Escharum is bad at speeches

I just realised something. Escharums whole deal is that he wants to gloat about how great the Banished and Atriox are. Whilst also getting under the Chiefs skin to provoke him into a fight and anger.

So why doesn’t he lead with:

“My master killed Cortana. The Banished freed the Galaxy from the Created.”

Surely that’s not just the most important thing Atriox/Banished ever did but it’s the sort of thing that should get under Chiefs skin since we’re shown it bothers him? If you want to gloat that’s what you mention first.

But Escharum only partially mentions this at the very end of his story and even then his only point is how it made the Banished stronger. He doesn’t discuss beating the Created, list it as a triumph or try to use that to bait the Chief into fighting him.

Given that Atriox knew the Chief and Cortana had some connection and that Escharum was his second in command and clearly knows who Chief is then he should also know this.

So he spends the entire game trying to get a reaction out of Chief to the point of kidnapping his friend but he completely misses what’s actually bothering Chief in the game.

He also spends the whole game gloating about how they destroyed a single carrier and ten thousand humans :scream: But, kind of forgets about why they were at Zeta Halo in the first place.

I don’t know. Maybe 343 really wanted it to be a surprise that Cortana destroyed Doisac and the events of the SA which is a very late reveal. But I think that would just add to the mystery if we get a highly biased take with a second hand account. Plus maybe Atriox is going to lean a lot more into that than Escharum and they don’t want to repeat themselves.

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I don’t like speeches. So Echerum gets very tiring.

However, Atriox didn’t kill Cortana. She was trapped by the UNSC and then she blew herself up.
And I don’t think Echerum even knew what happened between Atriox and Cortana, he just knew they’re both gone after the ring tore itself apart, didn’t he?

Or do you mean that he Echerum could have just lied about it to get under Chief’s skin?

From Escharums POV their fleet controlled Zeta Halo and Atriox went to confront Cortana. So that’s a Banished victory from their perspective, I don’t think they would qualify that with “no Weapon and we’d all be dead.” Also we haven’t got all the information about how the battle occurred. For all we know the Banished had already neutralised the Guardians and Created forces; which is alluded to in the Encyclopedia.

From his perspective Atriox died killing Cortana. Making him a martyr in defeating the Created and avenging Doisac.

In the Encyclopedia whilst they are at Zeta Halo for the Endless a major motivation is also to kill Cortana and take the Halo ring for themselves. If it’s a goal and they succeeded then you should expect Escharum to gloat about it. Why mention a random human colony as proof of the Banished being powerful and not defeating the Created? Like Atriox didn’t disappear they would have known why he entered the SA and it’s why the Banished fleet went to war.

Well yes. He doesn’t need to lie too much here. But we can assume he knew what Atriox did. Atriox knew Chief and Cortana had some bond. Atriox taunts Cortana about this. So reasonably you would expect Escharum to try that with Chief. But he doesn’t. He spends a lot of time gloating about destroying a vessel he might not actually have destroyed.

To me it doesn’t make sense with what the characters know and what they’re trying to do. Escharum wants to provoke the Chief, he should know Chief/Cortana were close and that would be a way to get under his skin. Instead he talks about other stuff and the Chief ignores him as he grieves about Cortana. Like. I don’t think this is a character trait that Escharum doesn’t understand the Chief. It feels like a mixture of oversight, maybe an awareness this will be a big deal with Atriox and quite likely wanting to keep the Halo 5 stuff to a minimum cordoned off in its own box.