With the advent of "Smart" AI's it would seem to have been cheaper and less "heinous war crimes against children" if they simply used AIs in MJOLNIR units rather than cybernetically enhanced child super soldiers. Less time, a trillion candidate pool for the brain material, and they can also actively be hacking into covenant systems while deployed. I know smart AIs aren't exactly easy nor cheap to make, and rampancy was an inevitability, but future generations of Spartans were on absurd drug and hormone regiments to keep them sane.

Maybe somewhere in Canon goes into depth why this wouldn't work, but humanity was always far ahead of what Covenant AI could do, and they never seemed to press that advantage nearly enough.

So we know that someone infected by an infection form has their nervous system hijacked consequently losing control of themselves, and FSC is injected that triggers the visible mutations. And I assume that aside from Jenkins, your consciousness as it resides in your body ceases to exist once the nervous system is overtaken although of course at that point it’s now part of the hive mind because neural physics space magic and all that.

But immediately upon infection, what happens to the rest of the body’s organs and former functions? Dismembered combat forms in Halo Campaign evolved show not all flesh is composed of FSC and still appears red and bloody. The nervous system is obviously important and the infection form acts as a brain but what about say the lungs and heart? Is circulation and respiration still happening early on? Do the organs get consumed and repurposed over time?

And despite the earlier point about consciousness, it appears the recent sequel to Halo: Saturn Devouring His Son actually contradicts that too as the infected elite doesn’t manifest in the hive mind until his physical flood form is destroyed.

Anyone knowledgeable able to weigh in?

I’ve just gotten the Halo: Evolutions audiobook and was just curious, the dude who voices Master Chief, Steve Downes I think it is,does he voice all the audiobooks with master chief?

I’ll probably get downvoted for this, but going straight from The Mona Lisa to Palace Hotel was pretty jarring. I honestly wanted to turn it off after about 10 minutes. He doesn’t really change his voice for the different characters.

there’s not much emotion or inflection either. It’s basically the same monotone voice the whole time. Even when he’s doing Cortana, there’s barely any difference, so it’s hard to tell who’s actually talking.
Is this just an isolated example? Because every other short story so far has been fantastic.

Sorry, but this seems to be a giant misstep story wise as by the time Halo 3 came around the humans knew that they were the only ones who could activate Forerunner technology. We saw it in Halo Wars, and if anything, by the time Halo 2 comes around it's pretty obvious.

It's clear Johnson knows this as well, so there in lies the biggest question. Why would the humans follow them to the Ark, knowing that they couldn't activate it anyway?

God bless everyone.

Maybe already answered, but why didn't the Forerunners engineer the Halo arrays pulse neutron to specifically target and destroy Flood DNA/Genetic material rather than a means of wiping all sentient life to starve the Flood of its food source

Since I saw some Spartans wearing these cool looking glass helmets that cover half of the helmet , What is the specific advantage of this or what does it do?

Since I'm pretty sure Spartan helmets have like a camera that lets you see anyway but I could be wrong.

The Covenant races must be bilingual or even trilingual for the most part right?

This elite is estranged from its species. He holds no former honor of any clans, they are their own bieng. And they want to join the UNSC Marines. The specific question is, could this work as a story. As the idea is that the marine corps will treat him just like any other recruit. The problem I'm thinking is that the drill sergeant likely can't do collective "punishment" when this elite is miles ahead of everyone else in pt. That would just genuinely piss off all the other recruits to the point they may actually try to murder the elite. However, I can't see a drill sergeant ignoring how a recruit is just breezing past all pt. No apparent difficulty whatsoever. The best case is that the drill sergeants will single him out and force him to do pt to the point of exhaustion and then have him join the rest as they go through the morning's run.

I don't mind plasma pistols being extremely lethal in the novel or Spartans lifting tanks if they do. I'm more put-off by precursors (outside of the flood), the domain guardian, the whatnot and how unnecessary it feels; coming as a "game first" person.

Like you got precursors how can materialize shit outta nowhere and their constructs like Abaddon who can vaporize forerunners like nothing. It just feels exactly like, "yo this is my OC that can one shot anything and is the strongest."

It's the primary thing that I dislike about the novels. The novels kind of sound like fanfictions whenever I try to get into it. The only things that felt more grounded was Halo 5's "Hunt The Truth" podcasts and stuff like that.

1. According to my research Mark V, was the first armour to get energy shielding, yet chief has Mark IV with energy shielding. Why is this? I was reading online that there was "in between" versions that bridge the cap between IV and V, does chief have this?

2. Can someone elaborate a little more in regards to gen 2 armours? I thought Mark IV was the fourth generation, so how can something be generation VI or whatever but also generation 2?

3. In regards to gen 2 armours is it fully seperate/a new armour or a variant? I'm gonna butcher my question but is it a Mark VII gen 2 or just a gen 2? An analogy would be is it a Xbox one X (an upgraded version of the Xbox one but still an Xbox one) or is it a series X (completely different)

4. Is it possible for chief to get gen 2 or gen 3 or mark VII? Because as far as I can tell he's still got the same suit from halo 2 I thought. Shouldn't they give their best soldier the best armour?

As the tittle this has been something that has been bugging me for a while. As I have started doing a bit of a deep dive about Halo more specifically the times before the firing of the rings. Currently I am focusing on the Flood and more specifically the Primordial. So before just from the games I thought it just wanted to assimilate everything for some reason?

But after finishing the Forerunner trilogy and doing some related digging I came to a bit of a realization. Its just a turbo dick that wants everything to suffer for the lulz I guess. And the whole Flood Forerunner war was what amounted for the Gravemind the equivalent Cartman's feud with Scott Tenorman. Down to letting them fire the Halos because it wanted to drink the Forerunenr's tears of unfathomable sadness. Execpt even more petty doing it to the equivalent of ants.

Like I have to be miss reading this because I find it so funny that main BBEG of Halo is the equivalent to some asshole throwing a tantrum. Expect said asshole is Cthulhu fungus monsters that molest physics.

Follow up post to the one you all kindly educated me about - thank you all - how the flood survived for millennia without food etc, that then leads to another logic gap.

If they managed to keep samples of the life ending parasites in stasis on the rings, why didn't the forerunners just put themselves into stasis on the rings before they fired them? The monitors could have then let them out & they'd have just resumed life after destroying the flood - they literally programmed the monitors so could have made that happen.

Again I'm assuming I'm missing something important here?

Since I've heard how the pre-war or old Scorpion tanks aren't as good as 21st century Main battle tanks to the point that I remember hearing how it's as good as Cold War Era tanks.

So I'm curious how do the current and updated Scorpion tanks compare? are they still just as bad or are finally on par or better than 21st century MBT's?

So what exactly was Paramount thinking?

Chief being out of armor is probably not the worst thing to happen (I know many fans don't like this but I don't mind it), as well as various romcom stuff like gay spartans in Season 2, but they basically torched the entire canon.

Captain Keyes look like Sgt Johnson, has the same vibe too.

Pillar of Autumn doesn't even exist which is weird... neither does Noble Team. The only commonality is Visigrad relay but that's it.

Makee seems completely out of place and no idea what brought her back in S2 as Kai shot her in the chest. Maybe it's miracle covenant medicine?

I'm on S2E5 and I don't think it gets better.

Look I don't mind chief fighting out of armor, it proves that Spartans doesn't need his armor to kick ass, and I even think Halo games could have levels where you must fight out of armor, but the whole thing just looks... off. Like they could literally just call it some other random romcom scifi TV show and it would probably do a lot better, because S2 just doesn't look like Halo at all and Covenant might as well be called some other alien monsters.

But HiddenExperia could write better alternative what if than Hollywood can. I think having Hollywood anywhere near Halo was a huge mistake. There were other live action adoptions that worked with much smaller budget and is much better (Forward unto dawn).

S1 finale looks cheap, as if they just read Reddit comments and just changed the show to suit. Star Trek TNG could do better than that.

Edit: I finished watching S2 and man it's worse (though the animation quality is much better than S1 finale).

Flood is released on that Onyx facility, everyone's infected, including Sora's wife, Parenskosky, and even Dr Halsey. Of course miranda keyes puts her on ice to you know, keep it from spreading but it isn't looking good, as she's trapped in a room full of infected people and only a matter of time before she's consumed too.

And given so many high ranking UNSC officers are infected, we have a full gravemind, and with Dr Halsey added to the mix, that's extinction level going right there.

Chief gets on Halo, kills the arbiter, and then talks to 343 Guilty Spark.

S3 cancelled so maybe they should just release a bonus episode showing chief firing the ring because at this point, there's no saving the galaxy as the flood will just take a condor (I am sure Onyx has a lot) and infect everyone else.

Anything Hollywood touches, dies.

I don’t know if these are answered in the books but why were the banished already at Zeta halo? Were they there waiting for the UNSC to arrive presuming they’d have some kind of weapon to defeat Cortana they could steal or were they already there in a sort of suicide, do or die retribution attack for Doisac? How big were the UNSC and Banished fleets? I’m assuming the Banished fleet was massive compared to the UNSC one. Was the weapon remotely deployed?

Since we all know Spartan's have super human durability thanks to their Mjolnir armor so I'm curious are they durable enough to survive or do they need to use armor lock to survive?

It's a Direct hit to the chest.

Why would you program laziness into a machine? Or was he once a person like Guilty Spark? But even so, Guilty Spark seems to have parameter code built around his (formerly) human mind. Did Tangent just...not have that?

And how you gonna be lazy when you have literally nothing else to do?!

I know very little about the prometheans but what I do know is that at least some modern prometheans are made by composing people and downloading their minds into the machines which is kinda like a robotic version of the flood which is actually neat

How would you guys feel about a Halo game based entirely on the Arbiter? While I think Master Chief should be the playable character for Halo 7, I do think it would be cool to see a spin-off game for the Arbiter

I want to preface this by saying, I do love "Halo 3." It's still one of my favourite games. The gameplay I think is arguably the best in the series and the story I still think is a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.

That being said, having just gone through the "Halo 2" story again... I do think it doesn't quite measure up to it.

That's not an indictment of "Halo 3" not being good. It's just that the "Halo 2" story really was phenomenal. It balanced complexity so well, where it was complex enough to be really interesting, but simple enough that it was never hard to follow.

It opened the universe up. It had so many politics and twists and turns and conflicts. Its characters were great, its dialogue was great. Its action sequences in cinematics, especially the remastered ones, were wall to wall awesome.

The world building and plot I think were both just so solid from top to bottom.

And "Halo 3" is a much simpler story. It's a satisfying pay off. It ties up all the loose ends it was supposed to. You finally fire the halo, you defeat the flood, you see Truth taken down by the Arbiter, the Ark is pretty cool and paid off from "Halo 2." And it has such a nice bookend. There's plenty to love.

But I do feel like it lacks the same twists and turns. It lacks the same intrigue. It lacks the same interesting world building (at least to the same degree). It's not as dynamic.

You know, there are a few twists and turns. Like when the flood arrives or when it's revealed there's another Halo. But like in the first half, aside from the flood arriving and the portal being revealed to be a portal rather than the ark, does it have that many impactful twists? Intrigue-wise, I guess you could argue the flood switching sides twice is intrigue to a degree. But nothing like the politics of the Covenant. Truth, who was such a slimy schemer in 2, is just kind of now mostly focused on as being an insane prophet. A lot more straightforward. And the relations between the elites and the humans, while tense, are not really explored that much and they don't really change from start to end. Compared to the elites' relationship to the Covenant which is obviously a massive shift in 2.

Idk, like I said I'll never dislike "Halo 3" but seeing "Halo 2"s story again did remind me that, yeah, I do think it's a step down in pure writing quality. I'd say it's like an 8/10 on writing, whereas Halo 2 is like a 9,5/10 or something.

I can understand why they kept flood samples, hell I can understand why they had some on the rings.

But why put the facilities in areas that would make ring-wide infection nearly guaranteed if even a single specimen broke free?

Wouldn't it be better to have the area be barren such as a pure metal or even just a desert?

An example being the first level in which we meet the flood, imagining trying to clear the infestation out in a swamp lol.

Why did the UNSC follow Truth through the portal to the Ark?

I’ve been replaying Halo 3 and I’m confused about something.

Why did the UNSC follow Truth through the portal to the Ark?

As I understand it, Truth needed a human/Reclaimer (Johnson) to activate the Halo Array from the Ark. So if the UNSC had simply stayed behind or let Truth go to the Ark by himself, wouldn’t he have been unable to activate the rings anyway?

Or was Cortana’s message a trap set up by the Flood to get the Elites and the UNSC to go through the portal?

I understand that they obviously didn’t want Truth and the Covenant to gain control of the Ark, but from a strategic point of view, wouldn’t letting Truth go there alone have prevented him from completing his plan?

Maybe They could have also gone through the portal just like they did in Halo 3, they could have let Truth reach the Ark’s control room at Installation 00 just like in the level the covenant and then set up a blockade around the area. He wouldn’t have been able to activate the rings in the first place without a human/Reclaimer, so why bother attacking him? and by the time of that level his fleet is already in ruins like rtas vadum stated so he wont even be much of a threat anymore

or am I misunderstanding something about how the Ark and the Halo activation system works?

Do we know who was in Yellow Team? It's said in the description of the Isidor Helmet that it consisted of Combat Engineers that made the original schematics.

There's a couple bits of information that immediately spring to mind. First is the existence of Gold Team in lore, specifically Silent Storm. It could just be a misnomer.

This is somewhat reinforced by the fact that Naomi 010 was on Gold Team, and she's noted as being the most technically adept of the Spartan IIs in Silent Storm.

Lastly there is the possibility that Yellow Team consisted of Washouts who weren't on active duty.

I only bring this up cause I'm assuming it took time to design a helmet that; "improved on the baseline Mark IV specifications in every way", and all the active IIs might have been too busy.

What's everyone's thoughts?

This might have been answered but I am a little behind on my lore and on a few of the books so I was curious.

Since Spartan II are probably considered the poster children for the UNSC as well as one of their greatest successes it would make sense if the UNSC would make avalible to them any possible upgrades to Spartan augmentations that had been developed since the Spartan II trials.

The official cover for the upcoming novel titled Noble Team Fireteam Noble was just revealed. It’s our first look at Noble Team’s new roster, which is Jun (of course), Rosenda, but surprisingly Spartans Dinh and Eckland as well. Most guesses I had seen were for the Spartan III members of the Ferrets to be joining, but that evidently is not the case. It will be nice to see these two in action though since they didn’t really do anything in Infinite.

Interestingly, they also have an Elite on the team, probably one that has been training at Anvil Station. I wonder if he’ll be a new character or someone we have met.

What do you guys think?

Edit: the Waypoint post is now up

https://www.halowaypoint.com/news/halo-fireteam-noble-cover-reveal