lore-and-universe

[versed helm]

man that was all worded terribly, apologies

[stoic hamlet]

Blue Team is an interesting example because it heavily depends on what you’re referring to in that there are two types.

The early lore, Nylund era and later, 343 era.

The Nylund idea was that there were no static teams or designations, and members came and went as needed, shifting between Blue (Team 1), Red (Team 2), and Green (Team 3) as and when needed. Hence, Blue Team on a technicality doesn’t exist under this interpretation because it can be made up of anyone, commanded by anyone, sent to do anything.

The later interpretation, and the current one, is that it’s a static, set in stone team with designated members that never change. This does mean the team can be inherently more reliable… but it also pigeonholes it somewhat where the old system wouldn’t. They can no longer leverage the Spartan II’s best traits, their adaptability and general purpose nature,

[versed helm]

YKW this is a genuinely good point and i honestly hadnt thought about that.

i more so meant the 343 blue team originally with what i was mentioning

this is making me want to re read ghost of onyx and first strke lmao

[main night]

This guy knows ball

I’m not trying to follow the same exact lore
I want to have two types of events
One that you can’t change (covenant invasion) and others that may be changed altering the course of the war

[agile holly]

what is an updated omnibus

[prime mauve]

An omnibus is a compilation of novels or comics put together in a single book format. In this case, there have been a number of small updates here and there to better fit current lore.

[atomic stump]

First I would play through the MCC (1, 2, 3, ODST, Reach, 4) first. Some of the books won't make sense without playing through the games. Then The Fall of Reach, The Flood, Parasite's Wake, First Strike, and Ghosts of Onyx in that order.

[prime mauve]

I imagine they will probably be done with the rest before Parasite's Wake comes out

[versed helm]

so like an au? nice

[atomic stump]

I wouldn't be so sure. My local library has 2 copies of the Fall of Reach. Both copies are checked out and there are 4 people waiting in line. If each one of those people were to keep the book for the full 2 weeks, it would take me 6 weeks until I started reading the Fall of Reach. Ditto for The Flood. And future people will ask this question again and I want my comment to be up to date.

P.S. @agile holly If you don't have an xbox or PC or otherwise can't play Halo until the CE Remake comes out this year then I would avoid most Halo books as they will spoil the main games in some way. In that case, I would read Cryptum, Primordium, Silentium, Contact Harvest, and then continue in chronological order and not release order.

[prime mauve]

Fair enough, I hadn't considered the library times like that

[atomic stump]

Its fine. The later Halo books like post 2553 are always available but the Fall of Reach, Contact Harvest, and Cryptum are almost always checked out.

There is also a very tiny bottleneck around Glasslands since it kind of an introduction to the post war universe. The waiting line for First strike is 4 right now. Ghosts of onyx is 3.

[agile holly]

Oh I played and beat all halo games so I'm good, ty

[agile holly]

Is the Halopedia a good or bad place to get info for the franchise in case I want to learn a lot about specific things

[carmine sleet]

It's a fantastic place for learning more (I am a little biased due to helping out from time to time with images of armour in game)

[agile holly]

I'm very fascinated by all things Sangheili so I spent a bit of time there learning about them

[twin parcel]

Yknow what I NEVER understood? Why SPARTAN IIIs were used as expendable shock troops. They had hundreds of S-3s, if they outfitted them with MJOLNIR and had them fight alongside regular marine and army units (like NOBLE team did on Reach) they would’ve made an excellent cohesive fighting force.

The potential of Spartan-3s was so wasted.

[carmine sleet]

Mjolnir isn't cheap

[twin parcel]

The UNSC was churning out Charon class frigates like it was candy, I don’t think money was an issue by the time Alpha and Beta companies graduated.

Even then, they wouldn’t have had to give them cutting edge MK5 or MKVI armor, they could’ve used MKIV.

Or just not send them on ultimately futile suicide missions.

If they had kept S-3s as mainline combat troops instead of disposable shock troops the UNSC would’ve had hundreds of SPARTANs with augmentations on par with S-2s

Wasn’t there like 300 personnel in both Alpha and Beta companies? That’s six hundred Spartans with augmentations on par with S-2s.

[carmine sleet]

Money very much is the reason why they weren't wearing Mjolnir outside of very specific exceptions. If the UNSC could easily pump out endless amounts of Mjolnir during the war, they would've

Like, the S-III program was all about making more Spartans faster and cheaper than the S-II program. This meant they had to rethink aspects. They also weren't being deployed carelessly. They were more expendable than the IIs but they had hoped more would've survived to help train future generations of Spartans (Which we do at least see with Tom and Lucy training Gamma)

[modest marsh]

Most Spartan-IIIs in their first year of action had already been deployed on several high risk missions successfully

By any realistic standard they’d experienced more combat than most veterans ever would

They did eventually get mostly wiped out by Prometheus and Torpedo but there were extenuating circumstances that caused them to eventually die before they could extract, but their missions were carried out successfully which caused significant damage to the Covenant advance

[carmine sleet]

Indeed. It's not like they were just tossing them into a meat grinder every operation they deployed a III on

[orchid kettle]

I mean, the idea of Spartan-IIIs being sent to their death is more or less the opinion of the characters who approved it

And later we have this idea that Kurt/Deep Winter had some information on Torpedo that suggested it was likely going to be "another meat grinder like Prometheus"

What has always made sense to me is that the operations Alpha Company participated in pre-PROMETHEUS were likely their equivalent to Blue Team kidnapping Watts-- just proving that they're ready for what came next

People assume that all 300 Alpha company Spartans personally participated in every op, but there were like a dozen in the few months they were active pre-PROMETHEUS, and I think it's more reasonable that they were deployed piece meal across as many theaters as the UNSC could manage

That's the thing too-- both Alpha and Beta company being shredded within a few months of their activation doesn't really make a good case for the UNSC being mindful of III casualties

You could argue it's written like this because Nylund needed 3 companies of IIIs in 20 years, but I personally don't see what's stopping Nylund from having Beta in mid-training when Alpha gets shredded, or with Beta and Gamma

it really does just feel like Kurt's job is feeding the cats to coyotes

[orchid kettle]

And I've never personally been convinced of the counter argument that mainly amounts to just pointing at how there were options for extraction at TORPEDO

The UNSC's objective doesn't have to be total Spartan-III annihilation for Spartan-III survival to be considered a low priority

If some of the crew members from the Cradle during the Fall of Reach managed to hop on some escape pods and get away before the station got slagged by fifteen hundred plasma torpedos, the UNSC wouldn't shoot the pods down or anything

But you also can't really deny that the Cradle's sacrifice was yet another example of the UNSC spending lives, which they do pretty often in Nylund's novels

[vagrant ocean]

Tell me you don’t know the purpose of the Spartan-III program was or how truly expensive it was to make even a single suit of MJÖLNIR without telling me. Those resources and money would be better spent on frigates to pad out planetary defense fleets and escort evac vessels than on HUNDREDS of suits for a program that was designed to be cheaper than its predecessor. That’s why things like SPI were made, to create a cheaper yet adequate alternative to MJÖLNIR for these troops. Like Eon said, if they had a way to produce 300-600 suits of MJÖLNIR, you bet your sweet bippy they would. But they couldn’t. A single suit of MkIV MJÖLNIR could pay for an entire company of IIIs to be equipped with SPI.

[twin parcel]

Yeah no money is definitely an issue but it’s just crazy to me that for example Beta Company was almost wiped out to the man in Operation TORPEDO because they were “fodder.” With their genetic enhancements they could’ve been used as a Rapid Response force, 600 genetically enhanced super soldiers with bloodlust and rage for anything covenant would’ve made a better use of the S-3 class

[orchid kettle]

The idea is supposed to be that the targets they hit and successfully took out were so important to the Covenant war effort that it effectively delayed humanity's extinctions by several years

[twin parcel]

The idea was implemented horribly.

[vagrant ocean]

That wasn’t their purpose. They were designed to deliver crushing blows to major Covenant locations and stall their advance, and they did that very well.

[vagrant ocean]

If the IIIs didn’t get made, I suspect the war would’ve ended sooner and with our extinction.

[twin parcel]

Probably but I just find it to be kind of a waste of such talent

[orchid kettle]

I mean until Halo starts dabbling with "what-ifs" we're probably never going to get an objective answer on how well the IIIs actually delayed things

The big thing about the Covenant is that its not really about their ability to project force in the human sphere

its about whether or not they can find those human worlds

[twin parcel]

Six hundred genetically engineered murderhobos would’ve made an excellent rapid response force and could’ve turned the tides of land battles exponentially

[orchid kettle]

Land battles weren't ever really the issue is the thing

[twin parcel]

No it was always Navy

[vagrant ocean]

The facts disagree. Even the select few IIIs that were pulled from their companies did extensive work in delaying Covenant operations. From Headhunters engaging in sanitation efforts to having them assassinate leadership, they did their job and did it well.

[orchid kettle]

its mentioned in Fall of Reach-- Spartans always win on the ground, but what's the point if the Covenant win in space and then they can just glass your ground?

[twin parcel]

The UNSC won most land battles iirc but the UNSC was only doing damage control in space

The UNSC relied primarily on Wolfpack tactics and numbers.

[orchid kettle]

later prequel novels will of course give the Spartans a lot more to do during the war and insist that every last sacrifice mattered-- but really the idea in TFOR is that Chief and friends were really helpless to change much of anything during all those 27 years

in which case you could see CE and Alpha Halo as like, the first time Chief really made an impact

[vagrant ocean]

The UNSC already had rapid response forces, they’ve had ODSTs for nearly 400 years and they had the IIs. And as Benson said, land battles rarely made a difference.

[twin parcel]

Most of the war was literally just about trying to stem the tide and hold out for as long as possible

[orchid kettle]

its why it annoys me how in the show Chief is already famous, when it seems like the bungie games were implying Chief got big because of Alpha Halo

[twin parcel]

True, just seems to me like a gross waste of money to send em on suicide missions

[orchid kettle]

Spartans in general had a rep, of course, but Im talking John-117 specifically being propped up

[vagrant ocean]

Yes, and by using the IIIs in the way they were used did just that.

[vagrant ocean]

Find me a military suit who cares about wasting money and I’ll take you to my beachfront property in Kansas.

[orchid kettle]

I mean the missions were about stiffling the Covenant navy

which as mentioned-- is the part you gotta worry about anyway

[twin parcel]

You just talked to me about how expensive Mjolnir was.

[orchid kettle]

they aint wasting time with like, the grunt breeding planet or whatever

[vagrant ocean]

From a MATERIAL standpoint. The materials used were volatile and better used on less experimental tech to reduce things going BOOM.

Halsey herself states that due to the volatile nature of the materials many of the components to MJÖLNIR would need specialized space stations for fabrication.

Meanwhile, the UNSC had buckets of shipyards in the Inner Colonies.

[twin parcel]

Okay yeah that’s true there

[orchid kettle]

yeah but the material apparently isn't scarce, they just synthesize it in a lab

you just gotta make the liquid crystal layer or whatever in micro gravity apparently

[twin parcel]

It’s honestly kinda crazy to think about how many ships the UNSC was churning out

[vagrant ocean]

Why build a dozen specialized stations when we can use the hundreds of shipyards we have.

[vagrant ocean]

Tbf, the UNSC takes heavy inspiration from the US military, just look at how many warships the US made in WW2.

[twin parcel]

We can agree to disagree on S-3s and how they would’ve best been used it’s a subject we could go on for days about

But the UNSC was churning out frigates like they were giving out candy

[orchid kettle]

There are a bunch of "washout" IIIs, which are just the IIIs who went through all the same training but never got augmented

[vagrant ocean]

Basically never made it past selection, happens all the time in SpecOps.

[orchid kettle]

GoO only ever says that they became drill instructors for the next company, but I honestly doubt Kurt needs 200 guys for that

[twin parcel]

Spec ops is brutal

[vagrant ocean]

Maybe some of the “washed out” Alphas and Betas went to the IV program.

[orchid kettle]

Ya gotta figure that if you went through this special training anyway, you might as well just let them be normal dudes in the military

[vagrant ocean]

It’d be interesting, IVs that were trained as IIIs by a II.

[orchid kettle]

Like the way Kurt words it, there's only 300 slots, not necessarily that only 300 are worthy

[twin parcel]

I can imagine they’d be particularly effective

[twin parcel]

What was the failure rate for the chemicals augs used for the IIIs? Do we know?

[orchid kettle]

Though its a bit of an inconsistency with Beta's situation, considering Ackerson was crying about not having 1,000 candidates like he wanted

[vagrant ocean]

I’m sure all the selected were “worthy”, it’s just that the 300+ that got augmented were the crème.

[orchid kettle]

but then he didnt let all the candidates get augmented to make up for it

[orchid kettle]

Basically zero as far as we can tell

[twin parcel]

So much like the augs on the IVs

Just not able to be applied on adult troops up until the IVs

[vagrant ocean]

I wouldn’t say that it’s zero, just that we don’t know about any severe side effects like those from the first two Spartan generations.

[orchid kettle]

Im guessing Nylund figured that if all 300 were gonna die anyway, why even bother writing in the idea that some of them also didnt survive the augs

Like in the story of the IIs, the washouts dying is this big emotional thing for Chief that makes him ask Mendez what the point of "this mission" even was

[vagrant ocean]

And what he could’ve done differently to improve their odds.

[twin parcel]

Yeah. The IIIs haven’t been exactly the focus of a lot, yknow, considering most of em are dead.

[orchid kettle]

and Kurt gets like that when he has to think about all his kids dying

so it would have been a bit narratively repetitive if you had Kurt be sad about the washouts dying, and then also sad about the kids dying from the mission

[vagrant ocean]

A hat on a hat.

[orchid kettle]

in-universe-- you kinda just gotta figure aug technology got really good

[vagrant ocean]

We do know that there have been instances of eye damage as a result of IV augmentation, necessitating a VISR platform for it.

[orchid kettle]

Halsey does say that the IIs were being augmented way too soon and she wanted to wait-- but the UNSC could tell something was going on with Harvest so they wanted supersoldiers ASAP

[twin parcel]

Dad Kurt always makes me feel depressed istg

[vagrant ocean]

A lot can be learned from a bucket of dead kids and twisted mutants.

[twin parcel]

Man had to deal with the effect of the kids he trained and saw grow up get absolutely annihilated poor Kurt

[twin parcel]

I feel like chemically enhancing the human body would at the very least cause side effects like this on a not uncommon basis.

[vagrant ocean]

Again, we have no KNOWN severe reactions to the ORCHID suite of augmentations. They are known to be unstable and require regular maintenance to ensure nothing goes horribly wrong. It is also unknown how these will affect the Spartans when they enter civilian life, as the vast majority of their augments are irreversible. The ASTER suite of augments used on the IIs were semi-reversible, with Serin-019 and Ralph-103 washing out due to their body rejecting the augments but surviving without too much damage. Ralph-103 was able to enlist in the UNSCDF Marines, causing him to exist in a space between fully augmented Spartans and standard humans. Randall Aiken (Candidate number 037) underwent the excruciating process of having his augments suppressed in 2546 in exchange for his freedom, as a result he was significantly smaller than his brothers and sisters and was left scarred.

[versed helm]

This is random, but what im currently doing is the battle of tribute in Casbah City, specifically the unnamed Spartan III team that never got off the planet

The players dont know they wont be getting off the planet either, im keeping it a secret

[tropic forge]

I would point out the ORCHID augmentations have killed at least one person. Leonidas was created from the brain of somebody who died during the augmentation procedure.

[vagrant ocean]

I stand corrected, we have ONE severe case as a result of ORCHID.

[whole timber]

Even though the Orion Soldiers program failed, was Johnson a failed survivor or did he reach the augmentation goal the UNSC had for the Orion Soldiers?

[stoic hamlet]

As far as we know no ORION’s died due to augmentations in surgery. The issues came later.

[whole timber]

Oooooh, okay that explains it, but did the augmentation give them the level of strength and stats the UNSC was hoping for or they didn't reach the level of stats that was intended?

[stoic hamlet]

It’s not clear.

ORION originally wasn’t a UNSC program, it was a CMA endeavour done behind the UEG’s back.

The idea was to augment soldiers to better be able to handle the rigours of colonial wars, rather than to make out and out super soldiers.

It’s one of those things that probably should come up more, but doesn’t.

But then, having Master Chief struggle on a low gravity world kind of ruins the power fantasy, and Halo has steadily moved away from acknowledging differences in gravity and the like.

(Much to my sadness)

[vagrant ocean]

That is both unknown and classified.

[whole timber]

Thank you.

[whole timber]

Gotcha.

[vagrant ocean]

I think HS locking 95% of the information about ORION behind the doors of it being classified or lost isn’t a terrible idea, but I do hope more info is gleaned from it, same with JAVELIN.

[stoic hamlet]

I wouldn’t be surprised if the UNSC’s prodigious use of combat stimulants and drugs came about because of ORION, either intentionally or in a roundabout way.

[vagrant ocean]

Prolly in a “Ok, so a TON of people got mutilated by this program and the 300 survivors we have are all mentally unstable or riddled with PTSD, so how do we actually make it look like we did something?”

“We make these augments snortable?”

“Promote that man.”

Way

[stoic hamlet]

Pretty much.

[vagrant ocean]

Imagine doing a line of rumble drugs.

It’d be crazy.

[minor sky]

I imagine it'd be like watching Samson in 28 Years Later

[half pike]

Why are h4-h5 elites brown

[modest marsh]

They come in multiple colors

[twin parcel]

We also know of Maria iirc

[vagrant ocean]

Her augments were not curtailed.

As she was responsible for testing Mk VI.

[twin parcel]

You mean they just…let her retire?

And start a family?

With a regular dude she met?

[vagrant ocean]

Retired from active service, she is still in the reserves.

[modest marsh]

We don’t know any of the specifics

[vagrant ocean]

We have no specifics on her personal life beyond her retirement from active duty post-Reach and her desire to have kids.

[modest marsh]

Recently we learned she was recalled for Redflag and fought on Reach before returning to earth and going back to the reserves

We don’t know the timing on when she retired from active duty

[twin parcel]

Ah myf I thought she was married

[modest marsh]

I mean, she could be

We don’t know

[vagrant ocean]

I do know that if she does have a kid, it’ll be under close surveillance by Naval Intelligence.

[twin parcel]

It’s a pretty common headcanon amongst the fandom iirc

[vagrant ocean]

The only Spartan-II confirmed to be married is Randall-037.

And he’s a widow.

[modest marsh]

The precedent set by the Vale’s is pretty compelling at least

[twin parcel]

I’m still amazed that a SPARTAN II managed to stop being so emotionally constipated that they had a wife.

[vagrant ocean]

That’s true, she was the child of a candidate, albeit one that escaped capture. Could explain her performance as a Spartan to an extent.

[vagrant ocean]

He went AWOL in 2532, and had a decade to work on it.

[twin parcel]

Makes sense, good on him for getting a life outside the program.

[modest marsh]

Ngl dude there’s plenty of sociopaths who get married and I’d place any Spartan above them in terms of marriage material

[twin parcel]

My favorite specific “washout” is Soren-066

[twin parcel]

They’re 7 foot super soldiers with perfect genes, by marrying one and this could be taken as eugenics, you’re guaranteeing your bloodline to be amazing.

[vagrant ocean]

Sadly his wife died in childbirth and his daughter was killed in a terror attack on Sedra. As a result, it is unknown if any of the gene therapy as part of ASTER transferred over to Natalie Aiken as a result of her father’s augmentation.

[vagrant ocean]

At the time Randall was married, the Spartan program was still classified.

[twin parcel]

Oh for sure but I’m just saying that there’s a lot worse marriage options

[modest marsh]

That’s a very interesting takeaway

[twin parcel]

I’d take a SPARTAN over Sidney Sweeney any day.

[vagrant ocean]

People forget that the Spartans were unveiled to the public 6 years before the war ended.

[modest marsh]

I was only remarking on the character of Spartans, their “perfect genes” have little to do with what makes them suitable partners

[vagrant ocean]

Not a high bar.

[twin parcel]

LMFAOOO

[vagrant ocean]

Someone could be physically or genetically perfect, but if they’re an awful person or an idiot I have ZERO interest.

[twin parcel]

No but it is a factor in childbirth, you want your kid to inherit good genes to lessen the chances of inheritable illnesses

And personally I date to marry and marry to start a family

[modest marsh]

But that’s not the criteria Spartans were selected for

[twin parcel]

No I’m just throwing it out there due to your comment on how there’s worse options

[vagrant ocean]

The criteria was genetic compatibility with ASTER to reduce rejection.

[twin parcel]

You think any of the chemical augs would be absorbed in utero and create a super baby?

[modest marsh]

Again I meant specifically their character/personality which I think gets unfairly maligned due to misconceptions about their socially stunted upbringing

[twin parcel]

A lot of the novels show the exact opposite

[unique rune]

pretty sure any non-surgical augmentations would be more likely to cause birth defects in a child if anything

[twin parcel]

Wait forgot I can’t swear here

SPARTANS defo got a few screws loose but I think most of Humanity would after survive a thirty year war of extinction against their race.

[vagrant ocean]

Unknown, as I said, due to Natalie Aiken’s death at the age of 11 and the lack of potential documentation on her from Naval Intelligence I cannot conclusively confirm nor deny any potential inheritance in a way similar to the children of ORION candidates.

[twin parcel]

It’d be a neat thing to write about in a novel or short story

Maybe the kid of a IV or something

[vagrant ocean]

I have a feeling if a IV has kids they were born prior to recruitment.

Given the average age.

[modest marsh]

Musculoskeletal alterations might cause complications for a child gestated from a Spartan’s womb although I imagine there are workarounds

[twin parcel]

But I wouldn’t be surprised if Spartan IVs already had kids unknowingly, if you’ve ever been near a Military Base you’ll know what I mean.

[vagrant ocean]

Wouldn’t be shocked if Halsey had a contingency for it.

[twin parcel]

Halsey seemingly has a contingency for 99% of things, she probably has plans in case zombies happened and necromancers raised the dead.

[vagrant ocean]

Well, augmented IVs don’t have a ton of downtime out of armor, thus most likely reducing the odds of illegitimate children.

[modest marsh]

Halsey implies Kelly and Linda could have natural pregnancy in Glasslands provided they weren’t menopausal but that was a desperate situation in which they were potentially the only humans left alive

[twin parcel]

IVs are still former ODSTs and if you’ve ever been in the service you’ll know how bad soldiers are when it comes to unplanned pregnancies.

Marines would be more likely but I wouldn’t put it past a IV

[vagrant ocean]

Basically Lífs of a new world. (Líf is the only human woman to survive Ragnarök)

[modest marsh]

Okay I feel like things are a bit different in the 26th century

The quality and access to healthcare is very different from today

[vagrant ocean]

IVs are also almost always in armor and on the job, they don’t have time for that. They need an entire mechanism to remove the plating, lord knows what it takes to remove the tech suit.

[modest marsh]

There probably isnt as much cultural stigma around forms of birthcontrol and their effectiveness is also probably better

[twin parcel]

IVs also probably get shore leave just like every other ground pounder

[vagrant ocean]

Especially after the issue of overpopulation that was occurring on Earth prior to Solar colonialism.

[modest marsh]

They’re cathetered, so yeah, no funny business in the field

[vagrant ocean]

Yes, but they’re also Spartans and are probably injected with forms of birth control to prevent such mishaps. The UNSC has contingencies for everything.

[twin parcel]

Wouldn’t be surprised

the UNSC is a pretty well oiled machine

[wispy pewter]

Maybe they just get discharged if preggo

[twin parcel]

They probably get extended leave like many modern militaries would do after they allowed women into combat arms

[modest marsh]

The infinity briefing packet mentions something on this, all fraternization has to be documented and reported to a superior officer under penalty of court martial iirc

[vagrant ocean]

Discharge? Unlikely, most likely put in an ONI black site for monitoring of the pregnancy and the larva.

[wispy pewter]

Spartan augmentations don’t transfer to children lol

[modest marsh]

Romeo got into some trouble over this but his usefulness as a sniper outweighed the need to punish him for it

[twin parcel]

We don’t have proof they do anyways atleast.

[wispy pewter]

Aren’t Buck and what’s her name literally married

[twin parcel]

Dare? Yeah

[vagrant ocean]

Not true. We have several children of ORION candidates that show that some do transfer. Also, all four generations of Spartans underwent EXTENSIVE gene therapy which will have an impact on their children, because that’s how genes work.

[modest marsh]

Yeah, but she’s also an ONI captain

[vagrant ocean]

As of 2558.

[vagrant ocean]

The trouble was during his time as a jumper.

[modest marsh]

I know, speaking towards the protocol for the UNSC in general

[worn wolf]

i hereby sentence you to death

you now work for the UNSC home fleet.

[twin parcel]

I’m still annoyed the Rookie got domed offscreen and in a short story of all things

[wispy pewter]

A Retired Spartan had one kid iirc, no stated issues

[vagrant ocean]

That’s because we have no documentation on it, and the child didn’t live very long. A lack of information isn’t evidence of something not happening.

Meanwhile all of the ORION children we know of made it to adulthood.

Albeit only due to injections to prevent abnormal growth due to the highly volatile nature of the IRIS suite of augmentations.

[wispy pewter]

I thought it was mentioned Maria had a kid, did not die no other info

[vagrant ocean]

No, Candidate-062 only expressed a desire as of 2552 to have children, but that was the last we saw of her.

Her whereabouts after the Battle of Earth are unknown.

[tropic forge]

No, she's confirmed to have a spouse and a child.

Or at least she's "a wife and mother"

[vagrant ocean]

No she isn’t. That’s a headcanon. Provide a source. Right now.

[wispy pewter]

And gene therapy isn’t gene modification

[tropic forge]

It's the OG Encyclopedia.

“A wife and mother, Maria is an anomaly--a Spartan that has been able to live an essentially normal human life.”

[vagrant ocean]

Page number.

Because I have the 2009 encyclopedia.

[modest marsh]

https://archive.org/details/haloencyclopedia0000unse_d9d3/page/112/mode/1up?q=Maria

112

Oh wait this is the 2011 version

Well either way it has that quote

[tropic forge]

108 in the original 112 in the newer one.

Really, though you could probaby just check the glossary for Maria she doesn't have all that much in the book.

[vagrant ocean]

Like has been said both here and in the Wiki server, the encyclopedia gets things wrong many times.

[modest marsh]

Yeah but this is like, the only real mention of Maria anywhere besides the graphic novel itself and a blogpost last year

Not a lot to get incorrect

[vagrant ocean]

Until a more definitive statement is made, i will not rely on an outdated document. Just how it is.

[modest marsh]

I’m open to the idea this was printed in error but there’s exactly equal evidence that it remains the intended interpretation of the character

[tropic forge]

Even taking that into consideration the OG Encyclopedia touches on potentially the most material of any of the guidebooks--not really any reason to discard it without something to indicate otherwise.

[vagrant ocean]

Again, a first edition text does not trump the third edition, so until a definitive statement is made, I will follow the third edition.

[tropic forge]

I am curious to see if they are going to discard it given Maria being on Reach. They'd have to do something like have her be called back to service for RED FLAG.

[vagrant ocean]

The 2022 revision doesn’t touch on as much because it has to touch on 21 years of content.

[tropic forge]

Third edition...Oh.

They're different books, not a third edition.

And there's nothing in the 2022 Encyclopedia that contradicts this, is there?

[vagrant ocean]

Also nothing that mentions it.

[vagrant ocean]

It’s literally the second revision of the encyclopedia.

Yes it’s new, but it’s the definitive document now.

[tropic forge]

A Halo Encyclopedia, not a third edition if the 2009 Encyclopedia.

Not a revision of that Encyclopedia either.

[vagrant ocean]

I mean, she was recalled as she was a member of Beta-Red.

[vagrant ocean]

Ok we’ve devolved into semantics. Anyways, until it’s actually confirmed, I will not agree to the concept that 062 had a kid by the time of Armor Testing.

[tropic forge]

We don't know she was recalled, specifically. She might've never left the service before then but that does make the timeline of her kid and spouse awkward.

[modest marsh]

To be clear, the 2022 encyclopedia retains errors from the 09 encyclopedia in some cases while also introducing new ones

[vagrant ocean]

So it continues the tradition.

[modest marsh]

It’s undeniably the more definitive text and is largely authoritative but it shares lineage with the older encyclopedia

[vagrant ocean]

Which is why I lean more towards her escaping Reach and THEN entering the reserves.

Maybe with ONI allowing it as some sick experiment.

[modest marsh]

Some of these “mistakes” also ended up being codified as canon for that matter like the URF being an official name for a faction and not an informal community name

[tropic forge]

I prefer it as something she opted for herself-we've know that Spartan-IIs have some legal recourse to leave military service and I like the idea that one of them beat the indoctrination and wanted more out of life.

[vagrant ocean]

We also know that ONI won’t let an investment get away without some assurances, which is why they suppressed Randall’s augments in 2546 and let him be a papa. She was in full service by 2552, so clearly she was very much still in fighting condition, and it’d be better to have a Spartan in reserve on Earth to not only test new generations of MJÖLNIR but also to be called into unleash some shock and awe. From a military standpoint it makes sense.

[tropic forge]

It might be a fun bit of retroactive canon that she got a better deal because of how badly Randall was bungled.

[modest marsh]

Randall is also an interesting case because he was the one that tried to arrest Soren during his escape

[vagrant ocean]

And felt awful for failing, despite literally having done everything he could have.

[vagrant ocean]

Exactly, a great deal is “We won’t subject you to horrific surgeries and allow you to leave active service in exchange for being a reservist on Earth.”

I’d make that deal.

How bout you @modest marsh ?

Would you make that deal?

[modest marsh]

I mean tbh I think Maria would’ve been the one to make that decision herself in the first place

I don’t think they’d need to negotiate her to willing stay in the reserves, that sounds like something she would’ve done anyways without it being a bargaining chip in exchange for freedom

[vagrant ocean]

Damn, you didn’t do the thing.

[twin parcel]

Damn good deal

[obsidian thistle]

That... was more "how Halopedia used to do section headers" issue

If we hypothetically go by the idea the issue never happened.

Before 2009
==Unified Rebel Front==
After 2009
==Unified rebel front==

The Encyclopedia writer used the caps and assumed it was a thing

There is a buncha issues like that in the 2009/11 Encyclopedias

Least be said

Halopedia is in a WAY better place than it was in 2008/9 lol

[stoic hamlet]

Considering you guys are helping with the omnibus, you had the chance to do the funniest thing (again)

[digital basin]

Bet

[orchid kettle]

Sadly I think even besides the URF thing, Contact Harvest already kinda promotes Watts from the "Some Guy Who Lost Decades Ago" he was in TFOR, to the Innie leader

[obsidian thistle]

Pfffft

[deft marlin]

Just finished Halo divine wind and man

they freaking ruined my boy

[prime mauve]

Who's your boy?

[obsidian thistle]

I assume Mark

(Can only be Mark)

[prime mauve]

I don't know, I wouldn't say he was ruined even though he was killed

[stoic hamlet]

I’d say Ash and Olivia were the ones ruined.

What a shame how Denning wrote them.

I know we harp on Traviss, but Denning really just twisted Saber to fit his own stories, just the same. It just wasn’t malicious, and most people haven’t read Ghosts of Onyx, so they don’t notice or care, but it’s rather blatant hypocrisy every time it comes up, IMO.

[obsidian thistle]

I viewed ruined as in "his fate". Less so how they were treated as characters

[prime mauve]

How did their characterization change?

[wicked mulch]

Hey guys, saw someone said regret found earth and other human colonies from a luminary on meridian but I’m kinda curious as to what kicked off the human covenant war. In reach noble team already knows about the covenant before first contact and I’m aware that the winter contingency is the protocol for initial covenant contact. How did we know about them before they knew about us?

[unique rune]

Reach was basically the beginning of the end of the war

it had been going on for almost 30 years by that point

[wicked mulch]

Ohhhhh okay

I kinda know about harvest, just slipped my mind when I asked

[unique rune]

Yeah, first contact was at Harvest in 2525

[wicked mulch]

But I still don’t understand why winter contingency was only called on reach (as far as I know) if it’s supposed to be protocol for first contact of covenant on a human colony

Is it colony specific?

[unique rune]

presumably it would have been declared for other colonies but I don’t believe official media has ever really gone into that level of detail aside from Reach

[wicked mulch]

Right

Initially I thought maybe we knew about the covenant from human colonies that aren’t apart of the unsc considering the insurgents and all but I suppose that wouldn’t make sense since the unsc fought on harvest

And idk if the unsc governs all of humanity or just a select few colonies

[unique rune]

technically the UEG has jurisdiction over human-held space and the UNSC just took over for wartime reasons
but to my understanding they're nominally in charge of all human territory even if some colonies aren't big fans of them and have rebelled to varying degrees of success

human colonies in particular fall under the Colonial Administration Authority as part of the UEG but their powers are apparently rather limited

[stoic hamlet]

To add, and give a real life example, if the Covenant War was World War 1, Reach would be summer, 1918. The mid way through the 100 days offensives.

[obsidian thistle]

Oh I know this is going off topic. But hey fun fact that Halo: Silentium was the media to name the symbol that appeared everywhere on Forerunner stuff the "eld".

Kept bugging me we didnt cite that on the wiki! (String 10 if yer curious)

[stoic hamlet]

Ghosts of Onyx presents Mark as the isolated, outwardly uncaring, cool headed member of the team and their sharpshooter, not their scout. Olivia is quiet and best at stealth and scouting, and Ash is the leader who greatly cares for his teammates, one in particular being Holly, who it’s (very loosely) implied he might have had a crush on, though it could also just be a sort of brother-sister dynamic.

Denning makes it so Mark is the most outspoken about teamwork and in all instances where it matters, Mark is made team leader in Veta’s absence with Mark being essentially given Ash’s personality. He’s also made the team’s scout, while Olivia’s shifted to being a hacker and has a much more outspoken, confrontational personality. Ash meanwhile basically loses all his character traits, and, most egregiously, when Mark is killed, and we have his POV, he doesn’t think about Holly and Dante (the two teammates he lost on Onyx) at all, they never come up despite, again, Ash being the leader at the time and thus thinking their deaths were his responsibility reacted the most outwardly to them, yet in Divine Wind, with his team now down to two from five, he acts like they never existed.

Denning also changed other, smaller things, like, in Last Light, he changed Olivia’s nickname from ‘O’ to ‘Livi’, for no discernible reason. Oddly enough, Traviss actually acknowledged Holly, Dante, and Olivia’s original nickname in Kilo-5, and kept Saber’s personalities much more in line with how they should have been from Ghosts of Onyx.

What this means is Saber doesn’t feel like Saber. They have their names, but not their personalities or histories.

[prime mauve]

Okay yeah they definitely changed and I hadn't noticed that

And it's a very big shift to have the change just months after they were seen close to their Ghosts of Onyx characterization

If the change happened after a big timeskip it could make more sense but now I will never unsee it in a reread

If only I could share the reaction image I made of Joseph Joestar saying "I will never forgive Troy Denning" lol

(I also made some for Karen Traviss, Haruspis and the 2022 Encyclopedia lmao)

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah. Like, I wouldn’t mind the characters (as much) in Divine Wind, if we hadn’t seen the “Early years” with Veta where the changes are already in place., and etc,

But completely ignoring Holly and Dante is still inexcusable, IMO.

It’d be like Chief forgetting Sam.

[prime mauve]

"Man, I have lost so many friends along the years. Sam? Never heard of him."

[prime mauve]

Exactly, it would make sense for them to become more sociable and talkative but losing their former speciality without much explanation and forgetting teammates is uncool.

[agile holly]

Who is Sam

[prime mauve]

John's best friend in their training years. A big and reliable Spartan, brave as hell. He was the first one to die, sacrificing his life to take out a Covenant ship and to let the team escape.

[agile holly]

Wasn't Fred supposedly better than John

[stoic hamlet]

John thinks this, but there’s nothing inherently to imply this.

It’s possible, though, as Halsey’ favouritism might have caused a sort of feedback loop.

[obsidian thistle]

Is interesting I wont lie to reflect on

[agile holly]

What is the main ranking structure for Sangheili in the covenant? What do you get promoted to in what order and how

The halopedia list lwk confuses me

[obsidian thistle]

There is... well no standards

It depends on the fleet they are on

Which probably isnt the answer yer hoping for

[abstract nebula]

It's also about their achievements in battle, and all those things. As CIA391 said, it can vary depending on the fleet. Sorta like how different military branches are in how they rank and such.

[agile holly]

What about like the main military thing

Like Minor -> Major

[robust frigate]

Did the UNSC Infinity have its 10 Strident/Anlace Frigates in its docking bays at Zeta Halo?

[stoic hamlet]

We don’t know.

We know they were involved in Operation WOLFE at Reach, and there’s a theory that one of the crashed Frigates in Edge of Dawn was a Strident, but it’s unconfirmed.

[robust frigate]

It wouldn’t make sense for them to not be there, we know there were 6 Mulsanne class frigates as the advance group, so I’ll just say they’re present for my wargame scenario

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah, but other things happened between WOLFE and Zeta.

During WOLFE they had a full 18,000 complement, at Zeta they were down to just over 7,000. Clearly something changed.

[robust frigate]

Something definitely changed, I think the Stridents need 190 sailors to fully man the ship, 1,900 sailors in total, removing a lot of the crew would definitely cause the frigates to be on a skeleton crew, still possible but it’s a slight stretch

[crimson grove]

Hey dudes can somebody explain how the promordials went from space cocaine and became the endless in the books and why the forerunners fear then so much ?

[stoic hamlet]

Precursors are not the Endiess. They’re akin to the Eldar and Orks from Warhammer 40K, or, in a halo sense, the Engineers to the Forerunners.

They’re a made species, not the same species.

[crimson grove]

Ohh, still why do the forerunners fear then so much ?

[stoic hamlet]

They don’t fear them. They’re fear what they can do to their plans.

Have you ever played any sort of “make a civilization” game? The Forerunners basically did that, but then they found the Endless who were more advanced than the civilizations they made, that if left alone would “break the game”.

[robust frigate]

The Forerunners imprisoned them because they didn’t want anyone challenging Humanity’s rise to the Mantle of Responsibility, and they believed the Endless could survive the Halo array

“And so, the Forerunners condemned these beings to imprisonment, not out of malice but out of fear, and a deep seated sense of duty to preserve the galaxy’s best hope for the future”

Taken straight from Halo: Edge of Dawn (2025)

[crimson grove]

Why did they feel so indebted to humanity when they literally lobotomised them and killed off all of them, it's kinda confusing and they proceed to do the same mistakes with the Endless ?

[robust frigate]

They didn’t feel “indebted” necessarily, the Forerunners were a dying species and they knew it, so they went with Humanity as the next best bet for the galaxy’s survival, with how incompetent and evil they seemed, they somewhat cared for the galaxy

[crimson grove]

Couldn't they simulate what'd happen with the kinda technology they had ? Like couldn't they forsee the effects of the Shang shayum imprisoned in the shield world getting ahead of humanity?

[carmine sleet]

No San'Shyuum were imprisoned in a Shield World to end up with the technology which allowed the Covenant to form

And allot of what happened post Halo firing and the galaxy being reseeded was up to chance, the Forerunners didn't know if their plans would succeed

Like, it was just a case that the San'Shyuum home world had a bunch of Forerunner sites and the Dreadnaught we see in Halo 2 and 3, which had crashed on their planet for unknown reasons

[robust frigate]

IIRC the forerunners didn’t know the Halo array would work, it was all theory and simulation until it was fired resulting in the capture of Mendicant Bias (flood corrupted AI made by the Forerunners) and elimination of all life in the galaxy except for those on the Ark

[vagrant ocean]

They knew it would work because they built 12 other ones.

[robust frigate]

Right it was the senescent array I was thinking of I believe

[vagrant ocean]

What they didn’t truly know is if the overlapping pulse would work, especially since the new installations did not have directional pulse capability.

[robust frigate]

Sounds about right

[fresh cedar]

Anyone wanna talk about halo fan fic

[prime mauve]

What's your story about?

[fresh cedar]

A fireteam of spartan 3s tasked with finding things that can give them the edge over the covenant

it takes place a little bit before reach

but all of the spartans were from different units and have to learn how to work with each other despite their differences

One of them being an oni Operative whos tasked with rooting out corruption within their ranks

[prime mauve]

Neat

[fresh cedar]

since he was originally a member of section zero that was hand picked by oni to silently watch over onis higher ups to eliminate any form of corruption

Earning him the Nickname "Watchdog"

[stoic hamlet]

What companies are they from?

[fresh cedar]

mainly gamma

[fresh cedar]

2 are from alpha one is from bravo

so most of them are very familiar with secrecy

[stoic hamlet]

Broadly they should all have no real issue working with one another, ww see this demonstrated often enough in the books.

Granted I’m looking at this from the perspective of hard canon.

Fanfiction you can do whatever.

[fresh cedar]

yea its not really that they cant figure out how to work with each other but more so how they butt heads similar to how emile and jorge argue

[fresh cedar]

it also has a bit to do with the mental instability that comes from the augmentations they recieved illegaly

most of gamma company had illegal operations done additionally with their regular augmentations

[stoic hamlet]

I’ll need to tap the sign again, won’t I?

lol.

[unique rune]

the Gammas’ extra augs normally don’t really do much

[fresh cedar]

I read that the extra augmentations made them more unstable than normal

so I thought it would be cool to expand on that

bc they needed extra drugs to keep them stabilized

[unique rune]

without the smoothers for extended periods of time yeah they’d gradually become more aggressive and less rational

[fresh cedar]

yea

forgot what the term was

[unique rune]

I feel like for the most part the Gammas have been depicted as kinda like

knowing that well enough that they usually are prepared and keep themselves well-maintained outside of extreme circumstances

[fresh cedar]

Yes But since the war with the covenant I imagine extreme circumstances are common

[stoic hamlet]

It’s been used as a plot crutch, but a pretty poor one, because how it’s said to work isn’t how it actually works, so you get misinformed people reading wikis and just… not actually reading the source material.

[fresh cedar]

I see

so theoretically how long could they go without it

before they become rampant

[stoic hamlet]

Which I admit is aggressive, and I apologize, but it’s just… sigh

[unique rune]

the most common smoothers used last about 12 hours but there’s longer-lasting options as well

[fresh cedar]

12 hours? I thought it would be longer

well that gives me an idea of what to put into his spartan tactical soft case now lol

all of theirs tbh

[stoic hamlet]

Honestly they’re not even the most common.

They appear only once (in Last Light*)

[fresh cedar]

theres really not much about gamma company and all of the details of their drugs are there?

[unique rune]

for the most part that’s just how a lot of Halo is yeah

[stoic hamlet]

Not on the wiki. The books are your friend here.

[fresh cedar]

cuz honestly I dont really need the extra augmentations as a plot reason as to why a lot of spartans are aggressive towards the covenant

esp the spartan 3s

[unique rune]

the thing with the Gammas is that they’re broadly pretty much normal (as normal as Spartans can be at least) as long as they keep up with their meds so the real narrative impact of their extra augmentations isn’t really that big

[fresh cedar]

I was gonna make a dark origin story of one of the spartans getting their arm ripped off by a brute before they became a spartan

[stoic hamlet]

They’ve been shown able to last over a year without smoother resupply, and any medical post can make more

Hence it’s just a bad plot crutch.

[unique rune]

granted I’m not super caught up on the novels so I could just be making things up but I feel like it’s one of those things that’s been kinda spun out of proportion over time

[fresh cedar]

I see

cuz I had a part where they were stuck on a forerunner planet for a period of time

so I didnt know how long they could go without it

but I had one of my spartans suffer a bit more bc he had to watch his mom get eaten by a couple of brutes and his dad get shot by a plasma pistol

watching as his fathers skin melts like cheese off of his skull

and right before he gets eaten or killed a couple of marines rescue him

[unique rune]

that seems

graphic

[fresh cedar]

It is

I wanted to show the more grimdark aspect of halo

because we dont really see it since we spend most of the games playing as humanities bastion

[stoic hamlet]

It has

Hence my general eye rolling whenever it’s brought up.

[fresh cedar]

I only brought it up cuz I didnt know if it was important enough or not

[stoic hamlet]

Nah you’re cool, fanfiction lets you do whatever.

From a canon sense it’s just a really bad game of broken telephone that wouldn’t exist if people both actually read the novels and had basic media literacy.

[fresh cedar]

I like to write fan fiction thats plausible in the games lore

[unique rune]

for the most part I think there are probably better ways to create the sort of tension and drama you’d get from a Gamma being off their smoothers

[stoic hamlet]

I just don’t think it’s a good plot point.

[fresh cedar]

I was just gonna have it be shown in either them being stuck on a planet with no ability to communicate with the unsc or just have them hate the covenant so much to the point that the drugs dont really matter

[stoic hamlet]

It’s manufactured drama borne from a gross misunderstanding of the characters.

[unique rune]

like in hindsight it feels like kind of a weird addition to the universe in general because I don’t recall it ever really even having much impact in Ghosts of Onyx

like I’d imagine the idea was to play up Kurt’s desperation with the -IIIs but it wasn’t really meant to go further than that

[stoic hamlet]

I’d recommend reading the short story Breaking Strain as that’s pretty much what you’re describing.

It’s a very good one, at that.

[stoic hamlet]

It makes sense within ghosts of onyx, yeah.

[fresh cedar]

I see

[stoic hamlet]

But outside of that bringing it up doesn’t really matter, because the people who should care (the Gammas themselves) see nothing wrong with it and any time something goes wrong it feels utterly manufactured for drama.

[fresh cedar]

I see

thanks

[stoic hamlet]

Like, if it was a thing in the games it would never come up, even in Infinite

[fresh cedar]

yea in that case I'll just make them put some smoothers in some of their cases

then call it a day

[stoic hamlet]

They’d have implanted smoothers that slowly administer a dose when needed, then hypodermic needles as a back up.

[unique rune]

Yeah, it's very much like, trying to emphasize that Kurt's had his soul destroyed seeing the first two classes getting wiped out so he'll do anything to increase Gamma Company's chances of survival

but then afterward no author since really knows what to do with it

[fresh cedar]

I see

so does it get injected in the neck or the arm?

if theyre in armor

[stoic hamlet]

It’s a problem halo has in general with the Spartans.

They’re not written as they should be.

[stoic hamlet]

They have an injection port. It’s in the thigh, I believe, from memory, but I’ll need to check.

[fresh cedar]

oh okay

thats cool

is there any lore on the Unconventional war tactics as described in the operator helmet bio?

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah it’s the inner thigh.

[fresh cedar]

oh cool

[warm ridge]

Winter Contingency = 1st contact with the Covenant on that specific world.

Winter Contingency gets called on a per colony basis, not 1st contact with the Covenant as a whole.

[warm ridge]

The Forerunners were not a dying species, that's never implied anywhere.
In fact, the original plan under Faber's leadership had them being kings of the entire galaxy. No longer would any species "rise" to pass them ever again.
Everyone would be restarted under the Forerunners leadership / ideals, whether they wanted it or not.
Much of the Forerunner AI's that got left behind fully expected this to happen & were waiting for the Forerunners eventual return more or less, but that never happened.

The Greater Ark being attacked & destroyed by the Gravemind ended these plans, and any Forerunners left who managed to escape decided it wasn't best for them to interfere with the galaxy any longer & left to settle on a new planet outside of the Milky Way galaxy itself.

The Lifeworkers are largely the ones who wanted Humanity to reclaim the Mantle in the Forerunners absence, as that was the new plan going forward. To "atone" for there own sins.

[abstract nebula]

Winter Contingency was made for Reach because of how big of a military and intelligence asset it was to the U.N.S.C.

It was basically the call to announce the Covenant had compromised Reach, since Reach was close [in relation to other planets, I guess] to Earth, it was all the more important. Since they DEFINITELY had data hives there, they had special precautions set in place specifically for that planet.

[balmy oasis]

What Halo book is most recommended for someone who has been playing Halo forever but hasn’t read any of the books?

[prime mauve]

The Fall of Reach

Also both anthologies, Evolutions and Fractures

[latent igloo]

Hey guys, I just want some clarification of the >>current<< Halo lore now. Not the past, the now. I love Halo’s lore, both Bungie and yes a good number of 343 lore like Halo 4 and Infinite, but it’s pretty obvious that there has been a good number of retcons and even retconning retcons like how Ancient Humans and Forerunners are now retconned back to be related in a way.

So with all of these changes now, what do some of the Halo lore mean now?

With quotes like

343 Guilty Spark: "I see now that helping you was wrong! You are a child of my makers; inheritor of all they left behind. You are Forerunner, but this ring... is mine!"

The Gravemind: "Child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness, a father's sins, passed to his son."

343 Guilty Spark: “Last time you asked me: ‘If it were my choice, would I do it?’ Having had considerable time to ponder your query, my answer has not changed:
there is no choice. We must activate the ring.”

Prophet of Truth: "Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion... steeled themselves for what needed to be done"

And if there’s other quotes you guys like to add along with an explanation, that’d be great!

For things outside of quotes, why did the Covenant went to war with humans now?

Without any gaslighting from others fans or coping from both sides of Bungie and 343 fans, these quotes WERE originally intended insight the player the forerunners are humans. By time 343 retconned that they were separated just for it to be retconned again in 2022 that they’re related in a different way, forgive me for repeating my words, lol.

Other explanation I would like to understand is what has changed in Halo 5’s lore and what has been retconned? Why did Chief and almost all of the characters has been out of character and so on and so forth

With all of the stuff I’ve pointed out, what does all of these story elements mean now?

I am a Halo fan, I love a the lore, I just want a coherent good understanding of the current Halo lore now so I can enjoy it even more, especially playing through the games instead having some misunderstanding.

I do understand some of you don’t like most of these changes, but I’m only here asking a explanation, not you hear you argue about Halo’s lore

If any of yous answer my questions, then thank you for your time helping a fellow Halo fan out. 🫡

[carmine sleet]

What people often forget is that Bungie was not united in the idea that humanity and Forerunners are one and the same. Plenty of people within the company had differing ideas back for what the relationship between humanity and Forerunners before Halo 3's terminals confirmed the two were not the same

[ionic tiger]

I’m fairly certain even in the Forerunner trilogy we come to see the “term” Forerunner as a title that species have to themselves based on their own misunderstood history with the Precursors. The expectation was that at some point even the Forerunners would pass on the title and a new successor would come.

Granted, that was the ideal but the reality was a species hesitant to give up their power. So Spark’s words still ring true even if the biological connection isn’t the same (though humans and Forerunners came from the same base stock millions of years ago).

As for the Covenant’s motives, humanity still poses a problem for its religion. You could say Truth still misunderstood that connection and sought to exterminate a species who would undue their whole civilization.

[sudden widget]

As I've tried to research this a bit - I don't think I'll be able to develop an argument that satisfies the framing, but I'd still like to develop my own understanding of the issue - I've found this to be very enlightening: https://www.halopedia.org/Halopedia:Canon_policy#How_do_we_interpret_the_canon?

I've never before read about Watsonian and Doylist interpretations, but both are helpful to me when considering some contentious canonicity issues. It at first makes me a bit anxious... to arrive at an understanding, you have to mentally replay the facts as they've developed across multimedia sources and decades. But it's also relieving because you seemingly must accept that the canon is an imperfect, developing thing. Further, if one accepts that both Watsonian and Doylist are valid modes of interpretation, then you're relieved of the idea of a perfect answer to some of these issues: sometimes, either interpretation must be mutually exclusive.

If one trusts the editors of something like Halopedia (and I do, as I don't have a reason not to thus far), then the work has largely been done for me with citations, allowing still for possible human error, outdated material, or subjective interpretation.

I think the earlier question (not to speak for the author) is maybe grappling with the very existence, necessity, or burden of retcons, a term I hate to even use because of the baggage it carries in my mind. I have to shed that baggage and accept some of these proposed interpretations on canonicity to feel remotely comfortable with a canon that's developed over 25 years.

[prime mauve]

Well stated

[modest marsh]

Humans and forerunners being related somehow was never not the case even if the specifics of the relationship has been changed, the problem is that Halo 4 itself does not really acknowledge this because it’s trying to keep the story simple stupid so people don’t get confused what the Didact’s motivation was, since ultimately the setup for the game since Halo 3 was Chief and Cortana having to deal with some unknown Forerunner threat

Chapter 1 of Cryptum:

Because of strong similarities in our natural genetic structure, some Forerunner sages thought humans might be a brethren species, also shaped and given breath by the Precursors. It was possible the Librarian was intent on testing those theories.

Later in the novel Silentium, Didact and Librarian happen upon an isolated branch of Forerunners who have been constrained to Paleolithic society and are very clearly described to be closer anatomically to humans, in particular having five fingers like the Librarian:

In another doorway, back among the main cluster of dwellings, another curtain drew aside and a second figure stepped into filtered sunshine: a male with a square, broad face, thick-furred about chin and forehead. Columnar legs supported a squat and bulky torso. He wore heavy gray clothing. His face was rugged, observant, but lacked any readable expression.

Behind him, silhouetted by the flickering glow of a fire or lantern, stood a younger female dressed in lighter clothing. Sexual dimorphism was evident but not extreme.

They were far closer to each other in appearance than I was to the Didact—but of course ours was an artificial dimorphism, rate-determined, and it seemed they had given up all that here, if ever they had possessed it.

I was fascinated! Never had I seen Forerunners so different from our root stock: less than a meter and a half in height, broad across shoulders and midriff, thick of leg and short of arm, with long, curling fingers—five fingers only on each hand.

The implication is that Forerunners are so physically distinct from their human brethren because of artificial evolutionary processes and that their “natural” state is closer to a member of Hominidae (Great Ape) family

Humanity’s evolutionary progress is inherently at odds with the real life scientific consensus due to the fact that regardless if the Forerunners (Humans) themselves sprang from Earth or were a rival species (Ancestors) that competed with the Forerunners in the form of a space faring civilization, the timeline required is ahistorical

If nothing else, the “modern” lore fixes the slight problem of modern humans coexisting and even interbreeding with other Hominina more than 100,000 years ago

As far as Halo 5 “retconning” anything, I’m not so sure? It’s certainly a massive setting upheaval that also establishes a plethora of setting details that were previously obscure to us, which I suppose could be considered a retcon, but no more than, say, Halo 3 changing the location of the Ark from Earth to an installation outside the Milky Way

Nothing was strictly contradicted, probably the most egregious thing being the Mantle’s Approach warping away from Earth to Genesis without this being shown or implied in the game itself but we also never actually see the extent of the damage done to the ship

Responding specifically to “Why did Chief and almost all of the characters has been out of character and so on and so forth”

I’m not entirely sure what you mean? It’s mostly just Chief and Cortana out of the recurring cast members that are acting much differently than before, and I don’t think their change in behavior is that surprising given the context of the story

Not to say I’m in love with Halo 5’s character writing, and I’ll always repeat that this story arc would’ve benefited from being stretched over multiple entries rather than stuffed into one short campaign, but their demeanor in 5 is pretty well justified all things considered

I guess the other thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is Buck being a little too eager to be best friends with Arbiter’s Swords of Sanghelios just because they’re fighting on the same side, I would’ve expected him to be the most xenophobic of the cast so his “brothers” line has always bugged me for being a bit too idealistic for my taste

I can get someone like Vale being more enthusiastic about working with the Elites on friendly terms because she was mostly isolated from the impact of the war and her specialization as a xenoanthropologist, so having her verbally spar with Buck or Tanaka (whose planets were glassed) on the issue would’ve been interesting, but they don’t really take advantage of that opportunity

Locke too, but I get the impression he’s too much of a stoic professional to vocalize a personal grudge like that (though I wouldn’t mind if he did since he’s utterly lacking in the personality department unfortunately)

[unborn island]

why are most of the spartan 4s just so unprofessional

even sarah palmer

they have worse personalities on average than the odsts we see in game

[ionic tiger]

They arent.

[modest marsh]

There are some attitude problems for IVs because they’re recruited from UNSC special forces

Not to blanket disparage real life veterans but SOF operators have been known to be eccentric characters

Look into Richard Marcinko, that guy is more than a little nutty and he was the guy behind Seal team six

[sudden widget]

I was trying to find a way to phrase that... couldn't actually find a supporting section in the wiki for the IV program, though. I was also trying to figure out how to describe the effect of child conscription and training on early SPARTAN generations' adult personalities, behaviors, and compliance.

[modest marsh]

IVs in particular also have to deal with the exhilarating reality of becoming a super soldier on top of whatever preexisting psychological disposition they have

It goes to their head, understandably

A good chunk of IVs got culled at Requiem when they finally had to deal with a peer level threat

For the first 4 years of their existence, IVs were largely dominant and superior to whatever enemy they encountered such that it’s not surprising it cultivated a culture of bravado and complacency

Hoya charging the Prometheans out of cover for instance because this is probably the first time he’s ever dealt with something that could actually hurt him in a close quarters engagement

(That wasn’t another Spartan that is)

[ionic tiger]

I just take issue with the notion that “most” Spartan-IVs are unprofessional. It’s not really been a criticism with much teeth for 12 years.

[modest marsh]

It’s a non-specific term that could mean any number of things, the bottom line is everyone has their flaws

The robotic stoicism we expect of Spartans is not as strongly imposed on IVs, that doesn’t make them more or less flawed people

I would argue Chief has had his moments of “unprofessionalism” in spite of being the quintessential Spartan himself

In any case, I think we expect more of Spartans since they aren’t just highly effective soldiers but also symbolic beacons that represent humanity as a whole so they’re held to higher standards from a thematic standpoint

Seeing them defy our expectations is more noticeable as a result

[stoic hamlet]

I’d argue the II’s are by and large shiwn as far less robotic than they should be, overall. And yeah, have more than a bit of unprofessionalism when they probably shouldn’t.

It’s just not as blatant, but it’s definitely still there.

[ionic tiger]

Usually people tend to call them “jocks” or things to that effect. Which, again, hasn’t exactly been relevent recently and shows how some “criticisms” stay locked in time and don’t evolve.

[stoic hamlet]

First impressions do a lot for people.

The IV’s first impressions were absolutely terrible.

[modest marsh]

The roboticism is mostly externalized which I think has been realized to be deliberate on their part, the unreadableness there is a facade because their job isn’t just to be excellent soldiers but also to “look pretty” and they know it

[stoic hamlet]

And that’ll stick with you.

[ionic tiger]

Yes, but if people want to have a discussion on how a whole category of characters are after a solid 12 years of additional content has come out, they shouldn’t limit their own understanding.

It’s just dishonest

[modest marsh]

I’m always confused by the notion this is a mistake or flaw of the writing, because I think it’s a good thing IVs act like sports jocks

[stoic hamlet]

That’s true later on in the war, but early war it very much isn’t the case, yet they show clear signs of unprofessionalism and, especially in Oblivion a lack of decorum among UNSC officers that shouldn’t really be there.

Hey don’t display it out loud, but it’s odd to even have them voice the thoughts they do.

[modest marsh]

Ehh, we see as early as Silent Storm Chief literally thinking to himself he should use his robotic appearance to his advantage

[ionic tiger]

And, you know, I feel that tag only really applied to Demarco and Madsen. Of which the former evidently grew out of that and became the type of person who’d sacrifice their life willingly for others.

Just…things change.

[modest marsh]

I think he and his other Spartans would quickly internalize the advantages of being an opaque statuesque figure

[stoic hamlet]

No that’s not what I mean.

Oblivion has Blue Team rag on the Prowler Commander for basically the entire book, but aside from one instance where she makes a bad call due to circumstances, she’s otherwise perfectly rational and logical.

Yet Blue Team insult her over TEAMCOM for most of the book, and it feels very much out of character.

[modest marsh]

I see

I’ll have to read it again at some point to see where I stand on that, it’s not something that really occurred to me at the time

Granted, my brain was a little turned off for most of that book

I just remember lots of walking across sand dunes

[stoic hamlet]

And it’s like… mean spirited as well.

It goes beyond questioning and comes off as infantile. (Which, I mean, yeah, they’re kids, but they’re the closest they’ve been to their training, roughly speaking, so they should be far more diplomatic in how they speak of her. She is, at the end of the day, a superior officer in the UNSC. It makes no sense to bad mouth her like that.

[modest marsh]

As far as this goes, part of the goal with IVs would be to close the gap between the more defined characteristics of the player characters in the main campaign and the player themselves by allowing these blank slate entities to exist in the setting you can impress yourself upon, with the main means of engaging with the game being the PvP multiplayer which is, bluntly, a very jock-coded experience

[stoic hamlet]

Tbh, there’s a lot of that in Oblivion that I actually don’t mind, but would love to see actually factor in.

Because the book also notes ONI had access to all their TEAMCOM frequencies, so they heard the insults, combined with John going over everyone’s head, it’s an interesting sort of idea that the top brass wouldn’t be happy.

But alas.

[modest marsh]

Removing the high fives from the H5 victory screen was one of the most ridiculous points of outrage of the series because the whole point of that was to align with the player’s own emotional connection to the gameplay

And yeah, I imagine most of the people making that criticism also don’t like that multiplayer is tied to the story in any way, but I feel like it’s dishonest to say that halo was never meant to move in that direction to begin with

(I do think they leaned a little too far into the combat sports framing with the Munera Platforms, but given recent events in real life this seems more and more plausible)

And, well, it’s an insanely cool aesthetic, at least in the concept art

[latent igloo]

I really do appreciate your time helping me understand the current lore. You made a lot of things made sense. Though what do those quotes that I mentioned mean now? What about that Joe Staten book

[modest marsh]

So it’s pretty cut and dry: Contact Harvest spells it out in a way that’s not really reconcilable because even in the modern sense where humans and forerunners are distantly related from divergent evolutionary paths, Mendicant Bias speaks in absolute terms that cannot be explained away as easily

With regards to Guilty Spark, the original lines from CE don’t actually have anything to do with human-forerunner connection necessarily

Halo was written as a Marathon sequel in which extremely similar circumstances occurred that Spark is “remembering”

In this version of events, the Master Chief we know is just a vessel occupied by the spirit of the protagonist from the marathon games

So he thinks Chief is literally the same guy who fired the array, but instead what he’s recalling is the trih xeem (Halo) created by the Jjaro (Forerunners) to contain the W'rkncacnter (Flood)

In the modern lore, guilty Spark is likely mistaking Chief for Didact, specifically the Iso Didact, who was personally responsible for firing the ring

The forerunner and rion forge trilogy make this more clear, where Spark’s perception of events has been muddled by over a hundred thousands years of isolation and trauma leading to his evidently confused mental state by the events of the games

If you ignore Bias’s phrasing from Contact Harvest, you come away with a more lenient range of interpretation regarding what the other instances are suggesting

Truth especially is an “unreliable narrator”, just because he thinks that humans = forerunners doesn’t mean they are

[modest marsh]

Just to be clear, this is a problem most of the early books run into one way or another

The upcoming master Chief omnibus will supposedly correct mistakes from the first 3 novels but TFOR and First Strike’s stories in particular hinge on certain details that are unreconcilable in the modern lore

The former regarding the timeline of the fall of reach and the latter with respect to Johnson’s miraculous survival after encountering the flood

Johnson’s flood immunity being retconned as him just avoiding being infected in the first place was their answer, but it doesn’t change the fact that the story itself treats Halsey and John’s choice to spare Johnson as important

If he’s not actually immune, not only does that make the choice thematically worthless because he’d be killed and dissected for no reason, but this isn’t even a thing that would occur to Chief and Halsey to consider in the first place

I’m not really sure how they plan to resolve this because it’s not really like they can just completely rewrite the scenes without calling it a new book entirely

[atomic stump]

I really enjoyed that part of First Strike. Halsey asks Chief to spare Johnson's life and ignore the greater good. It is Halsey coming full circle and rejecting the logic of the Spartan program where in she killed people for the greater good.

And then Glasslands throws all of that character development out in favor of unrepentant mad scientist. Halsey might be Halo's worst instance of Flanderization.

[modest marsh]

To be blunt I don’t mind that sort of “inconsistency” if it’s handled with grace

People very rarely have a singular moment where they utterly change who they are like that

Halsey showing a bit of humanity towards Johnson, a fellow human, an accomplished soldier, and at least thanks to retcons a personal friend of master Chief changes the calculation a lot

I think that her outburst where she threatens to kill Prone to Drift is understandable given the circumstances (even though she’s clearly in the wrong) without her being a total hypocrite in light of her development in first strike

If nothing else, I’d like to say her portrayal in 5 is considerate of her previous arc where I’m not sure that her more Machiavellian/consequentialist absolutism depiction from earlier in her life would’ve been so opposed to the Created’s plans

Halsey is very much someone who thinks that the laws of the universe are governed by rigid calculus and it’s simply a matter of doing the right math to scry what is to come and what should be done about it in objective terms

After all, this is precisely what the Carver Findings are

John and the Spartans collectively are her weakness in this respect because even she admits there’s an incalculable quality about them that forces her to reconsider certain preconceived notions about what is possible

[atomic stump]

That is fair

[orchid kettle]

I mean on some level Nylund did do this by having Halsey willing to sacrifice larger humanity for the sake of protecting the people she felt she had personally wronged

She still has that savior complex, that willingness to rob other people of their agency

Though even TFOR has her doubting her actions, though its unclear if she's doubting the morality of supporting the UNSC in this situation, or if she believes in the premise-- that doing this to the children, and probably more children after them, is even worth it

The UNSC in the Nylund books are defined by what Mendez says to Chief after half the IIs die during the augmentation procedure, this idea of "Lives spent vs Lives wasted"

Where any death or sacrifice is worth it as long as you can extract some material benefit to the greater whole

And thus, the choice Halsey presents to John ultimately sees him rejecting this moral framework, he chooses to see that Johnson's life has value inherently, even his death would in theory be of a greater material benefit to humanity

The fact that Chief crushes the chip that would have doomed Johnson after the gang were forced to abandon the rebels and pirates of Eridanus Secundus to their fate is probably not an accident

As it was a choice they made where they decided that the material benefit of an intact covenant ship was worth more than the hundreds of lives aboard the asteroid base, even though the base was only in danger because Chief had led the Covenant there accidentally.

[modest marsh]

I think the framing here is softened a bit by the fact that the rebels while not necessarily “evil” are kind of left looking a bit cowardly for still hiding on some rock while there’s an existential war going on

They made their own moral calculation which from the audience’s perspective was the wrong one

[orchid kettle]

Yeah but you already have this idea that Chief doesn't really see rebel lives as lesser, since he admits that he sees Watts' kidnapping as a failure because a lot of people died when Blue Team were making their explosive exit

[modest marsh]

That doesn’t mean they deserve to die but it makes it harder to feel sorry for them for lying in the bed they made so to speak

[orchid kettle]

Even though those people, in Mendez's words, would have been the enemy

[orchid kettle]

I personally don't think the book itself at least is pushing that perspective

and I personally don't think being "cowardly" is all that worthy of contempt on its own

Like, even Whitcomb is lamenting this loss of life, saying that he's sure he'll burn in hell for this, even if he was just doing his "duty".

[modest marsh]

Ngl this is also how I feel about Denning’s portrayal of rebels

[orchid kettle]

Buckell I think, with the Exodus project and Delgado being allowed into ONI, is kinda overly optimistic as well

Like with GoO you have this idea of rebels presenting the UNSC with a trade: a stockpile of nuclear warheads that the UNSC apparently desperately needs, and asylum for the rebels on some world that's safe (or safer) from the Covenant

and the UNSC's answer is to send Blue Team to just shoot things up and grab the nukes anyway

Like even if the rebel's deal was ultimately a trap, its a trap that only works because of the UNSC's unwillingness to hear them out in the first place

If the UNSC said sure, what then?

[modest marsh]

I’m a bit befuddled about whatever planet camp new hope is supposedly on because the way it’s described what with thick underbrush for Chief to crawl in, why do they need another home

[orchid kettle]

I'd assume the planet was an outer colony, and given the timeframe, those weren't stacking up so well against the Covenant

[modest marsh]

That may be it, yeah

[shrewd perch]

[shrewd perch]

.

[atomic stump]

Loreheads. Where was Guilty Spark's huge red lazer face when I needed it in the Library? Did he forget the double AA batteries?

[carmine sleet]

Bungie hadn't thought of it yet back in CE

[atomic stump]

Come on man. We can think of something better. What if the Heretics upgraded Guilty Spark's lazer face?

[carmine sleet]

They didn't

[atomic stump]

your no fun

[carmine sleet]

We know they didn't upgrade Spark because we see in the Terminals for CEA and H2A Spark use the laser to kill a few of the Heretics before they turned on the Covenant. Sesa personally had to tell his troops to stop firing

[slate hinge]

Might watch Halo Mona Lisa with my friends today. I can’t remember is it bad to watch it if they’ve only played CE and don’t know anything outside of that?

[prime mauve]

No, what you know of the Flood from CE is enough

[obsidian thistle]

You dont even need CE though it helps understand some loose context

[carmine sleet]

Yeah, nothing from the games released after CE is important to understanding the events of Mona Lisa. Maybe at most an idea of what ONI is but the story gives you plenty anyway

[chrome apex]

Do scorpions have built in toilets?

[unique rune]

no

[chrome apex]

Do they use bags?

[unique rune]

I doubt it

[agile holly]

How come the Sangheili who are superior in basically every category to humans and were part of an empire that had some of the best technology in the galaxy weren't able to get to the level of Spartans

Wouldn't it make sense considering their superior technology and bodies that they outclass every human in every way

[stoic hamlet]

Because they’re very traditional and scorn augmentation generally.

[unique rune]

they didn’t have much need to nor the cultural motive for it

[agile holly]

What about the combat harnesses though? Aren't those roughly equal to Spartans

[stoic hamlet]

No. There are tiers to them.

Zealot-class ones are maybe equal, but it’s debatable, and Silent Shadow might also be on par, but they have major design flaws when engaging Spartans in the field.

It should also be said strength and speed aren’t really all that important. Most fights occur at range, and when they do get close, Spartan training and doctrine tends to win out.

[agile holly]

Aren't Spartans pretty dirty fighters compared to Sangheili

[stoic hamlet]

Yes.

[vagrant ocean]

Because Spartans literally push the limits of what the human body can handle. As said by Buck, the IIIs and IIs are the Olympians and Titans of old. They are monsters.

[prime mauve]

The Spartans almost never fought a "fair fight" and their strategies and tactics generally kept them alive against the odds. Stealth, speed, violence of action and more than a little luck kept the Spartans winning.

[fresh cedar]

I have a question

[prime mauve]

What was it?

[fresh cedar]

Oh it was about the fluids from Spartans in armor

[stoic hamlet]

…go on?

[prime mauve]

The gel layer or like urine and sweat and such?

[modest marsh]

We know nothing about Scorpion battle doctrine whatsoever, it’s a completely underdeveloped component of the lore that we only have the briefest of glimpses into so you can just speculate whatever sounds right.

So yeah they might have to use bags.

[modest marsh]

There are billions of Elites who serve in the Covenant military versus hundreds of Spartans during the course of the war

It’s a bit of a conservation of ninjitsu trope where the smaller group is individually more capable to compensate their fewer numbers

[agile holly]

Why are Spartans so often superior to the Covenant when it comes to ranged combat while most of the time they're fighting multiple elites at once who have gear that can keep up with them

[modest marsh]

Covenant weaponry is generally poorly designed to target rapidly moving targets at distance

Like, the reason covenant use plasma guns in game is so that we the player can predict and react to their gunfire and dodge

This interaction is magnified when the reflexes and agility of a Spartan are taken into account

Elites on the other hand cannot do much about being shot at with bullets

Even if they had the reflexes or speed to evade gunfire, it’s not like it’s easy to see airborne ballistic projectiles the same way plasma bolts are impossible not to notice

You have the muzzle flash to go off of, that’s it

[wispy pewter]

Plot armour

[agile holly]

I mean, how would a Spartan just mow through a Covenant ship when they have to deal with dozens of Elites

I can see Spartans having an advantage but that kinda goes out the window when you're fighting that many

[wispy pewter]

Some Spartans are just superior

[modest marsh]

Mjolnir being significantly more effective than most if not all Elite combat harnesses is not strictly surprising given that the former is outfitted to a smaller group of people so they can afford to invest more to squeeze more performance out of their gear

Even a unit like the silent shadow likely had thousands of members

[agile holly]

Yes but isn't it pretty unrealistic how Noble 6 was able to survive for like hours against hordes of elites

There was the Field Marshall, the General, and Zealots there too

That just makes no sense to me

[wispy pewter]

indomitable human spirit thats why

[agile holly]

That can only get you so far bro 😭

[modest marsh]

We do not know exactly how many Elites Six dealt with because gameplay just spawns in arbitrary numbers and distribution of elites until it’s all Zealot class

There are no covenant bodies in the area when gameplay starts on Lone Wolf despite there being Spartan corpses which is already questionable

[agile holly]

Well Noble Six was there for hours

And wouldn't he have canonically fought the Sentries of Devotion (I think that's their name) and the Field Marshal

[modest marsh]

I don’t think we have any rigid time span on how long Six spent fighting the covenant before or during the level Lone Wolf

[modest marsh]

And yes, although depending on how you handled the prior waves, Six would’ve been equipped with some pretty effective weapons to wipe them out

[agile holly]

I think Master Chief's raid on High Charity was the most odd tbh

[modest marsh]

The grenade launcher basically hard counters elites due to the EMP grenades

Explosives in general are very, very effective on Elites

[agile holly]

Even if most were flood, that's still realistically like millions of Elite combat forms

[modest marsh]

Yes but he only fought maybe a few dozen himself

The more significant event would’ve been the weeks spent on Anodyne Spirit between 2 and 3

[agile holly]

Seriously?

I mean he was going straight for Truth and he likely doesn't even know where he is

so he's just running through the biggest covenant fleet

[modest marsh]

If we are to take the level itself even remotely literally, he spent maybe a few minutes running around in narrow spaces that would’ve been largely inaccessible to the flood

There’s not enough time or opportunity for him to encounter the bulk of the flood present

This is largely also true of the halo 3 level Cortana where he’s also trying to get through High Charity controlled by the flood

[agile holly]

and what about fallen High Charity?

in gravemind?

[agile holly]

Is there a definitive amount of time that's given

[modest marsh]

No

[agile holly]

Because apparently he was going to fight multiple Arbiters infected by the Gravemind who's a super genius at that time

Plus pure forms running rampant

[modest marsh]

If we take gameplay literally, it’s less than an hour for sure

Remember that the par time for the average halo level is like 20-30 minutes which even if you triple that isn’t a very long period

[agile holly]

I just think a lot of the gameplay situations that the main characters get themselves into are so unrealistic

[modest marsh]

According to the novelization, Chief spent like 3 or 4 hours in the Library iirc

[unique rune]

Well, yeah. It's gameplay. The priority was making a game that's fun to a relatively casual audience, not something that would make realistic strategic sense.

[agile holly]

Also that one time he showed up in the Gravemind level and had to like 1v4 some honor guard Brutes with only a needler

and the grunts just being little losers

[unique rune]

The "true" canon versions of the Halo campaigns probably involve a lot more sneaking around than getting into open gunfights.

[agile holly]

Is there anywhere that these situations are explained in realistic ways

[modest marsh]

I mean yeah this just goes back to “he’s going to have an easier time shooting them than the reverse”

[unique rune]

The only game novelization they've ever done is The Flood, so. That's about it really.

[agile holly]

He was thrown into an open room with Brutes who can light him up at any point with Unggoy there too

[modest marsh]

They’re bigger, slower targets than he is

[agile holly]

That's kind of insane

[modest marsh]

I mean, have you read the Uprising comic?

[agile holly]

Nah

[modest marsh]

There’s a scene where they use an identical room that’s supposedly on the anodyne spirit where he has a rematch with the brutes except there’s +40 of them at once and he wins

[hardy swan]

Jerome defeated a room full of Brutes with a shotgun

[agile holly]

Oh yeah just a random thought, I believe Halo would be so much cooler if the sequels went more into the Blooding Years instead of the forerunner stuff

[agile holly]

That's insane

[modest marsh]

Some of them are captains/chieftains too

[agile holly]

Are Brutes not capable of like mauling Spartans to death if they're caught in an awkward situation

why didn't they just rush him down

[modest marsh]

Spartans are more durable than brutes so even if they’re close in strength it takes more effort on the Brute’s part to deal significant damage whereas we’ve had multiple examples of Spartans causing severe damage to Brutes with a well placed punch or series of punches

[hardy swan]

sometimes, sometimes not

[modest marsh]

Spartan Stone punched through a Captain’s armor and disemboweled him while on the verge of death

[agile holly]

Yes but like

Would it not be pretty difficult to do that while all are running at you and shooting at you and if they get close you just kinda like

die

[modest marsh]

Again there’s the issue that the alien weapons are (generally) harder to reliably hit things with if the target is very fast

[agile holly]

40+ all firing rapidly?

[modest marsh]

Because from a gameplay perspective they’re designed with this in mind, players are meant to strafe around and avoid getting hit

[modest marsh]

Well you have to account for body blocking

Have you ever played Doom?

Like the old Doom games

[agile holly]

2016

not the old ones

[modest marsh]

Well, the new ones are similar

When enemies get in front of each other they cannot attack the player efficiently

[agile holly]

what does the room look like

[modest marsh]

They will attempt to reposition so everyone has a valid angle of attack but when the number is so big, it’s impossible for their numerical advantage to come into play

And in fact, it’s very likely they accidentally shoot their own allies in the process

[modest marsh]

It’s identical to the first room in the Halo 2 level Gravemind

[modest marsh]

In the comic, Chief takes advantage of this by using one of the brutes as a human shield, but realistically this would be happening regardless if he’s constantly moving in and around his opponents

The starry night trailer also depicts Chief doing this, where he charges directly into a crowd of brutes and wraiths head on because unintuitively this is actually the safest place for him to be on the battlefield

https://youtu.be/7_TEkQ-4Zuo

[agile holly]

is it possible to send images in here

[modest marsh]

You need permissions which we do not have

[agile holly]

can i dm you this pic rq

[modest marsh]

Ok

[agile holly]

is it like that

[modest marsh]

No

[agile holly]

That's how I mostly visualized it

[shrewd perch]

@dense falcon Hey! Good to see you around again.
Quick question: the Halo: prologue thread I made got locked, and I didn't get any warning or message about it.
I checked all the other threads here — even the years-old ones and the ones that only have one or two messages — and they're all still open.
Could you tell me why mine was locked?

[gaunt oak]

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

[stoic hamlet]

Red Team does the same in the Reach radio broadcasts after softening up an enemy column with autoturrets and mines.

It makes a lot of sense, even if unintuitively.

Get close enough so the most dangerous weapons (the wraiths) can’t fire on you, and get in amongst their infantry so they risk friendly firing each other.

In terms of a game that actually takes this into account… Mirror’s Edge, of all things.

[shrewd perch]

[obsidian thistle]

Ah the Reach Radios. Those are fun! 😄

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah I have no idea what to refer to them as.

I guess “Reach Radios” is the shortest term that works. They’re a weird bit of lore to reference as they’re in-game radio broadcasts.

[unique rune]

reachios

[stoic hamlet]

Sounds like a tasty appetizer at a restaurant.

[obsidian thistle]

MCC calls them "UNSC radio chatter" but that is a misnomer seeing as some arnt UNSC

One in particular is the exact opposite lol

[atomic stump]

MD Review:

Mortal Dictata is very long. The audiobook is 17 hours. For context, Halo Evolutions was such a big book that it was cut into two volumes. But the Evolutions audiobook is only 15 1/2 hours. Some people will notice that Evolutions has a higher page count but that is decieving. Page count =/= word count. Publishers tweak the margins, line spacing, and letter spacing to fit books into a particular mold. Publishers like to keep books under 500 pages since books over 500 pages are hard for small children to read without their hands getting tired. But they also don't want to cram as many words onto a page as possible because that hurts readability. Managing the white and black space on a physical book is more of an art than a science. You can often tell who the target audience of a book is just based on the weight.

Did Dictata need to be that long? The scenes on Venezia and dealing with Steffan are absolutely the best stuff Halo has ever done. Dictata is the only halo novel that surpasses First Strike, imo. The scenes from a Kig-Yar point of view are boring and don't lead to any developments. All of the Kig-Yar Point Of Views are deeply unlikeable. I can tolerate reading about greedy, violent, selfish, and stubborn Kig-Yar but I can't get over how unlikeable they are. I turned the audiobook to 1.5x speed for the Kig-Yar parts and I don't feel like I missed anything of value. If you are a DIE HARD Kig-yar fanboy like Lord of the Stars, then you might enjoy the Kig-Yar POVs.

[prime mauve]

The Kig Yar speaking parts at 1.5 speed is probably the way they'd sound normally when talking lol

[sudden widget]

The scenes from a Kig-Yar point of view are boring and don't lead to any developments.
Is there any room for scenes like this for the sake of world-building? Must they all contribute to development?

[atomic stump]

The emotional blows for Osman, Naomi, and Staffan are really good. I haven't shed a tear in 7 years but the scene where Naomi remembers her abduction got to me. All of those scenes are absolutely peak.

I think K5's characters almost match Nylund's fan favorites. I would put Vaz, Naomi, and Staffan on par with Nylund's Halsey, Keyes, John, Blue Team, and Kurt. Nylund's characters are genuinely beloved by fans but intelligent minds can disagree.

Lets talk about Traviss. Karen Traviss is a British right-wing libertarian. She is not a fan of the British nanny state and you can just look at her twitter account if you need confirmation. There is a scene in the Thursday War were Vaz complains that his taxes are going to fund both sides of this civil war. And Staffan Sentzke is just the libertarian killdozer meme. The core takeaway from the Kilo 5 trilogy is that the government is bad and you can't trust them with your money. There are multiple scenes where characters ponder why their taxes are being used to fund Sangheili rebels. Of course Karen Traviss hates the Spartan program. The Spartan program sounds like one of Alex Jones' conspiracy theories. She is a huge defender of parental rights and not a fan of most government programs. And at a certain point we have to ask ourselves exactly how evil ONI is. Would George Washington have started a revolution against an organization as bad as ONI? Definitely. Jefferson would be rolling in his grave. If the government had stolen John Sullivan's or George Rogers Clark's children, the body count would be stratospheric. Any reasonable person would have grabbed their gun and overthrown the government. Staffan is pretty responsible by comparison. He only laid low and smuggled some guns to rebels.

TLDR: I do hope Karen Traviss comes back and writes a story that fleshes out the insurrectionists more but she has been quite vocal about not wanting to return to Halo in any way shape or form.

[obsidian thistle]

Traviss likely wont come back. Not for fans wanting or even money. Not due to not enjoying it, but more she is legit happier doing her own thing now as suggested by her blogs and website.

And like... good on them honestly

Dont we all want that in life! 😄

[atomic stump]

Thanks

[obsidian thistle]

Yea, I may have gripes with how she treats preexisting stuff that are well developed. But I legit feel new stuff (or stuff just "mentioned" or "covered very little") was suited to her style and wouldn't be against seeing more

[prime mauve]

I think that she could write a much more compelling take on Ilsa Zane than anything we've had so far

[fair hazel]

You know what I thought about? It would be interesting to have an alternate story where it's either the created or just regular AIs, and the halo array gets fired and you're just left with their perspective, all life is dead again and they remain

[prime mauve]

That would be a really excellent what if scenario

[carmine sleet]

Hopefully they don't decide that they need to wipe out civilisations on a regular basis akin to the Reapers in Mass Effect

[obsidian thistle]

This is explored a lil in a Lootcrate Data Drop

https://www.halopedia.org/Halo_Legendary_Crate/Data_Drops#Series_1_2

No 2. The Vergil Interrogation

https://www.halopedia.org/images/8/8a/LC_002_Doc_8.jpg?b4882

Vergil didnt mind the idea of the Array firing.

[prime mauve]

If the Halos fired there wouldn't really be any I think

[prime mauve]

Engineers survive the Halos because they are artificial life so maybe he's just generally chill about it?

[carmine sleet]

Life would be reseeded most likely

[prime mauve]

Who would do it?

[modest marsh]

Forerunner automation

[prime mauve]

Didn't the Conservation Measure need input from living people, like the remaining Lifeworkers?

[dense falcon]

Hold up— then the Mausoleum of the Arbiter in High Charity was... all for show?

[dapper kite]

Not entirely it contained the recoverable remains of every previous arbiter

Which is a smaller number than I previously thought with it being only 182 caskets

[modest marsh]

Not quite, but you’d expect a large number if not majority of the arbiters would either be rendered unrecoverable or their armor destroyed beyond the point of repair so obviously the armor that Thel Vadam receives is unique

Allegedly in halo 3 it was considered for the player to encounter floodified arbiters from the mausoleum

[orchid kettle]

it also just kinda sounds gross to be given the same clothes as a guy who died

Considering what the body tends to do when you die.

[unique rune]

they’d probably need to get it sized to the new guy anyway

[prime mauve]

The Prophet of Regret sprays the armor sets for 30 seconds with Lysol and then they get handed over, this is done in remembrance of the Master Builder Faber's ways

[minor sky]

Beyond Jul's Covenant, are there any example of the original Covenant worshipping specific Forerunners?

[warm ridge]

how Ancient Humans and Forerunners are now retconned back to be related in a way.
Not exactly. As far as we're aware, the relation goes back to how the Precursors created them, think of it like a primordial soup (a mixture of organic molecules) & both the Forerunners & Humans were made from that soup.

I suspect all humanoid species in the Milky Way (2 arms, 2 legs) species were made from this by the Precursors.

All the quotes you just took are related to the Forerunners passing the Mantle down to Humanity per the Librarian's / Life workers orders & way of life. The Prophet of Truth had some idea of this & it basically made the Covenant's entire religion a lie, which would've also caused Truth and basically all the San'Shyuum to lose there power in the Covenant as a whole. This is also one of the reasons Humanity was never allowed to join the Covenant either.

Remember, only the San'Shyuum could speak to Engineers, they wouldn't communicate with anyone else (some exceptions to this rule exist, but not enough to say Engineers didn't purposely choose the San'Shyuum for whatever reason). With Humanity suddenly existing & being able to not only communicate with Forerunner tech, but able to access it just by touching it, it undo's everything the San'Shyuum had built at that point in order to secure there position as leaders.

By time 343 retconned that
No, 343i didn't retcon anything, Bungie themselves made the changes. No, 343i didn't retcon there own story explanations either or Bungie's own Halo lore.

[warm ridge]

It was written that way in 1999 (basically them spitballing ideas), then it was turned into an entirely new franchise & no longer a Marathon sequel by 1999 / 2000. Most of Halo CE's writing occurred in the year 2000 - 2001 afaik (according to Paul Russel the entire game itself was made in about 10 months).
Any other similarities were easter eggs at best, nothing more then that. @latent igloo

[obsidian thistle]

As far as I'm aware the Marathon-esc Cortana letters, the Marathon-esc weapon names (some semi-stuck but were altered), and Marathon-esc Transmissions were abandoned fairly fast.

Is fun to see what stuck from that era though (in the Bungie era to be exact, 343i/HS brought some stuff back where legally allowed)

[warm ridge]

They had similar writing styles because a lot of the writers who wrote Marathon had also been writing Halo CE, but they're 100% meant to be separate universes 10 fold.
So a lot of ideas or things were going to be reused regardless, but that doesn't suddenly mean they're the "same" when they aren't.

It's like Call of Duty to Titanfall, tons of similarities just about everywhere, same cod devs, different universes.

[obsidian thistle]

The WSTE-M90 Shotgun is a favourite of mine.

M90 stuck for the shotgun.
WST stuck for the company that made it.

The E did not

[warm ridge]

It's funny cause in Marathon (2026) we have the WSTR - Combat Shotgun now. Double barrel. Very short range though.

[obsidian thistle]

The og Marathon 2 shotgun was the WSTE-M5 Combat Shotgun

Which shows the og naming link

[vagrant ocean]

Not to my knowledge, I’d have to do some digging. But tbf, the Didact is probably one of the few Forerunners the Covenant and its remnants know by name.

[vagrant ocean]

There could be a sect that worships the Librarian, but that might not be likely.

[warm ridge]

Jul's Covenant knew the Librarian by name as well afaik

well, her title "the Librarian". Not her actual name.

[vagrant ocean]

“One of the few”

[warm ridge]

They didn't know the Didact's actual name either if that's what you mean. "Shadow of Sundered Star" is his real name.

Not really sure when he got the name "Didact", or why he has 2 different names.

[vagrant ocean]

It isn’t. Name in this context is synonymous with title.

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah it’s an irrelevant distinction in that sense.

[vagrant ocean]

Indeed.

[heady peak]

I read in Halo: The Fall of Reach that UNSC ships had rotating sections inside the ship to generate gravity inside so people wouldn’t float around, but it’s obvious that the games didn’t show that in the designs so… what’s keeping everyone on the floors??

[stoic hamlet]

They have gravity plates.

I prefer the rotating sections, but alas, it didn’t work with how Bungie designed the ships.

It is still a thing in some shops, though, like the Razor-class prowlers, and older UNSC vessels.

[heady peak]

Thanks

[warm ridge]

Basically that bit was sort of retconned because it really doesn't work with how Bungie designed the ships in Halo 1, 2, 3, etc.
This was largely because the writer of the book had to basically make certain things up as he went (Bungie wouldn't give him access to the whole story and or didn't know themselves).

It's also why the fall of reach book is a bit inconsistent vs what later Halo material says (no I'm not talking about the video game halo reach).
Stuff like "this is the 1st time we've met elites / brutes / etc", how far certain planets are, how many planets the UNSC has, so on so forth.

The new Omnibus collection (fall of reach, the flood, first strike) is hopefully correcting all of these mistakes.

[wispy pewter]

Imagine if Rocky met with the covenant instead

[stoic hamlet]

Tbh, you can’t really call them mistakes. The lore basically wasn’t written at the time. They’re just “outdated” but when it was written there was nothing inherently wrong with any of it.

[warm ridge]

There was lore written at the time which would've greatly helped the guy, but like I said Bungie either wouldn't or didn't want to give him access to much if any of it. So he had to make things up as he went, which as a result created inconsistences with later lore that had likely already been written up back when Bungie was making Halo 1's story.

-# this is also kind of one of the reasons bungie wanted to make halo reach itself which caused a huge colossal mess with the novel anyways

[heady peak]

Overall though the inconsistencies in it are pretty minor all things considered

[green needle]

https://old.reddit.com/r/HaloStory/comments/1046njn/all_canon_halo_content_in_release_order/

if one were to follow this order

let's take Fall of Reach novel for example. which version would be read?

the very first version or one of the subsequent rereleases?

[carmine sleet]

I just chalk up any inconsistencies from the early days to one simple thing, the early days of a franchise are always gonna have oddities like that. Sometimes they get addressed in later media, sometimes they don't

[carmine sleet]

The rereleases are usually just fixing minor details and gramatical errors. For example you're not gonna miss something by reading a newer version of Fall of Reach over the original

[green needle]

ik ye but as you can see this is in exact painful release order so im wondering how you'd go about things lol

[carmine sleet]

And even with the changes happening in the upcoming rerelease of Fall of Reach, it's not likely they're making anything as significant of a change like actually changing plot points

[carmine sleet]

I mean, just find a copy of Fall of Reach and start there

[atomic stump]

The real lore disaster is Ghosts of Onyx. I can't get over how easy it would have been to make Noble Team Spartan IIs. It solves everything.

1. Alpha Company was wiped out. There were no survivors.
2. Spartans IIIs wearing Mjolnir and having shields
3. Halsey knowing about Spartan IIIs too early.

All those issues are fixed if Microsoft/Bungie just made Noble team Spartan IIs. There was no reason to make them IIIs.

[carmine sleet]

Bungie didn't much care for the lore of the novels

[atomic stump]

true

[stoic hamlet]

That affects the II’s numbers, though.

Either way you’re affecting Spartan numbers.

The III’s are a bit easier to explain, even if it’s arguably incompatible with Ghosts of Onyx.

[atomic stump]

Its ok to just say you prefer retconning Ghosts of Onyx to retconning the Fall of Reach. But it is a retcon either way.

[stoic hamlet]

I never said that. Don’t put words into my mouth.

I’m opposed to retconning either.

[prime mauve]

Honestly yeah, they could have just picked names from the Red Team Spartans in First Strike and made Noble Team from them.

[stoic hamlet]

If it was up to me, Halo Reach the game wouldn’t exist.

Alas.

[prime mauve]

Also I think there were still some spaces available in the Spartan II roster until recently, what with adding Silver Team to the normal timeline and having them at Reach and all that

So there really could have been Spartan IIs Carter, Emile, Jun, etc if they wanted.

[stoic hamlet]

Until the updated Red Team roster there were 13 unknowns, yeah.

(Off the top of my head)

[carmine sleet]

In an ideal world, nothing would need to be retconned, but alas. The way I'd fix it is by having Halsey learning of a rival Spartan/super soldier program to her own earlier, but not having any details due to ONI keeping her out of the loop.

So stuff like whether or not they are a new Spartan program or it's a S-II Class II made without her involvement or just a wholly separate super soldier program with different goals and methods to the IIs wouldn't be known to her. Maybe even have it where she doesn't even know if the members of Noble are Spartans per say (Excluding Jorge, since he is a II)

[prime mauve]

"Commander, the "Spartan" brand is copyright protected so you will do me a favor and refer to yourself as something less cool like Big Soldier III."
"Ma'am this is frankly very petty of you we already helped you fight like 500 Covenant just today."
"Shush and lemme speak with Jorge."

[atomic stump]

That is pretty hilarious

[vagrant ocean]

I hate this guy so much.

[vagrant ocean]

There’s also an unknown II killed during Harvest.

[vagrant ocean]

I mean, she was aware of JAVELIN so why wouldn’t she be aware of a potential “successor” program.

[carmine sleet]

Halsey is ultimately one of many cogs within the machine which is ONI, I doubt she would've been privy to all of its secrets

[vagrant ocean]

But she was also developing AI designed for cyber warfare, she prolly tested them by putting them against ONI firewalls.

[prime mauve]

She's been possibly the most employed person in Halo in the war era honestly

[vagrant ocean]

If you have a polymath on the payroll already, why not use her?

[atomic stump]

The lore answer is that the relationship between Halsey and Parangosky broke down after the Spartan II program was finished. In lore, the reason Halsey was not brought onto SIII is because she had a tiff with Parangosky. Just office politics.

My head canon is Parangosky loves to duplicate processes. She never wants to rely on just one person to build the Spartans. She wanted two different Spartan programs so that she could decide to kill either Halsey or Ackerson and still have a Spartan program. She builds redundancy into everything. Everybody in ONI is spying on everybody else which allows Parangosky to stay on top. Divide and rule.

To put it simply: If Parangosky had Halsey work on the Spartan III program, Halsey would have become the most powerful civilian in ONI and possibly the most powerful person in ONI. Halsey might control 1000 Spartans personally loyal to herself. Parangosky is deeply paranoid about anything and everyone so she can't let Halsey become that successful.

[prime mauve]

The whole clone thing made Parangosky's friend kill himself out of guilt so that's a slow cooking grudge building there for years, plus Halsey taking more and more budget every time for improvements

Also she did kidnap Kelly at one point

[unique rune]

this feels like a weird unnecessary layer to add when the fun combination of "unpleasant to work with" and "no longer need to work with" means they could immediately just throw Halsey out the window

[vagrant ocean]

Tbf, Kelly isn’t Parangosky’s property. As a member of the UNSCDF Navy, Kelly ultimately falls under Fleet Admiral Lord Terrance Hood’s command.

Not Rear Admiral Parangosky.

[vagrant ocean]

Now if Halsey kidnapped Grey Team or Team BLACK, then Parangosky would be within her rights to get testy.

Cuz they are ONI assets.

[prime mauve]

"Halsey, I find Black Team extremely cringe and hate their vibes but sunk cost fallacy demands I get angry if you go back to your Spartan kidnapping antics."
"The Didact killed them already."
"Okay then forget about the whole thing."

[stoic hamlet]

SPARTAN II (and III) were under NAVSPECWEP, and then administratively under ONI Beta-5. They’re “regular Navy” in name only.

[worn wolf]

firm agreement right there spartan blackteam are actually just pure cringe

[fair hazel]

Making it so some people were pulled out from the operations increases the availability of spartans you can use in the story

[stoic hamlet]

The issue really is that it affects Kurt’s story retroactively (and also, the stated reasons make absolutely no sense and completely go against the original book.) but as an idea broadly it makes a lot of sense.

It was just (like a lot of Halo stuff) really, really badly framed.

[obsidian thistle]

Ghosts of Onyx really needs a definitive edition

I doubt anyone in the lore community can really deny it will stand out compared to the other novels. Especially since it hasn't been touched outside edits in the 00s (Bungie era, not 343i) that made some issues worse. And that the other 3 novels in The Original Series will have been done twice this November.

(Yes there is a few soft revisions of Ghosts of Onyx in the wild. Mostly notable changes were around Alpha Company's start date. All of which dont work lol)

[stoic hamlet]

hai yes dat me. I is the wild fears

But actually though I hope if we do get another book rewritten, Ghosts is the one they choose.

The changes needed to bring it in line are very slight, all things considered.

A few small dates, and a few minor word changes and you’re basically fixed.

[obsidian thistle]

(There is other stuff that can be done. I'd argue introducing the name Beatrice for Halseys ship better lol. Seeing as its not said in First Strike. Looking back that confused a buncha folks when the book came out)

Oh and getting rid of Jerrod once he becomes irrelevant so he is free to do his weird Hunt the Signal jaunt.

[vagrant ocean]

From what I can see, only the IIIs are under Beta-5.

[atomic stump]

There is one scene in Ghosts of Onyx where Halsey unequivocally says "Spartans cannot survive a fall from space" This is when Halsey is crashing landing her ship on Onyx.

......

And then the Master Chief survives orbital falls in Halo 3, Halo 4, and Noble six survives the drop in Halo: Reach. This is probably the most cringe inducing line in the whole book for me.

The lore heads can explain more but there is also a scene in First Strike when Red Team has to bail out of a Pelican as they land on Reach. I forgot how many Spartan IIs just die from falling out of a Pelican. I really hope they fix that scene in the omnibus.

[prime mauve]

Chief had the mighty power of Big Forerunner Door on his side though

[carmine sleet]

And Six had a pack designed to specifically help with re-entering a planet's atmosphere

[atomic stump]

how could I forget? silly me

[minor sky]

I imagine the wreakage of the Dawn also cushioned his fall to the surface of Requiem

i'd have to rewatch the cutscene

[modest marsh]

This is a consequence of early franchise weirdness but the Mark V was relatively untested despite entering service in 2551 and was already rendered obsolescent by the Mark VI across the board within a year

We know at the very least Mark VI has superior energy shielding which would contribute a lot towards making atmospheric burn up and impact more survivable

Kelly’s Mark V was not only less resilient than what Chief was working with, it had previously been seriously compromised by sustaining damage from Hunter assault cannons that had left her seriously injured

In any case, none of Master Chief’s falls are particularly “safe” even if he ostensibly walked away totally uninjured for all intents and purposes

If there was a halo 3 novelization they’d have probably mentioned some form of injury or armor damage that he’s merely suppressing and would’ve received attention for after RTB

Noble Six, in spite of benefiting from a reentry pack of non-descript functionality, still suffered injury from the impact that resulted in a visible limp they did not recover from over the course of several days and likely required medical care and rest to fully recover from (in game abstracted by starting the level with reduced health)

The Spartan-IIs that perished reentering Reach’s atmosphere after dismounting their destroyed Pelican did not have the benefit of a controlled descent into a “safe” landing zone beyond changing their body orientation mid fall, so it’s plausible that the ones that died as a result of the impact simply landed more violently than others, such as colliding into a rock face rather than soft soil like Chief does in halo 3

[hearty whale]

@fallow sundial Chief is a reclaimer, he is technically forerunner since they left the rings to him.

[fallow sundial]

if they left the rings to some humans that would not make those certain humans forerunner

[hearty whale]

Reclaimers are forerunner

Not all humans are forerunner is what I’m saying

[modest marsh]

The meaning of the terms “forerunner” and “reclaimer” changed over time

In the current canon, “Forerunner” is very explicitly in reference to a non-human race

It’s also a term for the civilization comprised of that race, who designed a plan that made humans their heirs, hence “reclaimer”

[fallow sundial]

heres my canon, the 343i games never happened and chief is still on the forward unto dawn

[stoic hamlet]

Fanon, technically.

[carmine sleet]

I don't even think that's a technicality, that is straight up fanon to say Chief is still sleeping on the FUD

[prime mauve]

Yeah a random guy on the internet is not the one who determines canonicity

[fallow sundial]

cool its just my canon because 343’s canon sucks

[prime mauve]

Unless you made the thing you don't decide

[fallow sundial]

exactly thats bungie who gets to decide because they made halo

[prime mauve]

Bungie did their thing and handed over the franchise.

[carmine sleet]

And Bungie decided they wanted to do other things and leave Halo with Microsoft, who decided they wanted to continue Halo, hence 343 forming (This is oversimplified because there is more to it than this but I don't feel like explaining exactly when Halo became Microsoft owned and whatnot)

[prime mauve]

It's no longer them that decide anything

What they released exists now in a different, more complete context.

[fallow sundial]

and they chose to retcon everything, I don’t believe in retconned lore

[carmine sleet]

I don't remember any mass retcon of all the lore happening under 343

Like, when you say "retcon everything", it makes it sound like you think they literally retconned everything to have a clean slate. That did not happen

[unique rune]

as if Bungie wasn’t also frequently retconning things and just making it up as they went lol

[fallow sundial]

well thats cool, now you 343 fanboys can keep defending 343 but Im getting bored of this so goodbye

[carmine sleet]

I wonder if they know Reach was intended by Bungie to be a retcon of Fall of Reach

[prime mauve]

343 added some dumb things, sure, but the point is canonicity, not quality

[carmine sleet]

I have plenty of critiques for things that have happened under 343, but I also know that Bungie didn't have some grand plan and also made some dumb decisions when it comes to the lore as well

[stoic hamlet]

Wait, no, what was retconned?

I’m curious.

(Genuinely here.)

[vagrant ocean]

Bungie doesn’t own the IP, so they have no say.

[vagrant ocean]

So cringe.

[atomic stump]

Bungie didn't even have consistent lore from game to game.

Chief was supposed to be a cyborg in Halo 1 for starters.

Or ask why the Brutes look so different in Halo 3 compared to Halo 2.

[strange pumice]

Brutes in Halo Reach:🗿

[stoic hamlet]

Technically Chief (and all other UNSC personnel) are still cyborgs. :p

But yeah it was supposed to be more in-depth than what it turned into

[strange pumice]

Not sure about marines and ODST, but all Spartans definitely cyborgs

[stoic hamlet]

They’re all cyborgs by definition.

They have neural Interlace chips and embedded IFF’s in the brain stem.

Pilots link with their machines via these as well

[carmine sleet]

Yeah, pretty much every human we encounter in the games is a cyborg (Not sure about the civilians we encounter during Reach and 3)

[stoic hamlet]

Esparza (and Sorvad’s daughter), and I guess Halsey are the only exceptions, when it comes to main/named characters.

[vagrant ocean]

I fink so too.

Anders?

[carmine sleet]

Oh yeah, I don't recall seeing any sort of implant on Esparza

[stoic hamlet]

He shouldn’t have one.

Which makes John assume he was Military not make sense.

He should have known immediately he was a civvie.

[carmine sleet]

Yeah

Like, it's a minor thing but yeah

Well, not minor but you know what I mean. The story Infinite was telling wouldn't work if Chief could immediately tell he was a civilian

[stoic hamlet]

I mean it still could.

But Chief just… didn’t care.

But then that also doesn’t work, because he’s supposed to be ‘nice’.

[prime mauve]

Yeah a quick IFF check could have probably rendered that plot point moot

But maybe Chief preferred to let Esparza tell the truth on his own time

[worn wolf]

if only esparza had a roman numeral on his helmet then he would've been a fan favourite.

[carmine sleet]

I feel like I've seen plenty say they like his character. It's only a small percentage of people that I have seen who hate him

[fading flume]

It’s not a matter of defending it’s a matter of legal owning rights if you wanna talk about canonicity😭

[fading flume]

I love how that single sentence will send some people for a loop

They can have their own fanons, but any attempt to impose said fanon onto others isn’t really the move here

[warm ridge]

Microsoft made Halo, Bungie simply developed it until they wanted to become independent & to stop making Halo entirely cause they got tired of it.

How did MS make Halo?
Without MS, Halo wouldn't exist, Bungie would've gone bankrupt sometime back in the year 2000, and it's assets would've been sold pennies on the dollar to Apple, Rockstar, and whatever other investors it had at the time.

[warm ridge]

Not everyone in the UNSC has the implants pretty sure.

[prime mauve]

Marines have neural interfaces, Army pretty sure they do as well, for the Navy I think bridge crew are confirmed to have them. Captains definitely do.

[warm ridge]

https://www.halopedia.org/Mev-ut

🤷‍♂️
"They are especially interested in bringing back those equipped with neural interfaces."

This heavily implies the grand majority of the UNSC aren't equipped with them. It also implies ones that do have them fetch a higher price to the Jackals.

Also I think we might be talking about 2 different types of neural interfaces. All UNSC personal have the basic neural chip which helps with the friend / foe system. This is just a basic chip implanted under the skin, but not an actual neural interface which exist on the back of your skull.
For example, this is what Marines have, they don't have the skull version.

[hot zodiac]

lmao I think you've finally hit peak tool here

[stoic hamlet]

If we’re using Halopedia links, then this is what’s said about even basic Neural interfaces:

The neural interface is implanted at the base of the skull and can only be removed through sophisticated surgery. The most basic interface, known as a "neural chip", is implanted in all UNSC military personnel upon activation, but it can be replaced with a more specialized neural lace should the need arise.

https://www.halopedia.org/Neural_interface

Regardless of if it’s simply an IFF, it’s still counted as a neural interface.

[modest marsh]

Expensive and requiring complicated surgery when first introduced, neural interfaces and their mediating computing systems can be fitted in a simple outpatient clinical procedure by 2557. High-bandwidth interfaces can be paired with advanced expert systems to augment – and even bypass – the human motor system, reducing the physiological stress of high-performance combat exoskeletons to levels that do not require extensive skeletal reinforcement.

[warm ridge]

Anytime I see someone mention neural interface they're referring to the skull version almost exclusively, not just a basic chip implanted under your skin. I think that's the important distinction that just needed to be made.

[warm ridge]

Also the Pilot does have one, the basic chip itself. It's how the Weapon was able to "activate his tracking beacon remotely" when he left the Pelican during the Pelican down mission (where you blow up the 3 anti-air cannons)

[prime mauve]

I think both would be on the skull

But the more complex ones protrude from it

[warm ridge]

Believe it isn't, it's why all the Marines don't have them showing on the back of there skulls.

There are slightly more complex ones that aid in vehicle control to, but appear to be exclusive to vehicle crews only. Specifically scorpion crews are mentioned having this.

[deft marlin]

Finished rubicon protocol book yesterday

Another day, another book full of despair

Still mad abt the end of divine wind

[prime mauve]

I think you could be right. I remembered in the Arms Race trailer for Halo 3 that the Marines got an injection with a machine that looked less like a normal applicator and looked it up and Halopedia does mention that it could be an IFF tag being injected.

[fair hazel]

I like the arms race stuff a lot

[minor sky]

Very good trailer

Neill Blomkamp's direction does a lot to sell it, especially since it is being filmed on what is basically a paintball course

I wonder if the pseudo-found footage feel of the Landfall trailers had any influence on the cinematography of Halo Reach

[vagrant ocean]

It’s a shame he’s washed up.

[warm ridge]

In the Halo: Landfall trailer at 1:04, you can also clearly see a tattooed "bar code" like-thing that shows up on the back of there necks that was being scanned. Possibly as a back up system incase the chip itself fails?
Details like that wouldn't ever show up in-game ofc, but it's cool to have.

[prime mauve]

Agreed.

The barcode would definitely work if scanned, maybe Marine HUDs can scan barcodes like that and get individual information

Like a QR code

[warm ridge]

It'd also make it impossible to track for the Covenant properly (if the Covenant cared about such info at all), and if you don't have the right tech even decrypting it could prove difficult for people like Insurrectionist.

[prime mauve]

Yeah and it would explain why Marine deserters wouldn't just be spotting other Marines from afar with their IFF tags

[stoic hamlet]

This comes up in Edge of Dawn. The marines encountered removed their IFF’s because the Banished could track them/the Banished used captured IFF tags as bait for traps.

[prime mauve]

It would be easier to remove one from the arm than from the skull

[minor sky]

Fun fact! The barcode on the back of the neck can be traced back to William Gibson's unmade Alien 3 script. It is one of the few elements of his version of the film to make it into the final release

[warm ridge]

yep, just right under the skin. Wouldn't make sense to have them near the skull unless it was the far more invasive & complex version that digs itself into your actual brain.

[fair hazel]

in spartan ops jul's covies also use captured IFF tags

[timid elbow]

.

[prime mauve]

Yeah and since some of Jul's guys like Gek Lhar are absolutely vicious, I did think it likely that they'd rip cranial implants for a ruse, but with arm placed subdermal implants it would just be so much more convenient for everyone involved. Probably still painful as hell for those poor humans though.

[fair hazel]

Well they were like physical tag card things

[obsidian thistle]

As a fun note

https://x.com/Halo/status/2049534573856637035

Halo (@Halo)

To celebrate #Halo25Together, Halo Studios is partnering with community powerhouse @JumperScape on a special 25th Anniversary Halo Waypoint Chronicle coming later this year.

X · Apr 29, 2026, 5:01 PM

JumperScape is doing more Chronicle stuff

We dont however know much about it

[prime mauve]

I hope Jumperscape is the writer for it

[frigid heart]

I once saw somewhere that the DMR was made by Armalite

Is that true in lore?

[vagrant ocean]

No, that was a placeholder. It’s produced by Misriah Armory.

[karmic gulch]

Why couldn’t Keyes come back for 6? Pelicans can go into space, he wasn’t even on the autumn yet. Couldn’t he zip back and get 6?

[frigid heart]

Darn

I thought that was really cool

[warm ridge]

If you couldn't tell, by the time Six got off the MAC cannon & down the latter, the Autumn was already flying directly above him and getting into position to go to space.
Uh no, there was zero time he could've "gone back for six".

Even if you assume the Pelican could've gone into space and board with the Autumn, the Autumn is moving insanely fast by this point & running from hundreds if not thousands of Covenant ships shooting at the thing right before it slipspaced (halo 2 anniversary starting cut scene).
Zero chance any Pelican can keep up with it, and it's a guaranteed 100% chance some Covenant ship will spot it and obliterate the thing instantly with a plasma bolt.

tl;dr Noble Six would've just died faster.

[prime mauve]

Keyes himself returning would be kind of silly honestly lol

[signal stratus]

Im working on a fan fiction and would like to make it lore accurate so I would be grateful if someone wants to help me fact check (and add some creative input if you’d like) while I flesh the story out. It is a stand alone ODST story set during halo 3 (does not tie into halo 3s story) if you’re interested please dm

[prime mauve]

Sounds great, I'd like to help. I'll send you a dm

[wicked fulcrum]

https://discord.com/channels/471722331820130324/1499519932096970812 👀

[prime mauve]

Nice job

[obsidian thistle]

While I dont read Fanon myself. My best tip would be to not worry about if your story follows canon and just "enjoy writing the story". Most fans wont care if a random deet doesn't work canon wise in a Fan Story, more if its good or bad!

[worn wolf]

somehow, captain keyes returned.

[strange pumice]

Do all Spartans count as Reclaimers or only Master Chief?
Because I'm not sure if any Spartan beside Master Chief can be Reclaimer

[vagrant ocean]

All humans are Reclaimers.

[prime mauve]

I think every playable Spartan that has interacted with any Forerunner thing at all can probably be counted as one

So Chief, Blue Team, Red Team from Halo Wars, our Spartan Ops Spartan, Fireteam Osiris, etc.

[modest marsh]

“Reclaimer” got complicated because of divergent interpretations of what it refers to depending on the source and it’s unclear what exceptions/exclusions are meant to exist

CE only has Chief interfacing with Forerunner tech but supposedly Marvin Mobuto was Spark’s first choice so internally its not supposed to be that Chief was only one capable of activating the ring

In 2 and 3 both Miranda and Johnson are obviously shown to be compatible as well

4/forerunner trilogy is where things get dicey because it introduces the idea that what makes humans “reclaimer” is a form of genetic engineering that was intended to evolve/mutate over time to create distinct outcomes

Implicitly Chief and the other Spartans are a different “type” of reclaimer from whatever Mobuto or Miranda were because it’s unlikely their genetic sequence included whatever precursor was required to develop composer immunity, that might require the specific genetic markers and modifications inherent to the Spartan program

Ghosts of onyx also introduces the idea that humans can be modified to no longer be identified as reclaimers in the case of the gammas, where the mutations they’re subjected to make them no longer register as a member of the same species even though they clearly are for the most part

[stoic hamlet]

On this point, Ash was actually identified as a Reclaimer initially.

He just didn’t know the passcode, so the sentinel defaulted to him being a non-reclaimer.

Honestly you’d think that would have happened to literally all of them, considering (if I recall) they see sentinels first, not Guilty Spark or another monitor, and should thus have all been classified as non-reclaimers.

[modest marsh]

It refers to him as “aboriginal subspecies” though which implies it’s a biological distinction it’s acknowledging

[stoic hamlet]

Yeah, though there’s no indication it scanned him or anything:

”I understood that," Ash replied.
"Ring offensive system activated," it said. "Shield in countdown mode. Exchange proper counterresponse Reclaimer."
"I don't want to hurt you," Ash tried. He had no idea what this thing wanted.
"Non sequitur," it said.
"Reclassification of targets as non-Reclaimers. Aboriginal subspecies. Collect for further analysis— else neutralize as possible infection vector."

I assume with no counterresponse it just defaulted to him being a Florian or something.

[prime mauve]

"Why are you so SMALL?" the Sentinel asked the 6'4 tall Spartan III. "Honestly little Riser might have been bigger than you what is going on."

[atomic stump]

Ash was probably just Canadian.

[stoic hamlet]

Well he’d be smaller at that point, but yeah.

[prime mauve]

"Boy, I say boy! No Reclaimer status until you have a growth spurt and no excuses about your bone augmentations, you hear me? You need to be at least this tall to ride, boy."
"You gave detective Veta Reclaimer status and she's like 4'10, this is outrageous, this is unfair."

[stoic hamlet]

Sentinel Foghorn-Leghorn? I appreciate the reference, lol.