, with a final coda (if you want to follow me on this). [b]1)[/b] The "cars issue". Examining the cars on Venus, it's possible to notice a contemporary design - for "contemporary" in this case I mean the nowadays one. There's a lot of Smart-lookalike cars there, which is... unlikely, I'll tell you why. Modern car design has changed a lot during the last century, and now we are on the verge of shifting from oil to an electric power source. This will probably reduce the mass of the car for good, as most of the time the whole electrical engines are enclosed in the wheels - an ongoing process by now, apart from some "feels-like-a-good-old-muscle-car" designs from Tesla, to keep western audience interested on the matter (this concept will come in handy at the end of this post). That's been said, car's architecture should look something different. Furthermore, 4 wheels... they really are anachronistics. To eliminate material and power loss due to friction, a civilization capable of reaching Venus and terraforming it... really doesn't need wheels. Ground vehicle should work on magnetic repulsive systems, such as Covenant's Ghosts or, to stay on the topic, Guardian's sparrows. Which bring us to the main question: why as post-apocalyptic Guardians we have sparrows and as "Golden Agers" (I've made up this term) we had... ehm... Smart cars? While in movies like the afore mentioned "Total Recall", for cost reasons, they decided to go for wheels, in a video game you can really do whatever you want. It's only an aesthetic/style choice, not an economic one. [b]2)[/b] During the recent Bungie - Ride Along on Cosmodrome video, I got an explanation about the super retro design of the tanks in the Cosmodrome. Its design was meant to be something contemporary and somewhat futuristic, we'll see in some decades... but why? Keep in mind that we terraformed deadly places like acid-clouded Venus and hyper-radiated Mercury... It's not an inconsistent evolution of tech in different field, which we have today (smartphones vs bicycles, or drone vs pencils), it's about a huge paradigm shifts in our society operated by a super powerful and technological being on ALL levels. It's 4 wheeled cars against human-like Exo's artificial lifeform we created, an immense gap that causes an unforgivable inconsistency. The colonial ships in Cosmodrome are not even remotely believable. They looks chemical-fueled (huge tanks attached and the vertical launch position suggests it), while they should use a more powerful source to be propelled in space. So... why? To reach Mars we'll need years like this and Golden Agers they say they colonized Jovian space too! Also, colonies on the Moon are closer to what we could build in 20 years by now, rather than structures that the Traveler taught us to build. And, where are the cities they are telling us about? It is confirmed later on, on the same video I quoted above, that the Traveler gathered all the humanity together, and there was a single, huge effort to create the movement of the humankind in space, towards the colonies. The Traveler did not help us to create better Ferraris [sic]. In my opinion, they got a point, even if still this is slightly inconsistent to other elements (the poor tech on Moon's outpost, for example, and the very old tech on colony ships as well). Human space run in the 60's produced computers, mobile technology and a lot more... so why Traveler's help didn't bring us floating cars? My bottom line is that Bungie decided to draw its world by means of [i]style[/i] not [i]logic[/i]. Due to the great concept artists that worked on this game for years, I can only imagine that we are operating on conceptual levels and with collective imaginary. Bungie needs people to stick with the environment, just as with weapons and tech. Why in Halo humans are colonizing planets, mastering slip space fractures, while still firing with bullets and black powder most of the time? Because they need to differentiate weapons from alien ones and have people that like to hear "boom!" while firing a weapon to stick with them, to have the feel of the firing experience. This could be a reason. A futuristic car could not emotionally bind us to the tragedy of the Collapse than the vision of a familiar one, rusted and ruined in the dust with thousands of them. It's our world that collapsed in this way, not some alternate, futuristic and far one. ... or, basically, there's is some other trick that's going on with the plot, as we all said, involving weird time paradoxes, side shifting plot twists, and who knows what else. Sorry for the text wall, guys!

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Please do remember a few points: 1) Destiny is a videogame. Bungie is entitled to do whatever they please. 2) As St1nkf1nger pointed out, this is a game in the near future. The only difference is the appearance of The Traveler, which radically accelerated technological development . 3) We are still talking about humanity here. Even though we had obtained hyper advanced technology, it probably would nit have been distributed evenly across the planet. 4) It is "Old Russia" you play in. Perhaps there is a more advanced portion of Russia, and this area was abandoned early in the Golden Age, and humans flocked to it as a last resort during the Collapse.

Anyone else notice the Cryptarch STILL uses an iPad 1?

The same shitty, non-future cars can be found on Venus. The short and simple answer is that this game has stupid devs with no logical or imaginative art direction when it comes to level design.

I think these cars were used and developed in the last years of the war. One thing I noticed is that all the cars on all the planets have steering wheels. This wont be the case even in our near future. I think they were developed in case the grid went down, which would have. They are small to save resources for the war machine. When the world comes to an end low tech is what will continue to work. The ISS will always be around even when it's a thousand years old unless something happens to it. Even when it's obsolete it will serve historical purpose. It was probably a museum at the time. As for being resurrected where you were, you were probably originally killed when defending the wall. Though this wall never made sense to me when whatever was attacking it must have had air/space power and could just nuke it from space. Hell I'm not sure why everything hasn't just been nuked or that the cabal didn't blow up the parts of earth not protected by the traveler

Why, if I'm not an exo, is my body still around if I've been dead long enough to see things I wouldn't understand. If the ghost can rebuild bodies why are there so many skeletons? We need all the fighters we can don't we?

The golden age was caused by all the technology that was taught through the traveller, it was a sudden leap in understanding and thats why a lot of old technology remained wile some tech was very advanced.

I've often thought about the old cars and planes. But if you take a long look at the far side of the Cosmodrome that we can't get to, through a sniper scope. You soon realise has more in common with an Aeroplane grave yard than it does with abandoned vehicles. Also all the cars, trucks, planes and helicopters aren't in an advanced stage of rust. Sure they don't have much inside them, possibly due to scavengers. But they are essentially intact, unlike the ships at the Cosmodrome, which have advanced stages of rust. My theory is that the vehicles are made out of a near corrosion resistant alloy. The like of which one would create during a golden age. As for all the old tanks etc, you would pull out all stops and use everything you had to throw at the enemy if it came down to the wire. This to me is what it looks like.

The car wrecks were not due to war from universal species, but by horrible driving conditions in the winter with people trying to overtake everyone, documented on youtube. I laughed during the opening scene because all i could do was re-see all those videos playing out in my head as i looked around the ruined russian landscape.

Also all the computers, tanks and ships are modern age. If you look on the moon the dead astronauts look exactly like the ones from the opening cutscene.

Probably a nuclear weapon...

It is the ISS. It's supposed to represent "near future". It's what I assume to be a possibility in the next 50-100 years. And as someone pointed out in another post...Russian automotive technology is still stuck in the 80s...no offense to most Russians, but the pics of the traffic jams don't lie.

I think we are just in the Matrix O.O

I assumed that cosmodrome was used in the beginning of the golden age, then abandoned.