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So... Hunt the Truth. (I'm up to #03)
By:Quirel
Date: 5/19/15 4:38 pm

To date, the only part of HtT I've seen is the first trailer. At the time, I didn't even think it was official. Frankie said long ago that they were no longer interested in ARGs because the medium was played out, and the video looked like an amateur job. Besides, APFSDS rounds don't work that way.

I thought that the video and the Hunt the Truth Tumblr site was just a fan project, like that wonderful Bzzzzt! roleplay Dagoonite ran... gosh, four years ago? Time flies. Anyhow, a friend was kind enough to point out that the video was bracketed by the official Xbox logo, and a voice could be heard saying "Not yet rated" as a little "Rating Pending" emblem was shown. And it had Microsoft's name on it. And Halo 5: Guardians.

His explanation may have been peppered with phrases like "Are you really this dense?"

So, I just ignored it. I'm not interested in Halo 5: Guardians, and I don't want to get my hopes up because I know I'll be disappointed in the result. But now everybody is talking about it, and I've been told that it's probably the best fictional entry 343i has made to the Haloverse for years. Comparisons to iluvbees and Believe keep floating around.

This morning, I decided to wade into Hunt the Truth and catch up. Let's see how much I like it.

-So, Benjamin Giraud is the guy from Second Sunrise over New Mombassa? Seeing "Journalist. War Photographer" in the second HtT post made me crack open my copy of the HGN and reread that story. It's a lot better than I remembered, and I love his cynicism towards ONI.

-One thing that I've noticed is that Benjamin sounds a lot more credulous in HtT than Second Sunrise Over New Mombassa. I never expected the guy from the book to call someone like the Chief a hero, and he's a lot less critical about this job than I thought he would be. Maybe it's just the difference between one author and the next, maybe Giraud isn't always second-guessing the morality of his job, but I think it's something else. I think he's playing up his role as a guy who stumbled onto the truth and is now doubting what he's been told. He's making these logs to convince people that something is wrong, and this angle sells it better than his typical "We're lying to the public, but at least it gets me paid."

He's still a propagandist.

-"The prolonged orbital bombardment destroyed East Africa, killing millions before it ended."
I keep wondering about how much of Africa was glassed. Hood's "Half of Africa" gives us a nice upper limit when we take his tendency towards exaggeration into account, but it doesn't look that bad in the end of Halo 3.

Is the affected area the size of Lesotho? Did they glass all of Kenya? The way Benjamin put it, it sounds like the Separatists might have glassed Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania. I wouldn't call it overkill considering the threat of the Flood getting a foothold, but that's a huge slice of Earth. Kenya alone is about three times the size of Washington state!

-These interviews are awesome. I laughed out loud when Deon said that the kids started fighting to see who was king of halfway up the hill.

-John was boxing at 12? >.>

-That Insurrectionist attack... that was dark.

-No he wasn't.

-So, why is John's name blacked on on the census form? What's the reason in-story?

-The way I understand this, ONI hired Giraud to produce a story about the Master Chief and his childhood. They want people to know the story of the man behind the helmet. But they aren't about to reveal that they kidnapped kids from the outer colonies and turned them into augmented child soldiers, so they're feeding Giraud false witnesses and documents. That's why John's teacher claims to have given him boxing lessons when John was 12, and why Giraud had to find those documents from the scavenger before he learned that John 'died' at the age of six.

But Ellie Bloom, who seems to be in on the conspiracy, points Giraud to Katrina, who sends Giraud diary entries that say John died when he was six.

The Hell?

-Oh, so he found Ellie on his own. That makes a bit more sense.

-So, O.N.I.'s fake witnesses include John's former boxing instructor, a fellow Marine, and a bona fide captain of a cruiser (Voiced by Jennifer Hale!). They've gone to a lot of effort to sell this, but I can't help but wonder why they included John at all. If his parents weren't killed in an Insurrectionist attack, that leaves a paper trail that can be followed. If you can create fake witnesses, a fake enlistment, and a fake past, why not create a fake John? A John whose absence in Elysium's records could be blamed on the incompleteness of those records.

-Yeah, John is never going to live down that incident in the gym. =P

-Fake Insurrectionist attack? Boxing is illegal? This doesn't make sense. Yeah, I know it's an O.N.I. coverup, but why would they concoct a cover story that could be blown by anyone who lived in Elysium at the time? Even if they didn't expect Benjamin Giraud to be so thorough in his investigation, what happens when the story gets released to the wild?

-So, "Waypoint" is an FTL communication net that has existed since before the UNSC-Covenant war? For crying out loud...


Messages In This Thread

So... Hunt the Truth. (I'm up to #03)Quirel5/19/15 4:38 pm
     Excuse me?Grizzlei5/19/15 4:43 pm
           Re: Excuse me?Gravemind5/19/15 7:13 pm
                 Re: Excuse me?Grizzlei5/19/15 7:15 pm
                       Re: Excuse me?Gravemind5/19/15 8:33 pm
                             Re: Excuse me?Grizzlei5/19/15 8:41 pm
                                   Re: Excuse me?General Vagueness5/19/15 11:32 pm
                                   Re: Excuse me?Quirel5/20/15 12:43 am
     Re: So... Hunt the Truth. (I'm up to #03)Grizzlei5/19/15 5:00 pm
     Re: So... Hunt the Truth. (I'm up to #03)General Vagueness5/19/15 11:21 pm
     Re: So... Hunt the Truth. (I'm up to #03)General Vagueness5/19/15 11:26 pm
           Re: So... Hunt the Truth. (I'm up to #03)Quirel5/20/15 12:57 am
                 muted and polite he says *NM*Bounce-A-Gon5/20/15 1:16 am
                       Yes.Quirel5/20/15 1:41 am
                       Re: Just like you were last week! :D *NM*Hyokin5/20/15 2:27 am
                             Ah. Good Times. lol *NM*SEspider5/21/15 1:18 am
                 Re: So... Hunt the Truth. (I'm up to #03)Archilen5/20/15 3:15 am
                       That would be beautiful, and I wish it were canon. *NM*Quirel5/20/15 3:30 am
                             Re: That would be beautiful, and I wish it were caArchilen5/20/15 9:47 am
     Re: So... Hunt the Truth. (#04 through #07)Quirel6/2/15 3:18 pm
           Re: So... Hunt the Truth. (#04 through #07)General Vagueness6/2/15 4:43 pm

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