I broke down and looked on Halopedia only once, for the Data Pad on Nightfall. That's when I realized that I had a completely wrong approach to finding them.

I assumed that they would be left near buildings and settlements, where people would actually be and someone might leave behind a datapad. Nope.

: I hate the way the Librarian and Didact look. Happy?

It's a very good start, yes.

: Of course it did. Pre 343 industries it did. Ghosts of Onyx, man!

343i: "Ghosts of Onyx? Onyx? You mean that cloistered shield world guarded by a trillion ultra-Sentinels with teraton-equivalent firepower, where Halsey, Mendez and a few Spartans will travel lands unknown, see sights yet unseen by human eyes, and drink tea with strange, reclusive gods?

Nah.

You're clearly talking about an undefended, unpopulated Dyson Shell, filled to the brim with labeled, individually wrapped tech-goodies for the UNSC and the UNSC only, because humans are just so special."

: If the Forerunner were able to make
: sanctuaries that were resistant to the effects of the Halo firing than
: it's possible someone survived.

Good. Let's go explore... in the books.

Rant begins. Let's face the facts. "Advanced technology used to primitive ends" is the Covenant's schtick. The Forerunner had something like eight million years to get over that; they should be god-tier. Seeing them use reskinned UNSC weapons is like seeing modern soldiers fight with bows and spears. Sure, maybe those bows are made from fiberglass and carbon fiber, but it's still a stupid way to fight. The whole concept behind the Prometheans and their arsenal isn't just pathetic, it's an insult. Frankie is supposed to be a fan of Ian Banks' Culture novels, so you'd think that he'd have an idea of how many magnitudes the Forerunner should outgun the UNSC by, but I guess not.

Go play Halo 2. The Forerunner's Roombas have enough firepower to fend off a full-scale Covenant incursion.
Go read the Forerunner Trilogy. A War Sphinx is their equivalent of heavy infantry or light armor, and a few of them can wipe a city from the map.

That's the catch 22. You can't fight Forerunner soldiers because the Halo formula isn't designed for an enemy that's faster, stronger, better armored, slightly better armed than an Iowa class battleship, and sees in the full electromagnetic spectrum. In the opposite direction, you can't nerf the Forerunner enough to make them playable without turning them into a shallow imitation of what they're supposed to be. That's why 343i delivered top-heavy killbots with holographic skulls and spikes. Once you're at that level of nerfing, it's hard to get any less ridiculous.

And it's not just the Promethean Knights that were crippled. The Didact had to be a raving madman with sub-room temperature IQ, because anything more intelligent would have ended the game a third of the way through the story. At the end of Halo 4, we have the Master Chief charging the Didact with a nuke in hand. How would that scene play out if the Didact wasn't hopelessly senile?*

"You survived. Such inoculation against the composer should not have been possible. But can it protect you from having your head twisted off?"
Crack. Pop.
"I suppose not."

Or what if that scene had played out if the Didact wasn't hopelessly senile and had weapons-grade telekinesis instead of his cute little Jedi tricks?

"That sound you just heard was your combat skin's power sources being ripped out. Primary, secondary, and emergency. By the way, these tendons look important."
snip

*The game would have ended several levels before, with a Promethean teleporting onto the Infinity's bridge with several-kiloton warhead, but I digress.

There was no chance that 343i would be able to do the Forerunner credit in Halo 4. I'm frustrated that they even tried.

Rant ends.

Right now, I'm tired of alien races being just like us, only their guns are silver and glowy. I'm tired of 'tagonists, pro- and an-, being talked up like geniuses when they're actually morons. There's a wide, wonderful range of science fiction out there, but only a narrow, often Star Trek-like selection makes it to the silver screen. I treasure District 9 and Gravity for getting made, but they're outnumbered by the likes of Ender's Game and Halo 4.

: I know people like you and the Levi's of
: the world were comfortable not knowing anything about them, and that's
: fine- to an extent I was too, but it's a logical direction to take the
: story, post war Halo 3.

No, the logical direction to take would have been to explore the continuing fall of the Covenant Empire and Humanity's attempts to rebuild and stay out from underneath the collapsing sections.

The logical direction does not involve human superships or legions of "Good as the original" budget Spartans. Otherwise, 343i wouldn't have had to retcon or handwave the story into knots.

: The reclamation of Forerunner tech and know-how by
: humanity to prevent the Covenant from happening again. Frankie said early
: on that was a direction he wanted to explore.

I guess that would be a good place to explore... if they did a good job with it.

This Janus Key claptrap? A magical McGuffin given to us by a senile Forerunner soothesayer that'll unite all the disparate Forerunner machinery that was lost during the Forerunner-Flood war? If you're going to do all that work for us, why not go all the way so we don't have to get up off the couch?

Forerunner relics could be interesting characters in their own right, but 343i isn't going to use them that way. It would be nice if there were more characters like 343 Guilty Spark or 2401 Penitent Tangent, each with its own agenda, but that would probably get in the way of the "Humans are awesome!" theme.

: But I digress- You don't like that direction- fine. Whaddaya gonna do aboot
: it??

Whine, kvetch and moan. Try and capture some of Bungie's old magic with my writing.

: Do you mean in terms of look? Because I greatly dislike the way they look in
: Halo 4. I was OK with the way they were shown in the Origins (Legends)
: video.

The best depiction was probably the CEA terminals.

: "But Rev, just revert to the last check point or play the level over
: again and access it agai"

: No. Fuck that. I don't have time for that. You think pausing a video and
: starting from the beginning is bad- how is the above not worse!?

I was under the impression that you could simply access the terminal again. If not, poor design.

: Audio and video logs are now so common place in gaming that the mystery and
: excitement they once held are now getting tedious.

How many games have them?

: Engineers: I had fun once and here's why it's broken!

Don't we deserve to be entertained too?

: I just laugh at how fired up people get over little things sometimes. I'm
: guilty of it too!

"The Ringworld is unstable!"

: I'm not an optimist. But, I do approach things from the point of view that
: "things could be worse"

I used to be that way. Used to barely care at all. Then I realized that "Things could be worse" doesn't mean that things are working.

: Once again, what makes ALL of this enjoyable, is you guys.

: Also, not having these discussions on B.net or Waypoint's forums.

: Ew!

I go over to Waypoint's forums quite often, just to bask in the chaos.