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: Twist 1: Cortana is somehow alive (which makes little to no sense, given
: the debris we see strewn around Chief at the end of Halo 4 - if "the
: Didact's ship" was "pulled into slipspace" then what was
: all of that debris? What did that nuke ACTUALLY blow up?).
: So yes -- people were expecting her to either stay dead, or to have a
: legitimate reason for being alive. There were several avenues by which the
: character could have returned without any hand-waving. The only thing that
: makes sense to me about that (without requiring something akin to a
: storyteller's retcon) is that this is not the Cortana from the Didact's
: ship, but rather one that comes from the Chief's interactions with The
: Librarian in Halo 4 (remember when you first lost her at that data
: terminal? Immediately prior to your conversation with The Librarian's
: imprint? Maybe The Librarian's imprint made a copy or something. Or maybe
: the Cortana that died WAS the copy. *shrugs*).
: Twist 2: Cortana is not feeling like herself. In fact, she's feeling very
: Didact-y. So much so that she's going to impose her version of peace on
: the galaxy under penalty of death, and she's not willing to discuss it any
: further.
: I am suddenly reminded of Cortana's Halo 4 dialogue where she says
: "It won't be me.
: ...you know that, right?"
: Twist 3 (and the False Advertising): Chief and Locke aren't actually
: diametrically opposed to each other. The marketing -- heck, the cover art
: of the game AND the intro screen that you see every time you boot up the
: game -- all show Chief and Locke facing off against each other, as though
: they've taken two opposite stances on some philosophical issue that they
: both believe that they're fully informed about. All of these elements seem
: to paint the entire story of Halo 5 as revolving around this "central
: conflict" between these two characters, and it's all bogus. Locke
: doesn't even dislike the Chief, he's just doing a job.
: Twist 4 ( also False Advertising): We never see poncho Chief on The Ark.
: The Ark never even comes into play at all. Nor does the poncho. I'd like
: to remind everyone that they went so far as to make an action figure out
: of poncho chief. Poncho Chief was a thing .
:
: : I'd really appreciate it if someone compiled a very simple dossier on the
:
: Alright, here's a barebones articulation of what you're asking for: |
: |
: |
: |
: |
:
: The Filthy Casual's Guide
: to
: Halo's Fiction
: a.k.a.:
: |
: |
:
:
: Alright, look: in Halo, there are these beings called Precursors. They're
: supposedly the first beings to have ever lived -- as in: they're literally
: the oldest living creatures. They are billions and billions (and billions)
: of years old. They're mind-bogglingly intelligent and powerful, and have
: successfully kept most details about themselves secret.
: They created this thing called The Mantle of Responsibility For All Life,
: which is basically a position of guardianship (kinda like guardianship in
: a custody battle over a kid) over all life. Now, what's important to
: remember is that only The Precursors get to say who inherits The Mantle
: from them and who doesn't. If you don't like that, tough, cuz they don't
: care, and you can't stop them. No, like, seriously, you can't. The most
: powerful race in the galaxy tried to back at the height of their power,
: and they got smacked down so hard that there hasn't been a smack down
: before or since that has come even close to comparing with it. It was the
: undisputed mother of all smackdowns.
: They also created two races of beings in their own image, with the intent of
: these races inheriting The Mantle: the race that we call Forerunners, and
: the race that we call Humans.
: The Forerunners were made first, and as they got older, the Precursors became
: dissatisfied with them, so they told the Forerunners "Dudes, we
: changed our minds: after watching how y'all got all lame and stuff, we've
: decided that we're gonna hand down The Mantle to your new baby brother,
: Humanity."
: The Forerunners at that time freaked the frick out. So much so that they
: carried out a holocaust against the Precursors' physical forms, and
: thought that they had pretty much killed them all. (Pretty sure that you
: can't actually KILL a Precursor in the most absolute sense, but that's a
: whole 'nother can o' worms that'll have to wait 'til another time, 'cuz it
: gets pretty complicated pretty quick.) The Forerunners who survived
: carrying out this holocaust left the galaxy in horror, and never came
: back. The Forerunners who stayed home did a massive cover-up about the
: whole thing, and erased all traces of it from history.
: Now, fast-forward 10 million years. The Forerunners that are alive at this
: time don't know jack-diddly about any of that Precursor stuff, same as you
: don't know jack-diddly about what was going on in this galaxy 10 million
: years ago. They don't know what The Mantle actually is, they only think
: they know (they ballpark it), and so their version has serious problems.
: It comes to pass that for various reasons, they go to war with Old
: Humanity and decide to de-evolve us instead of making us go extinct.
: These Forerunners encounter The Flood. It forces them to activate these
: Forerunner-built weapons called Halos as a last-resort to prevent The
: Flood from succeeding in killing absolutely everything.
: The Halos activate, and kill ALMOST everything (which is an infinite
: difference from ACTUALLY everything). For various reasons, the Forerunners
: were not able to make it to The Ark (a Forerunner installation outside of
: The Milky Way) before the Halos fired, and so they all died (with a few
: exceptions). Afterwards, what little sentient life is left is sent out
: from The Ark to locations throughout the galaxy to start re-populating the
: place. One of the races that was sent out was the de-evolved version of
: Humanity. Some of the other races that were sent out end up meeting up and
: forming The Covenant.
: Fast-forward 100,000 years.
: The Covenant scans a planet and discovers Humanity. A grand total of like,
: three members of The Covenant find out that Humanity is supposed to
: reclaim the Forerunners' legacy (we are ID'd as "Reclaimers"),
: as well as all of the Forerunner artifacts that the Covenant races have
: worshipped for so long, and so their response to finding this out is to
: freak the frick out and pursue our total annihilation (sounds familiar).
: These ~3 Covie dudes don't tell anyone else this information about humanity,
: they just all keep it to themselves, and so whenever members of The
: Covenant would ask things like "Hey: So why are we just straight
: slaughterin' these 'Human' dudes again?" the ~3 Covie dudes would all
: just be like "Look, dem dudes is straight unclean and such, and so
: we've marked 'em for DEATH, and... that's... really all you need to know.
: Aight? Now get to glassin'."
: So they waged war against us for ~27 years.
: Then The Flood showed up again, making things complicated for The Covenant,
: and because The Flood showed up when they did, things worked out for us so
: that we survived the war against The Covenant. Which is a funny little
: thing, because if the Flood hadn't shown up and been such a problem for
: the Forerunners, we wouldn't have survived their war against us either.
: Fast forward to Halo 5.
: After the nuke goes off at the end of Halo 4, Cortana (or something like her)
: has it in her head that AIs (The Created) need to be the ones to claim The
: Mantle -- not humanity or anyone else. This ain't gonna work though,
: because only The Precursors call that shot. She doesn't know this, though,
: so she's gonna go through with her attempt anyway. For some reason, she
: calls out to Chief to see if he'll support her, and when he shows up, she
: locks him safely in a cryptum so that he can't interfere with her plans.
: Fireteam Osiris shows up with a Forerunner Monitor at the last minute and
: snatches the Cryptum outta Cortana's grasp before she leaves to go lead
: the war effort in pursuing this whole Mantle deal.
: As for Halo 4, The Didact (specifically, the original Didact, called
: Ur-Didact) was put in a cryptum by The Librarian 100,000 years ago, pretty
: much right before the Halos fired. [The Didact was the military leader of
: the Forerunners, and not just against the Flood, but against ancient
: humanity as well. He lost his kids in that war, and that source of
: resentment is added onto the fact that he already strongly disliked
: humanity.] The idea was that he'd be able to do some sort of a
: "communing with The Domain" sort of thing from within the
: cryptum for a good long while, and that doing so would "straighten
: him out" so that when he was finally woken up by humanity at some
: point in the distant future, he'd be more like a friendly advisor and less
: like a narrow-minded murderer. As you can see, it didn't quite work out
: like that. Main reason for that is that he wasn't able to commune with The
: Domain during those 100,000 years, and so you can understand how he might
: be upset. Imagine being locked in a escape-pod with no internet or
: anything for 100,000 years. Frankly, I think I'd want to kill everybody
: too, if I'm being perfectly honest with myself. [We don't know what The
: Domain is, exactly, but current theory is that it's actually the domain
: of the Precursors, who store up all kinds of knowledge and memories and
: other such things (such as minds). The Forerunners didn't fully understand
: what it was, exactly, either, but they used it kind of like a Forerunner
: version of The Internet. It actually kinda seems like a good/happy version
: of The Gravemind, but way, way bigger.]
: So yeah: the " tl;dr " version is: The Precursors are trying to go
: through the process of handing down The Mantle of Responsibility for All
: Life to humanity, their chosen Inheritors, and stuff keeps happening to
: get in the way of that. Whoever has gotten in the way of that happening
: has gotten themselves thoroughly Dealt With ™.
: Current theory on Cortana's behavior is that Precursors are causing her to
: behave the way that she is so that they can test humanity's eligibility
: for The Mantle. It was never the Precursors' plan that she and the other
: AIs actually succeed in claiming The Mantle, they just want to test us
: in some specific way. For more on that, check this out:
: http://carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/halo.forum.pl?read=1209604
: Hope this helps. Whatever questions you've got, I'm more than happy to
: answer.
No one promised the Ark... at all.
Campaign (spoilers) | Schooly D | 10/29/15 2:35 pm |
Re: Campaign (spoilers) | DHalo | 10/29/15 3:41 pm |
Re: Campaign (spoilers) | Grizzlei | 10/29/15 5:00 pm |
You're opinions are bad and you should feel bad! | cheapLEY | 10/29/15 7:24 pm |
ur face | Grizzlei | 10/29/15 7:27 pm |
Re: ur face | breitzen | 10/29/15 10:17 pm |
Re: ur face | Grizzlei | 10/29/15 10:37 pm |
touché *NM* | breitzen | 10/30/15 12:15 am |
Re: Campaign (spoilers) | gamerguy2002 | 10/29/15 5:14 pm |
Hmm. | cheapLEY | 10/29/15 8:02 pm |
Filthy Casual's Guide to Halo's Fiction | The Lionheart | 11/5/15 1:53 pm |
Re: Filthy Casual's Guide to Halo's Fiction | Stretchy | 11/5/15 2:30 pm |
Re: Filthy Casual's Guide to Halo's Fiction | Schooly D | 11/5/15 6:18 pm |
Re: Filthy Casual's Guide to Halo's Fiction | Hawaiian Pig | 11/5/15 10:25 pm |
Re: Filthy Casual's Guide to Halo's Fiction | The Lionheart | 11/5/15 11:51 pm |
Re: Filthy Casual's Guide to Halo's Fiction | bluerunner | 11/6/15 9:22 am |
Re: Filthy Casual's Guide to Halo's Fiction | thebruce0 | 11/6/15 11:19 am |
Re: Filthy Casual's Guide to Halo's Fiction | Postmortem | 11/6/15 3:12 pm |
Re: Filthy Casual's Guide to Halo's Fiction | davidfuchs | 11/5/15 7:43 pm |
Re: Filthy Casual's Guide to Halo's Fiction | The Lionheart | 11/5/15 8:54 pm |
I Need To Sit Down And Read This. *NM* | Morpheus | 11/6/15 1:53 am |
Re: Campaign (spoilers) | Hawaiian Pig | 11/5/15 10:47 pm |
Re: Campaign (spoilers) | General Battuta | 11/6/15 9:57 am |
Re: Campaign (spoilers) | Cody Miller | 11/6/15 3:06 pm |
Re: Campaign (spoilers) | Cody Miller | 11/6/15 3:05 pm |