: Well, Cortana did say something seemed strange when they found out where the
: signal was coming from, and she was hesitant and being all "this
: doesn't feel right" when the Chief was about to activate what turned
: out to be the thing to release the Didact.

I get the feeling it would have happened regardless. Infinity and all of its blunderous, worthless crew would have shown up eventually, had their people abducted by Covenant or Prometheans or who knows what, and then a random human would have been forced to free the Didact. And this time no one would have been able to stop it. Now that's a scary thought! Thank goodness Master Chief was there to screw up. :P

: pete_the_duck: The Forerunners did a lot of hard-to-understand things.

Haha!

: Avateur: How do you know what it refers to (or if it's even still canon
: >_>)?

The Bestiarum on the Legendary disc on H3 lists many, many populations, and doesn't bother breaking it down by planet. It's assumed to be total regardless of location in the galaxy. And sure, this is a few years after H3 once we get to H4, but I'm kind of doubting that humanity's hanging out at a few billion now.

: um, what? Why are you still talking about 300 million? It's been over four
: and a half years, I'd think it changed a little (most likely it
: increased).

Yep, and even then it's not all that much (considering right now America only has over that many people) because of what the Covenant did to us, and I'm sure it increased, too, but there's zero indication that the increase occurred on Earth. At the end of Reach we saw people back on Reach. Who knows what they were doing there, but it might be a safe bet that we're back and recolonizing places.

: I agree the threat wasn't felt for a lot of the game, but...

: what? how, when, where... I don't...

Chief nuked himself. He's dead. He either used Action Replay, modded, or used space magic. Or all three.

: Are you telling me it didn't get to you seeing Dr. Tillson get disintegrated?

Oh no, someone I was introduced to for barely a whole level who actually truly did have potential as a character but then was just immediately blasted away. So, no, it didn't get to me. I was more amused at how the Librarian made Master Chief become Composer-proof. Thank goodness for the timing on that one, right?

: I don't think it really matters how many people were Composed. One is too
: many, right? and we can agree it was more than one? more than 5 or 10
: even? I think that's enough.

One isn't too many considering how many people the Infinity seems to love throwing away to their deaths throughout Spartan Ops. 343 Industries hasn't done a good job of making me feel like humanity is ever really being threatened or like they really even care if humanity is actually being threatened.

But if I go with what you're saying, sure, it is tragic, it is enough, and how dare that Didact go after Earth. Too bad, from the way they wrote it, he was never a true threat. He and his ship were taken out far too easily and the impact was lost. What the Flood did in H1, slowly but surely just taking out all of the Covenant and Keyes and all of our buddies and gathering buddies and that entire build up, there was A LOT at stake and you felt it, saw it, fought it, knew it, lived it, dreamed it, etc'd it.

: From here to the end of your post, you mostly have points I agree with, so
: I'll just cut it and say that.
: I don't know, I agree there were flaws, some of them serious ones, with Halo
: 4's story and how it was presented, but it sounds like you're mad at them
: for doing a bad job of writing, and it's starting to seem like, to use an
: example, picking on someone for being clumsy when they have cerebral palsy
: or Parkinson's disease. Maybe it's because it's happened so much lately,
: maybe it's because I can sympathize so much with having trouble with
: writing, I don't know. I'm not trying to defend 343i because of any of
: that, in fact I'm not specifically trying to defend them at all. I agree
: they had a job to do (or several) and failed at it (or them) varying
: degrees. I just felt you missed some things in what you said, and I had a
: realization about how I felt about the whole thing and wanted to share it.

Not sure if you read it, but I wrote up a far more indepth and way longer critique of the overall campaign, and the story is hardly the only problem. The level design was atrocious. Go disarm these three cores. Now go to the next identical place and do it again. Now do that one more time. Now do that for a few different levels, but maybe replace cores with gondolas. :P

Also, you are right though. They did do some things right, and even though I'm focusing on populations and overall intent, the fact is that the impact is never felt and whatever intent they may have had actually failed. Nothing in that game was ever truly at stake. I took out the Doom Ship and the Doom Composer and the Doom Vampire in a matter of quicktime event seconds for goodness sake. And Halsey was never even a real thought in the designer's minds beyond "let's have them talk about and show concern about finding her all game, open it up with her" and then do nothing with it. lol