From the recent Bulletin:
> “Poor Catherine Halsey. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a monster. A war criminal. A woman who kidnapped and killed children because she thought the ends justified the means. But then we come along and chop off her arm simply because we wanted a spot of ambiguity in her final line. In the original draft, she was shot, but in one piece. Jul asked her what she wanted, she said, “Revenge” and everyone knew she meant on Palmer and the crew of Infinity. But we didn’t want that. Halsey is a woman who is always saying two things at once. To end on a note from her that was so clearly defined just felt wrong.
>
> So I chopped off her arm. Now she glances at her shoulder before answering Jul’s question and you have to ask: Who does she want revenge on? Palmer? Jul? Everyone?”
You know, I really didn’t hate how 343i portrayed Dr. Halsey in Halo 4. I didn’t really enjoy it either as she still reminded me way to closely of Karen Traviss’ portrayal of Halsey in her books. But THIS little quote coming from an employee of 343 Industries. The only reaction I could conjure up after reading that was this.
To me, this just reaffirms everything I had believed about 343i and their “love” and appreciation of the Halo story, as in it is very questionable. I remember when Bungie had Halo they didn’t outright tell me how to feel about Dr. Halsey, I was allowed to come to my own conclusion. I knew what she did was morally questionable, but given the circumstances I could understand why she did what she did. But like I said, I was able to come to my own conclusions as did others.
But yet under 343i’s guidance, we have Karen Traviss and 343i blatantly tell us either directly, like in the Bulletin, or through text, like Traviss, that Halsey is a bad person. We have references to the Nazis and Soviets just thrown around towards her hoping they stick. Yet what really upsets me is that despite being a company that allegedly loves and respects the Halo lore, they leave out SO MANY key details that are important to understanding Halsey as a character.
Halsey didn’t kidnap the Spartan-II candidates, ONI agents did. She did not murder them either, she did not maliciously and purposely plan out their deaths. The augmentations procedures failed and crippled some, it was heartwrenching to her and she researched constantly methods to heal them. And yes, she did believe that the Spartan-IIs were justified, but that was because a galactic-wide rebellion was going on with colonies being nuked, ships being hijacked or blown up, civilian or otherwise, and BILLIONS projected to die if the conflict continued. Seriously, this is supposed to make me think Halsey is a monster? Especially compared to what the higher ups at ONI are up to be it experimenting on the Flood to use it as a bio-weapon to planning to commit genocide on the Elites?
And then they cut off her arm simply to create ambiguity. 343i purposely set out to make Halsey look like an evil character, shove that opinion down the fanbase throats and then mutilated her. Dr. Halsey is one of my favorite characters in fiction and to see all this happen from a company I thought at one point was going to keep Halo going in a positive direction is just…depressing.
This is what I’m going to remember Halo 4 for along with my other problems with the story. If this is what they are going to do with the characters, characters that have been with Halo since the beginning, and then basically tell me, “Halsey is bad and if you like her you should feel bad!”, then I don’t know if I can support Halo any further. I’ll try my best, but the direction Halo 4 went pushes it for me.
You know history that’s not how things work. I apologize before hand to the mods.