Of course I do. In game and in the real world they are a major reason I didn’t get a sequel to Halo 5 and they killed off Cortana; after six years. Going to be sour about that.
Leaving that aside, they’re the First Order of Halo. If you go on the latest canon fodder article it reiterates that this was a secret force in the unknown regions building it’s power and military might before emerging into the main stage. It doesn’t make sense in Star Wars and it’s doesn’t make sense here either. The New Republic should have beat the First Order. The UNSC should be able to beat the Banished. These things don’t happen because the plot wants to set up this little guy struggle and is bending the universe to accommodate it. If the UNSC knew you had a warlord amassing ships and genociding human worlds why wouldn’t they send an armada to nuke Doisac with Nova Bombs or hunt down the Banished fleet?
I don’t think they have really criticised the Banished. I can read into some of the things Atriox says in the towers and write fanfic on why the organisation and it’s leader are evil. I can make comparisons to Thanos or Marxian Ro from the High Republic or real world figures. But, for the characters its basically they’re mean and killed our friends; let’s kill them back. Compare that to Halo 5 and Infinite where they spend ages waxing lyrical on why Cortana is wrong for assuming the Mantle with all the 1984 references being wheeled out. In comparison you simply happen to be fighting the Banished and that means a lot of what they say and represent goes uncriticised. Chief, the Weapon and the Pilot don’t really comment on the Banished motives or justifications for what they’re doing. Compare that to Halo 2 where it is brought up that they think they’re crazy for wanting to fire a Halo ring and enter a suicide pact. There’s nothing approaching that with the Banished.
It’s a case of me having far harsher criticisms of the Banished, Atriox and Brutes than any of the characters. Who are kind of indifferent for the most part and don’t really engage with the villains. That can be annoying. I know it’s the meme that you can just ignore Esharum and walk past him. But I actually did listen and take notes. However you aren’t able to reply or counter what he’s saying. It’s kind of, oh well you kill him, so that shows him right. I don’t know, maybe Joe is trying to bring back some of the silent protagonist stuff.
Of course a engineer/Hurakog can understand the Spartan armor and create one for Atriox. They are able to repair forerunner technologies, so they can easily understand UNSC technologies.
The Banished weren’t at war against the UNSC before Halo 5, they were more like pirate who attack them sometimes. The Jul Mdama covenant were a more important threat at the time.
We don’t know from where they built their ship, the universe is big and the UNSC don’t watch every planet. Of course, it wasn’t from Doisac, or everybody would have see it.
And after what the Created have down to the UNSC, the Banished are military superior to them
The target dossiers mention Banished attacks on humanity prior to the Created uprising. Escharum specifically mentions the Siege of Palagnar. There’s also reference to UNSC ships and soldiers being destroyed by the Banished.
Also, “raids” in the context of a sci fi universe at that scale means destroying entire cities and putting the millions of people to the sword. Including the deployment of capital weaponry that has the same result as nukes. This isn’t small scale stuff they’re doing that can go under the radar.
Like in Shadows of Reach they’re technically occupying a human world and that is an act of war. Which doesn’t get addressed as much as it should be the characters. It’s a massive escalation. Those sort of provocations would mean the UNSC would have retaliated. Even the First Order didn’t directly attack the New Republic with its capital ships.
Per the dossiers they recruited most of their soldiers and officers directly from Doisac. It stands to reason they also obtained most of their equipment from factories and workshops here. You need factories and shipyards to maintain a fleet. It’s not hard to imagine them dragging hulks and captured supplies to get turned into fresh equipment. When the Encyclopedia comes out we should have a better idea.
Also per canon fodder:
“Following the razing of Oth Sonin, where Cortana’s Guardians were deployed to shatter Doisac, it is the Ark and Zeta Halo where the Banished’s presence is most strongly felt. A new home is required“
To need a new home implies the Banished were indeed originally based on Doisac. So it was their main base and that military presence should have been noticed by the UNSC. Assembling a war fleet and army, actively attacking human planets and slaughtering the population are just causes for war.
Yes but if y’all read the lore in the Books Brutes are clearly able to take out a Spartan in hand to hand combat as they are far stronger and more massive. The Brutes power armor vs Spartan 4 armor… I’m not sure the stats but Red team got took out an so did Chief by a Brute.
You also see Chief in the opening Halo 4 cutscene beat a Brute Chieftain with a gravity hammer whilst unarmed. Particularly since that one actually has advanced San Shyum armour instead of the cobbled scrap Atriox wears.
It’s also easier said than done that the brutes can get into close combat with Spartans. Both in game and in the lore, they typically get gunned down in huge numbers by Spartans. A ten foot tank like Atriox in an open hanger like the Infinity should have been a magnet for 50 cal machine guns.
Also Jerome later in the game demolishes a squad of Brutes in close quarters.
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Well It says on many titles Heroic difficulty is the difficulty set for fans or veterans of the series so I consider it the Cannon difficulty. But more importantly notice that PVP an PVE shields, weapon damage, etc, are the same on Heroic settings. So go try to be chief against Bassus or another Hammer wielding Brute Infinite on Heroic. On legendary you can’t take as many hits.
I think alot of players have loss interest or don’t want to think much… Only about 4% decided to finish the game on Heroic so far. Where are all the veteran players.! The risk of getting stuck at a Boss fight might be the main deterrent…
Yes but the game is an abstraction and we don’t have assassination on Brutes to get an idea of what killing them in close combat looks like. But per the Halo 4 intro, Chief should be a lot faster and still packs a major punch; despite being slightly smaller. Something a Brute typically can’t deal with very well. Considering Halo 4 and 5 elites and Prometheans are the same size or even bigger than brutes those assassinations are a good representation of Spartans in close combat with Brutes. So it wouldn’t end very well for them.
These bosses aren’t meant to be bullet sponges who can take multiple rocket launchers either. In a book Bassus probably wouldn’t be able to tank those sorts of hits he does in game.
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I’m pretty sure it was kind of obvious that Oni an UNSC scientist reverse engineered covenant elites shield technology. So actually they have superior field shield technology then the UNSC. It’s in one of the earlier novels. Gray or white Specops Elites shields an Brute Chieftains may take more then a nade to down in Halo 2 or Halo Infinite on Heroic an Legendary with the Mythic skull on. Spartan base shields don’t take as much damage on Heroic. Chief Locke Noble 6 the Rookie Thel vadaam, Crimson team Red team we’ve got to use a bit of MCCs.
The covenants had all the power to destroy the Banished, but they didn’t make it because the Banished were hidden. Say they would have just had to destroy Doisac to stop the Banished is wrong, the banished isn’t a nation but an army who hide to survive. They recruited on Doisac because it’s fool of brutes, not because it’s their home. Maybe it’s their holiday place to meet some female brute, but they aren’t Doisac citizen.
So fo course they have secret place to build ship, maybe it’s feel a litlle like the first order to you, but once again, the galaxy is big.
The fight between UNSC and Banished was ridiculous compared to the covenant. The Banished became a real threat to UNSC because of the events of the created.
You only need a new home if you had one to begin with. When the Encyclopedia comes out, hopefully, there will be some sort of timeline and explanation for what exactly the context was for destroying Doisac. There is concept art of Brutes fighting Prometheans so it’s possible the Bansihed began some sort of armed rebellion on Doisac, or it’s the first thing Cortana did after Halo 5 to spite a random Brute Chieftain; I don’t know. They haven’t provided the details for this. For all I know Atriox was dumb enough to weaponise the flood and they got loose on Doisac.
The Banished were already attacking humanity long before Cortana decided to kill them. Atriox clearly had malicious intentions towards the UNSC and openly says he wants to tear down the monuments of human oppression. War would have happened with the Banished eventually and unlike the Elites the Brutes are incapable of living alongside the rest of the Galaxy in peace. They’ll keep attacking humanity until they’re all dead or their ability to fight is taken away.
Humanity would have had to demolish the organisation, destroy its ships and kill all its members. The Banished do not have any legitimate grievances or motivations. It’s a force of barbarians led by a power hungry warlord who is either a liar or really thinks he’s the victim in all this. They’re a malevolent force in the Galaxy that serves only to bring misery and death to everyone in it. They have done nothing good and have no redeeming qualities as a people or as a nation. This ends with them being put down. If 343 want to make this like the Elites then they’re leaving it very, very late to bring those elements in. Even the Pilot calls them monsters and has no time for them.
The Banished are depicted as a Brute nationalist organisation and its goals synonymous with that cause. Characters like Atriox tend to slip interchangeably between being a brotherhood and wanting to strengthen the Brutes as a people by casting aside the old ways. The issue is that, so far, the other races in the Banished aren’t seriously questioning this. So they are a nation in the same way the Covenant is a nation or Empire.
It’s exactly like the First Order. You have a faction that was part of this Galactic Empire. They hide out in unknown space, are then secretly able to build a galaxy conquering armada and army under the nose of the good guys. You say the Galaxy is a big place, but you can’t conjure several Km warships from the ether. You need dockyards. Doisac makes sense as a place they would have that. The Dossier mentions Atriox being on Doisac and even Suban to recruit these leaders. He wasn’t low profile at all. So they must have had a substantial presence there.
Yes but the game is an abstraction and we don’t have assassination on Brutes to get an idea of what killing them in close combat looks like. But per the Halo 4 intro, Chief should be a lot faster and still packs a major punch; despite being slightly smaller. Something a Brute typically can’t deal with very well.
This isn’t well known, but it is possible to assassinate Brutes in Halo: Reach–but only if the Brute in question is unaware of the player. The animation has the player first stun the Brute by hitting it in the back (I think with an elbow) and then stabbing it more or less directly in the back. I assume this is probably meant to indicate a severing of the spinal cord?
Halo 4’s prologue cutscene has plenty of inaccuracies, such as every Spartan-II wearing Mjolnir Mark VI MOD and the implication that Cortana was given to John as some kind of coping tool. We should be cautious about using it as an indicator for canon.
See I never minded that. Fall of Reach and a lot of the early books were kind of hesitant on whether they wanted to go all in on that or not. Sometimes they do point out it’s pretty harsh, but other times it’s power rangers where he just sort of steps into this role without too much discussion over it. So I appreciated that Halo 4 did partially address that it would kind of mess you up slightly and it is a genuinely monstrous thing. The problem with it in Spartan Ops was they decide to pin everything on Halsey rather than make it a discussion about the UNSC or even ONI.
I mean, I might be reading too much into it. But, if you go with the sentiment of the Halo 4 intro that having Cortana with him keeps the Chief at 100 percent. Which we see represented by him wrecking that Brute Chieftain in close combat. But then he doesn’t have Cortana with him in Infinite and is a bit conflicted about having to go kill her. Meaning he wasn’t a 100 percent then. So the insinuation is that it’s part of the reason Atriox won, because his head wasn’t in the right place.
BTW, related topic. How exactly is Atriox going to react when he finds out we killed Escharum and most of his top commanders? If the Propaganda Grunt can be believed the Banished are barely holding together. See I am not sure how he would be different from Esharum if he’s just a really angry Brute? Do you think they’ll contrast them or just a meaner version?