lore-and-universe

[hardy swan]

Oof Elon failed in that timeline ig

[obsidian thistle]

Tbf our universe is like fully separate from Halos.

Similar stuff happens yes, but there is differences.

https://www.halopedia.org/1996

That year is 1 example of differing from irl

I actually never expected to find the og source of that quote lol

[modest marsh]

The other difference is that Halo the video game doesn’t exist

[hardy swan]

Did Halo universe even have a WW3

[obsidian thistle]

Its been suggested yes

[stoic hamlet]

Like The Walking Dead and zombies.

Which is… odd, lol.

[modest marsh]

What was one of the other working titles for the game?

It’s on the tip of my tongue

[stoic hamlet]

For Halo?

[obsidian thistle]

https://www.halopedia.org/2090
https://www.halopedia.org/2103

WW3 and 4 seemingly

[modest marsh]

I could’ve sworn Bungie had like a dozen goofy names they came up with before settling on Halo

[strange pumice]

"All coincidences are accidental"
But what if...

[obsidian thistle]

Armor, Monkey Nuts, then Blam

[modest marsh]

Monkey Nuts was the one I was looking for

[stoic hamlet]

Most companies do.

It’s always fun getting to hear them.

Some companies though just call upcoming releases stuff like IG4 or IG5, like with Insomniac, where their games are coded as that (Insomniac Game 4/5, etc).

Working titles change all the time.

Occasionally a game will be in development-heck for so long, it’ll have its title changed after it’s premiered.

[hardy swan]

Discord was almost called Wyvern

[obsidian thistle]

I believe the safest route is that...
Halos universe is more parallel to ours.

It differs in a few areas.

1. "Our" origins on Earth are different. In the Halo Universe we were reseeded by the Forerunners. Irl depends on what you believe.
2. Humanity has had "some" minor interactions with Forerunner tech. Not enough for us to understand it or what is happening. But enough to make some humans go "places the earth stands still" and have conspiracy nuts wonder.
3. Stuff just happens that didnt here. 2021 was meant to have the International Society of Civil Engineers establish... that didnt happen here.

[hardy swan]

Sydney exists so I guess much of the timeline for Australia was the same

Ong the British empire is canon

[strange pumice]

I'm believing that everything can happen
It's just my opinion, maybe you right, but it's just one step on time

[obsidian thistle]

Honestly I dub 1997 where the parallel walls start to crumble.

[modest marsh]

Lord Hood should be a hint

[obsidian thistle]

1997 is when Halo started to be developed. So by all metrics stuff will be WAYYYY different after that

Before that its mostly 1 and 2 that caused differences

[hardy swan]

Back then smartphones didn’t exist so Halos version looks like some compass

[obsidian thistle]

We survived off fliphones for 400 years

Love it

Chatters do seem more based off that idea

Than the Smart phone of our generation

[stoic hamlet]

The UNSC is just space CANZUK. Change my mind.

[obsidian thistle]

I do wonder if any myths and legends of our past are based around Forerunner technology?

In-universe that is

Like I did wonder at one point if Arthurian legend with Excalibur and its Scabbard with healing properties are two such items.

[hardy swan]

huh Sydney is the UEG's HQ...

damn Cortana just killed millions

must be a big explosion

[zealous panther]

Y'know...I would like Spartans to go back into having roles and specialties and have on armor equipment be used than just be cosmetics.
I like the idea of SIVs ranging in different fields and their armor equipment speaks for it.

[hardy swan]

well I mean canonically they already do

[steel stone]

I agree there wish we got to see more of that

Sarah Palmer wears scout in 4 and 5, isnt that suppose to be stealth type armor? if shes a commander why isnt she wearing that gen2 commando armor?

Shes has shown many times to be more of an close quarters type combatant, dual wield magnuns, scout just didnt make sense to me for her to have

[hardy swan]

because she chose that

[steel stone]

Idea CQB could of fit her and its an iconic armor set from halo 3 and is tailored to close quarters combat

[hardy swan]

the lone wofl spartans from the multiplayer story wears Ra- something

[steel stone]

I think Reach was the last game to have that armor tailored to their skill set I dunno thats very interesting

whats everyones thought on that?

[carmine sleet]

Had Palmer been a sniper during the war, Scout would've made more sense. Like, she was an ODST (And we know they do have sniper specialists, such as Romeo) but there's better sets they could've given her which would have fit her prior role, even before Halo 4 got ODST armour in the Champion's Bundle

[steel stone]

thats awesome I didnt know she was an odst, thanks for sharing that

i think in spartan ops they had armor tailored to their skill sets I cant remember

[carmine sleet]

Not really, all the Spartans you encountered in Spartan Ops wore standard Recruit armour and Majestic didn't have much in the way of defined roles within the team outside of Madsen wearing Recon because he was the team's sniper

Like, you could probably guess what each member's role is based off of their armour but it never really plays into anything

And then with Crimson, you get to decided what their specialisation is because they used our multiplayer armour

So if you wanted a member of Crimson who specialised in operating in Hazardous environments, you'd put on Hazop

[steel stone]

i remember the madsen i think he hijacked the banshee

think one of them did that was a cool moment

[carmine sleet]

That was Thorne, not Madsen

[ancient thistle]

do spartans or overall unsc use martial arts for example jiu jitsu, judo etc cause i know they do hand 2 hand combat

or did it die out

[vagrant ocean]

3. Could’ve been founded in secret.

[vagrant ocean]

They probably use a descendant of those practices, or a fusion of them. Hand to hand combat isn’t really viable in an era where everyone has body armor and weapons that have an effective range of half a kilometer that use .30 bullets. Maybe in a pinch, but I doubt it’s standard training for even Spartans, unless we’re talking only about the IIs.

Don’t expect Fred to use Gōjū-ryū (the real Miyagi-do karate) to take down a brute.

They might’ve been taught the basics but that’s probably aboot it.

[modest marsh]

Every Spartan-IV candidate has basic training in hand-to-hand combat from their previous years of military service, but Spartans are required to learn several fighting styles, as different methods work for different situations. This can mean redirecting the force of a massive Brute's punch with Aikido, disarming an Insurrectionist rebel with Jiu-Jitsu, or taking down a Covenant Elite in close quarters with Krav Maga. Though this may sound daunting, your augmentation gives you the ability to lean new fighting techniques from your opponents-effectively acting as an enhanced "muscle memory" that makes observing and memorizing techniques much easier. To this end, you will be paired with a Spartan who has already mastered the techniques you must learn.

@ancient thistle @vagrant ocean per the field manual

I also disagree with the characterization that hand to hand combat isn’t going to be useful for anyone outside of IIs, it’s the most frequent source of death and injury for Spartans outside of large explosions

Getting attacked in close quarters that is

Off the top of my head, Thorne alone was beaten or mortally injured in close quarters 4 separate times and he barely has any screen time

[empty bloom]

Going off of how we know Scout functions, her armor isn't actually the most unreasonable for a battlefield commander.

[glossy sun]

So did the UNSC and the NMPD work together to make the armories seen in Halo 3: ODST?

[carmine sleet]

Fair

[empty bloom]

It's low-profile, has a minimal impact on offensive performance if any, offers a full suite of anti-detection systems, and has uplink systems to allow for forward command and strike designation.

[modest marsh]

Hoya also got injured by a Knight and later had a close encounter with a Zealot that nearly cost him his life had knight Tilson not intervened

[vagrant ocean]

Probably. All Earth governments are part of the UEG and the UNSCDF had defacto control over the UEG for the entire war. It makes sense to have law enforcement personnel use standard UNSC weapons for logistical purposes. And it makes sense since the UNSC is essentially based off the US military which LOVES logistics.

[glossy sun]

Yea I was thinking that maybe the UNSC put them there so that the NMPD would have the right gear to be the first line of defense until the actual Marines arrived

[empty bloom]

The NMPD is simply the NMPD. Lots of wartime production means a lot of wartime equipment.

The NMPD would not be kitted out as it is for the express purpose of being first-line meatshields any more than real life police, the idea is that it's familiar and common gear.

[modest marsh]

If you ask me I feel like it may just as well be the UEG has an extremely blase stance on civilian weapons access, there’s never been any indication of meaningful gun control in setting

[carmine sleet]

And now for a live look at Tilson on Genesis in 2560!

https://tenor.com/view/halo-promethean-knight-promethean-knight-halo-knight-halo4-gif-26689148

[empty bloom]

Actual discussion on UEG Governance is incredibly sparse compared to other settings. I'm pretty sure freaking Titanfall has more information on its political structure than Halo.

About all that can really be said about the UEG is that it is a representative democracy with heavy corporate influence and some authoritarian tendencies and a weirdly honorbound officer class.

[modest marsh]

Titanfall is more pointedly about making commentary about the military industrial complex rather than it just being a background detail

[empty bloom]

Like, NGL, the fact that Lord Hood willingly and without pushing stepped down as wartime leader, instead of continuing to hold power like he could have, is basically a gunshot to the head of the theory that the UEG is bone-deep fascist.

[modest marsh]

Hood is a good guy because he’s voiced by Ron Perlman, simple as

[empty bloom]

Maybe it doesn't kill it stone dead but like, you don't normally have your Junta stop being a Junta because it wanted to stop.

(Yes, I know the UNSC didn't take over by force, but still)

[vagrant ocean]

I mean, the war ended so he had no reason to continue to hold power. But again, the officer class of the UNSC (career officers, not politicians like Del Rio) being so honor bound makes sense, and is one of the many things we have in common with the Sangheili, that and our hatred of brutes and San’Shyuum.

[empty bloom]

From my own interactions with officers, that's... Actually somewhat abnormal. Must be something they put in the water.

Not to say there aren't honorable officers, just... That is not a rule. I'm not sure why the UNSC seems so hidebound to be that way.

[vagrant ocean]

Or maybe a massive shift in demeanor occurred over the intervening half millennium.

[empty bloom]

Fair enough.

There's also some scumbag officers in the UNSC from what we see, so.

[modest marsh]

There isn’t really a strong historical basis for this type of thing happening, usually when a country decides that the military needs to run things, the same regime tends to maintain its emergency powers until the leader dies or they get overthrown

[empty bloom]

Maybe they just have better promotion boards.

[vagrant ocean]

I believe it’s better for cohesion to have such honorable officers leading units, as they’re less willing to take unnecessary risks if they don’t think the payoff is good enough.

With honor comes duty to those you command.

A duty to get them home in one piece or to make their sacrifice mean something.

Obviously we have many examples of UNSC officers throwing away lives like Churchill did at Gallipoli, but this is both a rarity and a result of us not knowing how to fight the Covenant early in the war.

[empty bloom]

Maybe the UNSC just makes ethics classes mandatory all the time.

[vagrant ocean]

It also probably includes he same doctrine many European militaries have where if someone receives an order that would lead to an unnecessary loss of life or conflicts with the morality of a soldier it’s their obligation to themselves and to humanity to disobey that order.

If I recall correctly the Bundeswher has that doctrine.

[empty bloom]

One of the more frequent issues with rules like that is on paper, you are supposed to disobey unlawful orders.

Historical precedent and reality say that you will get bent, and if they can manage it, broken, if you disobey unlawful or insane orders.

If not by the system, then by the people who are for the war you were being told to fight.

[vagrant ocean]

I wouldn’t be surprised if UNSCDF tribunals include AI that would help both the prosecution and the defense in such matters.

Given how AI are literally everywhere.

[orchid kettle]

I've always said it's hard to get a read on the UEG's fascist tendencies since it would require actually exploring the average civilian's relationship with the UEG

since at the very least, a lot of the components brought forward by Ur-Fascism has to do with like civilian culture and how the government cultivates that culture

and i don't think its as simple as like, "Is there a funny looking supreme leader?"

like for one thing we kinda have no idea how the UNSC/UEG justifies itself to the people when it came to the Insurrection

there's just no counter-rhetoric

And like, is that because the UNSC/UEG just haven't tried to defend their actions in the public eye

or are we just not shown this because anything surrounding the Insurrection runs the risk of getting "too political" for Halo

[empty bloom]

What few civilian perspectives we get tend to have said civilian getting a looooot of leeway in what they can say, even around UNSC personnel and ONI officers. The only red lines seems to be snooping too close to Spartans, and even then that infosec is so bad that it doesn't even seem to exist considering random field-grade officers are able to figure it out and publicly yap about it without any consequences whatsoever.

[ionic tiger]

I guess to me the UEG doesn’t have to be explicitly fascist. It allows the UNSC and ONI to do some shady stuff, but so does pretty much every government nowadays as far as their intelligence communities and military go.

Like, the US was able to stomp down on civil rights just fine without breaking out the jackboots and silly marches.

[orchid kettle]

Thats kinda the other thing too lol, that the UEG's status as essentially America In Space may mean any fascist tendencies may just be inherited, uninterrogated cultural artifacts from the US

[ionic tiger]

I just assume the writers go with what they know

[empty bloom]

US is nowhere near as free as people seem to think, and people tend to forget that our fascist state tendencies have been baked in for centuries.

[orchid kettle]

what do you mean other people think its weird that kids have to pledge allegiance to the flag like they're swearing everlasting love to the supreme leader

[empty bloom]

That wasn't even a thing until McCarthyism and the Cold War.

[ionic tiger]

Granted, you also have the freedom to not pledge and there are mechanisms in place to right any attempts at suppressing that.

[empty bloom]

Speak for yourself, I got detention for not doing that.

I get what you mean though. On paper, it's not legal to really do much about it.

That was one of thethings with McCarthyism. They'd arrest people for being Communist, but charges never really stuck because it wasn't illegal to be a Communist even if the state hated them.

[ionic tiger]

And that’s an injustice. Another issue is with 50 states you got 50 different policies and those are sub-divided by local policies and etc.

Personally, I tell my kids to pledge if they wish and don’t really care to notice any who don’t.

[empty bloom]

I think part of it is a Microsoft-driven refusal to showcase the authoritarian side of the house actually doing authoritarian things.

[ionic tiger]

Presumably, the Spartan program even being a possibility is likely meant to do the heavy lifting. I mean, if that’s allowable what isn’t?

And yet you can dig into any governments past to see some heinous stuff without them being explicitly one ideology.

[empty bloom]

Like, they go to great lengths to avoid showcasing any of their properties having personnel actually engage in the enforcement structure of their system; Locke attempting to arrest Chief is the closest I've actually seen in an actual Halo game.

In Gears of War, the closest Marcus ever got to engaging with the state's enforcement directly on the side of the state was under orders against the unambiguously evil Locust.

Governments do what you let them get away with I suppose.

[ionic tiger]

And we saw how absolutely mad folks got at the idea Locke would follow military protocol just because it involved Chief.

[orchid kettle]

I always felt like as well that the UNSC getting away with mowing down civilians en masse in HTT season 2 only really works if they've cultivated a culture where outer colonists are seen as "lesser" than Earthlings or anybody from the inner worlds

[thorn osprey]

The UEG is a representative democracy, the huge problem with them was due to being so far away from the Outer Colonies tuah point where they couldn't effectively communicate or have much say. It also didn't help that the UNSC and ONI tried to take as much power as they could from other organizations like the CMA.

It's something that should be fixed following the Human-Covenant War since we achieved faster-than-light communication.

[empty bloom]

I still remember a particularly disgusting comment by someone saying what they'd let Chief get away with for being the savior of humanity in Halopedia's Discord.

[orchid kettle]

like even if you figure they covered it up perfectly, the fact that the powers that be are okay with that would suggest that they at least see these colonists in that way

[empty bloom]

I still don't think that comment got the pushback by everyone else that it should have.

[ionic tiger]

I mean, probably. They wiped their hands of Aleria when its climate collapsed and that’s just…cold.

Some colonies, and therefore some people, are just more important than others

[orchid kettle]

CH had this idea as well that outer colonists faced harsher regulations on how they could live their lives

[ionic tiger]

I think it’s also implied the Outer Colonies had more of a corporate influence insofar as they wanted resources and would do anything to get that return on investment. You also had people flocking to these colonies in both legal and illegal means.

The further you go, the less people necessarily have loyalty to Earth I suppose.

[stoic hamlet]

Unless you’re Buck and Mickey. Then for whatever reason you’re reversed.

Where Buck’s an outer colonist but a staunch Earth loyalist, and Mickey’s from Luna, but apparently his parents (also from Luna?) were… anti-Earth Insurrectionists.

[ionic tiger]

I’d say it’s like there being Loyalists and Patriots during the American Revolution.

[stoic hamlet]

Exceptions to the rule exist of course, I was just pointing out an oddly comical situation of that.

[orchid kettle]

Oh during the spartan chatter i asked about Mickey's folks being Innies despite living in the middle of Earth decadence

gist was basically "Yeah even though they lived in privilege they didn't agree with what their government was doing"

i assume at least, haruspis' mic was cutting out a lot

[ionic tiger]

This article is kinda interesting

https://www.halopedia.org/Surveillance_grid

That seems like it’s point to some really 1984 levels of control on Earth…and yet outside of some of the stuff Vergil does in ODST we don’t see it much.

[orchid kettle]

Which is basically the only explanation there is, unless you wanted to invent something convulated about how Mickey's folks actually came from elsewhere and they infiltrated Luna

and they just so happened to have Mickey there

[thorn osprey]

Would everyone in Britain agree with the treatment of the colonies? Would there be outliers in the colonies that were content with their rule?

[orchid kettle]

I feel like if the goal was to always have Mickey defect, I'd throw in a twist about how his parents weren't even terrorists at all and Mickey just learns the UNSC mowed down some defenseless protesters again

[stoic hamlet]

His parents died trying to blow up a government building. That goes beyond grievances with the government.

[orchid kettle]

thats why i think it may make more sense if there was just some large protest situation that broke out into a riot or something, and Mickey's parents were being labelled as criminals by the UNSC to save face

[stoic hamlet]

IMO they should have been protestors incarcerated, or something.

(Or shot)

Yeah.

[thorn osprey]

That isn't really relevant to what I was saying. Just because Mickey lived on Luna doesn't mean he'd adore the UNSC, same with his parents. They could've been extremists who knew about the Insurrectionists ideologies.

[orchid kettle]

It'd also be nice to have that element of Mickey being partially motivated by his parents because of what happened to them instead of this unspoken suggestion that being an Innie was just in his blood

[carmine sleet]

I still remember when I first learnt about this from Americans I knew, such an odd thing to make kids do at school

[orchid kettle]

I mean it's basically the equivalent of accusing vietnam war protestors of breaking out Viet Cong tactics to kill american soldiers and civilians

Like, that just didn't happen

[thorn osprey]

It was an analogy referring to the difference in ideologies among people of the same population

[ionic tiger]

I can understand Mickey’s parents hating the UEG surveillance state, or how they handled things like Far Isle or any number of colonial rebellions protests despite living comfortable lives. I don’t think it’s that unusual.

[orchid kettle]

Again its not really that anti-war people would exist so much as the extent they'd be willing to go

But you know what is pretty common is protesters being labelled as violent extremists

Rarely because of what they actually did but because of a smear campaign meant to de-legitimize them in the eyes of the wider public

People who protested the Iraq war and America's involvement in the Middle-East in general were accused of being "terrorist sympathizers" or "anti-american" but that didn't mean you actually had american civilians turning themselves into suicide bombers

Like, what feels far more common is somebody getting uppity about there being protests against the government at all, and said person takes it upon themselves to drive their car through a crowd of protesters, somehow convinced they're the good guy in all this

but if you recognize the reality of this situation, like I said, suddenly things start getting "too real"

Its simpler and perhaps more comforting to just believe that Mickey's folks were cray-cray and just decided to blow themselves up and leave their son all alone in the world

Which is really the rub with the Insurrection as a whole. You either recognize that if so many people are this angry about the government, that maybe there's a reason for that anger. But now you've gone and implied there's something wrong with the actual real world government

Or you just have them all be wackjobs who don't really have a point and they're violent just because they're Bad People. And now you've implied that any movement that's born out of a percieved sense of injustice in the status quo is just the result of people overreacting and stirring up trouble over nothing.

[modest marsh]

the UEG doesn't have to be a critique of modern day neoliberalism since its main flaws are specific to the challenges of governing exosolar colonies

as of right now the US and other western nations largely are not responsible for governing colonies in general (exceptions may apply based on what qualifies to the individual)

the closest equivalent would be territories that are largely inhabited by US military who generally are very loyal to the us government insofar as the vast majority would never consider a violent insurrection

its a little different when you're talking about people who have spent generations away from earth and live fundamentally different lives as a result of their distance

the geopolitics of the UEG have a lot more in common with the victorian era british empire

that is to say, the rebels have a lot in common with the patriot army in that they're a collection of ideologically distinct groups whose main goal is self governance, and thus potentially have conflicting opinions on certain issues, ie slavery

[minor sky]

Part of me is kind of glad Halo doesn't touch that side of it's world because if they screwed it up it could be really bad. But another part of me thinks that not doing it and leaving it up to implication or offhand comments denies the series more storytelling potential

Its a double edged sword

[orchid kettle]

I think for me it'd be fine if the Insurrection was largely "solved" by the post-war, either because all the problem planets blew up or because the UNSC is in no position to really enforce its claim on the few surviving frontier worlds anyway

and we moved on to Sapien Sunrise and similar anti-alien groups being the new focus whenever we wanted to do human vs human

or just cool pirate crews who are just pirates and don't have any ideology to interrogate at all

the fact that Halo's criminal underworld is so tightly intertwined with the Insurrection has honestly always felt pretty limiting to me

[empty bloom]

I somewhat interpret it as the insurrection largely being made irrelevant/extinct, with anyone left without their own territory (Venezia, Gao) or holding a grudge or just in it for the plunder being the new face of the insurrection.

Like, Gao and Venezia are both practically sovereign ground at this point.

[stoic hamlet]

There is, I think a great irony in that if anyone in the 1770’s or so in North America had actual reasons for trying to overthrow British rule it was the Québécois, seeing as they had been French for hundreds of years and were now British because of a war that ended less than 20 years prior… but they remained loyal and repelled Patriot incursions.

The idea that all colonists inherently want independence and gain it via violent uprisings is also a very American slant, I think.

Most of the commonwealth, for example, gained their independence via political lobbying, but still hold great ties to the UK.

[modest marsh]

I should learn more Canadian history because what the hell do you mean the French were forced to become British and were okay with it

This is in fact breaking my American brain

[stoic hamlet]

The Seven Years War, fought between 1756-1763 saw French North America basically dissolve after British troops won the Battle of Quebec (among other things) and all the holdings became British, under British North America.

When the American Revolution broke out, Continental troops invaded Canada to convince the Québécois to join them in revolt as Americans, but the troops were incredibly heavy handed and hostile to the French populace (and had absolutely no idea or care to learn about them which the British had), and after getting beaten in a battle, retreated in poor order, keeping the territory under British Rule.

Canada’s an interesting case actually in how, if we equate it to Halo,Tribute went fully independent, Reach might double down on loyalty to the UNSC, as Canada and before confederation, Newfoundland did on a number of occasions.

Part of that is due to just general commonwealth ties.

But also a lot of early history of these nations and settlers therein were all loyalists who had fled the thirteen colonies.

Nova Scotia and New Brunswick for example, have large ancestral loyalist populations.

From what we know about the colonies in Halo, I’d classify them more as Dominions, rather than Colonies, personally.

[modest marsh]

Colony just has a certain connotation to it that is more familiar

[hardy swan]

He willingly joined the ODST and Spartan IV program, both are volunteers only

Why would he even betray his friends he made in the military?

[thorn osprey]

Mickey himself said that he did it for humanity, not the UNSC. Also not really relevant to what I said

[frigid heart]

Point being, he’s in a group known for their loyalty to the UNSC, it’d be like a navy SEAL defecting to North Korea.

[modest marsh]

Not special forces, but look into Wilmer Puello-Mota for a recent example of something similar

Reinhard Gehlen and Otto von Bolschwing were German SS agents that were recruited by the CIA

[frigid heart]

Oh, exactly

[modest marsh]

Otto Skorzeny was even claimed to be recruited by Mossad which is probably the wildest example of this sort of thing happening

[tulip bobcat]

I was curious on how exactly the Xalanyn are immune to Halo's weapons systems? I wasn't able to find much explanation in either the game or the Rubicon Protocol.

[spark pivot]

no one knows :D

[tulip bobcat]

Well, that's extremely frustrating.

[vagrant ocean]

Not everything has an explanation

[lucid kelp]

Masterchief was a hooper before he was a spartan, he dominated the NBA

[modest marsh]

Gravball, not basketball

[empty bloom]

I kinda wonder if it'd be thematically appropriate to have a Spartan IV who knows more about actual human history who critiques the naming convention despite being a Spartan.

Kinda thinking of writing a more sardonic Spartan who kinda gets irked at Halsey's inability to properly recount actual human history when naming her fancy supersoldiers.

[dusky mantle]

John only knew three ways to react to people. If they were his superior officers, he obeyed them. If they were part of his squad, he helped them. If they were a threat, he neutralized them.

This is so interesting, the military indoctrination goes hard here

Master Chiefs origin story is super sad

[empty bloom]

It's weird that he's the only II who has that visibly drastic of a maladapted mindset by 2550.

Even Linda had more leeway in how she responded to people.

[dusky mantle]

He is so mentally broken

He can't conceive of life outside military command

Which begs the question, if you are supposed to fight for humanity, how can you defend what you cannot understand ?

He gets into a scuffle with some ODSTS, he kills some of them and then struggles to understand the morality of what he had done

The fall of Reach book is actually quite good so far, I didn't expect it

It raises some very interesting questions

The UNSC military is presented in a very negative way so far

[vagrant ocean]

I have an OC who calls Spartans the Einherjar, as he views the augmentation process as the death of who you originally were.

[vagrant ocean]

And when you come out you’re someone else

[hardy swan]

Spartans are already mythified elite soldiers.

And also… a warrior trained from young? As his only job? Yeah what’s wrong with it

[stoic hamlet]

The Spartans basically exist on hype alone. But they weren’t all that special when compared to other Hoplite-armies, like the Athenians, Thracians, etc.

The most accurate thing the Spartan II’s have that connects them with the Spartans of old is they’re given the credit for basically everything, ignoring the contributions of everyone else. Historically at Thermopylae they were one of the smallest if not the smallest force present, and the majority of the Greek forces there were similarly armoured, well trained and disciplined.

[hardy swan]

Yeah agree… they were an incredibly small force. Kind of like the Spartan program in general.
Hoplite just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Meanwhile the Innies use the term “jannisary” which are basically kidnapped kids forcibly converted soldiers

[minor sky]

It just occured to me that when Del Rio says "He isn't the only one" to Chief he could be reffering to humanity as a whole and how they are now the "giants" of the galaxy as Lasky put it. Infinity's loss would be a major shot in the leg for the UEG's position

Feels a little obvious but ig I never really articulated it until now

[modest marsh]

I’ve mused the idea of power armor equipped-ODSTs having the designation “helot” because of their place in the hierarchy in Spartan society but that would just draw further attention to the less-than-stellar history of ancient Sparta

[hardy swan]

Halo 4 had humanity level up and then 343 decided to flip that twice

again

[modest marsh]

I do think this would be funny if this was an unofficial moniker ODSTs gave themselves as sort of self-deprecating/ironic jab as well as highlighting the rivalry between them

[stoic hamlet]

That’s too cynical and jaded for Halo, unfortunately.

[hardy swan]

guys do we still not know Spartan's name in Spartan Strike?

[carmine sleet]

No

[lucid kelp]

guys what is halo odst?

[carmine sleet]

It's a game set during the events of Halo 2, just after Chief leaves Earth

[empty bloom]

Do you want the historical reasons why they sucked or the known, practical reasons they sucked

[hardy swan]

both ig

[empty bloom]

Child soldiers aren't something professional militaries used for a reason.

[orchid kettle]

It is only through online gaming that children can learn true hatred and fighting spirit

[empty bloom]

The most ideal, statistically speaking, soldier is a mid-20s college-educated volunteering urbanite in good physical condition.

The issue with child soldiering is mostly developmental; The ramifications of their upbringing being done in a military environment with military trappings largely breeds poor social behavior, poor ethics, poor acclimation to non-Military settings, and generally being poorly spread out. This isn't even getting into motivational issues; The mid-20s college student is there because they want to be, the kid isn't.

Drive and morale and want to be there as well as good socialization is a lethally effective combination, practically essential.

[orchid kettle]

but what if a space Voldemort lady injected them with a geas that makes them motivated at all times

[empty bloom]

As for the Spartans; Their nature of drill and combat basically required an extra army of slaves to maintain, their lifestyle literally revolving around keeping a peasant class down and even having holidays wherein said slave-servant class was to be put to the axe. The Spartans were effectively required to be of specific bloodlines (Eugenics), which led to their numbers dwindling as generations mounted.

Spartan men were socially regressive and slow to change in line with history, with the entire culture being effectively a precursor to modern Andrew Tate style mindsets, being stunted, aggressive, and egocentric. This focus on military prowess, ironically, made them worse at being an armed force. While they were effective due to good fundamentals and passable strategy, this was not enough to overcome their failings; For example, the Battle of Thermopylae ending in a Spartan defeat can be attributed directly to their cultural egotism, as can the last notable defeats of the Spartans, where they were outmaneuvered and killed by more proactive and less regressive foes who adapted strategies and cultures that were better suited to defeating Spartan tactics.

[empty bloom]

Something something squicky eugenics

[hardy swan]

yeah 300 vs millions of Persians I think that fight was not fair

[modest marsh]

thats just a legend

[empty bloom]

It was 300 Spartans with Athenian and Grecian (IIRC) backup in the thousands, versus thousands of Persian soldiers. There also weren't giant monster elephant things and dimwitted giants.

[modest marsh]

the actual battle of Thermopylae had more reasonable numbers

[empty bloom]

And honestly, the 300 Spartans is problably an exaggeration.

[hardy swan]

Of course there wasn’t a rhino and tomato sauce

[modest marsh]

there were also fighting defensively and only were meant to delay the persians so athens could send reinforcements

[empty bloom]

Going down, I mean, not up.

There were likely more than 300 Spartans present at the actual battle.

If not fighting troops, then logistics personnel, so, well, slaves.

Spartans loooooved their slaves.

.. I am mildly disgusted with myself for the implications of what I just said.

[modest marsh]

according to Herodotus, there were 7000 troops on the side of the spartans

[hardy swan]

Spartans called them boy lovers lol

[orchid kettle]

Colonel Watts was analogous to Spartan children murdering slaves in the dead of night as a rite of passage send tweet

[modest marsh]

against a few hundred thousand persians

[empty bloom]

Kind of the pot calling the kettle black, really.

[modest marsh]

but the persians were fighting through a bottlenecked pass so the difference in numbers matters a lot less

[hardy swan]

I hate Zack for making them shirtless

[empty bloom]

I know it's the difference of about the ease of access to historical information not being discussed as much as it was in 2000 and 2001, but Halsey being Halsey about the Spartans is so funny to me.

"Hmn yes they shall learn how to properly fight a battle by watching an AI generated video of the Spartans at Thermopylae"

It's even funnier to me that she literally fell into the same mental trap that caused the Sparta civilization to lose everything

[modest marsh]

i dont think halsey leaning into an ahistorical, fictitious interpretation of the spartans is that absurd if the goal is to convince children they're gonna become immortal heroes

[empty bloom]

I mean, we know they obviously learned like, how to actually fight, that was just morale padding.

[modest marsh]

the veracity of the story being contrary to reality is partly the point, if only to exacerbate the irony of what ends up happening to them

[empty bloom]

It's just funny to me in an abstract way.

[orchid kettle]

I think what gets me is the idea that none of the 6 year olds cried when they told they would never see their parents again

[empty bloom]

It makes for like... The one we know went from a broken home to getting beaten in another broken system that beat you senseless for correcting a mispronunciation of your name.

[orchid kettle]

I remember back in kindergarten, I told a girl it was dark outside (because of a storm, not because it was night like I was suggesting) and that meant our parents forgot us

and she cried immediately

[modest marsh]

yeah uh huh but did you consider that john saved a girl from drowning and promised to marry her so he could protect her

he was born for this, sorry to say

[orchid kettle]

of course later media will somewhat conflict with Nylund and add this idea that at least some of the kids tried to get away

[empty bloom]

This sort of thing is why I take the stance on what actually happens in Halo media that I do.

If I didn't, the inconsistencies would bother me too much.

[orchid kettle]

and to be fair to Nylund I guess, if you wrote a whole book about children being sad about being stuck in a military training facility, you'd just have Ender's Game again

[modest marsh]

the kids thought it was awesome because they're like the younglings in star wars

they should make a halo equivalent of young jedi adventures

[vagrant ocean]

To be fair, the IIs were never supposed to even be known about, so the social aspect of them outside interpersonal interactions with other IIs was never considered. It wasn’t until the War that it became a real issue.

[hardy swan]

They also wanted revenge against the covenant

[orchid kettle]

still, its always been weird to me how much Nylund had avoided the idea that any of the IIs minded their situation

[modest marsh]

thats the spartan-iiis

[empty bloom]

No, it's actually just as bad, if not worse.

As a soldier meant to operate on a team, you need to be well-socialized, even around people you grew up with.

[orchid kettle]

i wonder if the implication was that the kids might have already been indoctrinated as a result of growing up in the UEG

sometimes it feels like in TFOR, you're supposed to think even the average person has slightly inverted morals

[empty bloom]

There is a massive logistical trail around Spartans, and despite being the tip of that particular spear, they still need to know how to talk to the shaft and talk to the hands operating that system.

And they need to talk to eachother just as much.

[orchid kettle]

like who gleefully laughs about beating up kids like those guys in the woods

[modest marsh]

no i think the kids are just intended to be inexplicably suited for the task, even if that sounds like its reinforcing problematic ideals

[hardy swan]

Of course the UEG will educate people to think Earth as their eternal homeworld or something

[vagrant ocean]

The psychos handpicked by Mendez to man that operation.

[stoic hamlet]

I honestly flip flop on this.

I think it’d make sense.

[vagrant ocean]

It is tho. Earth will always and forever be our home.

[empty bloom]

Socialization bleeds into every single aspect of human existence; Every facet, every interaction, even conversations in your own head, are shaped by how you interact with the world.

[modest marsh]

every thing we hear about the spartan kids, even pre-augmented, makes them sound absurd

[empty bloom]

Oh yeah it's handwaved to bejeezus and back.

[stoic hamlet]

This idea that humanity will always have the same morals and etc is inane.

[vagrant ocean]

A 6 year old with an IQ of 165? Breeeeeeh

[modest marsh]

"yeah john just fought and beat dozens of other kids his age singehandedly"

[orchid kettle]

I just say "in TFOR" because that's when I think Nylund had this idea of the UNSC being really heinous in a way that goes uninterrogated, and is never repeated in future material

[vagrant ocean]

Yeah, Eric accidentally wrote the franchise into a corner, and that corner is eugenics.

[orchid kettle]

like the very idea of Mendez setting up those ODSTs to die

or Halsey telling John he can kill the ODSTs again in the Mark V training

[hardy swan]

tell that to the innies

[vagrant ocean]

And then Karen Travis proceeding to spend 3 books rehabilitating his image.

[orchid kettle]

only for Halsey's rival to try and kill John back with an air strike

Even Keyes doesn't seem to have a hint of regret for John's situation when he meets him again as an adult

[empty bloom]

I'm saving this, lmao, that actually
Got a chuckle out of me.

[orchid kettle]

And he seems to be aware of who John is

[modest marsh]

In my mind Ackerson was going for the kill from the start and that was just expected on both sides given whats riding on this test

[stoic hamlet]

I wouldn’t say that, necessarily.

[vagrant ocean]

I tend to be funny when I don’t intend to. But since he wrote us into that corner we gotta play the game he made. So using his logic, Vale is better on a genetic level than the other members of Osiris.

[vagrant ocean]

I would.

He doubled down in Halsey’s journal.

[wicked cobalt]

Hi

[modest marsh]

also, regardless of what Nylund was obligated to write in TFOR, its not like this idea that the spartans were specialest boys and girls that were just naturally suited to become super soldiers only shows up there

Halsey's journal leans super hard into it

[vagrant ocean]

However I don’t think that explains why she is so dummy thicc.

[stoic hamlet]

Halsey’s Journal is written from her POV. Even in there, she makes a ton of insane extrapolations.

That don’t really have a basis in reality.

[vagrant ocean]

And he wrote it. So he clearly continued what he wrote for her in TFOR

[orchid kettle]

Halsey's Journal also has this sad lil picture of a Spartan girl feeling bad about killing her instructor in hand to hand training

but when that happened in TFOR, Mendez and Halsey didn't give a shit

They were just hyped that the Spartans were that strong

[modest marsh]

yeah because she was a freak of nature that maimed everyone she interacted with

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah but that doesn’t mean he’s advocating for it. Is my point.

[empty bloom]

I wonder what she wrote her doctoral thesis on.

"Why we should have practiced eugenics instead of that woke feelings stuff in the 21st century"?

[hardy swan]

at least Halsey didn't cause millions dead like Khan

[vagrant ocean]

Carris Pernault, Candidate 137, IQ of 163.

[vagrant ocean]

I know he doesn’t but he wrote us into a corner where the IIs are genetically perfect beings.

[empty bloom]

Are you sure about that

[stoic hamlet]

She did cause the deaths of at least a thousand in Ghosts of Onyx.

[vagrant ocean]

KHAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!

[stoic hamlet]

Only if the series actually doubles down on that (which it has) but that’s easy to write out of.

[empty bloom]

Halsey's got a particularly chilly cell in hell for a reason.

[vagrant ocean]

Rq, am I the only one here who thinks Halsey might have ASD?

[hardy swan]

UNSC would probably just let her continue research

makes no sense to have a super genius be in prison

[empty bloom]

They... they literally did that?

[hardy swan]

ya

[empty bloom]

Like she literally was a slave scientist for ONI when she was brought back into the fold

[hardy swan]

ig

[modest marsh]

halsey never stopped working for the unsc, they just stripped her of her authority as science chief

[vagrant ocean]

They prolly threatened Miranda’s life to keep her under control.

[vagrant ocean]

During the war.

[empty bloom]

What life? She was already de-ah.

I doubt it entirely.

One of the key points about Miranda and Halsey was that Miranda was not a fan of her mom.

[modest marsh]

no one had any reason to suspect that miranda meant anything to halsey

[vagrant ocean]

But Halsey still loved her, in her own way.

[stoic hamlet]

A lot of times, those prodigies and child geniuses average out later in life because they have incredibly stunted development in other areas, or miss milestones that other kids hit.

It would be very easy to make the II’s and III’s literally broken individuals (not hyperbole, but actually) to show that they’re not all that great.

But instead they… don’t.

[empty bloom]

And Halsey, for her part, was disinterested in caring about her daughter until it was far too late.

[orchid kettle]

Again, the fact that Keyes has no issue with Halsey's work in TFOR makes me think that in the first book, humanity just had a severely skewed sense of ethics in the setting

[empty bloom]

(This is one of the reasons child soldiers is a bad thing)

[orchid kettle]

I always say that Chief may have been uniquely kind but honestly in that context he may have just been the closest to being what we consider "normal"

[vagrant ocean]

That and decades of a low level civil war that was killing millions was making them desperate.

[stoic hamlet]

It would fit, with him as the audience surrogate.

[vagrant ocean]

The only 2 Spartans that were more “human” were Jorge and Kurt.

[empty bloom]

Considering [current events and hearsay] they still somehow have more ironclad ethics than the modern world, which is... insane.

The mortal dictata being something world leaders are mortified by the violation of versus reality, where Russian government leadership openly talks about organ harvesting.

[vagrant ocean]

I view UNSC ethics as of 2517 as a slightly corrupted form of utilitarianism.

[vagrant ocean]

And Chinese leadership

[empty bloom]

Yes.

[orchid kettle]

I don't think the insurrection is ever really explained that in depth in TFOR is the thing

[empty bloom]

Or using transfusions of your kid's blood to age more gracefully.

Which is a real thing a billionaire does.

[stoic hamlet]

But how did that humanity present itself?

The implication I got is Kurt cared about UNSC personnel but not really anyone else.

And Jorge (going off the other stuff) only gave a real care about Reach, but otherwise was just like the other II’s.

[orchid kettle]

hell at first Keyes actually says "raiders" AND "rebels" were tearing human civilization apart

which to me kinda just reads like

[vagrant ocean]

From a utilitarian perspective, if you honestly believe the Carver findings were accurate (and literally everyone even Halsey believed that), sacrificing 75 kids for 39 BILLION is a deal anyone would take.

[orchid kettle]

"The authoritarian government is fear-mongering and exaggerating to justify its continued existence and attempt at grabbing more power"

[hardy swan]

she thought the war with the innies would cause billions of lives

not even the covenant

[vagrant ocean]

Literally anyone who saw the findings did.

[orchid kettle]

Because you also have this idea that Watts' fleet was smashed to pieces years before the IIs were deployed

[modest marsh]

The spartans being largely well adjusted and morally upstanding contrary to their upbringings always came across as an intentional irony to me in that the cold robotic exterior of their visage hides an underlying compassion that remains in spite of it all, like robocop

[orchid kettle]

and ONI had known where he was hiding for years

the Spartans are only put into action because Harvest went dark

[hardy swan]

the Spartans never once thought they are superior to other humans

right?

[modest marsh]

or the t-800 in terminator 2

[empty bloom]

I saw Farquad pointing when you said this.

[orchid kettle]

its implied the UNSC already knows about the aliens when they command Halsey to augment the spartans now, regardless of the risks

[hardy swan]

and plus I think the term eugenics is overused since Spartans are more sugery modifications and less so genetic they can't pass it on

[stoic hamlet]

I treat it more as “Microsoft/343 don’t want to deal with the idea that Master Chief would leave people to die because his mission told him they were unimportant”.

[vagrant ocean]

Well, the UEG saw High Charity a year before the first cargo ship went dark.

[orchid kettle]

Like, there's no hint that Watts is really still a threat, he's just a test run

[modest marsh]

nah you saw robot voice cyborg chief saving marines in the 2000 demo

[empty bloom]

Microsoft seems to have a love affair with authoritarianism and having people under that system be cynical and contrary to it despite having every reason not to be due to being raised in a position of esteem in said system.

[modest marsh]

i think it was always part of his character to be this unexpected hero that helps humanity despite being viewed and used as a weapon

it hits harder when this transhuman thing has the ability to not only experience empathy and care for others but sacrifice itself for the common good, and then that "thing" turned out to be a child soldier in lore that bungie had no hand in making

[stoic hamlet]

Perhaps.

But all of them being so feels a bit odd.

It also seems retroactive, which I don’t appreciate.

[hardy swan]

It's not like he had his emotions ripped away by Halsey afaik emotion suppresants is a show only thing right

[modest marsh]

to be clear im talking about bungie's initial intentions for the story, before TFOR was written

[vagrant ocean]

The augmentations of both the ORION candidates and the IIs includes gene therapy, and they went under genetic screening prior to conscription. The 150 that were scoped out measured 0.000000384615% of the population of humanity, and half of them were actually conscripted and only half of them survived augmentation.

[modest marsh]

but you dont really have the latter without the former

[stoic hamlet]

Ahhh, fair.

[modest marsh]

i think Nylund was influenced by these narrative goals but did not fully understand them due to the game of telephone that was going on

[hardy swan]

Halo's crispr

[orchid kettle]

personally it makes sense to me that in TFOR Chief is the exception not the rule, if only because then it creates this idea that Mendez, Halsey, and then Cortana really don't have a grasp on the Spartans' morals

like Cortana expected Chief to kills the ODSTs in the Mark V exercise

[modest marsh]

Halsey underestimating the spartans is more or less a recurring theme

[orchid kettle]

Mendez obviously expects his speech to assuage any guilt or doubt

[vagrant ocean]

That is 0.0000001923075% and 0.00000009615375% respectively. That is legit “these children are genetically perfect”

[vagrant ocean]

They always exceeded her expectations. And that pleased her.

[stoic hamlet]

Mhm.

There’s no real reason for the II’s or III’s (some of them, sure) to really call out the system, or object to it but they do.

[hardy swan]

dang if the human population is only 40 billion then 0.000000384615% is only 153 people

[modest marsh]

you do have to filter out by age

and the average age in the halo universe is naturally going to skew older

[vagrant ocean]

39 billion. Literally only 150 were actually screened and of them only half were conscripted, and only half of them were successfully augmented.

[vagrant ocean]

Thanks to cryosleep and advancements in medicine.

[modest marsh]

eh

[hardy swan]

what special gene did they have? I always assumed it's related to the ancestors

[modest marsh]

more like things like lack of food scarcity

[modest marsh]

there is no special gene

halsey wanted genetic markers that would indicate augmentation compatibility

it doesnt make them smarter/faster/stronger than everyone else

[hardy swan]

but aren't they smarter than everyone else

[modest marsh]

no

[vagrant ocean]

It wasn’t just one gene, it was a myriad of genetic and biological factors. Though when augmented they could be seen as either a bridge to or an echo of the Ancestors, especially given their enhanced comparability with the HELLCAT platform.

[modest marsh]

they are very, very smart

there are smarter kids than them

[vagrant ocean]

Beyond genius in fact.

[stoic hamlet]

Some of them might have high IQ’s, but that doesn’t mean they’re smart or particularly knowledgeable.

[modest marsh]

especially when you factor the fact that intelligence measurements are not absolute

intelligence accounts for a wide assortment of broad metrics that are difficult to quantify linearly

[vagrant ocean]

It’s more of a tree than a line

[hardy swan]

maybe if John studied engineering he can be smarter than Halsey

[modest marsh]

IQ is mostly just a measure of just how well you can focus on logic puzzles

[vagrant ocean]

Not likely. Halsey was basically a supercomputer in a flesh suit.

[hardy swan]

the true heroes of humanity. The eggheads

[modest marsh]

halsey has an unrealistic degree of proficiency in a wide breadth of scientific fields

she has more in common with a comic book mad scientist than anything resembling reality

[vagrant ocean]

An autistic degree of proficiency.

[hardy swan]

this is why the San-ti wants to disable our scientific advancements before invading

[orchid kettle]

Halsey is basically the way she is so we don't have an entire team of science nerds in the cast

[vagrant ocean]

Which is honestly more interesting because she has so many insane ideas

[hardy swan]

Reeds Richards level of genius

[modest marsh]

the good ol hbo's Chernobyl

[signal basin]

Her journal was a good read

[vagrant ocean]

Phenomenal.

[vagrant ocean]

Great show. Amazing to watch after an edible.

[empty bloom]

Intelligence is such a strange thing. I know why we measure it in objective terms, but it still feels weird to consider. Especially considering how many factors goes into someone's perceived intelligence.

[vagrant ocean]

Such as nutrition and cultivation

[empty bloom]

Hell, what gets valued more in most situations is not even something that has a legitimate measurement system. Emotional intelligence is extremely important, but incredibly undervalued.

[vagrant ocean]

Lowkey Halsey’s journal might be my favorite piece of Halo media.

[orchid kettle]

that's because emotions are for girls

wait Halsey is a girl

uh

wimps

there you go

[vagrant ocean]

This one is better, especially after having read a bit of Contact Harvest

[hardy swan]

more like a woman 😱

[minor sky]

@empty bloom I haven't finished the trilogy yet but does it state that the Mantle is supposed to be rejected at some point?

[empty bloom]

It's more specifically mentioned in Epitaph, not the trilogy.

[vagrant ocean]

The true test of the Mantle is to not want it.

Only then will you have it.

[empty bloom]

It's left somewhat up to interpretation either way, but yeah, the most viable interpretation is that it needs to be rejected.

[vagrant ocean]

The only winning move is not to play

[hardy swan]

ah yes one must be Jon Snow then

[empty bloom]

During the book club a few months back I brought up the possibility that the Precursors actually did what the forerunners did.

Which is why they made the mantle test, to basically 'sus out' that issue in their progeny.

[vagrant ocean]

I’d argue the only way any civilization would be worthy of it would be if it was a Council of Worlds.

[obsidian thistle]

An alternative is to share it

Cultivate the galaxy as peers

Not lords and rulers

[vagrant ocean]

I said that. Like, an hour ago

[tough vault]

I just watched c3 Sabertooths “humans are forerunners” video and the amount of vitriol in it sent me back down a rabbit hole. How did Halo of all things create one the most heated lore arguments in gaming history?

[hardy swan]

a Galactic Republic!

[vagrant ocean]

It’s literally one side using scrapped storyboards and cope.

[tough vault]

Honestly I am on there side when they talk about bungies vision for the forerunners and the retcons, but they go way beyond into hating everything 343 made, which is when they lose me

[vagrant ocean]

I find Forerunners being humans to be incredibly lazy.

[orchid kettle]

Being more complex doesnt make a story better by itself

[orchid kettle]

I think even more important than what bungie's vision was is just what the relation means for the story and themes

Like even in 343's situation where the Forerunners actually kinda sucked and deserved what they got-- I think that works better if they're humans like you or I because then the story is asking the question of whether or not we've changed at all for the better, or if we're even capable of change

in the current plotline about the Endless and how they're mad about being imprisoned, it's far more meaningful if humans are the ones who wronged them

In either case, humans are positioned as the Forerunners' successors be it through blood or just because the Librarian specifically was a human-fangirl

The latter I think just robs the human characters of all agency or relevance whenever it comes to anything having to do with the ancient past and those misdeeds

Generational guilt is always going to be illogical since the characters living in the present never did anything themselves, but I think it's even flimsier when you add in the caveat that an entirely different species did the bad thing

Humans in Halo are basically just another victim of the Forerunners, and the new plot is that some other victim is mad at us for being associated with the Forerunners

and i dunno I don't think there's any interesting about that, there's no commentary on human nature or anything of the sort

[tough vault]

I agree with virtually everything you just said, I think humans being forerunners would have been more interesting.
However, I don’t necessarily think what we got is bad, it just could have been better. My main gripe about the 343s forunners isn’t even that there aliens, it’s that we know way too much about them and there’s no real mystery.
Even then, I don’t let that stop me from enjoying most of 343’s modern halo lore( as in,lore that takes place in the 2550’s and forward), which I think is pretty good.

[minor sky]

"It was the dawn of the third age of mankind......"

[silk inlet]

I forgot, did they ever explain the Cortana fragments in infinite?

[carmine sleet]

You mean the memories we see across Zeta Halo? Basically, that's just bits of her scattered across Zeta Halo's network

[silk inlet]

Ok, but they are a lose end if u remember right

[carmine sleet]

No because they're not functional AI

Think of them like video and audio files

You can play it back but it can't do anything like open doors

[vagrant ocean]

They’re literally echoes.

[wicked cobalt]

Hi brothers

[minor sky]

Maybe it's the Babylon 5 fan in me but I do kind of wish the "Reclaimer Saga" ended with Chief or "humanity" in a thematic sense rejecting the Mantle and choosing to share/work together with the rest of the galaxy. Which I think would kind of slot in nicely with the big picture of humanity's newfound dominance and the Sanghelios civil war.

It reminds me of B5's Vorlon/Shadow war- rejecting the cycle of larger more powerful beings in favor of working aside one another on your own path

[wispy pewter]

I don't mind humanity being the dominant power

it should definitely be ONI's goal in order to secure humanity's survival

[empty bloom]

TBF, they kind of did.

Just not explicitly.

[soft plank]

Are the rvb characters canon ?
I mean they appear as easter eggs throughout H4's spartan op

[carmine sleet]

They are not canon because they only appear as Easter Eggs

[modest marsh]

Red vs Blue doesn’t present itself as part of the Halo continuity, basic aspects of its setting are clearly contradictory such as the fact that the elites are the only identified alien race (which aren’t even referred to by their official name) which reproduce via “infection”

Probably the closest you could ever come to elements of RvB becoming canon would be the recognition of Grifball as an in-universe game which honestly isn’t that much of a stretch and then extrapolating from that there was a character named Grif

https://www.halopedia.org/RICOCHET-class_Mjolnir

Created in response to the new rise of combat-fused sporting competitions.

Nobody really cares about the actual Ricochet game mode so in my opinion this may as well refer to a canonical interpretation of grifball, especially since the design of the armor itself already looks like American football gear

[fair hazel]

9 days left until the next chronicle

[gusty star]

I really hate the ramifications of RvB on children’s minds that are now grown up

They all think it’s canon it’s actually crazy

[carmine sleet]

As much as I enjoyed RvB and it lead to some good (Albeit fleeting) things for me, it's for the best it isn't canon

Also like, there is no way you could fit in RvB's Mjolnir lore with Halo's

[lament karma]

I guess you could say they’re…dust and echoes

[stoic hamlet]

I think the only thing that could fit would be Dr. Church, Allison, and the most basic idea of the AI.

[ionic tiger]

The idea of any one species holding the Mantle never made much sense to me. Power like that can’t be democratized, it’ll just come down to what the elites in society dictate and whatever good or bad results from their rule filters to the rest of us.

In Halo’s case, mankind isn’t even unified. We aren’t ready for that power nor do I think we ever will be.

Which is probably what the Precursors had in mind.

[stoic hamlet]

Chorus would also be possible, again, broad strokes.

Basically elements could be made to fit, but not the series itself.

[carmine sleet]

Aye, like a rival program to the Spartan program called Project Freelancer could exist in Halo's canon, but the details, such as the armour would need to be different

[vagrant ocean]

Well, there’s been references to a rival super soldier program called JAVELIN.

[stoic hamlet]

There were likely dozens of them, in truth. JAVELIN is just the one called out..

[carmine sleet]

I kinda want to come up with a version of Freelancer which could fit into canon now

[frigid heart]

Emerson Special Defense Contractors would be sick
Corpo PMC spartan

[hardy swan]

considering 100,000 years ago humanity had a unified empire spread across the orion arm

[tough vault]

Halo is Canon to rvb, rvb is Not Canon to Halo

[minor sky]

I always thought Halo's canon was more asthetic to RvB than anything

They use the imagery, names, and locations but they never really took the effort to ensure it neatly fit along side the actual canon. Which is totally fine of course

[modest marsh]

As I laid out before, I don’t think RvB’s own setting is compatible with Halo’s

[modest marsh]

There’s paralleling themes and concepts, but you’re right in that they mostly exist for flavor rather than trying to neatly slot into the same timeline

[tough vault]

That’s how I’ve always Seen it, yeah sure the early seasons are just Comedy, but I dont see anything in the Freelancer Saga onward that contradicts Halo (except for the armor, which could just be experimental SPI or something)

[modest marsh]

Everyone can interface with AI

AI can be housed in things that were never designed to contain them including armor used by random simulation troopers

The whole idea of creating distinct AI fragments by torturing the original

There’s loose reference to these ideas that existed in Halo’s canon, but they’re fundamentally incompatible even going off of the early lore where this was first established

[tough vault]

When I meant Halo is Canon to rvb I meant that the Events that Happen in Halo also Happens in rvb, not that the 2 worlds are the Same

[modest marsh]

I mean the only events mentioned are that the covenant war vaguely happened and master Chief is offhandedly mentioned and never heard of again

[tough vault]

The References get a lot less loose in the freelancer saga onward where there explicitly fighting corrupt UNSC

[modest marsh]

Yeah I don’t really see how that makes it more compatible with Halo’s canon

[tough vault]

I don’t see what’s incompatible with the events of halo happening plus what happens in rvb, they don’t really overlap, sim troopers on a planet or star system, freelancers fighting insurgents, a civil war on a outer colony that the UNSC forgot

[modest marsh]

When does the events of project freelancer take place in your mind

[tough vault]

Great question

[modest marsh]

Bearing in mind that CE-3 take place in 2552-2553

And immediately before CE is what’s claimed to be the very first integration of an AI with a human through the neural connection unique to MJOLNIR

I guess in RvB lore Halsey is a chump

[tough vault]

I think where looking at this two different ways, when I mean halo is canon to rvb I mean everything that happens In halos main continuity, Halsey kidnapping kids to the end of the human-covenant war and beyond, happens the same way in rvb, with the addition of everything that happens with project freelancer. Not that everything explicitly fits together perfectly

[modest marsh]

And I’m saying key aspects of the settings differ on certain things even on the RvB side early on

And these persist in the freelancer era because it’s a prequel

[tough vault]

I agree that the settings differ, but not so much that it can’t be inferred that everything that happens in halo happens in rvb.to a certain extent

[modest marsh]

The timeline for RvB doesn’t make any sense because it requires important events to have happened years before the events of the halo games proper such as key developments in AI, which is a central plot element of RvB’s story

“Say the words please” doesn’t make any sense if Cortana can just go ghost mode and take over whatever suit of armor she wants wirelessly

[tough vault]

It can make sense with some tweaking, (and a little bit of retcon). But now I feel that I’ve got a little in over my head with debates about canon.

[modest marsh]

I think it’s better to just say it’s an alt timeline from RvB’s side

Especially given that there’s literal time travel as part of the story

[tough vault]

Also the ai taking over suits could either be a feature of the suits used in project freelancer or a feature of the Alpha AI, as He is technically the only AI in rvb( if I remember right)

[modest marsh]

Alpha is the original, but the others in the show are fragmented parts of his personality

[tough vault]

Was it actually time travel when they switched to halo 2? I know with Gary that was just gamma trapping church in a simulation

[modest marsh]

This is inspired by something that happens in the novel First Strike, where Cortana gains the ability to partition herself into multiple instances

[tough vault]

So technically all the AI fragments are Alpha, just different parts of him

[modest marsh]

That still doesn’t explain how they’re able to take over people’s bodies when that’s explicitly something AI cannot do in Halo

TFOR was pretty clear about that and it’s been reiterated many times over the years

Oddly the Halo show is more in line with RvB’s interpretation

[tough vault]

I haven’t watched the halo show so I wouldn’t know, but again, I didn’t mean the two setting fit together perfectly, obviously there are some things that don’t. I meant that there is nothing in rvb that would render the events of Halo or its books,by and large, non-canon. Maybe I’m just bad at saying words

[modest marsh]

And I’m saying it would by virtue of it violating established rules of the setting that are plot relevant

If RvB was canon, even only the “serious” parts of it ie Freelancer, it would mean that Chief and Cortana integrating wasn’t the first time that a human an AI had neurally linked

In turn that would contradict the Halo Reach datapads

[tough vault]

I’m not saying rvb is canon to halo, as that would mess up some of the story, I’m saying Halo is canon to rvb, as in the things that happen in halo happen in rvb as they did barring the few instances of overlap, such as the AI thing.

[modest marsh]

I don’t see any good proof for this

[tough vault]

Maybe there isn’t , but I’m not a person who needs much proof to believe something that I think makes a story a bit more interesting

[modest marsh]

I don’t think RvB is being reflective of Halo’s canon by saying that Elites reproduce by infecting humans with a parasitic embryo like Xenomorphs

Or that there’s a special unique sword that just happens to look like an energy sword which we know from the games isn’t a particularly rare weapon

[tough vault]

I agree, thats why I said barring the few instances of overlap, Halo is canon to rvb, but not the other way around. Maybe I should’ve worded it better in the beginning

[modest marsh]

What instances does RvB actually reflect Halo in any sense though?

[modest marsh]

2548 was the answer turns out

7 years before the events of the games

[tough vault]

Project freelancer being one of the many projects the UNSC started to try and win the Human-Covenant war. The civil war on Chorus being a direct consequence of the UNSC leaving many outer colonies to fend for themselves in the aftermath. Freelancer stealing an engineer to help with the Alpha, junior and Tucker becoming ambassadors for the sang’heli (who are named in the chorus trilogy I believe)

[modest marsh]

They don’t call it the human-covenant war in RvB

[tough vault]

Huh, I didn’t know that, where was that stated?

[modest marsh]

The RvB wiki, its alleged as such

What's up with that anyway? I mean, I signed on to fight some aliens. Next thing I know, Master Chief blows up the whole Covenant armada and I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere, fighting a bunch of blue guys.

I realize grif is an unreliable source here because he’s a sim trooper being lied to but

This was obviously written with the intention that CE’s ending ended the war

Moreover this is I’m pretty sure the only time the Covenant is named

After that they’re all called aliens and it’s only elites who are nothing like the elites from the games

[tough vault]

An engineer also shows up, and in restoration epsilons slideshow shows jackals and grunts

[modest marsh]

I haven’t watched restoration, but irregardless the way the aliens are depicted in rvb is not reconcilable with halo lore

“Santa” being represented by an elite as a stand-in for a forerunner AI for instance doesn’t really work with any version of the forerunner lore

[tough vault]

Exactly, a stand-in, they were working with base halo, unless they wanted to make a fully unique forunner AI model that would look out of place with a bunch of multiplayer Spartans bouncing their heads, just using an elite and making him transparent was easier

[modest marsh]

It seems to be implying that the forerunners were the aliens all along in the RvB continuity

As in, the same ones

Their religion was real

[tough vault]

Anyways, I admit my take on rvb and halos canon mostly boils down to speculation and head-canon, it’s just the way I’ve always seen the two settings, I’m going back to playing silksong, have a good night and this was an enlightening conversation

[carmine sleet]

Without major changes, you can't fit Red Vs Blue's story and continuity into Halo and vice versa

[tough vault]

Probably, but those changes wouldn’t impact the actual story of either, or you could do it in a way that wouldn’t, but your not getting me back on this, I need to go to bed

[carmine sleet]

I was just making a statement, not trying to cause an argument

[silver hill]

dang

[low whale]

that still makes no sense

ur contradicting ur "I agree" immediately

they just look the same that's it

[empty bloom]

They're a very silly individual.

[lusty hound]

https://youtu.be/I0VswLj74d0?si=OqA6MP8eQOKV7Wxx

Enjoy. PancreasNoWork is pretty funny. 😄

Edit: Looks like previews are disabled. It's a lore video on Grunts.

[rustic sluice]

I got two questions

Are Jackals actually racist towards humans?

And is the novel The Flood just a retelling of Halo CE?

[orchid kettle]

Yes The Flood is a novelization of CE with some extra bits, mainly in the form of new character POVs beyond Chief

[thorn spindle]

jackals r pirates arrrgg

[minor sky]

Jackals are space birds and not the cool kind of bird

Elites: Powerful, noble warriors lead astray by false prophets.
Brutes and Grunts: forced to fight and toil away for a faith not their own
Jackals: FOR PROFIT!!!

[stoic hamlet]

Idk if I’d say Elites are noble.

Well, nobility cimes in many forms and is very much based on personal opinions, but the Sangheili culture pre-Covenant was a bit… garish, in terms of rituals.

[cunning knoll]

They’re a prideful species kinda like imperial Japan in a way

Death before dishonor type of thing

[carmine sleet]

They talk about nobility and honour but will also do stuff like glass planets from orbit or wipe out entire military bases with stealth teams and claim the humans inside were unholy vermin with no honour

[stoic hamlet]

Also they take skulls as trophies.

And mutilate the dead.

[carmine sleet]

Indeed

[minor sky]

"Honor" was the word I was looking for. But it goes without saying that the Sangehelli version of "Honor" differs greatly from how humans would see it

Granted maybe not as great as you first think. Zealots tend to do terrible things in the name of their "rightful" cause

Doesn't matter if they are a human or a hinge-head

[wispy pewter]

Optimus Prime has true honor. More aliens should be like him

[hardy swan]

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings"
Truly the most honourable

[orchid kettle]

You could argue that the concept of Sangheili honor is more so just like, proving you're a cool warrior dude and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how you treat your enemies

in which case you could argue what the Sangheili are obsessed with is valor and glory and not necessarily honor

[hardy swan]

then that is not honour

they don't know what that word is or the translation is broken

[orchid kettle]

don't look at me, I've always felt like Sangheili world building was busted the second we decided they're a warrior race that thinks its bad to ever be wounded

[hardy swan]

atleast some elites has redemptions and changed the way they think. Similiar to the klingons we saw in Enterprise

the space monkeys on the other hand... they don't seep redeemable

[tough vault]

Correct, it was also midnight so I was very sleepy

[junior rivet]

How exactly did that one infection form manage to sneak onto the Spirit of Fire?

[carmine sleet]

It was very sneaky

[junior rivet]

That poor maintenance

[empty bloom]

The flood is very sneaky.

[vagrant ocean]

Very very sneaky

[tough vault]

A cardboard box

[stoic hamlet]

Eh, it depends.

For the Samurai, for example, the highest and greatest honour was obedience to their Lord, but they had no qualms about anything else. (Generalizing here).

[empty bloom]

Honor is culturally defined, not uniform.

And above all, nothing is more honorable than victory.

[thorn osprey]

Tobias Buckell did a lot of good but also some interesting things to the lore

[empty bloom]

I've made a lens that makes me hate that canon less, even if it kinda falls flat against not knowing what Sanghelios culture was really like when the social bonds at that level were formed.

That lens is mostly Sangheili viewing lives as cheap without prestige, to include any use of medical supplies. Maybe Sanghelios naturally has few plants that aid with medicine or something, and more toxic plants than nontoxic.

Since Sangheili lay eggs, that also closes off another route of medical knowledge humans needed to learn. Few, if any, proto-Sangheili doctors would ever need to know how to stem bleeding from a bad birth. If there's no safe herbs that can be applied to wounds without significant pain or death, there's no need to learn how to apply to wounds. If there is an economic crunch to trying to heal wounds, culture could evolve to make that less imperative or even a taboo.

[vagrant ocean]

I mean, we can see that the climate of the planet is quite arid.

[hardy swan]

I mean yeah ig samurai honor is like that, But modern Japanese won't seppuku themselves if they lose a battle.

It’s based on culture yeah.

But not all cultures are right

[empty bloom]

"Based culture"?

[hardy swan]

left out a word

[vagrant ocean]

Tell that to the salary men who get fired.

[glossy sun]

You think GEN2 is still good and can keep up with GEN3?
Or is the armor in 4-5 already obsolete?

[carmine sleet]

Gen 2 was quite different in that allot of it was very specialised armour whereas Gen 3 Mjolnir is much more standardised. So while your average Gen 2 may not perform as well as a standard Gen 3 suit in some areas, certain Gen 2 suits would excel at very specific things

[glossy sun]

Yea I kind of wanted my Spartan team in this story I'm writing to have GEN2 armor because of the thrusters and since some of the armors look better but by 2560 it seems GEN2 has been phased out

[carmine sleet]

I imagine there's still teams using it

I know for my own Spartan team, one member is wearing a full set of Raijin by 2560 while others are wearing Gen 3

[stoic hamlet]

Vale’s still using it as late as November 2559.

[carmine sleet]

Aye

[glossy sun]

Ah okay
So it would make sense then

[orchid kettle]

honestly given how many different suits apparently meet "GEN3 standards", you could figure there exists a GEN3 version of GEN2

as ridiculous as that sounds

[empty bloom]

It's been confirmed, actually.

I should know, I'm the one who asked the question.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230929074648/https://www.halowaypoint.com/news/canon-fodder-concert-of-words

CaedHart (My Reddit Handle): So with the rise of the MJOLNIR [GEN3] armor platform, is MJOLNIR [GEN2] still in use with any Spartans on far-flung worlds or on the front lines?

Alex Wakeford, presumably: There are indeed certain places where GEN3 armor wasn’t—or simply couldn’t have been—rolled out in the wake of the Created uprising.

It is important to note that each generation of Mjolnir does not necessarily render the one before it obsolete. It is a technology standard and baseline, and improvements can be "back ported" if needed. Upgraded GEN1 and GEN2 Mjolnir (with or without the GEN3 specs) will remain in service for years to come.

[orchid kettle]

what is the GEN3 secret sauce

is it just the anti-AI hacking software

[empty bloom]

I hear they replaced the crystal-liquid piezoelectric layer with something more financially potent; Nostalgia juice.

It's why the Noble Team armor in Halo 5 is basically Gen 2.5.

[carmine sleet]

That'll stop the Banished and Created, nostalgia

[stoic hamlet]

Have you Remembered Reach today?

[glossy sun]

I mean I guess it's a stupid question asking if last GEN Mjolnir is obsolete

[viscid birch]

I have made it in here

[glossy sun]

After all Red Team on the Spirit of Fire still has GEN1 Mark IV and they're giving the Banished hell

[viscid birch]

[stoic hamlet]

They’ve gotten updated to GEN2, thanks to Isabel.

[glossy sun]

Oh they did?
Nice

But I swear I read it was like only Jerome that got the upgraded hybrid GEN1/GEN2 since Atriox broke his

[minor sky]

It is kind of funny to think that Chief was Mark V for so little time

[glossy sun]

Yea it is

Like for only CE right?

[minor sky]

Fall of Reach and First Strike as well

[carmine sleet]

Jerome wasn't the one Atriox beat up, it was Douglas

But all members of Red Team have improved armour since it makes sense to upgrade all their gear and not just one

[glossy sun]

Ack
Got my characters wrong whoops

[glossy sun]

Yea it's like a hybrid right?
GEN1/GEN2

[empty bloom]

Silly Frankensuit-wearing Red Team.

[minor sky]

Sums up Buccaneer-armor

[empty bloom]

Eh, Buccaneer isn't frankensuit material. It's more of a reproduction derived via observation.

When Buccaneer was made, whoever made it produced everything themselves. There's no guts from other MJOLNIR thrown in.

[minor sky]

Huh. Mb then

[vagrant ocean]

And all the components are off the shelf

[spark pivot]

that was douglas who got his armor broken

[hardy swan]

How? They disappeared like 20 years ago when Mark IV was the only armor used

Gen 2 is like mk 7 Mjolnir

[vagrant ocean]

The schematics for GEN2 were on the Ark, Isabel helped them.

[hardy swan]

Oh

Eh how does an old ship be able to make one though

[modest marsh]

The “old ship” has self sustaining onboard factories that can turn raw material into new vehicles, prefab structures, and equipment

[vagrant ocean]

Prefabs and factories that are onboard the SoF and using any materials scraped together from UNSC outposts on the Installation. Plus, it’s only a tech suit and software upgrade,

[hardy swan]

If AI can do this what is the point of eggheads

[vagrant ocean]

Ai are limited by their lifespans.

Among many other things

[hardy swan]

That means they can make Mjolnir for ferret team

There are 5 Spartans on board SoF rn

[vagrant ocean]

No, the GEN2 hybrid made by Isabel was constructed using scraps.

[hardy swan]

Oh

[vagrant ocean]

What?

[hardy swan]

Red team and the two Spartans they picked up in one of the books

[vagrant ocean]

Oh yeh

I forgot

[hardy swan]

Interesting

The Gen 2 is like a huge upgrade to the Mk IV relic I wonder what are the features that Isabel managed to add

[minor sky]

They are all wearing Seeker helmets now

[modest marsh]

Even outside the lifespan limit, you can’t produce as many AI as you can train scientists and engineers

[hardy swan]

How do you know

[minor sky]

Because the UNSC had an over-stock of them and needed to get rid of them ASAP

And all the other Spartans who wore it got laughed at

[hardy swan]

lol

[vagrant ocean]

Mainly a tech suit upgrade and maybe some hardware replacements. I doubt it’s as big of an overhaul as you think.

[stoic hamlet]

MFW no one ever calls them Team Saber anymore:

😭

[worn wolf]

question for lore mega fans if theres a proper answer

[forest ocean]

hi

[worn wolf]

jorge said he made "additions" to his armour - was this an actual thing he could do? it doesnt specify what exactly he added whether it was the bulkier armour pieces, or just cosmetic additions

during the reach campaign

[forest ocean]

i think its the big armour

[worn wolf]

only really curious on that

the rest of noble besides your custom spartan and emiles skullface all seem relatively sensible

i was gonna ask a follow up question but on second thought it was dumb so ill leave it for now i think

[forest ocean]

do yo uthink elites can eat spaghettie

[thorn osprey]

no

honestly with how their mouths are built I imagine they're messy eaters

[forest ocean]

can they drink Blizzard from Dairy Queen, I'm thinking maybe a royal penutbutter Blizzard

[thorn osprey]

nah sangheili are allergic to peanuts

[worn wolf]

i reckon the elites invented spaghetti and gave it to the italians

[forest ocean]

really the question is can they create suction

[worn wolf]

like how aliens built stonehenge

[forest ocean]

the forrunners built that

[worn wolf]

is that canon

can we get a book about this

[forest ocean]

have you read halo book yet

[worn wolf]

i dont like john halo as an author

[forest ocean]

grrrr you little TROLL

You're lucky I don't kick your ass....

I recommend Contact Harvest its pretty fun

[vagrant ocean]

Jorge was a heavy weapons specialist, makes sense he’d wear heavier armor to protect himself, and he also had the VAUNTLOCK generator as a secondary power source for his shields.

[worn wolf]

thx

the follow up was if there was anything relating to how spartans would actually request making these changes to their armour but i figured it was likely the same as just making your multiplayer spartan anyway

[vagrant ocean]

Well it’s all about requisition forms and approval from NAVCOM, changes to your armor for purely cosmetic reasons is heavily frowned upon, so most MJÖLNIR loadouts are they way they are because they suit the needs of the user. For example, it makes sense for Linda to use the ARGUS platform because it’s designed for snipers, and she’s the best one in human history.

Which is why I tell people that in a standoff between NOBLE and Blue teams, Blue Team wins nearly every time.

[tacit trench]

They rip up food with they’re bare hands than swallow it whole i imagine it’s the most hardcore yet goofy experience seeing an elite eat

[empty bloom]

Jorge's Armor incorporates elements from both early adoptions of Mark IV shield tech (Vauntlock and Grenadier) and mixed role components (EVA shoulder equipment).

He also has an armored backpack and armored leg plating that we haven't seen on anyone else, the former of which may be custom.

So in a way, Jorge is the original canon frankensuit wearer.

[empty bloom]

Noble being more of a 'kitchen sink' type unit with an ad hoc organizational structure kind of results in their overall capabilities being hard to qualify.

But two extra members means I'd actually expect them to outperform Blue team in a lot of scenarios, simply due to having extra hands that specialize in things that Blue Team lacks entirely.

For example, by implication, Jun is more of a recon/spotting specialist than a sniper; Kat is an actual bonafide hacker; Jorge is a dedicated fire support/machine gunner; Six is... Something?

That's three roles and some change that Blue has no real wheelhouse in, that depending on environment, Blue wouldn't have the most adequate of counters for.

It's also not like Noble can't also change their gear; I doubt Jorge would be adverse to swapping out his HMG for something else if needs must, and we know Emile is an at least competent Grenadier.

[vagrant ocean]

I doubt Jorge would stand alongside NOBLE in such a scenario, Chief is his brother, and in effect, his commander. We all know Chief is essentially the leader of the IIs, has been since their wilderness exercise.

[empty bloom]

The basic presumption of a team vs team is that it is either a war game or 'blind' encounter where loyalties are not questioned.

[vagrant ocean]

It’s one of the reasons he’s the de facto leader of Blue Team despite Fred outranking him as a O-2 Lieutenant Junior Grade.

[empty bloom]

I don't really see any amount of relevance here.

Like, if you're going to try pulling out a gotcha for me pointing out the issues with a fight between the two, you can do better than saying Jorge would somehow turncoat on his actual squad in a teamfight that canonically can't even happen.

And as per the nature of the fight, that's being profoundly disingenuous on your part regarding the typical nature of said engagements.

[vagrant ocean]

No need to be hostile bro,

[worn wolf]

ever since ONI started dropping new spartan programmes every year they've just been garbage, every year they go on stage and announce the spartan 4s, then its the spartan 4+ and the spartan 4 mini. just with a new camera or they've removed the headphone jack smfh

[carmine sleet]

That's not what happened at all

Like, there's no Spartan IV+

[hardy swan]

The famous Spartan V program

[stoic hamlet]

Kat alone would cause Blue Team some real headaches. They don’t have any real ECM specialist, and we know John prefers other people to deal with SIGINT and Electronic Warfare.

A lot of people tend to forget just how much Spartans rely on their armour’s motion trackers, their connection to the B-Net, etc. take that away ahd Nobke could - literally - run circles around them.

And even if we discard Jorge (for some asinine reason) they’d still have a one man advantage and the only one who can reliably eliminate a Spartan quickly at range is Linda.

Trip up her sensors and you can move on the tram much easier than you’d otherwise be able to.

[hardy swan]

None of them have Cortana

[stoic hamlet]

That too, yeah.

[orchid kettle]

I never really consider Cortana as part of Blue Team since like the only time they've worked together was First Strike

and even then during the climax, technically Chief was carrying around a partially degraded Cortana copy

Compared to the implication that Auntie Dot is consistently used by Noble Team

[empty bloom]

Honestly, if there was any character on Noble, despite my constant griping over Emile looking stupid, that I would change the appearance of... It would be Kat.

I'd have her kit festooned with so many comm systems that you could microwave a hot dog until it explodes within 4 seconds of physical contact.

Her look does not match the 'Grumpy and skilled comms adept' archtype she is saddled with.

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah.

[empty bloom]

Actually, maybe it'd be better to point out here than in the cosmetics thread. @obsidian thistle Has anyone translated the iconography on the Vondr model of Heatwave?

It has an obvious mantle of responsibility on the cylinder, but there's nothing on the remaining symbols.

There is one I can find, which is the symbol directly behind the axe blades on the Vondr Heatwave; It is the symbol seen on the Prophet's anti gravity chairs.

[obsidian thistle]

Found em all. All are just random symbols

Thankfully no fanon font was used this time lol

[empty bloom]

Womp womp :c

[obsidian thistle]

One symbol I only have record of as appearing on Halo2.com lol

So HS must have the symbol set somewhere

[raw jolt]

are there any in lore examples of the UNSC using underbarrel attachments on their weapons? (EX skeleton/masterkeys GL’s ETC)

[versed salmon]

Is it true that there’s going to be a continuation of the short story “Saturn Devours his Son”? I vaguely remember seeing that somewhere but not I’m not sure if it was a fever dream.

[orchid kettle]

In Silent Storm Blue Team uses an underbarrel grenade launcher with their MA5 assault rifles a couple times

CE's Assault Rifle originally had a grenade launcher during development, but it was scrapped for some reason

i can only assume when it was decided that you'd have a dedicated throwing button for grenades anyway

[sour raven]

Yes

[empty bloom]

There is the aformentioned one mounted underslung on the MA5, but there is also an underbarrel grenade launcher attachment for the M6634 Flamethrower that is compatible with the MA series.

Apparently they are actually... the same launcher. Weird.

[gusty star]

I believe this also showed up in Oblivion

[minor sky]

Carry over from Marathon

[spark pivot]

Why does a flamethrower need a grenade launcher XD

[stoic hamlet]

It fires concussion grenades.

I can see a use case, but I don’t know if man-portable flamethrowers will ever really be effective anymore… or really, if they ever even were.

[minor sky]

They're good for fighting space monsters at least

The Thing, Flood, Xenomorphs, ect.

[orchid kettle]

I could unironically see them as being weirdly good against shielded targets

[thorn spindle]

always in style

fire good

[orchid kettle]

In general really I feel like Covenant Elites would be susceptible to basically any kind of weapon beyond simple firearms

cool kinetic shield, now breathe in this mustard gas, punk

[fast heron]

Do you think if more humans/spartans joined the banished, the humans and brutes would have a civil war? Cause I doubt all brutes would respect all the humans like Elsa Zane

[orchid kettle]

honestly the two races with the most reason to hate each other would be the Brutes and Elites, and we're expected to believe that they're playing nice regardless

I do kinda wish Zane experienced a bit of friction after Doisac blew up, but it seems like during the Battle for the Academy, she's still more or less in the Banished's good graces

In general I feel like we're expected to handwave the idea of there ever being interpersonal drama within the Banished, which is a shame, because a faction without drama is hardly believable as a faction at all

[fast heron]

I am asking because I do definitely think the brutes blame most humans (most = not including Zane and possibly a few other humans) for destroying doisac

And the humans are tired of being treated like grunts in the covenant

[minor sky]

https://youtu.be/17WzdN-y5L4?si=1uJwHrpnrAfzDexP

Can we please get a full audiobook read by Steve Downes?

[burnt spear]

Are brutes like atriox or Tartarus physically stronger than spartan 2s?

[dusk jetty]

Yes, but a Spartan would know to avoid cqc with a brute

[modest marsh]

Spartans very frequently fight Brutes in H2H and win, it’s all a matter of context

[sour raven]

https://tenor.com/view/atriox-halo-wars-2-halo-wars-2-atriox-gif-17978630603022160361

https://tenor.com/view/atriox-halo-infinite-i-am-the-last-face-you-will-ever-see-master-chief-gif-24184901

[modest marsh]

Atriox is stated to be the strongest of his species in addition to being the smartest in a HW2 vidoc, and well, Tartarus is Tartarus

[stoic hamlet]

Gammas are on par if not stronger.

Spartans overall seem equal, strength wise.

[dusk jetty]

A Spartan II easily could stun a brute; what I meant was that it wouldn’t be wise to go hand to hand with a brute tactically if you don’t have to

[modest marsh]

I don’t like to generalize an entire species but I think it’s a safe bet that the baseline physical strength of a typical Spartan is inferior to a typical Brute, but things get vastly more complicated when you’re assessing individuals and their respective equipment

With MJOLNIR, a Spartan-II is easily capable of outright killing a common Brute barehanded with no other factors at play

[stoic hamlet]

Broadly, as well, Spartans don’t usually use strength. They use skill. Which is itself a generalization.

I.E, a Spartan isn’t going to intentionally grapple a brute, they’ll go for a knife strike, or a fist to the throat, etc.

[dusk jetty]

It’s probably good to be ready for a brute to push their luck and berserk nonetheless

[stoic hamlet]

That’s why there’s stuff like the Shockbrace, the wrist knives, and etc. they’re not meant for offensive action, but to deter a brute charge.

[modest marsh]

That is to say, Atriox isn’t any common Brute as seen how he easily dismantled Red Team in close quarters without much issue, and of course with the new philosophy of the Banished using any advantage they can come up with, including strength-enhancing exoskeletons and pharmaceuticals that help mitigate the historical technological edge Spartans have

[dusk jetty]

I like to imagine strategies players use are also strategies Spartans use as well

I don’t have a line of dialogue or such to support this specifically, but grabbing a pistol to overcharge and then firing a burst come to mind

[modest marsh]

Brutes with actual powered suits/gauntlets or under the influence of stimulants are a good bet to beating any Spartan in an arm wrestle regardless of context

This isn’t stated outright either way but I’d have to imagine the average age of your typical Brute Minor is fairly young, and I would venture to guess this is largely true of the Covenant races in general, which the games do not communicate well due to the standardized body model they use for each species

Spartans being on par or even stronger than a Brute makes a great deal more sense if that Brute turned out to be 14 in human years

[dusk jetty]

No I think that’s fair, it’s stated younger Jiralhanae are more fervent and devoted to the covenant in Harvest

Makes sense they would fill the ranks

[modest marsh]

This is also important because there’s a huge practical distinction between having a high amount of muscle mass that can technically be engaged by the individual, and someone having actual functional strength because they’ve developed the neuromuscular control to fully take advantage of their existing muscles efficiently

Silverback gorillas are really strong but even the strongest ones will never lift over half a ton like Hafthor Bjornsson did

Because they don’t have the training for something like that

Meanwhile Spartans essentially have perfect control over their individual twitch muscle responses as a requisite to even wear MJOLNIR at all, so naturally they have way more control over what their muscles are doing at any given moment than even top performing athletes

[icy sonnet]

I've always perceived Brutes as physically capable, if not slightly stronger than Spartans. The preference has always been to take them out at range, instead of close quarters. But obviously it depends on the age of the Brute. They also earner their illustrious moniker by being strong and ferocious. Their one weakness was their tendency to become enraged and charge, making them predictable and easy to goad, drawing them into a killing zone with overlapping fields of fire. Or, failing that, plenty of needle rounds.

The best Brutes are the ones that are smart and have the muscle to back it up. Maintaining their dominant position.

[wispy pewter]

There’s no argument they are stronger even against latest Mjolnir

They are even heavier than a Spartan in full armor

[empty bloom]

I gotta say, I feel like there's a chance Atriox is actually augmented in some way, just not like a "Brute Spartan".

[modest marsh]

Ever since Halo 3 where Brutes can be killed in as little as 2-3 melee strikes even on the hardest difficulty, it’s become less and less emphasized how dangerous normal brutes are in close quarters compared to their presentation in First Strike and Ghosts of Onyx specifically, which were written based on their Halo 2 incarnation and where Spartans were more or less helpless against them just purely based on brawn

Even Chieftains aren’t safe from a few good whacks, which is easily reproducible in the Cethegus duel

Consequently you have the likes of Halo Legends and even HW2 itself depicting Spartan-IIs easily dispatching hammer-wielding Chieftains, both outpacing them and delivering damaging blows to the head

[modest marsh]

And for that matter, during Halo 2’s development it doesn’t seem like Brutes were meant to be nearly as threatening in close quarters as they ended up being, namely because the melee combo mechanic was removed as well as a deleted cutscene where Arbiter would’ve grappled/fist fought multiple Brutes and nearly won single-handedly before Johnson kills the last one with a big rock

[modest marsh]

There’s a few cases in Rubicon Protocol in particular that would indicate that GEN3 does in fact elevate even Spartan-IVs to the physical level of Brutes and beyond

Horvath moved back, energy flowing and ready as the Brute got his feet under him, and straightened to his full height. And despite the dislocated shoulder and cracked ribs, he charged. Giant arms wrapped around Horvath’s waist, lifting him up and then slamming him against the piece of hull that hung into the aisle. He heard the telltale snap indicating that the force had slammed the Jiralhanae’s shoulder back into place. They crashed through and rolled into the bay. He gripped the side of the Brute’s damaged chest armor, ripping a section free before landing a hard blow to his injured ribs and feeling a small, satisfying crunch. The Brute rallied by seizing his shoulders and slinging him across the bay; the pummeling went on for several minutes until Horvath’s lungs burned and armor integrity warnings skipped across his display. Neither he nor the Jiralhanae was able to stay steady on his feet, but Horvath was in much better shape overall. Every blow he landed was aimed at his enemy’s ribcage. Finally the Brute held up a wavering hand, and slurred, “A truce, demon.”

Like Horvath beating a Bloodstar into submission, when they were both in suboptimal shape

The Brute captain—the one called Hectarius—filed in, barreling over and fatally crushing the remaining Jackal who had frozen up at the base of the ramp, terrified by what it had just witnessed. The Kig-Yar’s crushed frame was kicked aside, coming to a stop by its friend. Before the Brute had time to attack, Stone was already slamming headlong into the captain. Hectarius was strong and well-armored, but Stone began punching the Jiralhanae’s gut with a kind of unrelenting ferocity she didn’t know she possessed. The beast reeled backward, falling heavy to the ground as his torso armor began to perforate and break off into pieces under the vicious blows. It was only a few seconds of punching his stomach dead-on before Stone knew she had won, letting go of the Brute as he crawled into a corner and began staring unbelieving at the mess Stone had made of his vital organs. He finally stopped moving and slumped over in a pool of blood.

[orchid kettle]

On some level, it feels like you can't get away with the idea of even one Brute being nearly unstoppable when they're now the most common alien enemy

[modest marsh]

And then Stone, albeit experiencing a slight case of hysterical strength, literally disembowels a Captain

[orchid kettle]

like even back in Halo 3, people probably just wouldn't engage with the melee mechanic at all if any Brute could backhand Chief and one shot him

[modest marsh]

I mean, the game is pretty generous insofar as locking enemies into animations where they can’t hurt you

Breaking any brute’s armor will stun them for a full second which can be done trivially even with just a single AR mag

Chieftains are harder to stun but they also typically wield gravity hammers, and they have big telegraphed swing animations that make them easy to avoid by just sidestepping or jumping over them

Infinite cheats by effectively giving the chieftains invisible grapples so they home in on you even while moving through the air

[orchid kettle]

A lot of the enemy melee attacks feel like cheating in Infinite, ngl

like I swear I've strafed around an enemy while they punch at the empty air, and it somehow still does damage

[wispy pewter]

It’s so bloody inconsistent tho

[orchid kettle]

But yeah even on a narrative level, I kinda understand nerfing Brutes

[modest marsh]

I don’t think it’s that inconsistent if you just examine context and don’t make unnecessary assumptions

[wispy pewter]

lol Spartans die to brutes all the time

Master Chief almost got killed by one

[modest marsh]

Only one has actually been killed by a Brute barehanded

And it was by a Berserker

[orchid kettle]

If you kept their insane resiliency from GoO, gave them energy shields, and still had them travel in packs, then it honestly wouldn't feel plausible for our heroes to actually beat them as often as they do

[modest marsh]

Well, it could still be plausible, they’d just need to employ different tactics than say, Jerome just John Wick-ing 20 of them

[orchid kettle]

I do feel like Elites in a way can be kept more "balanced" when you figure that normally Chief isn't running into entire platoons of Elites

but Brutes kinda can't be crazy powerful, durable, and numerous

[modest marsh]

This is what I meant by examining context because literally right before this fight happens, Halsey says Chief should be hospitalized from the shock from his injuries

It’s also the last fight he has before returning to Earth where the gunnery sergeant famously explains just how ruined his armor was

Like Chief got hurt a lot during the events of CE, and has a pretty bad couple of encounters during the events of First Strike as well before he even sees a Brute

Like being human shield to block hunter fuel rods along with Kelly and Fred

Or narrowly surviving a nearby plasma torpedo detonation

[modest marsh]

collateral damage moment

And uh I guess technically Oblivion too

Referring to the “platoons of elites” bit

[wispy pewter]

Ngl forgot about that

[orchid kettle]

the Atriox failed execution scene is pretty funny when you think about how all those Elites were just kinda hoping these grizzly-rhino orcs would just standby and do nothing

[wispy pewter]

Jerome built different

Atriox is probably on steroids or he trains

[modest marsh]

Chief also does something similar in the Uprising comic

[orchid kettle]

If you have a name in this franchise you get a 20 times buff

[modest marsh]

There’s like 40 Brute corpses in a single room after he fails to assassinate Truth lol

[orchid kettle]

even more so if you're an actual important character that 343 doesn't want to off in one action scene

[modest marsh]

I don’t think that’s unreasonable because you can very well justify this type of thing in-setting, especially if there’s contextual factors at play

Some people are just freaks of nature like that

But I also just tend to be of the mind that we have yet to see the potential of any given species fully realized, either through artificial means or something more organic

Stolt for instance comes across as “what Grunts could be if they were just given the chance”

[orchid kettle]

Its also really just dependent on what the author is feeling like that day

First Strike is also the Halo 2 promotional book, which is why we have a scene of Blue Team nerding out over the new BR55 and how it kills Elites in one-burst

[wispy pewter]

Chieftains seems to be built different

[orchid kettle]

and similarly, the new Brute enemy type is introduced by immediately killing Grace with the new brute shot weapon

[wispy pewter]

Canonically Master Chief defeats Escharum and the rest in infinite I can’t even remember

[modest marsh]

Chieftains are necessarily “stronger” than the rest of their pack because it what justifies their right to rule in Brute society

It’s been clarified however that doesn’t mean they’re literally the physically strongest, strategy and reputation are also important factors

[orchid kettle]

but I'd say Halo 3 and media surrounding it really leaned into this idea of Chief being this unstoppable force of nature who everybody loves and looks up to

[modest marsh]

Tbf the Bruteshot in First Strike is also like, absurdly powerful

[orchid kettle]

yeah it is

better preorder Halo 2 at your local gamestore today

[modest marsh]

They blow up several meter thick stone pillars

Like damn what are they putting in those things

[orchid kettle]

Like Halo 2 Chief doing all these wacky stunts and spouting one-liners obviously led to this, but I feel like Halo 2's story and cutscenes had a consideration for other characters that Halo 3 just doesn't

Like Chief is a cool guy in Halo 2 but he's not the only guy that matters

in Halo 3 he's very much The Only Guy That Matters

[modest marsh]

I think that depends on whether or not you play coop

[orchid kettle]

I mean like, Landfall is about finding out where Chief is gonna crash, Starry Night was about Chief's backstory, Believe is about remembering, among other things, Chief as this enshrined hero

[modest marsh]

Yeah you’re right it’s pretty much inescapable in how the game was marketed

Given the rumors of the CE remake and the suggestions of incorporating elements taken from the wider fiction that weren’t cemented later, I do wonder if it’s in the cards to incorporate Linda’s presence more explicitly somehow, since it’s obviously something amiss with how her and the fate of the other Spartans goes completely unacknowledged

Obviously you have CEA including the Easter egg on the cryoroom monitor, but what if they did something like make her a second player character in an alt timeline akin to the Wyatt/Fergus split in the wolfenstein games?

[stoic hamlet]

That’s basically what people assumed co-op was, anyways.

[modest marsh]

Sure, but that requires external book knowledge, and if it was acknowledged within the game it would logically have knockdown effects on the rest of the game’s story

[orchid kettle]

if it was lore accurate, player 2 Linda should be a zombie

[stoic hamlet]

Ah, whoops.

[modest marsh]

In this hypothetical alt timeline, Linda’s injuries would be less severe if not completely avoided

[stoic hamlet]

Haven’t had that happen in a while.

[orchid kettle]

and then at the end, she trips and hits her head on the longsword ramp

breaking her neck

and chief has to put her back in cryo all over again

[modest marsh]

lol

[stoic hamlet]

Anyways:

it’ll be interesting, I think, whether or not characters will all worship Chief and the ground he walks on, or whether the games will finally allow like, your common marine or whatever to actually do things without him, and whether he’ll be forced to defer to other people aside from just Keyes, and the like.

[orchid kettle]

A certain youtuber used to criticize 343's halo games for having stories that felt like commentary on halo's legacy more than anything else

[modest marsh]

Clearly he’ll have to contend with Major Silva

[orchid kettle]

and i kinda get what he means, in the sense that so many stories are about ethics of the Spartan Program, if the newer Spartans could ever hope to live up to Chief, people being inspired by Chief

[stoic hamlet]

Aye, but beyond Silva.

You know, a gruff Lieutenant or something. It’d be neat to actually see one of those, lol

The games always mysteriously had them not around so John never has to encounter a superior officer.

[orchid kettle]

on some level I think it makes sense to assume that Chief's in-universe fame is a consequence of his real-world popularity as a video game icon

[modest marsh]

Does Mckay not already fill that role? I suppose you’d have to add more interactions between them than the novelization had

[orchid kettle]

Chief can't react to being famous in the real world without breaking the fourth wall, but he can react to being famous in more or less the same way in-universe

[stoic hamlet]

Sort of, but I meant more in gameplay.

Like how Metropolis has the Lieutenant KIA (or wounded and not around) before John arrives.

[modest marsh]

Hideo Kojima sitting in a dark corner, grinning to himself

[stoic hamlet]

He never actually needs to interact with a CO that’s not a big, named character Ubless it’s in a book.

And it feels more than a little contrived.

[modest marsh]

To be blunt I dont think this is particularly unusual in fact it should be assumed as the status quo for video games in particular lol

[stoic hamlet]

Because if he did, he’d show some sort of deference to them, and that’d make the fans angy.

[orchid kettle]

Whats sad too is that now that we accept that Chief is worshipped, it doesn't feel like he can have the slightest amount of friction with an officer-type character without that character being portrayed as utterly in the wrong like with Del Rio

[modest marsh]

Since you mention it I can already hear the worst people you know throwing a hissy fit at Chief being subordinate to a female officer

They already did for Space Marine 2 and she doesn’t even hold actual authority over Titus lol

[stoic hamlet]

Honestly no, at least, not that I can think of.

Killzone has you interact with a number of superiors, not just the main specific guy.

Resistance has at least a dozen.

Call of Duty (well, less so in the modern day, but early 2000’s yes).

Medal of Honor has quite a few, sometimes even multiple in one level.

Gears I think is one of the only instances where you don’t really deal with CO’s except Hoffman and Kim.

Crysis as well, technically.

[orchid kettle]

Halo on some level has built its identity on a sense of isolation though

[modest marsh]

Maybe I’m misunderstanding your position but at least in game you’re usually pretty unconstrained by authority beyond mission assignment in most of those games

[orchid kettle]

and that can be harder to achieve if the full UNSC chain of command is preserved

versus like, a captain character tells you your objective and sets you loose into the wild

[stoic hamlet]

Oh aye.

I’m just pointing it out.

I do wish Halo took some cues from Resistance Fall of Man in that regard, it’d be nice.

[modest marsh]

This would require anyone to remember Resistance

[orchid kettle]

I always felt like a big reason ODST worked as a Halo game was because the squad was split and you felt more like "Chief" in the sense of being more or less on your own, with the rest of the UNSC just being convenient allies who wouldn't necessarily follow you from encounter to encounter

[stoic hamlet]

In the first level alone you encounter and are (breifly) commanded by two separate captains and a lieutenant, for example, all independent of one another.

Yeah they don’t last long, but they’re there.

[orchid kettle]

Meanwhile, Noble being split all the time, but it rarely if ever being clear why, I think just fed into the problem of not really being allowed to get attached to them as characters

You get told to leave that lone wolf stuff behind, but that's also how halo gameplay works, so the game needs to bend over backwards to remove 90% of Noble from the missions

[modest marsh]

I recently tried playing it on an emulator (it ran terribly so I had to give up) but it does kinda seem to go out of its way to quickly split you up from anyone, let alone officers

In that sense it was clearly emulating Halo, as was Insomniac’s strategy going back to Ratchet and Clank

[stoic hamlet]

Sort of, but they’re still present, and not just the main, named Keyes and Johnson archetypes.

Unlike Halo, where it feels like (at least in gameplay) everyone above sergeant doesn’t exist unless it’s Miranda or Hood, or now, Lasky and Palmer.

The game made an effort, small though it was.

[orchid kettle]

I do think that's economical from a narrative perspective, if nothing else

But I guess its also not like stories have to suffer from extraneous elements

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah, of course.

But it’d be nice if modern Halo could do better than a game from 2006, lol.

Though I guess the trend never really caught on.

[orchid kettle]

but im also the guy who doesn't mind the truncated ranking structure of the Spartan Branch

[stoic hamlet]

hiss

[orchid kettle]

except for handlers but thats because the idea of spartans sitting in a chair that can hold their two ton power armored butt is silly

[modest marsh]

I think the Spartan branch is 80% of the way to being a good idea if only because it makes it way more accessible to the militarily illiterate

[orchid kettle]

and dats me, bby

or at the very least, im an advocate of Halo adopting more abstracted elements

[stoic hamlet]

It’s one of those things where I think, had it been better introduced it’d be fine.

I mean, even now, with the small changes, it’s much better than it was, but like a lot of early 343, it really, really floundered.

[orchid kettle]

I don't really like just how closely the UNSC has latched itself onto US military culture and iconography

[modest marsh]

Most people aren’t interested in learning the nuances of who listens to who in a complex military structure so dumbing it down to the bare bones is at the very least useful for onboarding people

[stoic hamlet]

Mhm.

It makes sense.

[orchid kettle]

like shorthand is effective sure, but if you're like me and you happen to not be a fan of what the US military has historically done, then you may not really like our heroes being tied to that

[stoic hamlet]

Especially for a casual game like Halo.

[modest marsh]

UNSC cadets are taught to imitate—and thereby venerate—the martial actions of humanity’s time-honored heroes.

Is it too soon to say that this is a troublesome thing to include in marketing?

[orchid kettle]

I also feel like for cosplaying purposes it's probably best if character designs try to be a bit more unique than like, a modern US soldier but 10% more scifi

dare i say i even like the halo CE/3 style pajamas the navy guys are wearing

[modest marsh]

Like this is just true based on the established fiction going back to the beginning of the series but I find it a little odd it’s been done so uncritically

[stoic hamlet]

I think the issue moreso is that they’re honouring contemporary or near-contemporary heroes.

Like, the UNSC shouldn’t be venerating anything from our time or before, except as like, tradition, but they’re not really all that traditional as a military force, like the Commonwealth nations.

Instead of it was like, a “new culture” borne from the Interplanetary wars, that’d be fine, IMO.

[orchid kettle]

i have been traumatized from when I wore an ODST hoodie as a teenager and somebody walked up to me and asked if I really did serve in the "105th"

man, i aint about to be shot for stolen valor

[stoic hamlet]

lol

[modest marsh]

That’s a bit difficult for the studio to avoid given Microsoft’s disproportionate hiring of veterans

And the cultural stigma against not honoring the military in the US by default

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah, but I’m saying the issue isn’t the veneration.

Soldiers do that all the time.

The issue is that they’re venerating modem or near modern people, not people they should actually be, you know, tracing their lineages to.

[orchid kettle]

They're better about it now but I swear for a while all the merch was like, made with the idea of it seeming as "authentically military" as possible

[stoic hamlet]

But yeah it is a very American slant, and I don’t like it.

Commonwealth countries are generally more solemn, when it comes to that.

Though I might also be biased, having Newfoundland ancestry.

[orchid kettle]

like you didn't buy a "halo jacket" you bought a "UNSC Navy Cadet" jacket

[stoic hamlet]

Losing your entire military force in under 30 minutes tends to give you a sobering picture of war, after all.

[modest marsh]

Also, in reference to the Interplanetary Wars, this is the part where I mention my headcanon that Jeremiah Mendez is Venezuelan and big fan of Simon Bolivar