Covenant.

Games Other Halo
1

My thesis on enemies as part of gameplay and story in Halo 4.
TL,DL: Why you can expect covenant races in Halo 4.

First of all I want to address the statement from 343; “No purple” -Obviously this refers to the series primary enemy faction: The Covenant. (Read: No “The Covenant” in Halo 4).
This does not mean we wont see any of the individual species that belong to (or have belonged to) said faction.
In other words, it is the faction, and not the perpetrators, that has crumbled and perished. The various kinds of alien races found in the covenant, still flourish on their homeworlds and have their respective motifs / conflicts. -Except for the prophets, who are now in danger of extinction. Just go read the two first chapters of Halo: Glasslands and you’ll see.
There will be alliances, and you can bet your sorry behind that there will be wars.
-And thats just story-wise…

The second (and probably the biggest) reason why 343 industries cant take away these various types of enemies, is because of Gameplay.
In 2012, all eyes will turn to 343 industries, who have taken the huge responsibility of forwarding the legacy of halo. They will seek the approval of the community, and they better not screw it up. So although they will make changes and add features, the product they deliver must be a reflection of the previous installments.
If you take away the chicken in a chicken-salad, it is not a chicken-salad anymore!
(yes, I did just make that comparison)

Halo has been a groundbreaking series since day one. It is the flagship of the Xbox consoles and it has made videogame-history by defining and reinventing the first person shooter genre for a decade.
You just don´t screw with that.

The gameplay of the campaign part of the Halo series, has always had a unique feel to it. In other, simpler shooters, you see one type of enemy, and two-three types of weapons, but halo puts all that to shame.
The Halo series offers several different types of antagonists, and a multitude of very different tools you can use to defeat them, in a semi-open-world environment. This creates what game-developers refer to as a “sandbox”, allowing the player to choose different paths, strategies and techniques. The Halo gameplay-formula also generates what we call “replay-value” because you can play the game multiple times and still experience something new.
Essentially this formula is a giant “rock-paper-scissors” scheme. (plasma pistol beats shield, shield protects from bullets, bullets kill grunt, etc…) And you can take away certain parts of the scheme, like removing some enemy types, or replacing a weapon or two; BUT you cant just scrap the entire system. Removing the entire covenant = Scrapping the whole system. You need several different types of enemy and several different types of guns.
Or else it would be like playing a game of “rock-rock-rock” because “paper” is dead and “scissors” is retreating…

This leads me to what is probably going to be your best argument: What about the “ancient evil” and the rumored human vs. human tribal wars on the rumored shield world sigma 07? Cant they just replace the old enemies with humans and that one new enemy?
-Well, first of all, regarding humans, either UNSC, Rebel, or ONI, I strongly doubt that. This because the halo series has kept away from violence against humans entirely, as a moral standpoint and in order to get a certain age-rating by PEGI.
Then comes the question about the now confirmed new “ancient evil” enemy. What is it, what does it want, how will it appear? (Spoilers) There is in fact one such “ancient evil” known in the halo universe, the precursors, more precisely the precursor “the timeless one” whom is thought to be the only one left.
Precursors are supposedly 15 meters tall and bear weapons forged from neurologically networked metal and their technology is more advanced than that of the forerunners. Even if it turns out that there are loads of them instead of just one, its going to be really difficult to make them function practically in-game.
(/spoilers)

But lets be pessimistic, lets say there are tons of them and they are in Halo 4, and that there are human enemies.
You are now fighting a nice mix of bewildered / insane marines, Flood, Robots, and thousands of giant, immortal, evil and impossibly advanced, time-traveling space-lobsters.
Fun, perhaps, but its not going to be Halo. And Halo is what it is.

2

I expect them really to just replace the Covie species with Forerunner equivalents. That means they can keep the “enemies” they want and change the ones they dont without canon issues.

3

It´s more a wish than a realistic idea but… I realy, realy, realy (…) realy want to land as MC on the homeworld of the grunts in a ODST-Pod. Then i want a weapon drop each 5 Minutes.
That would be a party man!

HRHR!!!

If I see a Grunt running away it realy awakes my hunting instincts and a lot of dark, sadistic toughts. XD

That´s an other element, why i love playing halo!
’ Today: Grunthunt - No Morals needed! ’

4

yeah,i hate how because 343i said no purple, people assumed that meant all covy race magically didn’t exists anymore. You can still see them in the galaxy, if mc discovers another threat, im pretty sure the elites won’t sit down and say,bah…

5

There will be no Covenant…

…because they split. The Great Schism, people. I’m sure they just said “no purple” to get a reaction out of people. Each species, as a species, is now fighting to gain the upperhand. If word gets out that theres Forerunner tech up for grabs, each species will be fighting to get their hands on it. Most Elites, as hinted by Chapter 2 of Glasslands, don’t want to ally with humans. They want to wipe us out while we’re at our weakest. I’m sure Brutes would have no problem doing so either.

As for the other species, Bugs and Grunts are too simple minded to manage by themselves, so you’ll see them united with some species or another. From what I’ve gathered, the Hunters were supposed to ally with Elites, so when the Elites eventually split into pro-human and anti-human factions, I’m sure we’ll see a split between allied species as well.

Jackals (Skirmishers?) don’t get nearly as much respect as they should in the games. They were able to freely do deals with Humans in an asteroid belt, meaning they more than have the ability to separate on their own as well.

I’d like to think Engineers are actually on our side, and not just totally gone, pending on what happens at the end of ODST.

There will be Covenant species in the game, just no Covenant per say, because it doesn’t exist anymore.

6

Good arguments, I think the enemies will be different, but that they will have the same weaknesses as enemies we have seen before. Either that, or there will be new weapons which we are going to have to test out on enemies to see which weapons kill what.

7

From my perspective I think that the new Halo 4 universe is going to have a composition of forunner technology and cybernetic warfare such as a cybernetic human. From what I’ve seen in the concept art the new enemy is a forunner like one, with the same looking technology so honestly, it’s got an extreme relevance to forerunners, I think well be seeing them real soon.

8

At least Halo: Glasslands will cover up whats goin on before Halo 4, so for now…just read the book and see if the Elites are still allies or not…

9

> I expect them really to just replace the Covie species with Forerunner equivalents. That means they can keep the “enemies” they want and change the ones they dont without canon issues.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t/weren’t the forerunner a single shaped humanoid species?

> There will be no Covenant…
>
> …because they split. The Great Schism, people. I’m sure they just said “no purple” to get a reaction out of people. Each species, as a species, is now fighting to gain the upperhand. If word gets out that theres Forerunner tech up for grabs, each species will be fighting to get their hands on it. Most Elites, as hinted by Chapter 2 of Glasslands, don’t want to ally with humans. They want to wipe us out while we’re at our weakest. I’m sure Brutes would have no problem doing so either.
>
> As for the other species, Bugs and Grunts are too simple minded to manage by themselves, so you’ll see them united with some species or another. From what I’ve gathered, the Hunters were supposed to ally with Elites, so when the Elites eventually split into pro-human and anti-human factions, I’m sure we’ll see a split between allied species as well.
>
> Jackals (Skirmishers?) don’t get nearly as much respect as they should in the games. They were able to freely do deals with Humans in an asteroid belt, meaning they more than have the ability to separate on their own as well.
>
> I’d like to think Engineers are actually on our side, and not just totally gone, pending on what happens at the end of ODST.
>
> There will be Covenant species in the game, just no Covenant per say, because it doesn’t exist anymore.

This. Is exactly what I said.