Hey guys. I’m writing a bit of lore background (fanfic type) and I came to a point where a character is talking to his Ghost. I was doing fine with the dialogue until I thought about something pertaining to how Ghosts talk to their Guardians. For context, the Guardian is speaking to a citizen of the City, but the Ghost is hidden. It got me thinking about two things about Ghosts themselves:
1: “When our Ghost is put away in-game, but he’s talking to us through the missions, can other people hear the Ghost?” It would make sense that the Guardian can hear his/her own Ghost, but when the Ghost disappears, can it talk to the Guardian without anyone else hearing it?
2: “Where does the Ghost go when it disappears from view?” I know in one mission from a while back, your Ghost says “I just live in your backpack”, but Ghosts disappear with the same light effect that the Exo Stranger teleports with. So where do Ghosts go? Do they go back to the ship? Do they go back to the Tower? Where???
What do you guys think? Thoughts and ideas are all welcome!
Our communications with the vanguard and other questgivers go through our Ghost, so when it’s a conversation with the vanguard mission control, for example, others can hear our Ghost.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that Ghost can communicate solely with the Guardian, though. I’m pretty sure our enemies can’t hear when our Ghost is making comments and giving advice, and they can’t intercept it as with outgoing communication. Servitors and Hive magic can prevent us from phoning home via our Ghost, but they can’t prevent the Ghost from talking to us one on one.
As for where Ghosts go, “live in your backpack” probably doesn’t refer to a literal backpack. It could, but with the amount of weapons and armor a Guardian has in their inventory, (and with lines like Saint-14 saying “prepare my Vex arsenal”) it seems like they have much more storage space available.
Whenever we have to pick up a quest item, our Ghost transmats it so we don’t need to carry it on our person. This is probably what happens when we switch weapons and armor we didn’t have previously equipped.
Our Ghost’s animation for disappearing looks like a transmat animation, so it’s possible wherever our field equipment is stored is where Ghost takes shelter.
This last bit is personal spinfoil - We don’t know much about Guardian physiology, but there might be some kind of space magic similar to a demiplane that a Ghost can hide in “inside” their Guardian’s body.
I always just assumed that they would transmat inside of us somewhere. Dematerialising to fit inside some sort of space in our armour or our body, I doubt they go back to the city. If they had the ability to teleport over long distances, you would think this technology would have been adapted or intended to be used for slightly bigger things (such as guardians). Additionally, if they went back to the city and some sort of problem with the transmat process occured, our ghost could be stranded a long way from us, unable to perform a resurection. As for our ghost going back to our ship (wherever that goes after we arrive at our destination, yet another mystery…), that would be more plausible but the some problem as our ghost going all the way back to city could occur. I think all suporting evidence (failsafe saying that our “lives in our backpack”) and common sense points to the fact that our ghost does stay with us rather then going somewhere else.
My question about this whole ordeal is how many ghosts can do this with their guardian? Of course it’s become regular with our guardian and other players, but with npcs we never really see them do this. Their ghosts are always by their sides, even in times of danger. A lot of times this leads to death or near death experiences for the ghost, so why wouldn’t they just pop into their guardian’s “backpack” until they aren’t at risk anymore? Is it something special about our ghost/guardian? Is it just a technique some ghosts pick up?
That seems like a visual inconsistency to me. Most of the time when we interact with someone and their Ghost is involved, it’s out and about.
At the Tower and the Farm, Ghosts are out most of the time, probably because it’s safe.
There is the scene with Cayde on Nessus where he pulls his Ghost below cover, but that could just be for the gag. Talking to Zavala and Sloane on Titan, their Ghosts aren’t visible, for example.
It’s likely that they’re taking shelter in much the same way.
Maybe there are ways to draw ghosts out of the guardian? It could be possible that the guardian has to be alive for the ghost to take shelter. If so that would explain why when we die playing solo, our light fades away. Because they’re completely undefended while they try to revive us. However, when we play with others they can revive us after some time because there are other guardians there to defend them.