: 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

I'm with you on that, I was more saying that Cortana did see some signs, and she told the Chief about them, but since they didn't know what the signs were about, what they did wasn't any more stupid or reckless than any of the other stuff they've done in Forerunner places (although that does include almost activating Installation 04).

: 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.

: 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.

fair enough

: 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?

Even if it hadn't been a character you knew at all, did that visual seriously not... IDK... do anything?

: 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.

they, who?

: 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.

I'll agree it doesn't measure up to the Flood in the first game, but then very little in video games or other media does.

: 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

IDK if it was intentional, but what they said a while back implied to me they wanted to (re-)introduce her to people before Spartan Ops.