The Official Halo Thread

They certainly won't kill him, especially with at least Halo 6 coming out (they may go further with the series). Also Frank O'Conner said they have no plans to kill him anytime soon.

And 343 Industries just released the entirety of the Halo 5 Soundtrack on their Soundcloud so go check it out!

 

No, I agree, I was simply offering my own opinion on what I think might happen if it turns out to be true.

As much as spoilers don't bother me, I haven't looked into any of the Guardians spoilers – mainly because I can't find them, which is sort of ironic.

The so-called Reclaimer Saga was originally planned out to be a trilogy but 343i changed their minds and decided not to limit themselves to three games in which to tell their own story. Halo 6 is guaranteed, but I think at the very least 343i has plans for Halo 7 and Halo 8, should they need to go that far to tell their story.

Granted, I don't think they'll stop there (why would they?) but like I said, I'm betting they've got the story mapped out a few games into the future.

 

Holy shit Mark Hamill voices Dasc Gevadim in Hunt the Truth. Damn 343, you have brought some pretty big names onto this project. And season 2 has been nothing but flawless so far. Next week is the last episode, so I can't wait to hear it.

 

Tomorrow's going to be the longest day of work of my life, considering I'll have to wait until I get home to play the game.

 

Oh my god... that ending... My mind is fucking blown. I just... never expected it to end like that.

 

so, has anyone else finished the campaign yet?

 

Yes I have, and yes, my mind is equally as blown as yours. Though I was really surprised to find out that the campaign is getting such negative feedback. Sure, it wasn't perfect and the pacing was a bit off, but the story was amazing for me. I guess it's just more for hardcore fans of the series.

Oh, and they really need to change the base radar range back to what it was or at least extend it. As it is right now, you might as well not have a radar cause it's pretty useless at this range.

 

Spoilers:

Blue Team was woefully underrepresented in the campaign. The camaraderie between the four Spartans never felt explored enough in-game. Sure, we get it in the books, but it'd have been nice to have seen it play out in-game as well.

Fireteam Osiris was great and I didn't expect to like any of them (except for Buck) but I loved them all. Their sections of the campaign were great.

Speaking of the campaign, it was too goddamn short – just like with Halo 2. Some of the cutscenes felt incomplete and some of the missions felt like they were way too short, like they could've been combined into one mission.

The ending was annoying as fuck and now I want Halo 6 because holy shitfucking christ I did not see that shit coming.

 

It feels like 343 is kind of repeating the style of the original Halo trilogy. Halo 4 (Combat Evolved) was kind of a self-contained story with the possibility of a sequel, but was enough to satisfy consumers if it were to be a stand alone game. Halo 5 (2) was the exact opposite; a lead up to the bigger, and more satisfying, conclusion in the next game. I'm betting Halo 6 will wrap up most of the story from 4 and 5, while still being just open-ended enough to warrant another game, like 3.

 

343i has already said the new story will be longer than a trilogy, so I don't expect much to be resolved in Halo 6, to be honest.

It's been aces so far. And also MCC isn't that bad anymore, just FYI.

 

my main gripe with the game is the story. halo 4's emotional ending was completely undermined after the second mission of the game, and then completely shat on in my opinion. i have mostly played the halo games for the campaign, and this is the first one that hasn't really done it for me. i don't mind the idea that cortana is alive, but it feels as though it's been revealed too soon for me to be surprised, nor actually happy about it. then, add on the fact that has became a villain is just ... not right. again, i don't mind the idea but the execution was poor. i never really felt excited to see/hear cortana again because the time spent without her (from halo 4 to now) was essentially nil, making the impact of the loss from the previous game practically nothing. then the sudden change from sacrificing herself to save chief to wanting to be the master of the universe just doesn't make sense. maybe someone can explain it? but i don't know, i was just disappointed.

that said, the gameplay itself is immensely fun. i found the campaign fun to play, and i suck ass as multiplayer as always, but it's good fun.

 

Here's my take on it: Cortana loves the Chief inasmuch as an artificially-intelligent being can love a flesh-and-bones human being. Her idea here's that by creating a forced galactic peace, there won't be any need for war – and war is what the Chief's good at; in fact, it's almost the only thing he's good at. Therefore, her idea's that if she gets rid of the galaxy's propensity for war, the Chief won't have to fight any longer, and he can finally find peace. It makes sense when you look at it that way. However, I don't think Cortana's acting of her own accord. There's been a lot of debate (already) about whether or not she's still Rampant, and part of the theories for why she's not still Rampant are what I've already stated: that she's doing what she's doing specifically for the Chief. Remember, the Warden accused her of still being emotionally attached to the Chief. That said, I think she's still Rampant and, on top of that, I think she's being controlled by something else – perhaps the Didact, since he's not dead – and the reason I think this is because Cortana murdered millions (perhaps billions) of people to bring those Guardians to Genesis – something I don't think a non-Rampant Cortana would ever do, whether or not she was doing it for the Chief or not. Cortana would never, ever harm a civilian, just like how the Chief would never, ever hurt a civilian. Another reason why I think she's Rampant is because, just like how it was pointed out by the Chief, she was using psychological tactics against the Chief, by calling him by his real name (John) or appealing to his teammates (Blue Team) being more or less his family, the only family he's ever known. A non-Rampant Cortana would've never done that to the Chief.

tl;dr Cortana's still Rampant but thinks she isn't and is trying to achieve galactic peace by making herself the master of the galaxy in order to save the Master Chief.

Also, I'm with you, I don't mind that they brought her back (I always knew they would) but she shouldn't have been revealed as the force behind the reawakening of the Guardians until damn near the end of the game, rather than near the beginning of the game.

I hope some of that made sense.

 

it did! thank you for that response. what you said made a lot of sense and made me feel slightly less cheated, hehe.

 

I just... I just can't play Warzone. No matter how well I do, my teammates always end up sucking and I never win.

 

Hybrid, I'll talk more story when I have more time. But I think you should all listen to the first 5 minutes of this video:

[video]https://youtu.be/hyfJEDvMksY[/video]

I used to like the machinima videos this guy made, they always looked pretty cool. But I had to unsubscribe after this video. Cause after I saw this video, I realized how much of a fucking douchebag him and his friends are. And a lot of his subscribers felt the same and unsubbed too. So, take a couple seconds out of your day and please give this douchebag a dislike cause he obviously doesn't care about his subscribers.

 

I'd like to say a few things, but I don't have time to flesh out my ideas, because I've got to go to bed; that said, I want to get them down now while they're fresh in my mind, and I'll come back to them later. Needless to say, spoilers:

Cortana is Rampant. I believe Cortana is Rampant based on certain pieces of her dialogue throughout the game. A non-Rampant Cortana would've never used psychological tactics against Fireteam Osiris, let alone the Master Chief and Blue Team. Also, I can't recall any other point in time in which Cortana refers to the Chief as "John" as often as she does in-game. That stuck out to me more than anything else, and the Master Chief points it out himself. I believe Cortana only thinks she's no longer Rampant because that's what the Domain wants her to think.

The Domain and the Didact are one in the same. Dialogue in Escalation reveals that even the Master Chief doesn't think the Didact is dead, merely "contained." There's a piece of dialogue in the game in which a Grunt claims to have worked with the Didact and only said "three words" when he was around: "I can't be Composed." (I know it's four words, but the Grunt says it's only three.) This lends itself well to the Chief saying he thinks the Didact is only contained. There's a theory going around that, rather than being Composed, the Didact somehow became one with the long-dead Domain; thus, the Domain that exists now is simply the Didact's consciousness.

Much of Cortana's dialogue near the end of the game was spoken word-for-word by the Didact. I don't have exact quotes on me at the moment, but there are several things Cortana says near the end of the game that the Didact himself said in either Halo 4 or Escalation. This leads me to believe Cortana's being controlled by the Didact.

The Didact has a new "body" in the form of the Warden Eternal. I believe the Didact has taken possession of the Warden. The Warden seems to think that the Mantle of Responsibility belongs not to humanity, but to the AIs that humanity has created. This directly goes against what the Librarian said in her cutscene with the Master Chief in Halo 4. The Didact-Warden is using Cortana to reclaim the Mantle of Responsibility for the Forerunners, taking it away from humanity, whom he has never thought worthy of upholding the Mantle.

I believe Cortana is well-and-truly dead and that the Cortana we're interacting with in-game is the Rampant part of her matrix that was "down there" (as in, on the Mantle's Approach). I believe the only non-Rampant part of Cortana left following the battle with the Didact was what was used to protect the Master Chief from the nuke detonating, and that her remaining matrix that was trapped on Mantle's Approach was the Rampant portion. Thus, Cortana (as we knew her) is dead, but Rampant-Domain-Cortana doesn't know that (and probably won't ever know that).

I believe the Didact-Domain is using Cortana to take the Mantle of Responsibility back from humanity, going against the Librarian's wishes, and that the Didact-Domain is using Cortana specifically because of her relationship with the true Reclaimer, John-117.

One more thing: I believe the Master Chief's "you've changed" jab at Cortana was more him pointing out that now she's got what appears to be a physical body, and that she's also wearing clothing. Cortana's always been depicted as being naked before (for whatever reason, and we may discover why in the future), but once she interacts with and becomes a part of the Domain, she is clothed. I don't think it has to do with anything other than the fact that 117's never seen her hologram as being clothed.