lore-and-universe

[minor sky]

That works pretty well

[plain mesa]

You know what when 343 Guilty Spark said to Chief and i quote from Halo 3 "You are Forerunner." I wonder what that was about even if they do call humans Reclaimers because of inheriting The Mantle but Chief as a Forerunner i wonder what Spark meant?

It got me wondering? and that is in the dialogue before you fight him.

[prime mauve]

Spark understood that the most damage he could cause was by that specific wording and that it would cause nearly two decades of debates

[minor sky]

If you subscribe to the idea that Chief has Bornstellar's geas that is what it could mean

That or it is purely metaphorical

[modest marsh]

The bornstellar geas thing is a consequence of the necessarily contradictory rationale behind certain creative choices early on in halo’s development where it was still considered a marathon sequel and “chief” was just an avatar of the player who is metaphysically represented as an immortal hero across time

[modest marsh]

It’s interesting to see how even 25 years later Bungie is still committed to the idea with Marathon embracing the concept of player immortality as a central gimmick of their games

[fresh granite]

So we're going to have a game with Old Chief?

[modest marsh]

Nothing is set in stone but I think based on what we’ve seen of the “future” relative to the events of the games, there’s only going to be a couple more decades of serious conflict at most before everything gets resolved

Chief is biologically in his early 40s at most, and due to his genetic modifications is unlikely to meaningfully age in that time

(Naturally I’m talking about the Halo 3 promotional material and Reach epilogue)

[vagrant ocean]

“I wonder what this insane AI meant when he said that?”

[vagrant ocean]

And for all we know he could’ve died in combat by then.

[plain mesa]

Word for word Guilty Spark says "You are the child of my makers. Inheritor of all they left behind. You are Forerunner. But this ring is mine."

[minor sky]

Sure but like, he can be talking about Chief specifically in regards to how the Spartans represent what the Forerunners had been working towards and the idea that Chief carries within him the legacy of the Iso-Didact/Bornstellar

[plain mesa]

So like the antithisis to the Ur-Didact? It also makes me wonder why the Librarian chose chief as a champion, surely not pure coincidence? it seems Forerunner lore either implies he is Forerunner in ancestral blood or as a successor?

[minor sky]

No no, there were two different Didacts

[plain mesa]

Yeah i know they are two didacts the opposite to the ideology to the Ur-Didact i guess it was the Logic Plague that mainly influnced him?

[minor sky]

Not really? The Ur-Didact and Iso-Didacts aren't really in a "light side/dark side" dynamic

[plain mesa]

Yeah but i was accounting for the Logic Plague how graveminds can spread it to any biological or Technological being and twist their logic and Ideology including the fact The Ur-Didact was Subject to brutal torture by a Gravemind and Cortana's transmission had something to do with her being in a flood infested High Charity and subjected to small bits of Torture we see in Halo 3. Cortana and the Ur-Didact are victims of the Logic Plague.

[hot zodiac]

I don't think there's an official position on how specifically Spark's lines are meant to be recontextualized.

He's simply "insane", so what he's saying isn't true. But, the Forerunners left an imprint (the geas) in humanity to enact them to be Reclaimers, and Master Chief has that correct "geas" that allows him to essentially be called "Forerunner"—so what he's saying is true?

[modest marsh]

I think there is just as much reason to think that chief's geas has the imprint of lord of admirals wrt the "who"

it could be both or neither, but cross-species implantation simply isnt suggested anywhere

[plain mesa]

Some things differed in Halo 3's terminals to the actual lore.

[modest marsh]

the terminals dont opine on this particular issue

[carmine sleet]

The terminals are also actual lore as well, which have since been given additional clarification and context via the Forerunner trilogy

[minor sky]

Yeah the offical standing of the H3 Terminals is that Mendicant Bias is an unreliable narrator

[somber idol]

Isn't because Bungie at the time had a différent idea for the forerunner..?

You're all talking about a Line in Halo 3 and trying to explain it with 343 lore..

I remember that i did read peoples saying that originally humans were indeed forerunner or something like this ?

[minor sky]

The line is still canon

[prime mauve]

Yeah the intent of the line back then no longer matters, it's about how it fits with the added context now.

[minor sky]

Bungie seemed to have some conflicting views on the nature of the Forerunners by the time of Halo 3. When Greg Bear began work on The Forerunner Trilogy a lot of these conflicting positions got ironed out

[somber idol]

Yes Indeed but that doesn't mean the line have sense now

[prime mauve]

If Bungie had some idea for the Forerunners they really wanted to make they should have, I don't know, made it explicit in the games they released

[somber idol]

The line can "fit" in the lore but at the same time had lost all sense

[prime mauve]

It has more possible meanings now if anything.

[somber idol]

They didn't had any opportunity after Halo 3 anyway

[somber idol]

Yes because this line can be interpreted like everyone want moslty

But things are not clear

[minor sky]

To be honest I thought Spark was being hyperbolic

[prime mauve]

Or poetic

Or just vague

[somber idol]

This line and an other Line in the first game always had me lost

[prime mauve]

I don't know why people expect him to be 100% truthful, clear cut and precise in his words every single time when from the start he has been a scatterbrained, rampant trickster

[somber idol]

When in the first game he say that Chief had asked him before if he would be ready for everything

[somber idol]

I don't find it trickster
But at every game hé seems to think that everyone should be aware of the protocols and everything

For example in the second game hé answer ironically at the end Of the game and seems to not understand how the protagonists don't know the arch and everything

[prime mauve]

He tricks Chief by omission even if not by intent

[somber idol]

Yes i think

[orchid kettle]

actually Master Chief has YOUR 🫵 geas and that's how the player can control him with an xbox controller 500 years in the past

[minor sky]

From my understanding of things, one of said positions was that Forerunners were an uplifted group of humans. That is why the Halo 3 terminals and Iris ARG show the Forerunners back on Earth in their final days and why in the terminals the Librarian makes reference to Earth carrying "answers to their own mysteries".

This plot thread would then be expanded upon to show Ancient Humanity as a species which once stood toe-to-toe with the Forerunners before being reduced back to primative hunter-gatherers

[somber idol]

Anyway Bungie indeed have some ideas of what they thought about this side of the story
And when 343i take over i think they had theirs, they did enough for everything to fit pretty well in the story but i don't think they took time to think if this line or another would have this or that significacion

At this point i don't think there is no real answer

[prime mauve]

The only way to get one would probably be a Halo 3 novelization

Which they really should do anyway

[minor sky]

This may not be the case but it is possible that development stimmed from Greg Bear's daughter Chloe suggesting that Bornstellar have a human "sidekick" in Cryptum

[somber idol]

Or doing a Remake of the game and change some détails..

[minor sky]

Maybe some of the nature of ancient humanity were already understood by then before Chakas' character was included

[minor sky]

Based on some of the reactions to Campaign Evolved, idk if that would be the right course of action

[somber idol]

Yes but the game name is Halo Campaign Evolved not Halo Can't Evolve

I thint a remake of the trilogy would be a good idea for my part

I dont really see the issues in the first remake

[wispy pewter]

Why remake

[somber idol]

I tried to watch various videos about it but idk, only minors things to me

[somber idol]

That's a good way to appeal to new players i new Platforms indeed
The MCC is pretty dead now, and i honestly think that ps players or any new players would be left bored by the first game in his state..

Game is good i love it but for actual standard..

Nearly half of the game need a rework to be more digest

[wispy pewter]

You can appeal to players by making a good game

[somber idol]

Why wouldn't be the remake a good game ?

[wispy pewter]

Because it takes away resources to creating a greater games

Halo 2 maybe, even though Halo 2A already exists. Halo 3 isn’t even that old

[somber idol]

Ah yes
Like 343 are able to make great games

They did proove it..

[wispy pewter]

And you trust them with remakes?

[somber idol]

I think that's a good idea overall

They had issues with the engine of infinite
I think that doing a Remake is a good idea for what i already said, it fit the Xbox strategy even if i don't like it
And that's a good way to take in hand UE5 for future project

They need to find a way to work efficiently

Cause they only had issues and failing for now

[wraith garden]

how old is our arby

[prime mauve]

That too but I'd prefer a book, The Flood style, that takes what is there but adds more and recontextualizes some parts. It would sure help with Miranda's silly moments and to show that Truth is still Truth even if he is acting different in front of enemies and minions

[wraith garden]

like 70?

[wispy pewter]

He was there 3000 years ago

[prime mauve]

He turns 75 in December 10, 2560

[wraith garden]

3000? that was the entire covanennt

arby aint that ancient

[somber idol]

Maybe he is talking about the rank

The status

[wraith garden]

oh i meant my thel vadam

the status was after rings firing or even before

cuz prophets didnt make covanent insta after there rebirth/receding

[wispy pewter]

It was a lotr joke but nvm

[vagrant ocean]

I love when people talk like they know what’s going on behind closed doors at HS.

[stoic hamlet]

Halo 3 will be 20 years old in two years.

[somber idol]

And 25 in 6

In 3 years Halo 2 remake
In 6 Halo 3

Would be cool

[carmine sleet]

Halo 3 is turning 19 this year. It's an old game now

[minor sky]

I am more invested in how Halo 7 will turn out but I don't mind the remake if it is a stop-gap/celbratory release/exists to get devs up to speed

[half dirge]

It is almost 2 decades old.

2026 - 2007 = 19

[modest marsh]

I mean yeah this is just true

Something something elder scrolls

Something something deltarune

It’s not a particularly novel idea

[modest marsh]

Just to reiterate, it’s because halo was written as a marathon sequel and Chief was literally intended to be either a clone or literally the same cyborg who was alive that activated the ancient superweapon, and any conflicting particulars could be chalked up in timeline shenanigans or a big universal reset

Instead halo went with the idea that Spark is just confusing Chief for someone else

The “someone else” is generally agreed to be bornstellar

[orchid kettle]

I still think its reasonable to read Guilty Spark's use of "you" to refer to greater Humanity instead of suggesting any one particular character

Like its not the cleanest explanation but its also intentionally written to be cryptic

[modest marsh]

It’s not unreasonable at all, but I think that framing is weak knowing the initial context and the later changes to the world that happened

[orchid kettle]

It might also have been the case that Chief isn't really supposed to be a stand in for anybody important and that Guilty Spark's remembering that conversation is just supposed to be the one glimpse into the Forerunners as characters in the game

[modest marsh]

Bro was talking to Steve the janitor and we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking he was the king of all forerunners

[orchid kettle]

the legendary fivewalker

[vagrant ocean]

One year

[warm ridge]

No they did, they just decided not to continue it because they didn't want to continue any new story narratives they couldn't finish.

From what we know, it wouldn't of been all that different with what 343i did in the 1st place.

In this hypothetical timeline, you'd just have Bungie saying they were different all along vs 343i being the ones who nailed it down.

[vagrant ocean]

Also I have a feeling it’d be a worse product, given what Bungie has made in the past decade and a half.

[minor sky]

Well Destiny's development was a nightmare

[modest marsh]

I do not think Bungie’s hypothetical second halo trilogy would be an MMORPG which you can chalk up most if not all of the major issues Destiny has

They were pioneering the live service shooter model which is just a massive priority shift from the far safer established model Halo is cemented by

[wispy pewter]

Damn

[vagrant ocean]

I’m mainly talking about how they canned Joe’s story for D1 MONTHS before launch.

And proceeded to release a subpar game that took several years to finish, and then somehow screwed the pooch even more with D2.

Bungie is a corpse and has been since 2007.

[modest marsh]

Story is the hardest and most disposable part of a game to implement because it’s entirely beholden to the much more significant priority of the gameplay itself

Halo throughout its existence has been marred with similar problems

[vagrant ocean]

Yeah but a good chunk of Halo’s story issues were caused by the publisher rushing things, not the dev looking their story lead in the eye and telling him the thing he spent most of the dev cycle working on is trash causing him to quit.

[somber idol]

Bungie event at the time where also too much ambitious

And they pretty well messed up the Halo 2 développement themselves

[minor sky]

There is a quote from Jamie Griesmer about that very thing

Tbh I do think Nu-Marathon looks pretty cool

I don't have the means to play it atm but I'm keeping my eyes on it

I am really curious to see how certain plot threads from the original trilogy will come into play (especially with Durandal)

[minor sky]

I think the real issue lays at the feet of Jason Jones being somebody with a strong vision but being bad at managing large scale projects/meeting demands

Not to scapegoat, but the seed for a ton of Halo 2's development issues comes from how Jones, who everybody looked towards for that secert "Bungie" sauce, was working on two projects at once

Jones was more interested in "the next thing" and his vision for Halo 2 was- from what I've seen and heard- pretty vague

The big asymetical multiplayer mode that Jones wanted,"Warfare" didn't progress beyond a single sheet of paper before being scrapped. All while Max Hoberman was making clear progress with Halo 2's traditional multiplayer suite. The "story" Jones gave to Joesph Staten for Halo 2 amounted to three lines of dialogue

"The wire; I'm going to cut it"
"I am a monument to all of your sins"
And Master Chief overlooking a burning planet Earth and saying
"Only blood will pay for this"

For what it is worth, I think Jones is a talented person who is responcible for a ton of what has made Bungie's games great. But that doesn't ignore how his leadership caused problems

[carmine sleet]

Calling it now, Durandal is hiding in the cat because nobody would suspect it

[minor sky]

He'd do it

Actually no

Tycho is the cat

Durandal forced them into it as a means of punishment/a cruel joke

[stoic hamlet]

The line by chief I also don’t think would work well.

Actually I don’t know that it would work at all.

Tonally it would present a change and conflict with the Arbiter sections, it directly puts Chief and Arby into conflict, whereas I think the release game was right to not really allow them to fight, or really acknowledge that they’d happily kill each other.

H3 kind of does, but it’s more played for laughs.

[minor sky]

Before it was cut, the Forerunnertank level would've ended with Chief and Arby duking it out before being captured by the Gravemind

Which, in all fairness, is an idea that I don't hate.

"Only blood will pay for this" is a cool line on paper, but coming from Chief just sounds really odd. This is mainly 25 years of characterization talking, but still.

Hell, I feel like it would make more sense for Chief to say that in regards to Reach, his home, being destroyed instead of Earth

[warm lion]

If someone was born on November 26 2532, how old would they be in 2549?

[gusty star]

Did you really just ask that

Instead of pulling out a calculator

[vagrant ocean]

Kids these days.

17

[warm lion]

What? That doesn't make sense

[vagrant ocean]

They’d be 17.

It’s basic math

[warm lion]

But their birthday is in November 26

[stark torrent]

which month in 2549 is it then

[warm lion]

They're birthday

[stark torrent]

then theyd be 17

[warm lion]

My OC needs to be 18

So, they'd have to be born in 2531

[vagrant ocean]

Yes

That’s how math works

[warm lion]

Oh, whoops

So, how does Elite age work?

Is it like Humans or do they live longer?

[stark torrent]

its not like humans to them i assume, so they would just live longer

elites might not even have ages to them because the covenant calculates time in stuff like "first age of doubt"

[warm lion]

Well, they have to age. That's how it works

[stark torrent]

yea they do age, but its not like they would say "im 70 years old"

[warm lion]

How old would an Elite have to be in order to fight in battle?

[stark torrent]

they probably dont have a set age, its just whenever the elite trainers think they are ready

[warm lion]

Okay, and what about Brutes?

[stark torrent]

brutes just fight

they dont care about anything else

[warm lion]

How old would one have to be in order to become War Chief?

[stark torrent]

im not sure

[minor sky]

It reminds me of some of Chief's dialogue in The Flood

[vagrant ocean]

They live much longer. Jul ‘Mdama was in his prime at 69 years old.

[stark torrent]

yea and there was some 130 year olds

human years

[vagrant ocean]

Yeah

Everything is measured in human years given we don’t know the orbital period of Sanghelios.

[stark torrent]

yea thats wat i was saying

[vagrant ocean]

I was agreeing

[warm lion]

Damn, then Tasze is real young for a Shipmaster in The Banished

[stark torrent]

maybe not to the elites

[vagrant ocean]

It appears the orbital period of Sanghelios is 583.3 days, or 1.5 times longer than Earths.

So I if my math is correct, someone like Jul ‘Mdama would be 46 in Sangheili years. Granted I am very bad at math.

[warm lion]

Okay, cause Tasze is only 30 or 29, same age as Jack

[vagrant ocean]

Take my calculations with a grain of salt.

I legit flunked out of remedial math in college.

[prime mauve]

Tartarus was Chieftain of the Jiralhanae before he was 61 (his age on 2552 when he died) and Atriox was 39 when he started the Banished so maybe 35-40 I think

[warm lion]

Okay. well he's 40

[prime mauve]

Maybe younger, we don't know Severan's age and he was War Chief in 2559

30-40 maybe would be a good range

[stark torrent]

he was cheiftan of his pack durring harvest

[prime mauve]

Yeah he was 33 at the time when he took over from Maccabeus

[vagrant ocean]

Well for a Jiralhanae it’s different as Doisac’s orbital period is .8 years. So they’d age faster I fink. Again, my math sucks.

[warm lion]

I'm not sure if I want Krellius 30 or 40

[prime mauve]

Oh I was counting human years but the equivalences could be made then with dialogue like "I was merely 30 Doisac sun-cycles old when I took this hammer" or somethint

[warm lion]

Gonna keep him 40 just to be safe. Also, he built his Gravity Mace

[stark torrent]

no he took it from his uncle maccebeus

wen he killed him

[warm lion]

Oh, I thought you were talking about Krellius

[stoic hamlet]

Small thing, just because it irritates me. I apologize:

• their, not they’re.

[warm lion]

Fixed

[plain mesa]

Has anyone seen this video? these vehicles were initially going to be in Halo CE before Bungie ran out of time, so much potential for Halo Campaign Evolved especially in the expanded missions also including the prequel missions with SGT Johnson, also i don't think all of the vehicles will be added but i hope it's a possibility to add some at least to the vehicle sandbox? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwafSBN2FuM

[carmine sleet]

I don't think most of those will be showing up outside of maybe the Gauss Hog but that's because the Gauss Hog did end up becoming a vehicle in Halo 2

Like, even with the prequel missions, I don't see them reviving any of the cut CE vehicles as the roles they for fill have been taken by other vehicles

[modest marsh]

Rocket hog in campaign is a possibility

[carmine sleet]

Aye, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's the Reach style Rocket Hog

[thorn spindle]

would b cool

spectre could fit

[plain mesa]

of course we probably wouldn't see most but i think The Kestrel as it is an UNSC air counterpart to the banshee and the Spectre as it's a covenant warthog thats my main 2

In CE the Banshee was the only air vehicle that you can pilot. Maybe the Kestrel is on par with the Hornet and Falcon?

And The Spectre would be a great counterpart to the warthog. Seeing the Warthog and Spectre going head to head. i mean think about it? and i think Halo Studios is fully aware of the cut vehicles. but i will give you that they revived the E3 Pelican with a chin-gun as we saw in the Halo Campaign Evolved Demo.

[marble lion]

I do see rocket hog from Reach being in. Would you be surprised if the Rocket hog from CE PC was chosen instead the one drom Reach style design?

[plain mesa]

Yes but it might be the Rocket hog from CE's Mutiplayer? thinking realistically.

[coarse hamlet]

Yes because i believe in the slim possibility of the flamethrower making it in

[plain mesa]

They confirmed the Wraith will be pilotable unlike CE and the Fuel rod cannon and energy sword will not have a deadman trigger this time so you can use them unlike CE's Campaign which is why I am convinced that more content could be added especially the confirmed prequel missions with SGT Johnson.

[carmine sleet]

I would be surprised if they went with the CE PC style Rocket Hog. At most, I am expecting they might give us a Reach style Rocket Hog with a paint job based off of the CE PC version

[carmine sleet]

I wouldn't take those as evidence they'll be resurrecting cut content, since the Wraith, Energy Sword and Fuel Rod are all things which became usable in games after CE (The latter was usable in the PC version of CE but I doubt they'll make the Fuel Rod a heat weapon)

[plain mesa]

https://www.halowaypoint.com/news/introducing-halo-campaign-evolved Here is what has been confirmed so far.

[carmine sleet]

I know what's been confirmed. I just don't think you should be taking it as evidence of cut content being resurrected

[plain mesa]

I never said they would definitely do it i was implying there is a good chance.

But whatever the outcome it might be better than CEA

[carmine sleet]

Nothing about what's said implies they'll be bringing in cut vehicles though

[plain mesa]

I know they never said that but thinking logically Halo Studios wouldn't risk making a carbon copy or at least close to carbon copy. Halo CE had it's charm and still has i won't deny that but I think they would want a more modernised version also it's a remake being built from the ground up due to the move to UE5.

[carmine sleet]

I'm not saying they're making a carbon copy

In fact, we know it isn't by the fact they're adding in weapons like the BR and Needle Rifle

The point I'm making, which you've ignored when I've made it clear before, is that the remake isn't being made based off of the cut content for CE, and that nothing about what they've talked about is suggesting they are actively adding in cut content

[plain mesa]

Yes, I am not disagreeing with you but i'm not discounting the possibility either.

[warm ridge]

Any age. As long as they're strong enough to defeat the previous Chieftain, they're automatically crowned as the new Chieftain, even if by accident.

"this baby killed the previous Chieftain by knocking over this glass vase which they proceeded to slip on and die, he is the new Chieftain"

chieftain baby: "googoo gaa gaaa"

not saying this as a joke, that's quite literally how the current Brute society works. The War Chief rank also behaved like this.

[plain mesa]

That plus eating their victims albeit Humans and other victims. Brutes can be a bit barbaric but hey at least they have customs lol.

[warm lion]

"All hail the new Chieftan."

Chieftan: "Googog gaga."

Brutes: "He's hungry, get him some milk!"

[warm ridge]

Nah someone would probably just kill the baby immediately in order to be the new Chieftain ngl

Brute society is very ceremonial, pack mentality, anarchy & even democratic all in one.

[plain mesa]

that too or could even eat their own kind as well. kinda barbaric and civilised at the same time?

[warm ridge]

For example if a Chieftain dies through unknown means without someone in the pack killng him, the entire pack will proceed to "vote" or "fight" each other until a new Chieftain is crowned by everyone

They're ceremonial in that they treat well liked leaders with the highest amounts of respect, organizing entire funerals for dead leaders.

This is how Escharum was able to survive for so long, even after Atriox was thought to be dead. Everyone new the guy was aging, and one good fight with a decently capable Brute would kill him on the spot, but they didn't because he was respected & feared by many.

[plain mesa]

Even Chief respected Escharum in the end. Warrior to Warrior. could be seen in Escharum's death scene.

[stoic hamlet]

I don’t believe we’ve ever seen it declared by accident.

It’s usually done via challenge.

[plain mesa]

Do you think that Chief in the end respected Escharum or any warrior. in Escharum's case it was in his final moments, he sees him not as a monster, but as a fellow soldier who was fighting for what he believed was right, which humanises Chief in my opinion.

[warm ridge]

Accident can mean anything, such as the current Chieftain being severely injured by outside means, tired, and not able to fight properly.
This happened to Maccabeus, who was still injured & hadn't fully recovered when Tartarus challenged him.

[plain mesa]

Something Norse or Samurai-esque

[stoic hamlet]

No, Tartarus challenged him after his perceived failings. Maccabeus wasn’t eliminated via accident.

[warm ridge]

Again, he was still injured, it was done on purpose. There's a pretty good chance Tartarus wouldn't of won if Maccabeus had fully healed.

[stoic hamlet]

Yes, so not an accident.

Tartarus wasn’t made Chieftain because he killed Maccabeus by accident.

[warm ridge]

The accident is Maccabeus being injured at all, unintentional.

[plain mesa]

what are both thoughts on it?

[stoic hamlet]

That’s irrelevant to the point.

Tartarus saw weakness, ergo he challenged.

Yeah Maccabeus would have probably beaten him had he not been injured, but the point stands that Tartarus didn’t kill him accidentally.

Your analogy was a baby knocking over a vase which the chieftain tripped on, that’s not what happened,

[plain mesa]

How did Tartarus recieve his fist of rukt hammer?

[warm ridge]

Idk where you got the idea that I was comparing a baby knocking over a vase to Tartarus killing Maccabeus.

Jiralhanae culture is built on whatever Brute kills the previous Chieftain is automatically crowned as the new Chieftain. This doesn't always happen through "challenging" them.

[stoic hamlet]

It was Maccabeus’s. Tartarus killed him and took the hammer as a sign of leadership.

[stoic hamlet]

Literally in your original comment, mate. I’m not playing this game with you again, it’s insufferable.

[warm ridge]

No games played here, and my original comment didn't compare them. It's examples.

[stoic hamlet]

In terms of the actual line I think it was out of place, but John does have a line directly comparing himself to Escharum in an earlier section.

The Weapon asks how Escharum can keep fighting with his planet destroyed and all the horrible things that’ve happened to him, to which John replies (paraphrased) “I would to.”

So he sees a similarity between himself and Escharum on that basis.

[warm ridge]

This was intentionally by the lead writer for Halo Infinite, who wanted Chief & Escharum to be seen as equals, but also as the complete opposites.
Chief = good
Escharum = bad

it's talked about some in the halo infinite art book

[stoic hamlet]

It’s a fair enough narrative beat.

[plain mesa]

In your Opinion which is the better The Fist of Rukt or Diminisher of Hope?

[warm ridge]

Fist of Rukt.

[plain mesa]

Same goes with Thel's Prophets Bane and Jega's Bloodblade. and I agree with you on the Fist of Rukt.

[warm ridge]

Fist of Rukt is better because it was upgraded by Truth to have all sorts of stuff it couldn't do before.
Such as controlling people through gravity, making them float, electrocuting them, and doing gravity shockwaves.

You're not really gonna do any better then that if your able to just manipulate the gravity surrounding people.

If it wasn't for those upgrades, then Diminisher of Hope all the way. It's just a better weapon 🤷‍♂️

Without the upgrades the Fist of Rukt is just a piece of concrete or a large metal slab stuck onto metal rebar more or less (yes i'm aware it's not actually this, but it's appearance is very similar to that)

[plain mesa]

The Diminisher of Hope looks aethetically pleasing due to it looking like a fusion of a big Dane Axe and a Hammer

[warm ridge]

here's the fist of rukt

https://www.halopedia.org/images/1/15/HM-Maccabeus.png?64fac

This is what it looks like normally.

https://www.halopedia.org/images/c/cf/H2A_-_Tartarus_with_Rukt.jpg?065b1

and here you can see the upgrades, covenant tech shoved into it.

[plain mesa]

Yeah like a normal hammer got to admit The Rukt looked better

[plain mesa]

Also there was that Vortex hammer in Halo Wars

[warm ridge]

here's it in classic graphics.
https://www.halopedia.org/images/8/81/H2-FistOfRukt.png?6a531

[plain mesa]

still looks cool and i remember it even before Halo 2A when i played the classics, playing every Halo game as it came out and the Hammer from Halo 2 still looked better than Halo 3 and above

Sometimes i can tell the difference between the MCC and original

[warm ridge]

I'm just going purely for performance reasons, aesthetics aren't something I consider.

[plain mesa]

Yeah i agree

[warm ridge]

If I was going for aesthetics then honestly Halo 5 Gravity hammer all the way.

[plain mesa]

Sometimes I remember i roleplayed as a warrior judge and i found every covenant or banished who shot me Guilty if you know what i mean lol

I acted as Judge, Jury and Executioner

[plain mesa]

Also That aside i warn you this Video is about 35 minutes long but are there any weapons you wish they kept from early Development in the final games as a hypothetical what if? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXkNbFRgvxg

I know i looked at some, some look like earlier versions of weapons we know today and some look like different weapons altogether but I'm asking all of you which are your favourites?

[stoic hamlet]

I wouldn’t really consider this #lore-and-universe

I’d post that question and such in #general-chat

[plain mesa]

Sorry wrong chat lol.

[wraith garden]

random question : is binary rifle or incineration able to just ignore energy shielding in the lore not multiplayer cuz its anti matter projectile but energy shielding is uhm idk what will happen

[prime mauve]

I think it's less that it ignores shields and more that it's so powerful it breaks through pretty much instantly

[modest marsh]

We have never seen the incineration cannon or binary rifle interact with anything outside of gameplay except when it was used on the Didact

The first time, Didact was without his armor and was incapacitated by it

During their fight on Gamma Halo, Linda fires at him which at first seems to hurt but then his armor adapts to and nullifies it’s effects

[orchid kettle]

Halo 5 does have a light rifle one shot an Elite in a cutscene which makes me assume a Binary rifle is basically overkill on anything alive

at least if you're not wearing Forerunner armor

[modest marsh]

That technically also happens in Halo 4

Not a cutscene, one of those scripted mid-gameplay vignettes

And I mean, yeah, it’s an anti-matter gun

Even a small amount of anti-matter causes enough atomic annihilation to generate thermonuclear explosions, so if anything its effects are undersold

[vagrant ocean]

Most likely contained in a magnetic field due to the unstable nature of antimatter.

[orchid kettle]

Promethean stuff in general feels like it should be beyond the capability of our heroes to meaningfully challenge with their modern weaponry

but then you get Bad Blood and Alpha-Nine plowing through hordes of Soldiers

[vagrant ocean]

Now what type of antimatter is up for debate. I suggest it’s either anti-hydrogen due to the (relatively) easy way it can be produced, or anti-helium.

[modest marsh]

In fairness, the existence of soldiers seems like a response to the evident problem with halo 4’s depiction of knights

[orchid kettle]

To me its just a bigger issue with the franchise since in the HCW era material, you never really witness something of Forerunner creation that is a conventional weapon, the sentinels are basically roombas and we've been exposed to this idea that the Covenant plasma pistol/rifle is really just some salvaged communications array or something that's been repurposed into a weapon

[vagrant ocean]

It’s theorized that the energy sword is based on that weird weapon we see in Origins.

[orchid kettle]

so it feels like when faced with a proper Forerunner war machine, our heroes should simply have no answer. But that obviously isn't fun for gameplay so they need to be killed by frag grenades and shotgun blasts.

I know some fans are also of the opinion that the lack of explicit Forerunner weaponry in the franchise for so long suggested that they may not have even had them in the first place

I know a past dev has said at one point they envisioned Forerunners as just like hippies in a field, eating grapes and debating philosophy

[vagrant ocean]

Or that due to their nature of basically being printed into existence the vast majority of what we would call “conventional” weapons were just lost to time due to that.

[coarse hamlet]

Possibility the forerunners were just bad at war, the didacts elite were just kinda okayish soldiers. This is supported by the scene in origins where the 5 dudes blast one flood form turn a corner and are instantly overwhelmed

[vagrant ocean]

Tbf, being the dominant military force does cause combat effectiveness to eventually drop, especially if most of your forces are being absorbed by a completely new enemy.

[orchid kettle]

I think the only reason I wouldn't vibe with this interpretation is because it'd have the knock on effect of implying that the reason the Forerunners failed to contain the Flood was because they weren't war-like enough

but otherwise I can enjoy the idea that as part of the Covenant misunderstanding what the Forerunners were, they went as far as corrupting their technology towards violent ends

[coarse hamlet]

Another explanation is the forerunners intentionally limited their weaponry, especially what wasnt buried postwar, so the flood wouldnt get it

[vagrant ocean]

As empires do. Look at the US, we took what could’ve been a very efficient source of energy and turned it into the destroyer of nations.

[vagrant ocean]

This is actually a viable theory imo.

[coarse hamlet]

Also would be a good policy so the unextincted races dont blow themselves up

Halos themselves being an exception of course

[vagrant ocean]

Yeah, especially since by the end of the war the only Rate with even the slightest bit of power were the Lifeworkers.

[coarse hamlet]

Ill thank the librarian but also spit in her general direction for not impounding the didacts custom built human demaker 9000

[vagrant ocean]

Tbf she had more pressing matters to attend to.

Keep in mind that many species didn’t even get catalogued.

I seem to recall a species that just managed to send a signal into space in 97,445 BCE before the pulse hit them.

Since it wasn’t encountered by either the Ecumene or the Hive, they were simply wiped out. Who knows if any remnants of their civilization remain.

[gaunt oak]

For server moderation concerns, please send a direct message to @wet locust.

[warm ridge]

No, they're just so powerful it instant breaks shields. Look at a rocket launcher, they instant kill enemies, they don't ignore shields.

[warm ridge]

Given new Halo lore saying that Elites don't have shields active 24/7, we can assume the Elites there just didn't have there shields activated. Even a DMR could've one shot an Elite at that range.

[warm ridge]

Would also support the entire idea that Ancient Humanity was capable of holding there own against the Forerunners despite having vastly inferior technology, (they only managed to get comparable tech near the end of the war), vastly inferior numbers, and still managed to place the entire Forerunner military into a stand still from inside a single solar system.

[warm ridge]

Well we already know why they failed to contain it, and it didn't have anything to do with them not being war-like enough.
They under estimated the Flood as just a harmless parasite that could be cured & didn't take it seriously at all. This allowed the Flood to spread much faster then what the Forerunners expected it to.
-# Until eventually there was no stopping it.

[plain mesa]

Don't you have a favourite IWHBYD line? Monitor/Gaius Plus?

I take it this Bot can't reply to something like this?

[stoic hamlet]

It cannot.

[minor sky]

I like how the more Aquatic design of the Halo 5 Covenant is reflective of the Sangheili's background as a sea-fairing people

It fits a Sangheili-centric Covenant splinter faction

[unique rune]

I miss those things

[wraith garden]

Forerunners were dump asf with high tech only cuz of precursors guidance

[minor sky]

I do have some issues with the asthetic and how it messes with parts of the gameplay, but by and large, I dig 5's Covenant quite a bit

The Halo 5 Carbine is hands down my favorite version of the gun

[unique rune]

it was a cool way to reinterpret the designs while also giving them some additional context in-universe so I appreciated them for that

[hearty whale]

It can if it wants to

[minor sky]

For sure. Though I will say that after playing through bits of 3 and Reach today, they did feel a bit more fanstastical than they did pieces of military hardware

[carmine sleet]

Whenever we next see the Swords of Sanghelios, they should have all their vehicles be the Halo 5 versions in their colours

[minor sky]

The R'sikosh Man O' War and the Lursu Brigantine are a bit odd

I think my core issue with the Halo 5 Covenant ship and vehicle designs are how they are too organic and smooth

Some paneling, greeble, and a little more wear and tear would go a long way

I do like the idea that some fans had of the newer designs belonging to the Swords of Sanghelios while the Covenant splinter factions made use of the traditional designs

But that seems like it'd be a tad impractical

[plain mesa]

Do any of you have a favourite IWHBYD Skull lines? in Halo 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-4g9WeDHDY, (2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cyQvH8rsx0 (3): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKyrqS9BdSo.

"And they must love the smell of Bulgari, yeah i'm doing a little product placement I gotta get paid too." SGT Johnson-2007

[stoic hamlet]

You posted this yesterday, and were told it’s not the right channel.

[plain mesa]

Sorry but this was ignored even on the main chat so i didn't know which one to put it on, before you judge me.

and if I re-posted this it is on a different chat and other people might use this chat than the other one and it does have to do something with the halo universe so i thought it was relevant.

also for the record that last vid on this chat was for Pre development-Halo weapons not these funny lines.

[carmine sleet]

Most people here likely don't pay attention to most of what is said in the IWHBYD lines

And I also wouldn't really look at those lines too closely anyway, they're just meant to be dumb alternative lines said during combat

[plain mesa]

Just wanted something entertaining to talk to the chat about. clearly some things feel like it's too much to ask?

what i'm saying is I thought this probably would have been a good subject to bring up on chat, but now i will try to change the subject so i'm gonna drop it now.

Anyway changing the subject what do you all think what's going to be in Campaign Evolved's Prequel Missions?

[prime mauve]

I think they said somewhere they would be original missions but if they were taking inspiration from the books then a couple battles from Silent Storm and the Circumference raid above Reach would be my guesses.

[vagrant ocean]

Fr. Those designs are slept on.

[carmine sleet]

They said they weren't going to retell any events from the novels in the new missions

Like, all we know is they're about Chief and Johnson and set before Reach

[prime mauve]

Ah so it was confirmed? Then we'll just have to see what they came up with.

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah confirmed in the Canon Fodder Live they did.

Entirely new missions.

[vagrant ocean]

Apparently quite early

Maybe after Silent Storm

[stoic hamlet]

If anything it’d be set after Oblivion, as we know what John was doing after Silent Storm up until then.

My guess though/hope is stuff set between 2535-2549.

Though, I’d prefer it be with other Spartans and not Johnson and our “traditional” Blue Team.

Like William-043, Li-009, Joshua-029, Vinh-030, etc.

…but I guess those days are gone now… D:

[carmine sleet]

Did they confirm Chief was the only Spartan II who will show up in the prequel missions? Because there's still a chance if they haven't

[modest marsh]

I know it’s a bit of a contrived set of circumstances that makes the universe feel artificially small but I’m still relatively confident that at least one if not all 3 missions will be set in 2549 and may or may not be specifically the Battle of Algolis in order to tie in the origin of the Banished somehow

[carmine sleet]

I hope not

[modest marsh]

As far as we know there isn’t any confirmed Spartan deployment in that year despite the fact that is supposedly when the program went officially public

So something “important” enough to kick off the propaganda campaign must’ve happened then

[carmine sleet]

I don't think we need to tie that into the origins of the Banished though

[modest marsh]

Purely commenting on what is the most “efficient” use of the prequel missions since we’re not getting any prequel game spinoffs any time soon

If you have not played halo wars 2 you dont know how the banished were formed or their relationship with the covenant without using out of game sources

This doesn’t even necessarily mean there will be bonafide banished in the game itself, I could see something like a terminal entry referencing Atriox’s rebellion without actually using the name “banished”

I do think it’s likely we’re going to see brutes either way, since the game is largely an asset flip of reach gameplay with infinite visuals

[ivory badger]

I don't know if anyone has asked this question before, but were there any Spartan IV's that wore Gen 1 armor? The reason I'm asking is because the Gen 2 platform would've had a testing stage and there's the possibility that the testing phase for that platform would've been after at least the first batch of Spartan IV's were made

[chrome apex]

What weapons cause radiation damage in lore?

[modest marsh]

Nothing is confirmed for certain but it’s been made very clear that part of the purpose behind GEN2 in the first place was to allow the armor to be compatible with augmented personnel with greater tolerance for inferior physiological benchmarks

[ivory badger]

I know in a Halo 3 mod that I run the Carbine does radiation damage

[stoic hamlet]

The various models of the Covenant Carbine fire radiation-infused bullets.

Plasma has also generally been said to cause radiation poisoning.

[modest marsh]

There have been suits designed to aesthetically appear like GEN1 but are actually GEN2/3 with either refurbished or custom built components

It’s technically possible that there have been IVs that used GEN1 in some form or fashion but one of GEN2’s main advantages is its adaptability to different physical profiles

[ivory badger]

Ok. Hopefully Halo Studios can shed some light on it in the future because it is a bit of a grey area in the lore

[modest marsh]

(It still requires a minimum baseline of augmentations either way)

[ivory badger]

True

[modest marsh]

Going off your username and pfp I assume you’re talking about in the sense of Fallout’s depiction of radiation?

Pretty much all energy weapons are emitting radiation by virtue of usually being heat based, but you presumably specifically mean the generation/dispersion of alpha/beta/gamma particles

[chrome apex]

What caused that took down Kat’s shield? How immune is Spartan armor to radiation?

[modest marsh]

Plasma weapons in general seem to have at least marginal radioactivity but in doses low enough that it isn’t immediately life threatening

Mjolnir armor is excessively protected against radiation if all is taken at face value/to its logical conclusion

[ivory badger]

It was a glassing beam from a covenant ship causing an emp that messed with Kat's armor and prosthetic arm

[modest marsh]

The biggest point of evidence for this is the fact Chief spent 6 months in space without being cooked inside his armor

[stoic hamlet]

Kat notes the radiation was above 90 million roentgen.

[ivory badger]

Did she say that in the campaign because I don't remember

[stoic hamlet]

Yes.

[modest marsh]

^ that also but I’ve always taken that with a grain of salt because at that level, Kat’s eyes should be boiling

[ivory badger]

Oh

[modest marsh]

Which she was apparently blinded

We know for sure plasma grenades are highly radioactive as they’ve been attributed to cause acute radiation sickness and even fatal injury even if the victim is insulated from the direct blast and heat

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah I took it more as a “it’s so high my Geiger counter can’t comprehend the number, so it’s so bad I can BS one.”

[modest marsh]

They also possess enough ionizing radiation to EMP shielded electronics, such as the door control mechanisms on a Covenant ship as depicted in First Strike

[stoic hamlet]

Because yeah, 90 million, even 40 million, is a lot

[modest marsh]

To me I just always assumed it was a remote sensor and not literally her handheld device picking up the rads

[ivory badger]

I mean anything over 9000 would scare Vegeta

[modest marsh]

“How close?” implies Carter doesn’t expect the reading to be local

I can definitely buy a glassing beam emitting +100 million roentgens at the epicenter

[ivory badger]

There's gotta be something like a mini geiger counter or something like that built into Mjolnir that the Spartans can use if their not using Hazop armor

[modest marsh]

That is confirmed to be the case in First Strike

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah.

It’s not unbelievable.

[modest marsh]

Also, to answer your question here, it’s not actually confirmed that Kat’s shield was taken down by the radiation surge

It’s debatable if hers or anyone’s shields were active

It’s something that kinda gets glossed over in the games (until Infinite added this as a mechanic for Elites specifically) but having shields on all of the time is neither convenient or an efficient use of power

Logically they should be turned off in circumstances that do not warrant the added protection

Kat also didn’t have her helmet equipped in the first place, and while it’s not exactly confirmed either way, it’s possible that not having a sealed suit meant that engaging the shield in the first place was a non-starter and she simply didn’t have it ready by the time she was in the sniper’s crosshairs

Out of universe, I don’t think it mattered to Bungie whether her shield was active or not because we know they intended her to be sniped using some iteration of the focus rifle (probably when it behaved more like a beam rifle) and thus the shot would’ve likely punched through a shield regardless

It being a needle rifle which cannot normally penetrate shields in a single shot is just a matter of resource management, especially when needle weapons are infamously ineffective at penetrating hard targets

[orchid kettle]

I would keep the shields at full strength but only at the bottom of my feetsies so I could ice skate around everywhere

i would be too fast for the plasma bolts

[stoic hamlet]

Give ‘em the ‘ol ✨ razzle dazzle ✨

[modest marsh]

I wonder if Nylund getting the idea of shields making things slippery has any basis from the game itself

[orchid kettle]

He noticed how if you crouched while falling on a rock at an angle you would slide off harmlessly

and he needed to canonize the butter shields

[modest marsh]

Reasonable

[warm ridge]

Master Chief Omnibus cover looks amazing

https://www.halowaypoint.com/news/halo-the-master-chief-omnibus-cover-reveal

the Flood spores look a bit funny tho

[warm ridge]

All Spartan IV's can wear Gen 1 armor, yes.
Quite a lot of Gen 2 armor was prototyped on the Gen 1 platform, you can see many of these prototypes in Halo MCC - Halo 3's armor customization.

by "gen 1 platform" I'm primarily referring to the Mark VI Gen 1 variant of the armor, not Mark IV or V (S-IV's can still wear these armors & they were also updated to Gen 2 standards).

[ivory badger]

I knew that part. I was more curious on how many classes of Spartan IV's wore Gen 1 armor before the Gen 2 armor became available for them to wear

[modest marsh]

None confirmed

[warm ridge]

We don't know any characters, but we know the Spartan IV program existed well before Gen 2 did, as early was 2548 - 2550.

[modest marsh]

The earliest known fielded Spartan-IVs were Palmer’s class, and they wore GEN2

[ivory badger]

Ok

[warm ridge]

Depends on what you mean by class, because presumably many S-IV's during the experimental phases had worn Gen 1 armor plenty.
This is also supported by the Gen 2 prototype phases.
And we know S-IV's had participated in battles during the Human - Covenant war.

The 1st actual class of S-IV's didn't enter full serivce until Jan. 7th, 2553, which by that point were all wearing finalized versions of Gen 2 armor.

Tedra Grant is a pretty good candidate for possible Gen 1 use considering it's directly mentioned she had field tested early versions of Gen 2 armor. @ivory badger

[ivory badger]

Ok cool

[warm ridge]

Believe there's other S-IV's with mentions like this, but I can't recall any at the moment.

[warm ridge]

I definitely think the intention was that the glassing beam itself was emitting 90 million roentgens, not that 90 million was affecting them directly. There's no chance 90 million roentgens would be able to reach them from that far without rapidly decaying. Could easily EMP them though.

[prime mauve]

The one next to Keyes looks like it's waving at the camera lol

[chrome apex]

What is more resistant to radiation damage, shields or armor?

[orchid kettle]

I'd probably sooner expect a Spartan in MJOLNIR mark IV to be fine with some rads versus somebody who somehow was naked besides for their shielding

Like clearly shields don't filter everything because Elites in Outcasts get got by gas and sonar attacks

and you know, Elites can breathe with their shields on, and apparently even smell

[modest marsh]

Energy shields are effectively ionized particle fields, so external electromagnetic fields of sufficient intensity is obviously going to disperse them

Armor plating is held together by things besides electromagnetic forces

[modest marsh]

Don’t hold me to this because I wouldn’t know where to look, but I could’ve sworn one of the early novels implies that the face of elites aren’t actually shielded at all

Obviously this doesn’t comport with gameplay or later depictions, but I find the concept interesting

TFOR itself suggests that shields form a vacuum around the armor

[orchid kettle]

I figure the shielding is thinner like on the hands and feet in order to maintain continuity with the rest of the shielding but it's practically a weak spot

I feel like the only reason we don't really explore enemy shielding having weaknesses is because usually the books just accept that Spartans can blitz through the fodder with their normal weapons and superior armor and enemy shields end up collapsing after a cool three round burst anyway

[warm ridge]

Pretty sure it's implied that shields only affect fast moving targets (although this isn't entirely understood & what classifies as a fast moving target is debated because not all examples in Halo lore show shields being affected by fast moving things).

Stuff like gas (atmosphere), and smells would get through them fine.

This would also imply shields don't protect against radiation at all. Not like you'd really expect them to in the 1st place.

[slim salmon]

Why do you need to go up 4 floor then ride another elevator back down to retrieve a Halo's Activation Index? Is this like some kind of 5-factor-authentication for ending the world?

[jade cape]

Spartan - IVs in general are just criminally overhated and don’t get enough material that portrays them properly

Biggest thing against them if you ask me is in a lot of people’s eyes they’re never going to hold a candle to II’s or III’s, even if MJOLNIR is the performance equalizer across the board

there was such a strong impression made & legacy left behind with the kind of impact the earlier generations had, nothing is really going to come close to that in terms of just raw performance & excellence

Horvath & Alpha Nine are the best examples of the best kinds of Spartan - IV’s though, for sure, the entire program is a good way of elevating exceptional people (soldiers) & characters

[icy yoke]

S-IV were designed for different purpose.
Spartan II designed precison instruments. But never enough them.turn tide of the war

Spartan III were kamaikaze drones to be honest but designed purposely to help turn tide conflict by usurping means Covenant ability lay logistics longterm and buy UNSC time

[jade cape]

every generation was made with a specific purpose in mind, for sure. IV’s were made with long term reliability, consistency & mass production in mind

not to mention their augmentations are being refined more and more as time goes on, so there’s no telling the ways in which that might change things in the future

[icy yoke]

Spartan IV were designed to be surviveable and adaptable in peace time environment. Also they were technology demonstrators of the sort.
Test tne capacity and long term endurance of biological augmentation could be done average people not premature children

More so massive production various armor technologies.

My guess Spartan IV Development was also precursor to concept standardized augmentation of general military forces.

[jade cape]

That was definitely the big selling point of the GEN 2 MJOLNIR platform, for sure

I would say the IV’s were mostly an answer to the ethical concerns of previous Spartan generations, as well as ensuring the accessibility & population of actual Spartans themselves, so they wouldn’t be as much of a scarce resource used for obscure scenarios

[icy yoke]

Yes that too. No kids no orphans. So idea Spartan V would be unnecessary. Conventional soldiers would be capable of simplistic and presumably reversible augmentation

Much same way Energy shields revolutionized UNSC navy. So to ground level.

[jade cape]

There’s still roughly 300 (ish) Gamma company Spartan - III’s out there somewhere, but we’ll most likely never have anything happen with them

Gammas are too much of a liability & tricky to incorporate into any story

[jade cape]

Spartan - IV’s I can understand reversing some augments to a degree, but the whole concept of Randall - 037 for example having his Spartan - II augmentations reversed entirely made absolutely zero sense to me

[icy yoke]

My understandimg S-III that survived were absorbed into the fold. In any case expectations of 90% attrition rates the UNSC never imagin3d what do with SIII in peace time being psychologically conditioned for constant warfare. Back to technolgy perspective Imagine unsc army had shielded tanks or ODST Had shield led suits.

[jade cape]

I definitely feel like at some point more of the technology introduced with MJOLNIR is going to become more widely used with time

[icy yoke]

Since Mjolnir evolution the primary concern was diminishment of power supply

[jade cape]

Having non-augmented personnel equipped with energy shielding or even vehicles is going to be such a huge game changer

[icy yoke]

Transition from IV to V armor power generation shrunk 50% . If mass produceable even a simple warthog could be shielded as better than a spartan

[jade cape]

I mean it’s also the fact of like— regular equipment doesn’t need the level of power and maintenance that MJOLNIR does, so I would imagine outfitting a warthog with energy shielding or pelicans would be much more straightforward

At least I would assume as much

[icy yoke]

Or ODST shield would only have withstand 1-2 shots while training teaches them take cover for recharge

I'm thinking Mammoth ideal shield infantry component.

[chrome apex]

What was the highest Spartan to marine ratio in halo history?

[wispy pewter]

Spartan IVs are only hated because of their introduction

[jade cape]

Definitely agreed

[stoic hamlet]

Like, numbers wise?

It’s never been closer than now.

[stoic hamlet]

Ehh, that’s debatable and stems from most people misunderstanding how the additional augmentations work.

[stoic hamlet]

That was actually one of the goals of the III’s.

It’s mentioned in Ghosts of Onyx.

The original plan (in-universe) was the III’s would continue to refine the augmentations and over time they’d introduce them into the general military.

But the IV’s are basically their own thing, with their own augmentation suite.

[plain mesa]

Also did you all know SGT Johnson was a Spartan I and Master Chief never knew he was a subject of Project Orion.

[stoic hamlet]

Yes.

ORION was highly classified.

And its inductees were kept close to the chest under NAVSPECWAR command.

Johnson and Bryne for example even when redeployed after Harvest did so under the guise of regular marines.

[jade cape]

In general, having a super soldier that needs to be medicated once every 12 hours otherwise there’s a risk of volatility or even friendly fire, I would call that a liability

whether or not that’s changed with the evolution of augmentation technology, I don’t know

[plain mesa]

Does Johnson have a confirmed look for his Spartan I armour?

[stoic hamlet]

Not every 12 hours.

That’s just one smoother.

We have examples even in Ghosts of Onyx of the Gammas going days without medicating.

Divine Wind has Saber last over a year without smoother resupply while undercover and they’re fine.

While I would broadly agree with you, we also have examples of the UNSC specifically trying to “game” that sort of aggression in other Spartans via suits like War Master, Recluse, and Viper.

[jade cape]

I might be a little misinformed then

[stoic hamlet]

There is no “Spartan I armour”.

There were plans for a powered exoskeleton but it never saw production. They just wore regular marine BDU’s canonically..

[jade cape]

I’m generally under the impression that Gammas are on a 12 hour clock and they need smoothers to counter it in order for them to be considered tactically viable

[plain mesa]

So Johnson has only the Spartan enhancements?

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah that’s just one type of short-smoother, which was supplied to Saber because they were on a friendly world within a few hours march of a UNSC base where the only opposition was supposed to be the occasional Sentinel.

[jade cape]

I mean Orion soldiers sometimes wore the Orion exoframe, to my knowledge, so I would imagine that’s the most Johnson wore during his prime years as an Orion operative

afaik, we don’t really have all that much information about Orions in the field beyond a general summary of the details of the program and the fact that it was shut down

We have a small handful of names, but nothing super concrete beyond that and the Orion exosuit that was more of a stepping stone towards MJOLNIR & SPI

[stoic hamlet]

Notably, as well, Smoothers (or lack thereof) don’t make you go beserk. They feed off of paranoia, basically make you leap to conclusions from otherwise logical paths.

In the Last Light example (on Gao), the Gammas only proved a danger to other UNSC personnel because Insurrectionists had infiltrated their area and had secured UNSC uniforms, and they (the Gammas) had outdated information.

And, even then, while that was going on, they’re stated to pass by a number of civilians and other UNSC troops and not have any issues distinguishing targets from friendlies.

The issue arose due to a sort of “perfect storm” which wouldn’t happen on any traditional Spartan operation.

[jade cape]

What I wouldn’t give for more stories utilizing remaining Spartan - III’s

alas, the chances are slim

[plain mesa]

It would be cool to know and learn more on the Project ORION and Johnson's story more with it.

[jade cape]

Yeah

I mean the most I’m aware of is that they were sometimes deployed against insurrections but not at a very large scale

The most you get from Johnson is a little bit about his history with it and his run in with a former Orion comrade during Contact Harvest

But I mean that’s it

there’s theories that Sgt Forge was Orion, and stuff like that

[plain mesa]

Also explains why he has an immunity to the flood?

[jade cape]

Something to do with the way the Orion augments affected his genetics if I remember correctly

I might be dramatically misremembering so take my words with a grain of salt

[stoic hamlet]

He has no immunity.

That’s been retconned for.. man, almost two decades now…. Time flies…

It was the case originally though.

[plain mesa]

and with SGT Forge little is known to me about him apart from the Halo Wars Story

[stoic hamlet]

But it’s no longer.

[jade cape]

I mean immunity is probably the wrong word but there was an explanation for why he was unaffected during the outbreak on Installation 04

whether or not it holds up in contemporary canon, I don’t know

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah it was canon originally, but has since been retconned.

[plain mesa]

But i noticed how Forge could handle himself with former Arbiter Ripa Moramee

[jade cape]

Johnson is just that guy, that’s all you need to know

[stoic hamlet]

Ripa likes to play with his food.

[stoic hamlet]

That’s basically the canon now, lol.

He was just too competent.

[plain mesa]

Also him and his charming quips

[jade cape]

The theory with forge stems from the story of he and Jerome briefly going toe-to-toe

which would be impossible for a normal person

thus, he might’ve been an Orion was the leading idea

[stoic hamlet]

Mhm.

But then we have a few examples of Spartans “holding back” as it were, and with Red Team being rehabilitated Washouts, it’s possible they’re worse than the average.

In terms of strength, speed, etc.

[jade cape]

I mean since they’re allies I doubt Jerome was aiming to seriously hurt the guy

however

[stoic hamlet]

Augmentation defects and all.

[stoic hamlet]

That too, yeah.

[jade cape]

The first time an average person went against a Spartan - II they were summarily pulverized within moments

so I think there’s something to it personally

[plain mesa]

Spartans Jerome-092 Alice-130 and Douglas-042 have some interesting story i assume?

[stoic hamlet]

That’s because the II in question didn’t realize how fast he was moving.

Or how strong he was.

It’s not really comparable IMO.

[jade cape]

Regardless, it’s a good example of the difference between an average person and a Spartan

Whether John was intending to kill the dude or not

[stoic hamlet]

He wasn’t, but yeah.

We know later on they were able to hone their strength and speed.

[jade cape]

Red Team were initially washouts

failed their augments first time around

[stoic hamlet]

If they couldn’t have, after all, Kelly would have been unable to spar with any of them.

[jade cape]

Jelly?

[stoic hamlet]

Typo.

Kelly.

[jade cape]

oh, lmao

[stoic hamlet]

yup, lol

[plain mesa]

Though i know Blue Team has an awesome story i know little on Fireteam Osiris and Locke's history with them

[jade cape]

Yeah I mean what you come to realize is— John wasn’t all that spectacular as far as Spartans went, he was just the main character, really

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah. It’s said more than a few times.

[jade cape]

He wasn’t the best at anything, he was kind of a Plain Jane Spartan

[stoic hamlet]

He’s lucky, but by and large, any of them could have done what he did.

He just happened to be the one to do it.

[wispy pewter]

Yes writers saying he’s an average Spartan and yet did things no other Spartan did

[plain mesa]

Also good to see Edward Buck again and became a Spartan after his ODST days

[stoic hamlet]

Broadly that proves the point, not diminishes it.

[jade cape]

I mean even that, like I wouldn’t call “Luck” an attributable trait to a soldier

I dislike the writing in that, personally

[stoic hamlet]

No one else has been put in his same position.

Ergo we can’t say if they couldn’t have done it.

But by all accounts they probably could have.

[plain mesa]

Even Buck had his Spartan armour modeled after his previous ODST armour I guess it was nostalgia?

[jade cape]

ODST gear was made with MJOLNIR compatibility in mind even during MK. V’s production

At least the MJOLNIR variants of it were

that’s my mistake

[stoic hamlet]

Same.

I mean, there’s an inherent luck-necessity in war.

It doesn’t matter how individually skilled you are, how many people you’ve killed, how many medals you’ve won, if you get hit by an artillery shell fired from 40 kilometres away.

That’s just war.

[wispy pewter]

Wasn’t John Halseys favourite Spartan

[jade cape]

yes

[plain mesa]

Yes

[jade cape]

Or at least she was very fond of him

I don’t know if favorite is ever explicitly thrown out there

[stoic hamlet]

To an excessively biased amount, yes.

She doesn’t directly call him her favourite, but she’s made it clear on more than one occasion.

[plain mesa]

Also i'm guessing on the subject of Halsey, Miranda Keyes wasn't much of a fan of her mother?

[jade cape]

Me personally, Naomi & Fred are my favorites of the II’s

[wispy pewter]

Mother loved him best I guess. That’s why he’s so lucky

[plain mesa]

Miranda more or less took after her father the legendary Jacob Keyes

[stoic hamlet]

She’s so biased, ironically, her word actually can be, and cannot be taken as gospel at the same time.

If she says “John is the only one who can do X” she’s lying, or at least blatantly downplaying everyone else.

However, if she says “John cannot do X” then it’s literally impossible.

[wispy pewter]

Need more of Naomi

[jade cape]

Yeah Miranda maintained a very deliberate distance from her mother (for admittedly good reason)

[plain mesa]

Yeah i remember getting Halsey's Journal and it said as much.

[stoic hamlet]

Miranda didn’t much like Halsey, understandably so.

Most people don’t like Halsey, really.

Even the II’s by the end of the war were getting sick of her.

[plain mesa]

Yeah i felt Catherine Halsey was a sort of hidden antagonist maybe?

[wispy pewter]

Somehow dr doofenshmirtz the evil scientist has a daughter that still loves him. Maybe Halsey needs a lesson or two from him

[jade cape]

If I remember correctly:

The first time Halsey meets Spartans that she wasn’t responsible for (III’s), during ghosts of onyx, there’s almost a hint that she views them as the same thing as II’s in terms of performance and tactical value, but she’s so uppity about not being involved with their creation she becomes mentally incapable of giving III’s any credence or credit

[stoic hamlet]

Pretty well correct, yeah.

[jade cape]

she’s an insufferably arrogant woman despite how important she was

[stoic hamlet]

Yup.

[jade cape]

like okay she technically saved humanity

[stoic hamlet]

She has a massive, massive ego.

[wispy pewter]

Her program quite literally did

[plain mesa]

Didn't Miranda feel troubled by Cortana though?

[jade cape]

Yes she did

[stoic hamlet]

Specifically she felt “equal parts maternal instinct, curiosity, and revulsion” at the sight of the III’s.

[jade cape]

I couldn’t speak to that

[stoic hamlet]

We have no indication of such, to my knowledge.

Either here or there.

[plain mesa]

I was saying that because Cortana is an AI of Halsey herself

[stoic hamlet]

There’s nothing that talks about the topic of how Miranda felt about Cortana.

… or how Jacob Keyes felt about it, actually.

Now that I think about it.

[jade cape]

however, just because Halsey had a hand in saving the human race, doesn’t mean she’s anything less than an absurdly difficult woman in actuality (to put it very lightly)

the same goes for ackerson, if you ask me

Humanity would’ve objectively been way worse off if the Spartan - III program didn’t slow the advance of the covenant the way it did

[wispy pewter]

The UNSC starves and destroy colonies but draw the line at kidnapping kids

🤪

[plain mesa]

Though both Jacob and Miranda Keyes respect Cortana i would have thought she would have reminded them of Dr Halsey?

[jade cape]

the irony, it’s almost . .

deliberate.

that’s ONI tinfoil hat stuff though

[stoic hamlet]

The two are intentionally similar, and are meant to parallel each other.

Out of universe wise, anyways.

[jade cape]

What would’ve really thrown me for a loop is if they deliberately staged the death of a Spartan II just to kidnap him and forcefully involve him in the subsequent repeat of kidnapping, mutilating and sending off en-masse another 900 children to their deaths

[stoic hamlet]

If she did, we have no information on it.

[wispy pewter]

Replacing them with clones that die within months is straight up cruel

[plain mesa]

Also what about the bond between Spartan Jorge and Halsey?

[stoic hamlet]

All the II’s had the same bond.

[jade cape]

I can only imagine if Ackerson were head of the IV program as originally intended

[stoic hamlet]

They all see Halsey as a surrogate mother.

[jade cape]

superhuman case of Stockholm syndrome

[plain mesa]

Was it the same for John-117?

[prime mauve]

It's just more pronounced with Jorge because he wears his emotions on his sleeve

But they probably all felt similar

[wispy pewter]

I think most Spartans do not even have much memories of their actual parents

[stoic hamlet]

It’d probably go pretty well, tbh.

One of the first things Ackerson does is get the two best possible people he can for the III’s and basically says “you guys do what you gotta do, you have my full support”.

He had a temper, but he wasn’t stupid or nearly as egoistical as Halsey, at least as far as we can see.

He never actually takes credit for S-III at all, for example.

The words “my program” or “my ideas” never appear.

Everyone else projects that onto him, but as far as his internal monologue and outward dialogue present, he has no indication of chasing glory.

[prime mauve]

Memories start forming at 2-3 years in children so they'd have 3-4 years of memories that would be getting overwhelmed by the mountain of information they're fed as Spartans for the next 8 years

[plain mesa]

Of course it was he was a Spartan II as well i goofed a bit lol. John-117 i meant

[prime mauve]

It's not like they'd be overwritten or anything but definitely pushed back with a lot of info

[stoic hamlet]

We see as much in The Flood.

John has a nightmare about his childhood where he has to protect his mother who then morphs into Halsey, because his mind can’t fully recall what his mother looked like, and his subconscious envisions Halsey in her place.

[prime mauve]

"My mother smelled of soap and was kind" I think is what he could recall

[plain mesa]

Also did Locke die along with the UNSC Infinity crew or did he survive? so far i think he's presumed dead?

[prime mauve]

We have no confirmation about him

[wispy pewter]

I don’t like this. Atleast Naomi managed to see her dad

[prime mauve]

We can infer stuff based on the helmet and chest piece on Tovarus that he could be dead but it's not confirmed at all.

[stoic hamlet]

Yep:

It was a familiar dream, a pleasant dream, and one which had nothing to do with war. He was on Eridanus II—the colony world he’d been born on, long since destroyed by the Covenant. He heard laughter all around. A female voice called him by name—John. A moment later, arms held him, and he recognized the familiar scent of soap. The woman said something nice to him, and he wanted to say something nice in return, but the words wouldn’t come. He tried to see her, tried to penetrate the haze that obscured her face, and was rewarded with the image of a woman with large eyes, a straight nose, and full lips. The picture wavered, indistinct, like a reflection in a pond. In an eyeblink, the woman who held him transformed. Now she had dark hair, piercing blue eyes, and pale skin.
He knew her name: Dr. Halsey.

[prime mauve]

It could be that he's alive and lost armor. It could be he's dead. It could have belonged to some other Spartan. That other Spartan could still be alive even. Tovarus could have bought the armor from Locke himself who needed quick cash to pay a debt

[plain mesa]

Him and the rest of Osiris and Blue Team?

[prime mauve]

"Here you go, Mr. Locke, 100k credits for my aura farming. What do you even need them for?"
"Blackjack debts with the Arbiter."

[wispy pewter]

Locke is probably dead or somewhere on the ring

[plain mesa]

Lol i get it.

[warm ridge]

can already be seen with things like the Wasp that would otherwise just be a super flimsy vehicle without energy shielding.

[prime mauve]

We just know where Vale is; Sanghelios. Tanaka is even more MIA than Locke. Blue Team are also not accounted for

[marble lion]

There is no confirmation that Locke is dead. It is possible (mostly likely) he is alive and is hiding somewhere on Zeta Halo along with Laskey and surviving crews of Infinity.

[wispy pewter]

Blue team might be on the ring like the last book hinted at

[stoic hamlet]

They could also be off-Ring, assigned somewhere else.

One of the audio logs implied as such:

[plain mesa]

What about Buck?

[wispy pewter]

Alpha Nine was off the Infinity I’m pretty sure

[stoic hamlet]

Locke might also be off-Zeta, if he’s alive. Empty Throne somewhat opened up that idea.

[prime mauve]

There was some concept art (or really excellent fanart) of Locke with missing armor pieces and long hair and a beard and God I hope that is what happened cause the style was off the charts

[marble lion]

I think Blue team were reassigned for different missions.

[jade cape]

https://tenor.com/view/bryan-cranston-walter-white-bryan-cranston-laughing-walter-white-laughing-breaking-bad-gif-3253293393090029064

curse you, embed functionality

[wispy pewter]

Even if Locke survives, does anyone even think he’s that important to the story

[warm ridge]

Johnson doesn't have Spartan enhancements, not in the traditional way anyways.
Johnson's enhancements are more closely associated as like, being on steroids but the body changes are permanent.

They aren't as drastic as the Spartans no, but carried enough damaging side effects that the program got abandoned. It was also just way to expensive.
Johnson was still operating in combat scenarios well into his 70's without breaking a sweat, a result from his augmentations.

[jade cape]

my only question is: in that moment, what could’ve possibly been more important than the seizure of humanity’s last bastion, and immediate discovery afterwards of another Halo ring

[prime mauve]

Locke was involved in Operation BREAKER TRIP when Infinity was hit on December 12 but we don't know exactly what it involved, or where. He had been aboard Infinity the day before when Halsey was talking of who to use to go along with The Weapon, so it likely wasn't that far.

[stoic hamlet]

Nysa isn’t humanity’s last bastion. Nor is Infinity.

[prime mauve]

Probably going as a scout to Zeta Halo

[jade cape]

I mean, true. But you get my point, I’m sure

It was a massive mobile fortress for all intents and purposes that was one of the last remaining holdouts during the Created uprising

[stoic hamlet]

The UNSC has dozens of holdout worlds and even facilities on Earth.

And once the Guardians were deactivated, the Created retreated en masse.

[plain mesa]

Damnn he looked quite good for 70 odd.

[warm ridge]

He died at age 78.

[wispy pewter]

Young for a Halo human I assume.

Parangosky was like a hundred?

[jade cape]

Johnson was boxing flood forms and galactic extinction at almost 80 years old, that’s very impressive all things considered

[warm ridge]

Not really. Johnson's older then Terrence Hood.

well, was older.

[stoic hamlet]

They were an occupation on high but had little in the way of ground presence.

Dangerous ground to mention, but the Created are best described/showcased by a recent kidnapping of a world leader under cover of night by helicopter.

I.E, immense power, but no real capabilities to project long term occupation.

[prime mauve]

Blue Team were going to be deployed separate from Chief on a classified mission also on December 12 so maybe they were aboard when the Banished attacked, maybe not. In Edge of Dawn John thinks about finding them so maybe they are on Zeta Halo.

[warm ridge]

As far as we're aware, Parangosky is the oldest living human in the modern Halo universe.

[stoic hamlet]

Once you get rid of the Guardians, they have no major teeth.

[wispy pewter]

I mean dead at 78. Since they cured cancer and all that he would have probably made it to a 100 or so

[marble lion]

Would the Cryo pods also be another factor for Johnson age slowdown?

[stoic hamlet]

Likely.

[jade cape]

The fact that there really was no real proper wrap up to the whole created threat or any of halo 5’s setups is very frustrating to me

like okay it was explained in books and extended lore but that’s not the same thing as following up such a massive plot development with a game

[warm ridge]

I'm only putting a emphasis on his age because of how young Johnson still looked & how he was still participating in active combat engagements despite being 78, due to his augmentations allowing for it.

You aren't gonna see Terrence Hood out there on the ground like that, despite being younger then Johnson he's to old & fragile for that.

[stoic hamlet]

He notes in Contact Harvest he’d spent over half his career in Cryo by that point, and that was 2525..

[plain mesa]

Quite likely now that i think about it.

[jade cape]

For the life of me I will never understand the refusal to adapt any of the books into games, like Empty Throne for example, or First Strike just to name a couple

[stoic hamlet]

We have examples of Marines spending years aboard ships, as well.

Gage Yevgenny, for example, spent the first two-three years of the war aboard a warship, never seeing ground combat.

And they’d keep the marines frozen even during space battles.

[stoic hamlet]

Different mediums are better at some things than others.

A book doesn’t a movie (or in this case game) make, not all the time.

And vice versa.

[wispy pewter]

Someone ask HBO to adapt one of the books into a series

[prime mauve]

To be fair you'd need to have both FPS Halo and Sins of the Prophets space battles to adapt everything. Maybe some Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat type fighting for the melee combat depicted

[warm ridge]

Halo TV Show Season 3 😲

[wispy pewter]

No thanks if it’s Paramount

[warm ridge]

Netflix adaptation 😲

[wispy pewter]

NO WAY

[warm ridge]

They "own" the Halo TV Series now, so if anyone's making new Halo stuff it's probably gonna be Netflix.

[prime mauve]

Get the Halo equivalent of a showrunner like Ira Parker of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms or leave the IP alone

[wispy pewter]

Such a great show. Tells you how well a show can do if they listen to the author and stop adding their own slop

[orchid kettle]

A big issue a game like Halo has specifically is that you need to invent like a million times more fights so there's actually enough gameplay to warrant making a game

[jade cape]

Like the fact that the whole battle for earth involving almost the entire banished fleet, and the created was essentially off-screened in a book that realistically almost none of the fans are going to read is very frustrating

[prime mauve]

And with creative people that take low budgets as a challenge

[wispy pewter]

HOTD has quite a few changes that makes the show worse

[orchid kettle]

all things considered even though Halo books may feature more fighting than your typical novel of similar length, it'd still make for a woefully short game

Like in Fall of Reach you'd only reasonably have like, four levels I think

[jade cape]

And yet Reach was only a few days and look how they managed to stretch that out, and that’s not even mentioning the inconsistency with the fall of reach novel

[stoic hamlet]

Contact Harvest is a common example of “pls make gaem”

That book has, at most, 6 firefights. And only one of those involves more than a dozen people on both sides.

[orchid kettle]

Jericho VII, Sigma Octanus, Gamma Station, I guess the ship boarding part where Sam died

[wispy pewter]

This is why book to game will be boring. A 6 episode show makes more sense

[jade cape]

I’m more in favor of them being movies or series if anything, I agree, I guess games came to mind first because for halo fans the games always get the most exposure

[stoic hamlet]

Halo Reach is not the greatest example here, I don’t think.

We’re still suffering from what it’s done to the canon, and part of the rereleases coming this year are supposedly finally going to fix it (I doubt that, though).

[orchid kettle]

I do think it would've been neat if we reused the TACSIM idea from Spartan Assault/Strike to let players have like a one-off original mission that's based on some prior event in Halo canon

[jade cape]

Regardless— I don’t think we’re going to get another show or series with the damage the paramount series did to the franchise

At least not in the foreseeable future

[wispy pewter]

Movies won’t do as well

We’re in the era of streaming

[prime mauve]

Yeah like for example Edge of Dawn had fights enough for like one FPS level lmao, but it wasn't the story's point

[orchid kettle]

I always kinda wished Spartan Ops was more like its namesake-- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's Spec Ops, where you just have a bunch of disconnected missions meant to explore one gameplay concept for like five minutes at a time

[jade cape]

I don’t know, put the right people in charge of it and you’d be surprised, look at the turnouts for Barbenheimer

[wispy pewter]

Oppenheimer was carried by the # crowd ngl

It was 3 hours of a snooze fest

[jade cape]

There is no way you’re going to convince me halo could not perform just as well as either of those 2 films

[marble lion]

It was well known in advance that the Halo tv series was going to be set in a different timeline even before it came out. It is possible that it might get revived or a new adaptation might occur in the future.

[orchid kettle]

Video game movies dont exactly have a stellar reputation

[prime mauve]

It was good but it made Nolan waaaay overconfident which is giving us the slop that he's dropping with the Odyssey

[wispy pewter]

I don’t like Nolan anymore

[prime mauve]

Like that man is using Viking longships and nobody is stopping him it is preposterous

[wispy pewter]

Overrated as hell

[prime mauve]

His Greeks wear pants!

[wispy pewter]

His Greeks are Americans in 3D printed armour

[stoic hamlet]

Nah Oppenheimer works because it’s a historical film so there always a market for that.

And Barbie is, well, Barbie, young girls love that thing.

Halo is only beloved by (on average) either mid-late 20’s to around 35, or people 40-50 years old, at this point.

It has no mass market appeal.

[marble lion]

Mario Bros. Sonic and Iron Lung would like a word with you.

[wispy pewter]

Sonic

These Japanese characters will never flop

[prime mauve]

I mean, the average videogame movie is like the Assassins Creed movie. Just so lame.

Sonic and Mario have done well being above that bar

[wispy pewter]

I’m guessing being animated does help as well

Since cartoons have a huge audience

[prime mauve]

Animated stuff usually gets lit in ways that people can see what's happening, versus cgi for live action where they throw in smoke and filters to hide a rush job as much as possible

[wispy pewter]

Halo works better as a show

[stoic hamlet]

Good ol’ Game of thrones season 8, we hardly knew you, but we knew enough.

[wispy pewter]

Am I the only one who prefers 40 minute episodes a week than movies. Oh no I think TikTok ruined my attention span

[prime mauve]

What are you talking about? Game of Thrones only had 4 seasons! Everything else was a fever dream.

[prime mauve]

The weekly release cycle is great for discussion and community

[wispy pewter]

Seasons 5-6 was not bad

Only when they ran out of source material it became bad

[prime mauve]

They character assassinated my faves since season 5 so I don't consider that one good. And 6 was even worse. But then in 8 everyone's faves were done just as dirty.

[jade cape]

I prefer 60+ minute episodes, for proper material coverage

series format is great for paced exposure and gradual buildup though, I agree

[prime mauve]

How about low budget 2 hour movies like the old Sharpe series with Sean Bean

[stoic hamlet]

Depends on the series.

Good directors can make 30’minute episodes work well.

Like the recent Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

But some shows, like Pluribus, Severance, and Shogun, need longer episodes.

[stoic hamlet]

Now that’s soldiering!

[wispy pewter]

Yeah depends on the series fr. For GOT I didn’t mind 40 minutes of dialogue

[prime mauve]

Just get some short guys and dress them up as Grunts, a dozen extras in surplus gear as Marines, on a field somewhere.

[wispy pewter]

Remember how the Halo show didn’t even have the budget to keep the Spartan their armour

[prime mauve]

Didn't even give them a basic, military-looking uniform for them to hang out in

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah we don’t do fatigues, sorry. They can’t look “HEROIC” if they’re in military uniforms.

ugh.

[prime mauve]

Should have had Pablo in a blue or olive drab BDU with a proper beret or something instead of his sporty casual vest

No need even for unit insignia since it's classified

[stoic hamlet]

They’d still have the Spartan patch, canonically.

And rank insignia.

[prime mauve]

Just take some from a couple volunteers' Halo Reach special editions and thank them in tye credits

[stoic hamlet]

No I meant, they’d wear a Spartan patch on their uniforms.

Even if the program was classified.

We see this in Silent Storm, Oblivion, and Ghosts of Onyx.

[prime mauve]

Yeah I meant for the show to save up a couple bucks lol

[stoic hamlet]

Oh, lol.

[prime mauve]

I remember my Halo Reach had the iron on patch as well as Halsey's Journal

It was the coolest

I lost it sadly

[stoic hamlet]

;-;

[prime mauve]

Anyway even if the show still had the same writing and everything the costumes could have been cooler with changes that wouldn't have cost that much all in all

Like using surplus for uniforms

Customizing the guns more could have also helped. Some of the rifles are straight up, unmodified, maybe just slightly repainted, airsoft guns.

In particular a rifle used by Keyes and the "Commando-like" rifles used by the Spartan (IVs?) in SPI armor

[wispy pewter]

Perez is a good OC but she was a Spartan III and not an orphan

[prime mauve]

Yeah she even had an abuela and everything, I think?

[jade cape]

I was more upset at the fact that MJOLNIR was apparently just GEN 3 from the get-go

That really pissed me off personally

[wispy pewter]

And a church goer in the 26th century

[jade cape]

The III’s weren’t even augmented to top it all off, just a bunch of hyped up brainwashed nobodies

[wispy pewter]

Idk if they were augmented in the show

[jade cape]

I’m actually not here to dunk on the halo series, as easy as that would be, but I saw an opportunity

[unique rune]

they were just normal people
no augmentations

for all the show's faults I actually did like its take on Spartan-III
it's not literally accurate but I think it was an interesting rendition of it in spirit

[jade cape]

May the writers & showrunners of that series never find work again

and on that note I shall cease

[wispy pewter]

Oh so they are just timmies in titanium. Stealing ODST jobs

[unique rune]

yeah I mean
show S-III was basically all just a sham out of desperation and for the sake of propaganda
bit of extra training, shiny new armor

[jade cape]

that’s another thing:

why on earth have we not gotten any significant material featuring ODSTs since H3: ODST

and no, bad blood, new blood & fireteam raven don’t count

[wispy pewter]

Wasn’t the kilo 5 trilogy after that

[unique rune]

no significant material as long as you ignore the material where they are relevant

[prime mauve]

New Blood was like half about Alpha 9 still as ODSTs, and yeah Kilo 5 has a trio of them as central characters.

[wispy pewter]

A few hundred of them died in Outcasts

[jade cape]

I guess to me like the natural thing to do considering how much of a cult following fan base ODSTs have on their own would be to follow up H3 ODST or have prequel games for alpha nine like what you see in the dark horse comics

ODSTs have like a separate fan base on their own

[prime mauve]

Oh yeah Outcasts has a LARGE ODST

Big, cornfed boy is naturally taller than Spartan Vale

Rips an Elite's mandibles with his bare hands

Honestly had more feats than Arbiter in the book

[unique rune]

they're fan favorites but for the most part they've really just kinda
been there?

[prime mauve]

Also one of the Waypoint Chronicles gave the ODSTs the Orcus armors from the Halo 5 concept art, which was neat, though the story itself was pretty low energy

[unique rune]

TIL the H5 ODST armor did get modelled but wasn't ever used

[prime mauve]

Also Evolutions was after ODST I think?

And it had the other LARGE ODST in the Heart of Midlothian story

And of course the amazing Dirt story

[prime mauve]

Yeah a couple months later

[prime mauve]

I wonder where they might have used them, since our Spartan teams are pretty cut off from friendly UNSC forces pretty much all along the campaign

[unique rune]

probably something that got cut from Warzone if I had to guess

[prime mauve]

That would make sense

Halo 5's Marines were only there

[unique rune]

they used the updated SOEIVs for the Assault opening animation so maybe there were plans for them to be NPCs for the offensive side

[prime mauve]

I hope that whatever book gets announced next after Parasite's Wake also has an ODST that's roughly the size of a barge

[stoic hamlet]

Because ODST’s have changed from being “mobile infantry/colonial marines” to “Navy Seals/SAS” adjacent, and that role is already filled by Spartans.

Until they go back to being ODST instead of just OD they’ll continue to basically never see the light of day.

[prime mauve]

In the campaigns for 5 and Infinite I get why they didn't show up, but in 4 they really could have had a role

[stoic hamlet]

That role was replaced by Spartans.

As it stands they have no purpose in gameplay.

I mean, arguably, they had no purpose in H2 and H3, either.

Halo Reach maybe.

[prime mauve]

Were the S IVs there with the Mammoth? Cause maybe that one could have switched to ODSTs or something

[unique rune]

Yeah, they were on the Mammoth parts of Reclaimer

[prime mauve]

Maybe use them to replace some Marines here and there then?

[orchid kettle]

i believe they exist for, as the kids say, "hype moments and aura"

[hearty whale]

i want them back just cause the armor goes hard

[orchid kettle]

and i guess you could have them in the space areas of the first mission in Halo 2 but they never actually did

at most you just find a dead odst in an airlock

I do kinda feel like the second we failed to solidify the idea that you didn't need a Spartan in order to have a main character in a Halo game, it was basically GG's for the ODSTs as a concept

At best these days they can be treated as slightly more competent Marines. The books really like using them as a powerscaling metric, funnily enough.

A threat in Envoy is defined by how it killed 50 ODSTs or something, and Silent Storm has Chief describe Spartan combat ability in terms of how many Black Daggers they're each worth

[modest marsh]

Not that this is necessarily a good thing or should remain the status quo, but I would contend that ODSTs being a disposable meter stick was kind of their only purpose for existing in TFOR

The Flood gave them more to do that wasn’t being wiped out in droves, but then, they don’t materially accomplish much or in the case of Silva is outwardly antagonistic towards Chief and nearly caused catastrophe

[orchid kettle]

I still kinda feel like Halo might as well just have made ODSTs the name of like, the UNSC Marine Corps to begin with

Every ship is seemingly outfitted with these drop pods but only a tiny portion of the troops onboard are actually trained to use them

I feel like if you wanted hapless soldiers who were always on the brink of losing it, you could have pushed a planet's local defense force or the Army to the forefront

Between ODST SPF and SPEG it can feel like ODST's are essentially a second, smaller Marine Corp nestled within the first one

[vagrant ocean]

I’d argue the only ODSTs on Installation 04 that were worth a damn were McKay and Fireteam Raven.

[vagrant ocean]

That’s what they pretty much are, other than basically having the spec-ops of every UNSCDF branch and UEG member nation being funneled into them. They’re now basically a place to find Spartan prospects, as 11 of the 81 named IVs are former ODSTs, and the gap between Spartans and ODSTs was partially bridged by the usage of ORCUS by Ninth Platoon. So I have a feeling that lore wise the ODSTs might be used more so as a scalpel while Spartans are are more so used as a surgical laser.

[orchid kettle]

I'd love to be proven wrong but I personally suspect ORCUS won't be that much of a stop gap if only because it's not a technology directly wielded by the player outside of its individual parts being available as armor attachments

It being made of Titanium-A I suppose is maybe a step up

Once upon a time 343 did want the Halo 5 ODST design with the exoskeleton to be retroactive in order to explain ODST's gameplay, but they've obviously abandoned that idea since and I don't think the type of exo portrayed would really let you do half the stuff Rookie does anyway

[vagrant ocean]

Hence why I said partially. It’s not much but it’s better than nothing.

Prolly gives them some boosts.

[prime mauve]

Versus the titanium composites of current ODST armor? Maybe it is a higher standard, yeah

[orchid kettle]

I think the big thing that'd make any non-augmented group of bois feel significantly more competent in combat would be the presence of energy shields

[vagrant ocean]

I agree, but I feel a better armored semi-powered or powered exoskeleton is prolly slightly cheaper. I unno.

[prime mauve]

Augmenting their strength lets them fight for longer and carry more weight but it doesn't really make a huge difference when you're getting sprayed with plasma

[orchid kettle]

It's why I point out Orcus being made out of Titanium-A, since Titanium-A in the form of MJOLNIR Mark IV had been shown to tank a pretty good amount of plasma even without shields

[vagrant ocean]

Yee

[orchid kettle]

like in current canon, Sam's suit being breached was simply a lucky, or unlucky shot

[vagrant ocean]

Yeah.

[orchid kettle]

when he falls to the ground in pain, he keeps getting pelted but none of the other projectiles actually pierce the armor

which makes you wonder if Chief was even actually in danger lol

[vagrant ocean]

But you know Sam, always looking after his brother.

[orchid kettle]

be real funny if it turned out Sam got himself killed because he overreacted

[vagrant ocean]

I mean, this was uncharted territory,

[orchid kettle]

no uncharted is a different franchise

[vagrant ocean]

Game idea

Tomb Raider/Uncharted style game where you work on a team exploring Archaeohomina/Forerunner ruins. OR a Covenant team.

[orchid kettle]

of course even so you could probably figure that Orcus plating may not be as thicc as MJOLNIR

or heck maybe it is because your Spartan character can think it's a good idea to wear it in place of other armor pieces

[vagrant ocean]

Could be thin Ti-A plates on top of standard issue composites. Grants better protection than base armor with the addition of it being a powered exoskeleton.

[orchid kettle]

That being said I feel like if you wrote a book or had a game cutscene where an ODST character took a bunch of plasma bolts to the chest and walked away unscathed, you'd probably confuse the audience

[vagrant ocean]

Yeah.

[orchid kettle]

which is why I said shields would work best if only because it would immediately register as something new and special to the audience

[vagrant ocean]

Even if it was a very thin layer or pretty much localized to the chest plate.

That would satisfy the logistics nerds like me.

[orchid kettle]

of course maybe that's because in broader pop culture we're pretty used to the idea that armor is by itself largely cosmetic lol

[coarse hamlet]

thin layer of TI-A on top of some asbestos type stuff would probs be great if you set up the armor with quick release mechanisms. Ti-A would be mostly to deflect shrapnel in that case though

[orchid kettle]

I always liked the idea mentioned in the cosplay guide about the chest plate having a quick release tab

[coarse hamlet]

i swear there was a scene in aliens where that happened but i cant find it

[vagrant ocean]

Near the end when Hicks gets sprayed.

[orchid kettle]

it would certainly feel more interesting visually if you watched that same character get hit in the chest, have the chestplate visibly sizzling red, and they frantically pop it off their vest

The armor still works but not for long

[vagrant ocean]

Also relatively realistic.

[modest marsh]

tbc that was the case in the original novel too, Denning's choice of words in Silent Storm just made that more clear

Sam literally gets mag dumped by the jackal and sufferred no meaningful damage besides the ruptured pressure seal

[prime mauve]

Denning favors Spartans pretty blatantly in several places so it could also be bias

Like when a young John beats a First Blade of the Silent Shadow at close distance

[modest marsh]

Is that really so incredible

I guess maybe in the context of this being so early on in his career such that he shouldn’t really know where to begin with countering a peer level opponent

But to be clear, he didn’t win that fight, Kelly saved him

It was just really close

What’s more egregious is what happened in Collateral Damage which is supposedly Blue Team’s first encounter with Elites and they fight literal dozens of them in close quarters including Majors, Ultras, and a Field Marshal

[prime mauve]

I think that a senior Sangheili from a prestigious, elite unit, with an energy sword, would have no issue killing a newbie Spartan within shotgun distance

But if we attribute it to John's luck, rather than superior skill (which was the impression Denning gave me tbh), then it stretches my disbelief less

[frigid heart]

Quick release has always been a good idea

[modest marsh]

Yeah but like what is the basis for that beyond vibes

If Spartan-IIIs are anything to go off of, experience doesn’t factor in that much given within the first year of their respective deployments they were put up against similar or worse odds and still came out on top more than they didn’t

IVs sometimes get humbled I guess but I don’t think that’s purely an experience issue

[prime mauve]

With rank comes better armor and better shields and a Silent Shadow First Blade really should have more than enough shields to resist to get to John

[modest marsh]

The rules for energy shields aren’t exactly the most consistent or concrete but the shotgun being lethal at close range even to the highest ranking elites isn’t inconsistent with anything

Reach depicts Zealots getting incapacitated by a single volley

To be honest I think that’s just a testament to how wildly overtuned the shotgun is both in terms of gameplay and lore

[prime mauve]

Even with Kelly helping out, between the shields and moving smart by rights he could have cut the distance and sliced Chief in two. If he had been described as having lost his shields then the shotgun barrage would be more than enough and I'd have no issue.

[stoic hamlet]

Silent Shadow are stealth operatives, though.

We know shield strength suffers with active camouflage.

I’d expect zealots to have better shields than a Silent Shadow, actually.

[prime mauve]

Zealots should generally have best quality shields

[modest marsh]

I kind of imagine it being an Iron Triangle situation

But that gets complicated if active camo is supposed to be on a separate capacitor from shields versus running off the same power supply

[prime mauve]

Maybe if his active camo had drained the shield it would explain why he went out like that

[modest marsh]

Again it would be well within the expected norm for any Elite’s shields to fail after sustaining a single M90/M45 shotgun blast, including Zealots

[prime mauve]

A single blast? I don't think I can agree with that one

If I recall it takes at least two shots for Zealots

And that was even at lower difficulties. In lore it must be higher.

[modest marsh]

https://youtu.be/-Q5bxu7SGOU?

You’re thinking of this but before it strikes the Zealot, it has to overcome the canopy of the Onager

Which may or may not be made of ALON or some other bullet resistant material

In either case, it stuns him in the process which put him in worse shape than Tel 'Szatulai

[tall carbon]

Just read some of the Halo Encyclopaedia and it got me wondering whether there is an in lore reason for why humanity has not fully transitioned to laser weapons after 500 years and are still mainly using bullets? Considering how quickly we went from muskets to bullets to full auto, it would make sense that humanity would be using lasers, as well as the fact that we could attempt to reverse engineer covenant weaponry.

[carmine sleet]

Well, bullets are a tried and true ammunition which has been reliable at killing for over 500 years by the time we reach the events of the Halo games. Plus, while there are laser based weapons (Spartan Laser), they aren't cheap. As for human-made Plasma weapons, some do exist, but they are expensive and not really practical for mass deployment yet

Plus, musket to full auto rifle firing bullets is a smaller technological jump than full auto rifle using bullets to laser rifles

[modest marsh]

Mass produced laser weaponry have to overcome several obstacles before they can be considered remotely viable

1. they have to be cheap and easy enough to manufacture compared to ballistic weapons assuming all else is equal

2. they have to be able to be maintained and operated by people with a reasonable amount of training

3. they have to be able to reliably operate in military operational environments that may strain its functionality

Ballistic firearms are very simple machines all things considered, it is not difficult to construct them using mundane materials that are ubiquitous wherever people are likely to be

A laser by comparison is unbelievably complex and not something a layman is likely to intuitively understand beyond the broad strokes

Firearms are designed with the expectation of being disassembled relatively easily for the purpose of performing maintenance, but once you escalate to sophisticated energy weaponry it’s unlikely anyone would be qualified for this unless they are a professional technician with specialized training

Until humanity develops the technology to mitigate logistical and maintenance considerations that make simpler weapons more desirable, energy weapons are likely to remain in a special applications or vehicle mounted form factor, not a replacement for the rifleman’s service weapon

[modest marsh]

Also, to be clear, there are such things as technological stagnation across history which is explicitly observed in Halo across both human and alien factions

There has to be an incentive to develop new technology, it doesn’t occur linearly across time

Many of the UNSC’s mainstay equipment has been in use/production with minimal iteration across decades or even centuries

Honestly, while there’s been clear improvements over time, firearms are largely principally the same as they were 100 years ago compared to now

Modern innovations seem to come down to marginal improvements in ergonomic design, slight changes in cartridges, and maybe some stuff regarding optics

[tall carbon]

You aren’t wrong, bullets are surprisingly effective against covenant/flood, just that realistically humanity has only truly known conflict, if you think about it, every major inventions purpose in warfare was just to kill easier.

[tall carbon]

As for this, humanity have been using bullets for 600-700 years from the 26th century, it would make more sense to train people in what is more “traditional” rather than give them something completely new.

Thanks for the answers!

[modest marsh]

To your point, the UNSC are trying to make energy weapon form factors

[carmine sleet]

Yes, but that doesn't mean that after a certain number of centuries at war, we'd suddenly develop laser rifles for the sake of it

[modest marsh]

Well it’s more so about logistical momentum

[tall carbon]

Well obviously, you can’t just make laser weapons from scratch 🤣

[tall carbon]

Hmm, yeah, disassembling a rifle does seem more easy than disassembling any laser weapon

[modest marsh]

7.62mm has been around for over 600 years, you best believe that every place where war is to be fought has the necessary tools and materials to make more

[tall carbon]

It’s just that I’m more used to seeing Sci-Fi laser weapons and big guns that go boom.

[tall carbon]

Yep, even now 7.62 is still quite useful of a caliber.

In a sense it does kind of make Halo a realistic scenario for our future

Appreciate the answers 👍

[modest marsh]

Halo was initially conceptualized to be a much lower tech setting than it ended up being, which partly explains the dissonance

[tall carbon]

“Lower tech” seems like an understatement when you have 7ft super soldiers with state of the art armour

[modest marsh]

Well originally they were supposed to be cyborgs

[tall carbon]

Really?

[modest marsh]

Yeah, as far as CE is concerned Chief is a cyborg clone, not just a genetically modified human

[tall carbon]

Well they technically are already, considering all the neural transplants

[tall carbon]

New lore fact every day 🤣

[orchid kettle]

There's some super old build of Halo back when it was an RTS and the UNSC had pretty modern looking Humvees and tanks, which made it look like originally it may have been like the modern military versus alien invaders

or maybe they were just placeholders

[modest marsh]

The only time the term “Spartan” is used in the entirety of Combat Evolved is for the map description of Chiron TL34, which says it’s a “Spartan Clone Training Complex”

[tall carbon]

[tall carbon]

Hmm, interesting

[orchid kettle]

I kinda wish Chief WAS the clone if only because it would create a connection between him and Cortana in that way

[modest marsh]

There’s plenty of Y2K-isms that survived even after that specific build of the game

Like the OICW assault rifle

[orchid kettle]

and honestly in some ways would probably feel more appropriate with them having numbers in place of last names, as opposed to fabricated last names like Kurt eventually got

I also assume the idea in Homecoming is that the Spartan candidate who offed themself the second they encountered their clone did so because they were under the impression that they were the clone

[modest marsh]

Tbh I think that depends how severe the neurodegenerative/metabolic disorders the clones have

I think the Spartan candidates would be able to tell that they’re not the clone based on the fact they’re not the ones suffering from the problems that clones would have

This does make you wonder if making the clones “disposable” was the right choice

[orchid kettle]

Well the fact that clones suffer from those disorders in Halo is mainly just there to limit the technology

until we get Chloe I guess

[modest marsh]

Chloe shows that it’s technically possible but it wasn’t something that would be feasible without Halsey running her illegal experiments for years using dozens of test subjects

Like the hundreds of dogs that were killed to make insulin

[orchid kettle]

But I always thought, aside from somebody deciding it was better if the Spartan kids were the originals, it was a good idea to place a cap on cloning technology so you couldn't undo character deaths by just saying "Oh before Keyes exploded we saved his DNA and memories also carry over"

[modest marsh]

To be clear, the reason why the clones have neurodegenerative problems is because the memory flashing process itself is highly damaging to the recipient brain

Chloe didn’t have this problem

Instead she just has physiological abnormalities as a result of growing unnaturally fast

[orchid kettle]

Didn't she? I thought she was missing a leg because of the cloning procedure being imperfect even outside of flash cloning

[modest marsh]

She might live shorter too

Yeah but that’s separate from her brain having problems

Basically, it’s theoretically possible to circumvent all of the problems with the cloning tech with what we already know if they 1) don’t bother with the memory transfer 2) perfect and minimize the usage of accelerated growth

If they just let a person grow in a vat for years there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t come out as “perfect”

[orchid kettle]

Isn't chloe the age she's supposed to be

[modest marsh]

She’s been modified to prioritize brain growth

[orchid kettle]

Yeah she's mega mind

[modest marsh]

Like she has an overdeveloped brain relative to the rest of her body

[orchid kettle]

but otherwise physically she's 11 years old

[modest marsh]

That’s likely to cause some health problems eventually

[orchid kettle]

her skull will double in size

its good James secluded her to a deserted planet

she must be hidden away like the freak she is

[modest marsh]

Well I just mean in the sense that the rest of her body will need to compete for resources compared to her absurdly powerful brain

[vagrant ocean]

Technology, especially weapons tech, can very much plateau for long periods of time. I remember a time when bronze was the standard blade metal because we didn’t have a way to extract iron yet.

[modest marsh]

Your brain alone consumes 20% of your resting metabolic output

(On average)

Chloe may as well be 3-4x that

[modest marsh]

Anyways, at least to me, I think halo wants to be more optimistic about the individual worth of the person, and it’s more than just their genetics that make them special

[vagrant ocean]

I think it was to an extent.