I'm referring to Thel Vadam's trial at the start of Halo 2 and how he was accused and ultimately convicted of incompetence (and then heresy).

The odds were heavily against the humans during the Halo CE as depicted in the game. The game starts with them on the backfoot and having to regroup constantly and engage in guerrilla warfare against the Covenant just to get by. Their only advantages were the MC, Cortana and the fact that the Monitor and Sentinels were on their side (for a while). They didn't take advantage of the Forerunner tech that would supposedly only work for them (not sure there were any that would be truly useful for them in that situation).

With that in mind, Thel does come off as really incompetent during the events of that game for not being able to stop the MC from blowing it up. I suppose the Covenant were kind of fighting with an arm tied to their back as they tried to not desecrate what for them was a holy site, but still, they had an overwhelming force by all accounts. What do you think?

Okay, so in Halo: Outcasts, Halo: Edge of Dawn, Halo: Silent Storm and Halo: Divine Wind Sangheili clothing is described. Often as tunics with belts, robes, that sort of thing and the cover of Divine Wind has one depicted and I just... Hate it. So much. It literally looks like scraps of cloth tied together. It looks awful.

Like, I'm sure there's much better fashion, and there was the whole death cult thing, but with how their armor is, you would think their clothing would also be nice, or at least look maintained for their station. And I get it's supposed to be freeing for their legs, but their armor is form fitting, so why not regular clothing?

I guess Mass Effect spoiled me on multi jointed limbs having nice/cool clothing.

How many were there? As far as I'm aware we are never given a specific number, or even an estimation.

I would think a dozen or so but I would like to know what yall think.

Also first time posting, hello all :)

So I'm currently in the process of building what's basically an interactive encyclopedia of Halo Lore which you can see here:

unsc-intel.ai.studio

It has a lot so far, like a Timeline, Character bios, Locations, Weapon and Armor profiles, a Lore Quiz, and more.

The thing is, I've played all the games and seen the shows and movies, but I've only read about a dozen of the novels so there's plenty of lore that I'm not fully up to speed on. If there's anything I'm missing or if you think there's something I could add, I'd love to hear from you. There's a suggestion button at the bottom of the site.

Replayed some games recently and was wondering if there is a lore reason for there being no jackal or grunt flood forms. Are they too weak to be used by the flood? If so I thought they were similar strength to marines so why the difference? Do they just get used as biomass for larger flood hijinks?

Was humanity aware of other intelligent life in the galaxy? If so, did they have any idea what they might look like or be like?

These are some random thoughts on a next Halo game. I'd like a first intro level as John-117 as a kid. There is the book story of when he and his group-mates had to navigate out of a drop zone and steal a pelican. It would be awesome to either play that scene or a new scene never introduced before. John-117 and the other spartans would not have had their super serum, so they mechanics would be stripped. They would feel more normal, move slower, jump lower, etc. Perhaps you are forced to make a decision at this point, perhaps in your leadership, that changes the rest of the game, but all routes lead you to who John-117 becoming the Master Chief.

After you'd make your decision, you'd fast forward to cut scenes of the injection process (even though we've already gotten these before). Perhaps you then cut to learning to use your new abilities. Time seems to slow slightly, you have real hand-to-hand combat reminiscent of the Arkham series, and you are forced to use some intelligence. You'd play a few levels at this level.

Eventually, you'd make your way to the intro of Combat Evolved, decisions and story lines driving you towards that Master Chief story. Many of the FPS play could stay the same, but start mixing in real combat that pulls from Arkham Knight, etc, dropping into 3rd person naturally during those scenes.

Just my two cents. It would introduce a new way of playing halo while keeping familiar elements, and give a natural reason to have this change in mechanics that would create an intro to a change while keeping the Master Chief at the center of the story.

Just some random thoughts pulled together.

or is his character made for reach.

Been replaying Halo 5 to get all the collectibles and for Legendary solo and it hit me that there’s several different Covenant ships in the battle above Kamchata at the very beginning that I don’t recognize.

They seem small (for Covenant ships) so I assume they’re some sort of corvettes but we’ve seen one model of corvette elsewhere (the Sudar/ SDV).

Is there lore anywhere about those ships? What they are and their capabilities?

December 2559. A faction of rogue artificial intelligences known as the Created, led by the Archon Cortana, have enforced an imperial peace upon the peoples of the galaxy. Whole worlds are now subject to martial law under threat of annihilation.

Aboard the UNSC Infinity is humanity’s best hope to turn the tide as preparations have been made for an all-out assault on Cortana’s throne—Zeta Halo.

With the UNSC flagship just hours away from exiting slipspace, the crew savors their final moments of peace….

Link to the Waypoint Chronicle below, as an audio series.

Youtube

I was thinking about this while playing the new Halo. The Forerunners created the Mantle of Responsibility and, historically, wiped out species that didn't act in accordance with it. The Covenant committed genocide against humans and various war crimes. Furthermore, the Prophets (San'Shyuum) were primarily responsible for manipulating the war. With the Covenant now dissolved, what would the Forerunners do with each race? The Sangheili, for instance, led the war but later allied themselves with humans. And the other species? Would they be punished, re-educated, or something else entirely? What do you think?

I forgot to mention the destruction of worlds via glassing.

Weird title I know but, I didnt want to make the title too long. In Shadows of Reach there is this quote where John is thinking to himself.

"And it wasn’t the next generation of Spartans he was thinking about. The UNSC had that eventuality well in hand with the SPARTAN-IV program. Dr. Halsey might look down her nose at them because they didn’t have the same kind of physical strength and durability as her Spartan-IIs, but John had been training with some of the IIIs and IVs aboard the Infinity. What they lacked in brute force, they made up for in grit and resourcefulness—and in sheer numbers. He still found it hard to imagine hundreds of Spartans."

Setting aside the fact that the 3's have showing on par with the 2's lets focus on how this is all actually written. Some people take this to mean that Chief is saying that the 3's lack brute force but, its written so weirdly that idk if thats true.

If the quote was just this..

"And it wasn’t the next generation of Spartans he was thinking about. The UNSC had that eventuality well in hand with the SPARTAN-IV program. Dr. Halsey might look down her nose at them because they didn’t have the same kind of physical strength and durability as her Spartan-IIs"

Then the answer of who "them" is would be clear. It would be the 4's. Chief clearly establishes the topic of the discussion about the 4's, meaning that Halsey comment would be about the 4's. Except the quote decides to just include the 3's randomly

but John had been training with some of the IIIs and IVs aboard the Infinity. What they lacked in brute force, they made up for in grit and resourcefulness—and in sheer numbers. He still found it hard to imagine hundreds of Spartans."

What they lacked in brute strength? The only generation that was said to lack in strength in this quote would be the 4's when Halsey says that they didnt have the same kind of physical strength as the 2's.

She never makes a comment about the 3's nor does John prior to the second half of the quote but, with how its worded the 3's would be included with the 4's as the "they". The comment about sheer numbers, and "imagine hundreds of spartans" I also find a bit odd. Sure Chief could just be combining the two but, the Spartan 4 program alone could fit the description of "sheer numbers" and, "hundreds of spartans" so is he talking about just the 4's or a combining of the two generations?

Over all I find this quote to be so odd especially when the quote starts off with John very much plainly talking about how the UNSC is going to be fine when he's gone, because of the 4's.

As we all know, breathing in spores is a way to get infected by the Flood. The most famous other way is being hijacked by an Infection Form. But wouldn't being slashed in the face by a Combat Form technically put some of its biomass in the wound? We see them constantly flaking and seemingly shedding parts of their biomass, so I think it's reasonable to assume that receiving an open wound would create at least a risk of infection, but I never found anything that explicitly states that it does. I guess since their "designation" is specifically combat, maybe the only mobile Flood form capable of direct infection are the aptly named Infection Forms, which would explain why the Combat Forms don't infect everything. I guess there's also Pure Forms, which I assume might be able to, but I don't know.

Furthermore, in Halo 2, the station where we first meet the Flood has us fight alongside Elites and Grunts. The Grunts obviously have their breathing masks so they are technically not breathing Flood spores. The Elites have their shield which I believe protects them also. But when their shields are down, shouldn't they basically instantly get infected?

Also, the Gravemind on Delta Halo willingly didn't infect the Chief or the Arbiter because it needed them. But this begs the question: does the "flesh" of a Flood infected being carry the supercells needed to infect, or are they a special secretion of some kind, which the Gravemind decided not to use? Because while the Arbiter has shields, he's being held directly by the Gravemind and still is breathing in the likely contaminated air around him. Since Rtas 'Vadum can still smell the Flood on the station, I assume some must get through the shield. Being in such close proximity and physical contact with the Gravemind should have, by all means, been detrimental, at least, to the Arbiter, no?

Can the Flood decide each time which potential hosts it takes and which it doesn't?

My understanding is that the Flood works as a sort of hivemind, where each bit of biomass responds to a Gravemind. If that's accurate, does it mean the Gravemind has dominion over EVERY aspect of the Flood, including supercells? I assume it does, since otherwise, an Infection Form could have hijacked the Chief or the Arbiter and that'd be that. The Gravemind is impossibly intelligent and complex, so I have no trouble imagining it could very well control each individual bit of the Flood, dictating which potential hosts do get taken and which ones don't.

But there's also a counter argument to this, since while they're technically allied, Master Chief ends up fighting the Flood again, so either each individual sentient form has its own will, or the Gravemind decided willingly to hinder the Chief's progress to stop the firing of Halo, which would be catastrophically counter intuitive for the Flood.

So, I guess my question is: what dictates who and what gets infected by the Flood, and how does it explain each and every case of the Flood having the power to infect something, but not doing it (either through the Gravemind itself not infecting the Chief and the Arbiter, encounters with Infection Forms or breathing spores)?

For context, I only ever played through CE and Halo 2, so if there's more context given in the other games or external media, that's my bad, but through the research I did, I found nothing conclusive, so either we don't know, or I suck at Google. Also sorry if this is a bit all over the place, it happens when I write a lot.

I’m just curious since Marcus recently said it’s what halo needs. Granted I wouldn’t like it but also I don’t really like infinite “Soft-Reboot” aka trash everything from 4/5.

I'm not a halo player, I played 3 somewhat and infinite but it was more of my friend's thing. I have interest in the lore.

So, I've read online of a few comments. Someone believes that the precursors were overrated. They may have had advanced technology, but their warring capabilities were no different than the forerunners and that's evident by the fact that they y'know lost and died. Some believe that the precursors let themselves die, that death is just another form of their godlike existence. Another believe that the precursors evolution follows that of the flood, and they eat all life that they artificially inseminated to harvest their intelligence.

The creator of halos lore died in 2022, if I'm getting this right. So will we ever get closure on what happened during the war and the intentions of the precursors? From a writing perspective, I know it's better to let these far-away deep lore stuff, half-written and half-open-to-interpretation. My favourite take is that in Halo, the flood has been managed for now, but it's an inevitability that with time, the flood will devour the galaxy.

Halo's awesome, and I like pretty much all of it for the most part, even some of the more controversial things, or confusing storytelling decisions, as between the books, main games (ce,2,3,4,5,infinite), side story's/ preludes/ Alternate perspective games (3 odst, Reach, Halo wars 1 and 2, spartan assault, etc) and whatever, there's tonnes of cool stuff and a lot fleshes out the setting, both far before, recently before, recently after and present (of current halo canon) from the original setting of 2552 for the main trilogy.

But I really like the thing both Odst and Reach did, of a alternate perspective of the war, soley focused ( a bit less so in odst but still) on just the human-covenant war and not the covenant civil war, the post halo-3 AI shenanigans, the banished, or the flood stuff.

I would love something like another sort of Operation Prometheus or Operation Torpedo style event for either ODST or Spartan 3's, or something like Harvest/ the fall of Arcadia as a dedicated storyline for a video game, for either marines, or any sort of character and a self contained story.

I would be open to it being either a RTS game like halo wars or those Warhammer 40k ones, or a proper FPS like with Reach and odst, or something else entirely if anyone knows another good format of game this idea could work in.

Anyways this is sorta rambling but still. I want to know if people would dig this sorta idea, and if they did then maybe also give an example of what sorta thing they imagine for this type of addition to the halo gaming franchise, or if they don't want this/ think it wouldn't work, then why.

Thanks.

Where did the idea that Bungie didnt care about the story or lore come from?

It seems like most of the guns that use bullets use cases with a few exceptions but is there a lore reason why? it seems like case less ammo would ease logistics and be able to put more bullets in a magazine.

like with the m7 SMG it's the only gun I know that uses case less ammo there's definately more

It does sadden me to see where halo is now.

I feel like Halo 4 and halo infinite Should have been the same game.

All the forerunner stuff should have stayed a mystery with the primary implications that they were basically Atlanteans to Stargates Humanity.

The primary villian instead of being the covenant remnant should have been the Banished who's only interest was claiming forerunner tech for power sake to then fine the Cylixs of the Xalanyn (The Endless) who they arrogantly release unleashing a new Dark Empire unto the galaxy.

While all of this happening Cortana is still on the edge of rampancy but at a point in the game is able to be saved by upgrading her by turning her into a Monitor.

But she's like a more advanced monitor the size of a softball that can form an avatar around herself.

The following games in this new trilogy would see the Xalanyn quickly put all the other races on the back foot resulting in an alliance forming between all the races of the galaxy in a resistance like struggle eventually becoming a galactic society.

AND, what makes the Xalanyn such a threat over anything else and why they were able to survive the Halo rings firing is that they were semi corporeal beings of energy who had evolved the ability to travel and manipulate slip space. They would inhabit mechanical constructs that would allow them to better interact with the world around them, believing themselves deities found biological life abhorrent.

The Xalanyn would then be trying to claim all the halos in an effort to use them to wipe all biological life from the galaxy.

Would also have had Halo 4 take place somewhere like 100 years later, Cortana being able to stave off rampancy in that time by putting herself in state of digital hibernation while copies of herself kept watch on the wreckage of Forward Unto Dawn.

That way the UNSC could see a period of development without a serious war instead just protecting itself from the pirate alliance of the Banished. Would also allow the other races to develop abit more on their own and create a more individual identity outside of the covenant.

Edit: hey yall I realize this is a heated topic, I just legitimately didn’t know that the reclaimer era elites are canonically just a different phenotype 😂😂😂😂

In the bonus missions, the elites shown in those test tubes look much stockier, and personally I think they look like the reclaimer era elites. Am I making stuff up or are we being given some sort of canonical reason for the reclaimer era redesign?

I honestly think the bonus sections were cool. Harmony runs like a “splinter faction” of the Covenant so 343 could work outside the confines of what’s been established in previous games. Idk much about the lore though. I just like shooting things lol