: The lead writer (Eric Raab, I believe) might not have known that those are
: Marathon references when he approved them. And the "references"
: to Marathon in the Destiny grimoire don't really feel like real
: connections; they're written kind of like the writer (Seth Dickinson)
: arbitrarily threw them in as easter eggs or because he thought it would be
: "cool".
: And if they are genuine connections to Marathon, then the way they're
: implemented kind of implies that Oryx is the player character from
: Marathon. Which doesn't really make sense.
They're still in the story, so still perfectly acceptable for speculation. Death of the author is a perfectly valid way to approach a canon (not the only way, of course). XD And we may just have to agree to disagree on your second point, since while some of the references I could see being just easter eggs/reusing good turns of phrase, some of the others appear to be perfectly plausible as connections. Not that I honestly expect Bungie to say anything either way; confirming that there is a connection might make a few of us older nerds happy, but either confuse or piss off the bulk of the current player base without drawing in many new players, while outright stating that there is no connection would piss off the lore geeks who enjoy the speculating/reference hunting and just confuse all the people who don't know or care about the older games.
Also, I don't see why you would think Oryx be the player character from Marathon? He's got a pretty firm backstory in the Destiny universe as Aurash. If anything, the most solid references to me seem to point to a connection between the Darkness/Worms and the W'rkncacnter, and the Leviathan/Traveler and the Jjaro. (And possibly either Durandal or Tycho having joined the W'rkncacnter, which is where some of the other references would come from.)
