I’m all for it.
If the game has terminals it’d be a nice touch for those terminals to have the same art style as The duel.
Although story wise there’s so much they can do. How about rather than just one Arbiter we have the game based on many different Arbiters? We can start with the first Arbiter but who was the first Arbiter? It’d interesting indeed if that the Arbiter existed since before the rings went off and the armor was found once again centuries later and we could learn pretty much the whole history of the Arbiter along with a lot of other things.
Beginning with where the armor came from, when it was made and by who.
It’d be really cool if the armor was originally a gift from the Forerunners and that every Arbiter armor set ever made actually had a wireless transceiver infused in the special metal it’s made from and for centuries the memories and experiences of every Arbiter were being uploaded to a Forerunner data base and the Campaign is told through the eyes of Thel who has gained access to this data base and is re-living the experiences of all the past Arbiters. But now I’m just getting fan-fictiony on you guys.
But there are so many ways 343 can go with just how the armor was made.
Then there’s the many stories of how the Sangheili fared in the Forerunner days. Their major historical achievements, first contact with other races, the formation of their original government, the wars they fought in including what they did during the Flood war and the story of how they were indexed.
Then after the rings go off and the Sangheili have to start all over again we can learn the story of how the armor was once again found and we can learn about what the Sangheili achieved before they joined the Covenant.
Then once we get into the Covenant era we can learn more about how the Sangheili joined the Covenant and the Grunt rebellion and the taming of the Hunters.
Then we can learn about some unknown Arbiters that fought during the Human Covenant war.
A really cool theme would be if that with every new Arbiter that Thel experiences life as teaches him a new lesson about becoming a better leader and making Sanghelios strong again. But there I go again writing my story.
There could be a Forerunner era Arbiter that helped form a united Sangheili government. Thel could use this knowledge to help unit his people.
What about an Arbiter that began life designing and building Star ships? Thel knowing that would definitely be useful.
And what about an Arbiter that used to be farmer? Or a doctor, or a politician? Because this Sangelios is before the rings went off it could mean that Sangheili society could’ve been completely different meaning that Thel can be put in an environment in which he can learn a lot of skills that his people desperately need.
The Arbiter during the Grunt rebellion can reinforce the ideal that all sentient species should be treated equally. Thel already knows this but it’ll be helpful none the less.
An Arbiter that fought during the Human-Covenant war can teach him that he shouldn’t put too much faith in humanity or even better teach him the distinction between ONI and the rest of Humanity.
Ok! I’ve gone way overboard! I don’t even know how this would work game play wise and this would probably be better served as a book or a comic but I’ve spent half an hour typing that so it’s staying. If the the campaign were to even come close to something like this it’d extraordinary.
So yeah I’d love a game like this. There’s a lot of potential fun game play wise and story wise it can go in so many directions.
It would definetly be a buy