lore-and-universe

[vagrant ocean]

Or that one interview with Frank.

[modest marsh]

That’s when he initially suggests it but I don’t think that was ironclad until after the game released

[stoic hamlet]

and we’ve suffered for it ever since.

[modest marsh]

If you want to get technical, the halo movie screenplay is where it’s first indicated that Mjolnir has some sort of self repairing functionality which may be where Frank got the idea from

[vagrant ocean]

[modest marsh]

It may have been in the story bible somewhere and just didn’t get officially implemented into anything until the halo 4 era

[vagrant ocean]

Prolly

[jade sedge]

Thanks for the info

[prime mauve]

Nanomachines, son! They change armor shape to fit new art styles! They also changed the shape and size of the Dawn while we looked away!

If we could post gifs here I'd send Senator Armstrong lmao

[void merlin]

lol

I tried

[jade sedge]

Wait but wouldn't the nanomachines deteriorate since it's been like 5 years and the foward onto dawn is basically just floating scraps

[void merlin]

I think that would depend on how many nanomachines there are

[prime mauve]

The Dawn part was just a joke. It canonically would still look like in Halo 3

And be normal sized

[void merlin]

Haha nah your good I got the joke

[prime mauve]

They just added the larger size for more play area to fight Jul's space Covies

[strange pumice]

As far as I know it was decision from old 343 to add to have argument why they changed the mjolnir armour style
Not sure if any UNSC ship has the nanomachines

[prime mauve]

And to have room for the big missile. It was pretty fun that the Dawn's one on screen ship kill was after she was destroyed ngl.

[strange pumice]

I guess it's reasonable because dawn bigger than Amber Clad

[prime mauve]

The In Amber Clad that we could jump around on in Halo 2 definitely feels smaller than the Halo 4 Dawn

I don't know if the frigate models in Halo 2 and 3 scale with their canon sizes. I remember a version of Sandtrap that brought down the Aegis Fate and she was definitely the same size as the Dawn from the campaign

[minor sky]

Yeah

I highly suspect this is from when Ryan Payton was leading the project

It would be fascinating to see a slice of what his vision for the game may have looked

https://halo.wiki.gallery/images/d/dc/CancelledHalo_Frigate.jpg

I would be surprised if this wasn't supposed to the Forward Unto Dawn

[unique rune]

that sure is
a design

[void merlin]

I actually remember as a kid, I used a football helmet to make a masterchief helmet, and I put flashlights on it, because of the movie Halo Forward Unto Dawn

[prime mauve]

It could be used for the Ancient Humans or something but I honestly thank them for not using that...

[minor sky]

https://www.halopedia.org/Cancelled_Halo_project_(2011)#/media/File:CancelledHalo_SetSchematics.jpg

In a video Ryan Payton mentions the second mission being drafted out by him as a vertical slice on a whiteboard, so I am curious if this was a very early version of Requiem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAatcnwlnh4

said video for reference

https://halo.wiki.gallery/images/0/03/CancelledHalo_LightingTest.jpg

Hell, maybe this "Central area" was an early version of those chambers with the beams you encounter in the room with the overgrown trees

[minor sky]

I wonder if Halo 5 could've pulled off a dual-narrative between Chief and the Didact. Basically trying to iron out the confusion surrounding the Didact by making us play through his past-experiences and have a better grasp of the Forerunners and their lore. Meanwhile Chief's story picks up right where 4 left off. Maybe you have some point where both narratives converge and the Didact returns in the present day.

[vagrant ocean]

I need a Spartan with a THICK Glaswegian accent.

[minor sky]

Halo if Frank O'Conner had his way
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1lUIzXYfhd4&pp=ygUaUG93ZXIgUmFuZ2VycyBJJ20gU2NvdHRpc2g%3D

[merry grove]

i always like to take a look at those kind of concepts arts. i wonder if bungie had more concept arts about halo 4 stuff.

[carmine sleet]

Pretty sure that was from a project completely separate from Halo 4

[vagrant ocean]

It most likely was, as it looks nothing like H4 concept art we’ve seen.

[minor sky]

Probably not. And if they did they are probably lost to time

[carmine sleet]

What little Bungie/ex Bungie devs have said about their very early ideas for Halo 4 before pivoting to making Reach sound not too far off what we got anyway

[modest marsh]

They knew that whatever we fought in Halo 4 would be forerunner related somehow because that’s more or less what the legendary ending was setting up

They also came up with the basic concept of prometheans being cybernetic amalgamation of human and robotic armor with weapons for arms

It doesn’t go much further than that because despite being a story heavy series, the lore is beholden to gameplay goals first and foremost which they hadn’t really spent any time on figuring out

[worn wolf]

Linda takes part in civilian shooting competitions

Why are they having competitions for shooting civilians?

[carmine sleet]

Civilian shooting competitions is most likely competition shooting like what's seen at the Olympics, not anything to do with shooting civilians

[prime mauve]

Shooting with civilians not at them bruh

[high glen]

Is precursor lore still canon?

[vagrant ocean]

Bro has an NFT as their pfp, don’t expect much.

[vagrant ocean]

Wdym

[high glen]

Is it still canon in halo lore that precursors created life and allat

Seeding life etc

[modest marsh]

There’s never really been anything that was introduced to halo’s fiction that suddenly stopped being canon

[high glen]

How unfortionate

[modest marsh]

So yes the stuff about Precursors and their hand in shaping life in the Milky Way is still canon

[modest marsh]

Are you lamenting the Precursor stuff specifically?

[high glen]

Ion like it

And ion like the trapped souls in promethians thingy

[modest marsh]

The stuff with precursors is tricky because it was soft canon before they were technically confirmed to exist

At least, based on what a certain former Bungie dev claimed

[high glen]

Well, it was more like „yea precursor are more advanced than forerunners“ but nothing more, not about Creating life and allat

[strange pumice]

But sadly or for good turned to dust, then to Flood

[high glen]

343 did kill the mystery of the flood,

Now its less

Scarier

[modest marsh]

Well the impetus for their inception was to explain how Forerunners and humans came to be separate things because prehistoric humans/protohumans existed 100,000 years ago, which we know thanks to fossil records

[strange pumice]

And it's never should be scarier
Idk why you all fear Flood, there's nothing to fear actually

[modest marsh]

In the Bungie version, Forerunners started as protohumans and precursors evolved them separately

The current version is very similar

[high glen]

Never heard of that

Bungie intentionally kept 99% if halo lore hidden and kept halo mysterious

[modest marsh]

Yeah, Paul Russel tweeted about it before deleting his account

[high glen]

Ofcourse he did; was it confirmed by bungie tho?

[modest marsh]

He was Bungie

[high glen]

Head of bungie?

[modest marsh]

Bungie isn’t a monolithic entity, I’m sure there were other people at the studio that disagreed

I don’t think Pete Parsons or Jason Jones were ever super opinionated on this stuff

Russell’s claim was that this was the opinion of a Bungie writer which could’ve been people like Luke Smith, Robt McLees, Joe Staten, or Frank O’Connor

[high glen]

Ietherway i dont think any Level of technology should give the right to create life honestly,

[dusk jetty]

There’s plenty of people who were at bungie who had different visions for this stuff, I think people give the notion of a canon too much thought, if a story feels better a certain way that was changed later, then just focus on that

[high glen]

Frank O‘connor?

[modest marsh]

Yes, he was employed by Bungie from ~2004-2007 before leaving to head up 343i

He’s credited as the managing editor of halo 3’s story

[high glen]

Oh yeah righg

[stoic hamlet]

A large portion of early 343 were Bungie people who wanted to keep working on Halo.

[high glen]

Forgot about that

But woudnt halo be better, if 99% lore was hidden?

Because im pretty sure 90% of halo players hate 343i‘s lore

[modest marsh]

In any case, halo kind of operates on magical logic to begin with, with certain applications of technology being fundamentally impossible by any conventional understanding of science

[unique rune]

no

[modest marsh]

You cannot make a bridge of out light, or bend gravitational forces to make an elevator

[high glen]

Technically

[stoic hamlet]

Depends on the lore.

For example, SPI armour:

we know it’s not one suit. There are multiple sub-armours in the line up, like MJOLNIR. We’ve known this for over a decade now. We even have visuals of several variants.

We have no idea what these do or are called.

Is it better that that lore is hidden?

[modest marsh]

A lot of why this stuff remains hidden isn’t because it’s conducive for storytelling, it’s because as a video game the developers want leniency in future games to do whatever they want

[high glen]

With lore i ment like

Flood origin: unkown and not precursors For example

Or ssme thing with forerunners

[carmine sleet]

You can't keep introducing mysteries and hope nobody wants answers to them is an easier way of putting it

Like, regardless of who made Halo 4, we were going to get more answers about the Forerunners

[modest marsh]

^

That was fundamentally unavoidable

[unique rune]

I feel like the extent to which that these “mysteries” have been explained is also kinda blown out of proportion

[modest marsh]

That’s also true

[carmine sleet]

I do agree with that

[modest marsh]

We still technically have no idea where precursors come from lol

[carmine sleet]

Like, it's not like everything is known and nothing is a mystery

Heck, I hope some things remain a mystery, like the ship which crashed on Installation 04 in the terminals

[modest marsh]

Every account we have about them aside from the primordial is presented second hand, in universe, from unreliable narrators

And the primordial is explicitly unreliable so he’s not a good definitive source either

[prime mauve]

The Primordial is unreliable, and pretty much everything else we have on Precursors is second or third hand knowledge, except for the encounter with the version of them in Netherop, and the ones the Librarian wants to reseed

[vagrant ocean]

Disagree. Not all things that are mysterious are more terrifying than things that are known.

[vagrant ocean]

No

[vagrant ocean]

No evidence for this claim.

[modest marsh]

I think the flood as is aren’t really all that mysterious or unknowable in the context of the original trilogy

Gravemind himself kinda dashes a lot of the mysteriousness about them by articulating a clear motive and goal

[vagrant ocean]

Yup.

Hell, I’d argue that the fact that the Flood are insane corrupted Precursors to be even more terrifying than them being an alien fungus or whatever.

[modest marsh]

You don’t know how they started, but it’s already implied through the mythological framing of the narrative

“The Flood” are a metaphor for a kind of divine retribution against a fallen world

[vagrant ocean]

And even pre-343/HS lore places the Precursors in a godlike position.

Just realized that guy left.

I hate when people do that.

[modest marsh]

He’s probably a kid looking for people to agree with him

[vagrant ocean]

And fled at the slightest pushback.

[stoic hamlet]

Happens all the time.

[worn wolf]

Curious about this

Nvm it’s covered in the following messages.

Always thought the idea that human and forerunners are the same species just post firing of the rings to be very silly even if it’s hinted at through out the original trilogy.

[modest marsh]

Yeah, I don’t think Bungie thought through the specifics until very late

[carmine sleet]

Allot of people love to think Bungie was all set on a very specific, well thought out plan but they were very much the opposite. CE was never originally meant to have a sequel and stuff like whether humanity and the Forerunners were the same or not was not a set in stone idea

[modest marsh]

Halo 2 is really funny for the ancient ruins just being there on delta halo because what could that possible mean

[carmine sleet]

Indeed

[worn wolf]

It just seems shortsighted from any realistic perspective

[orchid kettle]

I still kinda feel like within the context of Halo 2, it's reasonable to just assume they're yet more forerunner structures that have fallen into decay

[modest marsh]

Maybe but then Cortana draws attention to the incongruity of their design

[orchid kettle]

Well what's weird is that she says the Forerunners built new structures around the old ones

but im not 100% sure what counts as "new" and what's "old"

[modest marsh]

There’s certainly a stylistic distinction between them at least

The bridge and gondola system use much more archaic technology compared to light bridges and teleporters

[orchid kettle]

I also think in a pre-Halo 3 Ark world, the thinking surely must have been that the Halo rings could protect and house species

because like-- why else would they have an inhabitable surface?

[modest marsh]

Implicitly, to study the flood, is the main thing that comes to mind

[orchid kettle]

Yeah but it can still feel pretty advanced when they're big floating platforms with holo control panels

and later halo games will just make more Forerunner gondola sections, like Infinite

hell there's another gondola section in 2 with Arby

[modest marsh]

I think that has more to do with contriving reuse of familiar level set pieces than coherent worldbuilding

The architectural style of zeta halo is extremely different from the ruins on delta

The gondola isn’t a surface transport there, it’s an underground tunnel system

[prime mauve]

I think the only Halo where gondolas felt really overused was 2

[unique rune]

as much as I love Halo 2 it has a real problem with gondola/elevator sections

there's one on like every other mission and it sucks

[carmine sleet]

The first elevator on Cairo is easily the best one by virtue of you having some flexibility for how you approach it. Either you stay up top and wait for it, or you can jump down and send it back down to the airlock. It's also pretty short too

The rest all either take too long, throw loads of enemies at you or both

[prime mauve]

The Cairo elevator is excellent because all diagonal elevators like that going back to Akira are the coolest bits of engineering

[carmine sleet]

Also true

[inland haven]

Lore.

[prime mauve]

Indeed

[stoic hamlet]

No lore is a bore.

[unique rune]

aurora lorealis

[vagrant ocean]

I’m always full bore in regard to lore.

[minor sky]

In all fairness, this idea was for Halo Chronicles and not Halo 4

[modest marsh]

Yes but it still served as ideation for what became knights in 4

[minor sky]

Yeah

But the brunt of "Bungie's Halo 4" really just seems like a series of vague ideas like "Explore more Forerunner lore" that never got developed on because of Chronicles/ODST and Reach

As I said, I doubt much actual concrete work was done. If there was any, I am willing to bet it is lost to time

Like a marker board drawing or something jotted down on scratch paper

[warm ridge]

It doesn't really make any sense when you think about it logically.

"We're gonna erase all life & revert our selves to the stone age while burying all our advanced technology underground."

[worn wolf]

The forerunners betting that humanities descendants don’t wipe themselves out with nuclear weapons or climate change is definitely one of their ballsier moves.

Never mind the fact that they almost indirectly got them wiped out anyway when other species were faster at developing the technology to study the forerunners stuff.

[vagrant ocean]

Tbf, that’s because other worlds had an abundance of Forerunner artifacts, Earth had bugger all.

[supple jasper]

I just found out another way that could also prove noble 6 is dead. You know how all spartan 3's are injected with 009762-OO the thing that makes the insanely aggressive? And how 3's need "smoothers" so they don't go insane? So if noble six did survive being stabbed by an energy sword. He would likely go insane and die but I don't know how long it takes for a 3 to go insane with out there "smoothers" maybe someone else can shed some light on that? But anyway, even *IF *he survived I think he would (theoretically) go insane and could die in many ways from that point (theoretically)

[unique rune]

not all of them received the extra augmentations

those were exclusive to Gamma Company
B312 was Beta Company and would not have needed the smoothers at any point

not that any of that would be meaningful evidence in proving that a heavily injured Spartan with failing equipment and dwindling supplies surrounded by Covenant forces and isolated from any friendly support would have quickly died from any number of causes assuming they even survived getting stabbed and beaten by a bunch of angry Sangheili

[modest marsh]

Aside from none of the spartans depicted in Reach including noble six not being from Gamma company and thus not having the berserk state mutagen, it does not make them "go insane"

the negative side effects amount to being extra paranoid and impulsive due to lower frontal lobe activation but this isn't made out to be a huge impairment of cognitive faculties by itself

[supple jasper]

but theoretically it could happen to a 3?

mean gamma 3

[supple jasper]

so it makes them get jittery and make more mistakes, and have anger issues?

[modest marsh]

thats a very simplified way to frame it but more accurate than not i guess

the main purpose of the berserk state is to allow Gammas to fight through extreme injuries or shock that would normally be debilitating or cause a spartan to hesitate, as rare as that is

[supple jasper]

so if their deprieved of the drug what happens?

their anti 009762-OO?

so if they don't take 009127-PX, and 009927-DG

[modest marsh]

we've never seen gammas go without their smoothers for longer than a few hours after they need to re-up

[supple jasper]

that would be a nice thing to know

I mean thee probably been incidents where this has happend

[modest marsh]

it comes up in the novels last light and divine wind

but in both cases, the negative consequences of the berserk state are relatively minor

[supple jasper]

during the Alpha company's training would be likely when an incident would have happened

no 3

[modest marsh]

alpha company did not undergo the treatment in question

[supple jasper]

i meant gamma traning

sorry

but during gammas training this probably would have happened

I would love more details on the side effects

an example of the Gammas rampage effect I think i have seen would be that one gamma that got hit with a needler but was still able to run and even saluted before dying

I thinkits in the ghosts of onyx book

Dante-G188

hes got hit with mutipul needler rounds to the chest and a plasma bolt to the side yet still was able to live quite a bit

[stoic hamlet]

You’re confusing two separate but connected things.

The berserk state (not exactly an accurate term either but oh well) doesn’t cause paranoia or jitters, it just makes them ignore pain. Per Divine Wind, when it activates, they become more focused.

The paranoia is only caused by not getting their counter-agent, but it doesn’t occur due to injury, and, more notably, it’s not really irrational so much as leaps in logic from otherwise rational starting points.

For example, a Gamma wouldn’t suddenly start attacking others at random, they’d need some actual, logical reason to believe those others are a threat.

The paranoia aspect is they take a logical or rational starting point and go extreme with it if not presented with logic that counters it.

[warm ridge]

Never was the case even pre-Halo 1.
As far as the lore understands it, it's always been the case that all life, even on the rings, die out, but the Flood does not.

[warm ridge]

Earth does have an abundance, it's just all buried underground for no real reason at all.
And before someone tries to say "it must've got buried over thousands of years".
Halo 3's own lore directly states it was intentionally buried, for what reason? who knows lmao.

@worn wolf
Like you'd think being an all advanced race you'd set up schooling systems, leave behind multiple super advanced AI like Spark around to teach the new Humans about there past and what went wrong with the Flood, but none of this happens.

Instead, you reverse yourself into apes for the worst idea imaginable, leaving your succesors to make the same mistakes.

It's just bad writing. Whether Bungie even got this far or not in there og vision idk, I assume they did which is why they made Forerunners a separate species because they hit a writing block.

[warm ridge]

tl;dr
gamma starts turning on friendlies, killing everyone & each other, and generally being a insane / psychotic individual.
Anyone trying to say they wouldn't become "insane" is missing the point entirely.

[stoic hamlet]

That’s literally never been the case.

There are instances of those with Rumbledrugs (which the Gammas augments seem to be a derivation from) doing that, but we’ve never had any instance of it happening to a Gamma, even when under worse states of duress.

I’d hypothesize that it’s due to the Rumbledrug derivative being a slow drip feed rather than a lightning shot like everyone else seems to use, so their bodies, alongside the other augmentations, allow them to keep their focus. (Many of the augmentations listed as a general III thing are anti-shock and pain drugs.)

[warm ridge]

They are literally directly called anti-psychotic meds.

Smoothers was the Gamma trio’s nickname for the cocktail of antipsychotic meds that kept their altered brain chemistry in check. “We’re down to just five doses.” “Each or total?” Fred asked. “Sorry, Lieutenant,” Mark said. “That’s total. I can keep one and stay, but I may come apart on you on the way out.”

Mark had taken his last Smoother sixteen hours earlier, and he had been growing agitated and contentious for the last hour.

In theory, it would be another half day or so before the young Spartan began to suffer fits of temper and physical outbursts.

Fred cursed under his breath. It seemed impossible that Mark had already unraveled into a full paranoid state.

In theory, he wouldn’t start having psychotic breaks for another twelve hours or so, but it was impossible to be sure.

In fact, both Fred & Veta thought that Mark, who was off his smoothers, was the killer, because that's literally how bad a Gamma could get when off there smoothers. Thankfully he didn't do it, but the point is Halo lore already sets the expectation on what can happen.

Are they permanently insane?
Of course not. Once they receive the smoothers again, they'll return back to normal / calm down. Exactly what anti-psychotic meds are meant for.

BTW all the quotes above come from Halo: Last Light.
There's a whole lot more examples in that book.

[stoic hamlet]

That’s some casual ableism there if I’ve ever seen it.

You realize antipsychotics/psychosis doesn’t automatically make them (them being anyone on anti-psychosis meds, not Gammas) inherently danger to themselves or others, right?

You do understand there’s a spectrum, yes?

[warm ridge]

They are a danger to others, without the smoothers yea, they 100% are. The book alone proves it, the expectations are set. It's hard confirmed, I just don't know how you aren't seeing it.

Parangosky even calls them a public relations hazard. They're extremely unstable without the smoothers, so much that Fred was worried he wouldn't be able to stop them.

[stoic hamlet]

Fred and Veta are also not reliable perspectives on the issue. Veta especially in Last Light knows nothing and assumes the worst. Fred is also jumping to the extreme.

Actual cases of them having psychotic breaks don’t show them degrading to the extent Fred and Veta assume, and we have actual examples of Rumbledrug users going off the handle. No Gammas has ever been shown to be that bad.

If you want to look for an example, I’d have used Divine Wind, as that features a POV from an actual Gamma and thus their internal thoughts, and nowhere in those thoughts do harming or jumping to the paranoid delusion of harming allies ever appear.

Again, they could be a danger to allies, but only if they have an otherwise logical point to jump off of. If they don’t, then that paranoia doesn’t manifest.

Last Light is also inconsistent with things.

Veta guns down plainclothes Insurgents in a move Fred considers random and insane until she explains her reasoning. This would put into the minds of the Gammas that the civilian population is a threat to them, as they could be enemy agents, but we’re told they pass multiple civilian groups and marine units and show no signs of aggression or risk of harming them.

[worn wolf]

you'd also assume they wouldnt leave flood samples on their flood killing superweapons, im just starting to think the forerunners are the advanced future equivalent of someone who owns a a top of the line electric vehicle yet would starve to death after waiting at a stop sign to turn green.

[stoic hamlet]

And later on, despite Mark earlier misidentifying a Marine as an infiltrator, Mark is sent alone to support a marine squad being overwhelmed, and he doesn’t engage them as hostiles because his mind can acknowledge them as friendlies due to what he’s seeing.

By contrast, the one real instance we have of an Innie rumbledrug, the user turned on his allies immediately because they happened to fire around him, and that alone made him lose it.

[modest marsh]

One angle I’ve thought about is the idea that it’s an early warning system for when the flood begins to enter the coordinated stage

If the forerunners developed the means to detect when the flood starts to communicate telepathically, they could use that to immediately carry out the activation protocols if necessary

[worn wolf]

i actually quite like that

[orchid kettle]

I mean clearly life did not all die out because life persists

Its just not until Halo 3 that we have an answer as to how

But I would think because it's such an obvious question that Bungie would have been thinking about how that was possible since CE

And the idea that Alpha Halo was planned to have endemic life on it would suggest that there's something on the ring capable of protecting or producing life-- since blind wolves are not a space faring species and didn't crash land there eons ago

[warm ridge]

No Gammas has ever been shown to be that bad.
Because no one lets them get that bad for the exact reason I just said. They're a hazard to the public, and likely shouldn't ever come in contact with them.

Fred and Veta are also not reliable perspectives on the issue.
Fred is 100% a reliable narrator on this subject as he's obviously been informed about the gammas before the mission ever started.
Unless you're also going to say Parangosky isn't a reliable narrator either, nor the Gammas themselves both explaining & going through the withdrawal symptoms. It really just seems like you're ignoring all of it.

but only if they have an otherwise logical point to jump off of. If they don’t, then that paranoia doesn’t manifest.
They don't need a logical point to jump off of, they assume the worst so they automatically assume you're the enemy until something convinces them otherwise.

[warm ridge]

Which was answered in Halo 3 that life was reseeded on the Halo rings & planets through the use of Keyships.

how that was possible since CE
Which was going to be explained in Halo 2's OG story, but during it's development they cut that & went into a different direction, which is how we got Halo 3's story instead.

[orchid kettle]

Obviously Halo 2 always had the idea of something being called "the Ark" and it feels obvious from the name that it protects you from mass extinction

Though ngl sometimes I wonder if the idea is supposed to be that there's a similar genetic repository on every major species' homeworld and the one under Mombasa is just humanity's Ark

[warm ridge]

pretty sure the intention is that the Ark was always intended to be the origin point, not multiple Arks.

[orchid kettle]

The original Halo 2 Ark just never looked grand enough to me to be the cradle of every civilization throughout the galaxy

[warm ridge]

with life being reseeded through the use of hundreds of thousands of keyships

[orchid kettle]

versus the Halo 3 ark

[warm ridge]

fully agree, which is likely one of the multiple reasons they decided to cut it.

like, where do you even store the keyships?

[orchid kettle]

they wait in a very long queue up in orbit I guess

and they dock one at a time

[warm ridge]

most inefficient use of resources ever

"yea we only have a single gas pump, get in line with the rest of the cars"

i feel like the Bungie writers at the time absolutely thought about all of this & all the issues that kept being brought up over & over is exactly why they went in a different direction

[orchid kettle]

I do think there were a bunch of arguments about the logistics of the Forerunners' plans given how Nylund also swoops in and throws the idea of shield worlds into the mix

even if the point is that nobody actually used Onyx

[modest marsh]

I don’t think Nylund independently came up with shield worlds to be perfectly honest

[warm ridge]

👆

[modest marsh]

Maybe the specifics yes but I don’t imagine anyone at Bungie read GoO and decided to name drop “shield installation”

[warm ridge]

yea I'm pretty certain Bungie already had the idea of shield worlds existing long before Ghost of Onyx given how Halo 3's "legendary ending" shows Requiem.
Was likely something they thought of as far back as 2005 to be honest. Requiem is even in Halo 3's actual script.

[orchid kettle]

No, but I mean from an audience's point of view

I assume GOO came out before Halo 3

I didn't actually start getting into Halo myself until 2010

[stoic hamlet]

It did.

October 2006

[orchid kettle]

Yeah I figured since that seems to be the pattern with the Nylund trilogy even if GoO's story doesn't lead into its respective future game as much as TFOR and First Strike

god i hate that stupid grammar rule about how "it's" is only correct when it is the contraction for "it is", and for possessive you have to write "its"

[stoic hamlet]

At least you’re aware of it and obey it.

A lot of people don’t know the difference between “their, there” and “they’re” and it drives me mad, because it’s so simple.

[fading flume]

Simply glass that rule

[warm ridge]

I only have issues with their & there. Not that I don't know the differences, I just don't really think about using them ever.

[fading flume]

Don’t forget the infamous “they’re”

[warm ridge]

I know how to use they're lol

that's an easy one

[fading flume]

I know you know how to use they’re, I’m throwing it into the ring because people love to use it as a staple of grammatical correction in a hissy fit

[unique rune]

theiyr’re

[vagrant ocean]

Proper grammar is no laughing matter.

[slim salmon]

Throwing it into the ring

Ba-dum tss.

Anyway, all the civilians were just doing their own thing during during Halo 3 right? The Covenant never interfered with anything other than the jungle somewhere in Africa and Voi?

Or did they attack other cities as well?

[slim salmon]

Because I mean, one day you could be having the greatest Christmas night with your buddies and next morning the news announces the death disappearance of a war hero.

Now that I think about it, why didn't they make Chief MIA, like all the other Spartans? Is it to not disrespect him or...

[modest marsh]

That we know of, Chicago, Havana, and London off the top of my head

[slim salmon]

During Halo 3 right? Not 2?

[modest marsh]

Originally the intent was the covenant was solely focused on the East African protectorate region but that changed later

Crucially, Bungie originally intended for halo 2 to end with the battle of earth concluding at the ark located on earth but that obviously didn’t happen when later material acknowledged other locations where the covenant attacked to justify them having something to do during the several week timeskip that happens between when Chief left earth to when he gets back

[vagrant ocean]

A ton of places got hit. London, Cleveland, Kenya. Havana, Antarctica, Southwest URNA, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border,

[slim salmon]

Antarctica

[vagrant ocean]

Cleveland, not Chicago.

[slim salmon]

Did we colonize it?

[vagrant ocean]

Yes.

[vagrant ocean]

Covenant excavation was being halted.

[modest marsh]

Invincible on the brain

[vagrant ocean]

If he’s invincible then why can I see him?

Riddle me that liberals.

[modest marsh]

Regret would be living up to his name if Omni-man was there

[carmine sleet]

The Covenant also took plenty of prisoners too, the workers at Voi are one such example

[vagrant ocean]

I think they were prolly seen more as food than true prisoners.

[carmine sleet]

Sure but the point is the Covenant was taking people and keeping them against their will

[warm ridge]

The entire planet was in evacuation mode basically.
Pretty much people were leaving however they possibly could off planet.

[slim salmon]

One heck of a Christmas.

So everyone just panicked during the First Battle of Earth?

[vagrant ocean]

Yep

[slim salmon]

Oh well

[vagrant ocean]

Of the 10 billion people that lived there before the invasion, just 200 million remained.

[slim salmon]

I'm pretty surprised how the Cole Protocol actually managed to work

[vagrant ocean]

This is from a combination of mass evacuations and the effects of the invasion.

[slim salmon]

The little ships that were flying away from Earth during the Cairo Station missions were escape pods and whatnot right

[modest marsh]

I would not take this as literal but those are UNSC ships

[slim salmon]

Those are some tiny ships.

[vagrant ocean]

Cargo liners, passenger ships, Condors, Egrets, if it can carry people off world then it did.

[modest marsh]

https://www.halopedia.org/images/4/49/UNSC_Fleet.jpg?f5ae8

They’re just far away

Most ships would be too small to see at all realistically speaking

Space is very big

[slim salmon]

Are those the same as the ones in-game?

[modest marsh]

These are cutscene renders but I assume you’re referring to the skybox during the EVA sections?

[slim salmon]

Pretty much

[modest marsh]

Similarly on the mission Regret the skybox is completely saturated with covenant ships and I would similarly recommend against interpreting that as literal

[slim salmon]

Never really paid attention to the skybox in Regret

[modest marsh]

Well right after the cutscene that plays right before you go to kill him, if you look up there’s hundreds upon hundreds of ships

Which isn’t to say that’s wrong but the precise presentation of it seems to be taking liberties for flavor reasons

[slim salmon]

Wait, what

You lose control of Chief after beating up Regret

[modest marsh]

Yes, I know

before you fight regret

https://youtu.be/6_dLqh_iw2I? 1:01:00

[prime mauve]

Honestly if there is a moment to panic that was when!

[prime mauve]

Did we ever get a number for High Charity's defense fleet? Cause that moment probably had the full defense fleet deploying, plus who knows how many other ships could have made it to join up and witness Delta Halo.

[modest marsh]

Realistically it would probably fluctuate substantially day to day depending on what’s going on, yeah

Though I think for the health of the setting, the lower the number the better to justify why the covenant even still has hundreds of ships post war

Almost the entirety of the fleet at Delta halo was destroyed during the initial hours of the schism

[prime mauve]

Some escaped to join Truth, some became the fleet that quarantined Delta Halo and glassed the Flood presence left there. Gotta been a few hundred on both of those sides

Also the San Shyuum flotilla, no idea how large that one might have really been.

[modest marsh]

I suppose I ought to clarify that it depends on what classes of ship we’re talking about here

In halo 2 and 3 there was only battlecruisers and carriers which are exceedingly large and powerful

Retroactively or at least implicitly we know the covenant had many other types of ship available that would’ve been present

Both larger and smaller than those two

Ideally there would be a larger proportion of corvettes, frigates, cutters, etc as well as unarmed transports and logistics vessels

Same goes for the UNSC side but all things considered the UNSC fleet has remained largely modest if a bit power crept by super ships like Infinity and Victory of Samothrace

[prime mauve]

The Victory honestly is such a cool idea but Patenaude may have gone a little overboard with the praise he gave to its double barreled MAC

Generally the way he wrote Abigail Cole's parts of Empty Throne made me think how good Jeremy Patenaude would be if he was writing Miranda Keyes ngl

[stoic hamlet]

Nah the MAC is fine.

It’s more the idea that only Valiant class ships can hold it. It makes no sense in that context.

Punics and Vindications are larger and should be able to mount it, and double MAC’s in general are common on UNSC ships, depending on the class.

The Halberd and Marathon both mount double MAC’s, for example.

The Punic mounts a double SMAC.

[prime mauve]

Yeah I'm not complaining about the configuration, I think it was great. But the Sarissa MAC being compared to the Infinity's and in some cases being described as better makes me scratch my head a little.

[modest marsh]

Personally I think it would be cooler/easier to justify if it was a power requirement, rather than size

Callback to the Autumn’s experimental reactor as a justification for its unique MAC configuration

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah, but that should only really taje out the Punic then.

And from how Victory is described, there’s no trade off at all for mounting the Sarissa.

[carmine sleet]

Miranda needs so much because she has so little in canon. Honestly, I'd make her a doctor studying Covenant language and tech like how she is in the Silver timeline

[prime mauve]

And if it could be done with a shorter ship, I imagine longer barrels in a Punic would pack a bigger punch

Maybe that's the next step?

[prime mauve]

I like her as a commander. She's so much like her father in all the best and worst ways. But we could see more of her mother's side with that.

[modest marsh]

I’m pretty sure the reason why she was made a xenobiologist/anthropologist in the first place was because the UNSC Hilbert was an unarmed science vessel

So the showrunners just extrapolated that to mean she lead her own science team

Jacob is given a similar treatment where they just smashed together different hats he wore

I do get wanting to spend less time on a boat so you can have more opportunities to have the characters interact at the office but it wasn’t without sacrificing the opportunity for the characters to do the stuff they were known for in the first place

It’s weird too because apparently Silver Jacob commands the Iroquois at Sigma Octanus just like in the core canon but it all happened offscreen, which like, what?

My bad, they just confirmed Sigma Octanus existed but we don’t know if the same battle occurred there

Temporarily assigned to UNSC IROQUOIS (DD-906) to assist ADM Stanforth in tracking probable locations of “High Charity” mobile command facility

[warm ridge]

During the invasion the human population on Earth dropped from 10 billion (pre-battle of earth) to 200 million by Nov. 17th, 2552 due to the evacuation efforts.

We have no idea exactly how many people died, let alone how many people actually bothered returning to Earth after the evacuation, but currently Earth's population sits around 7.9 billion according to Halo: Warfleet.

[warm ridge]

High Charity didn't make up a bulk of the Covenant's fleet, pretty simple.
It was definitely a large number, but not the largest at all. Most of the Covenant's actual fleet would be spread across hundreds of worlds, with thousands of leaders. Halo Encyclopedia 2022 explained it best.

The reason Truth struggled to obtain a sizable fleet is because his loyalty was with Brutes, while the Elites held a bulk of every fleet imaginable across hundreds if not thousands of those worlds.

[prime mauve]

Doing it in secret definitely was a big factor too

[prime mauve]

High Charity's combined defense fleet would probably be the largest single fleet but I wouldn't be surprised if Sanghelios easily had well over a thousand ships in its various kaidon led fleets

[warm ridge]

Regarding the quote from the Halo Encyclopedia 2022, here it is -

Although it communicated a monolithic unified power, the inner workings of the military's structure were much more complex, and often embroiled in competition, infighting, and rivalry. Driven by the ambitions of various ministries and the proud, hidebound ethos of warriors seeking to prove themselves, the central hope of divine sublimation was the only thing capable of maintaining order.

The tl;dr is -

• Covenant Military was largely Sangheili held
• The "military" was spread thin across multiple star systems. They had no real centralized "strong military", it didn't exist. They had competing war lords that were united under religious beliefs.

Without that religion, you get the various spliter factions we see today that seemingly pop up out of no where with massive sizable forces. They pop up because they never got involved / had no idea what may of been going on due to being far away from places like High Charity, Earth, or even Sanghelios. Milky Way galaxy is pretty huge after all.

[minor sky]

The only explaination I can think of that it was some Forerunner ruin or ancient site of importance that they moved to the ring for safe keeping.

That or the Monitor had a soft spot for that specific structure on the ring

Like, who knows, maybe it was the monitor who built it in the monotonous process of watching the ring.

I don't know, there is probably some sort of explaination

But yeah it doesn't really make sense on the Halo ring

[dry cedar]

I mean, we do know Forerunners survived.

So maybe survivors on the ring set up camp there for a long while before finally dying?

[minor sky]

Maybe?? Or hell, maybe there were ancient humans on Installation 05 and that was their home

Maybe the Librarian or whoever had the structure be preserved.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Zeta Halo is the only Halo known to house ancient humans, yes?

[modest marsh]

My thought is that, in keeping with the interpretation that humans and forerunners are the same thing but in different evolutionary stages, the forerunner ecumene as we currently understand it sought to preserve or experiment with incorporating older pre industrial civilization with their modern technology resulting in the strange hybridized architecture that wouldn’t feasibly exist without advanced technological intervention

Kind of similar to those conspiracy theories about how aliens helped the Egyptians build the pyramids

[minor sky]

Totally possible

[modest marsh]

The Babysitter especially aligns with this, the ruins on Heian being an anomaly in its anachronistic combination of ancient and industrial

[worn wolf]

covenant forces that had to attack cleveland probably still get made fun of by their peers.

[shrewd perch]

[orchid kettle]

The fact that there appears to be a well in the Delta Halo ruins would suggest to me that it's just someplace some people lived

but the well also doesn't have a hole so maybe it's just the Community Circle

Whether that means the ruins came from people who lived on Delta Halo or it was moved to Delta Halo, I dunno

The ruins have triangular shapes placed on top of them which reminds me of the classic beacon towers or whatever they're called

Which would suggest to me that the ruins were built by Forerunners, but apparently in the even more distant past, or the people who lived on Delta Halo were just copying the Forerunner facilities around them

Cortana also theorizes a couple times that the old ruins are revered and honored by the Forerunners, which is what makes me think its like a london bridge situation where they transplanted some old buildings of theirs from way earlier in their history onto Delta Halo, brick by brick

Why they'd think to do that, I have no idea

though with current Forerunner technology I feel like they could literally cut off the chunk of planet the ruins occupy and transplant the land onto Delta Halo's surface

[minor sky]

Thats what I was thinking

[vagrant ocean]

Omega Halo had some.

[minor sky]

So it isn't impossible that ancient humans were on Delta Halo

[vagrant ocean]

Not impossible but the amount of architectural work shown on Delta is not work done by such an extremely primitive society.

[minor sky]

It also isn't impossible that one group of ancient humans were able to have their civilization grow and expand beyond hunter-gatherer tribes

If not ancient humanity, it is totally possible that another species lived on the ring

That or Benson and my hypothesis that the Forerunners kept those structures around because of their importance to their own culture or history

Maybe that specific region of Delta Halo is based off of a specific place where the structures originally stood

[prime mauve]

My take on it is that the Master Builder transplanted some archeological sites of old Forerunner origin so that they would be better protected, as a sort of architectural Conservation Measure. If the Librarian could get plants and animals for the Halos, he wanted a chunk of ruins to be his museum.

As a Builder one would think he would want to depict continuity to the past in some ways, too.

As well as their dominance in the present.

He could have added ruins of non Forerunner origin for the Librarian's conservation effort, but I think he generally would have been more ego driven for anything that's built of stone or metal and deferred to the Librarian for the living stuff

[slim salmon]

Since my brain is square and I'm stupid, I've never really understood the end cutscene of the first Halo 3 ODST Playback/flashback/whatever.

So Buck finds Dare's drop pod, drop pod = empty, Engineer appears and prepares to beat up Buck, Buck sees Dare's helmet in the Engineer's tentacle, Engineer sniped by Romeo, Engineer goes kaboom, and Dare's helmet flies across the Plaza and into a building, getting stuck in the monitor where the Rookie finds her helmet.

Right?

[modest marsh]

It wasn’t trying to beat up Buck

It was trying to communicate with him

[slim salmon]

Oh

Well everyone thought Buck was about to get his butt kicked ig

[modest marsh]

They hadn’t ever encountered a Huragok up close and its behavior was erratic

The helmet had a friendly transponder and the Huragok had hoped that would help facilitate friendly communication

Romeo interpreted it as attacking Buck and opened fire before anyone could react

That’s also why the door was placed back on the pod, because the Huragok needed Buck to get close enough to talk to while it played dead right next to it

[slim salmon]

Another antic of my smooth brain

[modest marsh]

No I think the game could’ve done a better job of communicating this

[slim salmon]

Well the engineers look cute

[prime mauve]

Genius! I thought the Huragok would have just been tinkering with it out of curiosity but it makes sense it would figure things out quick.

[slim salmon]

Side effect of being a living supercomputer I guess.

[modest marsh]

I mean, Rookie finds the helmet because of the transponder too

[slim salmon]

I thought Rookie found the drop pod and going through the building was the only way, which is where he passed by the helmet

Also, why did Rookie get unconscious while everybody else just crash-landed like normal? Is the only explanation is that Rookie is new and hasn't gotten as... strong(?) yet?

[modest marsh]

No, his crash was the most severe

[slim salmon]

Well he did crash hard enough to be stuck on the side of a building

I swear I can't remember these things

[modest marsh]

He was in an uncontrolled spin as well

[slim salmon]

I just thought that happened to everybody

[modest marsh]

More g forces pushing his brain around

[modest marsh]

They’re in a controlled vertical spin, but rookie flipped around more

Buck for instance flipped over but only the one time on landing

And at a lower speed

[slim salmon]

Or maybe it's just his "smoldering handsomeness" at work

Anyway gtg, thanks

[minor sky]

Yeah that's what I was getting at

https://halo.wiki.gallery/images/thumb/1/15/HTMCC_H4_Achievement_YouHaditComing.png/1280px-HTMCC_H4_Achievement_YouHaditComing.png

I really like this concept art for Jul 'Mdama

I kind of wish they leaned into it more

It reminds me of what they would do with the Elites in HW2

I will admit that the hologram at the top being missing is a negative

[prime mauve]

Quite spiky!

[void merlin]

In the halo remake, they should add certain parts that were in the books, like the elite that was hunting getting defeated at the elevator in the maw

[vagrant ocean]

But then you’ll have people who never read the book complain that they added something new.

[carmine sleet]

The Elite is also already there, we kill him like every other Covenant we fight in the game

Like, it was The Flood which then expanded on him afterwards

[somber idol]

How can they complain about something they don't get?

[vagrant ocean]

You must be new here.

Halo “fans” will complain about literally anything that doesn’t reproduce the feeling of being 10 years old in 2008 on a Saturday night.

[somber idol]

That's a remake, things are gonna change

[vagrant ocean]

And they don’t like change.

I’d say we should ignore them but they’re so bloody loud.

[somber idol]

Then they must don't buy a remake, that's the whole point of it

If things wouldn't be going to change it will be called a remaster

[vagrant ocean]

You seem to be not comprehending what I’m saying.

[somber idol]

Yes i am

[vagrant ocean]

These people haven’t bought a game since Reach, yet will scream from the rooftops that the new games they haven’t played suck and aren’t really Halo. They will still screech about it like a howler monkey that got its balls caught in an industrial shredder and they will still try to make it your problem.

[somber idol]

You're not saying something constructive

[vagrant ocean]

They will find a way to whine about it without buying it and regurgitate whatever braindead half baked take their favorite HaloTuber cooked up.

[vagrant ocean]

I’m under no obligation to do so.

Funny how that works.

[somber idol]

No but i mean

You can't just résumé all people complaining about something like that

They're obviously things to complains since 343 take over

[vagrant ocean]

Not once did I say I was referring to all 343/HS critics.

[somber idol]

I don't think that mean all change are gonne be complain about

[vagrant ocean]

You are putting words in my mouth.

For shame.

[somber idol]

You're post saying that they didn't bought a game since Reach made me think that their complain mainly come since the take over of 343i

[carmine sleet]

My take is that I don't want them to try shoehorning in things which won't make sense. Like trying to make Zuka's story a major focal point of CEV isn't needed for the game's story to work or adding an encounter with Thel 'Vadamee on the ring (These are both ideas I've seen people suggest). I also think trying to add in the Alpha Base scenes or Jenkin's story of surviving being infected by the Flood won't really work without heavy reworking of those scenes.
Like, the story is most likely going to be the same as original CE, with dialogue tweaks to make it more consistent with current lore and environmental storytelling updated as well. So stuff like the "cave" will look more like a cave at first or finding the dead body of the marine that was in the Library before Spark took Chief

[somber idol]

I don't think they're gonna change a lot to the original main story/content

There is no much space anyway to add superficial "the flood" narrative to the story
And i don't think it's necessary

I just expect them to change a lot the interaction between Spark and Chief indeed because of their retcon of the original forerunner story

It wouldn't make much sense to keep those lines for them

[marble lion]

Do you think that any of terminals logs like similar to ones found in CEA and H2 anniversary might have some cutscenes of characters and locations from the Flood novel might be in the CE remake or less likely?

[carmine sleet]

That's where I think we'll more likely see stuff related to The Flood and other characters in expanded media

But I have to wonder if they'll be taking into account the CEA terminals when making these new ones

[obsidian thistle]

Yes its true folks

I am a nerd

https://www.halowaypoint.com/news/canon-fodder-casting-chronicles

[stoic hamlet]

Noooooooo~

You’re not just a nerd!

You’re our nerd!

[carmine sleet]

Yeah!

Also ooooh, Gideon Emery is one of the narrators

And they've got Tricia back for Dare's story

And this is how I learn Tamara Taylor was in Hunt the Truth

[prime mauve]

Wow now that's a cast of narrators

Guess I do have to give it another chance now that Haruspis is voicing only one story (and likely with a better mic and an audio director involved).

Major improvement.

[obsidian thistle]

Gonna make me blush aha

[stoic hamlet]

Sadly, I can’t really get into audiobooks.

Audio dramas sure.

But I find audiobooks too slow for me. I read faster than the narrator.

And admittedly, my preference just is to read, sooo.

[vagrant ocean]

I use audiobooks when I’m at work

[obsidian thistle]

I do like a physical book

Something I can crack open

Read and enjoy

[stoic hamlet]

Mhm.

[prime mauve]

Gotta say the Omnibus is the physical book I've been most hyped for in a while.

[prime mauve]

I like them for all those moments where I can't have the book open like when driving or at the gym but nothing really beats physical pages

[obsidian thistle]

Honestly same. But like... I'm bias

[last anchor]

Man, HS is pulling all the stops out for the audio books now.

Im ABSOLUTELY here for it.

[last anchor]

THE TOME

[last anchor]

In my expereince, they work best if they're done like audio dramas rather than the books themselves.
With sound effects and backing rather than just "a dude reading the book really well"."

This is a great start however cause a lot of the VAs they got are old hands.

I would absolutely love another audio drama in Halo though. Its been too long, Memory Agent was fantastic.

[prime mauve]

Yeah, my big hope was that it would have someone competent narrating and this blows it out the water

[last anchor]

Games Workshop?
Take. NOTES

[prime mauve]

Some Star Wars audiobooks were like that and it was great

[stoic hamlet]

How dare you disrespect the GOAT that is Keeble.

I will not stand for this slander.

[last anchor]

I mean they could use game VAs more is all.

Like if they got the voice of Captain Titus to read 500 Worlds: Titus

[stoic hamlet]

I still miss Mark Strong Titus. D:

[fair hazel]

Didn't memory agent have some availability issues recently?

[obsidian thistle]

Episode 2 vanished

[prime mauve]

Looks like our memory of that agent is in trouble

[prime mauve]

Just saw that you guys helped ensure continuity for it, amazing!

I wonder if Chips Dubbo and Sgt. Stacker's improbable appearances were one of the changes? They're our boys.

[obsidian thistle]

Its fun! 😄

[minor sky]

We are steps away from another proper Halo audio series

I would dig a Big Finish style Halo audio series

[worn wolf]

halo - finland edition

[slim salmon]

At the end of ODST, Sgt. Johnson says that the Covenant are digging a big hole and blah blah blah.

Is he referring to whatever was happening in Halo: Uprising?

[unique rune]

Uprising is a whole other thing
they're talking about the Ark portal excavation in ODST

[slim salmon]

oh

And then Johnson goes to the jungle, Master Chief decides to cosplay a meteorite and then Halo 3 happens?

[unique rune]

pretty much

[void merlin]

Yeah it’s basically the covenant digging up the dreadnought, and portal to the ark

[prime mauve]

No, the dreadnought is the Forerunner ship they used to power High Charity that Truth used to get to Earth

[void merlin]

Well yeah, but there was another dreadnought was also present in Halo 3. A dreadnought launched into the portal.

https://tenor.com/view/halo-portal-forerunner-dreadnought-unsc-frigate-gif-3116188385457439954

[stoic hamlet]

It’s the same Dreadnought.

[void merlin]

AH that’s right it is the same one

Because regret used it to open the portal

[carmine sleet]

Regret was dead by the time of Halo 3

Truth was the one who used it to open the portal

[void merlin]

Yeah truth sry lol

My mind is halo 2 coded, so when a prophet enters my mind, I subconsciously think about that prophet

Of regret

My bad

[obsidian thistle]

Yer username threw me for a mo. XD

Happy Birthday by the way! Yer Halo lore knowledge is impressive and ya always find ways to impress me with stuff ya do!

[tepid lagoon]

Happy birthday

[prime mauve]

Congratulations, happy birthday!

[tepid lagoon]

[obsidian thistle]

^ Reasons I love the lore community.

[strange pumice]

Happy birthday

[minor sky]

Happy Birthday

[stoic hamlet]

Thank you, for both the well wishes and the praise!

[stoic hamlet]

Thank you!

(Looks like I can’t tag that fast due to an anti-spam filter, but I will tag everyone thanks!

[stoic hamlet]

Thank you!

[stoic hamlet]

Thank you!

[vagrant ocean]

MAZEL TOV

[stoic hamlet]

Thank you!

[fair hazel]

Happy Birthday!

[fresh cedar]

Hey guys

[vagrant ocean]

I keep seeing clips of people playing Squad on YT taking out VBIEDs and it reminded me of Operation: TREBUCHET. It also made me glad that we’ll prolly never get an Insurrection-era game cuz these psychos decide to launch a missile at a truck carrying several tons of material and wipe out 3 city blocks.

[cold geyser]

I have a lore question: are all the halo rings required to be fired to get rid of the flood or were multiple created in case the others were taken out of commission

[unique rune]

the whole array was needed for full coverage of the galaxy

[stoic hamlet]

Late replying, but thank you!

[stoic hamlet]

Thank you!

[vagrant ocean]

Due to the overlapping nature of the pulse.

[worn wolf]

you reckon you could survive the halo rings firing if you just duck and cover

[unique rune]

I don’t know if you could find a big enough duck

[wispy pewter]

Just remain in slipspace

easy

[worn wolf]

well now im curious if that would work

[carmine sleet]

https://tenor.com/view/duck-dancing-duck-walk-away-gif-3532117161295181563

[wispy pewter]

https://www.reddit.com/r/HaloStory/comments/mb5qpd/halo_activation_and_slip_space_travel/#:~:text=No just being in Slipspace,how the Ur-Didact survived.&text=A: The Ur-Didact's Cryptum,the life in the galaxy.&text=No.,journey will offer no protection.&text=• 5y ago-,No.,crazy tech to shield them. Answer is No

[shrewd perch]

Excuse me. I have a gift for Halo Studio (343 Industries). I was wondering where would be appropriate to submit it.

[carmine sleet]

Not sure why you're asking that in the lore channel

[vagrant ocean]

I don’t trust this guy.

Oh boy, I sure do love checking the subreddit and seeing people who haven’t played a game since Reach try to explain why the lore is.

Anyways, super pumped for Campaign Evolved.

[carmine sleet]

I hope we get to learn more about the prequel stuff soon. Honestly I'm kinda surprised we've yet to see any new updates on the game since October

[wooden marsh]

do y'all think that putting halo on playstation would be a good decision?

[carmine sleet]

Yes

(Also not really a lore question)

[vagrant ocean]

Not a lore question. And more players the better.

[obsidian thistle]

More audience equals more people in our community. Which equals more people interested in lore. Which equals more wiki editors! 😄

[wooden marsh]

srry

[vagrant ocean]

They are early war, prolly gonna be after SILENT STORM,

[obsidian thistle]

Tis my guess

[carmine sleet]

Ah so that's your scheme to get more editors for the wiki!

[vagrant ocean]

So between 2526 and 2549.

[carmine sleet]

I'm hoping somewhere in the 2540s, since we really don't have much there

[vagrant ocean]

Maybe Daisy might appear and we can get more solid info on her.

Cuz I like her as a character.

[carmine sleet]

I feel like if other IIs do show up, they'll likely go with the other members of Blue

[wooden marsh]

I have a question.Will Campaign Evolved be a full remake of the original or a remaster like the anniversary edition?

[vagrant ocean]

Remake.

We don’t talk about CEA.

[carmine sleet]

Well, we do talk about CEA, but mainly to specify that CEA isn't a remake

And for the terminals

[vagrant ocean]

The terminals slapped.

[carmine sleet]

Which is the a thing I can't help but think about since Campaign Evolved is going to have terminals as well but if I recall those ones will be text based (Like Halo 3)

[vagrant ocean]

Oooooooo

I guess HS forgot that like, 47% of the fanbase is illiterate.

[carmine sleet]

Which has me going "Are we gonna end up with a Persona 3 situation where people argue over which version of Combat Evolved is the definitive version" because there's pieces of content which are exclusive to specific versions of the game like the analyse feature on 360 CEA

[vagrant ocean]

I think CE:Evolved is gonna be the more definitive cuz I get the vibe that they’re just fixing the holes in it that have been made over the past quarter century.

[unique rune]

how do words good

[carmine sleet]

Sure but that won't stop people from arguing about it

Like, if you've ever been involved in the Persona fandom, they argue about it even now regarding Persona 3 since there were so many different versions of the game, including one where you had an alternative protagonist (Who was not brought back for the remake tragically)

But to make my overall point clear. I just want to know what these new terminals will be detailing and if there will be any acknowledgement of the old CEA terminals

Because not gonna lie, I think it'd be neat if they brought those terminals back alongside the new text based ones

[vagrant ocean]

I find it cool that out of all the successfully augmented/fully rehabilitated IIs, there’s only 3 commissioned officers among them.

[vagrant ocean]

I think the old terminals will fall under the classic Easterling schtick of “it’s canon until we say otherwise”.

Kinda like how the Believe campaign is still canon.

[carmine sleet]

My concern is less "are they still canon" (I am assuming they will still be canon) and more "Will they be retelling them with the text-based terminals or are those something completely new"

[vagrant ocean]

Might be completely new,

That’s what I’d swing for.

[marble lion]

I wouldn't be surprised if CE remake that there are two or three terminals in each level and finding the new ones are in a hard to reach place that you need to be creative to reach them.

[carmine sleet]

I am betting on them having one in the Control Room on Two Betrayals, since most people won't think to turn around and interact with it

[obsidian thistle]

CEA still has a lotta worth.

[carmine sleet]

Agreed

[obsidian thistle]

Visuals on paper for non-unique stuff would still be canon.

AND

Anything 343i/HS said was the CEA design which are two characters

(Well 3. But 2 of em are hunters lol)

Zuka uses the CE design

So like CE and CEA both hold value

[atomic stump]

In Halo Glasslands they reveal that Russia still exists in 2553 and they lease the entire island of Britian.

Vaz also refers to himself as a "Russian taxpayer"

Karen Traviss had way too much fun writing these novels. I can imagine her laughing her *** off when she wrote that.

[minor sky]

I doubt they'll make the CEA Terminals non-canon

The thing that excites me the most about Campaign Evolved is that they finally will stop using the ugly Mark V armor from CEA as the go-to "This is what Mark V looks like"

[obsidian thistle]

🙁

I liked that set

[minor sky]

I.... do not

[obsidian thistle]

I hope they keep it as a variant

At the very least

[strange pumice]

Idk, it's kinda cool, but old like hell
At least it will be repainted to like a more infinite variant

[minor sky]

The colors look weird, Chief's arms feel shorter than they should be, and when he is facing the camera he looks oddly fat??

The pre-release version looks better imo

[frigid heart]

He’s doing his best

[minor sky]

The Halo Infinite Mark V looks great

It isn't "offical" but Marcus Lehto's Mark V model looks fantastic

It really recaptures the look and feel of the 2001 armor

~~ I'm honestly a little suprised they didn't get Marcus as an advisor on CEmake or something~~

[vagrant ocean]

So happy.

[strange pumice]

I didn't witness the 2001 armour, but the anniversary version is good

[vagrant ocean]

It was poorly implemented, just like 95% of the game.

[vagrant ocean]

Hey, even Chief gets the munchies.

[minor sky]

The main positives of the Anniversary graphics are the sound-scapes/updated weapon audio, termimals, and them putting a few extra arrows in the Library

[strange pumice]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

I guess it's more discussion than the lore part

[minor sky]

I find Noodle to be a tad pretentious, but his CEA video more or less covers the brunt of what that remaster fell short of

didn't care for him insinuating that 343i/Saber Interactive somehow was trying to "erase" Bungie's work on the series

[carmine sleet]

You mean the version where they used the Reach Mark V model?

[minor sky]

No

The one on the box art/in the announcement trailer

[carmine sleet]

You're gonna find people like that allot sadly

[minor sky]

Seems to be a running theme

Even though if you do two seconds of digging you'll find plenty of 343i devs talking about how much they admire Bungie's work and how huge of a challange it was to take over the series from them

Like, for pete's sake, they went out of their way to write a special thank you to Micheal Salvatori and Marty O'Donnell in the credits of Halo 4

But everybody seems to think that 343i hated Halo or thought that they knew better

When that really wasn't the case

[carmine sleet]

The whole "343 hates Halo and wants to destroy it" narrative falls flat pretty quickly anyway because if they did hate it, they'd just not be making Halo games (And that's not even mentioning how the studio exists to exclusively make Halo)

[unique rune]

occasionally I still see people "quoting" that one interview where Frank O'Connor mentioned that they hired people who hated Halo for one reason or another as if that's some kinda gotcha

[obsidian thistle]

That whole statement was taken sooo outta context

[unique rune]

it was kind of a weird thing to say and I think he phrased it badly there but it's been warped into something that doesn't even really match what he seemed to be getting at

[carmine sleet]

Aye. And it's reached a point that people just throw it out whenever they see something they don't like as a "See, I'm right, they hate this series!"

[unique rune]

I don't see it super often but I remember people would also used to bring up something from a different interview where the early 343 team put together something while prototyping Halo 4 that was scrapped because it was considered "too traditional"

as if they'd developed a whole chunk of a game when in reality it was like, part of a mission prototype or something like that IIRC?

[carmine sleet]

Yeah, they definitely wouldn't have thrown out a large chunk unless there was something really bad happening behind the scenes

[vagrant ocean]

Pretty sure he didn’t even say that.

Unless it’s him saying they won’t do that

I unno why people hated Frank so much

[unique rune]

I distinctly remember it being something along those lines but it was basically just him saying that 343 wanted to get a variety of perspectives and criticisms of Halo and its design working on the franchise

[unique rune]

I think it’s mostly because he was someone that they could name lol

[vagrant ocean]

Prolly was like “We didn’t want to exclusivity hire fans cuz then it’d be nothing but yes men”

[vagrant ocean]

Or was formed with ex-Bungie staff.

[minor sky]

Well, they were only part of a much larger team

They had people from Microsoft proper at the start iirc who started hiring specific industry talents like Ryan Payton, Kenneth Scott, and Sotaro Tojima

I don't think it was "Bungie devs left to form new studio" so much as it was "Bungie devs left to join new studio"

[vagrant ocean]

Ykwim.

[minor sky]

Learning that Kenneth Scott worked on Doom 3 put a ton of Halo 4's designs into perspective for me

Ur-Didact, Elites, Jackals, ect.

It is a pity he wasn't able to stay on board for Halo 5

Though ftr he didn't leave because of problems at the studio, iirc it was personal matters that required him to move to California

[stoic hamlet]

Frankie did that a lot.

A lot of his comments, I understand what he meant, but they’re very easy to take out of context and change the meaning.

[modest marsh]

The one time where “there’s context” is a valid excuse

[worn wolf]

i asked frank o connor to sign my copy of halo 3 and instead he pulled out a desert eagle and magdumped it before sprinting away

[vagrant ocean]

He’s Scottish, we all know they can’t speak properly.

[minor sky]

Yeah but if you say that to their face they'll cut out your organs and make a kilt out of them

[worn wolf]

you cant make a kilt out of organs

[minor sky]

If Frank O'Conner had his way every character would have a thick Glaswegian accent

[worn wolf]

calls in a pelican to drop off a nissan micra

[minor sky]

Thats what they all say. Next thing you know your organs are being used as a garment

[worn wolf]

frank o connor is my favourite halo person because i dont know anything about him besides the fact that theres a ton of people that absolutely hate him

[vagrant ocean]

Ye can if ye try hard enough.

[vagrant ocean]

I had a manager who was Scottish, she laughed when I said that.

But I think that had to do with me explaining to a customer why she couldn’t understand my manager.

[worn wolf]

reminded of the scottish language wiki page that was being curated by an american teenager who was just making it all up

granted nobody actually speaks it here anymore

nvm i googled it and 1.5 million claim to be able to

[wispy pewter]

Scotland still exists bruh

[worn wolf]

im quite aware i live here

[wispy pewter]

William Wallace?

[worn wolf]

nah he got cancelled realy before he could get started

[minor sky]

https://www.halopedia.org/Long_Night_of_Solace#/media/File:H4_LongNightOfSolace_Crashsite_Concept.jpg

I was scrolling through Halopedia and noticed this piece of concept art for Halo 4

Apparently it depicts the crashed Long Night Of Solace

For a while I was a tad confused because it feels odd knowing that this was concept art for Halo 4 and not Halo Reach

Oh well, add that to the list of obscure Halo cut content

I am also really curious about the cut Sentinel Factory map from Halo 4, which from an archived version of the artist's website seemed to be overlooking a landscape of fall-like colors with orbiting satellites, possibly other Sentinel Factories?

If memory serves me right, I believe there is other Halo 4 concept art with a similar landscape

Both seemed to be among the cancelled DLC content Microsoft contracted Digital Extremes for

[lament karma]

So what’s the canon status of the class II Spartan-IIs

[lament karma]

Would be cool if we could revisit Reach in a future game

I remember there being some concept art from Infinite depicting an ONI base on Reach

[rustic sedge]

Okay so a quick lore question cuz i haven't dived into halo in so long

Are the effects of the augmentations of s2's and s3's the same? Like do Spartan 3s have similar reaction speed, strength, movement speed, etc?

[lament karma]

I believe the augmentations used different chemicals, or processes, but they are very similar. The Gamma Company IIIs were also given illegal augments that allowed them not to register pain, even mortal wounds, and keep fighting. The downside was, if they didn’t get specific drugs after a certain amount of time, they would become increasingly aggressive, even towards cohorts.

[modest marsh]

Officially it was cancelled

Out of universe, it turned into Spartan-IIIs

[modest marsh]

Their augmentations are virtually identical with the main difference being the rejection/failure rate

There was a greater range of age and genetic tolerance that resulted in zero fatalities across all 3 companies

There was some washouts, but all were rehabilitated to my knowledge

The other potential exception is the lack of a Mjolnir-compatible neural interface as the IIIs would not require one to operate their SPI armor

Although at this point it kind of feels like they soft retconned that out with a large number of Spartan-IIIs eventually donning Mjolnir, though they may have simply been given a compatible neural interface after the fact

[vagrant ocean]

Very dubious. We only have 2 named members and one of them died during the process.

Nicole-458 is still TECHNICALLY canon, but we have zero info on her outside her dossier from DOA4.

[vagrant ocean]

Which is result of ONI learning what went wrong with the previous 2 generations of Spartans and refining the process.

[modest marsh]

Nicole-458 is almost definitely a Beta company Spartan-III if she is still considered canon

The numerical designation is conceivably reconciled that way as well

418 candidates were conscripted, but it’s possible if not likely more candidates were considered

Similar to the 150 Spartan-II candidates being reduced to 75

[vagrant ocean]

Except Yasmine Zaman is from the same program and is a Spartan-II.

[strange pumice]

And then to 33 iirc

[vagrant ocean]

Only due to washouts and deaths.

[modest marsh]

Yeah but you can just go “ilovebees is nebulously canon to begin with and details like that are subject to retcon”

It wasn’t intended as canon to begin with and 343i retroactively designated it as such because they wanted to incorporate elements from it

[rustic sedge]

THANKS DUDE I LITERALLY SEARCHED THE SEVEN SEAS FOR THIS

[vagrant ocean]

I go with the Jeff Easterling approach, it’s canon until they say otherwise, hence why Believe is still considered canon.

[vagrant ocean]

Tbf Bungie was always screeching at each other over what is and isn’t canon.

[rustic sedge]

Wait I'm kinda confused weren't s3s given a designation between 1 to 330 since that was the amount of Spartans present in beta company?

I may be dumb though

[modest marsh]

If you ever want something to reinforce this, the bottom line is that Spartan-IIIs can use GEN1 Mjolnir without any complications despite its specifications being optimized for the physiology of IIs, which means they have to be similar enough to be able to withstand using it

[strange pumice]

There was 3 companies
Alpha, Beta and Gamma

[vagrant ocean]

The training class of Alpha Company was pert near 500.

[vagrant ocean]

Which still numbered 1-300ish.

[modest marsh]

This is also why IVs can’t wear GEN1 mjolnir, because the performance baseline of it exceeds what their anatomy can handle

[rustic sedge]

I'm stupid.

[strange pumice]

Sadly, but number was ridiculously lowered to a few luckiest who survived

[vagrant ocean]

It has to be upgraded to GEN2 or GEN3 standards otherwise they become chili.

[rustic sedge]

In layman's terms it's too good for them isn't it

[vagrant ocean]

No, only 300-ish were selected to be augmented, if 200 kids died as a result of augmentation the program would be canceled.

[modest marsh]

Ehh, maybe not so bad, but it’s still enough of a problem that it required them to totally reengineer a separate armor platform entirely

[vagrant ocean]

Meanwhile you put a II in modern armor and they just get better.

[strange pumice]

I mean about near suicidal missions

[vagrant ocean]

Oh, yeah but only the graduates went on those. Some were pulled after augmentation for solo ops.

[modest marsh]

I would suspect that a IV would experience the equivalent of an intermediate mountain climber trying to climb the Himalayas in that they wouldnt necessarily die, but they’d definitely suffer from the experience

[vagrant ocean]

Prolly some bone breakage or muscle tearing, considering the high tolerances the GEN1 platform was wired with.

[modest marsh]

I’d like to give IVs more credit but there’s also something to be said about acclimating to the suits

Recall Chief thwacking himself in the face

[vagrant ocean]

Yep

[rustic sedge]

Yeah from my extremely shallow lore knowledge their augmentations just does not allow them to sync up with the GEN1 physical capabilities

[modest marsh]

Maybe an experienced IV would fair better, but there isn’t a good reason to equip them with GEN1 when GEN3 exists

IVs in GEN3 seem to be true peers to IIs as far as physical performance is concerned

[vagrant ocean]

It’s a result of Project ORCHID’s augmentations being less invasive and extensive compared to ASTER and CHRYSANTHEMUM.

[vagrant ocean]

Yeah, I think the armor components of GEN1 are in use they just were modded to be compatible with GEN2 and GEN3 tech suits.

[rustic sedge]

Isn't it basically just slapping on some new lab grown organs? Sorry if im sounding incredibly stupid

[vagrant ocean]

Which seems to be where the real issues lie.

[vagrant ocean]

All is forgiven. It also involves grown hormone injections to increase muscle and bone mass, the bones are then reinforced with fullerene lattices to make them stronger than steel, there’s gene therapy (which all generations used) among other things.

[modest marsh]

The main thing that gets emphasized is the quality of the muscle tissues since that’s what governs the athleticism and resilience of the Spartan

Both are given performance enhancing drugs to increase mass and muscle density, but the IIs and IIIs have a more dramatic effect because their changes were done as children, and the actual molecular shape of the proteins themselves were altered

If you look at their muscles under a microscope it would look like a synthetic composite material

IVs don’t have as drastic of a change

[vagrant ocean]

But this also gave the IIs and IIIs the benefits of acclimating better to the augments as they grew into them.

[modest marsh]

They compensate from having synthetic muscle fibers woven into their bodies

[vagrant ocean]

The IVs do not have such a benefit.

[modest marsh]

But these offer lower peak performance

https://www.halopedia.org/images/3/36/HJ_Mus_aug.png?f2883

This image helps illustrate it, but Spartan-II and III muscle tissue looks like it was printed out like a machine, unnaturally dense and symmetrical in it’s construction

[vagrant ocean]

@rustic sedge One of the prime reasons why the Spartan-IV (and even the IIIs) program had so few washouts was due to how refined the procedures were compared to both phases of Orion and the Spartan-II program.

[strange pumice]

As for me, 4s generation are goat
Hoping to see them once in Zeta Halo, but not dead, but at least NPC

[wispy pewter]

Spartan IIs better

[vagrant ocean]

Thanks to the insane amount of gene therapy and their pubescent bodies being more able to adapt to such changes compared to ORION candidates or IVs.

[modest marsh]

Muscle quality also impacts cardiovascular function which means that IIs and IIIs have improved stamina and focus even under high stress/exhaustion

IVs may still be an order of magnitude more energy sustaining than a normal soldier, but they will still tire faster and require more recovery time than their predecessors

[vagrant ocean]

(Remember kids, the heart is also a muscle, just like what we learned in school.)

[vagrant ocean]

They’re basically the what ORION was intended to be.

[modest marsh]

IVs have an edge specifically in low O2 environments, and can even breathe methane temporarily

That benefit hasn’t been afforded to the IIs and IIIs, though there have been cases of them getting backported IV augments via retcon

[vagrant ocean]

I’m imagining Buck sucking on an Unggoy mask.

[vagrant ocean]

As touch ups.

[modest marsh]

Although it’s also possible IIs and IIIs have also just received tune-ups/updates as the technology improves

[rustic sedge]

Okay that does sound genuinely cracked

The benefits of the S3 or S2 augmentations, plus the extras of the S4s

Yum.

[vagrant ocean]

Most likely.

[rustic sedge]

I really need to get back into halo i feel like I've been under the ashes of a volcano atp

[wispy pewter]

Spartans being able to breathe air that would usually be toxic to humans is very useful

[strange pumice]

But Spartans ARE humans

[worn wolf]

grunt spartan

grunt spartan

[vagrant ocean]

Eh,

[modest marsh]

To be clear, what I was originally referring to is the fact that some of the augmentations that were first introduced as being something applied to IVs have been suggested to apply to IIs/IIIs

Some benefits of the augmentations get “added on” without prior justification because for the most part the scope of the augments fall under 4 main procedures for the IIs and IIIs and a nebulous “gene therapy” umbrella which is mostly for augmentation retention

In universe they could justify it as additions that were made later but so far that hasn’t been done except specifically for neural interface upgrades

[lament karma]

Grartan. Spunt.

But that’s basically just Stolt

[worn wolf]

stolt doesnt do push-up he pushes the planet down

[lament karma]

Fr

Stolt is so strong, he consumes the Flood

[candid nova]

Stolt is Halo Chuck Norris

[vagrant ocean]

So a terrible actor and very homophobic?

[prime mauve]

Stolt survived a MAC blast that threw a building on top of him

[candid nova]

I didn’t mean it like that, I meant that Stolt is so cool, that he is as mystified as Chuck Norris is here in the modern age.

[candid nova]

Also it’s not healthy to type ill of the dead. Regardless if he’s was a good person or not.

[vagrant ocean]

Unhealthy how? It’s only unhealthy if it’s all you do. This is the first thing I’ve said about Norris period since 2013.

[worn wolf]

stolt doesnt shoot his gun. he scares the ammo into running away from him as fast as possible.

[candid nova]

All I ment was, it’s not good to talk ill of the dead, and I didn’t mean for us to have to debate about Norris being a good person, I just saw what everyone was saying and it made me think about how everyone looked at Norris, the man(mask) that was mystified

How many people do you know that served in the Air Force durning Vietnam, became a black belt in karate, and was famous enough to be given the title “honorary Marine” from the marine corps

[frigid heart]

Chuck Norris didn’t die
He just hit max rank and prestiged

[atomic stump]

I just finished Glasslands. I counted just two firefights in the entire book. Glasslands was clearly written without the intention of adapting it into a FPS shooter. I did not get the same feelings from the Nylund books. There was enough action in those books that they could be adapted into linear FPS campaign missions without any retcons.

Could Glasslands be adapted into a game? Well, if it had to be done, I would adapt Halsey + Blue Team's survival story on Onyx into an open world, sandbox, crafting, survival game like Arc: Survival, Palworld, or Rust. Almost half the book is based around Halsey + Blue team looking for food and shelter. There is a scene where Halsey makes a fire and Kelly hunts lizards. Of course, if this were adapted the player would have the freedom to kill these NPCs, explore the world on their own, and choose to stick with the group or leave. A blow by blow adaption of Glasslands would be painfully boring. Personally, I would make Lucy the playable character since she is already a silent protagonist. Additionally, I would give the player the choice to punch or ally with Halsey at the end of Glasslands. In general, there would be 3 or 4 endings depending on the choices you make in the game ala JRPGs. There would be a canon ending and you can go read the book if you are a stickler for canon but game design has to be based around giving the player as much freedom as possible. You could kill Johnson in Halo 1 multiple times but the canon timeline is the one where he survives the ring.

The only necessary canon events are meeting Prone to Drift and escaping Onyx. But I would allow a "post-game" where you build structures in anticipation for the events of Legacy of Onyx. We are on a Dyson Sphere with ancient forerunner technology. The sky is the limit. Let the player build floating factories and population them with war refugees. Instead of capturing Pals like in Palword, the player would capture Huragok and use them to automate the busy work.

[carmine sleet]

I don't think a knock-off of Palworld (Which is already ripping off much of its identity from Pokémon) is the route I'd take for a Halo title where we play as a Spartan-III. Like, part of the charm of Pokémon is seeing all the different creatures you can find. You can't really get that if the only thing you catch is Huragok. Plus, if we're getting a big open world game, I'd rather it not be trying to retell one of the novels. Better to tell new stories than trying to adapt one of the novels.

And I'm not sure why you think the Nylund books would be easy to adapt into an FPS game, there is nowhere near enough action in them for them to be easily adapted into one. Even if you combine all three of them

[atomic stump]

The Nylund books could be adapted as DLCs and others have spoken about potentially including First Strike as part of a Halo 2 Remake. They have the bones of an FPS game. Like I said, Glasslands is a whole other beast. There are just two firefights in the whole book. There is one against Jackal pirates and another one against Brutes gaurding a Huragok. It was clearly written without the intention of ever adapting it but if I had to adapt it that is how I would do it.

[carmine sleet]

None of the novels were written with the intention of adapting them into games

And I would rather not see them attempt to adapt First Strike in a hypothetical Halo 2 remake

[atomic stump]

Ok well you are in the minority on that one bud

[stoic hamlet]

Maybe, but among most lore fans, it’s a pretty sizeably held opinion.

[carmine sleet]

If we were to get prequel missions in a hypothetical H2R, I would rather they do something like showing us Thel during the early days of his career or (And personally what I would rather want to see) showing us an Arbiter we hadn't heard about before and how they died for the Covenant

[stoic hamlet]

I mean, with a lot of books, they’re just not meant to be adapted into other mediums. You will lose things, even if they’re adapted into TV or movies.

[vagrant ocean]

Y’all are arguing with a guy who would rather block a person when confronted with facts than actually engage in honest discourse.

[unique rune]

they do tend to translate better to other non-interactive mediums at least

video games are a whole other can of worms

[vagrant ocean]

Maybe a flashback to the earliest days of the Covenant.

[stoic hamlet]

When it comes to adapting any of the books, I don’t see them working because they need extra information given that the player just won’t get unless it’s given very poorly.

First Strike for example needs the player to learn about all the other S-II’s, as the games otherwise don’t say anything about them.

[vagrant ocean]

And we all know that the loudest “fans” of Halo are completely illiterate.

[unique rune]

squeezing Halo novels into games sounds like a disaster waiting to happen

you’d be trading a lot of slower narrative moments for more gunfights and nobody really benefits from it

[carmine sleet]

Honestly, so long as it's not trying to retell any specific event from Broken Circle, I'd be down

[unique rune]

also reading back we do not need more triple-A open world survival-crafting sandbox games

there’s so many of them already

[stoic hamlet]

And not even necessarily fun gunfights, as halo’s actual gunfights kind of suck, like, they’re fine, but they’re not exactly “great” they also wouldn’t really get the right feel as described by the books.

[vagrant ocean]

Maybe an Arbiter during the War of Beginnings,

[carmine sleet]

Maybe

[carmine sleet]

I'm still not over their idea of us catching Huragok as Lucy like she's a Pokémon Trainer

Like, I love Pokémon, but that's not the gameplay I want if we ever get put into her shoes in a game

[unique rune]

it sounds very bizarre on a conceptual level

[stoic hamlet]

After reading Death Rider I really do think Lucy was done so, so dirty. I mentioned as much in Halopedia.

The character of Jens is basically Lucy but done right. She’s even more infantilized in some ways, but it comes off as cute and kind of sad, not mean spirited.

[vagrant ocean]

Quick question

Are we able to say bad words in the Halopedia server.

[stoic hamlet]

Yes.

[carmine sleet]

I'll admit that I have stayed away from the Kilo-5 trilogy because of how things are regarding the character writing (And I will have to add Death Rider to my reading list)

[vagrant ocean]

Can I has invite?

Sick 2008 reference.

[stoic hamlet]

It’s a phenomenal book.

Jens specifically is one of the standout characters.

One of her better scenes (that helps illustrate my point) has the small group have a sort of “last meal” by combining all their special foods. (Local wine, some MRE packets, spices, etc) and Jens - after some prodding by the protagonist - offers up an MRE. Her reason for doing do is that “it has a serial number ending in twelve” and it was her favourite, and there are almost no others left because they changed what they were being issued, so she had to trade multiple items of her kit for them (and thus spent most of the book miserably dying of radiation poisoning because she traded her anti-radiation pills).

When it’s time for the protagonist to offer up something, he admits he doesn’t have anything, so Jens offers up a special gift she was saving for him, wrapped in nice lace. It’s revealed to be a mess tin with the serial number ending in twelve, with this being the one she traded her radiation pills for.

Basically a “I don’t know what you’d like, but I hope my favourite meal is a nice gift.”

[carmine sleet]

I would die for her

[stoic hamlet]

It’s so cute, but in a sad way.

[carmine sleet]

And that's why I would die for her!!! It's one of those tropes which I live for

[stoic hamlet]

There’s a few of those moments, where she tries to do her best in that kind of social way, but doesn’t quite get it.

[carmine sleet]

That's very relatable

[stoic hamlet]

Another cute moment, as a flashback, the protagonist shows her her quarters aboard ship while they’re in transit towards the war front, and this is her first time as an aide de camp, so she’s not really used to having her own, private billet, and so mistakes them as his quarters, and so - because she researched what an aide is supposed to do - makes him a pot of coffee, and tries to unpack his things, only for him to tell her that “no no Jens, this is your room. Mind is down the hall.”

She just assumed she’d be billeted with the infantry, and assumed the room was for our protagonist.

She’s a precious cinnamon bun.

[worn wolf]

i initially assumed the prequel missions in campaign evolved before they were announced as prequels was going to be an adaptation of first strike

a lot of detail gets lost because its a book and games cant convey information the same way as a book but its also like 20 years old and even if you havent read first strike i imagine most fans in tune with halo lore are familiar with the events depicted and at the very least are familiar with unyielding heriophant

granted i think i butchered how thats spelt

rip he got blasted by the discord auto moderation

[vagrant ocean]

Who pinged me.

[stoic hamlet]

I did, but I can’t paste the invite link for some reason.

Bot deletes it.

[vagrant ocean]

You can dm me y’know.

I’m not gonna bite.

[stoic hamlet]

P-promise? 🥺

[carmine sleet]

Must protect the cinnamon bun

[vagrant ocean]

Yes.

[carmine sleet]

You may see some familiar faces over there

[warm ridge]

Yes

[warm ridge]

didn't Cortana make a suggestion the idea was to preserve / honor the structures?
AKA they definitely got moved there, and weren't built there originally.

[minor sky]

No, Omega Halo held some

[warm ridge]

1. He was spinning uncontrollably.
2. Out of Alpha Nine, his pod is the only one that got hit by another ODST pod, direct impact, which is what caused the spin.
3. Due to the spin, his pod hit the ground the hardest, knocking him completely unconscious upon impact. He's lucky he survived at all.

No, he's not new, and no, he's perfectly strong & capable.

[warm ridge]

Different array, that's the Senescent Array, which likely had ancient humans on all the rings.

The only reason Installation 07 still had Ancient Humans on it even after it got repaired was because it was originally Gyre 11 & used by Faber to conduct experiments on humans.

[prime mauve]

I thought the Rookie's pod had hit Mickey's but Mickey's was not sent into such an uncontrolled spin

[warm ridge]

wait yea it did, he and Mickey.

[minor sky]

I wonder if had the DVD/Blu-Ray market not start to dip around the time they first released Halo Legends, we would've gotten more direct-to-video Halo projects

The extra profit boost from those sales could've been an extra incentive

Hell, had the DVD/Blu-Ray market not peaked we would've gotten at least two more Stargate movies but that is neither here nor there

[drowsy mesa]

Well, bad news: Parasite's Wake has been delayed to October 20 (originally September 29)

[carmine sleet]

That's not exactly a long delay. Most people will be fine with that

[vagrant ocean]

Less than a month

[silk marten]

@trail linden

Ok so he said just a few seconds from now

"I said they struggle, which is true
The guass cannon is also just a worse cannon somehow lol"

[trail linden]

Not sure about that one Chief, Although I do suppose it could do with difficulty

[silk marten]

Yeah.
So for more context we were debating Gundam Universal Century Earth Federation and Principality of Zeon tanks (Type 61 and Magella Attack) vs Covenant Wraith tanks

This is what I said before:

Wraiths canonically get killed by UNSC Scorpions and Falcons and rocket launchers. It totally says a lot. And almost every combat vehicle in Gundam Universal Century timeline is much stronger than that of UNSC vehicles

He said it doesn't say a lot but he has to be tripping

In Mobile Suit Gundam Universal Century timeline many combat vehicles have caliber in the hundreds of mm range specifically cable of taking down mobile suits like Zaku-IIs

Federation Type 61 Tanks and its variant have 150 to 155mm cannons

Zeon Magella Attack Tanks have 175mm cannons

[modest marsh]

vehicle durability in halo has never made sense and its efficacy is often beholden to gameplay considerations where handheld weaponry is often stronger than vehicle mounted weapons

[vagrant ocean]

This.

[modest marsh]

The gauss turret on the hannibal mantis does similar damage per shot as the magnum

[rustic sedge]

I mean hey your assault rifle is chambered in FREAKING 7.62x51mm

ISN'T THAT A BATTLE RIFLE ROUND

Oh god wait what cartridge does the actual BR use

If an AR uses a BR round then the BR uses god knows what

I should actually check rn

[modest marsh]

anyways this is because in the short story Palace Hotel, the gauss hog's one other appearance in the lore besides the more recent Oblivion, its insinuated that the gauss hog alone would be ineffective at taking out the wraiths and that actual antiarmor (ie Spnkrs) is recommended to handle them

this is obviously contradicted in oblivion though where blue team use dismounted gauss cannons to take out wraiths in single shots

so it depends on what source you want to prioritize or maybe there's some mitigating factor at play

The Palace Hotel version is obviously inspired by gameplay because it is a dramatization of the Halo 2 level Metropolis

(that contradicts the game itself but i digress)

what the "lore" tells us is that the projectile fired by the gauss cannon should be able to easily penetrate most forms of tank armor, but thats never been the case in any of the games or this specific interpretation of it

Oblivion took a different approach because Denning has a more cavalier view of UNSC magnetic accelerated weapons

[silk marten]

Interesting 🤔

[modest marsh]

namely, 10% speed of light broadsword guns

[silk marten]

Ok so it just depends

That's fair

But considering this, what's that mean for Mobile Suit Gundam Federation and Zeon tanks?

[modest marsh]

I have no opinion on that

I’m just saying that this is an underdeveloped area of Halo’s fiction because the balance of vehicles is mostly determined by the player’s ability to either use or destroy them

Everything has to be relevant to a Spartan, for better or worse

I would not take the turret sections in Reach at face value with this in mind for example

[silk marten]

Alright.

Well with all that I would say Gundam tanks still one-shot because of their high caliber capable of taking down mobile suits

So that sounds fair enough to me

[modest marsh]

That’s probably true on account of Spartan fists being relevant but again I don’t really have any stake here

[silk marten]

In either case, thank you 👍

[vagrant ocean]

By modern standards, yes. But doctrine must’ve changed by then.

[vagrant ocean]

It uses 9.5x40mm which actually is more of an intermediate cartridge.

The closest modern analogue being Russia’s 9x39 from the AS VAL.

[rustic sedge]

So the AR uses a BR round and the BR uses more of an AR round

That's

Odd

But

I acknowledge

[vagrant ocean]

Tbf, Halo has often not really paid attention to reality.

Rule of cool and whatnot

[rustic sedge]

Yeah that is true

I don't really see the classification of an AR or a BR round changing either

THOUGH

It's far future stuff, maybe they've got special tech that tables the turn or something like that

Look how the turns have tabled.

[vagrant ocean]

I think the 9.5 Kurz round uses experimental propellant so that’s why it’s classified as a BR round, as it probably has the power of a full size round.

[rustic sedge]

Wait why not use this round for the assault rifle and insert this special propellant into the 7.62 round the UNSC uses and use this weird Frankenstein bullet for the BR?

OH GOD I DID A TYPO AND WROTE AR INSTEAD OF BR IN THE LAST BIT

[vagrant ocean]

Probably because it’s a brand new propellant and it’s easier to make a new cartridge and then make a rifle that can handle it from scratch than it is to modify a round that’s existed since 1954 and then modify every single weapon that uses it. Also, the wider projectile offered more variety than .30 does.

[vagrant ocean]

My comment will still apply.

[rustic sedge]

Okay THAT is fair

But if the UNSC were to update their main service rifles i really think they should do this

Though atp if it ain't broke don't fix it

[vagrant ocean]

At most they’d change the weight of the projectile.

As changing the powder charge can get difficult.

[rustic sedge]

Tbf from what ive seen their 7.62 cartridge is lighter than the real counterpart so they may have already done that

[rustic sedge]

Fair.

[vagrant ocean]

But since the MA is gas-operated it could have a variable gas system which would help.

[rustic sedge]

petition to turn the UNSC weapons into ungodly weapons of war that even the geneva convention fears to mention

PUT THE PROPELLANT IN EVERYTHING.

PISTOL ROUNDS, RIFLE ROUNDS, I DONT GIVE A DAMN

I WANT MY PISTOL ROUNDS TO GO ABOVE 2000 M

[vagrant ocean]

This would help account for potential variations in the powder charge of the 7.62 NATO rounds, especially given how widespread the platform is.

[rustic sedge]

Alright thanks for the info

Now my stupidity must imagine a pistol round going over 1000m

[vagrant ocean]

A pistol having an effective range of 1km is a tall order.

[rustic sedge]

My stupidity demands it

It needs it.

[modest marsh]

The new M7 rifle the US Army has adopted is considered an Assault Rifle officially despite it meeting every qualification necessary to be considered a battle rifle

[vagrant ocean]

It’s also absolutely terrible.

[modest marsh]

It sacrifices much of the advantages that have been traditionally associated with ARs in favor of performing as a longer range marksman weapon

[vagrant ocean]

Doesn’t even have a bayonet lug.

[modest marsh]

Yeah I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s strictly important in terms of what does and doesn’t count as an “assault rifle” but that is definitely emblematic of a doctrinal shift

[vagrant ocean]

A shift of “Sig lined our pockets so now we have a terrible AR and a pistol that’ll ND at the drop of a pin.”

[modest marsh]

In any case, the MA5 platform does not leverage the extended range capability of 7.62mm in the way that most rifles do when using it and similar cartridges over intermediate options

The MA5 also magically has over 30 rounds (and up to 60) per magazine so ammunition capacity is not really a trade off

In practice, it has none of the downsides of being a battle rifle, but also none of the upsides either besides shooting a full size cartridge

[vagrant ocean]

We’d know more if we had a barrel length for it.

[modest marsh]

We do actually

[vagrant ocean]

Oh? Must’ve missed it.

Then again my brain is mush.

[modest marsh]

MA5C has a 24” barrel which is respectable

You could easily reach out to +1000m consistently with a decent match load

However, canonically it’s effective range is much shorter (and in game obviously even shorter)

(It does not help that generally speaking the MA5 platform lacks an actual sighting system in favor of digital targeting that isn’t the most robustly explained)

[rustic sedge]

Dude.

Don't disrespect SIG.

[vagrant ocean]

Sig sucks.

[rustic sedge]

Their guns are so reliable they fire 101 percent of the time.

[vagrant ocean]

Hail HK. “You’re poor and we hate you.”

[rustic sedge]

God the MP5 looks so delicious

Yes i mean that.

Yes I'd have metal and polymers in my digestive system, what're you gonna do about it?

[carmine sleet]

Take you to the hospital

[rustic sedge]

god dammit why didn't i think of that before

Must've been all that lead

[vagrant ocean]

Once saw an MP5 in .45 Auto at an auction once.

[rustic sedge]

Hold on

Okay i just remembered they exist

[vagrant ocean]

@modest marsh Do you think contemporary firearms are still in production as nicknacks by 2552?

[modest marsh]

There’s evidence to suggest yes but it’ll never be confirmed to be the case for out of universe reasons

[vagrant ocean]

Cuz Petra Janichek uses a Colt SAA.

[modest marsh]

The Desert Eagle popping up in Shadows of Reach is a funny exception which points towards the opposite

[vagrant ocean]

Well that was explicitly stolen from a museum.

[modest marsh]

Since it’s specifically noted as something that belongs in a museum

Right, what I mean is that its continued existence is presented as unusual because of its age

That probably means they’re not making desert eagle derivatives in the 26th century

[vagrant ocean]

Tbf, we have equally old firearms in museums today.

The Heilongjiang hand cannon is nearly 800 years old.

And the Deagle is pretty widespread.

[carmine sleet]

I would bet on that just being the comic artist using one as reference for her pistol, not confirmation that specific firearm is still in use in the 2550s

[modest marsh]

Yeah I’m not sure where she would even get the ammo for it

Black powder is not exactly easy to find nowadays

[vagrant ocean]

Colt SAAs are still made today in modern calibers.

Hell, the 1911 has been in continuous manufacture by various companies for over 110 years.

[modest marsh]

Yeah but that’s a US hegemony thing (its days are numbered)

[vagrant ocean]

(Sadly)

[stoic hamlet]

(Not so sadly)

But on the topic of old weapons, interplanetary wars firearms seem more likely to be common place compared to weapons of today.

[modest marsh]

(^ it ended US hegemony in the halo universe)

[vagrant ocean]

I don’t think we’ve seen any weapons of that era in lore, mainly due to how it’s glossed over.

[prime mauve]

There's a couple images of that era and the guns seem to have some hints of the design language of the MA5 series, like the bullpup configuration and the ammo counter. There is another bullpup with a carry handle that seems like it could be a precursor to the BR. Another rifle used by an enemy in the picture has a squareish profile that really reminds me of an MA37 or MA40
https://www.halopedia.org/Interplanetary_War

The uniforms and general vibes remind me of Ghost Recon Future Soldier

[vagrant ocean]

Sadly we’ll never get a game or anything involving that period.

[worn wolf]

hk supplied the combine im sure they also supply the covenant too

[prime mauve]

Sevine Arms, that make the Bandit from Infinite, legit did that lol

Though with a postwar faction, the Keepers of the One Freedom

HK would probably sell out to the Created imo