lore-and-universe

[empty bloom]

Not even then it'd really be accurate. I was considering doing a Reach mod where you'd get injuries and such.

Like, take too many shots to the legs when your meagre shields fail? You walk slower or with a limp.

Take too many shots to the visor? No more night vision or blood clouding your view.

[balmy swan]

[OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE]

[empty bloom]

Survival as a Spartan is bloody in shares different than a normal troop.

Your armor has many more failiure points before you start to truly die.

In many ways, IVs, surviving the war in unpowered, unconditioned, unpowered armor, suffered far more.

[covert tide]

My personal Head-cannon is that The Bungie Devs Read the Books that were written alongside CE's release and Decided to Put Halo 2 into the 9th circle of Development Hell just to make halo 2 as unpatched yet playable as possible.
Why????
Simple: to make Legendary Truly Lore Accurate with the Right skulls.
you just have to play like Chief in the books/Lore.
TLDR: Bungie made legendary Broken on purpose

[empty bloom]

Your PHC is wrong, considering Bungie's attitude towards the books.

[covert tide]

thats likely just a Facade, they actually want to be as Faithful to the Books as possible (Unlike the TV Series.) and the attitude towards the books is simply to cover their tracks
Like ONI with the Spartan II's and Replacing kids with Flash clones

[covert tide]

Perhaps Lore accurate Halo Difficulty is just LASO/Mythic

[empty bloom]

It's more complicated than gameplay conditions can approximate.

[hardy swan]

Worse than legendary even Spartans usually die in one plasma hit

[empty bloom]

They explicitly hated the books.

[hardy swan]

Having different authors doing your work would pmo too

[covert tide]

While we're discussing how "Lore Accurate" Halo 2 Legendary/Laso is.
I wanna just say:
Halo Reach's OST "Engaged" Is way better than Genesong from Halo 2.
Engaged Fits the Feel of the Spartans better than Genesong could
It's not a competition, just the the Human-Covenant War

[hardy swan]

Tony Gilroy had to retcon his own character because someone changed a backstory

[versed salmon]

who?

[hardy swan]

Who

[covert tide]

Just Listen to the Best parts of Engaged:
https://youtu.be/VbsqOMiF6Ec?t=56
And Compare that to Genesong's best part:
https://youtu.be/h6oHQhDM73w?t=129
You can't even compare them fairly if you tried.

[stoic hamlet]

Halo has no lore accurate difficulty.

[covert tide]

So you have Chosen..Death?

[modest marsh]

One of the devs, Robt McLees, wrote a short story that dramatizes the events of the Halo 2 level Metropolis, which includes Jackal snipers

The concrete beneath the Spartan had turned to dust and gravel as he launched forward. Barely half a second had passed and he was already ten meters away. Palmer slung her weapon and tore off after him; Sullivan fell in directly behind her, running for all he was worth.

Palmer was pumping her arms and trying to control her breath as she trailed behind the Spartan. She looked up from her boots and saw that his hands were no longer empty—his right hand now held a massive hard-chromed M6D, and a spare magazine was in his left. Eight thunderclaps rang out so fast that they bled together into a single long roar. At that same moment a terrible cacophony erupted behind them as her squadmates opened fire on the building—its facade disappearing behind a cloud of pulverized concrete and shattered glass. Two of the Jackals that had been covering their approach had already fallen—bright purple blood fountaining out of huge ragged holes that she could pick out even at this distance.

With one hand at thirty meters and a dead run, two shots apiece, each a hit to the head or neck, what the holy hell are my guys even aiming at back there—shit. The Corporal’s mind raced, but her legs had begun to slack off. She saw another Jackal appear at the roof’s edge and there was a flash of purple light.

And then her view was blocked by a wall of green armor; there was a loud crack and a flash of golden light. The Spartan had spun to face her; she saw her own reflection in his visor for a fraction of a second, then he dipped slightly before popping into the air, sailing backward three and a half meters above the ground—smoke trailing from the inside of his right arm. Four more rapid-fire thunderclaps roared in her ears; the magazine dropped out of the Spartan’s M6D, his left hand slamming the fresh magazine up into the well and flicking to catch the empty one as it fell, the huge pistol now latched onto his right thigh, the empty magazine stowed, and his knees tucked up to his chest as he continued through the air over the Warthog. Three fingers hooked the crossbar and the vehicle rocked as the Spartan swung down into the charred remains of the driver’s seat; the M12G roared to life as Palmer scrambled up into the rear of the vehicle and behind the controls of the gauss cannon in a near daze; Sullivan practically leapt into the sooty pan of the passenger seat and disengaged the safety on his MA5, bellowing, “C’mon! Floor it!”

[hardy swan]

who dat spartan

[modest marsh]

I just said, this is halo 2 metropolis

Take a guess

Anyways, Bungie is not a monolith

Their collective opinion on books originally leaned negative because they felt they were ceding creative control over their franchise, but this changed over time

Joseph Staten himself said that the books were canon in a 2003 interview and the fact that the games ended up incorporating ideas from the books is evidence that at least some of them had read the books

As far as how the game is actually balanced, gameplay undersells the protection offered by MJOLNIR because it’s largely depicting a truncated version of events where “large” firefights are often made up of less than 20 enemies at a time and are over in a few minutes, whereas many of the biggest battles in the canon would have thousands of Covenant against a handful of Spartans

And prior to Reach/CE, Spartans had no real access to energy shielding short of picking up a jackal shield gauntlet

[orchid kettle]

I feel like the biggest piece of evidence for MJOLNIR's raw protection is how in TFOR, Sam gets hit with like a dozen plasma bolts after the initial one that (as Silent Storm states multiple times) struck him in a "soft spot" of the armor

when he gets back up, no other breach in his suit is mentioned

[glossy sun]

So what other defenses did the Halo Rings have other than the big "Wipe Out the Galaxy" one?
Did they have like anti-starship weapons?

[orchid kettle]

even though he would have just been on the ground, getting focused down by the Jackals

[modest marsh]

It’s implied, yes

In the CEA terminals

[glossy sun]

Ah okay

[modest marsh]

Additionally, we know sentinels can function as antiship weapons in a pinch

[orchid kettle]

i guess we have to assume that chief was also about to be shot in a "soft spot", otherwise Sam sacrificed himself for nothing

[modest marsh]

Neither of them had any way of knowing for sure, but in the original novel version of events, Chief didn’t know he was gonna get hit

[vagrant ocean]

Yes, they have Confidence-class weapon arrays which appear to be able to drop ships.

[glossy sun]

Ah that's kewl

[vagrant ocean]

This doesn’t include any Sentinels that could be used, such as Enforcers or the potential construction of Z-510 focus turrets, Z-8250 light/heavy artillery batteries, or Z-8060 particle cannons.

[modest marsh]

I might’ve imagined that actually, but it does seem to imply the bolts being fired were head level

[orchid kettle]

i just find it ironic that the only instance I could think of where MJOLNIR tanks plasma bolts with no shields is also the most famous example of MJOLNIR failing to protect its wearer

[modest marsh]

Chief gets shot in Oblivion when being chased by drones

I believe someone on gold team took a ghost’s cannon to the leg

[vagrant ocean]

Keep in mind some Sentinels are capable of destroying entire cities.

[modest marsh]

That should only be case for stratosentinels and above

Which are essentially small ships

[vagrant ocean]

Yeah, that falls under the word “some”

[modest marsh]

I think it’s an important distinction to make because outside of halo wars 2 they’ve never appeared in a halo game

You might give someone the impression that that refers to the likes of aggressor/enforcer-sized sentinels since that’s all that most people are familiar with

[vagrant ocean]

I have a feeling the extremely casual fans aren’t really in this section.

[modest marsh]

A few hours ago you had someone talking about which difficulty is canon and I feel like that’s as casual as it gets

[minor sky]

Much as I decry Halo 5's writing and plot, that moment was solid

[minor sky]

Exactly. Bungie didn't "hate the books" so much as they were kind of secondary to what they wanted to do

[minor sky]

But 5 in general is filled with decent lines or moments that just fall short as a whole

One line I really liked was from Linda when she said "Jul 'Mdama is a lot of things; but he's no Prophet"
(Though personally I feel like it would make more sense for Thel to say that)

[minor sky]

I kind of wish Halo 5 had Osiris being formed to go after Jul/whatever hostile force at odds with ONI, and their missions being spent doing that while slowly laying out story pieces to do with everything else. And then for one reason or another Osiris/Locke's mission changes

We get the opening mission but thats it

and even then that level is a bit of a mess

Halo 5 really needed to be more of a slow burn imo. Despite the game being 15 13 discounting the guns down sections levels long, the game's pacing is all over the place. Half the time plot details are being told to you as opposed to shown (often conflicting with the context of the scene), levels get too caught up in spectacle to a fault, and characters barely get a chance for you to get to know them

Halo 2 had the same amount of levels and did a much better job of balancing it's leads and letting its narrative breathe (mostly)

[hardy swan]

Battlefield 4's mid campaign made you care for the characters more than Halo 5

[jagged lake]

I want more games where real care and effort are put into the characters, most of my favourite games have characters I cherish

[empty bloom]

That's really an evergreen problem with Halo as a franchise. The first act is usually a long, slow burn, and then each successive act feels more and more inorganic as they speed up the pace.

The natural middle point of most of the game's stories is usually 3/4 of the way through each game, and there's usually a level or two that would be after that point that would narratively stretch out the latter half that gets cut for one reason or another in development.

Halo 2 had Forerunner Tank and... I swear there was a second one.

Halo 3 had the actual intended High Charity level scrapped for time and they reused parts of the scrapped Voi flood level for time.

[minor sky]

Covenant Ship and Alpha Moon were also cut

I think Halo 2's story kind of benifited from it only telling the first and second act of it's story, letting those parts get a little more time to breathe

Honestly much as I like the idea of Osiris, I kind of think they maybe should've been cut in favor of just focusing on Chief and Blue Team

I feel like what they were trying to do with Halo 5 needed to be spread out across like 3 games rather than crammed into one

[empty bloom]

Oh yeah forgor that

[empty bloom]

The original ending for 5 was going to see Osiris actually fail to save Chief.

[carmine sleet]

Oh that would've been controversial within the community

[fringe temple]

Hi

[empty bloom]

Certainly would've forced a more Created focused story in Infinite.

[carmine sleet]

Aye

[minor sky]

I don't hate that in theory, but is all about execution

Personally I really like the ending one fanwrite of Halo 4 and 5 did where Locke defied orders and let Chief go, trusting him to accomplish/stop whatever mission/threat

[empty bloom]

Instead of them duking it out? Yeah, that'd make some amount of sense.

I always felt the fistfight was kind of shoehorned in.

[minor sky]

While I do like the cast, maybe Locke should've been on his own with a rotating cast of supporting characters

[covert tide]

in Lore However Plasma is downright broken, it can actually melt through even Mjolnir armor if hit right
The master chief even felt the heat of an energy sword through his suit when fighting an elite
Remember the Fall of reach and how an uncharged plasma shot damaged Samuel-034's armor, that's how OP it is.
Plasma in game, is pretty nerfed to the point where it's kinda more like a low caliber type of ammo.

[modest marsh]

This was already discussed earlier, but that’s not exactly true

[covert tide]

Perhaps this could be explored in Halo 7

[modest marsh]

No one is saying plasma is weak but it’s not punching through inches of armor plating instantly either

[covert tide]

Master Chief Vs. Noble Six would've been Light years better.
and would make 6 surviving in a cave or wherever on reach canon

[modest marsh]

Sam dove forward and knocked John out of the blast’s path; the energy burst caught Sam in the side. The reflective coating of his MJOLNIR armor flared. He fell clutching his side, but still managed to fire his weapon. John and Kelly rolled on their backs and sprayed gunfire at the creature. Bullets peppered the alien—each one bounced and ricocheted off the energy shield. John glanced at his ammo counter—half gone. “Keep firing,” he ordered. The alien kept up a stream of answering fire—energy blasts hammered into Sam, who fell to the deck, his weapon empty. John charged forward and slammed his foot into the alien’s shield and knocked it out of line. He jammed the barrel of his rifle into the alien’s screeching mouth and squeezed the trigger. The armor-piercing rounds punctured the alien and spattered the back wall with blood and bits of bone. John rose and helped Sam up. “I’m okay,” Sam said, holding his side and grimacing. “Just a little singed.” The reflective coating on his armor was blackened.

[covert tide]

Tell That to Sam-034
And let's not forget that it wasn't until The events of Reach that Spartans got Mjolnir armor with energy shields

[modest marsh]

I just quoted the relevant passage, he was shot a bunch and lived

[orchid kettle]

Silent Storm, set almost immediately after this event, has Chief state repeatedly that Sam was hit in a "soft spot" of the armor

[modest marsh]

The risky attack had worked—though just barely. John and two companions, Samuel-034 and Kelly-087, had intercepted the vessel and boarded through a breach in the combat-battered hull. They had managed to plant a trio of Anvil-II warheads near a power core, but not before a lucky plasma bolt found a soft spot in Sam’s armor and ruptured the pressure seal beneath. The only way to flee the ship had been to jump back into space, where Sam would decompress inside his armor. Rather than condemn his friend to such a slow and agonizing death, John had ordered Sam to stay behind and guard the warheads until they detonated.

Yeah

[orchid kettle]

and I assume all the other bolts were not hitting soft spots

[covert tide]

No, the Plasma Breached Sam's armor It no longer had an airtight seal so he wouldn't have survived the vacuum of space

[modest marsh]

I know

I’m saying that it didn’t actually breach a plate

The armor plating itself is pretty resilient against plasma strikes

Obviously enough of them will eventually get through

[orchid kettle]

smh I thought Chief was supposed to be lucky but that Jackal apparently rolled a nat 20 and one-shot Sam

[modest marsh]

What actually injured Sam was a lucky shot in a weakspot and even then he wasn’t seriously harmed, but more so the suit failing to be air tight that killed him

[covert tide]

the Shields mainly do most of the work, but again, plasma does eath through shields like a hot knife through butter

[modest marsh]

I think this also gets overstated

Plasma is much more effective at dissipating shields than kinetic weapons

But shields can still stop a lot of fire

In the Halo infinite s1 mp cutscene, a Spartan in Mark VII gets shot in the back 5 times with a pulse carbine and they hold just fine

[carmine sleet]

It'd be hard for them to explore a scenario like what Otto was talking about because a scenario where Locke hunts down Chief but lets him go because he trusts him has not happened in the games. Halo 5 didn't have anything like that happen. Otto was talking about a what if they wished happened for Halo 5 and trying to shoehorn in a situation like that into Halo 7 between Chief and Locke would just feel weird given that the last time the two were on screen together, they were both just fine with one another on Sanghelios

[modest marsh]

I don’t like the idea of Locke and Chief having a brawl because it just comes across as ego driven

Locke should’ve leaned into his bounty hunter theme and relied more on tricks and traps to subdue Chief

The audience would have an easier time accepting him as a viable threat

[empty bloom]

No?

I have yet to see a convincing argument for how that'd be better lmao

"Man it'd sure be cool to see Chief wail on a charred skeleton"

[orchid kettle]

Linda gets slammed by multiple shooters as well in TFOR but since Elites had been introduced by that point you could figure those were plasma rifle bolts

[empty bloom]

Like, wow, so cool dude

[carmine sleet]

How did I miss the "Six should've lived to fight Chief" bit. That sounds like a terrible idea

[empty bloom]

Halo Reach fans on their way to have the worst take on Noble Six as a character

[carmine sleet]

Like, regardless of how good or bad you think Reach is (As I know not everyone here sees it as good, which is fine, opinions are subjective after all), bringing Six back from the dead would undermine the ending of Reach

[modest marsh]

A new contact on the Pelican’s targeting display appeared—right behind Linda. He had to warn her— A bolt of plasma struck her in the back. Another bolt of fire blazed from the upper decks and splashed across her front. She crumpled—her shields flickered and went out. Two more bolts hit her chest. A third blast smashed into her helmet. “No!” the Master Chief said. He felt each of those plasma bolts as if they had hit him, too.

I think there’s a good chance the second one was an overcharged bolt

Anyways, if the armor couldn’t blunt plasma effectively, then Linda shouldn’t have a head anymore

[orchid kettle]

What doesn't help is how back in TFOR I don't think the designs were fully finalized so in the Sam scene, the Jackal was said to wield a chrome claw-like weapon

[modest marsh]

It’s possible that was in fact the plasma rifle since the Jackal is seemingly rapid firing, but then again they can shoot just as fast as one on legendary using only a plasma pistol

[orchid kettle]

i also will never see why Nylund compared the Grunts to dogs

maybe the mask made it look like a muzzle?

[modest marsh]

They make sniffing noises I guess

[covert tide]

Noble 6 likely never died in the first place,
During the last cutscene in lone wolf just before an elite stabs him with an energy dagger, it cuts to noble 6's broken helmet
On top of that 6 is one of only 2 Known hyper lethal Spartans
sure six isn't as powerful as, or lucky like the chief, the fact that ONI's private grim reaper was overwhelmed by a few elite zealots feels counterintuitive.

[modest marsh]

I’m pretty sure that one got popularized by Halo Follower

[orchid kettle]

yeah in CE the plasma pistol's semi auto aint no joke

[modest marsh]

In Halo 2 the enemy AI also just cheats and has a faster RoF, forget if this is true in 3

[orchid kettle]

maybe the grunts know where the turbo button is and Chief/Arby don't

[carmine sleet]

Six is confirmed dead by both Bungie and 343, to the point they may as well make a unique category for them called "Super dead, stop asking for them to come back"

[covert tide]

Halo Follower made a pretty cool Machinima,
Here's the link if anyone wants to know:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV82X6CEcjs&pp=ygUXbWFzdGVyIGNoaWVmIHZzIG5vYmxlIDY%3D

[carmine sleet]

Aye, definitely in more recent times, but the idea Six lived has been around since Halo Reach released

[modest marsh]

Yeah I know, and sorry to say but I think this is lame

[carmine sleet]

But also, god I wish Halo Follower didn't push the idea so much

[covert tide]

Exactly, besides 343 might've said 6 was dead, but you know who DIDN'T??
Halo Studios

[covert tide]

Elaborate

[carmine sleet]

Don't do that. Halo Studios isn't going to suddenly backtrack on Six being dead because they're no longer called 343 Industries

[covert tide]

Credit where its due, I don't know if they would or are gonna do that, but then again neither does anyone else but the devs

[covert tide]

btw is your profile picture an elite??

[carmine sleet]

They've no reason to change it outside of cheapening the end of Reach for no good reason

[modest marsh]

I already think the idea of Chief having a fistfight with other Spartans to satisfy some irrational notion of machismo is a disservice to the character and thematically inappropriate

It being another character doesn’t fix that

[carmine sleet]

It's not an Elite, it's Shadow Lugia from Pokémon

[modest marsh]

Additionally, I don’t know why anyone, Locke or Six, would think that would be the optimal approach if their goal is to capture him

It makes no sense

[empty bloom]

Man, why do you hate Reach so much?

[covert tide]

You may be right but i doubt it would cheapen the ending to halo.
if anything i'd think it would compliment it
We never see noble six die and given that 6's Current objective of: Survive was over 6 hours long with the covenant even having to bring in air support and wraiths

[empty bloom]

We literally see him die.

The elite pounces on him and brings the dagger down. That's dead. That's super dead. That's incredibly dead. You cannot breathe hard plasma and melting muscle tissue.

[covert tide]

YOU KIDDIN?
I love Halo Reach. It was my first halo game, i practically grew up on ODST and Reach

[empty bloom]

I mean, clearly you don't, if you think so little of the story.

I loathe Reach and I don't even hate the ending enough to pretend it didn't happen.

Like, for a bunch of people who proclaim they love Reach so much, everyone who thinks Six survived always seems to utterly hate the most basic conceptual story element of Reach.

[modest marsh]

Six couldn’t have survived even if he somehow managed to deflect the Zealot’s energy dagger lunge considering that he’s still engaged in combat with a Zealot and an Ultra that we can see in the cutscene, let alone whatever remaining forces that’s surrounding them

[empty bloom]

To a degree I'd be envious of if I didn't also dislike Reach's story elements, albiet for different reasons.

[covert tide]

I do think about it. although 6 surviving is again just a Reach theory
I wouldn't compare myself to the writers of the tv show

[modest marsh]

He’s disarmed, injured, and helmetless

The air is actively becoming toxic

[empty bloom]

You're right, they actually understand sacrifice better as a plot point.

[modest marsh]

He’s been exhausted from hours of uninterrupted combat with no defensible location nearby

[empty bloom]

The guy was literally in a rout, fleeing the location, and caught fire trying to escape.

No direction, no purpose, no survival.

[carmine sleet]

Ideally, I think they should've had Locke approach Chief with his weapon holstered and just try to talk. Maybe they could've leaned into the idea AI can mess with what Spartans can see through their visors, like we saw in the Black Team comics, to give us a reason for them to fight. Like say Chief thinks he's fighting a hostile and Locke isn't so much trying to fight Chief and more just get him to realise that he isn't trying to kill what he thinks he is (Admittedly, I don't really think it'd work great that way either but it at least has more justification for the two to engage in a brawl than what we got in base Halo 5)

[modest marsh]

I don’t mind Locke ruthlessly trying to capture Chief to bring him in, his plan just sucked and it doesn’t take advantage of his supposed skill set

[carmine sleet]

Fair

[covert tide]

If there is a halo game i dislike though it's halo 2
Overrated af in my opinion.
still good game (Considering you're not playing Laso or legendary) simply would put it in maybe high B or low A tier.

[empty bloom]

Locke should've spear-tackled Chief from a blind corner.

Because that seems more his MO.

[carmine sleet]

Or used the Jerome approach and jumped in with the steel chair

[empty bloom]

Like NGL I actually do think Locke's the better Spartan in terms of raw melee combatives.

[carmine sleet]

"And here comes Spartan Locke... He's got a steel chair!!"

[empty bloom]

He shows better technique in their fight, and it's what gave him the edge for most of said fight.

While Chief seems to rely more heavily on brute force.

[modest marsh]

Maybe because of how the cutscene is choreographed but that makes no sense in the grander context of the story

[empty bloom]

Why not?

[covert tide]

What if maybe Jun confronted chief
it would make sense since Jun simply "Disappeared"
Granted he was recruiting spartan IV's but would tie the ending of reach to the story well

[carmine sleet]

Now I kinda want someone to mod RE4make to replace Leon and Krauser with Fred and Locke for the knife fight cutscene

[carmine sleet]

Choreography being bad definitely didn't help

[empty bloom]

Like, think about it. Locke's been a Spartan for a shorter amount of time and was a normal human for years; He'd have more reason to extensively practice combatives and counters to stronger opponents, while Chief, despite being a II and ostensibly experienced, likely would've accidentally let that skill atrophy a bit by nature of IIs not needing to rely quite as heavily on technique so much as brute strength. Amazing fundamentals but less likely to utilize technique.

And in a duel between experts, technique tends to win over brute strength.

[carmine sleet]

Reach's ending already tied into the beginning of CE. No need to try and connect Halo 5 via bringing back Jun to hunt Chief, especially since Jun doesn't strike me as someone who'd be ok with hunting down another Spartan like that

[covert tide]

Chief does have the upper hand in most categories
Locke is a Spartan 4 so his augmentations aren't as extensive as the others
which is why spartan 4s are kinda carried by Mjolnir armor thay wear

[modest marsh]

Chief Mendez is noted as being the most talented hand to hand trainer in the UNSC who trained the Spartan-IIs extensively during their 8 years of training, and following that they spent the next 28 years in constant combat using those skills against peer level threats such as enemy elites and brutes as well as routinely performing sparring drills with each other.

Locke was a bounty hunter for most of his adult career, so even if Chief didn’t have an extended head start over him, his job doesn’t require him to be an expert martial artist to the same degree a Spartan does.

[empty bloom]

IV augmentations are just as if not more extensive.

[covert tide]

he could try to explain things to him

[covert tide]

why would they need tune up augmentations then?

[empty bloom]

IIs need aug tune-ups too. Chief is specifically listed as delinquent in getting one.

[carmine sleet]

You're assuming Chief would've been more willing to listen to Jun than Locke

[empty bloom]

Actually, I'd argue the opposite. Locke was a Wetworker for both ONI and civilian contracts, so he'd be doing a look of killing-to include melee, and I doubt Chief Mendez was still the best trainer over 20 years later.

[modest marsh]

You have no reason to suspect the contrary but that’s not relevant

The Spartan-IIs would become the better martial artists

[empty bloom]

I'm sorry, I like to apply basic logic to a franchise clearly devoid of it.

[covert tide]

Maybe not have Jun say cortana was the UNSC's concern at all and explained why she became dangerous.
Perhaps even say that hasley sent him to find Chief and Blue team

[modest marsh]

The room was filled with motion—Spartans unpacked crates, others cleaned and field-stripped their assault rifles, and a pair of them practiced hand-to-hand combat. Captain Keyes could barely follow their motions. They were so fast, no hesitation. Strike and block and counterstrike—their movements were a continuous stream of rapid-fire blurs.

[empty bloom]

Skills atrophy, my guy.

And that quote doesn't really do anything to prove me wrong, it just shows that Spartan IIs spar sometimes.

Like, congrats, Keyes can't see the movements, but I don't see how that proves your point.

[modest marsh]

You have to prove that their skilled atrophied at all

What is your basis for this

My point is that they perform regular sparring drills with each other

So their skills don’t atrophy

[empty bloom]

Overreliance on physical strength against physically weaker opponents tends to result in less required usage of technique.

[modest marsh]

Not all Spartan-II opponents are physically weaker than them

[empty bloom]

Sparring with other Spartans in your down time is not an ironclad counterpoint.

[modest marsh]

You also haven’t proven that Locke’s opponents are stronger

He is also a well built guy

[empty bloom]

Hey so remember that time a marine punched an Elite in the face and his hand shattered?

[modest marsh]

I dont really care about that since it isn’t relevant

[empty bloom]

I guess the lower physical strength and size of baseline humans against gestures broadly at the entire Covenant species roster isn't relevant and would have no bearing on how any level of UNSC training would account for such an issue.

Except for those weird fish guys I can never remember the name of because... I don't usually care that much about fringe species.

Yonhet, that's the one.

[modest marsh]

You’re just speculating using circumstantial evidence

Not even evidence really, there’s nothing indicating the UNSC takes extra steps to prepare their personnel are equipped to fight aliens in close quarters

We see in Halo 4 that an ONI SECOPS trooper gets absolutely bodied by a Jackal, it’s pointless

The armored human was like a tank, clearing the way for us. It shrugged off Grunts like they were annoying mosquitoes, tackled Brutes face on, and was an equal match for any Elite.

[empty bloom]

Multiple pointedly designed melee weapons such as shock braces meant to foil Jiralhanae, ODSTs knowing better ways to snap elite necks with their thighs to utilize more muscle strength despite being relatively diminutive.

[modest marsh]

Dutch is also just superhumanly strong

[empty bloom]

Still a human, not a superhuman.

[modest marsh]

He punched a brute off of him that had him pinned down

I know, I mean what he has physically done is a consequence of his unrealistic athleticism

It isn’t in support of the argument that UNSC marines are trained to fight aliens in H2H

[empty bloom]

An MP is a different level of standard than an ONI Wetworker or ODST.

Additionally, the "ONI SECOPS" troopers were random personnel grabbed from around the base. One of the Mantis pilots explicitly mentions that he only ever used the cargo configuration of Mantis before.

[modest marsh]

You still haven’t actually proven anything meanwhile I’ve lifted actual words from the text indicating Spartan-IIs make regular use of their H2H skills

[empty bloom]

This applies to literally every single Spartan.

Like, without exception.

[modest marsh]

In the same comic you are referencing, Dutch casually overpowers another ODST with one hand, bends a steel bar around an Elites face, and survived getting punched twice by an Elite in the same breath as Romeo’s narration claiming that the same would “leave nothing left” to anyone else.

[empty bloom]

Damn, Forge's new name is anyone else?

Subjective statements are fun.

[modest marsh]

We also have evidence in support of this ie The Mona Lisa

Logically someone even a fraction as strong as an armored Spartan should be able to easily gore someone with their fist, which we also see brutes capable of doing, whom Spartans regularly defeat in H2H combat

[empty bloom]

Elites aren't Brutes.

[modest marsh]

We are talking about who Spartans have fought, because your claim is that their skills would atrophy due to the lack of peer level opponents

High ranking Elites and Brutes are physical peers to Spartans

[empty bloom]

And your counterpoint is "Well, Spartans beat up things allegedly as strong as they are all the time", which... Those enemies don't tend to rely much on technique either, and the fights tend to be more like rocket tag, at best.

At worst, the Brutes and Elites get mulched anyways.

[modest marsh]

Can you name any actual examples or do I have to do all the work to prove that isn’t true?

“Actually the alien warrior cultures with an irrational fixation on melee combat are all bad at fighting and have no technique”

That just seems like a weird read on the material to satisfy a very niche interpretation

[empty bloom]

Thorne killing multiple elites in melee without a helmet.

Stone killing multiple brutes in melee with heavily damaged armor.

Sorel killing multiple brutes, grunts, elites, and jackals in melee with a mortal wound and heavily damaged armor.

Locke utterly humiliating Jul.

The IIIBs utterly routing the elites on the Operation that killed them off, snapping wrists and taking swords.

Chief snapping a Brute's neck with an uppercut.

Cal utterly humiliating a Brute Chieftain with ease.

Red Team's Halo Wars 1 cutscene.

[modest marsh]

This is gish-galloping without actually referencing the relevant context

[empty bloom]

I'm not denying the exceptions, I'm pointing out that the vast majority are so horrifically outclassed that it isn't even funny.

[modest marsh]

For Stone, she was pumped full of pharmaceuticals and just hammered the Brute Captain to death in the stomach till his innards seeped out

That’s not skill, that’s brute strength

[empty bloom]

Oh, I wasn't talking about that one.

[modest marsh]

GEN3 makes Spartans stronger than common Brutes

[empty bloom]

I'm talking about the part earlier in the book where she kills the ones trying to eat ODSTs and Marines.

And is pissed about not being quick enough.

Where she wasn't on combat drugs.

At least none that we know of.

[modest marsh]

She’s also in far better condition at that point

[empty bloom]

Still damaged, it's post-Reverie.

[empty bloom]

Also, GEN2, GEN3, GEN3, GEN2, Mirage MkI/SPI, GEN1, GEN1.

[modest marsh]

After the first few chapters of the book, practically everyone has some amount of battle damage, but by the end of the novel when she’s at her worst she’s still massively stronger than a Brute Captain

I also wouldn’t use Jul Mdama’s Covenant as an example of the cream of the crop covenant, and Jul himself isn’t exactly a skilled fighter

[empty bloom]

Did... Did you miss this?

[modest marsh]

I’m individually addressing each of your examples because as I said, you gish-galloped without regard for context

Thorne 3v1ing a few storm elites from Hesduros is not that impressive

[empty bloom]

That wasn't a 3v1.

[modest marsh]

The cutscene is unclear, because we only see the actual fight in disconnected flashbacks, but they only seem to attack him one at a time anyways

[empty bloom]

You see 7 individual elites.

[modest marsh]

They took turns I guess

[empty bloom]

You know how the last time we debated, I pointed out that my perspective on the Halo universe tends to be one that corrects for inaccuracies-the perception that cutscenes, gameplay, et cetera are not necessarily how the actual sequence goes down?

[modest marsh]

John had been in similar death-grip holds before—endless hours of training on the wrestling mats with his teammates and martial arts specialists provided by Chief Mendez. There were ways to escape a larger, stronger opponent. And there were always countermoves to those escapes. And countermoves to those counters. It was like a game of chess, except the pieces were arms and legs, torque and your center of mass . . . and most importantly your mind. He pulled his knees to his chest, and tucked his torso toward his pelvis at the same time. He twisted ninety degrees and shot out both legs and arms, and uncoiled his body. The maneuver was called “shrimping.” John’s head slipped from the Brute’s grasp. He used the monster’s split second of disorientation to scramble onto its back. John brought his elbow down on the base of the Brute’s neck. He swept out its elbow, wrenched the joint around, and pushed it as far as it would go—far past the point where any human’s or Elite’s would have snapped. John scissored his legs wide and pushed against the floor, leveraging his body to keep the Brute pinned.

[empty bloom]

Dude, I've read all the books, I know.

[frigid heart]

What if everything up to halo infinite is chief reliving his memories of the real canon when he’s floating in space
IE inaccuracy and stuff

[empty bloom]

It's also why I know these things tend to be inconsistent and why I tend to correct and average out said inconsistencies.

Like, it is not a broadly incorrect statement to acknowledge Brutes are close, but also tend to be slaughtered. Same with elites. Because all facts point to them being close, but casualty ratios also show them consistently getting utterly brutalized.

And frequently, with fairly basic technique.

Which-I also tend to assume is due to them underestimating Spartans, considering how haughty elites tend to be on a cultural level and how rage-blind brutes can end up being.

[modest marsh]

That doesn’t make any sense in the context of stories that take place during or after the events of the games

[empty bloom]

Except it quite pointedly does, as it comes up quite frequently.

[frigid heart]

Its because of how well they fight. It’s like comparing a horde of medieval conscripts to an army of samurai.

[empty bloom]

Considering Samurai would likely win due to traditionally being archers and cavalry archers, going against people who tend to be best issued spears (Which are admittedly good against conventional cavalry, but not horse-mounted archers or leg archers), fair enough.

[modest marsh]

In both the first and last Waypoint chronicle we see Spartan-IVs losing against an Elite and Brute respectively

In the latter case, pretty badly

[empty bloom]

Once again, tapping the sign.

[modest marsh]

Okay, give me the quotes

[empty bloom]

... So acknowledging that a Spartan can be defeated in melee sometimes requires a quote?

[modest marsh]

Your claim is very specific

[empty bloom]

Except it's literally not lmao

[modest marsh]

Yes, it is

[empty bloom]

"Yuh huh!"

[modest marsh]

You’re saying Spartans don’t have to worry about H2H proficiency as much as unaugmented troops

[empty bloom]

Yeah, one of the Spartans dies to a random Berserker Brute. Amazing.

[modest marsh]

This contradicts the field manual

[empty bloom]

Damn, good for the field manual IG

[modest marsh]

See, there’s the smugness thinking you know better than the source material

[empty bloom]

Damn right I do, lmao

[modest marsh]

Why should I take you seriously if you’re not even going to bother engaging in good faith about what we’re actually told when it’s clear you just have a preferred interpretation that isn’t directly reflected by anything?

Nothing indicates that Spartans degraded in their training over time, we are explicitly told that that training was critical in Master Chief’s survival

We are told that Mendez is a famous martial artist, but you speculate there are better ones without evidence

We are told that Master Chief is proficient in all unarmed combat techniques

[empty bloom]

My 'preferred interpretation' is gleaned from the information provided through multiple sources, including the ones you cite, combined with basic functioning knowledge of how people think and act. Skills change, degrade, and shift over time to what is needed, which can cause issues over time if not corrected.

Inferred in turn, I'm not claiming that Chief is utterly bereft of the skills he would've had in 2541 by 2559.

[modest marsh]

There is a difference between saying it’s possible his skills degraded and saying with absolute certainty that they should’ve

[empty bloom]

And I say the latter.

[modest marsh]

If anything it should be made extremely obvious that Spartans have an outsized emphasis on melee combat that isn’t reflected at all in the other military branches down to having specialized melee weapons to combat their enemy

[empty bloom]

I never said they don't have an emphasis on melee combat.

[modest marsh]

Furthermore, even at a physical advantage, Spartans need to worry about their opponents outnumbering them and using melee weapons of their own that are extremely large and powerful

[empty bloom]

Anyone sane in melee worries about being outnumbered in any fight.

[modest marsh]

Your claim is that Locke would have proportionally better H2H skill

[orchid kettle]

its mainly because it's cooler action wise if Chief karate chops people sometimes instead of purely shooting his gun

[empty bloom]

Which is based off of fight choreography, as bad as it may be, as well as the assumption that Locke tended to be more highly trained in technique over strength utilization.

For example, he's the only one in the fight to actually utilize his thrusters to add speed to his movements, something Chief utterly neglected to do; Preferring stronger attacks over finesse. Locke also was the one whose armor was not actually damaged from the fight, even if he lost, and was winning the grapple until he was headbonked by Chief.

[modest marsh]

Notice how you dismissed a cutscene’s authenticity based on your opinion of what is true?

[empty bloom]

Notice how I didn't dismiss the events in the cutscene entirely at any point, just the specific accuracy?

[modest marsh]

I’m not disputing the event happened either

[empty bloom]

I view it as .5 to .75 to 1 at absolute worst, not .01 to 1.

[modest marsh]

Like, I could easily argue that Chief didn’t take Locke seriously as a threat until Locke managed to crack his visor and pulled out the armor restraint, then within moments of that he wins the fight

[empty bloom]

By what we see in the fight, even if I do not believe that fight went the way it was depicted in the cutscene, shows a utilization of technique by one party that outclasses the other. By that information, from my perspective, that shows that one party utilized a better technique.

And I refute that by pointing out Chief started the fight by breaking his enemy's rifle over his head.

[modest marsh]

And?

That’s not incongruous with the idea he doesn’t respect Locke as a peer

By your own admission this is a common attitude in universe

[empty bloom]

Misread.

[modest marsh]

The way the scene is framed, which I found to be borderline character assassination, is that Chief was pissed off that ONI didn’t trust him and was taking it out on Locke

[empty bloom]

Within those moments he also almost loses the fight.

[modest marsh]

When?

[empty bloom]

Locke is overpowering him in the grapple before Locke gets headbonked.

[modest marsh]

And does that make sense to you or feel relevant to the argument about which is the more skilled fighter?

[empty bloom]

Of course it's relevant. Which is why I view it as an act of desperation from Chief, not an act that shows Chief is strictly more skilled in every possible way.

[modest marsh]

I don’t agree with that framing personally, but to remain consistent, are you actually using that as evidence despite the fact that Chief should be his physical superior if nothing else but his size?

[empty bloom]

Exactly how far apart do you think the two are in size?

[modest marsh]

Their given heights and weights roughly, which due to square cubed law as well as differences in armor distribution, Chief should be proportionately much heavier

[empty bloom]

Except he's not.

At least I don't really consider 20 pounds to be that drastic of a weight difference.

They're also the same height.

[modest marsh]

It’s 27lbs

No, they’re not

Locke is 6’10” in armor

[empty bloom]

No lmao

It's not listed whether or not it's in armor or out of armor.

[modest marsh]

Trust me, it’s their armored heights

The MP Spartans since Reach have all been 6’9” in game

Locke is the same size

https://www.halopedia.org/images/8/86/HM-Genesis.png?3319f

[empty bloom]

Chief is 6'10" out of armor.

[modest marsh]

This isn’t a perfect comparison but there’s a clear height difference here

[empty bloom]

https://www.halopedia.org/Data_Drop/Five

[modest marsh]

I’m aware

[empty bloom]

Oh, you sly dog, you have me arguing physical size in a technique discussion.

[modest marsh]

The given heights that came with the legendary edition for halo 5 all used the armored heights, for both blue team and Osiris

Yes, because you’re using Locke winning an exchange of strength as a reason he’s a better fighter

[empty bloom]

If you think grappling is all about strength you don't know much about grappling.

Not that it isn't a big factor.

[modest marsh]

Okay, what is Locke doing to win the grapple under your view?

Because it just looks like they’re pulling on each other

[empty bloom]

Alright, so Chief is utterly demolishing Locke in the grapple due to physicality alone, then pounds Locke's helmet in with his forehead until Locke is broken and bloody on the ground, and casually drops the lock on him.

[modest marsh]

I’m not arguing that either

That would be lame

But I’d rather not have the fight happen in the first place

[empty bloom]

Cool, we're not arguing about the fight not happening though.

[modest marsh]

You’re deliberately misrepresenting my interpretation of events by implying I’d prefer Chief demolish Locke

[empty bloom]

Yep.

[modest marsh]

Hence why I think you’re speaking in bad faith

[modest marsh]

You didn’t bother engaging with the argument I presented and instead pivoted to a strawman

[frigid heart]

So this argument is about Spartans in hand-to-hand?

I might be able to assist

[empty bloom]

I doubt it.

[modest marsh]

It originally started by me saying that Locke’s skill as a bounty hunter would be better served by him using tactics more relevant to that line of work than trying to get the better of Chief in close quarters

The contention is whether or not Locke is actually the better fighter

If anything, it seems clear that Vale is supposed to be the best martial artist on Osiris

[empty bloom]

Which was absolutely intentional and not intended in any way to be an actual argumentative point beyond illustrating that it was happening. The impression I get walking away due to the points I made earlier is why, in the abstract, I think he is the better fighter, even if he lost.

[modest marsh]

Him being a better fighter in your view is predicated on 1) Chief not using thrusters or techniques, which could be dismissed on the grounds that prior to this point, Chief does not seem to respect Locke, an argument you already made in the context of Spartans fighting aliens and 2) Locke seemingly winning a grapple between them, according to you, which you haven’t explained mechanistically

[empty bloom]

He better utilized the tools he had available, he better utilized his advantage in the melee, and he reacted quickly to not having first blood in a counter. The fight was dominated by him for longer while Chief did not maintain control over the majority of the fight. This combination of factors shows why I view Locke as better in terms of melee.

[modest marsh]

And we’re going to choose to ignore every other piece of evidence to justify that?

Locke has one other fight that actually makes use of his H2H techniques and it’s against Jul Mdama, who has lost every fight he’s been in, including against an Engineer

[empty bloom]

1. I did not say that Chief does not respect Locke at any point, that's entirely in your head-I actually outright reject that notion. The closest we get is Chief sounding mildly annoyed when asked if he thinks IVs are Spartans. I don't consider that sufficient evidence to suggest that Chief does not respect a fellow Spartan.

2. It was what was happening, dude, like, it was right there. Like, right there.

[modest marsh]

Yeah I don’t really agree with that perspective

[empty bloom]

Good for you.

[modest marsh]

Chief could’ve been sandbagging the grapple to get Locke’s guard down before deploying the headbutt

And moreover, Locke not being respected by Chief is just evident in the fact he refuses to even acknowledge him until he mentions Cortana

[empty bloom]

Body language doesn't suggest it.

[modest marsh]

He then attacks him out of anger and moves slowly, literally walking

[modest marsh]

Good fighters don’t telegraph their intentions

[empty bloom]

Good fighters also don't visibly struggle to hold someone back and then headbutt.

If the headbutt stop was the intent from the start of that point, he wouldn't have been visibly struggling as much.

[modest marsh]

They’re both visibly struggling

Get your eyes checked

[empty bloom]

Didn't say they weren't both.

And I'm enough of a pedant to say if they weren't both struggling.

[modest marsh]

You implied he’s winning the grapple, Chief moves him around and lands multiple hits in even before the headbutt

I was going off of memory before, but watching it now makes you come across as delusional

[empty bloom]

Oooh, we're going for ad hominems now?

[modest marsh]

I presented an argument

Locke’s lunge with the armor restraint is easily deflected, Chief slaps him twice, knees him, all before he uses the headbutt

[empty bloom]

Yes, I'm aware. I watched the same cutscene.

"Did you though" or whatever, I don't care, I did watch the same cutscene.

[modest marsh]

He’s winning when he actually starts taking Locke seriously as a stated earlier, the idea that this exchange made Locke seem better is absurd

[empty bloom]

And the idea that Chief utterly dominated the fight or didn't 'take it seriously' is equally as absurd to me.

[modest marsh]

Locke does literally nothing but hold the armor restraint at Chief while chief hits him 3 times

[modest marsh]

I didn’t say he did!

[empty bloom]

^

[modest marsh]

You claim to be pedantic but you’re misrepresenting my words very clearly here by implying that these are contradictory

Locke gets an early lead

That much is undeniable

But at this point, nothing of substance has been achieved

Chief is literally wasting time for the sake of ego by fighting Locke, his own irrational behavior informing his lack of using technique is self evident

When Locke pulls out a weapon that can actually hurt him, then Locke starts losing

[stoic hamlet]

Even ignoring the poor choreography I always hated that fight.

It just makes no sense to me.

It feels very contrived.

[empty bloom]

The fight itself is contrived, but that's not really what I'm concerned with.

[empty bloom]

Being pissed is not the same as 'not taking someone seriously'.

Being sloppy out of emotion, sure, whatever, but 'not taking someone seriously' implies a sort of attitude in action of "Oh I can beat this guy easy", a sort of approach that is wildly incongruent with how Chief is established in regards to other Spartans.

[modest marsh]

Yes, I know

We agree that the scene misrepresents Chief

[empty bloom]

And frankly, the fact Chief's technique was sloppier overall is directly why I still maintain Locke is the overall better fighter. If another fight came along, 10 times in a row, and Locke lost each time, I'd likely change my tune, but until then, I remain unconvinced.

[modest marsh]

Why would it take 10 losses to convince you

[empty bloom]

Because it's an arbitrary number that I threw out at random. The point is that if there's a second fight between the two and the showing is much better for Chief, consistently, I'd be persuaded, but due to lack of sample size, I remain unconvinced it is as clear as "Chief is always better at this, every time".

[modest marsh]

You don’t just have to go off an outcome of a fight between them

Locke could also lose a fight to someone Chief could beat

[empty bloom]

I quite literally am foundationally not.

The literal basis of this entire argument is me noting Locke lost.

[modest marsh]

The external evidence in support of Locke being a better fighter is nonexistent

If there was at least something to indicate that Locke was uniquely capable as a martial artist, that alone would probably be enough to sway me

As noted before, this is only true of Vale

[empty bloom]

I'm not saying he's a better Spartan, I'm saying he's better in melee.

Multiple people can be better than one person at something.

Hell I'd argue that there's a lot of IVs who are better pilots than the grand majority of IIs, for example.

[minor sky]

I always thought Grunts were like a cross between a chimp and a tortoise

[empty bloom]

Purely by virtue of a lot of IVs being noted pilots before they were Spartans and thus having more time behind the stick.

[modest marsh]

Which would make sense because there’s an entire MOS that prioritizes piloting skill

The argument I’ve presented is that all official material indicates that Spartans have an unusual emphasis on melee combat ability

They get into fist fights more often, are shown training more often, it’s a dedicated page in their field manual

[empty bloom]

Which is a universal factor I do not deny. What I deny is that IIs have a monopoly on being in the upper levels on that, including Chief.

[modest marsh]

If you’re appealing to this concept of realism, there is no reason for someone to emphasize melee combat technique over things like marksmanship

[minor sky]

I do think the Chief/Locke fight was stupid and pointless but that final bit where Locke has his gun on Chief at point blank range just as Chief puts the restrant on him is pretty damn cool

[empty bloom]

It's aight.

I do kinda wish I could see the look on Locke's face, tbh, because I imagine he had a similar expression to Buck.

[empty bloom]

And yet, they do. Sometimes my perspective takes caveats, this being one of them.

[minor sky]

I remember when the marketing prominently showed the damage on Chief's visor and it got me really excited to see what pivitol/dramatic moment happened to cause that
When in the game its just a lame sumo match

One with almost 0 build up

[frigid heart]

Don’t be dissing on sumo wrestling now

[minor sky]

Thats not a dis on Sumo Wrestling

[empty bloom]

Like, it's a surprising non-issue for me to weld Halo's inherent lack of realism with realistic interpretations of the information it provides.

[modest marsh]

They do because there’s is outsized utility for Spartans since they VERY FREQUENTLY engage the enemy in melee combat to the point some of them make having knives a personality trait

[minor sky]

I think why that scene really fails for me is how the conflict between Locke and Chief has no personal stake in it

[empty bloom]

I also could just be wildly disingenuous and say I think Locke's better at melee because his armor looks like a ninja and Chief's doesn't.

[modest marsh]

Going “uh they win too easily” isn’t evidence against the idea it’s disproportionately prioritized as part of their skill set

Especially when most of the cases Spartans have lost or came close to losing was in melee

[empty bloom]

... Funny enough, on a side note, I do think Osiris is home to two examples of things a IV would be amazing at that it'd be implausible for most IIs to even really be near their level at.

Especially given how the two characters are described.

[minor sky]

Those being?

[empty bloom]

Tanaka is noted at being near Halsey's level when it comes to engineering and material sciences.

There are IIs with a similar skill set, but they never really got elaborated on beyond "Also combat engineers".

And Vale's expertise on Xeno sciences in general is not something any II has really shown aptitude for.

[modest marsh]

I have nothing against IVs surpassing other Spartans in their respective specialties, especially as it pertains to lifelong career skills

[minor sky]

I figured it had something to do with Vale's expertise

[modest marsh]

I would even support the idea of them being physically superior after enough training and development

[minor sky]

I really hope Locke gets some more presence down the road

I really wanna get a survival story with him on Zeta Halo

[modest marsh]

This is why I’m frustrated with how Locke was handled, because he doesn’t get to do anything of note that is specific to his background and I find it unsatisfying if his special talent is just to carry an extra grenade

[empty bloom]

If it helps you understand part of my perspective, I actually tend to be of the mind that Chief is, at least pertaining to IIs, on the lower middle end of the road in terms of melee specialty, with Fred, Kelly, Kurt, and the majority of the others ahead of him.

[stoic hamlet]

…would Kurt be better? I don’t think we’ve ever seen him use melee.

He’s definitely a better leader.

[empty bloom]

For Kurt a lot of it is due to size.

[modest marsh]

He’s bigger at least

[empty bloom]

Same reason I'd say Sam is up there.

[stoic hamlet]

Fair point.

[empty bloom]

Like, if you're giant even by II standards, I'd say it makes a particularly significant difference.

[modest marsh]

I think due to the affect that Legends has had on Fred’s presentation, him being the knife expert also makes it significant to his identity

You also have Li

[empty bloom]

It would not surprise me, however, if a IIIG was the best at melee.

[minor sky]

100%
The main reason I want more media with him is because compared to the rest of his team he has way less stuff going on

[empty bloom]

I think the only completely and utterly uncontested slot in terms of skill amongst Spartans regardless of generation is Linda and marksmanship.

[stoic hamlet]

I think they’d easily have the best shot, cumulatively.

[empty bloom]

Now I'm mad we haven't seen a Gamma in Venator.

[modest marsh]

Mike is probably the best technical expert among IIs, potentially overtaken by Kat when she was alive

[stoic hamlet]

We haven’t seen a Gamma in anything, at this point.

There’s only, technically, one active Gamma in the role they were originally designed for that we know of. Her team is nowhere to be found, at that.

[stoic hamlet]

Naomi is stated in Silent Storm to be the best at figuring out Covenant tech, though that’s of course early days.

[modest marsh]

Her geas is stronger

[empty bloom]

I also tend to assume Black Team is actually on the lower end as a squad compared to most IIs

But that one is entirely because I don't like them.

[modest marsh]

Even if most stories don’t necessarily conform to this idea, I think that all Spartans are supposed to be within the same category of capability, which has been reinforced by 343i’s reframing the “hyper lethal” designation to something that applies to all Spartans instead of a blanket hierarchy

With that being said, what makes a Spartan good depends entirely on the tactics they’re trained and equipped for as well as the mission spec

[empty bloom]

Yep.

In terms of degrees I think you'd really only notice a difference at top and bottom levels of skill in any field that isn't long term life field combat specialization and even then it'd be mostly useless information to anyone but other Spartans and them establishing a team.

Like, damn, Spartan Jimmy only got the bare minimum to pass Spartan Sniper School.

But like, they still passed Spartan Sniper School.

[minor sky]

Buck is a seasoned vet who was there from the start to the end of the Human/Covenant War. Tanaka grew up surviving on a glassed planet, becoming an engineer and selflessly dedicating herself to saving other colonists left behind during the war. Vale is probably the human with the greatest understanding of the elites and their culture

[empty bloom]

I want more Tanaka. And Locke too I guess.

[modest marsh]

None of the characters really got much time to shine because 5 is a bloated game with too many characters and story events fighting for screen time

[minor sky]

Right

[modest marsh]

Like, going back to the Chief vs Locke brawl, what the hell is Osiris doing just standing there while they fight?

It’s clear that the team didn’t know what to do when writing this scene because they’ve been forced into incorporating this sequence in a story that also to contend with the existence of ever present ancillary characters

[empty bloom]

I actually find Blue more damning than Osiris.

Because they just all leave cause Chief nods at them, and like, what?

Osiris I can accept-the platforms actually cut them off right before the fight, they can't really shoot without chancing hitting Locke, and the entire fight is on a platform over a huge magma chamber that Osiris is an indeterminate distance away from.

But the scene where they get cut off is similarly contrived, just... Less than Blue.

[modest marsh]

…can you see why I interpret it as Chief not respecting Locke when they first meet? Or really, Osiris as a whole, because the logical conclusion is he planned on beating them all so they wouldn’t follow himself.

They earned his respect when they manage to save him, as a meta way of getting the player to see Osiris as worthy successors

[empty bloom]

In terms of the fight in general being a meta way of showing that, I agree. In terms of a stalwart showing of Chief not respecting Locke... I don't really agree.

If it was the case, though, it'd make his statement later about the new Spartans really funny, because it just makes him sound a bit like he's throwing a mini tantrum because one broke his visor.

... Actually, a lot of Chief's dialogue later in that lens regarding Osiris kinda makes sense.

Because he kinda acts all sulky after.

[upbeat gust]

Most powerful being in the halo universe?

[thorn spindle]

Idk not many powerful ones alive atm. I guess atriox only cuz he seems to be playing a bit ahead of others

If some other ai had some control over domain they would be up there

[minor sky]

Primordial

[upbeat gust]

Maybe the didact

[minor sky]

Not the Didact

[thorn spindle]

Oh I thought we were talking about alive ones

[upbeat gust]

Nah any

[minor sky]

He's strong but the forerunners lost that war

[upbeat gust]

I wouldn't say the gravemind

But hes in the top 10

[empty bloom]

Me

[spark pivot]

Whatever the current writer decides it is

[earnest pier]

goated answer

It's their baby

"who is strongest" in every universe there's a different writer, a god effectively. intrusions from one to another require... finess, and both must be willing participants

most of my OCs are all insanely powerful... in their world.

it's like those guys in Star Trek Enterprise where they had to make those spheres to change a portion of our universe into theirs, essentially, as their makeup down to the atoms required a completely different set of rules

[upbeat gust]

An extremely diplomatic answer

I respect that

[hardy swan]

except the lore keeps repeatedly showing that the IIs are superior

[empty bloom]

Hahahaha, sure, buddy, okay.

[hardy swan]

😂

[vagrant ocean]

As much as I love the IIs, they are more limited in their ability to improvise than IVs. Almost all Spartan-IVs were former UNSC infantry, and many are veterans of some of the harshest battles of the war. IIs were basically able to requisition anything they might need for a mission, but the IVs prior to their ascension to Spartan were trapped with whatever they had on hand or scrape up. Hell, some were sole survivors of their planets and had to survive on their own till the war ended.

[hardy swan]

They might be better in one thing, like reviously mentioned talking hinge head or engineering but Spartan IIs are just better all rounders

like Batman

[vagrant ocean]

Buck is a prime example, surviving Madrigal, Reach, Mombasa, Circinius IV, Harvest, Groombridge-1830, Vodin, Charybdis IX, and Alluvion.

[hardy swan]

But is he a one in a billion pick? hah! checkmate

[modest marsh]

I would say yes actually

[vagrant ocean]

I listed pert near every major battle of the war, and he survived them all.

With nary a scratch.

[hardy swan]

impressive

[vagrant ocean]

I’d argue the only thing that kept him from being a II were his genetics.

[thorn spindle]

i wonder if there is a bit of a power vacuum atm

how much does atriox have with him when he's being detective

everyone seems a bit weak for now unless he has some plan

[hardy swan]

he's played by Nathan Fillon he ain't gonna die

[vagrant ocean]

There’s enough of one that Severan basically leads all Banished forces not deployed at Zeta Halo, not to mention a vacuum in human space resulting in more and more groups rising up to either join the Banished or to protect themselves and only themselves. With the UNSC fractured, the SoS dealing with both a civil war and the Banished, and potential Created warlords fighting amongst themselves, the galaxy is as dangerous as he’s ever been.

[empty bloom]

Batman isn't an all-rounder.

[hardy swan]

unlike 343 that killed off the rookie

[vagrant ocean]

Guy Garder (played by Nathan Fillion) is slated to die in the DCU.

[empty bloom]

(It's almost as though Eugenics are kinda wrong)

[vagrant ocean]

They are, but let’s be honest, if just any random kid was taken into the program the failure rate would’ve probably tripled.

[empty bloom]

One would think they could've just kept doing it with clones until they got better, but then, ONI wanted its guinea pigs and manipulated Halsey into doing it.

[vagrant ocean]

Yeeep, as bad as people like Travis want to make Halsey, she’s not the disease, she’s a symptom.

[empty bloom]

"But what about the Mortal Dictata"

Look, they already didn't care, it was just convenient to pin it on Halsey.

I'm of the opinion that Traviss was not wrong to pin a ton on Halsey.

[vagrant ocean]

EXACTLY

[empty bloom]

But it's like, kind of a 50/50 of Halsey and ONI.

[vagrant ocean]

Her attempt to rehabilitate Mendez as a sort of begrudging participant is revisionism at its finest.

[empty bloom]

Now, that one, yes, is ridiculous.

Actually the single worst part of modern canon IMO

[vagrant ocean]

“Look, I didn’t mean to arm the trainers with live ammunition and basically give them carte blanc to do whatever they had to. I didn’t mean to threaten literal 7 year olds with starvation in the Reavian wilderness if they didn’t make it to the albatross, it was just a bad situation”

[empty bloom]

I know Alphabenson (IIRC) and I had a whole convo on how utterly messed up it was lmao

Or maybe it was EtCan

A lot of the deep loredive conversations on Spartan II ethics kinda blend together at this point

[hardy swan]

Oni is evil

[vagrant ocean]

This just in, fire hot.

[hardy swan]

But I guess their logic is that the ends justify the means

[vagrant ocean]

Keep in mind I have no issue calling out the ethics (or lack thereof) of the Spartan programs, but when you really look into Halsey’s justifications, they aren’t unsound. She truly believed in the results of the Carver findings, and she truly believed this was the only way to save humanity from itself.

[vagrant ocean]

It’s basic utilitarianism, the only question is where you draw that line.

[hardy swan]

ONI was preparing for genocide lol

[vagrant ocean]

Not really. The Spartans were not designed to wipeout entire populations, but for surgical strikes on Rebel leadership.

[hardy swan]

Yeah I was talking about how they were planning on poisoning the sangheli crops

[vagrant ocean]

Oh that’s a whole different issue, and what’s messed up was that plan was made after the war.

If I recall correctly

[hardy swan]

People say using child soldiers are bad but the UNSC literally conscripts orphans into their service the moment they turn 18

[vagrant ocean]

That’s just logical.

[hardy swan]

It was like immediately after the war. They used Jul as a guinea pig

[vagrant ocean]

The UNSC needed warm bodies to pull triggers and who the hell is gonna miss them?

[hardy swan]

No one

[vagrant ocean]

It’s the exact same reason orphans were used for the Spartan-III program.

[hardy swan]

Better than kidnapping kids.
Now you can have them choose and brainwash them 🤓

[vagrant ocean]

Hell, some of the IIs were orphans or had their families completely wiped out by the Covenant.

[hardy swan]

Also genius on their part. They have vengeful kids who grow up loyal to the UNSC

[hardy swan]

I think so far we only know Naomi’s dad

Feels so bad for her mom

I think she went bonkers or something

[vagrant ocean]

Well, we know he’s alive. We have a few Spartans who we know their parents are either dead or most likely to be dead. Jai was a street urchin, Serin’s mom was a lady of the night and a junkie, Soren was orphaned, Daisy’s parents lived on Sargasso so they prolly died, Chief’s parents probably died when Eridanus II got glassed, Sam’s parents probably died on Harvest, Linda’s are probably dead,

[thorn osprey]

Jai was a street urchin

Oh wait you just said that 😭

[stoic hamlet]

Honestly it was probably both of us.

We get around.

[obsidian thistle]

A lotta the time lore convos just blend for me. XD

[steel stone]

I love the lore for the ark its my all time favourite place in Halo

Infinite had a really cool open world concept imagine that with the Ark

https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/risgaq/i_think_i_may_have_found_what_the_cut_halo_3/#lightbox

Imagine exploring that, how big would it be? whats on the inside?

[supple jasper]

anyone mind telling me what we are talking about? I've been gone for some time

[sour raven]

https://tenor.com/view/muscle-man-you-know-who-else-my-mom-regular-show-funny-gif-9101122073397073314

[supple jasper]

what?

[supple jasper]

and why?

[spark pivot]

Big enough that it would require nasa computers to generate all the terrain

[minor sky]

Forerunner City feels like something that'd be expanded into a whole game

Reminds me of the BSL station from Metroid Fusion. One self contained structure with tons of unique environments within it

[thorn spindle]

sounds cool!

[carmine cipher]

Anyone know whats gonna happen after HW2? Just completed the game for the 5th time and I'm still waiting for answers on HW3

[minor sky]

Or at the very least be something akin to one of the areas in Infinite's map

[gusty star]

A lot’s happened since Installation 08 departed. I recommend reading Shadows of Reach, Divine Wind, and playing the DLC

[minor sky]

Its been 8 years and HW2's story hasn't gotten a proper ending

If we aren't getting a sequel then just do a novel or something to wrap it up

[obsidian thistle]

We did get a slight continuation via Divine Wind and a Waypoint Chronicle

[minor sky]

Yeah but at the same time the Spirit of Fire is still on the Ark fighting Banished, and Anders' fate is left up in the air.

I get the sense that HW2's story got put to the wayside when Halo Infinite/Olympus took priority. The positive responce to The Banished causing them to add them to the plot probably had something to do with it

While I may have just been artistic explorations and nothing more, I do theorize that the Halo seen blowing up Doisac in Infinite's concept art could have been planned to be the ring Anders was on

But that is purely speculation

[hardy swan]

It's weird there isn't even a novel to wrap the story up. My guess is HS wants to keep it for future use

[marble lion]

I believe Spirit of Fire story is far from over. Don’t wrap it up for the sake of wrapping it up. There may fair chance the Spirit of Fire and the crew, including Red team might appear in next Halo game or possible Halo Wars 3. (if it ever happens that is)

[carmine sleet]

Unless Zeta is on a collision course with the Ark, I doubt the Spirit of Fire will show up

[tight badge]

If the foward unto dawn was cut in half leaving chief behind. How come Halo firing didn’t kill him

[carmine sleet]

The pulse of Installation 08 wasn't what bisected the Dawn, it was the slipspace portal closing

[tight badge]

Shouldnt have halo still killed him. He didn’t make it through

[empty bloom]

The ring didn't go off completely and didn't go off until after he was through the portal.

The ring exploded like a misfiring gun.

[vagrant ocean]

*09.

[stoic root]

Question about halo: the rubicon protocol: when spartans die or are captured their suits are supposed to self destruct to prevent the enemy from getting the armor (usually activated by another spartan). so in the book when spartan nina kovan finds ||bonita stone's body|| she dosen't activate the self destruct sequence. the same can also be said for when|| chief finds all the dead spartans (including bonita stone)|| in halo infinite, is there a reason for that?

rly good book btw if anyone is thinking about getting it

[empty bloom]

Not every suit has a detonation device; And it needs a second person to activate it.

[stoic root]

but its mk vii armor

[empty bloom]

If the fusion core lacks power it similarly cannot be used to detonate the suit.

[empty bloom]

And that matters how?

[stoic root]

tbh thats prob it...

[stoic root]

cause its the best version of Mjolnir?? is it not?

[empty bloom]

I don't see how that's relevant in relation to the armor having spoilsport equipment mounted.

[stoic root]

cause its so advanced

[frigid heart]

But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t even matter, because we’ve already seen banished producing bootleg Mjolnir for jannisaries, and Zane gave them her armor I think

[stoic root]

true... I was just confused while reading

[empty bloom]

There's dozens of reasons it wouldn't have spoilsport equipment, and one of the big ones is also why the one GEN1 suit we ever saw get destroyed was spoilsported by a second person.

It literally only happens in First Strike, to my knowledge.

[stoic root]

in the book the suit was barely working so this (imo) is the reason

[empty bloom]

Because they didn't do it for anyone else in any other media, for example, with Kat.

[stoic root]

right...

[empty bloom]

I really shouldn't have said that then, because that's frankly the flimsiest reason.

[frigid heart]

And with tons of Spartans now, I think there might be a shift in doctrine, with recovery and rescue being a new norm

Instead of a nuclear bomb vest

[empty bloom]

Especially considering a lot of the 'dead' Spartans that were being brutalized after the fall of the Reverie were comatose and likely salvageable.

IVs seem to have a much higher ability to completely recover from crippling wounds over time that most IIs and IIIs have never actually displayed, despite newer depictions saying that they can as well. It's weird.

[empty bloom]

There's also the fact that the UNSC is in a resource crunch thanks to the Created and aftermath of the HCW.

[stoic root]

they we're not careful taking off the armor either, they used plasma cutters

so I guess they didn't have a use for it

[stoic hamlet]

Empty throne as well. And there it’s done by the user.

But that’s an older Mark V suit.

[empty bloom]

Why does every new book add something to annoy me.

[carmine sleet]

Zane's a weird one because she basically stole and modified Mark VII armour at some point after joining the Banished (I ain't a fan of her having a Mark VII suit)

[stoic hamlet]

So it’s possible the feature was removed in later marks.

[empty bloom]

First it was 'totally not a nuke' bathtub-sized bombs, now it's more ways to blow up your own armor. Crazy.

[empty bloom]

Seriously speaking, though, I am pretty sure that in First Strike it was technically a hybrid Mark V/Mark VI suit, after Halsey did some tinkering.

Also, spoilsporting experimental equipment isn't incredibly common IRL for a reason.

Like, it's been done, but it's usually asset denial by a friendly utilizing something to destroy electronics and other sensitive material, as the hull is not really something that most can learn from-they usually lack the industrial base ties to even make use of anything they might glean from the hull.

And usually, there's too much that can go wrong with something wired to automatically spoilsport, to include the death of the operator and the loss of any and all practical capability to glean anything from a postmortem.

[minor sky]

https://youtu.be/ONUN3iGJYEo?si=S0E-67l625Gzi60H

Really good video covering Halo 4's highs and lows

It still leaves me undecided if I would prefer Del Rio being made to be more of a political stooge or someone who's views of the situation are understandable, even if they are not agreeable

[ionic tiger]

I always viewed Del Rio as someone who was right in the letter of the law, but that doesn’t mean he was making the right call in the moment.

Yes, getting Infinity off Requiem was important and warning Earth about the Didact doubly so.
Yes, Cortana would normally have to undergo final dispensation after her outburst.

But fighting Chief about Cortana and debating whether to engage the Didact was a power struggle and with his prior bad calls was not one that would endear him to his command.

[lime heath]

Not technically a lore question, but what was the first spartan character in the Halo universe after John? I'm not talking about the timeline but from an aspect of writing

Given that CE was designed with John as the only spartan present

Basically, who was the result of Bungie going "what if there were more of them?"

It's just a curiosity

[modest marsh]

Iratus tries to explode the reactor core in the Mirage IIC as well in Battle For The Academy Part 1

Though it’s questionable if that would be possible without his intervention

[modest marsh]

“It was bait,” John said. “Something we already figured on anyway. Damn. I was hoping to have been wrong about this. Set your self-destruction protocol to tamper-safe.”

“You mean you haven’t?” Actually, he had. John had barely formulated the order before his onboard computer had activated the protocol. Now if someone tried to open his armor after he was rendered helpless—or killed in action—the onboard computer would initiate a reactor overload. Everything within ten meters would be atomized, and the suit would issue one last static blast over the emergency channel.

It’s also mentioned to be possible in Mark IV in Oblivion

[stoic hamlet]

I don’t know that that was an intentional thing of the suit, though. I sadly can’t check at the moment.

[modest marsh]

It’s made it clear you have to preemptively activate the dead man switch though

[modest marsh]

Blue Team is introduced in the prologue chapter of The Fall of Reach

[carmine sleet]

Basically the other IIs seen in Fall of Reach

[lime heath]

Awesome, thanks!

[vagrant ocean]

Mk VII isn’t advanced in and of itself, it’s the platform it’s on, GEN3, that is advanced.

[vagrant ocean]

The failsafe would only be used if the armor can’t be recovered.

[vagrant ocean]

Well, it’d be the rest of Blue Team considering the book came first.

[modest marsh]

If you want to get technical, in the prerelease, pre-Xbox promotional material for the game, there are several “cyborgs” instead of just the one that we play as

This was changed around 2000 but I believe the concept of Chief being a cyborg clone was still being considered, which technically made it into the game proper due to the Chiron TL-34 map description

In the CE manual there’s also the mention of the other Spartans, but it’s claimed they all died on Reach without ambiguity

And that was written after the game’s story was finalized

[stoic hamlet]

Tbf, all UNSC personnel would qualify as cyborgs.

But yeah.

On the topic of Blue Team, I miss the old lore about how Spartan II teams were organized. sigh.

[vagrant ocean]

Guys I have bad news.

Very very bad

[thorn spindle]

its not october yet!

[vagrant ocean]

Reach fell.

[lime heath]

You're 527 years early

[unique rune]

someone should buy Reach a Lifealert

[minor sky]

I'm very split because on one hand, this video makes an excellent arguement for why Del Rio is the way he is. He is a figure who stands in direct opposition to the likes of Keyes (both of them) and Lord Hood, presenting a dilema for Chief to act outside of the chain of command. Which makes me wonder if he would've been stronger had they pushed that forwards a little bit more with Lasky and him not seeing eye to eye or more glimpses into his leadership style being so "by-the-book" to a fault.

While on the other hand I have to ask if it would have been a more interesting dynamic for Del Rio to presented as more understandable in his decisions. Yes he is a bit stubbern, but his choices have merit. The conflict coming from Chief having to stand by his friend rather than go along with the chain of command

[tight badge]

Was the elite that killed noble team named

And if so what was it

[stoic hamlet]

The problem with Del Rio’s bad calls is that all those bad calls occurred in previous games but no one ever took issue with them.

The big two are the idea that Del Rio sending out recon teams to assess the area isn’t that insane when UNSC PDC’s are stupidly accurate and can engage targets out to several kilometres, and the Infinity had so much firepower and personnel sending one or two scouting parties out isn’t that insane (the game even has a radio convo mention this, in fact).

Similarly, the “we’re not going to bother with recon” isn’t great… but both Johnson and Miranda did the same in H3, and the one and only time we’ve seen recon used before (in H2) Johnson ignores their advice and gets their entire assault force shot down.

This isn’t even talking about the whole Librarian situation, where by all logic Del Rio was right based on the information he had, even ignoring the by the book aspect.

It’s basically a massive, poorly thought out double standard.

[modest marsh]

The identity of the individual zealots aren’t known aside from them being part of the unit known as the Devoted Sentries

[minor sky]

Right, which goes back to my point about how they needed to either push a bit harder in showing his flaws as a leader or make his choices understandable, but disagreeable

Earlier drafts of the game made him sound like even more of a jerk, and personally I am glad they cut that back a little bit.

I feel like if Del Rio was just overly agressive all the time it'd fall flat.

But at the same time I feel like we needed more moments of us seeing him and Lasky not seeing eye to eye (earlier versions of the game did have this), or maybe be more preoccupied with Infinity's importance/status within the UNSC's fleet than listening to Chief and Cortana's warnings

Hell, maybe hint that his distrust/dismissal of Chief stems from him having a less than favorable view of Spartan IIs alla Silva in The Flood

[hardy swan]

They forgot about it

But it was used in Empty Throne though. Maybe only Spartan IIs have it

[modest marsh]

We don’t know the context under which most of the Spartans on Zeta Halo died

[hardy swan]

Of the 3 times it was used in lore only for Spartan IIs

[modest marsh]

A lot of them perished defending the Reverie, but self destructing there is a nonstarter when the whole point was to protect the surviving UNSC personnel

When Stone gets killed, she’s stabbed through the back by Jega

Which, you know, doesn’t give her much opportunity to do anything about it

[hardy swan]

Maybe they just forgot about it

[modest marsh]

That’s possible but also an unsatisfying answer

The protocol is consistent with the methods used to scuttle lost ships

[hardy swan]

Or maybe it’s only for the Spartan IIs because they are too valuable to be captured

[modest marsh]

Spartan armor is consistently presented as an asset equivalent to a UNSC ship, both in terms of cost and in terms of its strategic impact

I think the main thing to consider is that before Reach there wasn’t even an established incident of a Spartan being killed onscreen, and the overwhelming majority of Spartan-II deaths were already the result of large explosions anyways

[hardy swan]

Which makes me wonder how it’s even possible to produce for hundreds of Spartan IVs

There’s one company of Spartan IIIs left but they mostly use SPI

[modest marsh]

It’s been walked back considerably how much the IVs rely on completely new armor

It’s the lore justification for them using Mark V[B] in considerable numbers

We do know that the armor is vastly cheaper than it used to be to produce, but there’s a big gradient between “as much as UNSC destroyer” and something more reasonable

[hardy swan]

I think most of the IVs in infinite were using Gen II

[modest marsh]

GEN3 Mark VII you mean?

[hardy swan]

Oh yeah

It’s “cheaper” but way more advanced? I don’t see how this is possible

[modest marsh]

Look at the relative cost of TVs over time

[hardy swan]

The Gen 3 could fix holes and heal wounds inside and also fix bones. Like that seems very advanced? It even has a function to feed and put injured Spartans into a comatose state for healing

[modest marsh]

60% of the armor’s cost was just the computer matrix alone in the case of Mark VI

[hardy swan]

They are still very expensive over here. Especially the 16k ones or the bigger ones

[modest marsh]

Relative cost

As in, how much it costs compared to itself over the past several decades

[hardy swan]

I unfortunately was not there when fat TVs were a thing

I actually wonder how dumb AIs cost. Or maybe they are just copies

OpenAI needs billions just to run their servers

[modest marsh]

A modern mid range tv costs about the same as you’d spend on a CRT about 20 years ago except modern TVs have higher resolution and better overall picture quality, have built in applications, take up less space while having larger screens, use energy more efficiently etc

[hardy swan]

Ah

[frigid heart]

Seriously, I just went to the store today and saw an 85 inch plasma 4k for like, 300 bucks

[modest marsh]

Jerrod, a thumb drive-sized micro AI, is described as being equivalent to a modern AI assistant except vastly smarter

[hardy swan]

Speaking of thumb drives Halo still use that tech even 500 years into the future

[modest marsh]

I mean, it’s a futuristic data chip, but it’s still gonna work like a thumb drive if you wanna have it stored on physical media

The crystal chips used by Smart AI serve the same purpose

It just also has a holoprojector in Halo 4 for some reason

And then in 5 and Infinite they decided to make holoprojectors and inherent feature of the armor itself

[orchid kettle]

Mark V[b] in Infinite is described as "technically refined, refit... suits", which suggests to me that like Mark IV, these suits have somehow been upgraded to GEN3 standards

how, exactly, is really anyone's guess

like you'd figure that doing so would require so many new components that you're not really saving anything besides maybe like the raw titanium and the wave guides

[modest marsh]

It’s a reasonable question because we know the external architecture wouldn’t account for most of the costs

It’s the internals that define most of the armor’s capabilities and expense

[orchid kettle]

Personally I don't see why they didn't just do the Naomi explanation of the suit just being Mark VII with a slightly different appearance

I guess because the suits being salvaged refits plays into the idea that the UNSC's resources were not endless and they needed to retrofit what they already had instead of having infinite Mark VII suits

[hardy swan]

I like how red team is still using their Mark IV suits

so fancy new gen tech but still manages to give the banished a hard time

[modest marsh]

It’s upgraded Mark IV, tbc

They vaguely had some form of shield tech prior to arriving on the Ark, and then Isabelle allegedly helped them modify it further somehow

[orchid kettle]

Yeah 343 decided to canonize them having shields when it was originally explained as just a gameplay conceit, and they've supposedly been upgraded further with Isabel's help

[hardy swan]

I thought it was Isabel that made the shield tech for them

or was it anders idk

[modest marsh]

They had shields in HW1 that was canonized as them having prototypes unrelated to the research done by Halsey’s team

[hardy swan]

but weren't they stranded before the others got their shield tech

[orchid kettle]

personally it seems strange to me to think that Isabel would be helpful when it comes to upgrading MJOLNIR

[modest marsh]

Yes, I’m saying there were working shield prototypes in 2531 that they were the sole testers of

The prototype shield tech was considered a failure however and they cancelled it

[orchid kettle]

the franchise really loves its Mark IV prototypes

[hardy swan]

Omega team also still wears it I think

[orchid kettle]

with Collateral Damage you have this idea of John testing a version of active camo as early as 2526

[modest marsh]

It’s unclear if omega team (and retroactively silver team) were also part of this pilot program

[orchid kettle]

but i guess in FuD he takes the Cobalt suit off to save the kids and then puts it back on in time for Oblivion?

[hardy swan]

according to halopedia Omega Team has shield prototypes too but ion think they had an isabel upgrading it

[modest marsh]

You’re misunderstanding

The UNSC issued red team shields in 2531, before the events of HW1

[orchid kettle]

Originally in Halo Wars 1, Spartan units having shields was just a gameplay element to make them stronger

but since 343 took over they've explained the shields as actually diegetic

so yeah I guess any member of Omega in gameplay canonically had those shield modules

[modest marsh]

I dislike how the distinctions between SPI’s implementation of photoreactive panels vs full on light bending tech has been conflated to the point it’s hard to tell what the point of the former is

Collateral Damage iirc describes it having an energy drain

Which makes it lean towards active camo light bending

[orchid kettle]

yeah in CD it can't just be PR because Chief outright walks up and grabs a rebel by the throat while being totally invisible to the human eye

[modest marsh]

But then in Shadows of Reach, Denning calls it “passive camo” and it just sounds like the armor retexturing itself like SPI

But then it also has all the supposed downsides of active camo too??

[orchid kettle]

And then in Rubicon it's stated to be active camo I think

[modest marsh]

Yeah, and infinite itself the escape velocity upgrade calls it active camo

As does the waypoint chronicle that references the upgrade for Kelly

So “passive camo” is now this weird term that must only specifically apply to the stealth package that was used by Blue Team on Reach and nothing else

[orchid kettle]

and we technically have another form of personal stealth system in the form of the ODST suit masking the wearer's thermal signature

[modest marsh]

And then there’s Owen, who didn’t even wear any form of special stealth armor but also has some vague camo tech as well

[orchid kettle]

which i think is interesting if only for how much of SoR is spent by Chief worrying about being spotted by Seraphs overhead via thermals

[modest marsh]

That’s another thing that’s always bugged me

[orchid kettle]

bro shoulda brought the magic thermal-masking poncho from TFOR

[hardy swan]

SPI seems to be able to hide from forerunner vision while in invis mode

[orchid kettle]

but maybe those have a similar limitation as real life where after a lil bit the poncho just absorbs your body heat and becomes visible again

[modest marsh]

The Flood established early that this was a supposed known weakness that the UNSC would exploit, except then Dietz didn’t account for the fact that the growing ubiquity of thermal optics was a given even in the modern day

Like if it were true that all it took to see cloaked elites clearly was to use thermal vision due to their camo unit generating heat, they should be easy to spot in virtually any context

[orchid kettle]

I kinda liked how in ODST, it was almost like a glitch in the VISR system that marked active camo enemies as neutral scenery is what allowed you to see them at all

its easy to imagine then at longer ranges the mess of yellow lines off in the distance may just be mistaken for like a bush or a tumbleweed or something

[modest marsh]

Yeah, between that and the Headhunters depiction, I prefer it more so being that end of the spectrum, with the detection more so being a consequence of the distortions rather than what it actually sees

[orchid kettle]

Its definitely better if the UNSC only recently learned how to detect Covenant active camo

and you could figure instead of thermal goggles, the ODSTs of the Flood would just be using their brand new VISR

its strange to me that 343 kept the goggles as is in the definitive edition considering they made sure to retcon the Alien-style power loader an ODST uses briefly into a Cyclops

[modest marsh]

That’s how I took the line in headhunters where Roland and Jonah’s “visual upgrades” presented as were bleeding edge innovations

Or, at the very least, there was potentially different grades of active camo and those upgrades were necessary to detect the silent shadow

But then Rubicon Protocol had to go and have Jega visible on thermals

[spark pivot]

to be fair isn't Jega running around in camo with his swords lit sometimes?

and isn't plasma like, really, really hot?

[stoic hamlet]

With this I always assumed he was using SPI’s coating on his MJOLNIR.

Which would probably make it the worst of both versions.

I’ve always seen SPI’s whole thing as like, a package deal, which is why it’s so good. Whereas MJOLNIR can’t actually match it fully, it can “kind of” do it half-measuredly, but SPI is still superior.

At least, that’s how I’d do it even post war. But that seems like only a war-era aspect.

I like when things have pros and cons.

[modest marsh]

It’s specified he turns his sword off in the book when he’s cloaked

[spark pivot]

ah that would avoid that issue, altho tbh I'm still confused about how no one is bothered by the sheer amount of heat those things give off, let alone when the species primarily using them doesn't know what gloves are

[modest marsh]

It’s not throughly explained but the way I’ve imagined it is there’s an invisible hand guard distinct from the blade

Like a magnetic field sheathe

[spark pivot]

tbh I don't see a magnetic field stopping the heat radiating off of the blade

oh well lol, I'll just suck it up like I do when I'm messing with my fireplace

[modest marsh]

That’s essentially what shields are in the first place

[spark pivot]

waht.

oh wait

assuming that there is heat radiating off of the blade

oh wait nevermind

[modest marsh]

You don’t need to assume, it does

[spark pivot]

I forgot swords show up through camo according to halo: forward unto dawn

[modest marsh]

It’s inconsistent depending on depiction

[spark pivot]

no I was going to say if there's enough heat radiating off of the blade it would cause a very visible air warping effect alongside whatever the active camo is causing

[modest marsh]

In halo 2 for instance an elite has a sword active while in camo in the day at the beach cinematic

[spark pivot]

but I forgot energy swords already don't get covered by camo according to the live action versions

in game however tbh it's just hidden bc gameplay reasons

idk

[spark pivot]

never seen this cinematic before

or heard of it for that matter

[modest marsh]

https://youtu.be/GYDklklJYog?si=zUtvbgv-uCg_5dD2

[vagrant ocean]

Yes. But it has a limited range.

[vagrant ocean]

Not hidden in CE

[tight badge]

How did the UNSC lose the battle for Earth? Earth had 300 MACs that shouldve been an impenetrable fortress

[carmine sleet]

What do you mean lose the battle for Earth? Earth wasn't destroyed

[tight badge]

The space battle. The UNSC lost

[empty bloom]

They sent a really, really big fleet, some ships jumped under the guns, and they prioritized simply making a hole in the gun network rather than eliminating all of them.

The UNSC was still in the process of losing the space war by the end of Halo 3's earth levels.

[modest marsh]

We see how quickly two of the ODPs got taken out in Halo 2

The only reason Cairo didn’t was because Chief was there

[tight badge]

They shouldve put The fleet behind the MACs and sent out long swords to shoot down Phantoms and boarding parties

[modest marsh]

How do you know they didn’t deploy fighters?

The MACs are less defensible than actual warships, they have no maneuverability

[tight badge]

That’s why The fleet shouldve been behind/next to them to provide support and added defense

[modest marsh]

Being behind the MACs would make it even easier for boarding craft

You have more time to intercept the incoming vessels without hitting the MACs themselves if you have a defensive screen positioned in front of them

There presumably was fighters patrolling the space around the MAC clusters, but the bulk of them should be part of the defensive screen to keep capital ships in the fight longer

And if boarding craft like phantoms and ticks get close enough to the station, you can’t shoot them down without risking friendly fire

[empty bloom]

As Halo is a very ground based game, we don't really know a single thing about how the defense of Earth went.

At least as far as the space campaign goes.

We know the basic facts of the matter but not the specifics.

The UNSC deployed a screen, the Covenant boarding craft passed the screen, the UNSC lost a large packet of MACs (Some of which were still active for nearly a month, so we know not all of them died) above Africa, and the Covenant basically owned Africa's airspace.

[modest marsh]

We also know they later occupied Chicago and London

[empty bloom]

Yep. Don't know exactly how. Presumably they could've just battered their way through the SMACs there too, and it also connotates more aerial/space control.

[orchid kettle]

im still a big fan of the idea that London's natural history museum or whatever had some forerunner artifact stolen from Africa

[empty bloom]

Something tells me most of the UNSC's heavy fleet assets were either hiding or down for the count after the first week.

[orchid kettle]

either that or the Covenant are looking for London bridge and that's why they're also in Arizona

[stoic hamlet]

Not only is it a ground based game, Halo just doesn’t like actually going into battles if a Spartan isn’t present.

[empty bloom]

Also true!

[orchid kettle]

I still kinda count Contact harvest as a non-Spartan story if only because Johnson being ORION is never really addressed and nothing really changes if you're ignorant of that fact

[vagrant ocean]

The sent fighters. Countless. Longswords, baselards, crows, if it could fly it was sent.

[minor sky]

black panther did it first

[lime vapor]

Atakan vuruduruyo

Atakan iyi asist yapamiyor onu banlayin kolsuz veledin teki

modoretorluq verin bana

[minor sky]

Its why spin-off material is such fertile ground to explore. If you aren't constraned by the traditional gameplay structure you can do a lot more.
Thats not me ragging on Halo's gameplay. I think its combat is as good as it gets but having to work every single narrative into that system can be limited

[empty bloom]

Too bad Microsoft shut that all down lmao

[thorn spindle]

that would b cool

[minor sky]

I mean its not like Halo Infinite took up a considerable amount of time and energy to get out the door

[hardy swan]

Halo Squadrons would have been great

[sleek vigil]

Venting.

This is for Halo 'Humans are Forerunner' fans.

One of their main talking points is how Humans being Forerunner adds this 'tragic irony' — 'cosmic revelation' of some kind, or however else they want to describe it.

Even if that is the case, Halo 3's writing does not make it better in any way. In fact, it degrades it, makes it inconsequential.

Only we convince ourselves of this 'cosmic irony' holds such 'grand importance' and is a earth-shattering revelation; a revelation that is almost entirely inconsequential because of how bad Halo 3's writing is.

Guilty Spark says we are Forerunner practically after the game ends, after the Covenant had already died, after the Huamans and Elites have become allies. Arbiter did not hear what Guilty Spark spoke; neither the Covenant nor other humans — and the fall of the Covenant had nothing to do with this 'grand revelation' but had everything to with Great Schism that Halo 2 layed out and Halo 3 never bothered to delve into.

So this 'irony' is nothing but our imagination of a fanfiction that Bungie never wrote, leaving us having to cope with this 'grand storytelling' potential that Bungie never cared enough to make use of or even try to weave it properly into the ending of their grand finale that is Halo 3.

--

I believe 343i is justified to make the decision they made, in spite of Halo 3.

[hardy swan]

@grok tldr

[vagrant ocean]

The Forerunners are humans thing is also lazy writing.

[hardy swan]

if not human why human looking?

[frigid heart]

Its a sci fi shtick, usually every alien is a biped. Especially ones that are written as “majestic” and mysterious as the forerunners, the writers wanted something different from the covenant species, so they just went with the basic “human” body shape. But that’s just my two cents.

[minor sky]

Ok in all fairness, some of the Gravemind's lines in Halo 3 do make a lot of sense with the whole "Forerunners are Humans" angle

Ultimately, I like too much of Greg Bear's forerunner lore to discount it

[frigid heart]

Right? Slow burn but a banger of a book.

[sleek vigil]

I suppose the Gravemind thing exists. But I would want to give it the same treatment fans give to in-game dialogue, especially considering how annoying Gravemind was.

[sleek vigil]

Make it truly alien and you alienate people.

And, @minor sky - #halo-discussion message

[modest marsh]

humans are forerunners even under the current canon, we're just separated by millions of years of divergent evolution and genetic engineering, which was more or less the intent circa halo 3

[empty bloom]

At that point it's kinda stretching the definition of human, though.

[modest marsh]

the main retcon is the idea there was a competing ancient human society

which was "necessary" to have a forerunner antagonist

[sleek vigil]

We all came from Primordial Soup!

(I guess that'd be literal 😂)

[hardy swan]

Can't wait for them to get more into the pockets of surviving ancestors

[minor sky]

Yeah, sorry I didn't responce earlier. Thanks a ton for the responce, I appreciated it a lot

[vagrant ocean]

Convergent evolution. Look it up.

[thorn spindle]

I guess the yanme look the most like precursors

Idk if precusor bug form had wings

Don't hear much about those yanmee anymore

[sleek vigil]

Guardians look a lot like Precursor AIs, and they look like Precursers.

[minor sky]

I do really appreciate Halo for so many of it's alien species looking so- alien

[tough vault]

How do people feel about the kilo-5 books? I’ve heard people say they either suck and are the worst or people say they’re the best. I’m looking for the next books to start after I’m done with the ferrets.

[hardy swan]

we need more aliens looking like humans

[obsidian thistle]

Traviss has a writing style that is controversial when it involves existing characters.

Opting to not read existing material and take facts and rebuild characters.

Source: https://www.torforgeblog.com/2011/11/01/qa-with-karen-traviss/

This doesn't mean its bad

But characters may act differently compared to media that came out before and after

I'd actually say her style is perfect for new characters

[minor sky]

We already have the Yon'het

They're already everyone's favorite Halo species

Fan reaction was so strongly positive that 343i had to scrap their plans for the next game and make them the main faction of the game

[obsidian thistle]

I aint against the Yonhet. Their introduction was ckunky unfortunately and didnt do the idea justice.

I'm glad HS are doing them a lil more justice by having 1 be a key player in the Orion arm space.

[stoic hamlet]

Travis’s is especially weird because she kept some stuff from Nylund that Denning discarded in later books.

Basically, Traviss character assassinated Halsey, Mendez, and Lucy, Denning character assassinated Saber.

[hardy swan]

I mean they look like Vulcans or Kryptonians

[stoic hamlet]

She also can write established characters really well, it’s just she’s really opinionated.

Human Weakness for example is a standout of Evolutions.

If her opinions get into her writing, you’re gonna have a bad time.

While for Denning (who took the baton from her) he just changes stuff for his own plots.

[hardy swan]

m a n d a l o r i a n s

[obsidian thistle]

I'll still hold by the idea that Traviss' style is perfect for new characters or very underdeveloped ones. (Whether you like them as people or not is irrelevant, as the fact it made you think a way is a success on the author)

[minor sky]

Their design feels very "Babylon 5's League of Unaligned Worlds" than Covenant. No doubt a side-effect of being introduced in a web-series circa 2015

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah I don’t disagree

Actual Kilo-5 are well written enough.

I stand by the idea that, had Nylund gotten to finish the Onyx stuff, rather than have Traviss do it, even if the broad points occurred, K-5 would have been one of the series’ better trilogies.

Basically remove all the Onyx stuff from Glasslands and pretty well all the issues are gone.

[obsidian thistle]

And I'd argue ignoring prior media (which is hard for people as invested as us) the rest is well written enough also.

We just have the knowledge of what came before... so it really stands out what Traviss' did and how it doesn't work fully in terms of connecting to the previous books.

[hardy swan]

Does 343 not like. Review a draft first or something?

[obsidian thistle]

This is EARLY 343i

Back on the heels of the og Encyclopedia

[minor sky]

(For the record thats not ment to mock Babylon 5. The aliens in that show (mostly) look great even to this day. Just that the Yonhet's design has more in common with the Narn and Drazi than the Sangheli and Kig-Yar)

[obsidian thistle]

Say what you will, 343i got better over time

Especially when their internal documentation got better! 🙂

[minor sky]

They are pretty good at trying to keep their canon streamlined

[hardy swan]

except for the fact that they forgot Mjolnir can make the reactors go kaboom

[minor sky]

Doesn't Halo 4 do that?

During Requiem and Shutdown iirc

[hardy swan]

the last time they did it was in Empty Throne but not a single time in Rubicon Protocol even though a few hundred IVs died

[obsidian thistle]

That said Traviss' style really is one that you go in fully else you risk kinda undermining her outright which doesn't really go well for getting authors to write books.

[stoic hamlet]

Somewhat.

There’s a real issue with Empty Throne where it feels like 343 decided to just… openly ignore their own written lore.

And I don’t know if that’s worse, lol.

[hardy swan]

like what

[obsidian thistle]

I'll say this, when Kilo-5 gets good. It gets GOOD. Kig-Yar saw some of their best development in that books that made them more than just "space pirate birdos".

[minor sky]

You think the Kig-Yar are related to Ridley at all?

[stoic hamlet]

Slipspace, primarily.

The 2022 encyclopedia makes it very clear how Slipspace for pretty well every faction works, with clearly set rules and the like for how they handle Slipspace travel, communications, etc.

And then Empty Throne just completely ignores them.

[obsidian thistle]

Halo has always had issues with Slipspace unfortunately.

"I believe" thats one reason 343i/HS stopped and lowered using irl systems and started almost exclusively using fictional ones.

AND

Havent made a real galaxy atlas

[modest marsh]

This was already discussed previously but within Rubicon Protocol itself I don’t believe there are any cases where this would’ve been practical

[hardy swan]

Stone died alone

[modest marsh]

Yeah I already talked about stone

[hardy swan]

and that Spartan that ended up in the house of reckoning or whatever

[modest marsh]

She was surprise attacked from behind, killed instantly

[modest marsh]

It’s possible the Spartan died while defending their allies

[minor sky]

The latter really does feel like one of those things that would be a total pain in the butt to nail down and ensure that everyone follows

[hardy swan]

yeah I doubt the marine and sangheli doc would last longer than a spartan

[modest marsh]

Why?

[hardy swan]

wdym why he's a Spartan

[modest marsh]

They’re the bigger threat

[minor sky]

Not to mention ensure that any media previously released gets updated to match

[hardy swan]

Anyways it was a fight to the death going out with a boom would be the best option

[modest marsh]

Moreover, just based on how Spartans have been routinely characterized, it would just be par for the course for them to heroically sacrifice themselves to protect their allies

[hardy swan]

they should just retcon that already

[modest marsh]

How do they know that was their only option?

[hardy swan]

bruh. Why would the banished capture them otherwise?

[modest marsh]

They could lose

Master Chief beat them

[hardy swan]

the Banish capture humans only to toy with them (or torture) and in that case a spectacle

[modest marsh]

No, it was a training exercise

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah but that’s not what I’m referring to.

That kind of stuff is fine, and it’s needed for how they build their world, it’s pretty common in Sci-fantasy settings. Star Wars, Star Trek, 40K, even the Expanse started doing it when they went interstellar.

The issue is when you generalize stuff like travel times and how communications work, and then you don’t even follow those generalizations.

I don’t need to know where the Betz-Zed 12 system is in relation to Epsilon Eridani.

But if you state in an encyclopedia that “human ships take a few weeks to go most distances” and then in a book released afterwards have human ships get to another star system in a few hours (ignoring the sublight travel, which is said to also take a long time), I’m absolutely critiquing it.

[hardy swan]

didn't they have upgraded slipspace nagivation tools by empty throne?

[stoic hamlet]

It’s not like that’s stuff buried in some deleted document.

That’s stuff that was less than 5 years old from a publicly released piece of media.

[stoic hamlet]

For James ship this is fine.

But the book directly calls out every other UNSC ship isn’t upgraded.

None of them are new.

And even then, the travel times still don’t work.

[modest marsh]

I guess to be more accurate, the Banished do get some sick sense of amusement watching the UNSC get picked apart in a gladiatorial arena where the humans have no chance of survival, but it still serves a practical training purpose and we know that they can be beaten because Master Chief eventually did despite them throwing everything they could at him

I don’t think it was out of question for someone to survive the house of reckoning, they just failed

[stoic hamlet]

Because a key point mentioned is that the larger a UNSC formation is, the longer they take because they rendezvous close to the target system then do another jump to bring them into the actual system so when they do jump in-system, they’re not scattered all over the place.

The timeline just doesn’t work out.

maybe I could buy, like, a three day break.

But all the Boundary stuff happens within less than 24 hours.

[obsidian thistle]

So a fun Halopedia deet that y'all rarely get to see is people keep searching Halo Atlas or Halo Galaxy Atlas on the wiki

People want the galaxy maps

[hardy swan]

It would be annoying to authors to remember all the facts ig

this is why Star Wars went with the super super duper fast travel so it doesn't really matter

[stoic hamlet]

That’s why you have people check this stuff.

And when the author is credited as a writer on the Encyclopedia, it’s even worse.

Yeah, he likely didn’t write the Slipspace stuff, but I’m still holding it against them.

[hardy swan]

they should just move on from the shaw something engine and make it more simple for authors

[modest marsh]

Jeremy Patenaude wrote Empty Throne, and he was a 343i employee for nearly as long as it was called 343i

[stoic hamlet]

^^^

[modest marsh]

He should know better than a contracted writer

Well, technically he was contracted for the book, but you get what I mean

[stoic hamlet]

It’s not about being 100% accurate.

It’s about at least trying to follow your universe’s established rules.

If you can’t even do that, why should anyone actually take the universe seriously?

[modest marsh]

Travel times/limitations have been a relevant narrative device since the very first game’s opening lines of dialogue so I also think it’s a bit different from most other scifi franchises that play looser with the rules

[obsidian thistle]

HS have been slowly building up stuff however. We can get a "rough" idea of the inner and outer colonies if we...

1. Take the furthest irl system thats a inner colony.
2. Take the closest irl system thats a outer colony.
3. Take the furthest irl system thats a outer colony.

It wont give us everything, and irl is subject to HS ignoring it outright.

But it does however give us a basic scale of our orion empire.

[stoic hamlet]

We know other people at 343 read the manuscript before it was sent out (Haruspis did, at least, likely Grim as well) someone should have caught that.

It’s not like it would really affect the book to adjust the travel times anyway, as we skip ahead almost a month later for the epilogues anyways.

[hardy swan]

I read somewhere the 800 colonies are only 100 lightyears in diameter

[stoic hamlet]

None of this would be really plot demanding to actually adhere to the rules you wrote.

And if your plot can’t work without break in your rules, it shouldn’t be done.

[modest marsh]

Yeah since you mention it this isn’t even a case of being written into a corner and just having to make due with the conditions allotted

Sometimes that can be pretty understandable

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah.

And they could have easily explained it anyway, or had people in the book call it out.

Like, Ghosts of Onyx has probably the series (now second) fastest travel times ever… but multiple parties call it out as odd.

[modest marsh]

Most of humanity is dispersed in part of the Orion Arm, but the distribution is a bit haphazard due to many of the star systems being based off of real ones that exceed what was originally intended to be the scope of human expansion

[hardy swan]

it's funny how halo humans didn't colonise the closest star system to us

I never seen alpha centauri mentioned

[obsidian thistle]

But yea you should be fine with Kilo-5. 😛 Realised I never actually responded to ya.

[stoic hamlet]

It’s not the specific issue, it’s the principle.

[modest marsh]

It’s not really a matter of choice, Star proximity isn’t the only factor even ignoring the non-linearity of travel distance in slipspace

There’s different degrees of habitability to consider

A given star system may offer nothing worth colonizing beyond a space outpost

[stoic hamlet]

You can also fudge things if you want.

For example, in Avatar, Pandora is a moon in the Alpha-Centauri system.

In Killzone, the Alpha-Centauri system has two habitable planets and no habitable moons around a gas giant.

In Halo, maybe they’ve decided none of the planets were viable at all and so ignored them, etc.

Fiction doesn’t need to be realistic.

But it needs to make sense within its internal rules.

It’s like, the most basic writing rule. The golden rule.

You can do anything you want, but it needs to be consistent with the world.

[modest marsh]

There’s also the possibility that there used to be earthlike planetoids in a given star system, but were moved or destroyed in the halo universe as a consequence of the forerunner-flood war

Conversely this explains the existence of those cosmic bodies in places they shouldn’t be

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah.

Again 343 have options for why X wasn’t done or Y wasn’t chosen.

[obsidian thistle]

Sometimes authors dont wanna use places other writers/universes use also

[hardy swan]

Didn’t they terraform Mars

[stoic hamlet]

That as well, yeah.

[hardy swan]

They seem to have terraforming and deglassing technology

The UNSC that is

[obsidian thistle]

A headcanon some writers go is "If you like one series, we ignored that system so you can imagine it still happens".

I personally dont subscribe to that. But its a fun thing to think about aha.

I dont think Halo intentionally did that also

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah.

I know 40K does this, to a small extent.

[modest marsh]

This is pretty new in the grand scheme of things

Mars was colonized in 2080 in the halo timeline, before it was terraformed