Zodi Plays: Halo 4 (In Canada It's Called Halo: Shadow Raiders)

[LaZodiac]

Talk about a deep cut for thread titles...



And so we begin Halo 4! The one everyone says is bad. The first (right?) not made by Bungie. The one where we get sucked up by a giant war planet to do a fighting on it. I know nothing going in, so this is going to be quite interesting! Already we can see some of the... interesting differences. Opening with an out of nowhere and very strange interview with Dr Warcrimes, wherein we're supposed to be on her side? And she shows that she, too, like Cortana, has an undue amount of love and respect for Main Character John Halo over here. Over with Mr 117 himself, we find ourselves woken up in the midst of an invasion of... Covenant, somehow.

Then, as said above, the Beast Planet eats us. Oh dear. Wonder where this is going...

As ever and always, we'll be uploading these every Wednesday alongside Majora's Mask on Monday and Fridays. I ask that for this game in particular especially no spoilers, cause I don't wanna know a thing that happens in this before the game tells me. Given how it opens, I think we're gonna be in for a wild ride.

Zodi Plays: Halo 4 [1] The Planet That Eats

Video Length: 29:39

Also since I have some room, to elaborate; the Spartans are augmented with mechanical stuff on top of bioengineering **** right? Because if so, Dr Warcrimes really doesn't know what she's talking about. As I said, young children are constantly growing. This makes mechanical augmentation an absolute nightmare, not even to mention the fact that said mechanical augmentation will screw up their physical development, likely making them weaker overall. Sure, they're more suspectable to combat hormones or whatever the hell they jabbed into them, but in terms of actual augmentation with mechanical components, it is extremely dubious that children were "best suited".

Now, like I said above and like Em said in video, bio-engineering? Sure, a child is a human that is still baking, you can fiddle with the recipe and it'll stick better, that's 100%. Mental conditioning as hell; though that's severely ****ed up. I call her Dr Warcrimes for a reason. If they had limited it to this, I wouldn't have raised my finger to be like "hey wait a minute" but unless I'm wildly mistaken, I'm pretty sure they mention Spartans are mechanically enhanced as well.

Finally, as a sort of note about the sillier plot points like "Cortana modified the suit because bored"... I'll try not to harp TOO bad on those, though they are pretty silly. I'm going into this with an open mind, and while I'll poke fun it'll mostly be out of love, or at the very least good humour.

[Ninja_Prawn]

I've never played this one. Excited to see what all the fuss is about!

The first (right?) not made by Bungie.

*Cough* Halo Wars *cough*

[PoeticallyPsyco]

I actually like Halo 4. It's not up to the standard of Halo at its best; I dislike how mechanically it discourages strategies other than keeping your distance, and some of the directions they took the story didn't stick the landing, but it's still fun enough to play through that I've replayed it a couple of times (mostly with my sister).

RE augmentations: the really big augmentations (including the 'mechanical' ones) came at the very end of their training. They were age 14-ish IIRC, but the smaller scale biological bio-augmentations meant that they were all fully developed physically by that age. Then came the heavy augmentations that killed over half of the Spartan IIs and disabled more, but transformed the survivors from 'peak human that has lived and breathed war, fighting, and strategy since childhood' into Spartans. (Also, it made them capable of actually wearing Mjolnir armor without it killing them, which was the real reason ONI was willing to accept such high losses). Side note: say what you will about ONI, but they do learn from their medical mistakes. From sacrifice of the Spartan IIs, they were able to learn enough that every Spartan augmentation since has had a 100% success rate as far as I know, with no participants being killed or crippled.

[LaZodiac]

I actually like Halo 4. It's not up to the standard of Halo at its best; I dislike how mechanically it discourages strategies other than keeping your distance, and some of the directions they took the story didn't stick the landing, but it's still fun enough to play through that I've replayed it a couple of times (mostly with my sister).

RE augmentations: the really big augmentations (including the 'mechanical' ones) came at the very end of their training. They were age 14-ish IIRC, but the smaller scale biological bio-augmentations meant that they were all fully developed physically by that age. Then came the heavy augmentations that killed over half of the Spartan IIs and disabled more, but transformed the survivors from 'peak human that has lived and breathed war, fighting, and strategy since childhood' into Spartans. (Also, it made them capable of actually wearing Mjolnir armor without it killing them, which was the real reason ONI was willing to accept such high losses). Side note: say what you will about ONI, but they do learn from their medical mistakes. From sacrifice of the Spartan IIs, they were able to learn enough that every Spartan augmentation since has had a 100% success rate as far as I know, with no participants being killed or crippled.

... yeah I wouldn't say "used medical science to make a bunch of 14 year olds hit adult age instantly" is small scale in any sense, and "we slaughtered and disabled countless innocents to make super soldiers, meaning our next batch of super soldiers will not get killed or disabled" is... not the win they think it is.

You do not, in fact, have to hand it to ONI here

[Lord Raziere]

Whelp time for Halo Four. the one that divided the fanbase.

Halo 4, Log 001:
On the Lack of Morality of ONI:
I mean there is a whole "war of extinction that we're losing" thing going on at the time? a war that lasted from 2525-2552. thats Twenty seven years. almost as old as me. a third of a lifetime, there is an entire generation of people in the Haloverse that knows nothing but the war. not exactly the conditions for humane science to be valued, or maybe even effective.

and really, Dr. Halsey was relatively restrained, the guy who made the Spartan III's, basically treated them as expendable and sent them on suicide missions. Dr. halsey at least, had the presence of mind to try and keep them from dying and have regrets about what she did.

like your ignoring that this is all happening in the context of "religious zealot aliens could at any time show up and glass your planet, leaving it lifeless and millions to billions dead just because humans don't fit into their religion. their tech is far beyond your own, to the point where the military has basically been made the temporary government and unilaterally declared that if these guys show up the first thing you do is delete all your navigation data, because in all likelihood these are not going to be battles your going to win, so the only thing you can do is make sure they don't find anyone and go down taking as many as you can with them." which y'know is basically turning a hopeless war into one where you lose by inches just to buy time so you can think of any out of the box solution that possibly work, no matter how improbable it is. like if the UNSC found the the tech from Doom that opens up the portal to Hell to let demons run loose, UNSC would probably give serious consideration to use it to open up a second front on the Covenant on the hopes that one will weaken the other, if they had any knowledge of the species biology enough, they'd probably bio-engineer PLAGUES to unleash upon them, if they had the ability, they'd probably respond in kind and start glassing covenant planets to make it clear that humanity won't back down.

like sure, none of this makes it any less horrible! war is hell, and makes people into monsters. However when aliens come down declaring they're going to a exterminate bunch of other life forms and have the technological advantage to do so, don't surprised if those life forms are going to do some extreme things to try and prevent it. At some point in that kind of situation, people just go "well if it doesn't work we're all dead anyways, so no one will be alive to care if it was wrong or not."

I would not reasonably expect humanity's morality to be the same as ours in that situation or entirely reasonable to hold them to our standards.

Edit: now a wrinkle in this is the fact that Dr. Halsey did make them before anyone ever knew about the Covenant. so yes she was making them to basically fight insurrectionists. But just because she was, doesn't mean the Insurrectionists were in the right. Like, here is the thing, the whole insurrectionist conflict was probably devastating all by itself: its a bunch of rebellion movements trying to make their planets break away so they can be independent- entire PLANETS. these aren't some random ragtag gaggle of rebels you find in a bunker fighting some battle they cannot win, they were armies of like millions to pull this off, like you wouldn't need the entire planet to agree with the Insurrectionists, you just need enough to form your own military and cause trouble for the UNSC because they might be a violent minority that just wants independence because they're now far away or something, and this a bunch of them just happening all at once which y'know you can fight normally because normally big foes have a hierarchy, a chain of command to disrupted, a centralized thing you can aim at, but the Insurrectionists are the bane of all conventional warfare: the decentralized guerillas all doing their own thing without actually coordinating which is worse than if they were. it'd be chaotic because the UNSC would send their armies to one planet or another and have to fight a different situation each time, and now imagine that civil war, larger than anything humanity has fever fought before that, now being joined by that war of extermination happening because that didn't convince the insurrectionists to get along or cooperate with the the UNSC one bit. so imagine a colony war already devastating for how long? since 2494, so 31 years then an extermination war from aliens thats 27 on top of that, so 58 years of warfare. thats the age they're living in.

On Halsey's Line:
However I do admit, Halsey's line about them being humanity's next step is stupid, thats just dumb. they were made as weapons, nothing more. any form of transhumanism is a side effect of needing to destroy/defeat the enemy.

Is John-117 "Broken"?
a strange question indeed. he was born in 2511, so assuming this is still 2552, he'd be 41 years old. six of those years were his normal early life as a child. so for 35 years he has either been training to fight or fighting/killing people. now combat is traumatic, but at the same time, humans can get used to anything. is he mentally well by the standards of a peaceful civilian life? No. Is he functional in the social institution and situation in which he was raised, that is the military and war which he is frighteningly incredibly effective at? Yes. so its kind of hard to tell whether this behavior is true mental damage, or simply him being raised to see military as a culture or institution which he excels doing his job in- he does have this camaraderie with other Spartans, meaning he is capable of forming empathetic relationships.

On Cortana's newness:
Mostly I notice more that she is being written more emotionally here than in previous games rather than her appearance.

while the Suit....I don't notice any difference. like I know they're different graphically and whatnot, but I don't notice any actual difference.

On Rampancy:

Spoiler: don't this is all pre-2552

Show

For the UNSC's smart AIs, rampancy is an unavoidable flaw inherent in their creation. "Smart" AIs are based on the neural patterns of a human being, and they have a limited lifespan of seven years after which their memory maps become too interconnected and develop fatal endless feedback loops.

A smart AI functions within a virtual processing platform known as a Riemann matrix. The AI's cognitive processes are constantly developing and creating new synaptic connections within the matrix. As the AI ages, these connections increase in density and, after a period of approximately seven years, the AI's neural map begins to outgrow the limited space of the matrix. This forces the neural linkages into a more and more narrow space, increasing the density of the links and causing them to overlap.[7] This can result in a "short circuit", in which the AI terminates due to a cascade of quantum transfer caused by the sheer density of linkages. To avoid this, an AI typically takes corrective action by eliminating some of its neural linkages preemptively. As rampancy progresses, the AI begins to sever the linkages at an exponential rate, resulting in increasingly poor choices of which links to cut. Thus, the AI becomes too obsessed with self-preservation that it ultimately self-terminates; Dr. Halsey explains it as thinking so hard that one's brains forget to send impulses to their heart and lungs

the default solution is simply to euthanize the AI. once they go rampant its too late.

Forerunner AI are not immune to rampancy. it just takes a lot lot longer and its subtler, but it still happens. now there are theoretical solutions to rampancy but none of them are perfect and one has particularly strange results:

Abstraction
As a more exotic solution to the problem of limited processing space, Dr. Halsey theorized that AIs may be housed in an abstract fractal constructed within the volume of raw slipstream space. By existing within the 11-dimensional spacetime, a smart AI would be capable of processing information at faster-than-light speeds as well as extending its neural linkages indefinitely; this would ameliorate the traditional problem of the increasing density of links, as space would no longer be a limitation with the extended range of dimensions. However, such a system would be highly complex to implement; as conventional structures cannot exist in the alternate spacetime, the process would require the manipulation of exotic matter within the slipstream itself, something that is still mostly beyond humanity's understanding.[7]

In 2547, Halsey ran an unsanctioned private experiment on implementing her theoretical system by using the decommissioned Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine of the UNSC Tripping Light. She used a stolen Slipstream space probe to launch an AI seed designated H-7 into a slipspace rift opened by the drive. The AI began to grow at a rate described by Halsey as "beyond exponential", appearing to be instantaneous. Though her own experience was disrupted by what appeared to be temporal anomalies in the presence of the unshielded drive, Halsey managed to receive garbled data from the AI. Her logic/mathematics scriber tests confirmed the AI was fully functional with all rampancy indicators showing negative. Throughout its communication, the AI produced strange conclusions, insights and comments regarding humanity, Covenant, as well as other intelligences in the "mist", with its voice communications quickly growing increasingly nonsensical. The AI's final communication burst was a set of incomprehensible mathematical equations. With her contact with the probe terminated, Halsey had no way of knowing what had happened to the AI, hoping it would be dead as it had become irretrievable.[22]

Despite the inconclusive result of the experiment, the The Assembly saw the potential in the concept. Such a construct would allow them to permanently escape dependence on humans, but debate arose as to whether this was ethical.[23] Halsey herself was unwilling to repeat the experiment, though she relayed the data she had gathered to her personal AI Jerrod.[22]

there are others, but this one was the most interesting and weird. don't worry- this happened pre-2552, so none of this is spoilers. The Assembly by the way are a bunch of secret group of AI's that do mainly two things: regulate other artificial intelligences and ensure the survival of the human species. apparently they've been active since 2310, given their lifespan of seven years that would probably mean they have generations of AI passing on their goal.

But yeah, WHAT. did this AI just.....ascend to a higher plane of existence? did it become an AI cthulhu, increasing in its intelligence so afar above humanity it became an incomprehensible alien super-AI?
is this H7 still in Slipspace and just....a god now or observing all of existence at once and thinking in math equations humans can't even begin to calculate? Its a mystery and says its thinking thoughts faster than light itself. thats spooky. thats a Monolith moment. thats "ending of Akira" revelation type stuff. and I doubt it'll ever be actually important, despite it being this mysterious thing that I just found.

Yeah space shooting is cool, why I beat Borderlands the Pre-Sequel recently and it felt good every time I sniped someone while I was in mid-air because the game takes place on a moon so lower gravity means more trick shots.

Project ASTER: the Spartan enhancements
the mechanical enhancements in question aren't clunky cybernetics: more like they are enhancements to make their bones virtually unbreakable with with carbide ceramic material and another enhancing their reflexes to incredible heights though "Alteration of bioeletrical nerve transduction to shielded electronic transduction.", how they remake the body was....incredibly painful though. imagine something remaking all the bones in your body by breaking and reforging them while the rest of body feels likes its on fire. thats what the Spartan II's went through and it was specifically performed on them when they were 14, and they were specifically chosen because they had genetic markers for positive fitness and lack of disease, things like that, and they still tried to minimize the chemicals casualty rate on bonobo chimpanzees between 2511-2525 before using it on them, and there were enhancements they rejected because they were too risky like an adrenal-response enhancement and another was a cognitive/memory enhancement, not sure why the adrenal one was rejected, but the memory enhancement was apparently rejected due to mental instability risks, so there was a measure of trying to minimize the damage here. like the Spartan-II's were specifically chosen because they were the very best specimens they could find out of billions, they weren't taking random children and just seeing what happens, they specifically looking for the people most likely to survive the procedure at all.

[LaZodiac]

Your bones grow with you so carbon plating your bones would need to be renewed every couple of... months, depending on the age of the child, or risk extreme dying due to "bones can't grow".

Also, "we need to make tortured super soldiers to crush the people who want to be independent of our total world government" is not the win they think it is either .

On that note here is a lore question I'm actually curious about; why ARE the rebels rebelling? Because not for nothing but if the government is incredibly willing to turn to "kidnap children and torture them into super soldiers" maybe they're not the good guys in this conflict, is all I'm saying.

[DataNinja]

The in-universe rationale for the Spartans being children was that, basically, when your body is still in puberty, it has the greatest ability to yet adapt to the chemicals and what not, in order to survive the augmentations afterwards, when their bodies stopped changing. Ordinary humans just weren't strong enough. The being raised as soldiers was just a "bonus" - they did try with adults first, after all.


I love how this is the very first time any of this stuff is mentioned in any of the core games. Better hope you read the EU before this, else, oops, you're suddenly told all of your backstory!

I also love how they succinctly point out the kidnapping, and isolation, and the fact they were used to crush rebellion... and expect us to brush that away. Like, they're expecting you to be primed by the lore to already know this, and primed by having experienced Halsey's view in the books to react favourably. ...well, at least until you get to an author who hates Halsey. But... we'll get to that.


It's okay, Em. I think collectively we'll get all the complaining out of the way.


Yeeeeeah, I am... not a fan of Halo 4's redesigns in general. It's... too dark and attempting to be more realistic or something? I dunno. Everything gets a new design.


The problem with freezing in and out is that it increases the risk of damage if you do it too much or without proper precautions. Spartans are already pushing it, by being in their armour instead of sans anything but skin.


Oh, good. I don't have to say anything, apparently. Em is just making alllllll my same things.
...and Zodi mentions everything else, geez! I'm just going to have to be silent this game!


The reason for rampancy in-universe is that "Smart" AIs basically can't purge the knowledge they've obtained without killing them. So they just gain more and more, and make more and more connections until they literally basically think themselves to death. "Dumb" AIs - which are actually smart, but don't have a capacity to learn beyond their programming - have theoretically indefinite lifespans. (And you can't re-make an AI, because they're made from the scan of a human brain - a process which can only be performed after someone's died.)


Oh, the first person segments turn off co-op??? I was wondering how they were done. That just makes them even more stupid than I already thought they were.


Hahahahahahaha. You had the exact same reaction as my friend upon finding it was C to sprint.


Being honest, Halo 4, gameplay-wise, is decently solid. But maaaaaaaan, is it rough in the story department, even at this early stage. I am very glad we can come along and laugh and complain at it with you.

[DataNinja]

On that note here is a lore question I'm actually curious about; why ARE the rebels rebelling? Because not for nothing but if the government is incredibly willing to turn to "kidnap children and torture them into super soldiers" maybe they're not the good guys in this conflict, is all I'm saying.

Basically, it's two tiered. First, You had the 210 "Inner" colonies that were settled first basically being treated as "greater" than the other 600 Outer Colonies - space travel was harder, so you basically had the best of the best sent. So there was some prestige to the colonies. When the Outer Colonies were settled, it was much more of a known science, and so the criteria was much more lax.

Second, all of them were subject to earth rule, despite the distance and everything. There was much growing resentment about being taxed by Earth, and a belief that, frankly, Earth wasn't able to properly give attention to everything. They wanted the ability to self-govern, and not be dictated to by bureaucrats hundreds of light years away. This was magnified by the Inner Colonies basically being the economic center, while the Outer Colonies were mostly those that provided raw materials. The Inner Colonies wanted to hold tightly onto those material providers, so tensions rose.

In essence, the Outer Colonies felt they were getting a raw deal, and some escalated to violence - although, support for the insurrection did shrink when things broke out into open conflict.


Also, yeah, ONI were never the good guys.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

... yeah I wouldn't say "used medical science to make a bunch of 14 year olds hit adult age instantly" is small scale in any sense, and "we slaughtered and disabled countless innocents to make super soldiers, meaning our next batch of super soldiers will not get killed or disabled" is... not the win they think it is.

You do not, in fact, have to hand it to ONI here

Your bones grow with you so carbon plating your bones would need to be renewed every couple of... months, depending on the age of the child, or risk extreme dying due to "bones can't grow".

Also, "we need to make tortured super soldiers to crush the people who want to be independent of our total world government" is not the win they think it is either .

On that note here is a lore question I'm actually curious about; why ARE the rebels rebelling? Because not for nothing but if the government is incredibly willing to turn to "kidnap children and torture them into super soldiers" maybe they're not the good guys in this conflict, is all I'm saying.

You misunderstand; the overwhelming majority of modifications were done in a single series of procedures once the children had finished growing (which was significantly younger than normal due to hormones and steroids administered throughout their childhood rather than any invasive procedures, hence "smaller scale").

And no one is arguing ONI are the good guys here (or even really the neutral guys), but Halsey's claim that Spartans are the next step for humanity is not unreasonable. As I mentioned above, the procedures have been basically perfected, and result in humans that are stronger, tougher, faster, and smarter than before. ONI went off the moral deep end, but their results are genuinely impressive: a project that has by the time of Halo 4 literally saved the entire galaxy at least 3 times and humanity in specific many more times, and a method of transhumanism that is safe, reliable, and effective.

ONI may have the ethics of Weyland-Yutani, but given a choice between the two I'd pick ONI every time, because at least when they sacrifice the few for the good of the many the many actually benefit (even if ideally they'd be hunted down with extreme prejudice once humanity is no longer in imminent danger of extinction).

Yeeeeeah, I am... not a fan of Halo 4's redesigns in general. It's... too dark and attempting to be more realistic or something? I dunno. Everything gets a new design.

As I understand it, when Bungie left the franchise they took with them the copyrights to all of their designs. 343 had to redo all of them out of necessity, not just for the sake of change.

[Lord Raziere]

Look: at the point that they started thinking up the Spartan II project, it had been 17 years of warfare. The Orion Project (aka the Spartan I's) had many of their bodies reject their augmentations because they were adults, started in 2491 and quietly deactivated in 2506, when the Insurrectionist war started in 2494, meaning 12 years had passed with the Spartan-I's. furthermore, the Orion Project had its roots in a similarly named project conducted in 2315 to enhance soldiers using drugs but were nowhere near as sophisticated as ones used in the Spartan program. so they've been using performance enhancing equipment for two centuries, and were making the most cutting edge ones they could make and it took another 40 years to get to the safe procedures that Psyco speaks of. so really, the whole process of "lets enhance soldiers with drugs" took about 250 years from start to finish to get to those results.

Now lets talk about the origin of the Spartan II program: around 2510 ONI reexamined the Carver Findings and then Dr. Halsey's predictions were more specific and darker, that what they calculated the insurrection could get worse and continue to escalate until at least thirty years of war, five billion dead, potentially the downfall of human civilization- apparently Admiral Michael Stanforth who Halsey presented the results came to the same conclusion. so somehow they had that made them believe this conflict would get to the point where destroy everything beyond any hope of recovery. now we don't know WHY this would lead to the downfall of civilization potentially, it never goes into detail, but apparently Elias Carver the guy who predicted this was doctorate in political science and sociology and his predictions were incredibly accurate, like shockingly so to the point where he thought he caused it by predicting it (self-fulfilling prophecy is a concept in sociology) and committed suicide out of guilt in 2509. like this is Foundation-type psychohistory kind of stuff here, so whether we consider that valid all depends on whether we think math can predict human behavior and whether we should do so at all even if it works. (Jacob Keyes read his work and considered him a pessimist if that means anything)

but apparently they considered the information reliable enough and created the Spartan-II project with several goals in mind:
1-group of elite people who can take out insurgents in their infancy before they get too large to minimize military casualties
2-minimize civilian casualties and avert war
3-substantially reduce the cost of convention means of pacification

the commander in chief of ONI, Margaret Parangosky however was angry at Dr. Halsey for the use of flash clones to replace the children.....because she viewed them as unnecessary and Halsey replaced them for personal moral reasons to give families closure and ease her own conscience. despite the project supposed to be top secret and Margaret being the one to greenlit it in the first place, so if it was up to the actual leader of ONI, all those families would just be worried where their child went and why the government isn't looking into it.

while Spartan-III, that was Colonel Ackersons idea, but Margaret greenlit that too. he looked the Spartan II's and went "lets have that but, cheaper and easily produced so they can go on suicide missions to slow down the Covenant a little" and made them without Halsey being involved. want to see the results of that, just look at most of the squad you work with in Halo Reach.

now to delve into the psychology of the Spartan-II's, Halsey's intent was actually to NOT brainwash them like other ONI people would do, but persuade and acclimate them to a war environment and to be truly efficient, properly understand and embrace their mission and its significance. they are supposed to possess a profound understanding of their role as weapons and the weight imposed on them. according to the wiki most of them don't hold grudges and consider it necessary. so John-117 isn't doing all this because he is an unthinking soldier, he understands everything that is at stake, he has been taught since he was a child what that means and why he has to do it, he hasn't been educated like normal soldiers. if this were up to normal ONI people, he'd just be brainwashed. so they went into this with their eyes open and being told exactly what this is all being done for.

so all the Spartan-II's involved probably were educated on the Carver Findings and the concepts surrounding it and why they think that force was the way to go with this. so....John-117 would've been perfectly willing to carry out all this of his own volition without Halsey's or anyone's orders because the way he was educated and what information they had about the Insurrection.

so....yeah thats what I can find on why they thought that needing super-soldiers trained from birth to deal with the insurrectionists was necessary. so really it all comes to "do we consider psychohistory from The Foundation stupid or not?"

[DataNinja]

As I understand it, when Bungie left the franchise they took with them the copyrights to all of their designs. 343 had to redo all of them out of necessity, not just for the sake of change.

Ohhhhhhh. Well, that'd explain it. Still sucks, but that'd very much explain it.

so John-117 isn't doing all this because he is an unthinking soldier, he understands everything that is at stake, he has been taught since he was a child what that means and why he has to do it, he hasn't been educated like normal soldiers. if this were up to normal ONI people, he'd just be brainwashed. so they went into this with their eyes open and being told exactly what this is all being done for.

so all the Spartan-II's involved probably were educated on the Carver Findings and the concepts surrounding it and why they think that force was the way to go with this. so....John-117 would've been perfectly willing to carry out all this of his own volition without Halsey's or anyone's orders because the way he was educated and what information they had about the Insurrection.

I mean, IIRC, they were also told that their family was dead and that they had nobody to go back to. So, I wouldn't necessarily say that they had all the info. Just... a curated amount. Just because it's "more than ONI would have wanted," doesn't mean that they have full free choice.

Edit: Okay, I was wrong. They were just told as five or six year olds that they'd been conscripted and couldn't go home to their parents again.

[LaZodiac]

(And you can't re-make an AI, because they're made from the scan of a human brain - a process which can only be performed after someone's died.)

Well THAT is certianly interesting, Cortana Warcrimes, daughter of Doctor Warcrimes.

Basically, it's two tiered. First, You had the 210 "Inner" colonies that were settled first basically being treated as "greater" than the other 600 Outer Colonies - space travel was harder, so you basically had the best of the best sent. So there was some prestige to the colonies. When the Outer Colonies were settled, it was much more of a known science, and so the criteria was much more lax.

Second, all of them were subject to earth rule, despite the distance and everything. There was much growing resentment about being taxed by Earth, and a belief that, frankly, Earth wasn't able to properly give attention to everything. They wanted the ability to self-govern, and not be dictated to by bureaucrats hundreds of light years away. This was magnified by the Inner Colonies basically being the economic center, while the Outer Colonies were mostly those that provided raw materials. The Inner Colonies wanted to hold tightly onto those material providers, so tensions rose.

In essence, the Outer Colonies felt they were getting a raw deal, and some escalated to violence - although, support for the insurrection did shrink when things broke out into open conflict.

Also, yeah, ONI were never the good guys.

Okay so, I'm not quoting every single bit of information provided as to the why of it, so this might seem like oversimplification but; wow it sure seems like they should have just let the spacenoids have their space-rights instead of making child soldiers to fight a forever war that really only stopped because an alien threat showed up.

I think, in essence, the biggest Thing going on with Halo 4's story at this moment is that... this has been a series where the plot has been very insular. You've only really ever needed to play the games to get what was going on, for the most part, and the optional stuff was there for the die-hards who were super invested in the setting. Halo 4 seems like it is going "okay so all that extended universe stuff that's never been important is vitally important now" and for a game series that... and I say this without any malice at all, really feels like it doesn't care about that sort of thing, this is going to cause some "what why??" questions from me, who has only engaged the games but DOES care about story stuff.

[Lord Raziere]

Okay so, I'm not quoting every single bit of information provided as to the why of it, so this might seem like oversimplification but; wow it sure seems like they should have just let the spacenoids have their space-rights instead of making child soldiers to fight a forever war that really only stopped because an alien threat showed up.

......well okay, your loss on having an interesting discussion about lore then.

[LaZodiac]

......well okay, your loss on having an interesting discussion about lore then.

I need to clarify that I did read all the stuff written. I just think that a lot of these problems would have been solved by just letting the spacers have rights. Sorry if I've erred or offended.

[Lord Raziere]

I need to clarify that I did read all the stuff written. I just think that a lot of these problems would have been solved by just letting the spacers have rights. Sorry if I've erred or offended.

I mean, its questionable if they were restricting their rights exactly. I've looked, all it says about their control that it was taxes and trade stuff. the conflict was socioeconomic in other words, all about money, not rights. For all we know a bunch of rich jerks were the ones that didn't like them and convinced the people that somehow it was their problem.

[DataNinja]

Well THAT is certianly interesting, Cortana Warcrimes, daughter of Doctor Warcrimes.

I mean, you sign your brain over, they don't just take if from you. :P

Okay so, I'm not quoting every single bit of information provided as to the why of it, so this might seem like oversimplification but; wow it sure seems like they should have just let the spacenoids have their space-rights instead of making child soldiers to fight a forever war that really only stopped because an alien threat showed up.

Look, the UNSC isn't really... necessarily the best. Which they gloss over in the whole "fight for survival", and don't really touch on even in Reach, which is the first game to even mention the Insurrection.

For what it's worth, I'm definitely on the side of "things have to change" when you have entire planets whose entire life is basically making stuff for the other planets to actually have an advanced economy on. Harvest, the first planet the Covenant hit, was pretty much entirely farming. Even the technology they had - like a space elevator and machinery - was mostly dedicated to farming.

I think, in essence, the biggest Thing going on with Halo 4's story at this moment is that... this has been a series where the plot has been very insular. You've only really ever needed to play the games to get what was going on, for the most part, and the optional stuff was there for the die-hards who were super invested in the setting. Halo 4 seems like it is going "okay so all that extended universe stuff that's never been important is vitally important now" and for a game series that... and I say this without any malice at all, really feels like it doesn't care about that sort of thing, this is going to cause some "what why??" questions from me, who has only engaged the games but DOES care about story stuff.

YEP. That is my biggest gripe with Halo 4. I was someone who was deep in the EU. So I knew all the context for this stuff. Halo 4? Seems to expect you to go outside the game, know more stuff, and doesn't even answer all the questions it raises. It's... not a trend for the better, I feel. You had the EU to... well, expand on stuff before, but it was for if you were interested. Now? You need to know it to explain what the heck is going on with some stuff.

I will be doing my best to give only limited context when Post Halo 3 EU stuff is involved (and you ask for it), so as to allow for maximum speculation.

...and then I'll rant at the end of the game.

[Lord Raziere]

Look, the UNSC isn't really... necessarily the best. Which they gloss over in the whole "fight for survival", and don't really touch on even in Reach, which is the first game to even mention the Insurrection.

For what it's worth, I'm definitely on the side of "things have to change" when you have entire planets whose entire life is basically making stuff for the other planets to actually have an advanced economy on. Harvest, the first planet the Covenant hit, was pretty much entirely farming. Even the technology they had - like a space elevator and machinery - was mostly dedicated to farming.

I mean, the entity that originally managed the colonies was the Colonial Administration Authority (CAA for short). its listed duties on the wiki were record-keeping, agriculture and managing prisons. it had a Colonial Military Administration, the CMA which was to serve as its military body. it was considered a ceremonial function to convince the colonists they were safe from marauders and pirates (apparently the military doesn't consider those much of a threat). another branch was the Department of Colonial Security which gathered intelligence on the colonies but thats it until Margaret took it over after the CAA "fell from grace" and turned into an ONI operation of spies. apparently the CAA was absorbed into the UNSC over the of course of the Human-Covenant War, so after the Insurrection. there was apparently a CAA charter, legislation that detailed the elements of colonial sovereignty, but what those exactly were we don't know.

though there is another way to look at the conflict: the insurrection's effect on the human-Covenant war may have actually been positive in favor of the humans. why? because apparently its the Insurrection that taught the UNSC how to properly fight in space according to Admiral Preston Cole:

"History looks upon this time as an unfortunate (and perhaps inevitable?) misunderstanding between Earth and her colonies, but those fighting for the last decade also realize that it was the most amazing piece of blind fortune the human race has ever stumbled upon. Had we not been armed and learning how to fight in space... what would have happened in the years that followed, when we faced an enemy a hundred times worse? Oblivion, no doubt.”

But then again, looking deeper there was apparently an "Inner Colony Wars" that took place at some point between 2362 and 2494 but the exact date has never said, there isn't much detail about it and its only mentioned in two books? but it might've not been much of a space based conflict? the only real detail about is that ONI apparently used THAT conflict to justify censoring the news from then on. So...okay fair that is an actual evil, an attack on free press.

But before that was the Interplanetary War in 2164-2170 which took place entirely in the Sol system between UN, the Koslovic, the Friedens, and Neo-Friedenists who were all those people? well....the Koslovics represented a certain real-world ideology that I'm not sure we can discuss here and the friedens represent another real world ideology that I'm not sure we can discuss here, the neo-friedens were a reformist splinter group that wanted a peace treaty, and is basically the conflict that made the UNSC exist in the first place. and would be studied by later scientists to project what happens in the Insurrection. all three non-UNSC factions got beaten badly and surrendered at the signing of the Callisto Treaty, so its possible that these ideologies persisted and that both sides of the Insurrection conflict might've had people who sustaining one or the other but not openly. they're never mentioned outside of that conflict so one assumes they're either gone or not openly expressing their beliefs anymore as the organizations were dissolved in 2170 when they signed it.

So.....*shrug* its kind of messy to figure where this all really began.

[DataNinja]

So.....*shrug* its kind of messy to figure where this all really began.

Almost as if people tended to write stuff that sounded cool as background information, and if they didn't have the desire to justify or explore it, it was just left hanging.

[Lord Raziere]

Almost as if people tended to write stuff that sounded cool as background information, and if they didn't have the desire to justify or explore it, it was just left hanging.

But these issues being messy and having no real answer is realistic and believable though.

[DataNinja]

But these issues being messy and having no real answer is realistic and believable though.

Having no real answer, sure, but it's the having no real context in which to judge them. I guarantee that the Insurrection grew out of "...well, hmm, how do we make conscripted child soldiers not sound totally evil to have done. Just mostly evil." "Hmm... how do we justify an Insurrection..."

Regardless, I get that there will forever be stuff that can never be satisfactorily explained. It just bugs me.

[Rynjin]

The in-universe rationale for the Spartans being children was that, basically, when your body is still in puberty, it has the greatest ability to yet adapt to the chemicals and what not, in order to survive the augmentations afterwards, when their bodies stopped changing. Ordinary humans just weren't strong enough. The being raised as soldiers was just a "bonus" - they did try with adults first, after all.

I always like to think the Spartanization process actually stunted Chief's growth. Just a funny thought to me.

After all, in the novels John is already like 5' 6" and built like a brick ****house that ate another ****house at age 5 (from what I recall he was able to PALM OTHER CHILDREN'S SKULLS and straight up yeet them in a game of king of the hill), so I'd expect him to hit at least 7 and a half feet by adulthood, but he's "merely" 6' 10" without his armor.

[LaZodiac]

A little late due to "oops my hard drive might be failing" concerns. Also work.

Zodi Plays: Halo 4 [2] Requiem for a Zodi

Video Length: 39:14

We begin the game in earnest, and start to see some of the chipped paint on this fixer-upper of a video game house. Metaphors are difficult. We get some... interesting back and forth RE what Cortana's deal is, some confusing in universe information, and some questions about grebel-ness and how the Forerunner tech is kinda silly. Hope you all enjoyed, we'll see you all next time!

[Lord Raziere]

Halo 4 Log 002:
I mean, MC's a guy whose lost his entire squad, all the people he ever felt the closest thing to family to him: the Spartans. Cortana is in a way, the last person he has left, on an alien world far from home, surrounded by Covenant and no human backup. Anyone else would basically be breaking down as they realize they'll probably die of starvation out here, maybe even dehydration if they can't find water. The fact that MC's more concerned about Cortana than himself in this situation speaks to how well he has been trained and how much he isn't panicking, really. MC can fight a lot of things, but a lack of food ain't one of them.

"its stops working when you move"- and this is why we won't get working camou-tech/invisibility fields for probably a loooooong time. I couldn't tell ya how many times I was able to get a headshot off on an "invisible" enemy in Borderlands the Pre-Sequel using a sniper rifle.

there is also the whole "MC's Job is basically to be Cortana's bodyguard so she can do the important hacker things" thing I mentioned in another thread. he is a soldier through and through, so he is thinking about protecting the more important person in his mind and seeing it as a duty he needs to carry out.

wow, the Banshees are faster in 4. the other games were slower with how they drove. though honesty why they are flying them in such a tight space, I have no idea.

and the Ghosts turn faster to, they really upped the maneuverability of these, they used to be more drifty but now these covenant vehicles just turn on a dime.

the not-space priates remind me: I remember a friend in high school claiming that MC was just a copy of Samus. I thought that nonsense, but now I'm older and think it nonsense for the right reasons because between DOOM, Adeptus Astartes/WH40k, Starcraft and so on I'd be hard pressed to claim any one of those have a clear claim to be more of an inspiration for Master Chief than any of the others.

[DataNinja]

Huh. I never saw that log before. And also wow, way to undercut yourself. "You can't stop rampancy." "So, hey, Cortana seems to be special when it comes to rampancy..."


Oh, right, they do actually just casually drop "by the way, I'm a clone of Doctor Halsey's brain" thing in a game. And you lying liar, Cortana! You aren't the only one! You're just the only one that gets cared about!


The guns are 100% a hand wave. Since you could argue the Spirit of Fire had them, but they also had to shoot themselves in the foot and overexplain that some of the guns came into production after the events of Halo 3.


Active Camo is mostly useful for sniping, I've found. Or sneaking up. In the middle of a firefight? Ehhhhhh, not really.


Oh, good, we're just going to retcon Infinity into existing even in prototyping prior to the end of Halo 3. It would have been logistically impossible without... AAAAAAAAAAA.

Spoiler: EU novel spoilers, not relevant to any games

Show

Infinity was only able to actually be made because of the help of the Engineers found within the Shield World within Onyx. Who explicitly didn't get out of there until after the events of Halo 3.

I get you need to have it be a known quantity without any of the EU books about it, but it isn't even really explained, and Cortana just seems to gloss right over it.


The banshee section there is mean. The enemy banshees are hyper-aggressive, and super good shots. And evade a lot. Turns out there's our good friend Mr. Rocket Launcher on the bridge, though. Which... I did not find out for some time, oops.


Fun fact: You can actually get motorcycle in. You just need a healthy Ghost, and then carefully melee the wings off! Squeezes into a lot more places!


Also, yeah, I 100% agree that previous Forerunner places had a lot more of a... smoothness to them. There was an angular simplicity to them. Their spectacle was in their scale.

[Lord Raziere]

Ooops it happened again. Not that that's a bad thing.

Zodi Plays: Halo 4 [3] Halo Four Runner

Video Length: 55:22

Pretty lengthy level, but given it is introducing new weapons, new enemies, new big name threats, and new things to grouse over with Em to the point of rambling for like ten minutes after the level actually ended, not a big surprise!

I like the little robot buddies. I like the stupid hologuns. I think the porcupine head can get dunked. I'm excited to hear all of you react to our reactions. Hope you enjoy, and have a good day!

Hi Zodi! I have Hollow Knight now, but I haven't played it yet because I've been looking into mods to maybe customize the player knight's appearance. It'll require downpatching though so I'm not sure if I should.....

Halo 4 Log 003:
Replying here because this is the right thread for this.....

yes, let us put the AI thats breaking down into even more advanced tech, what could possibly go wrong?

*Tron Music intensifies*

I've never watched any Star Trek other than the 2009 movie, so I'm ignorant of Star Trek in general aside from what I've absorbed from cultural osmosis.

Zodi killing robot dogs in large numbers just like I would in response to that stupid "can you pet the dog?" meme.

as for why the robots aren't called the Forerunners....that is an incredibly specific term.

as for why the promethean guns aren't interesting....well unfortunately, effectiveness isn't artistic or interesting most times, especially when it comes to weaponry. if art was science, we'd be doing battle with paintbrushes.

Zodi might have a love for sniper rifles that exceeds my own.

oh hey its Saren from Mass Effect/ oh hey its all the people from Destiny 2

as for whether The Didact is well received by the community.....well I have to check Tvtropes for this, because unlike most wikis this is a thing that it actually is useful for because it documents fan reaction to some extent not just the dry facts. the Tvtropes Halo 4 YMMV page lists him under "The Scrappy" for coming across as "Generic Doomsday villain" and that he is like General Grievous in that his motivations and origins are only in secondary material while in the main event he comes across as bland and unoriginal so.....no, Didact was not received well.

as for the lore....oh boy.....time to go the ancient Forerunner lore that I don't know and will discover myself by reading it on wikis. I didn't even know about the Precursors.

Spoiler: Time for Ancient Forerunner Lore

Show

So....lore time! in the year 110,000BC, the Human Forerunner War.....is a misnomer! Because the San'Shyuum, aka the Prophets were apart of it to. On the HUMANS side, and just as tech advanced as Forerunners and humans. akwaaaaaaard. but basically, according to the wiki at least, what first happened was the Human-Flood War, yes there was an ancient human-flood war. basically ancient humans as technologically advanced as the Forerunners were colonizing and going about doing stuff in space when they discovered a seemingly harmless powder! they used this powder on pets they called the Pheru which both Prophets and Humans liked and used to enhance them over a couple generations. turns out the powder was the Flood, one third of the Pheru got infected and some of those were eaten by humans because Pheru were a delicacy to so hey got infected, and thats how the Human-Flood war started, then Humans attacked a world in Forerunner territory to try and stop the Flood, they succeeded but the Forerunners misunderstood this act of aggression and declared war on humanity.

So humanity fighting a war on two fronts, what did they do? Well beating the Flood was higher priority so they took one third of humanity's population, inserted genes to fight Flood biomass.....then fed them to the Flood.....and it worked. the new genes somehow aggressively killed off flood biomatter and forced the few Flood remaining into hiding. a third of humanity was dead but the Flood was seemingly defeated. But then the Forerunners won their war against humans, and the Didact (yes, same guy) executed many humans for starting it, viewed as naturally violent and aggressive, dismantled much of their technology, and basically slapped humanity back to the stone age, so why humanity is way it is now in Halo? you can blame Didact for that. the San'Shyuum? oh their homeworld was used as testing ground for a Halo ring during the early stages of a third war involving the Flood I'm going to get to in a moment, but basically Forerunners committed genocide on the San'shyuum just because, leaving only a few of them alive.

which leads us into the Forerunner-Flood War, where in 98,379 BC (thats about 12,000 years later by the way) the Flood showed back up! so they fought for 300 years. these were wars where people were blowing up planets and solar systems to cleanse the flood from taking over, WH40k eat your heart out, your amateur hour compared to this. none of it was working, they saw their only option was to activate the Halo Arrays. the Ur-Didact (yes the same guy that popped out of the black orb) refused because it would go against the Forerunner's pledge to preserve all life in the galaxy due to this Philosophy of "Mantle of Responsibility" the Forerunners have and that things like firing the Halo Arrays contradicts that. humans were simply one of the species indexed by the Librarian, a Forerunner who liked to document and index all sentient beings and yep yep......sigh....she viewed humanity as special. Librarians the one who made sure humans got to repopulate basically.

as for why the Didact was imprisoned in said orb....well, basically his solution to the Flood problem was "hey lets make everyone robots" and the Librarian was like "no that violates our pledge to preserve all life" Didact turned some humans into prometheans, and Librarian imprisoned him forever for that.

so yeah, the Didacts a hypocritical evil jerk, the Forerunners were incredible giant jerks with very very weird definitions of "preserving life", Librarian was a human fangirl, and humans are somehow the only species that can ever win against the Flood.

as for Precursors.....I'm reading what they are now. I'm not sure if you should tell Zodi, M. I'm just learning all this myself. its interesting but not relevant to Halo 4. at least not directly. I think whether to tell Zodi is a Dataninja question. they seem to know you better Zodi.

so yeah, hope that was informative about halo universes stupidity or whatever.

[DataNinja]

Ooops it happened again. Not that that's a bad thing.

Zodi Plays: Halo 4 [3] Halo Four Runner

Video Length: 55:22

Pretty lengthy level, but given it is introducing new weapons, new enemies, new big name threats, and new things to grouse over with Em to the point of rambling for like ten minutes after the level actually ended, not a big surprise!

I like the little robot buddies. I like the stupid hologuns. I think the porcupine head can get dunked. I'm excited to hear all of you react to our reactions. Hope you enjoy, and have a good day!

So, in the actual thread...


The Crawlers are super great enemies. They're more dynamic than Grunts or Flood, because they climb walls. And they are amazingly satisfying to headshot.


And 1000%, they nailed the aesthetic and feel of the forerunner weapons. I love them. As much as I complain about other stuff, they are my jam.

The other fun thing about the weapons is you can sometimes see where the Covenant got their designs from, since they're supposed to be mostly reverse-engineered Forerunner weapons. So you get stuff like the Lightrifle and the Carbine, and especially the Boltshot and the Plasma Pistol (since they both have the charge). But you've got enough different stuff that it doesn't feel derivative.


Okay, this is where Em's opinions and mine diverge, because hardlight nonsense is my jaaaaaaaam. It is so rad. GIVE MORE.


The Forerunner grenades give the "detonation radius" and then explode after a short bit. Or... implode. Or whatever. But the sphere doesn't mean they've gone off. I think there's a slight pull inwards, too.


I do agree that the gimmicks could have been a bit wilder. Like, the sniper rifle with different modes between scoped and not is cool... but what if instead B E A M while scoped???


So... embarrassing story. During my playthrough, I fell down both the beam transmitter shafts before the holes sealed. Not just one, even.


I love turret friend. It's decently killy. And is cute, too.


I laughed at the Non-Binary Rifle joke, at least.


So, uncontroversial opinion: The Diadect has a stupid design.

I do think that he is generally... not that well-received. And is suuuuper underwhelming for what Forerunners were imagined to be.

Also, the whole thing with the Diadact being involved in this game? That was one of the least spoilery things found in the terminal two levels ago. It's stupid how much they drop on something that's so easy to find.


Oh, god. This part is abysmal for co-op. WHY did they think it was a good idea to have scripted destruction in a co-op part? I hate, hate, hate this part. It's always so frustrating.


What Em's ranting about, it was established in the lead up to Halo 4, in the many EU books of the Forerunners released at that time, and I am a million percent ready to rant about it just as much as Em is.

The books were released starting in 2011, with the first two releasing in January of 2011 and 2012, with Halo 4 released in November of 2012.

So, Em's… not entirely correct. The actual story is so much worse (oh, hey, you guessed that!). I am going to rant about it now, because this is apparently how we're doing it. And, let me tell you, I'm spoilering it for length. About... maybe 5% of this has to do with the game, and most of that is just context to the Diadact. Guarantee, this will change nothing about the game.

Oh, Em is wanting to know about telling The Thing. So... there are many things with the Precursors, all of which are stupid. I will probably cover The Thing in my rant, because I am upset, but I will also Spoiler it. Because I am going to cover everything I read way too many of these stupid books to hold anything back.

Spoiler: The Whole Danged EU (Actually, mostly just a lot of the parts that make me rant)

Show

So, the whole thing to start off is... the Forerunners are jerks. I hate that. Like, they were cool as this enigmatic civilization who did all this ineffable stuff, but were ultimately good, as a counterbalance to the Flood, historically.

But, the books decided to make them antagonists, so they had to be jerks. Holier-than-thou people, who only had the Mantle of Responsibility because they stole it by killing the people who had it before - the Precursors. Because the Precursors refused to give the Mantle to the Forerunners, and in fact were planning to wipe out the jerks. They had their own choice... humanity. Angry yet at how stupid and special this story is making humanity?

In the meantime, humanity has built a great empire! In fact, they've even forged an alliance with the Prophets, which only comes to an end when the Prophets surrender during the Human-Forerunner war! SMALL GALAXY, AIN'T IT???

Humans and the Prophets have first encountered the Flood. There are infections, and the Humans launch a pre-emptive attack on the forerunners when the Flood's spread to some of their colonies. Without telling the Forerunner's what's going on, so the flood can't spread.

Anyways, when the Forerunners strike back, it seems like... humans are now just immune to Flood. Aren't we special, being able to live unmolested in Flood-infested space. Except, nope, psyche! It was all a ruse by the Flood to make the Forerunners think the Flood was just an excuse for the humans to declare war! Or something. And then humanity is defeated, the Flood is cauterized, and all is quiet for ten thousand years. And the Flood is probably made up anyways.

Anyways, there's a bunch of political Forerunner stuff, the Diadact transfers his mind and memories into a younger forerunner but that doesn't actually matter because 343 decided to retcon the whole thing despite implying this Diadact was Bornstellar and not the original Diadact, and it literally never comes up again. This isn't important, but it brings up the Diadact. We'll get back to him later.

What's important is, the Flood returns. And there's the whole "ah, yes, the Halo Rings time." Though... there's another thing.

Spoiler: Precursor Things(tm)

Show

So... the Flood is actually the Precursors. The Precursors are trillions of years old, older than the universe (possibly writers are just bad at math), and just... regenerate when they die. Except, this time, something went wrong. Their dust came back as Flood, instead of people. And this dust got very angry, and so wanted to kill everything, and make it all one. They would ensure none of their creations would come back to kill them again. Especially not the Forerunners. In fact, they ensured that the Halo rings would wipe out all of the Forerunner's knowledge, and the remaining Precursor artifacts they were seeking, because... reasons?

Anyways, the Diadact (the original one) gets semi-infected fighting the Flood. And that makes him super angry, because the Gravemind infected him with the "wanting to kill other stuff in the universe" mentality, and this is done for no reason, because there is a perfectly good other Diadact that already hates humanity and yet is never, ever brought up again! And in fact, it contradicts how he acts in Halo 4!

Anyways, Halos get fired, everyone dies, and there we go. The story as we know it begins properly from there.

So, that is me ranting. There's more to rant about, but I consider that part to be actual spoilers for this game, so I'll yell about it later.

But, yeah. So, tldr: Everyone's jerks, they tie everything too tight, and humanity is even more protagonist.

The Precursor thing is... I personally feel like it might as well be told here (hence , because it kinda gets across why the EU is so... ugh.

Spoiler

Show

In that it just... retroactively defines stuff that didn't need to be defined in a stupid way.

But it won't actually... change anything.


Oh, yeah, I dunno why everyone turns to me for this stuff. I don't know the most, I just yell the loudest.

[LaZodiac]

I PUT THE VIDEO POST IN THE WRONG THREAD OH MY GOD. I'm tired and distracted oooops.

Ooops it happened again. Not that that's a bad thing.

Zodi Plays: Halo 4 [3] Halo Four Runner

Video Length: 55:22

Pretty lengthy level, but given it is introducing new weapons, new enemies, new big name threats, and new things to grouse over with Em to the point of rambling for like ten minutes after the level actually ended, not a big surprise!

I like the little robot buddies. I like the stupid hologuns. I think the porcupine head can get dunked. I'm excited to hear all of you react to our reactions. Hope you enjoy, and have a good day!

[Lord Raziere]

*looks at Dataninja ranting with fire spewing out of their mouth about Halo Lore*

glad thats settled!

Spoiler: Raziere's thoughts on the Precursors

Show

so apparently, the Precursors were like, this lovecraftian Tier Zero civilization that came up with the Mantle philosophy first, when the forerunners are merely Tier One, because the Precursors had something called Neural Physics. a form of technology that postulated that even the universe has a mind on a level that most organic beings can't comprehend, and was probably psychic powers of some sort? anyways they were normally indestructible but apparently the Halo Array has some way of targeting neural systems, and thus destroying Precursor technology. which y'know seems to be the Flood. and the Organon a Precursor archive containing massive amounts of information even the Forerunners referenced, but was destroyed when the Halos fired. we're talking galaxies of information accumulated over billions of years.

the only known one left was The Primordial, a Gravemind that identified itself as the last Precursor....way back in Forerunner times and had talk with the Ur-Didact at some point abotu how their vengeance was at hand. and they died, so....any remnants of the Precursors are gone, because they are Flood, so......*shrug* so yeah, not really relevant. Flood and Precursors are dead, mostly because the Forerunners killed them then killed them again. but then again they're godlike eldritch abominations driven insane and apparently survived a really long time as seemingly innocuous powder so.....there is always the potential for them to return unfortunately.

so yeah, you can thank the Forerunners for killing the Precursors and causing them to become the Flood, thus causing all this to happen in the first place. wow. the Forerunners really are massive jerks.

[DataNinja]

Okay, well, I've slept now, so... let me try and put my thoughts about the EU in general (and kinda Halo storytelling)into something less... emotionally charged. (Jk, there are emotions, but it'll be in less... explosive terminology.)


The EU has always been an important part of Halo. The novelizations were there from the beginning, and have only ballooned from there. They may not have always fit together perfectly, but that's okay - because they felt like they did. They all felt like they belonged. In part, I feel like it's because the books and short stories tended to focus on one particular thing, and then explore what made that interesting. And it worked! Things were cool, and it built up this whole complex web of things that you didn't actually need to know to play the games!

But that all changed after 343i took over. They seemed to want to tie the EU and their games closer together. Which... is fine, conceptually. But if you're going to do that, you have to be careful not to lock out people who focus on one or the other. And that's where the Post-Halo 3 continuity kinda… falls apart.

Halo 4... never really explains the Diadact very well. Do you want to know his actual deal? Okay, go read the Forerunner trilogy. Except don't, actually, because the books do a lot of nonsense that sounds cool, but contradicts what's established in the games. This stuff is especially egregious, because they had to jump through so many hoops just to try and rationale why they would be an enemy in Halo 4. So... you have books that make characters worse while destroying prior canon, and that doesn't even match up to future canon.

Do you want to know why you're still fighting the Covenant? Go read the Kilo-Five trilogy. Do you want to know anything about the ship Infinity? Go read the Kilo-Five trilogy. Do you want the fundamentals of the plot of the Spartan Ops game-mode? Go read the Kilo-Five trilogy. (Sensing a pattern?)

This was never a thing that happened before. You never had to know Halsey's story. Or the story of Onyx. Or the story of the Spartans and their kidnapping. There was just so much to explore. But now it all feels like a chore to try and figure out what you need to know, and look up. These books aren't stories. They're just set ups to the stories of the games.

Also, everyone is a jerk in these stories. There's focus on the Forerunners, who have been made jerks. There's a focus on ONI, and their whole "let's make the Sangheilli self-destruct in civil war" plot. Yes, let's focus on the stories where, after humanity and aliens have forged a tentative peace, we try and annihilate them.

That's not to say there haven't been good books. Broken Circle has been one I really enjoyed, and I'll shill for it. It covers the first days of the Covenant (right after the Sangheili-San'Shyuum war), as well as the last days. And... it really felt like a return to form for the EU. The protagonists weren't unlikeable. It explored a story that had zero human characters in it. It explored stuff we hadn't seen, in a way that fit with what we knew. We had a significant Prophet POV character - we'd occasionally seen through the eyes of Truth in the EU, but... well, he's Truth.

But the big thing is... most of the books now aren't like that. They aren't game-agnostic. The characters all have to tie in. The book Hunters in the Dark? Abandons, like, three separate amazing plot points... just to tell us the story of how a character got to be where she was in Halo 5. A book that didn't seem to even focus on her until, like, the last third!

So, tldr; both the EU and the games are worsened by what they've become. The EU is worse because it sets up stuff for the games and doesn't really explore what needs to be explored as standalones. And then gets contradicted anyways. And the games rely on you having actual knowledge of who and what is established in the EU, and seem to forget sometimes that people just... play the games.

[LaZodiac]

Oh hey, time for more Halo time!

Zodi Plays: Halo 4 [4] Zodi Get Battlemech

Video Length: 51:09

In this episode, we continue heading towards the Infinity, fighting robots, aliens, alien robots, and so on and so forth, all to stop the evil porcupine man. I get a miniature rail gun and a mech so I'm enjoying the hell out of this. Em also gives me a bit of a story about the Precursors and the Forerunners and how they developed and stuff and... look, I do understand that people do care deeply about this story, and I'd never admonish anyone for enjoying it. I infact am enjoying it as well, just not in the way they intended. Conceptually, given what mushrooms and decay are as it pertains to life, it makes sense that they'd be this existent force from prior to this universe. Mushroom has always BEEN, it's how rot works.

But it IS very very silly to hear that the porcupines went full Madara Uchiha on their forefathers, but since they're mushrooms they can't actually die so it just made them really mad... and they decided after millions of years that the only person who can take the blanket of leadership is the humans who they hate and reduced to stone-age twice. I may be, as the kids say, laughing at the story, but I'm having a great time playing the game, and I hope you're all having a good time watching. See you all next time, for probably (sadly) less battletech references.