Mind blown [url]https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/4jdhmf/an_important_discovery_about_halo_5s_plot/[/url]
[QUOTE=]Like many Halo fans, I was disappointed in Halo 5's story. I felt that 343 Industries writers did a fantastic job on Halo 4 by giving it emotion and a deeper underlying moral. A message about man versus machine, and what it means to be human. With quotes like "Promise me you will figure out which one of us is the machine" and "She said that to me once, about being a machine". Halo 5 lacked that unfortunately.
Halo 5 brought back Cortana as an antagonist, and the plot twist didn't work for many people. She was depicted radical, aloof and out of character. However, Cortana does in fact have motives to her behaviour that has been alluded to in past Halo stories. The plot twist, while not executed well, does indeed make sense. Cortana's wanting to police the universe and end all war initially seems out of the blue, but one piece of media In Halo explains it all. Foreshadowing began back in 2010 with the release of: Halo Legends: Origins.
Halo Legends: Origins takes place after Halo 3 with a rampant Cortana and a cryogenically frozen Master Chief drifting in the Forward Unto Dawn. Cortana retells the story of Halo and what it means to her. She comes to one conclusion: war is human nature, war is a universal nature. There are several quotes from the animation “...and war, always war. The oldest and most enduring of human practices” and “So you sought other worlds, worlds to escape your addiction to destruction. But the worlds you found were never enough. Never enough to satisfy the age old instincts.”. She feels that humanity’s natural tendency for war is destructive and meaningless. “Humankind was mired in horrific conflict. Meaningless bloodshed. Leaving the great earth eternally scarred.”. She feels that unless something is done to change humanity’s behaviour there will always be war “I wonder why humans continue to fight, I wonder if warriors will ever disappear from this world. Never. There will always be warriors. And there will always be war”. Cortana's hatred of war combined with her stressful situations in Halo 4 lead her to the point of trying to find the ultimate solution. In her eyes war is an endless cycle that will always be repeated unless something is done. In Halo 5, it seems that she has completely snapped and resorted to radical methods in order to control and end war. Her radical behaviour seems out of character, but at least Halo Legends: Origins backs it up. I recommend everyone who played Halo 5's campaign to watch Halo Legends: Origins. This does not however, excuse 343 Industries writers for not doing a better job of conveying Cortana's motives and changes to the player.
So this plot twist can work. Now, ignoring that Cortana coming back to life diminishes the emotional impact of Halo 4's story (in my opinion), the main issue with this is that 343 Industries writers did not do a good job of executing this plot twist. For any plot twist to work, there needs to be foreshadowing, and flashbacks. The foreshadowing is Halo Legends: Origins, but it is one piece of media that fans would have to dig through to make sense of the twist. This is why flashbacks are useful. In any piece of media, film, television, or games, when a plot twisting event happens, it is usually backed up with flashbacks to past events justifying that it makes sense. Halo 5: Guardians did not even attempt to explain Cortana's behaviour being so different.
Can Halo 5's story be fixed? Yes. Partially. Cortana is alive, Frankie has likely confirmed that this is the real Cortana. He continues to stress that Cortana is not evil, and her motives are just. 343 Industries wouldn't defend that if they didn't feel she was the real Cortana. Cortana being controlled or an illusion from the Didact or Medicant Bias does not seem like a likely scenario after that statement. Halo 5 negating Halo 4's emotional death of Cortana can not be salvaged. However, the rest of the plot still can. If Halo 6 has a scene for Cortana to more thoroughly explain where she is coming from, and feature explicit scenes flashing back to Halo Legends: Origins then sense can be made of this. Better yet, the prologue cinematic to Halo 6, can be Halo Legends: Origins. What better way to start off the game, than a scene explaining Cortana?
The gift and curse of 343 Industries writing is that they relate a lot to the books and media of the expanded universe (EU) outside the games. This is fantastic in theory, but unfortunately the writers rarely explain the EU elements in the games when they are brought in. For example, In Halo 4, the Covenant was back despite the Covenant being defeated in Halo 3. Most players were confused as they had not read the Kilo Five Trilogy (Glasslands, Thursday War, etc). It was good that the writers added stuff from the EU, but they failed to explicitly explain the events that happened in the EU, in game. Rather than just having Cortana tell the player "A lot can happen in four years", the game could have given a brief in game summary of the events that happened in the Kilo 5 Trilogy books. Cortana could instead say she tapped into the Covenant chatter, and learned about their origins, then explain the EU events to the player. When Halo 6, and future Halo games, bring in story elements from the EU that is fantastic, however they need to give a summary of them to the player in game, so that all players can understand.
Hopefully Halo 6 will be explicit enough to explain the EU of Halo Legends: Origins, and even show scenes of it as a flashback. This way Cortana's drastic character change can be made sense of and the plot can work. If Halo 6 has Halo Legends: Origins as a prologue or a flashback to justify Cortana's radically different character, I believe the plot can be saved. Here is part one of a developer commentary of Halo Legends: Origins with Frankie and here is part two. Those videos would have been a better argument to defend Halo 5's story, rather than this argument here.
If we convince 343 Industries writers to explicitly summarize EU included in their games and feature Halo Legends: Origins as a scene (prologue of flashback) in Halo 6, then Cortana as an anatagonist can perhaps be rectified.
TLDR: If it's too long, just read paragraph #3.[/QUOTE]
They really just need to replace Brian Reed with someone who can properly convey the EU in the main game. He has such good material to work with and just turns it into a mess.
[video]http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/The Gubefather/video/17520584[/video]
[editline]15th May 2016[/editline]
That moment you get Jun's Armor and Emile's helmet one after another.
[t]http://screenshotscontent-t3001.xboxlive.com/00090000008ff27d-2881ca19-905f-41dc-9998-77d1540ffa51/Screenshot-Original.png[/t]
[QUOTE=overwatch pvt;50322989]They really just need to replace Brian Reed with someone who can properly convey the EU in the main game. He has such good material to work with and just turns it into a mess.[/QUOTE]
In general it just feels like they don't even know what they want to do with the EU anymore. It all went out the window so that the story could get side-tracked into the "Created" plot for the next few games and Microsoft could milk the franchise on "big huge ultimate doomsday" plots instead of anything actually original.
The Reach armor aesthetics are kinda proof that the new armor is just a little too cluttered, considering how great these look in the game's maps
I may be 6 years late with this but I never noticed Jun's armour had a line from a hydration bladder on it. I mean its one of those neat things I like about the Spartan's armour in Reach how they had actual tactical gear on them and stuff, but it is a little silly since he'd have to take his helmet off to drink from it. Unless thats supposed to be something else.
heres an example of what I mean if you dont know
[img]http://www.armyproperty.com/images/Thermobak%20Omega%20ACU%20100oz.JPG[/img]
[QUOTE=AbbaDee;50323711]In general it just feels like they don't even know what they want to do with the EU anymore. It all went out the window so that the story could get side-tracked into the "Created" plot for the next few games and Microsoft could milk the franchise on "big huge ultimate doomsday" plots instead of anything actually original.[/QUOTE]
I don't know if I've gone off on this rant in this thread before, so you'll have to excuse me if I'm retreading old ground.
I find it immensely disappointing that they went with Forerunners as this rather contrived new threat (this one Forerunner dude hates humanity because he's got a grudge against (gasp) [I]ancient humans[/I] so he's coming back with a robot army as a new threat to the galaxy!), and they've taken that stake-raising attitude and run with it with this Created nonsense. You know what they should have done? Tightened the focus and started looking at the fragile state of affairs in the wake of the breakdown of the Covenant. You have fractured Covenant remnants like those led by Jul, you have the Elites who are shakily on humanity's side, you've got... idk, maybe 3 or 4 factions of lesser power than the SoS and Storm Covenant who complicate things, and you've got the Insurrection who - now that the threat uniting all of humanity is gone or severely diminished - is free to fire right back up and demand independence.
Would that not make for a more interesting story? I mean, you can even keep S-IVs in this, since this would make them [I]interesting.[/I] How do people who have signed up as adults for a program renowned for defending humanity against alien threats react when instead of defending humanity, they're sent to suppress Insurrectionist activity like the Spartans of old? How do S-IIs react, after having spent most of their lives defending humanity? Would they view their old assignments differently? Would they even have any internal conflict? How would people interact with them or view them if they did take up arms against the Insurrection again with absolutely no qualms?
How long can the UNSC keep it quiet that the entire human race (let alone the galaxy) was basically inches away from annihilation? What does ONI do when it sees the old anti-authoritarianism flare up again, except this time in greater force and with a much better justification? What role do the various Covenant remnant factions play in all this?
See, you get glimpses and tidbits of this stuff in the main canon, but it's all just kind of swept aside in favor of HEY GUYS LOOK, SPARTANS and ANCIENT ALIEN REVENGE. Look at Jul getting killed off right away in H5, look at HTT building extraordinary hype and then having like next to nothing to do with H5, look at Insurrectionists being used to kill off the Rookie for the backstory in New Blood, shit like this. Years ago when I found out that Halo was continued after Bungie left, I was annoyed with the shit I read because it picked up with a galaxy that wasn't at peace (something about "finished fights"), and while I've changed my mind on that, I still don't like where everything has gone. I think something just a little more grounded would've been far better.
I honestly wish the new trilogy's plot was more about the Civil War ONI was starting with the Sangheili and ONI started becoming the main enemy, maybe even an attempted coupe towards the end. Could have a group of S-IV that work directly for ONI that end up being bosses, which leads to neat boss fights where you fight enemies that have the same skills and movesets you do. Then you could also have interesting sections where ONI has the UNSC convinced that the Master Chief has gone rogue (like the Find the Truth marketing) and you have to do stealth sections to avoid Marines out looking for you, since the Master Chief wouldnt want to have to kill innocent Marines just following orders. I wonder though if its just Microsoft not wanting one of their mascot game characters being portrayed as killing humans.
I hate that we know so much about the Forerunners, even to the point that we know what they look like in the flesh. It ruined their mystic and mystery to me.
[QUOTE=Wulfram;50324040]I may be 6 years late with this but I never noticed Jun's armour had a line from a hydration bladder on it. I mean its one of those neat things I like about the Spartan's armour in Reach how they had actual tactical gear on them and stuff, but it is a little silly since he'd have to take his helmet off to drink from it. Unless thats supposed to be something else.
heres an example of what I mean if you dont know
[/QUOTE]
probably some kind of system like we have for the canteens and gasmasks where you can plug the nossel into the helmet and drink it. I'd imagine that far into the future they have to have some way for a fully armored spartan to get water.
[QUOTE=overwatch pvt;50324917]probably some kind of system like we have for the canteens and gasmasks where you can plug the nossel into the helmet and drink it. I'd imagine that far into the future they have to have some way for a fully armored spartan to get water.[/QUOTE]
I always thought that was a thing that was already in the suit that took waste and converted it to water. I mean Master Chief wore his armour for weeks, I think maybe even over a month, from the start of Halo 2 to the end of Halo 3 and he wasnt exactly stopping to take his armour off and take a piss and have a drink. Especially when you consider that the armour took hours to take on and off, there would have to be built in stuff to deal with waste.
You're probably right though, there was probably a port on his helmet that he could plug in a line from a hydration bladder or a canteen and drink from that. I'm sure they wouldn't always want to drink shit/piss water.
Hunt the Truth had me so hyped for Halo 5. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't anywhere near what I was expecting, it fell below those expectations.
[QUOTE=Wulfram;50325157]I always thought that was a thing that was already in the suit that took waste and converted it to water. I mean Master Chief wore his armour for weeks, I think maybe even over a month, from the start of Halo 2 to the end of Halo 3 and he wasnt exactly stopping to take his armour off and take a piss and have a drink. Especially when you consider that the armour took hours to take on and off, there would have to be built in stuff to deal with waste.
You're probably right though, there was probably a port on his helmet that he could plug in a line from a hydration bladder or a canteen and drink from that. I'm sure they wouldn't always want to drink shit/piss water.[/QUOTE]
I'd just chalk that up to it being a game. Last thing Halo needs is a water drinking quick time event :v:
[QUOTE=Wulfram;50324801]
I hate that we know so much about the Forerunners, even to the point that we know what they look like in the flesh. It ruined their mystic and mystery to me.[/QUOTE]
The Forerunners are a joke at this point. They have no noses and pale white skin, they live forever unless they're killed by something, they're incredibly smart, nearly unstoppable and prone to attempting genocide. They're literally Voldemort if he were an alien species.
I don't mind finding out more about the Forerunners, I just think the Forerunners we got are lame as hell
[QUOTE=d00msdaydan;50329562]I don't mind finding out more about the Forerunners, I just think the Forerunners we got are lame as hell[/QUOTE]
I was expecting something a bit more... dignified. And elegant. We basically got tall noseless humans. IIRC there was one Bungie-era concept for a Forerunner war suit that looked fantastic and more along the lines of what I would have expected for them. That or stuff that was substantially more angelic/religious-looking while also departing from strictly human appearances (like elongated proportions)
I was at least expecting something that wasn't completely humanoid in shape. The Forerunner design is straight up boring.
Are there any safe reliable sites that I can buy a digital copy of Halo 2 for PC, if I can at all?
You might not need to....
[IMG]http://mspoweruser.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/explorer_2016-05-16_11-32-33.png[/IMG]
what the
[QUOTE=chipsnapper2;50336883]You might not need to....
[t]http://mspoweruser.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/explorer_2016-05-16_11-32-33.png[/t][/QUOTE]
well that came out of nowhere
For now I'm considering that an error since the store merger isn't complete and why would the Overwatch Xbone beta show up as playable on Win 10?
Either an error or they didn't bother to update the description and copy-pasted it.
Plus, you know, the beta's long and gone, so yeah.
tbh, I wouldn't be shocked if at E3 they announce that the MCC is coming to PC later this year. But for now I don't see that happening considering *other things*.
Even if they announced it for pc, i doubt i would buy it. It would be exclusive to the windows 10 store.
Yeah it is probably a bug.
[QUOTE=chipsnapper2;50336883]You might not need to....
[IMG]http://mspoweruser.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/explorer_2016-05-16_11-32-33.png[/IMG][/QUOTE]
I want this to be real, but the text really makes me think this is fake. Unless it was just placeholder text?
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
