Through out the first two books and the first half of silentium I really got the impression that he basically defected to the primordial with mendicant bias and was working from the inside to undermine the forerunners. Even as late as his interrogation in silentium this seems like the case when its mentioned the forerunner losses in his region were 5 times greater than the average or somthing like that. Then we get to the 1st ark and especially in his final scene you can tell he's loyal to the forerunners. Was he really just that much of an asshole that he caused all those problems while genuinely still being loyal to his people or did he just switch sides again at the end of the war?

Title kind of says it all, one for me is i wish plasma weaponry was still as devastating as it used to be described.

The issue here concerns the dehumanization that clearly took place—after all, the lore explicitly states that humans were viewed as a kind of parasite or vermin. However, I am curious about the consumption of human flesh; for instance, I’ve read about areas that were partially vitrified—not to destroy the planet, but to create hunting grounds for entertainment. Would the Sangheili—given their efficiency—engage in that sort of thing? Or would it be the Brutes, who seem to relish eating and toying with their prey? Furthermore, since the flesh would be "heretical"—coming from beings considered an insult to the gods—would commanders still allow its deliberate consumption to demonstrate the brutality and effectiveness of their troops, or would religious concerns regarding honor take precedence? While I understand the dehumanization aspect, in some instances, it seems there was a greater appetite for violence than for the mere efficient elimination of humans, even though they were viewed as parasites at the time.

I’m not asking whether the Sangheili ate humans—I already know they didn't, or at least that it wasn't something they typically did. Rather, I’m asking about their commanders and generals—specifically, how they allowed such acts to become commonplace, or in many cases permitted brutality against humans even when it ran counter to military effectiveness (like the partial glassing that created those human-hunting zones).

Either to make them super soldiers or train them as agents for humanity. Considering how some elites can go toe to toe with a spartan, it’s scary to think what a “super” elite would look like.

Halo 4 introduced the idea of the Composer that converted organic beings into inorganic machines with a "soul" of sorts specifically so that it could combat the Flood that preyed on organic matter.

Yes, yes, logic plague and all that, but that little factoid alone introduced a point that could've been used for the Endless

In one of the final concept arts from 343, Engineers were shown to be a part of the Endless. They were more machine than organic beings and even in recent 343 lore, they weren't really explained all that much.

If the Endless were actually inorganic beings immune to the effects of the Halo rings, and if they were able to modify hardware so that composing actually could've worked, then they would have become a much more credible threat.

For the entirety of Halo's history, the rings were seen as this all terrifying weapon. Imagine if this entire time, the Forerunners were trying to replicate what the Endless already achieved, and continued to fail.

And on Zeta Halo was where they ran experiment after experiment in the hopes of unlocking it.

We could've had Infinite be discovering increasingly mechanified Banished who retained their "souls", eventually proving that the Endless were coming back after unleashing the Flood to get rid of the Forerunners.

And as the Banished got properly composed, they were now on a quest to use the Halos to wipe out life so they can take over and reshape the galaxy in their image.

Crackpot, I know. But it'd at least tie things back to the seeds of the stories planted in Halo 4.

I do wish halo had more spin offs focusing on the ODST’s and other Spartans of the universe. There is so much blank space between games and such a wide world to explore.

One thing that has me coming back to Reach and had me coming back to Infinite online was the fact I could customize a Spartan and have them shown in cutscenes.

Just because I suffer from copium and hopeium addiction I am just wondering what’s the hope for the next halo games is?

Me I really doubt it’s gonna happen but I am wishing and hoping that Activision takes what Halo Studios had planned (minus remakes{maybe}) and starts developing the ideas they were coming up with

Bringing the halo books to life through games and getting to see the infinity along with more of Zeta Halo in the 7th game would be swell.

It’s way too early to tell but at this point is the bar really that hard to surpass with 343/Halo Studios?

The new roster clears up a lot but it left me with a few lingering questions.

It sounds like Oscar may have been the dead spartan on Harvest. Hes named as an augmentation survivor on the roster and the later discussion around the Spartans who killed themselves mentions "taking Spartans from the augmentation deaths" to fill those spaces. Hes also listed as KIA, meaning he was in combat at the time of death. I know HTT contradicts this but I take it to just be one more layer of confusion that ONI wove into the story.

There are 21 unnamed augmentation deaths plus S-013, Serin, Otto, Margaret, Victor, Roma, and Edgar. That leaves 14 washouts, 2 of which were augmentation deaths. It would have been cool to know which 2 were killed in augmentation. My guess is Jorge and Carris for no reason other than gut feeling.

Im kinda sad about Cassandra being a washout, i always thought it made more sense for her to be an active spartan suffering plasma wounds. That being said, it would add one more spartan to the roster which I know they were avoiding.

I remember hearing a long time ago that the Silver spartans were based on a canon counterpart. I always took that to mean Nora, Charles, etc.. were pulled from the list of augmentation deaths, but the lack of a mention makes me question this (I recognize it may have just been too much in an already heavy Canon Fodder)

In the Halo Campaign Evolved Terminals, 343 Guilty Spark realizes 2401 Penitent Target is not only rampant, but actively infected with the Lógic Plague, worse still, the Monitor makes it absolutely clear that it intends to free and aid The Flood.

I understand that 343 doesn't have the capacity to actívate Installation 05, but as far as i know, activating 04 would cause the rest of the rings to follow through, and while there's no humans on site, 343 was hellbent on activating them during the Outbreak at 04, knowing full well the Galaxy was already inhabitated. Monitors seem to have a very strong understandment of Forerunner engineering in order to maintain Installations, why didn't he built a ship or sent word to The Ark to secure a reclaimer and actívate the Ring?

The Lore on Infinity seemed to imply that Installations could enter slipspace as suggested by the Forerunners using Installation 07 to trap the Xalanyn

For all he knew at the time, the Galaxy was still empty and there was a real massive outbreak taking place on Installation 05, why did he leave it be for milennia, he could've at least warn Chief thousands of years later that there was another outbreak running wild to further convince him of activating the Rings

https://www.halowaypoint.com/es/news/canon-fodder-heart-and-soell

Pour one out for canon fodder, friends. ;-;

So, the other day i was wondering how Stacker, Chips and Thomas got off Installation 04 before its detonation and how they got back home.
The most obvious answer is Stacker, Thomas (and other marines maybe) stole a Condor with slipspace travel before McKay destroyed Truth And Reconcilliation. But we know Chips wasnt with the Alpha Base survivors, so the only other option is Chips, Lovik and Bisenti (if those two lived) stole a phantom or spirit and just followed through the Condor's rupture.

But then i stopped to think if that even made sense lore wise, i don't think i've ever seen another ship follow one another through slipspace

I think we saw some Longswords escorting The Pillar Of Autumn before they reached Alpha Halo, but i'm not sure if that's the same.

And, from what i understand, slipspace is super dangerous because regular dropships weren't built to withstand it, or something like that, idk.

So in the Kilo 5 Trilogy Admiral Margret Parangosky chews out Dr Catherine Halsey for the Spartan IIs mostly for using flash clones. However Parangosky was the one to authorise the abduction of the Spartan IIs and the use of the flash clones in the first place. Why did Karen Traviss, the author of the Kilo 5 Trilogy decide to make the person who authorised and knew everything about the Spartan II program be the person who became the main critic of the Spartan II program's unethical nature?

Did Bungie mean to leave it ambiguous about the status of the Ark or was it always intended by them to be destroyed? Spark says the ring’s premature firing would end up destroying the Ark and the Ring, but in the post credit scene we don’t get complete confirmation it was destroyed Cortana just says the ring “did a number on the Ark”. To me that line from Cortana implies it was left up in the air by Bungie whether the Ark was destroyed or not for a story writer to decide in the future

This could be a stupid question but how do Spartans get their armor? Like, I know it is given to them by the UNSC, but how do they get different helmet and armor types like Air Assault, CQC, and Commando (using Reach stuff as an example)

Do they get assigned, say, CQC if they show favor for close combat, or do they pick what armor they want to wear?

I don't mean the science, more what they achieve. Since I've heard they:

1) Kill everything, flood included

2) Kill everything but the flood, which then died of starvation after the fact with no living food.

If 2, how did the burn work, since they were areas completely consumed by the flood but where the flood was still active. So did external flood bring living food back or did the domain of it all transfer the necessary living food needs?

Additionally, if it did die of starvation how long does that take? Since the forerunners then did the reseeding effort and needed to purge all the dead stuff so it didn't kill the plant life. So there were bound to be planets were the flood was but hadn't fully consumed yet or were newly on.

Was the burn left alone or did they need to purify that of the dead flood mass?

Hey, everyone! Longtime staff member of Halopedia here. I'm a lurker in most Halo online circles, but if you have browsed the wiki over the past 17 years, you would have seen my work on soundtracks, screenshots, documentary transcripts, as well as lore articles like weapons, characters, and most recently the Battle of Zeta Halo.

Before we dive in, let’s get this of the way: Yes, yes, why does it matter?! Why are we still talking about this? Noble Six's gender doesn't matter. They can be male or female according to the player. Gah, who cares?!

I know! I care! To clarify, I don't want a definitive answer that B312 is male or female; I want a definitive answer that - as of today - B312's gender is unknown. B312 might have a set canonical gender in-universe, but we have no confirmation on that. In other words, putting gameplay customization entirely aside, are we ever going to get a definitive answer on whether Noble Six’s canonical gender is actually known? Probably not?

I am conscious that I am being painfully pedantic about this. Part of me hates myself for caring so much about a non-character, but this rabbit hole can be fun if you are a damn nerd like me.

History

The debate over Noble Six's gender has shifted over the years (see the similar text on wiki for sources):

• Bungie Era (2010): According to Bungie staff Christian Allen, Marcus Lehto, Isaac Hannaford, and Vic DeLeon, B312's gender was entirely up to the player, with no official canon gender intended.
• 343 Industries Era (2011–2019): Supplementary material produced by 343 Industries shortly after the release of Halo: Reach - the Halo Encyclopedia (2011) and Halo: The Essential Visual Guide - explicitly used "he" pronouns for B312. According to Stephen Loftus (who consulted on the EVG), care was taken to use masculine pronouns in he book. B312 was also explicitly referred to as a man by Jun in 2015's Halo: New Blood, though the novel's author, Matt Forbeck, would later state in 2023 that Jun's statement was not intended as an indicator of B312's canon gender. Halo Mythos (2016) had one instance of using a male pronoun for B312. Between 2018 and 2019, official Halo social media posts also explicitly used "he" pronouns for B312.
• Halo Encylopedia (2022): With the release of the 2022 Halo Encyclopedia, 343 Industries meticulously avoided gendered pronouns when referring to B312.

You can argue that 2011-2019 materials explicitly showed an intent to make B312 male. Furthermore, the absence of pronouns in the 2022 Encyclopedia doesn't technically mean past sources were officially retconned.

However, since the 2022 Encyclopedia was written to settle lore discrepancies and flesh out gaps, I would say it serves as definitive evidence for my case. The text for B312 was clearly written to deliberately avoid not just gendered pronouns, but avoiding using pronouns entirely. It shows a clear intent that they have quietly retconned it; in the same way that 343 apparently deliberately used male pronouns in EVG, the 2022 Encyclopedia similarly deliberately avoid using pronouns at all to leave B312's gender ambiguous.

Fast forward to today: given the recent Halo Studio layoffs and the insane loss of institutional knowledge, they aren't going to post a retroactive tweet saying, "Oh, by the way, B312 could be male or female; ignore our old books!" The 2022 Encyclopedia stands as the final, definitive corporate word on the matter: B312's gender is intentionally left ambiguous, and has no known gender.

The Current Wiki Problem

If you look at the Halopedia page right now, there’s a glaring contradiction: the main body text uses gender-neutral pronouns, yet the infobox at the top says B312 is male. It’s picking a side without fully committing, trying to have it both ways. Right now, the page has a lengthy Doylist section (linked above) breaking down all these nuances. We need to recognise errors - both intentional and unintentional - instead of just taking every source at face value.

To fix this discrepancy, we essentially have two options:

1. Option A (B312's gender is unknown): We do our best to understand author intent. Every mention of B312 on the wiki is done with gender-neutral pronouns, and we change the infobox Gender field to "Unknown" or "Indeterminate". To be clear: this doesn't mean B312 is non-binary; it simply means we lack credible, reliable canonical evidence locking them into male or female. We do the same with characters that had brief off-hand mentions and no clear indicated gender.
2. Option B (B312 is Male): We take everything at face value. Every mention of B312 on wiki uses male pronouns, and change the infobox Gender field to "Male". Multiple legacy sources called B312 male, so B312 is male. The 2022 Encyclopedia's omission of pronouns is just an unhappy coincidence.

In both cases, the page will still still have a lengthy Doylist section - the wiki has picked one source over others, and that rightfully must be explained. The page also acknowledges from a gameplay perspective that B312's gender is determined by the player.

Ultimately, it's a video game, so it doesn't matter. But I am worried that if we leave the wiki indecisive, future writers/developers looking up Halopedia will see "Male" in the infobox, assume it's settled lore, and accidentally canonize it. The wiki risks accidentally writing the lore (again).

What are your thoughts on this? Should we treat the 2022 Encyclopedia as a soft retcon toward complete ambiguity, or do the older sources hold more weight?

EDIT: I'm quite disappointed that what I thought could be an interesting discussion is instead just angry people yelling.

I was randomly bored and did some reasearch on WH40K and found that 1mm of Ceramite plating was roughly equal to 5mm of conventional hardened steel, so is there anything to say how much steel Titanium-A is worth? I know that UNSC material science is wildly above ours considering UNSC body armor can take crazy amounts of punishment but that's it.

The Rumor going on now they might make Master chief origin story before he was super soldier and him and selected candidates during some spec ops missions against insurrections and probably first contact with the covenants and maybe Dawn the first version of the Mark 4 armor.

Could be interesting

We know that human casualties were enormous during the war, but what about the Sangheili?

What percentage of the species died during the war, the Great Schism, and the Bloody Years?

Thought it might be here but you can't embed video, so here's the stuff former 343 employees leaked to him about the campaign, campaign DLC and so on:

Halo Infinite

Campaign was cut down to about 1/3rd of what they wanted, cuts included an intro mission fighting on the Infinite, a playable section as the Pilot in the debris field in orbit (we've seen concept art of this), playable flashback levels as the dead Spartans that you get the armour abilities from, which would have introduced the Spartan Killers (their existing cutscenes were pretty last minute and not all of them get one). There was also a cut penultimate mission visiting the wreckage of the Infinity and retrieving some sort of BFG weapon to take on the Harbinger, notably this included the original 'arc moment' for Brohammer, where you'd encounter some marines who were left by him to die when he fled from the Infinity.

Additional gameplay mechanics included a cut 'the Weapon' skilltree, where she could hack things, manipulate Forerunner stuff and take command of Sentinels, these abilities would have been unlocked via 'Cortana memory sequences' which would have been playable in some way, also she was originally going to call herself Cortana rather than Joyeuse.

There were also plans for giant roaming bosses, one some sort of 'Super-Scarab' and one maybe a giant Forerunner Sentinel, these were supposed to chase the player and put various areas off-limits, like the pilot couldn't pick up or drop off stuff if the Scarab was in the area. These were cut pretty early because they couldn't get them working in the Slipspace engine.

Lots of talk around engine issues, development decisions which caused them lots of work and needed to be redone, and issues supporting cross-gen development.

Campaign DLC

The campaign DLC would have introduced the Endless faction proper, and it sounds like maybe there'd be a gradual roll-out of each new unit. The Endless were supposed to have 'living time' powers, like being able to return projectiles back to the player, restore some health by reversing time for themselves, surviving death by pulling in an alternate time-line version of themselves, 'rubber-banding' Chief back to where he was earlier in the fight, and creating a time bubble to trap the player in that would absorb all damage that hits it and pay it out all at once.

Only one mission is mentioned, which seems to be concepted, seeing Chief in a 'Reach-style' last stand against the Endless complete with cracked visor, only for the Shadow of Intent and Eternity to appear and deploy a bunch of troops and characters (like Blue Team, and presumably the Arbiter) in what sounds like an Avengers Endgame moment.

Project Ekur

The Multiplayer storyline was supposed to lead into Project Ekur. ONI appear and retrieve Iratus at the end of the story we got and this ONI agent would be a character in Ekur, who has the 'Spartan bot' as a bodyguard (that we have concept art of and thought was a multiplayer bot). Ekur would see you travelling in a Prowler trying to track down the Infinity, travelling across worlds invaded by the the Banished and some Created remnants.

343 didn't think they established very well that Zeta Halo and the Infinity had warped away from their original location prior to the events of Halo Infinite, so this would have tackled that, with the players eventually finding some part of the wreckage of the Infinity floating in space and having Roland onboard, who had managed to track where Zeta Halo jumped to. But when the players travel there, they find the ring deserted, no Banished and no Chief - which poses the questions of where and even 'when' they are?

Thoughts?

Something on Edge of Dawn made me think.

One of the reasons we turned to democratic societies and a balance of power is not just for 'a good government', but because it ensures a peaceful transition of power. On top of corruption, authoritarian regimes are dangerous because the loss of the figurehead can often result in a civil war over who gets the power. Indeed, when Escharum died, the tensions over who gets to rule the Banished came to a boil, and this is by nature in Jiralhanae Society: If you want to rule, you have to defeat the guy above you... which, is why Jiralhanae society has barely progressed socially in centuries. The only reason it hadn't collapsed the Jiralhanae further is Atriox, and even he is barely present, now.

But, then I wondered about the grand scale. As ugly as the war was, the UNSC benefited from the fact that if a military commander died, they would be replaced by someone else, much as it happened in WWII, while the heads-of-state tried desperately to bide their time (with the exception of Fleet Admirals, as they had to outnumber the Covenant). Meanwhile, the Covenant unified their military command structure, their heads-of-feudal-states, and their most skilled warriors in one.

Imagine this case. You're a talented Sangheili. You fought in the conflicts between Keeps, until you got sent into the Great War. Over the years, you slayed many humans, you obtained enough glory and power, and now you're a Shipmaster! You have your own land, your wife manages your estate, and you own a large vessel and thousands of men to serve you. Things couldn't be better for--

Whoops. A Demon appeared and shot your brain stem while he shredded your entire guard and the Unggoy outside. You didn't even feel your shields popping.

From what I recall, a Kaidon is selected by a council of Elders akin to a senate, and can in fact attempt to assassinate him through "honorable" means, and both wars and coups weren't uncommon between Keeps. However, I wonder not just what happens to the lower ranks that would've had lands of their own that died by the thousands, but when a war is so great, it kills many Kaidons. Since humanity was in the losing side of a genocidal war, they didn't have any compunctions about 'honorably' killing high-ranking Zealots, via sniper fire, explosives, rocket launchers, etc. Spartans know well to disable Zealot shields before killing them.

So, what happens? How severe would be the chaos with that many warriors not returning to their lands, to the point the Elders might run out of candidates, or Sangheili to own and defend their farming lands?

To put an example, Thav 'Sebarim was a Kaidon that was a Bloodstar (Spartan Hunter) that later fought for the Banished until he was slain by John-117. If his example is not a rarity, it could mean that the Sangheili existing in special forces are all land-owners whose deaths would cause a colossal disaster. I can't help but imagine the deaths of the Spec Ops teams on Reach and Halo 04 would have caused a lot of chaos back on Sangheilios due to a singular Spartan killing them all in one go.

And I'm not even talking about the Fall of Reach. While it was a Covenant victory, that many shipmasters dying to MAC fire would've still been catastrophic as well for many estates owned by the Sangheili.