lore-and-universe

[wispy pewter]

why would they use puny human guns

[prime mauve]

After losing Cortana I don't know if they still have much access to Forerunner weapons

[unique rune]

the Created would probably augment their products with a bit of hardlight juice too

[minor sky]

When I played Fireteam Raven not so long ago I was a bit for lack of a better word unhappy at how it is canon that there is a massive battle happening right outside the Pillar Of Autumn during the Maw. I always liked how it looked as if the surrounding area was empty like the fighting had completely settled down save for a few holdouts still dealing with the Flood. But thinking on it some more, it does make a lot of sense with Foehammer's apperance in the level

Also Johnson's cameo in the legendary cutscene

But that isn't canon

[worn wolf]

i like fireteam raven just also thought the multicoloured odst armour looks goofy

might just be the visors actually

[orchid kettle]

It's a fine line to walk honestly

Even Alpha-Nine in ODST I think only really look fine because there's so few of them

[worn wolf]

its an arcade game so its not really worth getting too worked up about visual designs or story

its just for fun

[orchid kettle]

But if they were like, surrounded by 30 other ODSTs who were also customized and colored to the same degree, it'd look very silly

[worn wolf]

thats fair

[modest marsh]

Implicitly the colors is to designate their role in the fireteam but this only happens when they’re playable characters

[orchid kettle]

Raven or Alpha-Nine?

[modest marsh]

Both

2009 encyclopedia and MCC armor descriptions assign role designations to their respective armor

[minor sky]

What was the reason Eric Nyland didn't return to write Glasslands/Ghosts of Onyx's sequel?

[unique rune]

I don’t think anyone’s ever officially said but the timing might not have worked out

when the Kilo 5 and Forerunner trilogies were published he was would’ve been working on his own book series aimed at younger audiences so even if 343/MS had reached out he may not have had the time to fit a Halo novel in

though I’m pretty sure he’s also said before that he’d be interested in writing for Halo again if given the opportunity so it doesn’t really sound like they have either

[modest marsh]

They were considering him for a narrative director role but the timing never worked out

[prime mauve]

I think Microsoft should send him a million dollars and a kiss on the forehead as a thank you when the Omnibus releases

[modest marsh]

I mean yeah kinda

[empty ermine]

is nylund still writing anything?

[prime mauve]

His most recent book was released in 2019

[minor sky]

I would like to see Nylund return to write a novel or be present in an advisory capacity

[atomic stump]

At this point all of his characters are being written by other people. Matt Forebeck writes Tom and Lucy. Troy Denning writes (or wrote) Ash, Mark, and Olivia. Blue team gets pass around. Halsey is almost unrecognizable. I think only Preston Cole is left.

The Monkey's Paw answer is that Nylund should write a sequel to the Kilo-5 trilogy since Karen Traviss has no intention of ever coming back to the Halo universe and they don't have anything to do right now. And the irony of Nylund rewriting the Kilo-5 characters after Karen rewrote Nylund's characters would be too juicy.

(That last point is not a serious reccomendation.)

[prime mauve]

Nylund please adopt my Kilo 5 kids, don't let Karen Traviss keep them in the divorce

[stoic hamlet]

I’m still sad that Denning basically rewrote Saber into his own characters.

Traviss gets a lot of flak but Denning’s almost as egregious IMO, yet sees none of the irritation.

[minor sky]

https://garrettpost.artstation.com/projects/K3y3Wr?album_id=6527215

If we ever see the Dazreme in something, I really hope Halo Studios leans into Garrett Post's redesign

I think it looks a lot more well-rounded than the original artwork Post did for the Encyclopedia

[modest marsh]

He gets less vitriol because his changes seem to be less malicious I guess

Saber are different, but not necessarily because Denning disliked the existing characters

Not sure if that makes it better or worse that it wasn’t done with intentionality

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah but I’d kind of argue that’s worse?

His reason is technically the same, in that he changed them for the sake of his plot(s).

If the pre-existing character doesn’t work with your intended plot, then you shouldn’t use that character, or otherwise adjust your plot.

At least, in my opinion.

[modest marsh]

This kind of reminds me of how people attributed malice on the part of the halo showrunners for depicting things “incorrectly” when it’s more like they just wanted to tell a different story altogether while simultaneously suffering from the baggage of using preexisting characters from an established IP

[stoic hamlet]

Like, if I’m doing a plot with… idk, we’ll say Captain Rex, from The Clone Wars, but I need to change Captain Rex’s character for my plot to work, my plot is bad for that character.

[modest marsh]

Like no I don’t think anyone did this because they had true hatred in their heart towards Master Chief

[stoic hamlet]

Mhm.

[minor sky]

Yeah. From what I can find the whole reason for the Silver Timeline's existence was because all the other Halo projects ran into roadblocks with canon in some form

Or maybe it was more specifically the Halo TV series was running into roadblocks with Halo canon

iirc at one point the Halo TV Series was supposed to tie into the games narrative

[unique rune]

I think that was back when they planned for it to launch alongside Halo 5 lol

[minor sky]

Something like that, yeah

though for a while I figured that Nightfall was supposed to be the Halo TV Series

I don't any animosity towards the people who made the Halo TV Series, I don't think it was a malicious attempt at "ruining the series" or whatever, but it does feel very much like a "Hollywood" take on Halo

So much of it feels kind of removed from Halo in favor of more standardized hollywood tropes and stuff like that

It is ultimately not much different than a bad adaptation of a novel or really any other "unfaithful" adaptation of a game

At least the TV Show had some cool action and decent designs

I think that if the franchise was in a healthier state, the TV series could've been brushed aside. But in 2022, it might as well have been the final straw

[atomic stump]

If Traviss missed the mark on a few characters I don't think it was her fault. The narrative director and creative director (people like Alex Wakeford and Jeremy Patenaude) are supposed to advise and assist and draw up the overall plotlines for the tie-in authors. It is not the author's job to consume all of the previous novels, comics, and games especially now that there are 40 different novels. And Traviss is well known for not reading or watching Star Wars before writing for that series. It is part of her creative process and 343 knew that when they hired her.

I actually liked her portrayal of Lucy but I don't want to debate that right now.

Say what you will about Traviss but she wrote 5 novels in 3 years. She is a hard worker.

[minor sky]

I hope that the Endless and their connection to Abaddon will be a gateway into the games getting to explore the more otherworldly and ethereal aspects of Halo canon

Hindsight is 20/20 but I really kind of wish that whatever the Reclaimer Saga was supposed to be was that. We got hints of in Halo 4, but I would've loved if they were able to draw players in with each game into the deeper mystery of the universe. I do wonder sometimes if it may have been a good move to have the Didact serve as something of entry point for the wider mythos and then in Halo 5 dive into concepts like the Primordial or Precursors

Osiris are cool and I would like to see them fleshed out further (or really Locke and Tanaka) but I ultimately think that Halo 5 should've stuck to that original idea of "Chief going out on his own" rather than the "Hunter and the Hunted" idea

There is something really striking about that visual of Poncho-Chief in the desert as the Guardian Awakens

And while I understand that was just an early concept visual turned into a reveal trailer because they had to showcase something I do think it was a good starting place

[fresh cedar]

Should’ve used actual threats to the master chief

Like grey team or Naomi from oni

Only cool characters from Osiris were buck and vale

Tanaka sucks

And Locke is just bland

[minor sky]

Tanaka gets too much crap.

I don't think her writing is anymore offensive than the rest of Osiris. If anything, she probably gets it a lot better than the rest of the team on account of Meridian giving her some character

Her speech at the start of the Battle of Sunaion is less emblematic of problems with her character and more with the writing of the game

[wispy pewter]

Only both got their own books and stories

[minor sky]

Yeah

Obligatory request for a "Locke on Zeta Halo" story

[wispy pewter]

Locked away

[prime mauve]

Tanaka being introverted, awkward and uncharismatic makes a lot of sense given her backstory of having been buried underground when the Covenant glassed her planet and her situation with other survivors was something straight out of The Walking Dead

[vagrant ocean]

I actually like the concept of Locke.

[vagrant ocean]

Yep

[minor sky]

As do I

[vagrant ocean]

I’m prolly gonna be less active here now that I’m in the Halopedia server, so if you wanna chat more I’ll be there.

[minor sky]

The more I think on it, the more I believe that Osiris should've been a spin-off game

[carmine sleet]

I've said it before, but I don't think the solution to Halo 5 is making Osiris' story a spin-off. It would still have the same issues regardless of if it is or isn't a spin-off

Like, the solution isn't to cut out the new characters and only focus on Chief

[orchid kettle]

In theory it could in the sense of like, a spin off wouldn't need to juggle a setting-defining plot

[carmine sleet]

Personally, I think Blue Team should've been working alongside Osiris to find Chief. Give us a bit of a old team mentoring a new team on how to properly work together, old generation with the new

[orchid kettle]

The 343 games have really struggled with juggling character and plot. 4 probably had the best balance, Infinite leaned more on character at the cost of feeling like the plot hardly progressed and Halo 5 was all plot no character

Halo I think just isn't built for a large cast of characters where we're meant to care about every last one of them

Not unless they wanna make a far longer game, at least

[vagrant ocean]

Yeah.

[minor sky]

I don't thinking doing Halo 5 story in a spin-off is the right idea either

[vagrant ocean]

OR

[carmine sleet]

So why suggest putting Osiris in a spin-off if you don't think it's a good idea?

[vagrant ocean]

We have the game manly focus on Chief and Blue Team going rogue and sprinkle in Osiris but then have most of their missions be DLC not unlike what Capcom did with O:RC.

[minor sky]

I think Osiris and the Squad-based gameplay would better serve a spin-off side story alla ODST

Not just "Halo 5, but two games"

[orchid kettle]

Like even in Halo 2 and 3, you could argue we flip flop between which faction actually matters. In Halo 2, it's hard to argue that the story doesn't revolve around the Arbiter and the Covenant, while in 3, the human leads retake the spotlight at the cost of the Elites mainly being supporting characters

[minor sky]

Use Osiris as a vessle to explore other happenings in the galaxy while Chief is off doing his character arc thing in Halo 5 proper

[stoic hamlet]

In game terms, yeah.

But I think books can, they just don’t really try.

[prime mauve]

You guys are doing God's work, keep it up!

[minor sky]

The humans being the focus again also comes at the cost of Truth being written as a saturday morning cartoon villain and the Brutes being cannon fodder

[prime mauve]

If we could see into the Covenant point of view in Halo 3 it would be soooo good

[minor sky]

I think what Halo 5's campaign was wound up being really unfocused and a straight forward Chief-centric game would've probably been the better call for a Halo 4 sequel. That being said, I don't think Osiris should've been desposed of, there is plenty of stuff for them to do and explore. Also as I said above, a spin-off would let them lean more into the squad-based gameplay without having to try and make fit with in the traditional Halo formula

[prime mauve]

The Truth we see in Halo 3 is mostly a mask. It is the propaganda version, the zealot in a religious frenzy as he brings in the Great Journey, the version he wants the Covenant loyalists to believe in, the version he wants to show to humanity. The real Truth, the schemer, the liar, only lifts his mask very little when whispering to Johnson. Even then I don't think he's quite as honest in his presentation as in Halo 2.

[strange pumice]

His mask already fell off since Halo 2 when he left the Mercy to die to Flood

[prime mauve]

It fell in front of a very small amount of people. The Covenant loyalists at large would probably not know the full details of that moment.

[vagrant ocean]

Also not a fan of the VA in H3. He went from a cold, calculating English villain to a Scottish zealot.

[prime mauve]

The accent switch was definitely weird

[strange pumice]

Brutes already knew, not sure about others, like elites, jackals or grunts

[prime mauve]

They knew he was ruthless enough to split the Covenant apart, yeah

But I don't think they ever learned that Truth knew the Halos were a weapon and that he'd kill the galaxy

So he really needed to keep the charade of the Great Journey until they won, fired the Halos and got a fresh new galaxy to start reseeding with the Ark's resources at their leisure

[strange pumice]

I'm thinking Truth was really never know that Halo are weapon for killing galaxy

[minor sky]

Terrance Stamp is the GOAT and it sucked seeing him pass away, but he was miscast as Truth

[vagrant ocean]

Very much miscast.

[prime mauve]

I think he knew. He sent the San'shyuum flotilla to a Shield World, after all. Imo his plan to "be a God" was a show of force. Fire the Halos, remove all his enemies from the map, and give the galaxy to his faithful followers, carefully administering how it would be reseeded to reward his people and to shape their future in the empty galaxy.
Also if High Charity had still been in the galaxy when the Halos fired it could even have been reclaimed after the Halos killed most of the Flood.

[minor sky]

Looking through the artwork of artists like StellarStateLogic, Rythaze, and Isodidacta, I start to think that a Forerunner era game could work with the right people at the helm

[prime mauve]

Hell yeah

[unique rune]

why would we need a Forerunner game when you can already drive one in Forza Horizon

[prime mauve]

We can have two games for when we are celebrating Toyotathon

[unique rune]

I see your point

[burnt spear]

So do the flood know how to like do that one thing?

[unique rune]

at some point they probably would have assimilated someone that knows how to do the worm, yes

[minor sky]

I've always been kind of cautious about the idea of "Forerunner-era game" because of how striking Greg Bear's writing was. I worry that an adaptation would fail to do justice to the original

Part of it is that so much of the Forerunner Era is in writing and leaves a lot of stuff up to the reader's mind

[atomic stump]

Even a terrible adaption would not ruin the source material.

You will always have the source material. And a good adaption will inspire people to go read the books who wouldn't have otherwise.

[obsidian thistle]

As a fun note about Adaptions. I unironically view the Fall of Reach comic adaption as great.

Changes what it needs to suit the narrative. Adds what is needed. (Gave us Watts backstory that strongly tied together bootcamp) Added stuff that made some things thematically better (Halsey putting on Johns Mark IV helmet, John pushing Sam out the way during the Watts mission instead of him randomly getting hit, so on)

My only issue is the adaption is too faithful in the final acts that it breaks First Strike lol.

(Legit its hilarious how bad the final acts of the comic are in breaking canon when it was legitimately great up to that point)

All in all the comic holds up well

[minor sky]

It doesn't "ruin" it, but it can weaken it

Or rather, doesn't live up to it

Part of it is that adaptations expose a wider group of people to something, and if it doesn't do justice to the original you wind up leaving people with a poor impression

This was one of my major issues with the Halo series, boosted by how TLOU's first season was so well-recieved and got a ton of people into the series

[atomic stump]

TLOU?

[atomic stump]

These are pretty simplistic ideas. Are you an adult?

[minor sky]

The Last Of Us?

[minor sky]

I beg your pardon?

[unique rune]

crazy response to a fairly obvious statement

[minor sky]

I just don't fully get why what I said came off as childish ig

like yes, it is a simple idea. I don't know why they got to be rude about it

[vale ridge]

they really didn’t need to, lol

[modest marsh]

You didn’t say anything to elicit that response, they’re just being patronizing

[stoic hamlet]

40K has this problem very much now, but ironically it’s intentional by the creators.

GW wants 40K to be more mainstream, but you can’t do that if you present the series as it actually is, so all the mainstream, big stuff presents things in a much less awful light, to the point some consider the series shifting into the “noble right” category.

It isn’t. It very much is not, nothing is changing, the tone is just as grimdark as ever, the Imperium still sucks, it will always suck, etc.

What that means, though, is you can tell almost immediately how “new” or “mainstream” a fan is based on how they claim the lore is going. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s a neat sort of barometer, especially because a lot of 40K lore is regurgitated slop from YouTube, edited and summarized such that it’s completely wrong, yet that’s how a lot of fans consume it.

[minor sky]

Interesting

Not much of a 40k guy beyond thinking that it is "neat" but stuff like that is always interesting to learn about

Also the series' "everything is canon, but some things are more canon than others" is a cool lens to view the mythos from

It is a solution that works specifically well for the medium of a Tabletop RPG

Most series either do a "rigorous" style of canon with little ambiguity or they do what Star Wars and Star Trek do where there is a "main-canon" and a canon reserved for everything else. The latter option usually just winds up causing more division among fans (see: Star Wars)

[vagrant ocean]

That user is just awful.

[dusk jetty]

Word of mouth is also important, people praised tlou season 1 for the most part, same with both fallout seasons so it shot up the # of people looking to get into the games, they liked what they saw and wanted more of it.

Our wonderful tv show on the other hand, had abysmal word of mouth (deservedly) for not being accurate, so it had the opposite effect, I’d imagine the average non fan thought is “if this show is nothing like the games what would the point be? Nobody likes this show anyway, I don’t care.”

It’s a matter of being in touch with your audience and being capable of adapting material across mediums

Rings of power also reminds me of the halo shows plight, there’s this weird sort of “do it myself” vibe where the accumulative differences from the source material combined with lackluster plot end up coming off as nonsensical, like the series existed to just pad someone’s resume and not much else

Even more of a parallel is disregarding the template sitting in front of you for your adaptation lmao

[inland creek]

Do we know who deployed Joyeuse to Zeta Halo, if it wasn't Chief?

[prime mauve]

The timeline of it is very confused. Joyeuse herself seems to imply that Chief deployed her physically at Zeta Halo, then went away (to Infinity most likely), then presumably the space battle happened. Joyeuse had Cortana locked up by then and after the Banished win in space, Atriox goes to Cortana and Cortana blows up a chunk of the ring. Chief then returns six months later and the adventure begins.

There is also the possibility that she could have been deployed by being beamed wirelessly by Infinity, which seems implied by the audio logs where Captain Lasky calls for deploying Joyeuse and it seemingly took less time for that than for him to reach an escape Pelican.

[unborn island]

[ i haven't played halo wars 1 or 2 ]
cortana in halo 1 says that the halo doesnt kill the flood, then what was the point of activating alpha halo on the ark?

[carmine sleet]

Halo 3 was just being inconsistent with what was established in CE when it comes to how Halo works

[modest marsh]

The modern explanation after several retcons: the flood at the cellular level is mostly unaffected by the sterilization pulse because it targets complex neural structures within a specific parameter since they didn’t want to wipe out all life in the galaxy indiscriminately

The destruction of most flood material was done through more conventional methods of sterilization such as immolation using energy weapons or chemical solvent

[minor sky]

Part of it can be owed to the fact that Bungie didn't have a writer for Halo 3

[modest marsh]

Flood forms are still affected by the halo array itself but it does not totally sterilize them

[unique rune]

tbh I don't think that's really even the problem
I think CE's description and framing of the Halos just wrote them into a corner because they didn't have much in the way of long-term plans

[minor sky]

Hence why I said "part of it"

Didn't the original drafts for Halo 2 leave Cortana behind on High Charity?

I'm trying to remember if there was a "solution" to the Flood present in that version of the game

[modest marsh]

No

[warm ridge]

Wdym? They had writers, multiple actually.

None of the well known writers ofc but writers did exist.

[warm ridge]

No point at all. The ring exploding is what would kill the Flood. She knew the ring wasn't ready, and that firing it would cause quite the catastrophy. Which is exactly what Spark later says himself, until he betrayed us once again to prevent it from happening.
She had no idea such a catastrophic explosion wouldn't be enough to completely kill off the Flood 100% though.

This requires no retcons or modern explanations either. It's set in stone with Halo 3's own lore exclusively.

[minor sky]

I'm exaggerating, but they did spend a decent chunk of development without a proper writer

A lot of the narrative was held by people who were wearing other hats

[warm ridge]

It wasn't fully decided on to switch it off of Halo's main canon until around 2018 or 2019.

Originally it was meant to tie in with Halo: Nightfall, Hunt the Truth, and Halo 5 itself but that got scrapped pretty quickly. For a while it was just gonna be it's own thing.

[minor sky]

It started as a Fall of Reach film adaptation that caught Spielberg's eye

My theory is that the switch to a television series was done when Xbox was really pushing the entertainment angle with the latter half of 360's lifespan/the launch of the Xbox One

It apperantly wasn't even the only series they had in production at the time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Entertainment_Studios

They were planning a Blake's 7 reboot apperantly?

Also possibly a Conker animated series

[worn wolf]

the forerunners kicking themselves after realising they could've just made the rings kill the flood, instead of killing everyone except the flood

[toxic mason]

That's not how it works, they shoot neutrinos at a frequency that destroys neurons, the flood can't really exist outside of organisms with neurons

[frigid heart]

That’s how it works???

[worn wolf]

according to the forerunners yeah but they'll say anything to get people to buy their stuff.

[toxic mason]

According to the wiki

[prime mauve]

After seeing the Master Builder spraying ships with Lysol and reselling them to the navy to keep fighting the Flood I think that he canonically WOULD say anything to sell his Halo idea to people

[warm ridge]

The TV show was supposed to launch alongside Halo 5 "fall 2015", where'd you hear it was a fall of reach adaptation? We already had that with the fall of reach animated series which came with Halo 5 limited edition copies. Maybe you're getting the 2 confused?

[warm ridge]

The Halo TV show only existed since 2013, confirmed in 2014, with a release date of fall 2015. This obviously never happened, and we only heard of it again in June 2018 when it was still going to be a "canon" event in the Halo universe that followed Master Chief as a new story.

I believe from the moment Rupert Wyatt stepped out of it on Dec. 3rd, 2018 is when they decided to turn it into an entirely new universe, or at least when Otto Bathurst came onto the scene in Feb. 2019.

[minor sky]

Spielberg, the producer attached to the series since its announcement, first became involved with Halo when he became interested in a Fall Of Reach script that had been penned by Stuart Beattie

This was in 2009

[warm ridge]

Oh that's an entirely different thing, unrelated to the Halo TV show entirely.

That got cancelled. That was going to be an actual movie which would've tied in with Halo Reach itself.

I see the confusion here now.

[minor sky]

Spielburg was still involved, not a leap in logic to assume he wanted to do something with Halo even after that project fell through

Also worth noting that Dreamworks, his production studio (that isn't Amblin) had just split from Paramount and was in need of new big ticket blockbuster series

[obsidian thistle]

I do wonder where HS were gonna take the Nightfall related TV show.

So many unresolved plot threads from that.

(As a side note: Second Stories were a fun concept. Shame Nightfall was their best use)

Forward Unto Dawn got its extras Second Storied also. So did some of RvB for some reason.

[inland haven]

Lore

[toxic mason]

Lore

[wispy pewter]

Lore

[vagrant ocean]

Universe.

[worn wolf]

Love how comically evil Fabre is at times

[prime mauve]

He's such a sleazebag

[hearty whale]

Why do the UNSC still use bull pup rifles? Aren’t they considered inefficient due to how much better traditional rifles are?

[stoic hamlet]

Bullpups allow for a longer, more accurate shot on target in a shorter overall package.

They’re just as effective as a traditional rifle, they just need different training and require different ergonomics.

[vagrant ocean]

Traditional rifles aren’t inherently better than bullpups, that’s a misconception. Both offer unique advantages.

[hearty whale]

..huh. I was always taught that they were considered worse than traditional rifles.

[stoic hamlet]

Worse in what way?

[vagrant ocean]

You were prolly taught wrong.

[vagrant ocean]

The trigger pull is a nightmare from what I heard, and it can be difficult to operate if you mainly trained with conventional rifles.

[hearty whale]

I heard they’re harder to shoot cause they load in the back of the rifle instead of the middle

And yeah the trigger pull

[vagrant ocean]

That’s, not even true.

[stoic hamlet]

Usual people bring up say, the long reloading… but that’s an aspect of training, and muscle memory, not that they’re any better or worse.

It’s like how someone who’s more familiar with a laptop might struggle to use a tablet even if both are equally as powerful.

Both can do the same things, but you might be more familiar with a laptop, versus a tablet, or vice versa.

[vagrant ocean]

Exactly.

[hearty whale]

And honestly im guessing that Spartans don’t have to worry about trigger pull lmao

[vagrant ocean]

Ultimately the UNSC using bullpups makes sense given the tight quarters many personnel operate in,

[stoic hamlet]

Because most of the gun nuts are yanks trained and familiar with AR pattern rifles, bullpups are scary and uncomfortable for them.

But when they’ve done timed drills between British troops and US troops, the actual timing is only off by a few seconds and it’s entirely down to the individual.

[stoic hamlet]

If you’re mostly fighting on ships, or stations, or in tight urban settings, a bullpup is miles better than a conventional rifle.

[hearty whale]

Well I learnt something new today! Thanks

[vagrant ocean]

Yeeeeep

[stoic hamlet]

Because it’s just as powerful at the fraction of the length, easier to control and manoeuvre, etc.

Manipulates easier, etc, etc.

[vagrant ocean]

The MA5 platform uses the same round as the FAL and is a whole 5 inches shorter.

The BR55 is only 2 inches longer than an M4.

[stoic hamlet]

Even ignoring the advanced materials, it should just be an altogether more accurate rifle than anything we have today.

[vagrant ocean]

Also, bullpups just look cool.

[stoic hamlet]

It would certainly kick more, due to the round.

But you wouldn’t really use it on anything other than semi, anyways.

[vagrant ocean]

The MA5D has what appears to be a muzzle brake or compensator, so that’s a huge help.

[hearty whale]

They should throw a suppressor on it. For stealth.

[vagrant ocean]

It has one in H5.

[hearty whale]

Bring it back

[vagrant ocean]

Many ODST and SPECOPs units equip their weapons with suppressors, they just aren’t super common.

[stoic hamlet]

It can take a detachable Supressor.

[vagrant ocean]

There’s a word I wanna use but I’m afraid I’ll get nuked so imma keep quiet.

Alright, naptime for me.

[delicate birch]

I have a theory

Halo infinite multiplayer was setting up a new

Noble team

Think about it

Commander Agryna is Carter's replacement

Dihn could be emiles replacement

Eklund is kats replacement

Our multiplayer Spartan is noble 6

And Jun and Rosenda don't need an explanation because they were a part of the original Noble team

What do y'all think

Also this doesn't ruin the sacrifice the original

Noble team had to do in reach because Noble team and by extension Spartans go MIA they are never pronounced dead so in the unsc's eyes this would just be replacements for Mia Noble team members

[delicate birch]

I'm glad someone's taking a look at my theory this is cool

[robust frigate]

Overall not a bad theory, I don’t really know his character well but I do believe that Jun was one of the main recruiters for the S4 program, I could see him joining this squad but I believe that he’d probably prefer to lead his own team for infiltrations

[robust frigate]

Correction: Jun is chief of staff of Spartan Operations after being a recruiter for the S4 program

[delicate birch]

The duality of Halo fans some people just get me mad look in general

You're fine by the way

[delicate birch]

You're a pretty chill guy

[robust frigate]

I’ve completely split myself off from the Halo community as a whole and give my opinions sparingly

I also enjoy the games on my own/with family

[delicate birch]

That's good this fandom is so toxic

[robust frigate]

I do my best to ignore it and their garbage takes on a lot of different topics, like how Halo Infinite assets being used is the end of Halo

And personally I believe the lore is in a decent place especially since I finished Edge of Dawn

[delicate birch]

Yeah

ARBITER IS COMING BACK

Also the endless are the flood WE ARE SO SCREWED

[kindred vale]

The endless aren't the flood, they are just immune to the halo array

[delicate birch]

New book confirmation

That's where that comes from

It's confirmed that the flood are the endless

Or something similar

[robust frigate]

Doesn’t that just confirm that The Endless are precursors

[delicate birch]

They are children of the AI Abaddon

Which was a precursor AI

Abaddon took the dust of the precursors

[kindred vale]

Really? I don't remember that in edge of dawn.

[delicate birch]

Let me take a photo of the book real quick

[robust frigate]

The flood is what the precursors became after turning themselves into dust and being discovered by Humanity

[dusk jetty]

The endless come from precursor dust, so not entirely true because that dust wasn’t corrupted at that point clearly

They are the grandchildren of the precursors if you will

[delicate birch]

You have to accept my friend request so I can send you the image I'm talking about

[robust frigate]

How do the endless come from the dust of precursors?

[dusk jetty]

Abbadon made them from dust, presumably the same dust precursors reduced themselves to to escape the forerunners

The flood also arose from this dust, because that was corrupted. Whether or not it was intentional is up for debate

So no the endless are not the flood

But they are precursors in a way

[robust frigate]

It probably wasn’t intended but it also wasn’t intended for Humanity to feed random space dust found 5 minutes ago to pets, which if I recall correctly originated the flood

[dusk jetty]

Correct, ancient humanity found that it had health benefits

I think it being intentional makes the story more poetic

But it’s not confirmed so

[minor sky]

Iirc they tested it and found no issues

Only for it to become corrupted years later

[robust frigate]

It certainly would make it more poetic, also ironic given that a random powder from a dead species caused galactic chaos

[strange pumice]

Something went wrong, as usual

As always it's happening

[strange pumice]

I would prefer to not trust the random dust that I found on space

[minor sky]

Even 100,000 years ago Humans were inadvertently creating horrors beyond comprehension

[robust frigate]

Sounds about right

[strange pumice]

I guess If they didn't create the Flood by themselves, we wouldn't see the Gravemind at installation 05
Or Flood outbreak happened later or earlier on that ring

[robust frigate]

Yeah the forerunners keeping flood specimens for study is a special kind of strange decision

[unique rune]

I mean it's really not

they didn't know where it come from and were never able to develop anything resembling a cure so preserving samples for study generally makes sense
we do it in real life with real pathogens

where they screwed up was long-term upkeep and maintenance

[robust frigate]

I could get it for like spores and combat forms, but didn’t they keep larger specimens as well for study

[unique rune]

I think the upper limit that we've ever seen was a tank form on Halo 3's Cold Storage

[robust frigate]

The biggest f-up with most diseases in fiction is long term containment, maintenance, and stopping breaches in containment

[worn wolf]

snort a few lines of corrupted precursor dust

big davie did it once was able to keep partying for 96 hours straight, didnt eat for 72 and had visions of flesh that could talk

[stray acorn]

Maybe a dumb question, but is New Mombasa the same location as Mombasa itself IRL? Cause Mombasa is at 4 degrees south of the equator, meaning it's not optimal for a space elevator. You could technically anchor one at latitudes above or below the equator, but that would put a lot more force on the cable and also cause it to bend towards the equator, when we can clearly see it going entirely vertical in the game.

[vocal jay]

thats actually a good question fellow engineer, I mean it’s possible, but ai would say since it’s called New Mombassa it would be in a different location

[stray acorn]

Fair enough. Although for it to be equatorial and coastal (assuming it's close to IRL Mombasa) it would need to be in what is currently Somalia. Granted considering earth has a UEG, awkward international situations like sticking a mega city in one country named after another country's city may not be as awkward as it sounds.

[vocal jay]

yeah, but it’s… something bout it feels off, eh its a video game in the end, we throw physics out the window

[stray acorn]

Fair enough.

[vocal jay]

WHY IS IT THAT PEOPLE WHO PLAY SPACE ENGINEERS OR IS IN THE KEEN SERVERS ARE HALO, MINECRAFT, OR HELLDIVERS 2 PLAYERS

[worldly cove]

We need a halo prequel game set during the fore runner age

[vocal jay]

oh that would be nice

[worldly cove]

And the final mission is u fighting the flood

Could be a hour or 2 long mission

[vocal jay]

I call that Tuesday bud

[worldly cove]

How

[vocal jay]

ya know sometimes I think of the Voteless as a mutated version of he flood controlled by the elites

[worldly cove]

True

[vocal jay]

kinda like how rookie got isakied to Si

*Super Earth

[prime mauve]

They put a space elevator in Havanna and that is even further away from the Equator so I'd guess there really is not a big issue with having it at current day Mombasa.

[stray acorn]

Huh, could just be a sources error, but something's up with the supposed number of elevators on earth before the battle for earth (as well as whether or not they need to be at the equator) both the Fandom and halopedia say that earth had 6 elevators at the start of the conflict, and that 2 were destroyed. The elevators destroyed were the Centennial Orbital Elevator in Havana Cuba (first instance of large deflection from equator for elevators) and of course the Mombasa Elevator. The Fandom says the other 4 are the Aranuka Elevator (small pacific atol), Borneo Elevator, Quito Elevator, and one it lists as unidentified. Meanwhile Halopedia lists the above 5 identified elevators, and then 2 others (as well as a third i'm ignoring as it's stated as being built post-2552) those being Malabo Elevator, and finally Colombo Elevator (the other weird non-equatorial Elevator) both of which are stated in halopedia to have survived the battle for earth. Which totals to 7 elevators at the time of conflict despite both sources stating six.

[unique rune]

It's hard to place it exactly but the Mombasa space elevator seems to be roughly at the mouth of current day Tudor Creek. New Mombasa is generally centralized around Mombasa Island and some of the nearby land, while the rest of the area corresponding to current Mombasa is generally referred to as Old Mombasa

[worldly cove]

Holy paragraph

[stray acorn]

Huh, ok. Granted it was an old Xbox game and it's already pretty impressive for a shooter to have a somewhat accidentally representation of a space elevator. But still, the cable should definitely have some curvature in that case.

[unique rune]

It's one of those things about Halo that you have to kinda handwave a bit because the people putting it together probably didn't think that far into it. I'd imagine the main priority was just to place the space elevator close to a real major shipping and commerce hub that was also close enough to the equator and let the actual physics of it get kinda fuzzy.

[stray acorn]

Imagine a lore question in the lore channel 😆

[worldly cove]

Just trollin

[stray acorn]

All good

[warped kestrel]

So ONI is the actual order in control of humanity in Halo, am I correct?

[modest marsh]

Halopedia is the more reliable than the Fandom counterpart, most Fandom pages have not been updated in years or if they have been plagiarize Halopedia anyways

[modest marsh]

It’s complicated but no

[warped kestrel]

Complicated?

[modest marsh]

The UEG is a federated democracy with smaller municipal governments that manage their own economy and local laws

ONI on occasion has put their thumb on the scale in regards to influencing politics, but for the most part their job is facilitating mass surveillance to provide actionable intelligence to the other branches of the UNSC

Their agenda is mainly to maintain the status quo, enabling the UNSC to continue its military dominance over human space, often doing so through covert operations including propaganda campaigns or more direct intervention, but they are not dictating civil policy

[warped kestrel]

Spartans job is to maintain the control

[modest marsh]

They are responsible for meddling in the political affairs of non-UEG polities such as rebel and alien factions

[warped kestrel]

Guess we can say now, after what's went down in Halo 5 and Infinite. ONI and the UNSC are severely weakened.

Especially after the loss of their great ship the infinity

[modest marsh]

Spartans were (previously) a Section-III project, but that is noted as being a consequence of their function as a research and special projects group within ONI which is a minority of the scope of the branch overall

Moreover, Spartans were organized under Navy Special Warfare Command, which means while they were originally developed by ONI projects, they’re beholden to Navy strategic planning

As we saw in Reach, we also know that Spartans could be “loaned out” as interbranch attachés, with Noble being a UNSC Army asset for most of the game

[modest marsh]

And to be clear, obviously many of the missions (if not most of them) were ONI-led or planned, but the bottom line is the likes of Cole and later Hood would have some involvement in how the Spartans would be used, and not just Stanforth or Parangosky doing whatever they fancied

[warped kestrel]

Mmhmm, I see.

Master Chief should definitely become the true leader of humanity

[modest marsh]

he has a strong bid for a senate position, or maybe serving on the security council

i dont think he has the political experience to jump straight into being the president though

unless you mean a post-ueg entity of some kind

as of now it seems like he's committed to staying a spartan until there aren't any more battles to fight, and after that he might consider becoming a diplomat

Ideally he'd probably work with the Arbiter to improve Sangheili-human relations

[warped kestrel]

He needs to become like the Didact

[minor sky]

Speaking of which, it is kind of frustrating how the best parts of Halo 5's story are the ones with Chief

And he only gets three levels

I know, not a new critque

But on my most recent playthrough I found the most interesting moments to be in those levels. Stuff like Chief calling Cortana's bluff was especially solid

John asking her point blank "how many people died?" or saying how "The Didact made it clear that the Mantle was an imperial piece. Step out of line and suffer"

I also liked the bits where the Warden was taunting Chief and judging humanity

[stoic hamlet]

Because that worked out so well the last time.

[modest marsh]

chief holds a very low nominal rank compared to the didact within the forerunner ecumene, but warrior servants were lowly regarded in terms of political prestige

didact was exceptional in his status but still far from head of state

chief has a better shot of actually being a major political player but so far has passed up that opportunity for now, namely hood's offer to make him an admiral

which, to me, wouldve been a symbolic gesture more than anything else, a way to let him retire from active duty while still saving face for the public

alternatively, hood wants to groom chief as his replacement, similar to Serin and Parangosky's situation, but, well

half of the security council including chairman being spartan-iis would be a bit much

[warm ridge]

Book does not confirm the endless are the Flood at all. I don't know who told you this.

[warm ridge]

No, it doesn't, as they aren't Precursors either.
Endless are a creation of the Abaddon AI, using basic materials to achieve whatever his goal was.
No, the dust he used isn't confirmed to be Precursor dust anywhere either. @dusk jetty

[warm ridge]

The Flood didn't "arise" from dust. This never happened. @strange pumice @robust frigate

The Flood were created over several centuries from Pheru who were treated with Precursor dust to become more docile & nicer. The Humans doing this had no idea the dust had been slowly modifying the genetic code of the Pheru itself.

Again, over many centuries, hundreds if not thousands of Pheru generations later (the dust is no longer relevant), these now modified Pheru began showing negative traits, corruption, a disease that wasn't curable. Tl;dr, how the Flood got created.

[warm ridge]

Halo is a game that takes place in 2552. Future tech allows for multiple space elevators across the entire planet, on the equator, above, and below it. It's not a problem. @vocal jay
We're talking about a game that uses a version of Titanium that does not exist in real life (as far as we know).

[robust frigate]

At this point we’re just arguing semantics, point is: humanity was unaware about the genetic code modification by the dust and inadvertently caused galactic chaos

[dusk jetty]

That’s why I said presumably

And the flood mutation came from this dust the pheru were fed so I am still correct in saying that even if I didnt specifically word it that way

Semantics in wording don’t make me wrong

[warm ridge]

Nothing i said there is semantics and Idk what makes you believe that. It's the official factual Halo lore & it's what I stick with.

[warm ridge]

As far as we're aware the Endless themselves weren't even created in the same reality the Halo universe takes place in.

[dusk jetty]

And?

[warm ridge]

Some weird area only Precursors have / had access to (of course Abaddon did to). The Halo ring activation somehow removed them from it.

[warm ridge]

Point is, no semantics.

[dusk jetty]

Mhm

[robust frigate]

My post was made in response to you fact checking someone saying the flood arose from the dust, meaning that the dust caused the flood

[dusk jetty]

Not like any lore ever has a dark areas you can inference things in

Much less science fiction no sir

[robust frigate]

Also semantics are everywhere in life tf you mean no semantics, you want us to give the full explanation every time?

Semantics means the study of meanings

[warm ridge]

That would be semantics ofc.
I just say what the novels & games actually say.

Which at times do disagree. Can't just talk about stuff without having the full picture.

[robust frigate]

Semantics: the study of meanings

[dusk jetty]

Yes you can, especially when the full picture is irrelevant

[warm ridge]

Not in this case 🤷‍♂️

Am confused why you feel the need to argue about this so if it's not Halo lore related I'll let you be now.

[dusk jetty]

People are allowed to speculate and that’s what I did here

Anyway, yes, I think the mutation within the pheru giving rise to first flood organism is very poetically powerful as it’s the retribution of god in a way

The retribution of god being, drumroll please, The flood

[robust frigate]

Reminds me of when 000 tragic solitude said to Spartan Vale “they were found wanting, and their punishment was the flood” I think that’s the quote

[dusk jetty]

I haven’t read hunters in the dark but that quote is a nice bow on the present

The flood shaped present

[robust frigate]

On another note, I’ve been wondering what happened to Infinity’s sister ship, because we heard from it once and never again

[dusk jetty]

It’s in the kupier or some other asteroid belt iirc

They took out some modules to replace on infinity post halo 4

Afaik it’s still in whatever shipyard it’s in

[robust frigate]

I think it would be interesting to show it since the Infinity is MIA wouldn’t they work on it more after hearing the Infinity went missing

[dusk jetty]

It might be in a outdated battleship situation where it’s just sitting gathering mothballs

Not that it’s outdated ofc

But it’s clearly a potential plot thread

[robust frigate]

It would be awesome to see it arrive alongside the Shadow of Intent at Zeta Halo

[carmine sleet]

She's likely not going to be completed for a long time. Parts being used to fix up Infinity and then the Created crisis causing so much disarray for the UNSC means that supply lines dedicated to moving the resources to build Eternity are likely no longer there and won't be there until things stablise for the wider galaxy

[robust frigate]

Figured as much, I know it’s highly unlikely but I still want it to happen

[carmine sleet]

I wouldn't bet on it happening any time soon

Like, the Created crisis genuinely messed up so much of the UNSC since the Created-aligned AI and the Guardians caused such a big disruption to the UNSC and other factions in the galaxy

[unique rune]

just pop it in the microwave for 30 seconds it'll be fine probably

[robust frigate]

I am aware of all happening, I was just stating something I really wanted to happen, even without the Eternity it’ll be good to possibly see the Shadow of Intent again

With Sydney being destroyed and Laconia station going boom, alongside everything else, it’ll be a miracle if the UNSC fleet appears at all in the next game after Infinite

[stoic hamlet]

I mean, the UNSC still have sizeable fleets.

They’re just not able to go gallivanting off to put out this one fire.

There are others that need their attention more urgently.

[warped kestrel]

Pretty sure the UNSC is severely weakened Thanks to Cortona and her Promethean armies that are now gone.

[stoic hamlet]

They’re weakened, but they still have large numbers of ships and, with the created gone, much better supply lines.

[unique rune]

Their ships didn't just disappear into thin air lol

[warped kestrel]

Well the infinity is destroyed so there now pretty much vulnerable

There super ship

[unique rune]

Infinity was one ship

even if it was a very capable ship it was never going to be the end or sole saviour of the UNSC or humanity

[warped kestrel]

Master Chief needs to figure out how to finally End The War.

[unique rune]

that's not something he has the power to do lmao

[stoic hamlet]

That’s like saying because the HMS Victory was sunk (hypothetical) the British will lose their entire empire.

One ship is meaningless in a large setting, no matter how good it is individually.

You need numbers, more than anything.

But the UNSC has a habit of putting all their chips into wonderweapons.

[warped kestrel]

Seems the only way to end the war is the complete conquering of all Covenant races

[unique rune]

no

[warped kestrel]

Mantle of Responsibility would be at all full force

[stoic hamlet]

Even if it was, the UNSC can’t do that, they don’t have the manpower, or ships.

[unique rune]

Chief literally says (rightly) that the Mantle is a bad thing

[warped kestrel]

Really

[stoic hamlet]

Yes.

[warped kestrel]

Well, cycle continues

[carmine sleet]

The Infinity was ultimately a single carrier with weapons which were a bit better than what most UNSC ships had. It's not like it was packing some sort of planet killing weapon which could be used to easily threaten other factions. Sure it is a loss that it was ambushed by the Banished and most likely destroyed. But that doesn't mean the UNSC can't defend themselves ever again

[carmine sleet]

He spells it out very clearly in Halo 5 that it's a bad thing

[unique rune]

using the Mantle as an excuse to oppress other sapient species would be perpetuating the cycle

[warped kestrel]

Now we're seeing a problem

[carmine sleet]

And the problem we're seeing is what?

[unique rune]

it's crazy that "human supremacy is the only way" is the read on Halo that some people get when one of the big tenets of the original trilogy was that putting aside our differences for the greater good is the way forward

[carmine sleet]

I guess those Elites who ended up joining forces with humanity to stop the rings from firing don't mean anything to the people who think that

[warped kestrel]

if I was Master Chief, id totally use Forerunner tec to turn myself into the next Didact

[carmine sleet]

Well it's a good thing you're not the Master Chief (And you didn't answer my question)

[warped kestrel]

Yeah it would be hard to get right

[carmine sleet]

Did you even read my question? Where I specifically asked you what the problem is that we're supposedly seeing?

[warped kestrel]

Sorry I probably didn't see it

[warped kestrel]

Oh

That would just make things worse

[warped kestrel]

Yeah it seems the Mantle is a bad idea

A flawed idea made by the 30 foot crab Mantis Gods

Aka the precursors

[stoic hamlet]

Even if it was the only way, you’d think people would recognize it’s not possible at this stage, regardless.

Mind you, a lot of those people don’t actually know what they’re talking about, so…

[warped kestrel]

I heard a New Covenant Empire seeks to open the domain

[stoic hamlet]

Everyone seeks the open the domain. (No one can anymore)

[warped kestrel]

Halo 7 is definitely going to be interesting

Hope John reunites with blue team

[warped kestrel]

I heard some wants Arbiter to go to war against ONI for actually aiding the Covenant Factions in trying to destroy the Swords Of Sanghelios.

Crazy ONI wanted to take over Sanghelios too

[modest marsh]

In fairness, it may as well be planet killing if a single salvo of its 4 guns were fired into an ecologically sensitive area

Contemporary materiel is already pretty bad for the climate, let alone what pretty much any UNSC warship a frigate and above can disperse

[carmine sleet]

You know what I mean, I'm talking Death Star type planet killing weapons, it doesn't have anything like that

[modest marsh]

The idea that any covenant or banished ship could withstand a strike of its SMAC is a relatively recent development all things considered

That is to say, the firepower “issue” is less important than its proven vulnerability to attack such as when it gets disabled in Escalation

[worn wolf]

the banished dont stand a chance against the unsc fleet of 1998 toyota coyrollas.

[unique rune]

they should make a Banished Hilux

[vagrant ocean]

You’re so cringe.

[warped kestrel]

I don't try to be

[frigid heart]

That’s even worse 😭😭

[warped kestrel]

Im sorry, I won't be cringe

Best we keep cool

[modest marsh]

I don’t think that’s strictly an unreasonable conclusion to make when the games do not do a very good job of painting the aliens as capable of promoting a more egalitarian and peaceful society in comparison to humanity but that’s what happens when it’s a video game that’s about shooting aliens because they wanna kill all the humans

I still think it’s a massive fumble to not have given arbiter his own solo game during the civil war where this stuff would be more front and center

[vagrant ocean]

I mean, we could be getting that, HS said they have multiple projects in the pipeline.

[modest marsh]

Halo 5 arc would’ve been the time to do it

[warm ridge]

Heavily damaged, not confirmed to be destroyed, and it's status is entirely unknown as of Halo: Edge of Dawn.

May as well of vanished, it can't be located anywhere on the ring as far as Chief, the Pilot, and the rest of the surviving UNSC members are concerned.

[warped kestrel]

Mm, alright

[warm ridge]

Meanwhile "We have enough dedicated resources to issue a new generation of MJOLNIR", but they also struggled to do this or even get it issued out due to lack of resources. Doesn't make much sense.

[warm ridge]

Laconia station is just 1 Spartan training center out of possibly a few hundred. It's not as important of a facility as infinite tries to make it out to be.
In fact, Laconia has 2 other identical clones. AKA Sister stations. Virgo station, and Naxos station.

Anvil station is another Spartan training center.
So is Chiron.
The Munera platforms could also be considered training stations for Spartans as well, and multiple of them exist across many worlds.

[robust frigate]

Bruh, I never said Laconia Station was the only station training Spartans, but hearing that a training center for the Spartans blew up because of its traitorous AI is definitely a blow to morale, Cortana did that to send a message saying “no one is safe”

[warm ridge]

you said "it'd be a miracle if the UNSC fleet appears at all in the next game"
UNSC fleet has loads of ships still & stations. Enough that they were able to defend against a gigantic Banished invasion.

Also Idk what morale would do here. The entire Created situation & losing Earth to them already did that, along with whatever other planets they lost to Created control.

Literally millions died across multiple planets, the 1st deaths coming from the Guardians being activated.

[robust frigate]

1. I said that it’d be a miracle for the UNSC fleet to appear in the next game making a joke about how the home fleet can’t catch a damn break

2. The Spartans were heroes to humanity, hearing that Cortana killed 75 at the snap of a finger (metaphorical) would be devastating to civilian and regular soldier morale

3. Billions died during the Human-Covenant war, Humanity was inches from extinction and we kept fighting

Not to mention the loss of Infinity and the literal MASTER CHIEF, which likely didn’t help commanders with anything

[warm ridge]

Cortana killed far more then just 75 at the "snap of her fingers". Did you forget what happened at Earth? UNSC ships falling from the sky, they'd all have Spartans, and there reactors going critical.
the point you're making is heavily undermined by already established plot points.

I feel like I already explained all that, but I don't think you're understanding the point still so.

Also, I meant billions as well. We don't have a total death count for the Created conflict entirely.

Also..The Infinity is a pretty recent thing. Laconia & all this other stuff happened well before that.

Fact is nothing will affect human morale more then the loss of Earth, which did happen at like the beginning of the conflict.

[warm ridge]

anyways you've completely gone off the original point here, kinda just seems like you're going on about stuff that doesn't make much sense.

[robust frigate]

You do realize I was just listing a FEW of the things done to screw over humanity

Also why are you saying the UNSC lost Earth, last I checked it wasn’t blown to hell like Doisac

[warm ridge]

You were acting like those few things were these massive events that, as I quote you "it’ll be a miracle if the UNSC fleet appears at all in the next game after Infinite".
All I did was point out the UNSC has far, far more stuff that allows it to show up fine. None of those events prevent the UNSC fleet existing.

You then tried to bring up this weird morale argument, when it's already been kinda established that nothing will affect morale more then the loss of Earth itself. Making all your other points basically redundant.

[warm ridge]

UNSC had zero control of Earth = they lost Earth. Created was in full control.
It'd be the same if the Banished suddenly took over, still means they lost it.

Doisac exploding is an entirely different thing. They didn't just "lose control of the planet", the planet blew up.

but with the lack of any real Created follow up after that, it actually allowed the Jiralhanae to exploit entirely new resources that were previously inaccessible, likely leading to the Banished quickly becoming such a massive threat in the 1st place.

[warm ridge]

for context this is basically Earth, circa 2559. @robust frigate
https://www.halopedia.org/images/1/19/HINF-Createdoccupation.jpg?7ced5

[robust frigate]

Those were the first events I had thought of

You said multiple times “with the loss of Earth to the created”

The difference between the destruction of Doisac and the UNSC losing control of Earth is entirely semantics and phrasing but those are actually important

[warm ridge]

Literally none of that is semantics dude what are you on about lol

[robust frigate]

Also me saying that the UNSC won’t appear was a joke on the fact that the UNSC fleet can’t catch a damn break for 5 minutes

[robust frigate]

Semantics: study of meanings, basically what you mean when speaking

[warm ridge]

I mean..yea? UNSC has been in constant war 24/7 basically. Covenant war ending didn't suddenly stop all wars.

Confirmed lore isn't semantics dude.

[robust frigate]

But phrasing it weirdly or someone not understanding what you mean can cause differences in perspective

[warm ridge]

I didn't phrase any of it weirdly, it wouldn't of been any different if I just started posting direct book quotes either.

Or quotes directly from the games.

Also, it is not semantics to say the destruction of Dosiac & the UNSC losing earth are 2 different things entirely. Like this is factual, it's not a semantic argument.

[warm ridge]

This isn't semantics either. I'm not meaning anything, I'm just telling you what's been confirmed directly. I'm not trying to convince you of anything, I'm telling you what it is.

[robust frigate]

I’m not even coming close to saying anything like that, I was just saying I wanted to see my favorite ship from the lore again in a game, and it turned into this, I said that Sydney got deleted and Laconia station going boom were two events I first thought of when thinking of the Created conflict. The morale argument was not just covering those two events but everything that happened to humanity. I have been going through the lore myself over the last year or so and I’ve enjoyed every bit of it except for arguments like this that happen because I just state information that comes first to mind and add info I learn later

[robust frigate]

Also you’re ‘telling’ me what the lore is like I’m oblivious to everything when I know general lore and I’m trying to make a dive into the deepest lore but get met with this

[warm ridge]

Well it's you randomly disagreeing with it then calling it semantics. You've done this twice now, not exactly something someone who just wants to "learn" new lore does. No one's being hostile to you, just correcting you on stuff.

[robust frigate]

Correcting me on stuff I already know, my whole semantics argument was what you mean when typing, I took your ‘correction’ the same way I took it earlier, which is that you were sounding so condescending, that’s what semantics are

You meant that the UNSC lost control of Earth, when you typed that the UNSC lost Earth, which I took as meaning earth got blown the f-k up like doisac

[warm ridge]

So, still not something someone does when they want to learn new lore

[robust frigate]

This whole damn argument was because I stated the most notable reasons to my joke that the UNSC can’t catch a break after the human covenant war, I could’ve also stated how Sentinels attacked earth, Didact appeared and killed everyone in new phoenix, the created occupied the planet, and the banished shows up to annihilate humanity, also I don’t want to learn new lore from others, I want to stumble across it while playing the games, also who are you to decide how someone acts when trying to learn new lore, I was being civil and asking genuine questions like “what happened to Infinity’s sister ship” until your first correction which literally was condescending and I just got tunnel visioned into this argument

[somber idol]

Why does the élites in the Halo 2 anniversary cinematics with Locke have OG artstyle but have their new artstyle in H5?

[robust frigate]

It’s a weird and unnecessary choice they made to change the art style when H2A looked incredible with the old style

That was really the only problem I had with H4 and H5 when playing them

[somber idol]

Yes the élites in those games are very weird

[robust frigate]

It’s like the Elites and Brutes combined when keeping the old style and having brutes be the main enemy in H4 and H5 would’ve been the better choice

[somber idol]

If we are gonna see again brutes i would like them a bit different

I would like to really feel how tall they are

They always seems to have a mid stature, i would like to see them bigger than us

Same with hunter idk

[warm ridge]

Ignoring what the other dude said, basically they were made by 2 different developers.
Also, it's not "og art style". The cinematics were made by Blur, which had done all the H2A cinematics also. Axis studio made all the pre-rendered Halo 5 cinematics in the final game, same company that did all the pre-rendered Spartan Ops scenes to.

Halo 5 was always going to reuse the same Halo 4 stuff in order to maintain consistency between the 2 games, at some point they planned to include both phenotypes also but time constraints prevented this.

[somber idol]

So because work is done by two différent dev team they can't communicate on those things ?

That just seems obvious..

Kind of funny to read that 343 wanted to maintain consistancy between their two games whereas those game don't maintain consistancy in this aspect with previous games

[unique rune]

I mean it's less a lack of communication and more just that one subcontractor had one set of assets to work with and a different one had another set of assets.

They're internally consistent with the projects that they were directly associated with and presumably nobody thought it would be worth the extra effort for what is a relatively minor difference in the grand scheme of things

[warm ridge]

Like I said, at some point they did want to include the Elite design seen in H2A in Halo 5, mainly for the Thel himself, time constraints prevented this though. (by this I mean make an entirely new design for it).

But yea, 2 different dev teams doing different things.
H2A always had a set vision, they weren't going to suddenly reuse any of that in Halo 5.

[somber idol]

Idk

I mean in the H2 cinematics the Arbiter have his new gold armor

They only communicate half of everything then

[robust frigate]

It’s just a combination of a lot of different factors, 2 dev teams, miscommunication, and a few other things caused the difference in art styles

[warm ridge]

As already established, there wasn't any miscommunication.

[robust frigate]

point is there’s a difference because of a lot of different factors

[warm ridge]

https://web.archive.org/web/20181021053627/https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/6e35355aecdf4fd0acdaee3cc4156fd4/topics/halo-5-sangheili/c73aceae-7ae4-4b4c-b419-0dffcffd0350/posts?page=1#post14

https://web.archive.org/web/20180429233158/http://www.haloarchive.com/forum/topic/9-canon-fodder-and-random-lore-chat/?page=65&tab=comments#comment-135237

Here's what actually happened.

[prime mauve]

Personally I just thought that the guys in Halo 2 style armor and the guys in Halo 4 style armor were different people coexisting in the same place and everything, just out of camera

Like they wouldn't cancel each other out

[near orchid]

So is Halo Hunt The Truth Season 1 and 2 cannon?

[worldly cove]

We don't talk about the halo show

[near orchid]

Not the show.

[worldly cove]

The halo show was a mistake

[near orchid]

The Audio Drama.

[worldly cove]

ah

[near orchid]

Hunt the Truth season 1 and 2.

Probably my favorite piece of halo media.

[worldly cove]

Haven't heard of it

[near orchid]

Great cast.

I highly recommend it. It’s about a journalist doing a project about master chief and slowly unraveling the truth about the spartan 2 program.

Keegan-Michael Key as the journalist Benjamin Giraud and Cobie Smulders as Petra Janecek.

It breaks my heart no one has ever heard of it.

[robust frigate]

Now I know what I’m watching this weekend

[near orchid]

Sweet! It feels like me and my wife are the only people who watched it. Let me know what you think!

https://youtu.be/ugzYuTnLUcM?si=Vr8w7HzVIMDmR7Ru

For anyone else who wants to listen to it!

[stoic hamlet]

Yes.

They recently received a continuation (sort of) in the form of the Waypoint Chronicle The Third Life, about Ilsa Zane.

And then, you know, several characters appear in other media.

Giraud first appeared way back in 2004 or so, in a comic.

Sully first appears in Forward Unto Dawn.

[near orchid]

Oh that’s cool. But yeah I think they got few Articles written by in universe characters.

[stoic hamlet]

You mean the short stories (Waypoint Chronicles)? Yeah they’re canon.

[minor sky]

I still wonder what Petra's fate is

[worldly cove]

I still wonder what if noble six survived reach and was on Zeta halo when master chief was fighting the banished

[dry cedar]

It was pretty clear at the end of HR that Noble Six was KIA

[worldly cove]

Ik

But it's a what if

[dry cedar]

Ohhhh.

I missed the "what". Sorry

[worldly cove]

All good man

[stoic hamlet]

That assumes he’d be assigned to Infinity in the first place. Plenty of Spartans were assigned to other tasks.

[near orchid]

Wasn’t she captured by ONI?

She’s probably at the midnight facility.

[near orchid]

Yeah I think Ben wrote one.

[stoic hamlet]

Chronologically, that takes place before Hunt The Truth.

[near orchid]

Indeed. His earliest appearance was in the graphic novel.

Idk I was asking the cannon worth of the series cause all of it was before H5 release and it’s pretty obvious H5 went in a completely different direction than initially intended.

Especially cause most of the halo 5 marketing like live action trailers have been intentionally deleted.

Man the Chief and Locke trailers at the statues? So much aura.

I was so hyped.

[warm ridge]

Apparently this was actually because the Microsoft marketing teams & 343 industries internally were so far disconnected / lack of communication that the marketing guys just started making up a better story based off what they thought Halo 5 was going to be about.

Halo 5's actual story itself never really received any drastic rewrites or huge changes according to multiple employees. Most of the changes would've occurred around 2013 when the decision to switch off the Ur-Didact happened.

The story we got in Halo 5 was more or less the intended direction they were going with for a vast majority of it's development.

[near orchid]

Hm. I’m not saying you’re wrong but I kinda find that hard to believe, even if that’s official. Halo Infinite development made it pretty clear you can trust what the devs are saying.

[warm ridge]

These would be ex-devs who have said this in an unofficial way, not part of Microsoft at all anymore.

We've already gotten similar things regarding Halo Infinite's development from a few ex-devs so.

[near orchid]

Lols everyone is an ex dev with how much they go through people

[warm ridge]

although Infinite's drawback is all the stuff they cut from the game due to being unfinished. Story wise, they didn't have a story in the 1st place.

[near orchid]

For infinite?

[warm ridge]

yes

[worldly cove]

Ngl

Now that u mentioned that

Infinite wasn't fully finished

It seemed rushed at launch

The ending teased for a 2nd part

But we never got anything to finish the story

[near orchid]

It wasn’t even rush. It’s the fact that the engine itself was broken.

[worldly cove]

Damn

So they just made a unfinished game

[near orchid]

Unable to be this massive content machine like they planned.

[near orchid]

Most games since 2020.

[worldly cove]

Damn

Yeah true that

[near orchid]

Well they definitely had expansions planned

[warm ridge]

Basically that's the whole game, donezo.

[near orchid]

That’s kinda why I’m hopeful for the unreal engine. They don’t have to spend too much time teaching people blam and they can just focus on story.

[warm ridge]

flying

ok my message disappeared when I editted it to change driving into flying 😭

[worldly cove]

Bruh

[warm ridge]

Pilot was flying a pelican

[worldly cove]

Ngl

If they ever do make a sequel to infinite

They should 100% have the legendary ending have chief finally face revealing

[near orchid]

From what 343 has shown us. I can expect.

• it will drop everything set up in the last game. (Leave it for the books.)

• be another soft reboot for the franchise.

-Chief will be in it.

[warm ridge]

I don't believe that's ever going to happen especially after the extremely negative reaction the Halo TV Show got from doing it in the 1st episode.

[worldly cove]

I mean like

They properly face reveal him

And do it with a good send off

[near orchid]

If you want to see Steve downs, use google.

[warm ridge]

Can confirm the entire Halo Infinite open world has effectively been dropped & won't be returning. In Halo: Edge of Dawn, the entire place gets nuked.

[worldly cove]

Damn

[near orchid]

Damn I didn’t know that

[worldly cove]

Neither did i

[near orchid]

I don’t read books. If they do more comics I’ll be there.

[warm ridge]

Only character that will actually return that we know of is Jega, although they could just as easily make him an exclusive book character only.

[worldly cove]

A while back I bought a halo comic

I forgot the name

It was a pretty thick book

Good story

[near orchid]

Probably a 343 omnibus.

[warm ridge]

yea the new novel is essentially Halo Infinite's only real sequel. It dove into a lot of stuff, revealed the Weapons actual name, and all this other stuff happens.

It ends with the Pilot, Weapon, and Chief finding a new location full of UNSC survivors. Way more then anywhere else.

[near orchid]

Yeah I heard they gave her a name. I already forgot it tbh.

[worldly cove]

Pretty sure the first story has the guy self suicide in a covenant base or ship

[near orchid]

I think that’s Halo Uprising?

[warm ridge]

Oh yea pretty high chances the next game will have actual ODST's also btw.

They appear in Edge of Dawn, so I'd assume they'd appear in Halo 7 to.

[near orchid]

Omg I miss them.

[worldly cove]

We last saw ODST's in halo 3

[near orchid]

But I kinda understand why they are phasing them out.

[worldly cove]

And in halo wars 2

[lavish jetty]

Can anyone here summarize the current controversy regarding the CE reboot?

[near orchid]

That’s not really a lore thing tho-

And they are kinda anti drama here

[lavish jetty]

True, thought I was in #general-chat

Nevermind - sorry to interrupt your flow

[near orchid]

No problem dude

[warm ridge]

Not true at all.
They've appeared in -

• Halo: Fireteam Raven
• Halo Wars 2
• Halo Spartan Assault / Spartan Strike
• halo reach

This isn't counting any novels / books ofc

[worldly cove]

True

Btw Vale the comic was halo legacy collection

[lavish jetty]

It is strange that they were skipped in H4, H5, and Infinite though - wouldn't you say? Regardless, I'll be glad to see them in the upcoming reboot. It would be a welcome addition if that turns out to be the case.

[warm ridge]

They were supposed to show up in Halo 5, were mentioned, and even had concept art created for them but none of it ever got finished afaik.

[worldly cove]

Wait I think

[warm ridge]

The Marines you see in Halo 5's Warzone were actually supposed to be ODST's funny enough.

At least that was the idea.

[near orchid]

Yeah I forgot that existed

I own all of them individually in hard cover.

[warm ridge]

ask in #halo-discussion

[near orchid]

Man fireteam raven is so much fun but such a scam.

[warm ridge]

buy the machine for $18,000 to stop getting scammed 😎

[near orchid]

Lols. Maybe. Have you used the ones with the actual ARs?

So cool.

[worldly cove]

I gotta find the comic now that I think of it

[near orchid]

My favorite is Bloodlines. It was my first comic as a kid.

[worldly cove]

Nice

I bought the book at a newberry comics store

It was slightly upstate from where I live

[near orchid]

Cool. Yeah the halo comics are pretty dope.

[worldly cove]

I found a page from legacy collection

Yup it's that exact comic

[near orchid]

Uprising?

😎 I still got it.

[worldly cove]

No

Legacy collection

Which has uprising in it

Man it's been a while since I read the book

[near orchid]

Ah

[worldly cove]

Ye

[obsidian thistle]

There is two collections (ignoring the two Graphic Novels)

Legacy Collection
Uprising, Bloodline, and Helljumper

Fall of Reach
Bootcamp, Covenant, Invasion

(I guess 3/4 if you include the Escalation Omnibus/collected versions)

[near orchid]

And Tales from slip space. But I guess that’s also an Anthology like the Halo Graphic Novel. I’m not sure if those shorts had individual releases.

Or are you counting that as the second graphic novel? Cause I never heard of two Halo Graphic novels?

[obsidian thistle]

Tales from Slipspace would indeed be counted alongside the og Graphic Novel

[near orchid]

Ah.

Ya know not super lore related but I don’t understand the fall of reach publishing. Was it originally made by Marvel comics and re-released by dark horse? Or are there two different releases from two different publications?

[unique rune]

the former

originally published by Marvel, later reprinted by Dark Horse a couple years after they got Halo comic rights

[obsidian thistle]

Fun fact: Fall of Reach was to my knowledge the first comics to have their art changed for their collected versions.

Nothing too serious

Just de-Trekifying stuff

Cause some stuff was WAY to close to DS9 lol

Escalation had it also.

(So did Rise of Atriox in the most minor or ways)

[prime mauve]

Trekified?

[near orchid]

Yeah I’m not picking up what you’re throwing down

How can I see the original art? What release would that be?

[vagrant ocean]

2001 is the original art.

[prime mauve]

The comic version was in 2010

[obsidian thistle]

And @near orchid

The og art (alongside other panels) had a strong Deep Space 9 theme

Thats one outta a few other changes

[prime mauve]

Oh yeah I see it now

[near orchid]

Wow that’s crazy

That’s so funny they fixed that but not chiefs helmet

When Halsey holds it it’s the halo 3 helmet and then when chief puts it on its back to being the Halo wars helmet.

[prime mauve]

I found my copy and IT IS TRUE

How

I didn't remember that!

Halsey 🤝 Cortana
Changing Chief's armor appearance just cause

[modest marsh]

That might’ve not been a mistake

[near orchid]

Nano machines son

[near orchid]

Right I’m on the fence about it. Dark horse did that with a few Star Wars helmets in comics, one panel it’s phase 1 another it’s phase 2.

So when I read Fall of Reach and saw that.

I had the dark horse release and thought it was the same thing.

[modest marsh]

In this case it’s thematically appropriate because 99% of the audience associated the halo 3 style helmet with the character’s identity specifically at the time of publication

[near orchid]

Right.

[modest marsh]

(Something they ended up loosely canonizing anyways)

[near orchid]

Most of this era of comics was lots of tracing from real life pictures. Most of Halo uprising is just real people traced over.

I wouldn’t be surprised they traced the halo 3 helmet cause that was on hand and forgot to replace it.

[modest marsh]

Anodyne spirit being a bunch of covenant and forerunner geometry from halo 2 lol

(Not impossible to justify ad hoc but still funny)

[near orchid]

Lols fr

[prime mauve]

Yeah I imagine that they could have had some interior work done to make especially cavernous chambers more useful by instead filling the space with Covenant architecture

[near orchid]

You mean “The Forerunner”.

Lols

[unique rune]

Zealot/the Ardent Prayer's comms room got traced for the Unrelenting's reactor room in the TFOR comic and one other thing that escapes my mind somewhere else
it is a bit silly

[prime mauve]

Tracing scenery like that is one of the types of asset reuse that I can't really judge harshly

[near orchid]

oh yeah, flipping through it now. Yeah I never noticed that lols.

funny all this tracing of the helmet and ship are done in the same chapter lols

[minor sky]

I was replaying Halo 2 with a buddy not long ago and I realized that this entire time I had been mistakenly remembering that "Chief killed Regret" despite Regret being very much alive (not for long) in the opening cutscene for Gravemind

So tl;dr the Flood was 2/3 on killing Prophets

well then again, maybe Chief killed Mercy because he ripped the infection form off of him which made him die instantly

So Regret's death is on Chief and the Gravemind/flood
Mercy got killed by Truth, the Flood, and Chief
Truth was infected by the Flood before getting stabbed by the Arbiter

Which makes me ask if the Flood produce some sort of life-extending effect upon the infected before they are completely taken over?

[unique rune]

seems plausible enough to me
there’s probably some point during the infection process where FSCs are kinda sustaining the host but haven’t quite reached the threshold for full assimilation into the Flood

[minor sky]

It checks out

I feel like Regret getting pummeled by Chief would be instant death, but if he managed to cling onto life long enough maybe when he got infected/captured by the Gravemind the infection was able to resuscitate him

[minor sky]

Okay, rewatching that scene it looks like the infection form choked him out as Chief pulled it off of him

[stoic hamlet]

We also can’t say how the event actually went down in lore. Gameplay wise you punch him repeatedly, but John might’ve (probably) just shot him, or stabbed him, when he got close enough.

[obsidian thistle]

Gameplay vs lore is always funky

Halo: The Flood vs CE was always a fun comparison historically

I love bringing up Chief carrying rockets for no reason whatsoever during Truth and Reconciliation cause its such a meme

(I have done so a few times here) xD

[robust frigate]

A Spartan’s punch is very powerful, don’t know the exact force though

[wispy pewter]

really wish I could send the Gif of the fella punching the car window

[dusk jetty]

Enough to break a brutes ribs at the very least

Which would also be enough to punch a hole through a man

[robust frigate]

IIRC we do see and read about Spartans breaking and prying open tank armor

Specifically Covenant/Banished tank armor I think

[obsidian thistle]

Oh seems we may be getting a small addendum Halo novel series wise.

https://www.halopedia.org/File:OTHW.jpg

Halo: Edge of Dawn seemingly was moved to the "Halo Infinite" (A Halo Infinite Story) series

No issues from me honestly

Makes more sense.

[prime mauve]

Neat!

[scarlet quiver]

Whoh. Good find mate. Hats off to ya.

[obsidian thistle]

Not me that found it. 😛 (technically, I kept forgetting to take a photo in my local book shop, which fyi would be kinda "bad" of me lol)

Yea I am that much of a Halo nerd I look at books I already own in bookshops lol

[scarlet quiver]

🤣😁😅 i do the same at barnes and nobles, and i think "ha ha this is what the book look like before I put marker notes all over it
Do yall have big audiobook sections on your side of the ocean?

[obsidian thistle]

Its tiny here

🙁

At least in my local

[scarlet quiver]

Oi, same. Missed opportunities.

[robust frigate]

How did I only just now notice the addendum on my copy of Edge of Dawn

[obsidian thistle]

Its in newer copies

(In a lotta newer copies of other books)

[robust frigate]

Figured as much, this is the first Halo book I actually got in print a few months back

[near orchid]

https://youtu.be/Nts0uevORJc?si=lt5n-OpCB45EuNZl

Never seen this before

Absolutely gas

[obsidian thistle]

I prefer the og source

https://vimeo.com/970298045

It is cool though

[strange pumice]

Always wanted to ask
How exactly is the working traven under the ring surface?
Especially on Zeta Halo, where the whole chunks of ring are destroyed

I can understand the conservatory, because it's happening almost on the surface
But what about the Command Spire?
There's exactly an issue that I still can't understand
Like, you going underground, but if in that logic, you should go nowhere, because that part is destroyed

[near orchid]

It’s was pitched to Spielberg! 😭 oh man.

[modest marsh]

Halo rings have compartmentalized sections that can function independently of each other, like a web of nanomachines

Chunks of the ring can also be manually ejected which was used to defeat the Didact in the escalation comics

[strange pumice]

So even if the ring is particularly destroyed, like Zeta Halo, the underground corridors will still be functional?

[modest marsh]

https://www.halopedia.org/images/5/5e/HaloLatticework.jpg?99883

[modest marsh]

I mean, have you seen Nightfall?

[strange pumice]

No

[modest marsh]

Apparently a chunk of Alpha Halo remained not only functional, but could sustain livable gravity and atmosphere

Halo rings are exceptionally resilient machines

[strange pumice]

Yeah, I heard about that
And it's under UNSC and SoS strict control

Like no one should land on there

[modest marsh]

Well no it was finally destroyed via nuke lol

[strange pumice]

Lol

[modest marsh]

(UNSC nukes are just unreasonably powerful for no good reason)

https://www.halopedia.org/images/5/5e/HaloLatticework.jpg?99883

[strange pumice]

I'm personally wanting to see fully functional (without firing of course) and repaired Zeta Halo

[modest marsh]

Anyways, the interior network of the rings apparently looks something like this

Obviously Infinite somewhat retcons how the rings work a bit as both a level design and gameplay compromise but the principle remains

There’s a large complex system of structures underneath the surface which contains a number of internal maintenance tunnels and subsystems

[strange pumice]

Iirc, it's even possible to throw away part of the ring into the space

[modest marsh]

Yeah that’s what I was referring to here

[strange pumice]

This is way more interesting

[modest marsh]

Though there’s a distinction between ejecting the contents of the surface of the ring vs ejecting a section of the ring itself

What happens in HW2 is the case of the former

[strange pumice]

So, in summary...
Even if part of the ring is destroyed, that part is still functional despite colossal damage, which is crazy

[modest marsh]

Well think of it this way: the ring is less one big machine and more like millions of machines independently working together

Those machines don’t just stop working just because you separated them

Tbc though, we know that the ring needs to be fully functional to successfully fire

As of right now, Zeta Halo isn’t viably capable of firing its sterilization pulse

[strange pumice]

I guess, to that time, Banished or Endless will be destroyed and UNSC will look over Zeta Halo

Personally, I want to see a fully repaired Silent Auditorium

Through the game, it will have 3 different stages
Not repaired(arriving at Halo), semi functional(I suppose), when Reformation started and after ending the game(almost functional)

[inland haven]

Lore 👍🦎

[red plinth]

I think my favorite thing about Spartan armor is the shields. If I recall correctly, the chief said shielding could be adjusted in terms of its power whenever the individual Spartan felt like it. He said that on max power it felt like he would slide across the floor because of the shielding on the bottom of his boots pushing against the ground. It’s pretty interesting to think about how the spartans choose to adjust its strength, and where

[wispy pewter]

My least favourite thing about it's that it cant shoot out laser beams

[warm ridge]

Afaik, the implication is the infection form wrapped around his neck, but Regret prevented it from getting to his spine / infecting him 100%.

Would've still been infected by this point regardless due to the scratches that'd come from this, but when Chief forcefully pulled the infection form off, it basically snapped the dudes neck. He could've still very much been alive though, just completely paralyzed.

For Regret, Chief basically smashed the dudes head in. He was 100% dead. Obviously you don't see this in gameplay, but it's basically what happened.

[warm ridge]

The Flood can resurrect the dead, it's not a issue for them at all. It does not require the host to still be alive, although it's preferable because the brain's memories are mostly intact when they're alive.

[minor sky]

Except Regret is very much speaking with head intact in the next scene

[warm ridge]

Yes, due to the Gravemind likely putting the guys head back together for that scene. It was clearly important enough for him to do this.

his whole body in general is mangled as hell in that scene to btw

[minor sky]

Eh. I don't buy it. I agree with EternalCanadian's take of Gameplay not being lore accurate

[warm ridge]

His brain at least being damaged would explain Regret's small stutter after being flood infected though.

Which did not exist before the flood infection.

[minor sky]

I can buy him having brain damage

Mercy probably had the least terrible fate of the three

[warm ridge]

Also, depending on which version you take as the more "canon" version -

• in H2A, his left arm is straight up missing. Chest looks completely caved in, you can actually see what appear to be "bones" protruding outwards, like his rib cage. What I believe could the the legs are twisted completely sideways. His skin also changed color to a light green, almost

• in H2C, it's honestly hard to tell where the dudes legs even are. His chest seems weirdly far, but I believe that's just the Flood tentacle itself. I believe the thing protruding at the very bottom could be his left arm (it just looks like a hand rather then a foot). The dudes skin is a weird mix of black, a light blue/green color (more on the blue side), and black everywhere else.

@minor sky a nice detail I like that they added with H2A's cut scenes is it shows Regret "waking up" almost, like he was asleep. If you pause the cut scene, when the Gravemind is moving the tentacle up his entire neck is LONG. Super long.

[obsidian thistle]

I find it horrific that not even death stops the flood taking you

If they infect your corpse. You are brought back

But into a sea of voices

Yeuch the thought scares me when I think about it

[warm ridge]

Think it largely depends just how damaged / how far decayed your body is after death though.
Like even after 5 minutes your brain is already tearing itself apart, and after 10 there really isn't much there to recover anymore.
Kinda just turns itself into mush.

Unless the Flood has the ability to regenerate memories and such like that, you shouldn't have much to worry about as long as the Flood doesn't find your body within that time frame.

It will absolutely reanimate your corpse though which could be another thing to be worried about. Voice & all.

[prime mauve]

This. To kill Regret by punching him we have to go into a crowd of Honor Guards and evade his throne's energy beams to kill the Prophet. Putting a few rounds into Regret's center mass from a distance just seems more practical for the Chief to do, and wouldn't completely destroy the head.

But also it would be pretty in character for the Gravemind to rebuild a corpse a little just to rattle someone

[carmine sleet]

Well, the reason why we have to punch Regret in the gameplay is due to him having shields protecting him from ranged attacks

[obsidian thistle]

LASO suuucked lol

I spent hours trying to beat him. Only to learn I had to use grenades

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah, but even in melee John would probably just stab him.

[carmine sleet]

You make a fair point (Though this is assuming Chief was carrying a knife in Halo 2, which he should be)

[prime mauve]

Maybe he just would use a Viltrumite knife hand attack

[modest marsh]

He’s done that

The Spartan inched forward in uncanny silence, carefully gauging the distance between himself and the Jackal. He positioned his feet on the tunnel floor, assessing his footing and evaluating the strength of the concrete beneath him. He was less than seven meters from the alien when its head snapped to the side with a start, inhaling sharply. John sailed forward—covering the distance in two strides, his left arm a blur shooting forward, index and middle fingers outstretched together to form a spike. The Spartan’s gauntleted hand passed effortlessly through the Jackal’s skull just behind its left eye. John backpedaled, retreating into the darkness of the drainage tunnel—the grisly remains of his quarry dangling limply from his forearm, leaving a streak of brilliant purple blood in their wake.

This is that one jackal that has his back to you when you exit the tunnel on Metropolis

[prime mauve]

Excellent work

[main night]

So long story short im doing a personal project for an halo rp game a year before the covenant appearance
Im not too much of an expert of that part of the lore so I was just trying to understand the main factions and generally how life was during the insurrection and where I could also find more info on that if there are

[stoic hamlet]

Contact Harvest, Dirt, the 2022 Encyclopedia, and Forward Unto Dawn (and sort of The Fall of Reach, but only the opening sections), are your best bets.

[prime mauve]

"The Impossible Life and Possible Death of Preston Cole" short story could also help for that Insurrection era lore and vibes

Halsey's journal may have a thing or two to offer too

[atomic stump]

Can I just hop into Legacy of Onyx after finishing Kilo-5?

[vagrant ocean]

Mainly the news clipping the on the Haven Arcology bombing. And the Carver Findings.

[prime mauve]

It is a pretty standalone novel as far as the human side of the plot goes, more of a sequel to Lessons Learned from Halo Fractures if anything (it shows how Tom and Lucy get there), but for the alien side of the plot yeah you can jump right in.

[prime mauve]

Exactly!

[atomic stump]

thank you sir!

[prime mauve]

In fact you might appreciate the alien side more right now that you have Jul's story fresher in mind

[dusty ferry]

What do you guys think that Mirage IIC having lower augmentation requirements actually means?

like, does the UNSC have less serious augments than S-IV's baseline?

like, we're sort of aware that they have stuff "better" (arguably a side grade for better compatibility) than that from Halo 5's Hellcat description

like, Venezia has Janissaries and whatnot which are worse to my knowledge, but does the UNSC have that too?

or is most of Mirage IIC's equipment theoretically usable by a normal person?

[tropic forge]

Yep, there have been several references to the UNSC having other augmented human programs. The problem is none of them have ever really had the spotlight so the only material out there are things like the JAVELIN project which has two mentions in all of the Halo canon.

There are also things like the Infinite description for the AKIS-II GRD helmet which reads:

The AKIS II-GRD was built for superhuman stalkers, killers, and assassins. After some detuning and removal of still-classified subsystems it serves the needs of Spartans as well.

[dusty ferry]

True, It's just that those references are always vaguely used to refer to spartans or up. Javelin originally is referenced when Halsey sees noble team in obvious Mjolnir armor

She could be wrong about Javelin's successfulness I guess, but that feels weird

[vagrant ocean]

El pozole

[somber idol]

How do marines aim with a assault rifle ?

Cause there is no sight right ?

[wispy pewter]

HUD

[unique rune]

the Halo 5 version of the MA5D has flip-up iron sights on its model but they’re never shown actually flipped up

with other versions of the MA5 I’d imagine the assumption is supposed to be that they’re using some kind of helmet-integrated optics linked to the gun to help with their aim

it’s possible that other MA-series models canonically also have built-in iron sights like the H5 MA5D that for whatever reason aren’t depicted

[somber idol]

What about the marines without hud ?

In H3 they have one?

I just remember some marines with a simple helmet

[unique rune]

yeah some of them don’t have helmets with any (apparent) sort of built-in optics system and I think it’s just one of those style things you aren’t supposed to think too hard about

[somber idol]

I see, i just saw a mod or something where someone was playing as marines so i was then wondering how it would work

[carmine sleet]

The flip-up iron sights not being on the ARs seen in the earlier games I can forgive for things like the hardware limitations of the time, but I do think it's odd that for Infinite's AR, they don't have the flip-up sights represented in any of the cosmetics

[unique rune]

I think it could also be that the standard use of neural interfaces could be used to say that maybe the gun links to the interface and allows the user to “see” where it’s aiming that way

but that’s entirely conjecture and I don’t believe anything we know about the usual UNSC neural implant/lace/interface explicitly supports that

[orchid kettle]

I always kinda felt like Halo might as well steal from the FN 2000 and make it so that the ammo counter can swap to a smartlink camera feed and the user can "see" through the barrel shroud that way

It'd be a funky looking scope but the SRS scope has also been a little LCD screen in most of the games

Realistically you'd still want pop up sights as an option just to be even more safe

[stoic hamlet]

They don’t have the sights, but you can see a rail system underneath the cowling.

But yeah I agree with Benson. It would look cool, at any rate.

[carmine sleet]

Fair, I forget about the rails under the cowling

[prime mauve]

The monocles and tactical glasses Marines wear have the HUD I believe. But for when they're just wearing a hat like Johnson I imagine they could be wearing the HUD on contacts or something like that?

[modest marsh]

a lot of the more modernized redesigns of classic marine helmets put some sort of lighting element on the interior

even if it doesnt interface with the eye directly, it could be some form of holo projector that can display a simple reticle

https://youtu.be/WCPJgyofFeo&t=4m47s

its kinda hard to see but in the blur cutscenes there's this amber glow at the "temples" of the helmet

the original halo 2 marine design had what look like "flashlight cheeks" similar to the mk4-6 mjolnir helmet but those were ditched and i think that they either mistakenly or purposefully changed in the 2A redesign

its possible those were never flashlights to begin though, maybe its a recording device/optic (or both)

anyways, assuming those lights in the 2A redesign are some miniature holo projector/optical sensor, this would allow for an actual visor to be inserted into the same helmet and just use it as a physical media to display the projection with a bit more fidelity

[modest marsh]

contacts are a potential solution but im weary about how delicate they'd have to be compared to a proper piece of headgear or eyewear

the way the HUD has always been regarded as important for UNSC doctrine kinda necessitates this sort of solution, but especially with 5 giving UNSC guns mini holoprojectors I figure it would make more sense to integrate that same thing onto a helmet which at least has a stable interface with the operator's eye line

[agile holly]

How strong are Sangheili compared to Spartans? I feel like it's been said that they're relatively equal to Spartans in combat lethality but they kinda get destroyed all the time

[modest marsh]

The issue with that sort of comparison from the outset is that the Spartan-IIs were the best of the best among billions even before their augmentation and their armor provides strength and speed enhancement well beyond anything thats shown to be the case for an equivalent exoskeleton

that is to say, does it really make sense for an entire race of billions to be equal to only a few dozen people?

when those few dozen overwhelmingly have a better track record of success

Usually when a Spartan is shown to struggle against an elite in any meaningful sense it's because the elite in question was an exceptional individual with better combat skills and equipment than the majority of their species

[agile holly]

Well it's shown that some elites have overpowered Spartans in close quarters and caught them off guard, I think the main argument for Spartan superiority is their skills but Sangheili are a warrior species who are raised for war and live longer so they have more experience

[agile holly]

I see

[stoic hamlet]

We have more than a few examples where the defining trait that allows Spartans to best Sangheili is speed and reaction times.

[agile holly]

Would y'all say Spartan II's are always superior to Sangheili or do ranks like Evocati or Zealots match them or beat them in certain areas

[stoic hamlet]

If you’re able to punch someone in the face faster than they can stop you, it doesn’t matter if they’re equal or stronger than you.

Except, in this analogy, you’re not punching someone in the face, you’re breaking their arm, or stabbing them in the throat, etc.

[modest marsh]

Zealots are roughly considered peers to Spartans nominally but as typical in the games you more often than not fight over a dozen of them on unequal terms

For example, noble Six fought multiple of them at once, alone, while they had back up, multiple times during the events of Reach

[prime mauve]

I like your idea with the mini holo projector more honestly. And with how holo heavy the UNSC is it makes sense I think.

[modest marsh]

the main reason to be against it is at least before, holoprojectors were presented more as a rare novelty with most displays using more analog display methods

ie the MA5 having a CRT display

this is mostly an aesthetic issue though

[agile holly]

So Spartans are better or not

[modest marsh]

Spartans are generally much more successful against Elites than the reverse to an extent that even being a uniquely capable Elite with the best gear still favors the Spartan overwhelmingly

[agile holly]

The really tall Elite called like Watinee or whatever probably beats most Spartans though right

Just because he's so big and experienced

[modest marsh]

He had never fought a Spartan before because of his exile

[stoic hamlet]

Xytan’s a fleet master. Most of his skill should be in fleet command.

Not 1v1 combat.

[agile holly]

Does he not still have a huge advantage though

Isn't he like 10ft

[stoic hamlet]

Not inherently.

[modest marsh]

Which is to say, he probably kept his blade and marksmanship skills sharp even while serving as a fleet commander, but I would reckon his dueling prowess would be inferior to the average blademaster

[stoic hamlet]

You’re assuming a Spartan would intentionally close to melee. That’s not really something they try to do.

[agile holly]

True

[stoic hamlet]

They certain can, but they’re first and foremost trained and prefer fighting from range.

[agile holly]

Also don't Sangheili have a big disadvantage in combat due to their culture and ideals

[modest marsh]

Typically when a Spartan engages in close quarters, it’s usually on their terms in order to minimize a numerical disadvantage since the enemy is less able to leverage that in a H2H exchange

A platoon of grunts with plasma pistols can’t do much to help their elite commander if the Spartan is right on top of them

[agile holly]

Don't they dislike using medical stuff on the battlefield or something for some honor reason

[modest marsh]

It’s more complicated than that

Covenant medical technology is extremely advanced

The taboo is specifically relying on fellow elites to perform surgical procedures

They have auto surgeons on their ships to perform necessary procedures

[agile holly]

So they don't have anything against recovering themselves? I do know that prosthetics are looked down upon because of Rtas's log thing

[modest marsh]

Right, prosthetics and artificial enhancements of any kind are viewed differently

[atomic stump]

The answer is "it depends" of course but I would give the edge to Spartans since they are capable of maintaining their own equipment and Sangheili heavily relied on the Covenant (huragok, unggoy, etc.) to maintain their equipment.

[agile holly]

Huragok are so weird

[prime mauve]

Yeah, like with Rtas and the Blademaster in the Shadow of Intent.

[agile holly]

Aren't they artificial from the San'Shyuum

[prime mauve]

They are artificial from the Forerunners

[agile holly]

Mb not Rtas, I meant Jega'Rdomnai

I got them mixed up

[carmine sleet]

No, Huragok are Forerunner in origin

[agile holly]

Is the Arbiter the best elite in terms of combat

[cerulean flame]

i think that is true

[modest marsh]

there’s very different ways to measure combat prowess

[cerulean flame]

or at least not anyone better in the cannon

[agile holly]

General combat

[cerulean flame]

assuming hand to hand with energy sword combat i think?

[modest marsh]

Admittedly though arbiter’s resume is very impressive but for example there is no evidence to suggest he’s the best marksman or duelist strictly

[agile holly]

Like h2h, ranged, swordsmanship, all of that

[agile holly]

Isn't Rtas superior to him in energy sword combat

[modest marsh]

I think if they had kept the cut halo 2 cutscene where he brawls Brutes barehanded, there would be a strong argument he is easily the most accomplished brawler of the sangheili

[agile holly]

Holy moly

[cerulean flame]

always thought he was a better pilot arbiter was the better hand to hand guy

[agile holly]

Well Rtas is a swordmaster because of that -ai at the end of his name and Thel just had -ee so he wasn't a sword master. I also think Evocati preferred blades over ranged weapons because they were more sophisticated or smth

[cerulean flame]

Ok, i am clearly outmatched here

[agile holly]

He wasn't an evocati

Nvm

[modest marsh]

No

[cerulean flame]

🍃

[modest marsh]

He was a spec ops commander

[agile holly]

Yeah mb

He had the Evocati's Edge by the looks of it though

The white blade

[prime mauve]

Rtas was Vadumee

[modest marsh]

Rtas specifically being the more skilled in swordsmanship is the more evidenced conclusion because in both of his major non-game appearances, The Last Voyage of Infinite Succor and Shadow of Intent, his skill there is more visibly tested than Thel ever gets to

[prime mauve]

Not Vadumai

[agile holly]

Oh right

He did kill one of the best swordsman ever while injured though right

I wanna get more into Halo because it's the first non-nintendo game I've played and it's very interesting

[modest marsh]

Bero 'Kusovai was the subcommander yes

[carmine sleet]

Evocati's Edge (the white energy sword) wasn't a thing until they added skins for the sword in MCC Halo 3. As far as we know, Rtas was just using a bog-standard sword

[agile holly]

Do all spec-ops commanders report directly to the Prophets?

[modest marsh]

Transcribed text from the graphic novel:

Kusovai is our best in sword combat, so I had to use other means to defeat him

I achieved victory at the cost of my own life, a tactic that can only be used once, but still a valid one

Due to his superior skills he could have ended the fight in a way that did not end his life, but chose not to think so...creatively

Rtas later duels Kusovai again after he has been assimilated by the Flood, which realistically would’ve increased his lethality as an opponent significantly

Rtas wins again because of his willingness to suffer an injury in the process to secure his victory at the cost of his mandibles

[agile holly]

Interesting

So he has more combat examples with a blade than thel did

[agile holly]

Do all the novels have graphic adaptions

[unique rune]

never really specified but given that Covenant organizational structure is an inscrutable mess of bureaucracy that’s never really been explored in-depth I would wager probably not

[modest marsh]

No the graphic novel is its own anthology book

[agile holly]

I'm gonna have to look up what inscrutable and bureaucracy means ngl

[agile holly]

So they're separate things?

[modest marsh]

Correct

[agile holly]

If I were to read the novels just to gain knowledge on the series where would I start

[modest marsh]

The fall of reach

[inland haven]

Lore

[prime mauve]

X2 on The Fall of Reach. An updated omnibus version of it, The Flood and First Strike is releasing on November, which looks like it will be just excellent, but any time is great to start!

[prime mauve]

I think that Rtas Vadumee answered directly to the Prophets in Halo 2 because the fleet that he and his unit served on was Thel's and, after becoming Arbiter, we don't know exactly what happened to the fleet but the likeliest possibility is that they got absorbed into High Charity's defence forces, and that with the spec ops unit stranded like that it was easy for the Prophets to just take the unit fot their personal use

[fading flume]

If I had to throw my two cents, I could get behind Rtas being the best Sanghelli swordsman. Especially now considering Kusovai was considered the best with the blade at the time and he dueled a prelate, and I’m quite sure a Prelate was engaged in CQC with two Spartans at once, although it was hard for him.

I’d also throw in Fal, but I completely recognize how incomparable he is to the others, specially since he defeated a whole army single handedly (but it’s obvious some of those scenes were creative license)

Maybe Jega too

[modest marsh]

The mitigating factor here is that Rtas in undoubtedly skilled, his role kind of precludes specialization into blade work specifically when there are likely warriors who do nothing but train and fight with a sword if that makes sense

[prime mauve]

Yeah he just straight up doesn't have as many hours in the day to train with swords

[modest marsh]

fiction rarely aligns with reality strictly speaking in this front, and some people are just more talented than others regardless of the time you put in, but a big component of mastery in any subject whether that be a combat technique or academic discipline is lots of practice

Arbiter being a uniquely gifted fighter among fleetmasters is implicitly because he would be unusually involved in ground operations so he kept his skills sharper than many at his point of his career

which is to say, all Elites are at minimum going to be proficient in all manner of combat discipline, but those skills degrade without constant practice

[stoic hamlet]

It’s like how, to use an often mentioned thing: the Spartan II’s are said to be “masters of any weapon, geniuses, and the best of the best”… but there’s more than a few examples of Spartans admitting they’re completely out of their depth when it comes to Pelican piloting or warship operation, even though they technically know how, and a dedicated pilot, bridge officer, and etc would utterly trounce them.

Just because we see a character do really good in a certain thing, doesn’t mean they’re actually the best in that thing.

[wicked mulch]

Do any of you bookworms know if there is much pre covenant war lore

Like the insurgencies and all

[stoic hamlet]

#lore-and-universe message

Broadly answered here.

[versed helm]

fellow roblox rper by chance?

🤜 🤛

i also have a halo rp myself

follows the game(s) and the book(s) canon very strictly. awesome to see other halo rps out there, i know a lot of us do them closed community styled

i really do recomend reading the books, they're amazing. ive read 9 so far

[versed helm]

i think chief not particularly specializing in a single skill backs this up.

i'd argue most Spartan IIs are the "best of the best" because they're a jack of all trades, and a master of none. which is better than a master of one. Chief being a more generalized soldier rather than specialist is what most likely let him live for so long, plot armor and literal luck aside.

even those who seem to be specialized into one skill seem to be extremely good at other skills, again though Chief is the prime example of a Spartan II poster child stuff asides with how he outran Kelly (and also tore his achiles heel in the fall of reach book)

Blue teams a really good example overall.