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Halo 4 Story Spoilers and Speculations
- Thread starter Slightly Live
- Start date
The Elite
BOSS
I think this thread needs love as people are already finishing the game after release.
But you see Halsey at the beginning of the game.
I assumed that her inclusion in the prologue was common knowledge, she doesn't appear in the actual game (though this will likely be remedied in halo 5 at this rate)
The Elite
BOSS
I had no idea she was in the prologue. I consider it part of the game story and avoided all spoilers.
Finished the game and got all the terminals. Story direction is really interesting. The campaign story is expanded upon a lot in the terminals and gives so reasoning behind the characters motivation.
what exactly does the librarian do to chief? I know she upgraded him somehow and he seems to be immune to the composer ray. Did anything change from within gameplay?
Didact can't be dead. Think we will see him again.
Didact can't be dead. Think we will see him again.
Vinterbird
Member
I think so twisted the lightbridge Chief was standing on to a shield, and propelled him away from the nuke.
Also:
- If I understadn the Terminals correctly, Jul Mdama is outside Requiem waiting to get it? Or did he get in with Infinity? He was never adressed in the game, but perhaps that will happen in Spartan Ops.
- Where the hell could the story go from here? Bring back the Flood? Have a Flood infested Didact go nuts on a killing spree?
Regular and Legendary are exactly the same with one difference.
In regular, the bit with Chief's eyes is simply a black screen w/voiceover.
In legendary, you see Chief's eyes (eyebrows are wrong color hair tho!) for those few seconds.
Everything else is identical.
Honestly, after beating it on Legendary I was a little disappointed that there wasn't something more for the effort.
Vinterbird
Member
Agree. They take far too much of the Halo lore for granted. They need to make a decision to either put all of the story stuff into the game or nothing at all. It's fucking annoying having to go to Waypoint, read books, read a wiki for a third cross-media product to understand what is going on in the main game.
If it''s essential to the main game, it would benefit them to actually put it in the game and explain it proper.
Yep. Even outside of the context of the Forerunner stuff, I felt like almost all the cutscenes could have used a little bit of breathing room, and more exposition.
The terminals, once again, provide vital story context that absolutely should have been presented in the main game. Putting a lot of very important background information behind secrets in the game is not exactly ideal.
Ah. Yeah I saw a video on youtube and I was wondering if it was just a fuckup or the actual regular ending. Kinda underwhelming legendary ending I suppose
Cuban Legend
Member
Doesn't the History of Halo on the Halo Legends DVD explain all this?
And the Terminals explain all the details between the Didact, Master Builder, and Librarian right?
Vinterbird
Member
The Forerunner books goes into a lot of detail between the Didact and his relationship to the rest of the Forerunner world. But the game itself expects the player to be totally up to speed on everything Halo, and I don't think thats fair for the end-user.
I would much rather see 343 try to take narrative back into the game, and not just keep it this segmented or expecting of the player. They very clearly have a very deep and well done universe, it's just sad they don't incorporate more of it into the main game, and instead hide most of it behind Terminals and books.
JimiNutz
Banned
Just finished the campaign and have no idea what happened at the end.
I liked the game, but no idea what the hell is going on lol.
Is Master Chief now invincible after the Librarian genetically upgraded him? First he survives that death ray (when all other humans were vaporized), then he survives a nuke?
What did Cortana do to save him? How did she momentarily become 'real' (when she touched him). How did she save Chief?
What did Cortana do to save him? How did she momentarily become 'real' (when she touched him). How did she save Chief?
I liked the game, but no idea what the hell is going on lol.
Vinterbird
Member
I think the Librarian upgraded Chief so to say, made him half Forerunner half Human, or in some way altered his genetic footprint so the Composer would not register him as a human or something to kill.
In regards to Cortana: I think so folded up the light bridge they stood on, and made it into a shield, and the "real cortana" was just a memory /hallucination she put into Chiefs armor during the Nuke part before she disappeared.
JimiNutz
Banned
Thanks. That makes sense.
I wonder where they go from here? Seems like they've wrapped up a lot of this story.
NekoFever
Member
This could be me misremembering something because I finished it last week, but wasn't there a throwaway line by Cortana in the final level about a teleportation grid on the Didact's ship? I just assumed she teleported him to safety at the last possible moment.
I need to go through it again in general. I could have sworn the Librarian said the Chief was immune to the Composer already and so wasn't sure what she did to him, but if that was the process of making him immune it would make more sense.
I need to go through it again in general. I could have sworn the Librarian said the Chief was immune to the Composer already and so wasn't sure what she did to him, but if that was the process of making him immune it would make more sense.
I do pity people who played the game without at least reading Cryptum. Stuff like the prehistoric Human-Forerunner war must have come out of nowhere and was treated like nothing considering how big a revelation it was to the franchise's story.
Gozer the Gozerian
Member
Reposting from the review thread.
Yeah the story really was bizarre in an off-putting way. Like the writers from the weird Desmond story crap from the later AC games took over.
What? Evolution, how does it work?
I was kinda worried with the story direction based off of the recent books with the whole ancient humans thing and what not, and the final product is pretty much what I feared. I won't say the story is straight up objectively bad but it feels very un-Halo to me and not really a story I'm interested in continuing to follow.
Yeah the story really was bizarre in an off-putting way. Like the writers from the weird Desmond story crap from the later AC games took over.
The whole meeting with the Librarian was just dumb. So she planted the "seed" of humanity on earth, and somehow encoded in our genes or whatever that thousands of generations down the line the Spartan-II program would be created and a lifelike AI called Cortana would be created and that AI would be matched to one of those Spartans and somewhere down the line he would end up on Requiem and unleash Didact accidentally to become the Librarian's secret weapon and defeat the Didact? (Oh then "evolved" him some more too)
I was kinda worried with the story direction based off of the recent books with the whole ancient humans thing and what not, and the final product is pretty much what I feared. I won't say the story is straight up objectively bad but it feels very un-Halo to me and not really a story I'm interested in continuing to follow.
MaximumFlipFlop
Banned
DAT FINAL MONOLOGUE!!!
Beautiful.
In this hour of victory, we taste only defeat.
I ask why?
We are Forerunners, Guardians of all that exists.
The roots of the Galaxy have grown deep under our careful tenure.
Where there is life, the wisdom of our countless generations has saturated the soil.
Our strength is a luminous sun, towards which all intelligence blossoms.
And the impervious shelter, beneath which, it has prospered.
I stand before you, accused of the sin, of ensuring Forerunner Ascendancy.
Of attempting to save us, from this fate, where we are forced to... Recede.
Humanity stands as the greatest threat in galaxy.
Refusing to eradicate them, is a fools gambit.
We squander eons in the darkness, while they seize our triumphs for their own.
The Mantle of Responsibility, for all things, belongs to Forerunners...Alone.
Think of my acts as you will.
But do not doubt the reality.
The Reclamation has already begun.
And we are hopeless to stop it.
I ask why?
We are Forerunners, Guardians of all that exists.
The roots of the Galaxy have grown deep under our careful tenure.
Where there is life, the wisdom of our countless generations has saturated the soil.
Our strength is a luminous sun, towards which all intelligence blossoms.
And the impervious shelter, beneath which, it has prospered.
I stand before you, accused of the sin, of ensuring Forerunner Ascendancy.
Of attempting to save us, from this fate, where we are forced to... Recede.
Humanity stands as the greatest threat in galaxy.
Refusing to eradicate them, is a fools gambit.
We squander eons in the darkness, while they seize our triumphs for their own.
The Mantle of Responsibility, for all things, belongs to Forerunners...Alone.
Think of my acts as you will.
But do not doubt the reality.
The Reclamation has already begun.
And we are hopeless to stop it.
Beautiful.
User 73706
Banned
Man, the soundtrack is depressing now. Even with the additional four tracks giving it a length of about an hour and a half, we're still missing a ton of music from the game. Davidge said he made roughly four hours of music doing the whole thing.
We hardly got anything from the first level, Awakening only shows up once when Chief rides the Lich to Didact's ship, we're missing a bunch of that Star Wars-esqe music that shows up in two of the later cutscenes (it's very brassy and bombastic), not to mention the three or so tracks we heard in the E3 2012 gameplay (not the Revival bits at the end, the in-game stuff) are nowhere to be found even though they're still there in the actual gameplay.
Did anyone else feel like they were getting a lot of inspiration from all the past Halo campaigns as inspiration to this, just ramped up to eleven? Flying a Pelican New Alexandria-style, Mantis defending the station like in The Package, Target Designator getting a massive boost, overcharged Ghost section as the area's crumbling around you similar to the Halo 1/3 finales, space combat switched into a ridiculously crazy "puzzle" or maze section and then switched to a giant battlefield where you disable the generators, etc.
Also, holy shit at the cutscene where Didact "data purges" the unarmored humans. Have we gotten anywhere near that level of on-screen violence in a past Halo game, even if it was a little hokey/in the style of Indiana Jones?
We hardly got anything from the first level, Awakening only shows up once when Chief rides the Lich to Didact's ship, we're missing a bunch of that Star Wars-esqe music that shows up in two of the later cutscenes (it's very brassy and bombastic), not to mention the three or so tracks we heard in the E3 2012 gameplay (not the Revival bits at the end, the in-game stuff) are nowhere to be found even though they're still there in the actual gameplay.
Did anyone else feel like they were getting a lot of inspiration from all the past Halo campaigns as inspiration to this, just ramped up to eleven? Flying a Pelican New Alexandria-style, Mantis defending the station like in The Package, Target Designator getting a massive boost, overcharged Ghost section as the area's crumbling around you similar to the Halo 1/3 finales, space combat switched into a ridiculously crazy "puzzle" or maze section and then switched to a giant battlefield where you disable the generators, etc.
Also, holy shit at the cutscene where Didact "data purges" the unarmored humans. Have we gotten anywhere near that level of on-screen violence in a past Halo game, even if it was a little hokey/in the style of Indiana Jones?
Gozer the Gozerian
Member
Was this speech supposed to be happening in the present? Like Didact fell through the slipspace whatever portal and is giving this speech to the rest of the forerunners? Or is it supposed to be a flashback?
User 73706
Banned
I just had a really stupid realization.
If we ever teamkilled Sentinels could we have gotten a Sentinel Beam? I didn't even think about trying it.
If we ever teamkilled Sentinels could we have gotten a Sentinel Beam? I didn't even think about trying it.
MaximumFlipFlop
Banned
This is a very large question. The one line that makes the time period questionable is this.
We squander eons in the darkness, while they cease our triumphs for their own.
My response to it.
Ancient humanity wasn't out to take and use forerunner tech like modern day humanity currently is. In the forerunner human war, we were simply advancing into their terriotry, running from the flood, and destroying forerunner worlds that had been infested. Our main goal wasn't to cease their triumphs as our own. That is something much more in line with modern day, current humanity in Halo.
Cuban Legend
Member
What? I'd like to see how the 'evolution/change' of the chief changes things, if at all.
If Halsey was willed by genetic destiny to do what she did as per Librarian's seed, wouldn't it absolve her and her Spartans from her/their sins in a court of law?
More importantly what is the setup for Humanity taking the Mantle of Responsibility, even IF this will happen. I'd like to see that struggle to gain the Mantel against whatever force the Didact unleashed covered in Halo 5-6... what else is there to do at this point? If 343 just pull some other stupid cop-out shit instead, I'll be very disappoint.
dragonelite
Member
So im kinda confused was it a hologram of the librarian. Or just a pre programmed memory.
If so could she have made a copy of cortana maybe make her meta stable for halo 5?
So the didact used the composer on his self too to go from organic to digital back to a flood refused form organic. Or he just saw humanity as a fast breeding army he could use to defeat the flood because the prometheans bodies cant be used by the flood.
If so could she have made a copy of cortana maybe make her meta stable for halo 5?
So the didact used the composer on his self too to go from organic to digital back to a flood refused form organic. Or he just saw humanity as a fast breeding army he could use to defeat the flood because the prometheans bodies cant be used by the flood.
Still don't really get it (don't really get why the Forerunners decided to go berserk)
Slightly Live
Dirty tag dodger
They didn't go Berserk, Didact did. Even his wife went against him.
Cuban Legend
Member
what does it matter, they were going to fire the rings and obliterate the cave-like/early mankind anyway right? index samples saved them all regardless of didact killing them or the rings doing the job.
Poker Face
Member
ending hit me right in the feels. can't believe
overall seemed really hard to follow for me, have no idea how some random casual is going to understand it. definitely should have had more info on who the didact, and librarian are. as well as some background on what the forerunners are.
cortana's gone 
overall seemed really hard to follow for me, have no idea how some random casual is going to understand it. definitely should have had more info on who the didact, and librarian are. as well as some background on what the forerunners are.
Ok sometings I don't get, 343 does a crazy markting with Ancient evil awakens etc and everywhere is the Didact symbol and they finish him of in this game?
This can't be all of him right? because that would be incredible lame.
Overall the story was really good.
Though I don't get how the terminals fit in with Cryptum and Primordium
This can't be all of him right? because that would be incredible lame.
Overall the story was really good.
Though I don't get how the terminals fit in with Cryptum and Primordium
Darkmakaimura
Can You Imagine What SureAI Is Going To Do With Garfield?
The Didact may not be the ancient evil they're referring to....
ToyMachine228
Member
My thoughts and speculation about Halo 5 and 6 after just finishing 4.
Now, all that said, I would like to finally touch down on one of the Covenant home worlds in the next game. 343 did a great job with 4's locales. Why not throw something like Sanghelios into the mix for something drastically different? Or maybe THAT'S how we see the Brutes again. Their home world. I'd also like to see some new vehicles thrown into the next game. The Mantis is great. I'd just like to see MORE. Maybe some Forerunner stuff. They could do some really abstract things with that since Didact was flying around in a sphere.
The Didact is not dead.
- There must be other "real" Forerunners still alive somewhere. Perhaps on other shield worlds.
- The Librarian gave Master Chief The Didact's own essence. In Greg Bear's Forerunner trilogy, each Forerunner comes to age by being granted the essence of another Forerunner before him. It's like...A sponsor. Your mind and memories are merged with that persons. My guess is that Master Chief has Didact himself in him now. Hence the reason he could hear The Didact's voice in his head when Cortana was picking up nothing.
- Cortana may be gone, or she may not be. I really can't guess where they're going to go with this. I can't really see Halo being Halo without Cortana. Like she says, maybe we'll get a new version of her that won't really be any different other than the fact that she'll realize that her memories aren't really "hers".
- The Flood will likely be re-introduced in one if not two of the next two games. I highly doubt we've seen the last of them.
- Brutes may also be re-introduced. Drones could be as well, but I don't see it as vital. Crawlers kind of took up some of their gameplay direction.
- There must be other "real" Forerunners still alive somewhere. Perhaps on other shield worlds.
- The Librarian gave Master Chief The Didact's own essence. In Greg Bear's Forerunner trilogy, each Forerunner comes to age by being granted the essence of another Forerunner before him. It's like...A sponsor. Your mind and memories are merged with that persons. My guess is that Master Chief has Didact himself in him now. Hence the reason he could hear The Didact's voice in his head when Cortana was picking up nothing.
- Cortana may be gone, or she may not be. I really can't guess where they're going to go with this. I can't really see Halo being Halo without Cortana. Like she says, maybe we'll get a new version of her that won't really be any different other than the fact that she'll realize that her memories aren't really "hers".
- The Flood will likely be re-introduced in one if not two of the next two games. I highly doubt we've seen the last of them.
- Brutes may also be re-introduced. Drones could be as well, but I don't see it as vital. Crawlers kind of took up some of their gameplay direction.
Now, all that said, I would like to finally touch down on one of the Covenant home worlds in the next game. 343 did a great job with 4's locales. Why not throw something like Sanghelios into the mix for something drastically different? Or maybe THAT'S how we see the Brutes again. Their home world. I'd also like to see some new vehicles thrown into the next game. The Mantis is great. I'd just like to see MORE. Maybe some Forerunner stuff. They could do some really abstract things with that since Didact was flying around in a sphere.
With his symbol appearing everywhere with this sentence I would think so and I didn't saw anything else in the game that would fit this title.
The ending:
No fucking way they keep Cortana gone. She's not allowed to succumb to rampancy, they can't replace her, she's on the shortlist of iconic female video game characters, no one other than Halsey can fill her role. I expect a return in Halo 5 with metastability or as a villain that must be saved from herself or something. Didact is coming back too.
spootime
Member
Did the didact refer to her as an "evolved ancilla" during the game? I thought I heard that but I could be wrong. I wonder what he means by that.
dragonelite
Member
Didn't Cortana her self also said the Librian tinkered or informed her.
Atleast she made a big deal about MC personal ancilla..
minasodaboy
Member
After watching the terminals and completing the game, can someone please explain to me how the story from the Greg Bear Trilogy matches up IN ANY WAY with the game?
So confused.
So confused.
Story stuff is handled very poorly for people who weren't already heavily invested in the franchise and were keeping up with the books; look at the confusion in just this thread. The Terminal videos not even being on the disc and viewable certainly hurts big time in that regard, and is even more comical in hindsight. So stupid.
Aside from that, the Campaign was good, but didn't really feel like Halo at all. The music was good, but not the same. Game was almost completely linear as fuck with only the illusion of freedom. The most open it ever really gets is "do you want to left or right in this canyon." Most of the game is advance to waypoint marker, and hold X to push a button, and the very last "gameplay" sequence is so laughably identical to multiple CoD games that I cannot believe more people are not calling it out. There's no standout levels or moments, no epic Scarab-level equivalents, just mostly linear areas with doors that close behind you because they obviously prioritized graphics (which are fucking amazing to be fair) and the engine can't handle the load of backtracking without loading.
The biggest thing though is that the enemies aren't that satisfying to fight. You spend half of the time fighting the Covenant, and the rest are the same 3 Promethean enemies. The Crawlers and the flying helper things (forget their name) are fine, but I didn't find the Knights fun to fight at all. I think the biggest problem with the combat, which I've seen other people mention as well, is that it feels flat. A lot of situations don't seem to have multiple angles of approach, but more importantly there doesn't really seem to be any good feedback on enemies. I couldn't immediately tell half of the time if I had killed something or not, everything felt very wooden for a lack of a better word. Also the AI is incredibly stupid, and not in a "playing on easy" kind of way. I just played on Normal to get through the story, but I had multiple times where enemies would just stand still, banshees that would just run into a wall, etc. On the level with the Mammoth, I was able to replicate 2 or 3 times an issue where I could get enemies to all run away from me and they would all bunch up on a cliff face and just run against it. Forever.
Overall it certainly wasn't terrible, but I think that the super high quality of the graphics and presentation are really carrying this for people. I still haven't played enough multiplayer to call how I feel about that, but going into this I was super confident that Campaign would be excellent, Spartan Ops would probably be cool assuming the netcode was fine, and multiplayer would be up in the air. Now after this Campaign I have no excitement for the next one, and don't even want to replay portions of it for Challenges or Achievements or anything like that, and Spartan Ops is a total bust because the netcode is shit in that and Campaign Co-op, just like previous games. The multiplayer may still totally hook me and that's fine to an extent, but overall I'm disappointed.
Aside from that, the Campaign was good, but didn't really feel like Halo at all. The music was good, but not the same. Game was almost completely linear as fuck with only the illusion of freedom. The most open it ever really gets is "do you want to left or right in this canyon." Most of the game is advance to waypoint marker, and hold X to push a button, and the very last "gameplay" sequence is so laughably identical to multiple CoD games that I cannot believe more people are not calling it out. There's no standout levels or moments, no epic Scarab-level equivalents, just mostly linear areas with doors that close behind you because they obviously prioritized graphics (which are fucking amazing to be fair) and the engine can't handle the load of backtracking without loading.
The biggest thing though is that the enemies aren't that satisfying to fight. You spend half of the time fighting the Covenant, and the rest are the same 3 Promethean enemies. The Crawlers and the flying helper things (forget their name) are fine, but I didn't find the Knights fun to fight at all. I think the biggest problem with the combat, which I've seen other people mention as well, is that it feels flat. A lot of situations don't seem to have multiple angles of approach, but more importantly there doesn't really seem to be any good feedback on enemies. I couldn't immediately tell half of the time if I had killed something or not, everything felt very wooden for a lack of a better word. Also the AI is incredibly stupid, and not in a "playing on easy" kind of way. I just played on Normal to get through the story, but I had multiple times where enemies would just stand still, banshees that would just run into a wall, etc. On the level with the Mammoth, I was able to replicate 2 or 3 times an issue where I could get enemies to all run away from me and they would all bunch up on a cliff face and just run against it. Forever.
Overall it certainly wasn't terrible, but I think that the super high quality of the graphics and presentation are really carrying this for people. I still haven't played enough multiplayer to call how I feel about that, but going into this I was super confident that Campaign would be excellent, Spartan Ops would probably be cool assuming the netcode was fine, and multiplayer would be up in the air. Now after this Campaign I have no excitement for the next one, and don't even want to replay portions of it for Challenges or Achievements or anything like that, and Spartan Ops is a total bust because the netcode is shit in that and Campaign Co-op, just like previous games. The multiplayer may still totally hook me and that's fine to an extent, but overall I'm disappointed.
There's still one more book to make the events, characterizations and technology fit in with what's presented in the game, but right now it really does feel like he's describing his own version of the universe.
In some ways, the books add their own layer of confusion, since they cause you to go into the game with certain expectations, promising to add some context, but it's like going from Phantom Menace straight into A New Hope... and also because Greg Bear likes to (or has to) describe things in misleading ways in order to create a few more forced mysteries.
Going back to the few relevant parts of Primordium was an especially interesting experience.
"A very powerful deviceif it was a device. Some thought the Composer was a product of its own servicesa Forerunner, possibly a Lifeworker, suspended in the final stages of the Shaping Sickness.
I really did not want to hear any more."
More like Bullshitium!
Head of Vengarl
Banned
Christ, I know. The most pathetic thing is that I haven't even played a Halo game since Halo 2 (I don't have a 360), I just watched a Halo 4 playthrough on YouTube yesterday. After watching
Cortana's farewell
And yeah, that final monologue was awesome.
Pretty much. I don't think a video game has ever made me sad.
TheVoidDragon
Member
Regarding the Covenant, can someone tell me
Wwhat happened with all those ships that were attacking the Infinity? The Didact is scared off but there are still lots of covenant ships nearby and the Infinity decides all clear and to go down to Yellow alert. And how did the Chief destroy a ship with a single missile at the start of the game?
Psychoward
Banned
So, I'm sure this has been brought up before, but I just realized the Legendary ending is about half an extra second over just the regular post credits scene. lol.
Darkmakaimura
Can You Imagine What SureAI Is Going To Do With Garfield?
????
You mean we only see MC's face in Legendary? Swore I saw the epilogue and he takes off his mask and we don't see his face unless it's Legendary.
Edit: By face, I mean his eyes.
Head of Vengarl
Banned
You know, I never realized how interesting Halo's lore was. I spent at least 3 hours yesterday reading about it on Halopedia, which is by far the best "wiki" for Halo that I've found. The whole thing about
blew my mind. And their history of being
was really cool, and reminded me of Gurren Lagann.
how humanity had existed 100,000 years ago as an extremely advanced species that even the Forerunners grew to fear, and who were the first to discover the Flood (AND find a "cure" for it, which even the Forerunners could not replicate)
eventually crushed and devolved by the Forerunners, after fighting subsequent wars against them and the Flood