lore-and-universe

[empty bloom]

Okay, so on the actual suit in Infinite, the cloth with the zippers is not the actual techsuit, and the concept art is another story entirely I won't get into.

The entire armor in Infinite is a cloth covering over something that looks like the titanium weave undersuit of a normal suit of MJOLNIR. You can see it specifically at the ankles.

[modest marsh]

The zipper is preserved in the actual model it’s just hard to see

[empty bloom]

But it's not on the actual techsuit.

[modest marsh]

https://halo.wiki.gallery/images/thumb/0/0f/HINF_-_Rakshasa_on_Fragmentation.png/1920px-HINF_-_Rakshasa_on_Fragmentation.png

[empty bloom]

Which is why I'm pointing out that very little of Rakshasa, in the game proper, is the actual techsuit layer-maybe like 2-3% of it is exposed.

Yes, that zipper is not the techsuit.

It's the zipper for the cloth layer over the techsuit.

Have you played Lost Planet?

Or, actually, a more recent example, Wolfenstein The New Colossus?

[modest marsh]

To be clear there isn’t actually anything that says Rakshasa even has a tech suit, that’s just assumed based on the precedent set by Mjolnir specifically

[empty bloom]

I infer it based off of design parts and, again, the ankles.

And the fact many of its components mention MJOLNIR connections.

[modest marsh]

So does ODST armor though

I believe that there is a form fitting element similar to the Mjolnir tech suit but I am not convinced it is comparable to the GEN2 application in particular because that version essentially puts 80% of the armor into the tech suit

And accounts for most of its bulk, which isn’t true of Rakshasa

[empty bloom]

Anyways the reason I bring this up, the first part of TNC, Blazkowicz is wearing a full suit of power armor.

https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/008/405/546/medium/vidar-rapp-blaskowicz-powerarmor-front.jpg?1512555409

But he wears his normal clothes over it.

[modest marsh]

I’m familiar with what you’re describing yeah, although this is an odd example in particular because the power suit is bulkier than his clothes

[empty bloom]

I'm just using it as a reference/example for what Rakshasa is based off of its actual appearance in Infinite.

[modest marsh]

I’m saying both run into a similar problem if we run with the interpretation that the Rakshasa system uses something analogous to GEN2’s tech suit when if anything Rakshasa sans the attachments is no bulkier than plain clothes, let alone the added bulk of the 4/5 muscle suits

[empty bloom]

My point is that it is a close MJOLNIR derivative, effectively a design cousin or child, produced by Lethbridge and Materials Group; We know it's closer designwise than Osteo is to MJOLNIR.

It isn't GEN2, and we don't have a proper look under the actual clothes that make up the armor, but we know it has a techsuit of some variety due to what we can see in Infinite.

What I'd assume is that to make it more rugged, they removed a lot of the high-maintenance parts and a lot of the 'muscle', focusing higher on strength efficiency and user comfort.

So by removing the most complicated parts of GEN2, and ruggedizing further what you have left, you presumably would end up with a much lighter and much smaller overall suit, one that can look relatively normal with just a cloth layer and strapped-on armor plates with various interfaces.

[modest marsh]

I was certainly missing the forest for the trees with your initial statement then

[empty bloom]

Yeah, I didn't mean it was literally just a GEN2 techsuit.

[modest marsh]

Well to me that just sounds like an altogether different system even if it shares some similarities

I think it’s important that Rakshasa isn’t Mjolnir but features characteristics of it, since its prudent for each armor system to have its own identity without rendering anything else redundant

[hushed jetty]

I do wonder what they did with the thousand suits of gen 2

[empty bloom]

In terms of personal perspective, I think it is a MJOLNIR, but a MJOLNIR in the sense of Rakshasa.

[orchid kettle]

I ate them all

[modest marsh]

They should be in service and receiving proactive refurbishment

[empty bloom]

I asked this over a year ago and got an official answer; Still in use or being recycled into GEN3.

[modest marsh]

Also idk about thousands

[empty bloom]

Guh

[modest marsh]

A good chunk of those suits have been destroyed along with the Spartan wearing it

[empty bloom]

Gotta hurry to class but to correct myself, I meant to say Hayabusa here. Like, GEN1 Mark VI era Hayabusa.

[orchid kettle]

MJOLNIR being a class of powered armor is something im not wild about

[empty bloom]

Where it's technically an offshoot/competitor/equivalent but is also MJOLNIR enough to be the same thing.

[orchid kettle]

especially when GEN3 seems so wildly different

[hushed jetty]

I would love to see people actually in gen2, it’s weird because it would especially fit perfectly into books because nobody has to see it. It’s a shame 343i has cowered away from gen2 so much

[orchid kettle]

personally I kinda vibe with semi-powered being used to describe exos for normies, while spartan suits are just like, I dunno, Powered Assault Armor

or something like that

[modest marsh]

There’s still fiction that suggests that people are wearing GEN2 concurrently with the events of infinite, or at least within a few months prior

GEN1 is still in use after all

[orchid kettle]

maybe the post-war corpos need a new designation entirely to better differentiate their normie OSTEO suits from their Spartan ones

[modest marsh]

8 years after it’s been rendered obsolescent

I like Mjolnir being a “money” term

[empty bloom]

I do like how it's more or less canon that Mark IV in Infinite is kind of a hackjob that is more a desperation thing than something most Spartans would willingly bring.

[modest marsh]

It’s what the government uses as a catchall to refer to things they’ve spent their budget on

[empty bloom]

Kinda like the US Military begrudingly remembering it has F-18s still.

[modest marsh]

Halsey may have her own opinion about what Mjolnir is in its purified form, but for the purposes of balancing a budget everything that touches the armor development program still falls under Mjolnir if they share resources

Yggdrasil comes to mind as well

[hushed jetty]

Does master chief have a dorm room with 10 suits of old armour on a stand like batman? Why did Kurt keep his old armour

[modest marsh]

Though innovative, MJOLNIR and its prototypes were extraordinarily expensive to develop and manufacture. By the direction of Vice Admiral Whitcomb, ONI created YGGDRASIL as an industry-led workgroup to adapt MJOLNIR-derived technologies and Halsey's one-off research results for mass production and implementation within other projects. YGGDRASIL remains an umbrella project for “democratization” of advanced military R&D, of which MJOLNIR is now but one element.

[modest marsh]

Rakshasa, Mirage, and the upgraded OSTEO suits should all fall under this

Maybe ORCUS too for that matter

[modest marsh]

In the old lore, it’s kinda more evident that individual suits of armor were rarer and didn’t have much utility beyond specifically outfitting the Spartan-IIs

In TFOR specifically they imply that Chief has been wearing the exact same armor for the entire length of the war

[orchid kettle]

ORCUS is something called EXO-X

[modest marsh]

GoO introduced the idea of a separate EVA suit

[orchid kettle]

or at least part of it

i assume Nightfall is also EXO-X if its also Cascade

[hushed jetty]

Orcus is so sick, I would love an in depth story with it

[modest marsh]

?

[orchid kettle]

chronicle doesn't count

[modest marsh]

I guess not

[orchid kettle]

they don't really say anything beyond "wow these suits sure are cool"

but don't really get into why

i guess the armor blurbs themselves get more into it, but i want cold hard stats when it comes to like, carrying capacity and top speed and whatnot

[modest marsh]

Do you actually

[orchid kettle]

ye

[hushed jetty]

I meant like, showing the suits in depth aiding the odsts with beating the pulp out of some brutes for example, rather than yeah, what you said

[orchid kettle]

Orcus probably isn't good enough to help with that

I'd imagine at most it would help like, overpower a Jackal or something if you're of the mind that a Jackal is stronger than your average ODST

[modest marsh]

(They are by virtue of moving around like they do in game)

[hushed jetty]

I’d snap their little bird bones

[modest marsh]

The field Manual is really funny for this because it literally just says “yeah IVs are like regular athletes which means they’re 10x more athletic than the average soldier”

In most environments, Spartans can achieve running long jumps of several meters and maintain a running speed of 40 km/h (24.9 mph) without Mjolnir armor. And even in standard-to-heavy conventional war gear, your ability to leap, dive, and scale uneven ground surpass the average soldier by a factor of ten or more.

[runic onyx]

Hey peeps, I'm looking for the name of a company/something that has made armor/equipment in the lore.

It has a really long name that borders on jokey or comical. Something along the lines of "Bewer......glitch".

I know it's appeared in the descriptions of armor pieces in Infinite, but I have no idea where to start looking through all of those and figured I'd ask here since Google hasn't given me anything.

[hushed jetty]

It’s a shame orcus apparently didn’t get used until 2559, could have been a cool hcw story

[modest marsh]

Like this would suggest that Jackals are stronger than IVs by virtue of being similarly sized but more agile

Kig-Yar are a highly evolved saurian species with distinct avian attributes, having developed into swift bipedal omnivores with nimble bodies that are lissome and designed for tracking prey. Kig-Yar have strong legs with three-toed feet and can reach speeds of up to 72 km/h (45 mph) in open areas, due to their lightweight bone structure and very powerful musculature.

[carmine sleet]

I know the company you are talking about, but yeah, it's a real long name and I have no clue how to spell it. Give me a few while I go double check what they're called

[hushed jetty]

Beweglichkeitsrüstungsysteme

[carmine sleet]

Aye, them

[modest marsh]

It’s a compound word that translates to “mobile armament systems”

[orchid kettle]

I feel like the only example of Jackal arm strength we have is that moment in Battleborn where a Kig-Yar was getting into a tug of war with Victor, a high schooler

[runic onyx]

I cannot thank you enough, that was bothering me so much! Thank you!!!

[modest marsh]

In the TFOR comic they beat down a door

Opening level of halo 5 a jackal gets jumped on by a crawler and throws it off its shield

Uh

Chief gets yanked on in On The Brink while he’s piloting the mammoth

[modest marsh]

Also idk that scene has slasher horror vibes

[hushed jetty]

Who wins

[modest marsh]

Saskia’s ankle bones are described as being painfully grinded

[orchid kettle]

The Jackal, but you could argue that if they're as super as they seem in other depictions, the poor girl being yanked probably should have had their foot torn off or something

[modest marsh]

“Got it!” Victor shouted. The seat popped out and hit Evie on the head. The Jackal lunged forward and Evie kicked out again, but this time it grabbed her by the ankle, its clawed fingers squeezing so tight she felt the bones of her foot grinding together. Evie screamed and flailed, reaching out for Victor, who wrapped his arms around her torso and pulled. But the Jackal was stronger. It yanked her leg through the gap in the front seats. She stuck out her free leg, tried to catch herself. Pain burst up her leg, through her hip. Victor screamed in her ear. The Jackal leaned in and hissed. Pulled. She slammed forward. The absence of Victor’s grip burned more painfully than the hand at her ankle. She screamed and thrashed, but the Jackal grabbed her other ankle and yanked her through the windshield. Rain splattered across her face. The Jackal flung her into the bushes and then jumped, landing with a shuddering thud beside her. Evie screamed. Rainwater flooded into her mouth.

I mean it literally does throw her by her ankle

She shouldn’t be walking lol

[orchid kettle]

the power of medigel

in battleborn its basically magic

[modest marsh]

In any case I think you could just say this guy was a particularly meaty jackal

Because he got slammed by car and didn’t seem to mind

[orchid kettle]

Both characters are also children

Though the second battleborn claims Victor is like a jock, or has the body of one I think

even though in the first book he's just a film geek?

i guess he could be a ripped film geek

[modest marsh]

Hey stereotypes are different in the 26th century

In any case yeah they’re not going to be as strong as your typical fully grown marine but idt it’s right to characterize them as kids in the context of comparing human and jackal anatomy

They’re nearly adults

[orchid kettle]

but yeah I feel like the vibes with Jackals is that obviously you'd never beat it at a leg press competition or anything, but a ODSTs could probably fight one

[modest marsh]

I mean for one I just think it’s better if we operate on the assumption there’s a big gradient of capability between members of the same species and it’s dumb and bad to generalize just because video games don’t always express nuance like that

There’s a jackal out there who can wrestle the weakest brute

I do think on the whole, jackals should average as being physically more dangerous in H2H than humans regardless of context by virtue of being big raptors/predatory birds

But like, that doesn’t mean you don’t have a solid chance at killing one

[orchid kettle]

Sure but when you don't really have time to name or establish the character at all, its typically good to just fall back on "average"

[modest marsh]

I do kinda trend towards wanting the average to skew towards jackals being significantly stronger just because the horror aspect of them dragging people away to eat them is fun

[hushed jetty]

A teenager who hasn't done anything phsical vs a alien pirate who has to kill and steal for survival

[modest marsh]

Kinda hard to do that if they’re at best equals

[modest marsh]

Dude got a rumbly tummy and decided it was a good idea to let himself get hit by a car

[modest marsh]

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fdnthu1rwfbve1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D1080%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D2c8ecbbbca535d54dbe3b1306807a0fac1cff0a8

Yeah it’s 3 of them but you get the idea

This is also true of drones for that matter

[orchid kettle]

My worry is then having no alien that my odst characters can reasonably engage in close quarters

[modest marsh]

Hey, people have killed bears and sharks before!

[orchid kettle]

i am also a believer in grunt superiority if only because I like their thing being the TFOR thing about charging enemies bare handed and just ripping them to shreds

[modest marsh]

Grunts kinda have been softened in that respect and I imagine it has everything to do with their out of universe reputation as the goofy silly guys

Brutes and Jackals are allowed to be cannibals because they’re uniquely scary

[orchid kettle]

I figure Jackals only really keep grunts in line because the grunt doesn't believe in itself enough

but otherwise I honestly think a Grunt could tear a Jackal a new one if they were so inclined

just look at those big chitinous popeye arms

[modest marsh]

Well yeah they’re bigger at least

[orchid kettle]

probably more of them in the room too

Lower center of gravity

Sturdy

[modest marsh]

At the end of the day though, who’s got the needler?

(It’s probably the jackal)

[orchid kettle]

I mentioned this before, but I always figured in TFOR, the way it'd have to work is that the Jackals are largely just around to support the main Grunt push

whether it be manning Wraith mortars, sniping, or directly wrangling the grunts

The fact that Blue Team never sees the pilot of that banshee emerge from the water though makes me think it may have been an Elite pilot

but its obviously crazy to think after 27 years nobody's ever cracked open a fallen Banshee before

[modest marsh]

They simply used the acid device from empty throne

[empty bloom]

I have consistent issues with that book

But then I have issues with this sort of inconsistency.

[versed salmon]

Unggoy dont even need to be physically superior to kig-yar, they literally have strength in numbers.

It’s stated that during the Unggoy Rebellion, they would have likely won through sheer tenacity and numbers overwhelming the Elites and Jackals. It was only the threat of glassing their homeworld that made them stop

[wispy pewter]

rats

[fading flume]

It’s a book, that’s for sure

[obsidian thistle]

I am rather fond of the new Spirit from Campaign Evolved!

Its like a precursor to the Halo 5 Spirit using ideas from the Halo Wars and Reach patterns

I just hope it gets a name and lore soon!

[vagrant ocean]

Oh that is sexy

[drowsy mesa]

https://x.com/Halo/status/1984274162064499055?t=v2HJqtO_6I9HAFK2vHSb9Q&s=19

Halo (@Halo)

A monument to the sins that saw a catastrophic outbreak at Site 22 and infection of a Spartan, nurtured and sustained later by the Governors of Contrition—a radical Covenant sect that worships the Flood. This emissary's song carries only truth. Can you hear it? #FictionFriday

X · Oct 31, 2025, 3:00 PM

[empty bloom]

I kinda wish we had gotten a revisit of the Halo 4 Flood Spartan face tbh. It's super dissappointing that we didn't.

https://www.halopedia.org/images/a/a4/H4-FloodCombatForm-Spartan.png?7b1c4

[upper canyon]

I suppose it's a question for the book clubbers, but don't know how else to post it

Is Mortal Dictata suitable as a first read? I want to share it with someone l, but they know nothing about Halo.
Would it be better to start with Glasslands, or is there just too much being missed?

[modest marsh]

Is there a specific reason for either to be the first?

[upper canyon]

Mortal Dictata has the themes and lore that i want the friend to read it for.
But Glasslands is the first of Kilo-5, so idk if its necessary for her to start there

[dry cedar]

Anyone else wondering if the rings around Atropos are old star roads?

They're referred to as having been "filaments", after all.....

[empty bloom]

I like that idea.

[odd bloom]

man the spartans significance considering their actual lore durability and such seems 1000% still based on plot armor

they die like flies in reach as well and its just like the only thing dependent on him doing all these things is 'not being hit' because a plasma shot would core even MC's guts... yeahhhh

the timeline where MC gets riddled with plasma until he's a steaming medium rare hulk of metal and meat isnt as interesting tbf

[empty bloom]

Have you heard of the survival onion?

Don't get detected.

If you get detected, don't get identified.

If you get identified, don't get reported.

If you get reported, don't get shot at.

If you get shot at, don't get hit.

If you get hit, don't get penetrated.

If you get penetrated, don't die.

Spartans seem hit or miss because they're strong big targets but also very meat under that armor exterior.

They're amazing up until you get to "don't get penetrated" because there's a lot of ordinance ready to get thrown at them as if they were a tank if they get spotted.

A plasma cannon from a Banshee nearly took Chief's leg off one of the few times he gets hit by something bigger than a carbine for example.

[modest marsh]

This simply isn’t true though

Like, okay, the very first time a Spartan gets shot, it’s Sam, right?

And that was with the earliest version of Mark IV

For some reason this gets remembered as “Mjolnir is incapable of stopping plasma”

But when you read the actual scene it’s like, obviously really good at it

[empty bloom]

Sam successfully did not die, which means the armor worked, but the issue is that the damage was not recoverable due to the whole issue of hard vacuum.

[modest marsh]

Yeah, that is to say, the hazard was contextual

[empty bloom]

Though considering at least one Spartanlike person has sucked vacuum before and lived, well

[modest marsh]

I think the implication is that the timeframe required to recover him would’ve been too long

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

[odd bloom]

should have engineered them to have built-in reserves of oxygen stuffed into their body that gets dispensed when they hold their breath

everyone overlooks regeneration when they bio-engineer something smh

its the ultimate 'i win' card lol oh you blew my head off no you didnt

[empty bloom]

I mean, Spartans have an insanely high level of injury recovery. Horvath was literally left for dead in a ditch after getting impaled and he regrew significant portions of heavily damaged internal organs.

[unique rune]

I'm pretty sure surgically implanted oxygen stores would only be worse for vacuum exposure

[odd bloom]

idk i kind of had hyper oxygenated fluid more or less that got injected into the bloodstream

so it feeds the red blood cells without breathing

[sour raven]

Well you still got pressure to deal with, well the lack of pressure

[odd bloom]

yeah your blood i believe does boil no

[sour raven]

Yes

[unique rune]

yeah the problem is less the lack of oxygen and more the whole thing about being directly exposed to the vacuum of space

[modest marsh]

This presupposes that Spartans have a normal level of oxygen consumption

Their respiratory functions might be unrealistically efficient but by all indications they need to suck more air than regular people do to stay functioning

At least, as long as they aren’t in a medically induced coma

[obsidian thistle]

A weird source but I'll take it lol

https://x.com/Unyshek/status/1984370428274679991?t=IsFJwj8bUA_3XJ-imDpR7w&s=19

John Junyszek (@Unyshek)

Happy Halloween 👻

always loved this ODST armor 🔥

X · Oct 31, 2025, 9:22 PM

The name of one of the ODST from We Are ODST. Wales

And yes this is indeed one of said costumes

Pinpointed on this bts photo

[empty bloom]

Nice

[wispy pewter]

ODSTs so cool they were completely left out from Infinite and the show

[modest marsh]

It makes sense they weren’t in the show because the show was going out of its way to portray the UNSC in an antagonistic light so it wouldn’t make sense to have the guys that purely exist to be cool

If they did a faithful/accurate depiction of ODSTs they’d be sociopathic thugs for Spartans to beat up

That is, if they’re remaining consistent with the TFOR depiction

[wispy pewter]

Hollywood writers are incapable of writing a cool sci fi military faction without making them evil

[modest marsh]

Uh well there’s a reason for that

[wispy pewter]

They took the part of Halo canon that the UNSC are fighting insurrectionists and made it into slop

[modest marsh]

I don’t like the show but it isn’t just because they made the UNSC villainous

I’d argue it’s pretty authentic to the material that inspired halo to begin with

343i probably told the showrunners that halo was heavily influenced by the likes of alien, starship troopers, and Robocop and they made the logical inference that that means it’s critical of the systems in place that created the Spartans

That being said I think they went too far and eliminated the subtlety/moral grayness that the original fiction had insofar as how the human government was navigating the insurrection

Ie chattel slavery being a thing

[wispy pewter]

I think that and they basically made MC a second character and introduced... a covenant girlfriend??

But the good parts are Kai who is the strongest of the entire team outside of MC and Perez which ngl is a great original character

she should join Halo canon

[modest marsh]

Kai is canon

Or rather, she has a canon counterpart that shares the same name

*They’re retconned to have been the 3 extra Spartans that appear on the Arcadia level of Halo Wars featuring Omega Team

*silver team that is

[wispy pewter]

Yeah that I know. Was talking about Perez tho

[vagrant ocean]

Cymru?

[carmine sleet]

The Rebel Alliance exists. They are literally the good guys in Star Wars and I'd say they're cool for fighting against the fascist Empire

[wispy pewter]

There were cool. But when they they took power and formed the New Republic they lost a lot of Aura. But that I will blame disney writing

[carmine sleet]

You know they formed the New Republic in legends as well, right?

[wispy pewter]

Yeah but afaik the first order doesn’t exist there. But they way the sequels presented them and then Mandalorian, they were pathetic ngl

[modest marsh]

They were just called something else

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Remnant

[fading flume]

I had an interesting thought. Do we think the Primordial managed to advance beyond a typical Precursor with unique connections to the flood and no inhibitions, or perhaps did it devolve and not retain the full extent of the Precursors power and knowledge? I do feel the most logical answer behind what the creatures the Primordial was made up of as the earliest form of the Gravemind were likely other Precursors.

[stoic hamlet]

It’s a pretty expected turnaround, tbh.

Honestly them actually forming a government after being what they were is more surprising than the government failing due to outside interests.

Realistically it should have collapsed due to infighting and political differences.

[slim salmon]

How does cryosleep work? I mean, I know how it works, but are there any laws or something?

Imagine being a Marine and going into cryosleep. Then 5 years later you wake and find you have commited tax evasion and your son has joined a gang or something.

And then your house has new residents.

Are there things to stop that from happening?

[carmine sleet]

There's not any specific laws (That we know of) but you might be interested in what is on the Halopedia page about Cryopods https://www.halopedia.org/Cryo_chamber#Technical_specifications

[carmine sleet]

Would you believe me if I said there was a crew on a ship who were on ice for almost 30 years?

[slim salmon]

Yes

UNSC Spirit of Fire

[stoic hamlet]

The universe fluctuates on how important Cryo is, and how often it’s used, and for how long.

You’ve got stuff like Johnson mentioning he’d spent over half his career in Cryo, Spartan II’s (or war-era Spartans in general) spending most of their lives in cryopods, or stuff like Dirt mentioning the same…

…to then modern lore having ships taje only hours to get places and even during the war cryo’s basically never mentioned, or only ever as a plot device rather than a fact of the setting.

[marble lion]

It is also mentioned that the cryo chambers can slowdown aging as well. Johnson was born in 2474 and he was 78 when killed on the Ark by Guilty Sparks.

[slim salmon]

Guys did you even read what I said after "How does crysosleep work?"

[stoic hamlet]

The point I was going for is “we can’t say”.

Because Halo’s so utterly lackadaisical with basic ship-travel, we have no idea how they’d handle the situations you’ve presented. If HS was more consistent/cared about consistency more on stuff like this, maybe we could give an answer.

[empty bloom]

Halo is very fast and loose on a lot of really important details. I'm pretty sure we didn't even know what UEG really was for a long time, or at least, we didn't know what their actual government's most basic structures were.

[coarse hamlet]

There's a very good book that explores that idea called the forever war. Protagonist is conscripted to fight aliens and because of relatively a normal deployment time on his end is like 20 years in earth time and the culture has changed radically and everyone has moved on with their lives. ||he goes out on another deployment and when he comes back everyone are clones and a hivemind and also the wars been over for awhile||
Written by a vietnam draftee so its very much underlined with his lived experiences of that phenomena

[slim salmon]

Moral of the story: Don't sign up to the UNSC

[frigid heart]

@ONI I found one

Come get him

[stoic hamlet]

One of my favourite books.

Genuinely one of the best science fiction books that’s been written, IMO.

Those who travel through collapsars experience no travel time (sub light travel still takes months) but time passes for everyone else due to relativity.

So vast, sweeping changes can occur even if for you nothing’s changed at all.

It’s also a very blunt book, it doesn’t censor itself at all, and for the time it was written (1970’s) was very progressive, which is sadly missing in a lot of media today, IMO.

Pretty much any quote from it on here would get you banned, which is both kind of funny… but also rather sad, IMO.

[vagrant ocean]

The UEG is apparently a representative democracy not unlike the US, and it also appears to have a parliament,

[empty bloom]

:>

[vagrant ocean]

But that’s the extent we know.

No info on how elections work

[odd bloom]

one of the worst militaries in sci fi to get dragged into in a way

[slim salmon]

Obviously.

You have a 90% chance of death by plasma in every encounter with aliens.

You have a 99% chance of being infected and still feel your limbs breaking and cannibalising your buddies before your mind actually turns in every encounter with zombies.

You have a 30% chance of death by bullets in encounters with insurrectionists but that was a long time ago

And if you're a child, are smart, and are good at fighting then you have a 100% chance to get thrown into military training and become a supersoldier lab rat

At least there's Sergeant Johnson to stop you from going insane.

RIP

[uncut onyx]

Nah. The worst one is Imperium Space marines.

[stoic hamlet]

Less than 50% actually.

Originally they had funding for 300 candidates, dropped that to 150, and only took 75.

[slim salmon]

How did they drop it to 150

Did the kidnappers get guilty for kidnapping kids and replacing them with clones or smth

[stoic hamlet]

They didn’t have the funding.

[slim salmon]

Huh

[stoic hamlet]

Definitely not. The Imperial Guard take that spot in 40K handily.

[uncut onyx]

May be. I have no idea about 40K exept that this is one (if not THE) worst "big" franchise universes to live in.

• some generaly known stuff

[slim salmon]

They don't treat them well.

They eat flesh.

And they don't sleep.

[stoic hamlet]

Who’s “they” in this context?

[slim salmon]

Space Marines

The Astra Militarum is worse.

[stoic hamlet]

They’re treated better than the Guard.

Always have been.

[slim salmon]

And the Emperor himself is a living skeleton

[uncut onyx]

...

I have derailed the disscision, havent I?

[stoic hamlet]

Ehh, not really.

This is how convos go.

[slim salmon]

They're still treated worse than the UNSC.

The UNSC is aware of human rights you know

[uncut onyx]

"He is the Carrion Lord of the vast Imperium of Man for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day so that He may never truly die."

Hallo universe is nowere near this grimm.

...
Come to think of it, comparing anything Halo-* with anything 40K-* is just wrong.

[slim salmon]

Tyranids vs Flood

Astra Militarum vs Marines

idk

[stoic hamlet]

Space Marines are not treated worse than the UNSC.

They have total and utter authority over their own dominions, have the support of millions of bonded serfs, and are armed with the best war-gear available, and worshipped by the common people as angels.

By contrast, Spartans are fully part of the military, and pretty well sign their lives away to being just soldiers. One could argue Space Marines are less individual and generally making a pastiche of humanity (as Arkhan Land suggests in Warhawk) but they’re still definitely held to a better standard than Spartans.

[uncut onyx]

AM have numbers.

[uncut onyx]

Nah. Teranid is zerg. No Flood.
Flood is more like replicators from Stargate.

[uncut onyx]

From what I know, marines are brainwashed to state of loosing their self, arent they?

[stoic hamlet]

It depends on the chapter.

They don’t lose themselves, though. It’s more just incredibly stringent indoctrination.

[uncut onyx]

Hm. Still would prefer been spartan over been space marine any day.
Thought, given choice, I wouldn’t like to be ether.

[stoic hamlet]

For example, the Imperial Fists indoctrination is described as thus:

His only real weapon of value was his mindset, the heritage of the VII, the unquestioning, indoctrinated will to stand and deny.
That focus kept him planted like a rock. The discipline, that praetorian defiance, branded on his genetics and reinforced by decades of intense training and the voice of Rogal Dorn, stripped all fear from him, annihilated doubt and hesitation, erased any notion that what he faced was better or stronger or faster or bigger than him. The mindset fixed him. It anchored him like extreme gravity. It locked Bleumel and Thijs Reus too. It pinned them in place, though time around them had unhinged, and become a psychotic blur that permitted no skill. Diaz stood, in the name of his Lord Dorn.

• Saturnine

[uncut onyx]

Yea, thanks no thanks.

[stoic hamlet]

They’re not as indoctrinated as Imperium Stormtroopers/ Tempestus Scions, they physically cannot disobey an order given to them by a superior.

[uncut onyx]

Yea. That sounds even better (no).

You prob havent herd of it, but it sounds like Dragon’s chains.
(This is from Wormverse. In this context Dragon is an AI, and "chains" refer to set of paranoid restrictions she was forced to operate under. One of said restrictions was "one shall confer to any order given by lawfull authority".) IMO, been bound by such restrictions is one of the worst situations one can find themselves in.

[wispy pewter]

let it go

[wispy pewter]

then why don't the innies just vote better

[empty bloom]

Presumably, it's because they don't actually get a vote.

[modest marsh]

Tyranny by majority etc etc

What little legislative power they do have for major government decisions probably doesn’t have the impact they’d want

[vagrant ocean]

Earth and the Inner Colonies have priority voting. Not unlike swing states in the US such as Florida and Cali.

Basically if Earth, Reach, and Tribute vote one way, the motion is carried. Even if half the other colonies don’t.

[empty bloom]

I don't want to talk politics but calling either of those swing states is really funny.

[vagrant ocean]

Big number state. In my defense I am sleep deprived.

[wispy pewter]

Earth having more pwoer makes sense because they have like half the human population in the entire UEG

[vagrant ocean]

Eh, a quarter.

[wispy pewter]

Because according to Halo lore the most populous colony has less than a billion

which is surprising

Reach only has like 700 million people

[vagrant ocean]

40 billion people spread across a couple hundred worlds.

[wispy pewter]

probably half that post HCW

[vagrant ocean]

Meaning the average colony has like, 150 million.

[wispy pewter]

They got like 800 colonies

[vagrant ocean]

23 billion dead by 2553 according to estimates made by Cortana. That’s a 57.5% reduction in population.

Roughly.

[wispy pewter]

that is terrible dang

The covenant got off easy

[vagrant ocean]

The average world outside of Earth had 37.5 million people.

And many of those planets would be completely exterminated.

[vagrant ocean]

I mean, billions of Covenant died during the war. The holy city alone had billions living on it.

And it’s safe to say the entire population was subsumed.

Not to mention the countless fleets wiped out during the war.

It only seems like they got off easy because we don’t really know much about the Covenant home front during the war.

Also, most of Earth was evacuated in the early stages of the battle. So casualties were low.

[empty bloom]

You know what's funny?

Ex-Covenant refugees are a wonderful litmus test.

In terms of how to view struggle.

[unique rune]

no don't you see the UNSC is dumb and bad and stupid for not rounding up and exterminating all of the ex-Covenant on Earth

humans should be mega genociding all of the Elites ever

[vagrant ocean]

(This message brought to you by the noble patriots at Sapien Sunrise)

[empty bloom]

I wonder if the statue of liberty is considered a UEG cultural relic.

I like to think it is.

[modest marsh]

That number is probably less optimistic than it could’ve been to be fair

There were many “lost” colonies that the covenant skipped

[empty bloom]

I like to think the UEG holds the script, the creed it embodies as sacred on humanity's birthplace as the blood of the Covenant.

[vagrant ocean]

Probably.

[empty bloom]

It'd go a lot to explain how Humanity still has a heart in the UEG as kept tightly as it apparently does.

Ah, crap. Emotional Trenchbird is in the chat.

[modest marsh]

Also yeah I’m fairly certain a similar number of covenant have died as a consequence of the war

At minimum, two major tithe worlds were NOVA bombed

And the loss of high charity

Plus the blooding wars

Now Oth sonin is gone

[vagrant ocean]

Despite the diabolical nonsense the UEG did to keep their grasp on the colonies ironclad, I’m certain they still hold true to the New Colossus.

[vagrant ocean]

In the aftermath? Definitely.

[vagrant ocean]

And I’m sure many extend such a welcome to former Covenant citizens.

[modest marsh]

War time attrition favors the covenant, which is to say, they killed waaaaay more than they lost

[frigid heart]

1000000% based

[modest marsh]

But it caught up with them towards the very end

[vagrant ocean]

Well, they were always on the offensive and used blitz tactics, we had no way of attacking their home worlds.

The UNSC only “won” because the Covenant collapsed.

[modest marsh]

Until we did

[vagrant ocean]

Obviously that was after the war, and even then we got lucky.

During the war we were being beaten into a corner.

[empty bloom]

I like to think humanity's hospitality ultimately won the day in terms of how we viewed things on Earth even after.

[modest marsh]

https://www.halopedia.org/Saepon'kal

[vagrant ocean]

Even the most anti-UEG person was willing to lay down their life for the pale blue dot, the only home we ever knew.

[vagrant ocean]

One planet NOVA bombed during the war isn’t really much. It’s like breaking a guy’s nose while he’s ripping your arms off.

[modest marsh]

They had bigger mega cities here than Earth man lol

https://www.halopedia.org/images/1/12/HINF_Concept_Sunaion.jpg?85d99

[empty bloom]

I'm kinda trying to write a scene right now of a Spartan who was born far from Earth, and having something of an emotional breakdown upon seeing the Statue of Liberty, which is being visited by both humans and ex-Covenant both on her first visit to her species' homeworld.

It's at least an interesting write.

[modest marsh]

We don’t know their population but that’s a highly developed world

I mean, those structures on it are visibly the size of countries

[vagrant ocean]

I have one character I like to work on sometimes who’s an Earthborn veteran of the war, fought almost all 30 years, and who after it ended went on a sort of pilgrimage to ex-Covenant worlds to better understand them and to heal his scars.

[empty bloom]

I wish Halo had kind of tried to explore the peace more.

It feels more true to the post OT timeframe.

[vagrant ocean]

Fleeting though it was.

[vagrant ocean]

He mainly did humanitarian deliveries after the war but was still part of the reserves.

[empty bloom]

Like, things are still bad. Cults are trying to bring back the Covenant, Humanity's failing to actually bring itself back to solidarity. But in the JOZ, on Earth, there's still that spark of comraderie. The drive to bring anything into our flock, no matter how different. A Sangheili craftsman into a workshop, a human linguist into a class of English for nonhumans.

Spartans working to bring peace alongside the Swords' best.

For a moment, however fleeting, there was the potential for a lasting concert of worlds.

[vagrant ocean]

A Sangheili artisan making prosthetic limbs for refugee children.

Who knows, maybe even the sparks of love would begin to shine.

We do have evidence of Sangheili warriors falling for Spartans.

[empty bloom]

Yeah, but that feels more tongue-in-cheek.

[modest marsh]

While I’m not opposed to the idea of greater emphasis on depicting the civil coexistence of aliens and humans, I don’t think it can really be done without acknowledging that overwhelming majority of humans should (rightfully) hold extreme prejudices against aliens in general

And for that reason I think it’s been avoided

[empty bloom]

Right, but the point is that both sides should be making an effort.

[modest marsh]

Due to the inevitable uncomfortable parallels with real world racial tensions

[empty bloom]

@stoic hamlet And I have talked quite a few times about how Halo is dreadfully afraid to touch real world politics when it is actually in one of the greatest positions to do so.

[vagrant ocean]

Let me inhale my copium.

[empty bloom]

There's so much pain between humanity and the Ex-Covenant.

When in reality there's a lot to be made of working together and trying to mend wounds. There's no forgiveness, but there is healing.

[vagrant ocean]

Forgiveness would take generations,

[empty bloom]

And if that's what it takes, well.

The second best time to plant a tree is today.

[frigid heart]

This is a very interesting topic I haven’t really thought about.
I’ll think about this for a while

[vagrant ocean]

I’m certain on many worlds, especially ones where there is a joint SoS-UNSC occupation, it’d be relatively quick.

[empty bloom]

Hence my point about the JOZ.

[vagrant ocean]

I wouldn’t be shocked if there were hidden interspecies relationships in the JOZ.

[empty bloom]

It's not actually uncommon for Sangheili and Humanity to work together on that frontier. They come to relative peace quite quickly-even the flood cultists are willing to bond with humans over cultural artifacts.

It is human nature to anthropomorphize those unlike us. To care about when they suffer, to care about when they need help. The natural human drive is to cooperate, and it wouldn't logically be much different amongst most other sentient life. Cooperation is a strength that builds houses, feeds the hungry, salves the sick and injured. Cooperation helps bring people together in times of strife in a way that simple zeal and faith cannot, applied to pain.

[vagrant ocean]

No better way to achieve peace than being forced to work with your old enemy.

[modest marsh]

I mean let’s be clear, the standout example of this being depicted is Legacy of Onyx, but no one likes to think or talk about that book because it’s sooooo laaaaaaaame

[vagrant ocean]

It’s our greatest strength.

[empty bloom]

Yeah, I think people in Halo's wheelhouse are kinda forced to write about war and conflict when I think it misses the moment.

[vagrant ocean]

Halo Studios, print a Human-Sangheili romance novel.

[vagrant ocean]

I’d unironically buy it.

A young Marine veteran enthralled by the smell of clean feathers,

[empty bloom]

But then I can't see Halo fans buying a book that talks about a soldier coming home from war to find there isn't much call for a trench raider in a world that needs builders.

Someone whose dreams are coated with gnashing fangs and searing plasma.

[vagrant ocean]

A Sangheili woman seeing a human warrior for the first time, becoming intrigued by the small creature.

[vagrant ocean]

Lowkey I think it’d be a great miniseries of like PTSD debriefings. Veterans sent to what’s left of the worlds they lived on to finally face the reality of what happened.

[empty bloom]

I wonder if Lert is a linguistically accurate name.

for Sangheili.

[vagrant ocean]

Lert, a Sangheili immigrant to Earth who is known as Lert the Turk.

He makes the best kholo kebabs in Old Town.

[vagrant ocean]

We don’t see enough of the psychological war.

[modest marsh]

https://youtu.be/qZp6zUARDvM?si=O4xZ7knklxUyu1zt

Not quite the same but idk, I think this is neat

[empty bloom]

I liked this series tbh

[vagrant ocean]

I’ll check it out at some point.

[wispy pewter]

seeks refuge on earth
goes and blow up Phoenix

[empty bloom]

Yeah see understanding the difference between one zealot and entire freaking species of people is kinda hard for most Halo fans, which is why I tend to think most Halo fans are bad at this whole "Understanding people" thing

[vagrant ocean]

Meanwhile that character I was talking about is specifically taking the journey he’s on to understand the Sangheili.

[unique rune]

ONI did all that stuff to kill Sangheili so clearly all of humanity should die

[fading flume]

Many things are hard for general Halo fans to understand, so I’m not surprised

[vagrant ocean]

Halo fans are one of those groups that lack media literacy.

[fading flume]

“Noble Six and Master Chief are the only ones who’re Hyper Lethal!”

“343 is a fan fic, I can choose to believe it or not.”

[vagrant ocean]

Hyper lethal is such a stupid concept. Literally 13 year old level nonsense.

[fading flume]

Like, all Spartans were for the most part created equally, it’s only with time and experience that some managed to become more effective than others, and at the time it made no sense to just slap “hyper lethal” onto it. Besides, any of Blue Team qualified just as much as MC at the time, and yet.

I do think Master Chief is the most effective Spartan (a combination of his innate Luck, well roundedness, and experience) as it was stated in his Halo infinite armor description, but regardless all Spartans have certain knacks to them others don’t.

I also fail to see what Noble 6 did that was so mind boggling besides doing some dirty work for ONI against other humans.

[modest marsh]

I think halo is fundamentally inalienable from “teenage edgelord fantasy” nor is that perspective any less valid just because it’s an imperfect reflection of the human condition

Spartans are child soldiers who were encouraged to be what they are

[versed salmon]

whats that mean, teenage edgelord fantasy?

[modest marsh]

Loaded words

[fading flume]

You ever seen one of those power anime’s?

Where the MC is just an overpowered blob of perfection with zero flaws

[versed salmon]

ahhhh

[fading flume]

I’m guessing that’s what they mean, the idea of someone wanting that for themself

[modest marsh]

There is an idealistic, hyper competitive, and intrinsically violent world view specific to those with a juvenile understanding of the world and the Spartan program sought to specifically harness that

[fading flume]

Indeed, Spartans are definitely not “powerscalable.” That is not the narrative they’re built on, nor will ever be.

[modest marsh]

I’m not sure what you mean by that

What I’m saying is that the idea of creating hierarchy within the system of Spartans is an intentional attempt to motivate them

That’s not really up for debate, their training was largely predicated on coercing them into situations where there are winners and losers

And not everyone can be winners

John himself was uncomfortable with that

But he still wanted to win

[empty bloom]

Basically the entire Spartan training program can be taken as: "What if we applied Eugenicist freakshow philosophy nearly 600 years out of date to a bunch of teens?"

[modest marsh]

I’m mostly talking about the role of competition and hierarchy within the ranks of Spartans

[fading flume]

Where what I’m saying connects to that is how people used the results of this higherarchy to deem one objectively better than the other, which I don’t really like, if that makes sense.

Sorry if that doesn’t make sense, I’m a bit fuzzy right now.

[empty bloom]

Yeah but I feel like making fun of Bungie and Microsoft for not knowing how science works

[modest marsh]

For instance, when we’re first introduced to the Gammas, it’s 3 teams of of them that are competing against each other for “top honors”

By the very nature of that even being a thing, you’ve introduced the idea of a ranking system

You could call it something else but it may as well be the same thing as “hyper lethal”

That doesn’t make it right or quantifiable, but it could be argued as a useful training motivator and it happens to be an example of diegesis between worldbuilding and the culture surrounding the franchise itself, which is inescapably a competitive shooter experience

[fading flume]

I’m perfectly fine with a ranking system, it’s just how they executed it was terrible and I’d wish more autonomy and flexibility for ranking to account for different talents.

There was “hyper lethal,” that’s it. With zero context they just threw that concept at us.

[modest marsh]

Well, imo, the context is obvious, it’s just kinda silly

Bungie was telling us that Six is equivalent to Chief in a very unsubtle manner

They can’t get into specifics in universe because the whole point of Six is to be a true player analog

[fading flume]

True, I just call it “zero context” mainly cuz the context itself is good for nothing. Ok, so this dude is as good as the Chief and no one else is. Why? Who is this fellow? And more importantly, where’s all the other legendary Spartans?

Not to mention the whole ordeal has left a bad taste in my mouth. There is a perpetual misconception that this concept still exists as is during the Bungie era

[twin parcel]

Oh God this makes so much sense.

Not a big fan of eugenics used in the racial way but I can understand why social darwinism exists. The strong adapt and survive, the weak do not. SPARTANS are an amazing example of darwinism applied wrongly.

I mean hell, darwinism is prevalent in nearly every species. The reason homo sapiens survived but Neanderthals didn't is proof of that and how thee strongest adapt. You apply it to a bunch of kidnapped child soldiers and you get darwinism done completely wrong.

Boom, you now have a group of anti social emotionally constipated child soldiers who believe everything is a competition they must win.

[stoic hamlet]

The ranking aspect is a thing all over the place, though.

It’s a key component of motivation.

And even without the aspect of making it a contest, giving out awards and rewards to others can help motivate people.

It’s not really something done to show someone is “better”, but instead to inspire others to achieve that sort of aptitude, or strive for it.

Almost all actions and skills have an element of competition to them, but if framed right, it’s to benefit the group as a whole, not just the winners.

[modest marsh]

That’s true, but that is to say, having a “specialest boy/girl” title only works if it’s something only so many people can obtain, and the highest honor is one that is as exclusive as possible

[stoic hamlet]

As an example, when I was a wee youngin’, a Cadet, I tried out for the shooting team. I didn’t get in, sadly but those who did were rewarded with a small shout out in front of the full parade, and the best shooter among them was awarded a distinctive patch to wear. This wasn’t used as a “look how much better they are than you!” It was framed as a “look how much skill and talent we have, and look to them for their drive and commitment.”

I was, a few times, picked for honour guards and Remembrance Day vigils, so that was nice. But in that context, it was framed as less of a reward for skill, and more of a way to honour those who’d come before, and the history of the Regiment.

If you break it down, it was a “you did X better than that person, so we’re picking you” but that’s not how it was framed, and the framing really makes all the difference.

It’s a collectivist mentality. The team comes before the individual, and the individual skill sets make a better team.

[modest marsh]

I guess it depends on how aspirational/idealistic you want to frame the culture behind each of the Spartan generations, because on a certain level I’d assume that for the benefit of TFOR’s sake you’re not really supposed to get the idea that the methods used for training the IIs were aspirational, and that their success with them was in some ways in spite of the toxic environment they had to endure

[stoic hamlet]

I’d argue that’s a fault of Nylund/how outsiders view a lot of military culture.

Though obviously it depends on the military.

But the key aspect in any force is collectivism. The idea of putting the team and objective above the individual.

You don’t do that by making the trainees/recruits whatever hate each other, or compete with each other via malicious intent.

you do that by giving them a goal to work towards and strive for, and highlight their individual skills as an asset, rather than focus on their negative traits or present one or more as better than the others.

It’s basic psychology, I’d argue.

[modest marsh]

Well, to the extent of valuing teamwork, I can’t really say any fiction besides maybe the games undersells the value of teamwork

Oof, not my best grammar

[stoic hamlet]

But that’s part of where IMO the whole “who is the best Spartan” or whatever question falls flat, because it’s missing the forest for the trees and focusing on the idea of someone being “better” than someone else, when in actuality no one would be graded in such a way, especially not in a military context.

[modest marsh]

But in any case, the first lesson John learns is the need to consider himself part of a team rather than an individual

[stoic hamlet]

Mhm.

But it’s an unfortunate idea a lot of people have, and where you see it in a lot of fandoms, where powerscaling is a common thing, and Halo especially tends to directly try and lean into this, with stuff like “John is the best of them” or “the greatest Spartan” or what have you.

So it’s understandable why you have people present this as objective fact, because the universe itself and the people writing and making it say it is… but it’s I’d argue a really immature and childish notion, and presents a toxic outlook on things.

[modest marsh]

On some level Halo kinda has to reckon with the fact that it chose to draw from both historical military and religious/mythological iconography that fundamentally cannot be simultaneously true

I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the world goes dim and cold. I am hero.

[minor sky]

That's Marathon

unless I'm forgetting some lore detail

[modest marsh]

We’re still doing marathon references, given ||the weapon’s name||

[minor sky]

I mean sure

(I am very happy they are keeping up the sword naming convention)

[stoic hamlet]

Personally I disagree. I think they can be true, but only if the religious and mythological aspects are presented as tragic.

If the idea of fate and success and being “the best” is presented amidst the idea of loss, or isolation then it can work.

Sigismund or even the Emperor (somewhat) in 40K (technically the Horus Heresy) are good example, or Eren and Reiner in Attack on Titan are another.

It shifts the idea of being “the best” or “the chosen one” to a Greek tragedy where the hero is someone to be mourned, not aspired towards. Where their successes are juxtaposed with failures in other ways. In a military context this can be the idea of them being “the last one standing”, or what have you.

[minor sky]

My favorite take on the whole "chosen one" clitche is probably The Matrix sequels. At least themeatically

Flawed execution aside, having it be revealed that Neo's status as "the one" is really just another part of the system he is trying to rebel against is a great inversion of the trope

Takes the entirety of the first film (and most of the 2nd) and flips it on its head. Everything that happened was mostly just the machine opperating as intended

[wispy pewter]

Disney ruined the chosen one by making the sequels

[minor sky]

What does that even mean?

They ruined the entire trope of "the chosen one" because of their mess of a trilogy?

[wispy pewter]

Anakin brought balance to the force by killing the sith. Only for that to be disregarded because somehow Palpatine returned

[empty bloom]

No, Disney didn't 'ruin' a trope. I don't really care for the Sequels, but there is a difference in message that is extremely important in that and their extra media.

[slim salmon]

You're talking about Marathon lore?

BRING IT ON

[empty bloom]

"Chosen one" centric media in general is losing ground overall in favor of a more 'collective good' type of philosophy in film or otherwise.

And the point of the sequels, or the direction generally taken by Star Wars media after Disney acquired it, is that anyone can be a 'chosen one'. Anakin had brought back balance after steepening it in favor of evil under Sidious, but maintaining that unsteady and tenuous peace fell on the rest of the galaxy.

Good comes at the cost of the actions of thousands a day waking up and deciding to fight together to make a better future for themselves, their children, and their neighbors.

[fading flume]

I feel like those titles for Chief are less so to do with powerscaling and more so to do with the statements given to us by Halo themselves that pretty much confirm such from an out-of-universe perspective (that he’s both the most effective and the greatest).

As a powerscaler myself, it’s more so things about “the strongest” or what dimensonality the Chief scales to, if that makes sense that concern the majority of power scalers.

[empty bloom]

I don't think Powerscalers really take into account many factors of anything. If the odd visit to Vs Spacebattles is any indication.

Like the time some guy was seriously trying to argue the entire Spartan IV program trying to kill just Master Chief aboard the Infinity was somehow a pubstomp in Chief's favor.

[fading flume]

That’s fishy to say the least

[modest marsh]

I don’t think any serious person would be proposing that argument unless they’re the type of person that’s using obtuse scaling chains

“Chief slightly crumpled the door he rode from the forerunner keyship which means his grip strength exceeds the yields of MAC rounds”

[empty bloom]

Eh, it tends to become a favorites game more often than it doesn't.

[fading flume]

It gets vastly more ridiculous than that

What if I were to tell you people think he’s somehow 11th dimensional

[modest marsh]

Locke is lucky to have not been atomized after being in close proximity with Chief

[modest marsh]

Is that literally just because of slipspace

[carmine sleet]

https://tenor.com/view/dandadan-dumbfounded-momo-ayase-ayase-momo-ken-takakura-gif-14575386895602202640

I have to know how people came to that conclusion

[fading flume]

Yep. Precursor and Forerunner nonsense as well.

[empty bloom]

Conversely I'm not even really that convinced Chief could solo an Elemental from Battletech in a 1v1 in an open field unless he had like, a Spartan Laser.

[fading flume]

“Since this thing is higher dimensional (a literal concept of the universe), so is Chief (a particularly dude)”

[carmine sleet]

That's so dumb

[modest marsh]

In fairness, Forerunner technology is powered by natal universes

[fading flume]

But then they just stick it onto Chief as well

[carmine sleet]

That'd be like saying Luke Skywalker could destroy planets because the Empire built a planet destroyer twice

[modest marsh]

But like, not in a way that is meaningfully quantifiable beyond things that happen within the universe…so…

[fading flume]

(What if I were to tell you people have Luke at a level of power where dimensonality becomes irrelevant)

[carmine sleet]

https://tenor.com/view/halo5-promethean-knight-head-bump-gif-13721229

[empty bloom]

This reminds me of that guy on Reddit who was trying to fight me to the figurative death over the Covenant Carbine's impact strength.

Old Halo canon stated it hit around as hard as a .50 BMG, when literally every indication possible outside of the old Halo Encylopedia says that isn't the case.

Mostly, y'know, because I know what happens when people get hit by actual .50 BMGs, and dying of radiation poisoning tends to be a lot slower than having your entire GI tract removed by inertia.

[fading flume]

I feel you, most things just can’t be powerscaled, like at all. Once dimensionality is brought into it, it gets all wacky

[fading flume]

“Let’s argue with people they have hands on experience because I am a Redditor that knows more than a vet!”

[empty bloom]

You don't even have to be a veteran to know how hard a .50 BMG hits! You can go and shoot a damn Barrett at a range outside of Vegas!

[modest marsh]

Eh, part of that is because it’s highly variable how fast the projectile is traveling by virtue of it being self propelled up to hypersonic velocities

[empty bloom]

I'm even referencing a specific guy when I talk about disembowelment by .50 Cal. There was a Marine who got hit by an ND shot through like, several layers of sand and six tents.

He literally got disemboweled by the shot and survived. Held in his meat with his shirt.

[modest marsh]

Also, elites have armor that can stop a few 12.7mm rounds as is

[empty bloom]

Oh no I'm not doing this crap again

[fading flume]

I definitely am in no place to try a 50 bmg and most people aren’t. And besides, I feel like a weapon would always hit harder during the heat of battle since your constantly moving around and aiming at differently placed targets (please, correct me if I’m wrong coz I wouldn’t now)

[modest marsh]

Doing what? It’s math

[empty bloom]

The math of the book does not match with observable reality.

And it's literally one book that says this. It's like getting all your lore from the Spartan Manual and taking it as gospel.

[modest marsh]

7.62 delivers +3kj, Elite shields take over a dozen sometimes to deplete

Most loads of 50BMG cap at around 20kj

[fading flume]

Where does this info come from?

[modest marsh]

I’m talking about real bullets

[empty bloom]

Counterpoint; A guy got shot in the shoulder with it in a book and doesn't have his whole arm ripped off.

[modest marsh]

Sometimes elites take multiple 14.5mm rounds to drop

[empty bloom]

This reminds me of the Vietnamese Two Step Viper gag from Venture Brothers.

[fading flume]

Ah ok

[modest marsh]

I think the argument that the carbine is depicted inconsistently is distinct from whether it can or should be comparable to 50BMG, because that would already put it on the lower end of destructive force other covenant small arms are capable of, up to and including slagging centimeters of armor and vaporizing entire limbs

I’m also unsure what instance you could be referring to, it’s not really a weapon that shows up often in books

Maybe collateral damage? Idk

[empty bloom]

Consistency generally puts it as not being .50 BMG, especially given the frequent issues the canon has with how destructive everything is anyways and the book the statistic came from generally being an issue.

[empty bloom]

It was the one where the Shipmaster is visiting the planet he glassed.

[modest marsh]

There’s no relevant book statistic for the carbine

What I assume you’re thinking of is a given mass for the weapon when loaded vs unloaded to extrapolate projectile mass

[empty bloom]

If there isn't one, then I don't know where the hell people keep yapping at me about fifty cals from.

[wispy pewter]

he held open a black hole in legends btw

[empty bloom]

If it's just that crap, I'm just going to put that down as "Sci Fi Writer is not a mathematician and doesn't understand the subject in a practical capacity" and ignore it.

[modest marsh]

This came from an old Bungie blog and later it was established that the carbine is effectively a bolter that fires rounds at an appreciable 700m/s before accelerating to an unknown velocity in the hypersonic range

[empty bloom]

Oh, Bungie Blogs? Yeah, I'm taking what I said above and cubing it.

If anything really gets retconned in Halo it's toning down the old ridiculous stats for things in both good and bad ways. I'm chalking that one up as a good change.

Human weapons on the other hand...

[wispy pewter]

none of this would be an issue if they gave every marine standard issue railguns

[modest marsh]

Either way, it’s a gun firing hypersonic gyrojets that may more or may not have an explosive submunition given that it’s the same technology as fuel rod cannons

“And it also poisons you” doesn’t seem like a reason to think it’s actually weaker than advertised, it just makes me think elites are prone to overkill

[empty bloom]

Nah, my point there was that it wouldn't be nearly as significant of a medical concern as it tends to get treated the few times one shows up.

[modest marsh]

I think this only comes up…twice?

Outside of reference materials that is, which you dispute

[empty bloom]

Sue me, I'm a stickler for ignoring stats that don't make sense.

Or at least are wildly inconsistent with observable impact.

Like, the gamut of Carbine shots runs from 'survivable impact on an armorless civilian' to 'Nearly cracks a prototype Mark VI helmet into pieces through a shield with one shot and causes the Spartan to bleed out of the now broken helmet'

[fading flume]

But does that make him beyond the concept of dimensonality? No. I’ve already known that and it’s a large star level feat at best depending on the size of the black hole.

[empty bloom]

The latter would put it more in line with a Beam Rifle or Sniper Rifle, which amusingly is present in the same comic.

[modest marsh]

I think the trend more consistently portrays it with having notable armor penetration at the very least, given it’s presented as a consistent threat to Spartans and has pierced the plating more successfully than most other weapons have

[empty bloom]

Yeah, that'd make more sense.

That said, that comic was one of the ones about Black Team, so... I still take that with a grain of salt.

[modest marsh]

A one off example where a civilian doesn’t get ripped apart just tells me “well maybe that was the exception” and it’s not even a discrepancy that couldn’t be explained away but differences in the ammunition

[empty bloom]

Part of the problem with the Carbine specifically is that the only time it actually visibly injures the Spartan getting hit is the Black Team situation.

[modest marsh]

Same way in direction of the bloodline comic, that could’ve been shooting the equivalent of HE

[modest marsh]

Nah, Empty Throne

Jai took a full mag

[empty bloom]

I still need to read that.

I have it, still need to read it.

[modest marsh]

(That was the second time that carbine poisoning came up)

[empty bloom]

So he tanks the full mag?

[modest marsh]

Well, he takes 3 slugs in the gut after his shields are depleted

[empty bloom]

Not grand.

Hmn. I mean, we know Carbines can take multiple ammo types, or at least two, maybe a few more if the Halo Online ones are ever canonized.

Still think the concept of a "Carbine-Shotgun" is pretty cool.

[modest marsh]

This is also how I rationalize Daisy’s death, since for the most part regular needler rounds aren’t supposed to be any good at armor penetration (ie Talon of the Lost REQ)

Doesn’t explain why the shards don’t pop, but oh well

[empty bloom]

She got unlucky and encountered a Req weapon at a bad time. Oopsie Daisy.

That... That pun wasn't actually intentional, I swear.

[wispy pewter]

Batman levels of plot armor

[empty bloom]

I mean she still died

[modest marsh]

Sangheili miners and engineers continue to discover amazing new properties of the Subanese crystals used in Needler ammunition. Advanced Needler that fires carefully calibrated shards that can embed themselves in armor.

[empty bloom]

How the hell do you Garrus your way into having armor penetrating Needler rounds?

[carmine sleet]

Plot armour works when the person with it doesn't die, Daisy very much did die

[modest marsh]

The same way enforcer sentinels did

[carmine sleet]

Next we'll have someone claiming Sean Bean has plot armour

[empty bloom]

He does

Until he doesn't anyways

[modest marsh]

https://www.halopedia.org/Shard_cannon

[wispy pewter]

oh I thought Jai was mentioned

[modest marsh]

I like the idea of “red needles” being the anti armor ones

[empty bloom]

Something about the Shard Cannon lineage not being retconned into something in line with whatever the Razor's Edge is doesn't, ah, doesn't sit quite right with me.

The supercombining Suppressor variant from Halo 5.

But, eh, not a big deal.

[modest marsh]

Subanese Crystal being this exotic super material that transcends millennia of civilization kinda feels right to me

Blamite is a meme, its reputation has endured eras

[empty bloom]

For me it's more logistics, but then again, Forerunner tech throws anything approaching "Hey we might run out of Blamite" out the window, so.

Ah well, metastable energy shards being a one-time Promethean trick is whatever.

[modest marsh]

In the wise words of Rob McLees:

"In 300 years, weapons are going to be so advanced that they're not fun anymore. It'll be like, a glass of water. You drink it, and all of your enemies die. That's boring. So in 500 years we'll be back to guns and bullets again, because those are totally fun to kill things with."

[empty bloom]

God, I love how ridiculous some of the names of the ammo types for Forerunner weapons are.

"Adhesive Pulsewave Explosive Light Mass"

[wispy pewter]

insert stargate P90 gif

[empty bloom]

How the hell do you make light adhesive? That just sounds more weird than making the damn stuff into bricks.

Hell, it sounds more weird than making it explode.

[wispy pewter]

use glue

[modest marsh]

I mean, given the precedent set by light bridges, we know they can give light tangibility and friction

As far as making it stick, maybe that’s to prevent overpenetration before the explosive charge can detonate

Flood have a habit of being made up of a largely viscous consistency that renders them a bit harder to do meaningful damage to by fast moving projectiles

[empty bloom]

Yeah, I'm not doubting their capability, it just sounds silly

[modest marsh]

On the whole I do kinda wish that the bread and butter of forerunners were beam and gravity based weapons rather than anything resembling a conventional firearm

[vagrant ocean]

Perhaps via experimentation and refinement. The Sangheili have prolly been mining kemuksuru for millennia, advancements were inevitable.

[modest marsh]

I love the scattershot, but does it really make sense for the forerunners to be using a break action shotgun? Idk

[vagrant ocean]

No. But is it cool? Yes.

[empty bloom]

It doesn't quite bother me too much in the context of body plan. If you have two upper limbs in a vaguely humanoid configuration, you're gonna make rifles.

[vagrant ocean]

Also, rifles are just an efficient shape for dealing with any form of recoil.

There’s a reason only psychopaths make .50 BMG pistols and carbines.

[empty bloom]

Eeyup.

[vagrant ocean]

Hell, I’ve seen a .50 BMG 1911.

If I had to design a hardlight shotgun, it’d prolly end up looking like the Scattershot.

Or just a Forerunner M870.

[modest marsh]

More so concerned with the necessity of a reload at all, let alone such an arduous method of doing so

Infinite did the “sensible” thing and made each weapon self contained

[empty bloom]

Even in the past-future-past, aliens understand how cool it is to reload a break action gun.

Cowboy style.

[vagrant ocean]

Imagine a Forerunner revolver.

Halo needs more revolvers.

[modest marsh]

We almost had the armament blaster, which isn’t a revolver, but it’s at least another sidearm

[wispy pewter]

Forerunners were too advanced for such primitive thinking

[vagrant ocean]

They had a top-break shotgun. Clearly they understand the rule of cool.

[modest marsh]

In halo legends, the concept of a “gun” is also shown to be an archaic idea

[wispy pewter]

UNSC using revolver missile launcher

[empty bloom]

Still mad that never got released.

[vagrant ocean]

Eh, I wouldn’t classify the SPNKR as a revolver.

[wispy pewter]

I mean the other one

[vagrant ocean]

Oh the Hydra.

[wispy pewter]

what is it called again

[vagrant ocean]

That is a revolver.

[wispy pewter]

it fires pencil sized missiles

[empty bloom]

The hell kinda pencils are you using?

[wispy pewter]

markers maybe

idk

[strange pumice]

Mauler?

[vagrant ocean]

Also a revolver. As is the Mangler and Bulldog. But the SPNKR isn’t.

[wispy pewter]

Ah yes did they say that after designing like 100 different ypes of weapons

[modest marsh]

We still don’t know what kinda gat she’s using

https://www.halopedia.org/images/6/64/Enc22-Glory.jpg?67742

[wispy pewter]

looks like a key

[strange pumice]

It's nice looking forerunner dagger, I already liked it, even seeing it for first time

[wispy pewter]

masters of overdesign fr

[modest marsh]

It’s some kinda beam weapon though, intended to be used in concert with others (which seems like a consistent motif of forerunner weaponry)

Their dragoons, onyx sentinels, the guardians, and the halo array itself all have the characteristic of being vastly more powerful when combined

Very mecha coded

[modest marsh]

Mauler is weird, I think it would be more accurate to call it drum fed as the actual magazine doesn’t move and is disposable

[modest marsh]

If you mean those extra thick sharpies, then maybe

https://www.halopedia.org/images/d/da/HINF_HydraReloading.png?12e46

[vagrant ocean]

It does move.

[modest marsh]

So it does, I might’ve been thinking of TF2

That game has a lot problems with weapon animations lol

[slim salmon]

Did Ancient Humanity get sampled on the Halo Arrays or was Earth a Shield World?

How did they survive the Halo Array activation?

[empty bloom]

That's the neat part

They didn't

[slim salmon]

Oh wait

Then how did the Librarian survive again

[empty bloom]

Humanity was reseeded from cylixes after the ringpulse.

[slim salmon]

So she was in like the edge of the universe chilling there while everyone else got their neurons fried off in the worst pain imaginable

[modest marsh]

Uh, no, Librarian died on Earth from the array firing per the Halo 3 terminals

Isodidact is the one who lived

[slim salmon]

Talking about Ancient Humanity.

[modest marsh]

Yeah she was with humanity, implicitly in the area near or around mt Kilimanjaro where a copy of her essence was stored

[slim salmon]

Wait then

So she died with everyone

And then...

She reseeded the world.

[empty bloom]

I had a senior moment

Ugh

[modest marsh]

More like her ghost did

[empty bloom]

Man, I was snoozing there, how'd I mess that up lmao

[slim salmon]

Did she do that in the Domain or uhhhhh

[empty bloom]

I should drink some water lmao

[modest marsh]

The domain was kaput from the array firing

[slim salmon]

Then wha-

So basically everybody lost their nerves, literally

[modest marsh]

It’s why Didact is big mad in Halo 4

[empty bloom]

Poor guy was in solitary confinement for eons.

[fading flume]

did you drink water yet

[modest marsh]

Iso Didact and a handful of forerunners survived but too few to replace their population

[slim salmon]

So

Bornstellar actived the Array, everbody died, Librarian (somehow) revived everything and umm uhh

[fading flume]

Wasn’t that coz the Primordial (or Gravemind) fiddled with his brain?

[slim salmon]

[fading flume]

[modest marsh]

Also, to be clear, it was really obviously intended in CE specifically that the then unnamed Didact had fired Alpha Halo specifically going off of Guilty Spark’s dialogue

(And Chief was his reincarnation or something)

Him firing the ring from the ark, which was an extragalactic installation and not a structure on earth, wasn’t something Bungie had settled on until halo 3 was being worked on

[modest marsh]

That was a contributing factor that set him down the path of wanting to exterminate humanity entirely, but he was supposed to cool off in his cryptum while still having access to the god internet to meditate on

[twin parcel]

Isn't the SPNKr designed to have the barrels be changed during a reload or am I just full of it?

[carmine sleet]

The barrels do get swapped out when you reload the SPNKr, yes. Basically the only part of it which you keep is the parts you hold onto when carrying the thing

[twin parcel]

That sounds really really terrible when used as a man portable Anti Armor launcher.

You're going to be lugging around tons of spares which a) are quite heavy and b) long as hell

[carmine sleet]

It's why I wish we kept Halo 5's Pilum instead of reverting back to the SPNKr

[twin parcel]

Hell, the spare barrels/reloads for the SPNKr would weigh more than the average LMG gunners kit.

I'm speaking from real life experience here when I say the kit for being the squads LMG guy is real heavy. Full combat load for me weighs around 160 pounds.

Just from the spare MG barrels and box ammo in my rucksack. The SPNKr would be even worse.

It would be better performed as a stationary recoilless rifle platform.

[vagrant ocean]

It does appear some of their tech survived and is still active in the galaxy.

[vagrant ocean]

M57 was brand new, makes sense why the UNSC reverted to the M41 during the Created Crisis.

[unique rune]

Halo can never progress beyond Reach and must always remain recognizable and ICONIC and can only look like 3 and Reach but shinier and with more polygons and more blood and more blood and more blood and more blood and more blood and

[twin parcel]

Found the Chaos Astartes.

[stoic hamlet]

They could easily say that the M57 is just the latest model in the Pilum line of weapons.

Honestly they should do that for most of the H4/5 weapons. They have for the SAW.

[carmine sleet]

Aye. Like maybe previous versions were just not as practical to deploy with for whatever reason

[stoic hamlet]

Or we just never saw them.

[carmine sleet]

Aye, that too

[stoic hamlet]

Like, the Railgun, for example, should be War-era, even if just late war.

Hydra as well, IMO.

[vagrant ocean]

I’m sure a weapon similar to the Hydra was fielded, as its description says it’s the result of decades of R&D.

And the ARC-920 is only the latest in a long line of handheld railguns.

Hell, the VK78 has been around since the Insurrection era when it replaced the HMG-38 in CMA service.

[stoic hamlet]

Mhm.

[vagrant ocean]

I’d love it if we got some games set during the earlier stages of the war so we can see these weapons, maybe one where you’re defending a planet and all you have is CMA surplus like HMG-38s and MA2s and MA3s.

[stoic hamlet]

I’d like to see the CMA proper.

Honestly if the UNSC can’t have the 90’s era retrofuture look, give it to the CMA.

[vagrant ocean]

Well, I think it’s the modern UNSC that no longer has that look. I’d expect the CMA to have more of an 80s era look given its age.

Kinda like the Resistance in Terminator

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah.

[vagrant ocean]

There’s a lot of potential there, especially if these prequel missions in CER go over well with the players.

[stoic hamlet]

CEV has become the accepted Halopedia term, but yeah.

[vale mountain]

Why does guilty spark think master chief is a forerunner?? Is he stupid???

[stoic hamlet]

Technically he’s rampant.

But yes.

[obsidian thistle]

I started to see that term leave Halopedia aha

Makes me smirk

[stoic hamlet]

Leave Halopedia as in get discontinued, or disseminated?

[obsidian thistle]

Leave as in I see it used elsewhere

[carmine sleet]

It's a shame CEmake hasn't caught on

[vagrant ocean]

I unno, if you spent 100 millennia waiting for your best friend to come back and then you see a tall dude in head to toe armor show up, you’d think he was back to save you.

[strange pumice]

But instead, blown the damn ring

[stoic hamlet]

Mhm. I was there when it was made. Twas a fun time.

[twin parcel]

Speaking of Guily Spark, can I just point out that he also in CE got another human dude to try and activate the ring. R.I.P Mobuto.

Made it so far against the flood without any kinds of shields, augments or mjolnir.

Just basic marine BDUs and His gun. What an absolute legend.

[vagrant ocean]

Mobuto DLC when

[twin parcel]

Real.

Flood horror shooter but as Mobuto.

Flood horror shooter as that ODST squadron that uses flamethrowers to dispose of possible flood outbreaks would also be awesome.

Mobuto was one helluva marine considering how far he made it too. Even Chief iirc was literally using everything he could to survive, Mobuto was just rawdogging the flood with standard issue gear and a pure will to survive.

the chesty puller of the UNSC marines is Mobuto.

[stoic hamlet]

Thankfully we’re getting a book about him.

[modest marsh]

i mean, a loaded SPNKr weighs less than an NLAW

and it has two missiles instead of one

the optics and fire control are probably embedded in the non-disposable portion too so you're getting some cost savings in that regard

[obsidian thistle]

I should totally make a note what floor he made it to on the wiki based on dialogue Spark says in CE and location based info.

[empty bloom]

Wut

[stoic hamlet]

I’m pretty sure it was the third? He was really close.

[stoic hamlet]

Halo: Parasite Wakes, releasing in 2026:

2552. As the planet Reach falls to the alien alliance known as the Covenant, a lone human ship, the UNSC Pillar of Autumn, fled into slipspace and has arrived at a place that could change the course of the decades-long war. An ancient and mysterious ringworld, Halo. With human forces scattered across the surface of this immense alien construct, Staff Sergeant Marvin Mobuto must now lead his fellow crewmates—survivors from the ship's brig—back to the Autumn's crash site to rally and regroup with their allies. Desertion, drunk-and-disorderly, and murder are only a few of the charges that Mobuto's squad carries, and keeping them in line might prove to be just as difficult as surviving the zealous and entrenched Covenant warriors who believe they have found the gateway to paradise.
But as war rages across the ring's landscape for control of the installation's weapons and secrets, a far more terrible threat from deep within Halo's underworld is helishly unleashed, that transforms this conflict into a desparate battlle of survival for UNSC and Covenant alike

[empty bloom]

Ough

Man

[stoic hamlet]

I’m interested, at least at a more bleak looking UNSC.

[slow wind]

That’s the Halo CE Infantry mod, on library, on Legendary difficulty

Also I kinda want an official halo wave defense game where your Noble Six fighting off waves and waves of covenant and whatever remains of the insurrectionists during the final hours of reach

[modest marsh]

Why would six be fighting rebels while the planet is melting

I guess if it’s not story related then whatever but also I don’t think human rebels on reach have much going for them in terms of gameplay novelty

[vagrant ocean]

If we ever got a game with Innies I’d rather it be in the early stages of the war.

[slow wind]

That or maybe a game that’s Pre-War and like after the 6th mission the covenant show up kinda like how the flood didn’t show up until like half-way through Halo CE

[vagrant ocean]

That’s the idea.

On a world fighting Innies and then all of a sudden the Covies show up.

[versed salmon]

I know this has been said before, but I think a Halo: Contact Harvest would be cool. It would take the same vibes as Reach

[stoic hamlet]

Contact harvest would be terrible as a game.

There are only four firefights in the entire book with no more than about a squad in each, and casualties are less than a dozen on each side.

Fireteam Raven already destroys a lot of The Flood, I’d rather not have the same happen to Contact Harvest.

[slow wind]

But then again (I haven’t read the book so spare me) there could’ve been more stuff happening that we don’t know about

[stoic hamlet]

Not on Harvest, no.

And not really with the ODST’s on the Autumn. The Flood is very specific about where each company is, how many men are in each, and what they’re doing.

[modest marsh]

its explicitly like two covenant ships with very small compliments against a rural community's volunteer militia and cops

[slow wind]

Oh…

That’s less climatic then I thought

I was expecting something similar to reach

Execpt The UNSC is actually against an enemy they haven’t fought before whilst the odds are somewhat stacked against them

[modest marsh]

there are additional battles of varying scope that happen over the course of the next 5 years

halo wars picks up towards the tail end of that

[wispy pewter]

if only the covenant came in peace 🖖🏼

[modest marsh]

harvest functionally a dead colony after the initial battle though

the unsc mainly fought over it for symbolic reasons, not because it was actually strategically important

[wispy pewter]

is it called harvest because it's the farming planet

[slow wind]

The reason they didn’t was because they asked a forerunner ai about forerunner artifacts or whatever and there was a translation error that proclaimed the covenant as redeemers and the Humans/UEG as heretics when in reality the Humans were the redeemers and the descendants of the forerunners not the covenant like everyone else thought

So basically

[wispy pewter]

Harvest after the glassing looks so sad

[slow wind]

Google Translate is the reason why the covenant had a very “take no prisoners” Attitude

[wispy pewter]

some still believe in the lie

[slow wind]

That too

Also like I’m talking mostly about the Lore of the Bungie games

Mainly because I don’t like the later halo games and also because I think halo went downhill after reach

[wispy pewter]

cool

[cyan halo]

So

Do spartans have a lot of vigor in bed?

[slow wind]

🐄

What kind of question is that…

[cyan halo]

In the animated series

they had kids

[wispy pewter]

not a question for this server m8

[versed salmon]

I got a warning from a bot for saying the S drive ._.

[slow wind]

Also There’s a mod for halo reach where you play as a Marine during the reach campaign and there’s a few missions that are kinda like that

[stoic hamlet]

I mean, it’s phrased really badly, but technically it could be.

If the overall question is “do they have a lot of stamina?” the answer is yes.

[slow wind]

I mean since chief can sprint in the Halo CE Remake they probably do have a lot of stamina

[wispy pewter]

only one canon Spartan had a kid. Idk if Maria had to reverse her augmentations for that

[slow wind]

If I’m gonna take a guess
Spartan I’s can’t have kids because well… most of them died Execpt for Johnson
Spartan II’s can have children since most of their augmentations are not really chemical to my knowledge
Spartan III’s can but it’s kinda hard for them because there augmentations are mostly chemical
Spartan 4’s I don’t really know since I don’t know the extensive lore behind them

[unique rune]

nothing about Spartan augmentations has ever run the risk of rendering them sterile

[stoic hamlet]

^^^

[unique rune]

one of the S-II augmentations had a possible side effect of them being less interested in the act but that’s about it

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah, and, again, possible side effect is the key word.

[vagrant ocean]

Which one?

We know of only one confirmed child of a Spartan-II but she died before any analysis could be done.

[stoic hamlet]

She might’ve even been adopted.

I don’t think we fully know for sure.

[wispy pewter]

They should update us on the whereabouts of Naomi

[slow wind]

I mean I think having abunch of Chemicals injected into you when your a mere child so ONI/The UNSC could get more super soldiers might screw up your fertility atleast a little bit

(I’m specifically referring to the Spartan III’s)

[unique rune]

I mean, maybe, but it’s never been mentioned in official sources so as far as we’re concerned it’s not a known issue

[wispy pewter]

Doesn’t matter much considering they’re lifelong Spartans anyway. The war doesn’t seem to end right now

[vagrant ocean]

“Natalie was born to former SPARTAN-II Randall Aiken and his wife on the planet Vodin. Natalie's mother had died during childbirth, leaving her father to raise her.”

I’m just curious to see if any of the augmentations were passed to her like the 1.1s.

[modest marsh]

augmentations, no, but they're exposed to a worrying amount of radiation on a regular basis

[minor sky]

It is kind of funny how there are certain things in earlier drafts of Halo 4's story that actually would've improved the final game

Listening to the cut dialogue a while back showed a ton of stuff like this

But also the earlier version of the Didact's awakening had a brief moment of him addressing who I can assume to be Jul 'Mdama, which actually would've made a bit more sense to include

[unique rune]

yeah there's a fair bit of cut dialogue that I wish they'd kept

I could probably do without the one where Cortana says she loved watching Chief sleep though

[twin parcel]

I mean, if Maria was on top her husband's pelvis mightve had to get titanium pins put in because it'd be literal bonemeal.

(Input death by snoo snoo joke here alongside the glory glory lyrics to blood on the risers.)

[wispy pewter]

🩼

[twin parcel]

🤣

Man probably said "worth it"

[wispy pewter]

I mean Spartans are like... 100+ kilograms without their armor

[twin parcel]

Although in all seriousness she'd also most likely be able to control the amount of force exerted during such "activities" to prevent that. Spartans are acutely aware of how heavy and strong they are.

[wispy pewter]

In the Orville this was made into a joke on one of the episodes

[twin parcel]

Except that incident with John and the ODSTs but he was also literally fresh out of augmentations.

[wispy pewter]

getting beaten up by a 14 yo

[twin parcel]

SPARTANs are probably acutely aware of their bodies and augmentations, I'd wager even moreso because a lot of SPARTANs aren't able to really see themselves in a way other than military hardware.

Which is one of the driving plots of Chiefs story as we all know.

[wispy pewter]

Chief and Lasky talking was a good scene

[twin parcel]

And the one with Echo 416

Or is it 216?

I mix them up.

[wispy pewter]

I think his name is Fernando

Esparza

[twin parcel]

yep, forgot his name SMH. Been a while since I played Infinites campaign.

The scene where Chief says to Fernando "Its what makes us human" really was a good one.

[wispy pewter]

"Are you Spaniish?"
-Chief probably

[twin parcel]

I feel like Chief gave off A+ dad energy in that scene.

[wispy pewter]

still think it wasnt as good as Chief and Lasky

[twin parcel]

I feel like Chief would be a great dad in general though. Soft spoken and quiet but always there.

[wispy pewter]

he's 50 and has a duty

kids will get in the way

[twin parcel]

Definitely but Downes voice always reminds me of my late Pa

[wispy pewter]

that's cool

[minor sky]

I always liked the last bit of the line

The part about her thinking about "anything could happen" when he woke up

[royal relic]

Odin will welcome him personally into Valhalla /s

[wanton tinsel]

Yk i was just thinking the other day about how past the coordinated stage the flood could choose not to symptomatically infect its carriers

How do you stop a disease that could stealth its way past your defenses with basically no indication of infection

[empty bloom]

I'm pretty sure it actively does that a few times. I know Halo Infinite's cosmetic descriptions imply it

[wanton tinsel]

I gotta look this up, do you know what theyd be called?

[autumn plaza]

I'm wondering if the Governors of Contrition will be the "new" faction in the prequel. Waypoint content has been pushing the Flood back into the spotlight and gave the Governors of Contrition their second appearance. They are the only way to get Flood lore into the game prior to 2552. I feel like the prequel and terminals will move the Universe forward while we wait for whatever comes next. If this does end up being a Campaign Evolved trilogy, we could get a lot out of 9 prequel missions and 3 sets of terminals to keep us satisfied during the wait for Halo 7.

[carmine sleet]

I don't think they were using the Waypoint Chronicle to tease the Governors becoming an actual major faction in the prequel missions

And the two Waypoint Chronicles about the Flood are clearly just meant to be seen as spooky Halloween stories, not anything too serious going forward

[modest marsh]

Death Effect: Hidden Malignancy - Death can reveal a creeping Flood infection even the victim was not aware of.

[wanton tinsel]

I was checking through all the armor didnt even think ab the effect!

Thanks man

[fair hazel]

There's always threads to be pulled from

[mortal mesa]

Im curious about Cortana changing colors time to time. She's purple and green in CE, blue in 2 and 3, 4 she's blue and red (tho red when raging), then infinite she's purple again leaving Weapon blue

Like, I read someone saying that her changing colors is based on mood which, I'd love if thats the case but feels it's more just design stuff in the other games sides ce

[stoic hamlet]

AI can choose whatever colour they want.

Even multiple colours.

[carmine sleet]

Or choose to be a cube, like Black Box

[obsidian thistle]

Or Blue, like Black Box.

That sounds like a joke but its a ongoing fan joke about how the character is visualised.

https://www.halopedia.org/Black-Box

[carmine sleet]

Don't worry, I'm all too aware of how blue they actually were

[vale mountain]

Would the unsc actually been able to destroy the keyship at the end of halo 2 if master chief wasn't on it

[empty bloom]

Maybe with a Nova bomb.

[scenic rain]

So I've been picking up a lot of the extra lore for the first time and learning about the expanded events in the Halo verse. It is amazing all the connected stuff aside from the games events.

I've finished The Fall of Reach, The Flood, First Strike, Ghosts of Onyx, Contact Harvest, and an currently listening to The Cole Protocol.

I even read the Graphic Novel and Uprising.

[blazing ivy]

Just curious. Is there an actual explanation to why the Mark 5 has ammo pouches while the other armors don't have them? For a long time, my headcanon was that the experimental shield tech that the Mark 5 has took up too much internal space that they had to get rid of the internal ammo storage that the Mark 4 and eventually the Mark 6 has, but I've been second guessing myself on that now that the remake removed the pouches from the Mark 5. Can't find anything online about it other than the Mark 5 has pouches, which doesn't really tell me anything.

[orchid kettle]

Not particularly. I guess they just didn't like Mark VI with pouches

[modest marsh]

All versions of Mjolnir can have spare ammo pouches

Soldier-class GEN2 specifically has them built into the chest plate

Halo 3 onwards leaned into the idea that stuff is held onto the armor via magmounts, you’re likely meant to infer that spare magazines and grenades adhere to the belt and chest without the need of dedicated containers

[blazing ivy]

Yeah, I figured that spartans can optionally add pouches if they want. I was just wondering why the Mark 5 was the only one to normally have it be part of the base set.

[carmine sleet]

You also do see ammo pouches and magazines on some of the armour pieces for the Mark VII as well

[carmine sleet]

Reach was trying to be more gritty and militaristic with its visuals

[unique rune]

They were there in CE too

[carmine sleet]

That is also true

[unique rune]

I don't think there's any real explanation as to why they didn't really bother with them for H2 onwards

I would imagine CE Mk. V having the pouches is more just a remnant of earlier concept iterations and they wanted to go with something sleeker for Halo 2
because it doesn't seem like the pouches were really a consideration during H2's development

Side note:
Can't help but wonder if Agryna's helmet was inspired by this iteration of Mk. VI concept art
https://halo.wiki.gallery/images/2/29/H2_Master_Chief_concept_art_helmet.jpg

[blazing ivy]

Yeah, CE was the example I was looking at, as there is no customization and it is all base armor. Halo Reach technically doesn't have pouches on the base armor, that was all attachments you can put on, but the Mark 5 and Mark 5B are debatably different armor, but also there is no canon armor set for Noble Six, and all of Noble Team has some form of external ammo storage on their armor.

[stoic hamlet]

No MJOLNIR really has internal ammo storage.

Armour not being shown with gear is just a visual thing.

For example the cover art of Shadows of Reach depicts Blue Team with no fear to speak of, but we know from the novel that John alone carried:

• A medical kit on his belt/hip

• a pouch to carry a cleaning kit for his MA40

• a pouch with extra attachments for his MA40 (suppressor’s, extra lights and lasers)

• a rucksack

• a bandolier of grenades

[blazing ivy]

Wait, really? I thought ammo ejected outside of the thigh armor, like how reloading works with dual wielding weapons in 2 and 3.

My bad.

[stoic hamlet]

The only example of that we see is in Halo legends, and when John carries an M7 in Oblivion there’s no mention of any internal ammo. It’s carried on the exterior of his Mark IV armour.

It’s just a visual thing.

[modest marsh]

It’s in the graphic novel originally

Well, no ammo storage, but the extendable thigh plate that holds Maria’s M7s

I’ve always assumed that’s what Legends was inspired by

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah I was referring specifically to the ammo.

[obsidian thistle]

Her helmet actually got a name with a toy. But said name was used in Infinite with a different helmet.

Flanker

So its up in the air if HS will keep it

[modest marsh]

On the one hand that’s a potential vulnerability since it means a section of the plating logically has to be hollowed out to allow for that but for the sake of feasibility in terms of removing/putting on the armor it makes sense for there to be parts that can actuate on their own

We kinda see that with the final scene of halo 4 where Chief is removing the armor, and the “cheeks” of the helmet extend outwards

There’s also that one piece of concept art where the backpack of the Mark V is popped open so technicians can perform maintenance on it

[empty bloom]

Realistically Spartans would primarily be using magnets and pouches to hold all their gear, and they'd always have a lot of it. From descriptions alone they are often kitted to the gills in equipment.

Like, Jorge's Backpack not being canonically standard issue for any Spartan is almost weird.

But Halo is an aesthetics-first setup for its actual games, so outside of fan art you'll never actually see anything near that on a cover or something.

[empty bloom]

IIRC some models of GEN2 also have a dedicated knife sheath in the gauntlet.

[modest marsh]

It’s not actually modeled on there, but it’s in concept art and the animations seem to imply it

[empty bloom]

Why, no idea, but it pops up in Escalation

Get it

Pops up

Because it pops out a knife

I'm suddenly wishing Reach had a belt from Jorge's backpack to his gun again.

I usually hate that concept but I feel like it's what they were going for anyways.

[blazing ivy]

Ah, okay. My bad.

[twin parcel]

Which is why it's probably my favorite. The UNSC Army designs were genuinely amazing.

The realistic webbing and gear combined with the futuristic armor was genuinely the best design. Infinite did similar with the Marines designs.

[twin parcel]

I don't understand how they'd be able to carry rations for extended periods in the field or a sleep system though.

Where the hell do SPARTANs put their MREs? They ain't got no pockets 💀

[wispy pewter]

They have some sort of substance inside the suit that feeds them

[empty bloom]

Spartans normally would have pockets if shown properly.

[wispy pewter]

Horvath was kept alive because of it

[twin parcel]

So it's just an issue of lore not being put into media.

[empty bloom]

Aesthetics don't vibe with the intended gamevibe yeh

[twin parcel]

Alright, neat. Now I don't have to worry that Chief is starving stuck on Zeta Halo.

[wispy pewter]

He can grow potatoes

[twin parcel]

I refuse to believe that the infinity crashed without seeds on it in the event it crashes on a planet with no escape.

I also refuse to believe that there isn't cylixes of random livestock that the forerunners made.

Iirc the rings had seed vaults on them. The forerunners prepared really damn well.

say what you want about em but they were atleast prepared for when the rings fired.

[wispy pewter]

Infinity was designed to be an ark for humanity im pretty sure

[modest marsh]

There’s MREs all over Zeta

Like, literal hundreds of unopened packages

I don’t think he has to worry about going hungry

[modest marsh]

That was explicitly not actually enough to sustain him though

[steel stone]

I always preferred the ammo and knives appearing on the spartan, just makes them feel more believable that they are a proper military

[modest marsh]

It was the bare minimum required to keep him alive

Spartans still need external protein and caloric sources for long term function

Also, we know that the UNSC relies on fully automated food dispensers

https://www.halopedia.org/MK71_emergency_food_preparation_station

[wispy pewter]

Yeah then the they mentioned Spartans can go like weeks without food

honestly that is kinda bs

[modest marsh]

That’s not what it says

Horvath was put into a coma where his biological functions were essentially all but shut off

Core body temperature, heart rate, brain activity all shut down to effectively nothing

When he finally wakes up, he’s extremely hungry

[wispy pewter]

a replicator would come in handy

[minor sky]

Are the Slugmen canon?

[modest marsh]

Yes but no

They’re canon insofar as there is a paragraph worth of text describing them

[minor sky]

Canon enough

[karmic gulch]

How possible would it be for a Spartan near Hyper Lethal rating to not be mentioned in the games?

[stoic hamlet]

All Spartans are hyper lethal.

[karmic gulch]

Oh

didn’t Halsey say that only chief and 6 are the two Spartans rated as hyper lethal?

Or at least in official canon

[stoic hamlet]

Since… 2015, or maybe a year earlier, the canon’s been that all Spartans are hyper lethal.

Mentioned in Ground Command… then Mythos… then the Field Manual… then the Encyclopedia, then Infinite (multiple times).

[modest marsh]

She technically doesn’t say it’s Chief but on a meta level you’re supposed to think that’s what she meant so you know that Six and Chief are on the same level (player character)

Since halo 4 the role of protagonist has been democratized a bit more

(Ignore ODST)

So like, it’s not really useful as a term when any random Spartan of any generation could theoretically be playable, whether in a campaign or your multiplayer Spartan you roleplay as

[minor sky]

It occured to me that having the first faction you encounter in Halo 4 be a remnant of the empire you helped destory is actually great writing and a good way to give players an idea of the post-war universe.
Too bad the Covenant in Halo 4 exist to be shot at 90% of the time

It is also a shame Jul 'Mdama's Covenant wound up being so half-baked

I think having Chief and Cortana spend the first act of Halo 4 dealing with Jul's Covenant while we slowly set up the Forerunner stuff would've been great

For a bunch of reasons not least of all including, letting the story breathe, allow certain plotlines to not be suddenly introduced in the middle of the game, and more character moments

Iirc there was cut dialogue of Jul's Covenant basically throwing themselves at the Knights as some sort of twisted spirtual thing. I kind of thought about taking that further, having Jul 'Mdama or some high ranking Zealot proclaim that these are "all tests to prove their worth in the Forerunners"

Maybe frame Chief showing up as some sort of divine challange, as if the Forerunners brought him back from the dead to challange them/destroy a figure of heresy

Thats the sort of manipulative twisted version of faith I'd wanna see from the Post-war Covenant. Make Jul or whoever something of a Televangelist

Making a great show of faith and promises of salvation in the name of gaining power

Maybe that sounds too much like Truth, but idk, I think you could push it further with somebody like Jul.

'Mdama is somebody who's mission is lead by revenge and politics. He isn't an emperor trying to keep his position. Jul is the leader of a small group made up of the hyper-devoted and vengeful.

He is after the means to grow his army, to decide the fate of the galaxy not by destroying it like the Prophets would've, but controlling it.

[obsidian thistle]

Thats been soft-retconned. One could view it as Halsey being sarcastic that Noble Sixs record is so redacted that the most common thing isn't.

It would be like if my record said I was blonde. Halsey may have then said only 2 Spartans had blonde hair (obvious sarcasm)

Which fyi to me is very fitting of pre-First Strike Halsey

[wispy pewter]

343 classing every Spartan as hyper lethal when their own writing g contradicts this

[carmine sleet]

I wouldn't really say anything in the 343 era games goes against the idea all Spartans are hyper lethal

[wispy pewter]

It’s mostly in the outside games lore then. No other Spartan has matched up to Master Chief in terms of feats. Even they write him as some kind of hero the other Spartans look up to

Like they introduced two Spartan IVs in empty throne and just kill them off in the same book 💀 .

[fading flume]

First of all, you have to consider they threw six in there, someone who we know practically nothing about and hasn’t done nearly enough as any member of blue team, let alone Chief. 2nd of all, it’s a classification that’s not being used in reference to the entire population of UNSC soldiers, including marines.

[fading flume]

Also in that book (from the narrators perspective) it is stated that Chief is a warrior without any equal among his kind, so I get what you’re saying. He is most definitely the greatest of all Spartans, and the UNSCs current most effective individual piece of military hardware. His capacity for success is pretty much greater than anyone else’s.

[empty bloom]

Chief's "Feats" are honestly relatively mundane in terms of moment-to-moment combat.

[fading flume]

I wouldn’t call them “mundane.” Taking out two rings and wiping out a majority of banished leadership is quite impressive comparatively to those who’ve failed. Besides, it’s confirmed as such that he’s the most effective piece of military hardware, so,

[empty bloom]

Conversely, considering he was in a much better situation to start versus an element of Banished leadership while the people he's being compared to started in a significantly worse state and with no actual mission plan beyond "Survive", I'd say his actions on Zeta Halo would be considered relatively mundane.

As for how he got away with the two rings, in the first case especially he was operating in a relatively simple operational environment.

One of his most noteworthy individual "Feats", giving the Covenant back their bomb, is something any Spartan could realistically achieve.

[fading flume]

Relatively straightforward, yes, but by no means was it given to him. He had to face an abundance of enemies. His situation on Zeta was, meh. He had a pilot who was tweaking and pelican, being thrown into action almost immediately after awaking from his months long nap. Keep in mind many Spartans were killed by enemies he defeated in combat. And as I’ve previously stated the narrative Halo pushes for the Master Chief pretty much ends this debate all together if one wants to scrutinize the achievability of his feats alone.

[empty bloom]

I don't really give a damn about what the narrative says versus reality of what happened.

That's not a counterargument that's worth caring about lmao

As for 'given to him', I also didn't say that.

[fading flume]

If you want to ignore canonical evidence, hey that’s on you. It sounds like copium to me but

Or just appeal to pig headedness

[fading flume]

I didn’t say you did

[empty bloom]

Then why say that?

[fading flume]

Cuz my brain is fuzzy from this bulk meal

[empty bloom]

Anyways, I don't care for author fiat. Attempting to use that as a cudgel to kill a conversation dead is kinda lame.

[fading flume]

That I do consider to be valid, but it’s a way of just me saying that regardless of the conversation, Chief is the goat.

[empty bloom]

It's fine to have the opinion, but I don't really care for it.

Anyways.

[heavy idol]

new here yall