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Halo 4 Story Spoilers and Speculations
- Thread starter Slightly Live
- Start date
The Reach bit was better, but they have different purposes as far as the gameplay direction they wanted to go for and story-wise.
Halo 4's landing pads are really forgiving and the area they cover is really large and probably comparable to the amount they give you for some spaces in Reach for the Falcon.. you just really have no idea of the scale of such and how big it really is until you actually try to land.
Zeouterlimits
Member
I feel the opposite. Reach's bit goes on for too long and little interesting happens.
I found Halo 4's to be suprisingly good, the ship was very easy to control and the trench run quite tense and exciting.
However, I realised at the time, that if anyone found it difficult/died a few times it'd turn into the most frustrating and un fun part of the entire game. Which was the Ghost segment earlier for me.
It's kind of a one trick pony though, I'm not sure how it'll hold up in future playthroughs.
NekoFever
Member
Weren't the shield worlds largely abandoned because the Flood knew where they were thanks to Mendicant Bias?
I think they just ran out of time. The war was so close to being completely lost that they had to sacrifice millions in a last ditch delaying tactic just to buy enough time to activate the Halos. We know enough about their philosophy to know that they thought they were just one step in the evolution of galactic civilisation (hence 'Forerunners'), so after such a pyrrhic victory the relatively few survivors could have decided that it was time for another species to rise up and inherit the Mantle. According to Halopedia the Forerunners that survived stuck around to oversee the reseeding and then left the galaxy.
The Didact knew the nature of the Flood as well, so that's likely to become an issue in Silentium and could lead the Forerunners to the above conclusion. If that was a test and they failed, it was someone else's turn.
2557 humans are still a long way from the ancient humans. The Didact's ship alone would have been able to stand up to the whole UNSC if it wasn't for the Master Chief being inside his shields with a nuke.
Then again, the UNSC is kind of doing what the Forerunners thought ancient humanity was doing before they found out about the Flood, building its most advanced ship and using it to aggressively expand its influence. Even if we're not as advanced, the philosophy is the same.
Pretty sure it's just humanity? Same race after all.
The one in Halo 4 is certainly more tense. The radio chatter, the setting and the music also help to create a better atmosphere. It's surprisingly good fun to fly it in co-op and maybe try to race a little. The space battle did fall a little bit flat for me at least.
Yeah, I'd rather not play it again and ditto that Ghost section now that you remind me.
@enzo_gt I think you think I'm referring to mission six which I thought was fantastic and yes, better than the one in Reach. I'm talking about the flying section that caps off the game. Long Night of Solace in Reach was more fun. But I loved the Pelican section in Halo 4. They can repeat that for all I care.
Blue Ninja
Member
It makes no sense to you. It's entirely possible that there are emotions since they've gone through so much together. Chief and Cortana have always had a playful and faithful guardianship of each other. Consider the obvious signs in Halo 2 that they cared for each other and that Chief spent most of halo 3 trying to get her back.
It makes sense to a lot of people.
Wasn't he trying to get her back so she wouldn't give up crucial military intelligence. All she is is a hard drive with some boob a she is literally an objectified female. She's a piece of military hardware and the chief has some weird Stockholm syndrome thing with her.
The didact was the least of my problems with halo 4's story - that isn't to say that I thought he was an effective antagonist, but he served his purpose as generic space threat adequately enough. In fact my main problem with halo 4's story was the way it dealt with cortana's rampancy.
Up until the introduction of the didact it was going great, cortana was shown to be deteriorating and a solution was dangled in front of the player as to how to save her - any reasonable person may have thought that this race against time would be the chief's primary motivation for the remainder of the game, but in fact the two characters never discuss the issue again, being very much sidelined in lieu of the altogether less interesting and barely developed didact storyline. Cortana's rampancy is used fleetingly as a deus ex machina reason to delay the player's progress several times, but the actual emotional implications of something like rampancy for cortana as a character are barely touched upon, and then suddenly she's dead because of something else entirely.
It almost seems like scenes from an earlier draft of the script where her rampancy played a much bigger role were retained, but without the meat of the storyline - it's just a mess. For all of Halo 3's faults, at least there was actually a palpable and escalating sense of peril with regards to cortana, as you navigated your way through that dreadful penultimate level, you had no idea what state you were going to find cortana in, whether she was even going to be there at all. Hell, I would argue that cortana's death scene wasn't as emotionally impactful as her rescue in halo 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iG1ElOrhII
I just hate that a narrative thread with so much potential was squandered, and largely served as nothing more than a convenient plot device.
Up until the introduction of the didact it was going great, cortana was shown to be deteriorating and a solution was dangled in front of the player as to how to save her - any reasonable person may have thought that this race against time would be the chief's primary motivation for the remainder of the game, but in fact the two characters never discuss the issue again, being very much sidelined in lieu of the altogether less interesting and barely developed didact storyline. Cortana's rampancy is used fleetingly as a deus ex machina reason to delay the player's progress several times, but the actual emotional implications of something like rampancy for cortana as a character are barely touched upon, and then suddenly she's dead because of something else entirely.
It almost seems like scenes from an earlier draft of the script where her rampancy played a much bigger role were retained, but without the meat of the storyline - it's just a mess. For all of Halo 3's faults, at least there was actually a palpable and escalating sense of peril with regards to cortana, as you navigated your way through that dreadful penultimate level, you had no idea what state you were going to find cortana in, whether she was even going to be there at all. Hell, I would argue that cortana's death scene wasn't as emotionally impactful as her rescue in halo 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iG1ElOrhII
I just hate that a narrative thread with so much potential was squandered, and largely served as nothing more than a convenient plot device.
HollovVpo1nt
Banned
I wonder what covenant in Halo 5 will look like. Would be neat to see them shielded with forerunner tech.
Zeouterlimits
Member
Woof, that applies to Halo 3 a lot more than it does in 4 I'd argue.
Her rampancy and state was a big thing coming into 3, and it's resolved how? By the Chief showing up and her getting right up without a scratch. It's a great scene, but there was absolutely no payoff for all of the build up.
Bungie completely wiffed it.
Consisting homo sapiens, homo neanderthalis, and others. More like a coalition of various human species.
Are you saying its a bunch of homos?
Ain't the current humanity a bunch of homos as well?
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Yeah I loved that scene in Halo 3 at the time, but in the end, he shows up, she just gets up, unharmed after a few words, and he takes her out.
Also the Rampancy was discussed several times during Halo 4, and was acknowledged even more. Only thing was, I think most were expecting to find Halsey at the end and rescue her. Especially when the adventure conveniently takes you right to Earth near the end. I know me and my buddy's second thought after seeing Earth was that "awesome now we can save Cortana."
That made her death somewhat unexpected and more impactful in my opinion.
NullPointer
Member
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Didn't say that there was a problem.
NullPointer
Member
I was being tongue in cheek. Its OK ;P
I shoulda known better. Couldn't help it. But lesson learned.
Sarcasm does not work in written form.
This is an incredibly cynical view of Cortana. She's not just a HDD with a pinup JPEG, she's an incredibly advanced artificial intelligence made from the mind of a person who would probably rival Einstein, intellectually. If mind and body make us who we are, Cortana's half-way there.
Doublesith
Member
Not quite. When the Forerunners literally bombed us back to the stone age, they also "devolved" the humans - they shattered them into several species. These are the several distinct Homo species whose existence is known to have more or less overlapped, i.e. Neanderthals, Homo Sapiens, Homo Erectus, Homo Florensiensis, Denisovans, etc. The Ancient Civilization Humans had several differences from modern humans, such as patches of fur on the back side of their hands.
Because it was faux rampancy, brought upon by Gravemind shenanigans.
I don't see why the military would bestow so much to one thing that in the end is so easily corrupted.
Also I don't really follow the halo non game related canon outside of reading Wikipedia pages for things when referenced whatever happened with the grave mind stuff or did they just David lynch that shit and never bring it up again?
This is informative, thanks.
To be clear, the Ancient Humans were homogenous and not a group of similar species, correct?
LAUGHTREY
Modesty becomes a woman
This is something I want to address. All the AIs seem to do is military applications. How has there not been one AI that just refused? Are they not truly sentient with free will? How does Cortana not just tell Chief "let's run away together!"
I would hope the unsc would be smart enough to program in some kind of protocols to stop that. Maybe she realizes the way to the chiefs cyborg heart is embracing his love of service and duty?
Has Bungie ever referred to her state in Halo 3 as "rampancy"?
Actually, has it even been properly defined in the Halo universe? The few references I could find in the books are extremely vague and wikis just mindlessly repeat the Marathon definition.
I think I'm fine with the idea of the Gravemind simply failing to lead her to an early rampancy, if only because otherwise it would make her character arc mirror that of Durandal's a little too closely (except surviving it wouldn't be a character-defining event in the Halo universe, it would just be a cop out).
I wonder what people who haven't built up any dorky expectations between sequels thought about the way that subplot was resolved. After all, a large chunk of the audience had no idea that Halo's AIs even have an expiration date. To them, Cortana could have looked just a little kooky.
Doublesith
Member
Yup.
http://www.halopedia.org/Human-Forerunner_War#Aftermath
Read it. "Splintered among their collective species". Thus the humanity was multiple species BEFORE the loss of the war.
LAUGHTREY
Modesty becomes a woman
It was in some comic, so take it with a grain of salt. She was splintering herself off and making copies for the gravemind to consume instead of getting to her proper.
TheCongressman1
Member
I hate all of this 'Chief shouldn't have emotion, he's too hardcore' nonsense. I love this story for the fact that he does show emotion. It's not like he suddenly starts gushing, they handled it very well I think. He is still very stoic, but you can tell that his humanity is breaking through.
Don't mistake emotion for weakness.
Don't mistake emotion for weakness.
Were we ever told that it was a slipspace portal? Those in space were always blue, while this one was orange. Also just a few cutscenes before was it made clear that you need some shields if you want to pass through one. And let's not even talk about what he would be supposed to do there, drifting all alone through space...
Would feel pretty forced if he shows up alive and well in the sequel
NullPointer
Member
Pretty sure Cortana identifies slipspace activity before the portal opens.
Thought the scenes of Chief at the end, during his farewell to Cortana and his conversation with Lasky were really powerful. Thought the whole Didact arc was terrible, to be honest, especially when you 'killed' him with a QTE. Chief's story is in a really good place now, the best of the series, he's definitely forming more of a character than he's ever had in the past, which I'm a fan of.
You don't need shields to pass through a slipspace portal. Human ships have done that for hundreds of years, the Infinity is the first one with shields...
Forerunner body armor, especially such as worn by the Didact probably incorporates combat skin, ie energy shields anyway.
He "died" so easily, the way he was made to be a dangerous enemy, and gives a speech after the credits... And the beam the Composer does, it goes to Earth but also to that "portal", so it was probably a slipspace portal, just orange due to the Didact's ship (everything with that guy is orange).
As for the speech, i think he is still alive, explaining his actions to other alive Forerunners.
Doublesith
Member
What page is that? Wiki cited page 127
EDIT just realized the edition (paperback, hardcover, etc may affect this...)
Doublesith
Member
I have it on ebook, but its on Chapter 1, sixth section, around page 12.
Odd, check the page cited by wiki, what does it read?
If there is an in-book conflict, i'd take the later explanation over the first, it is more logical (fossil records and all that).
EDIT i don't have my Cryptum copy anywhere close by, checking it tomorrow. Hardcover.
The ancient humans would have stomped the Forerunner's asses if they didn't have to deal with the Flood. It's explained somewhere (forget the source) that they evolved so quickly because they came in contact with Precursor technology.
I'm definitely interested in seeing more of them, because the small bits from the terminals was awesome. I mean, they were taking out entire Forerunner worlds for christ sake, and that is what the Didact's speech is about at the end. He is afraid humans will once again reach that level of badassness.
I'm definitely interested in seeing more of them, because the small bits from the terminals was awesome. I mean, they were taking out entire Forerunner worlds for christ sake, and that is what the Didact's speech is about at the end. He is afraid humans will once again reach that level of badassness.
And we will.
Doublesith
Member
My kindle edition doesnt have a page count, just those stupid location numbers. Maybe someone with a physical copy can chime in?
victreeb3l
Member
Oops wrong thread