Halo 4's ending with cortana isn't justified

Community Halo Universe
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Spoiler thread. Turn away if you don’t want to find out what happens.

Maybe it’s because the Bungie games were much more science fiction than science fantasy (at least compared to 343). But the ending of halo 4 was total -Yoink-. Finding one giant flaw is bad enough. Finding 5 or 6 is unforgivable.

(there’s an actual hypothesis on making solid light)

1: After the didacts ship is destroyed, there is nothing to sustain the hard light which saves and encompass chief.

2: Making an avatar made of Light move into a place where the light doesn’t go to is really, really silly.

3: Cortana wouldn’t “feel human” because she doesn’t have eyes and likely looks at herself in third person through chief. Furthermore (to add too point 2) she’s never used a hard light bridge to project herself and would probably do it wrongly (if there were a right way to do it)

4: Grabbing the didact in place and saving chief from a nuke just feels like cheating. Unrealistic cheating might i add.

5:The player doesn’t even feel clever for killing the didact. I was robbed of a bossfight. On why the quicktime event on a light bridge was bad:

  • He’s more than capable of removing that grenade.
  • He can manipulate gravity and throw you a hundred feet.
  • He could have just turned the bridge on whilst you were walking on it. Or made it flicker so that it re-hardens at a point where it cuts you in half.
    -Such a high value target should obviously have at least two personal guards. Or have the ability to call in guards.

Food for thought notes that i don’t realy want to have people point out as flawed, post about how they are flawed and then assume that the rest of my points don’t work.

  • The composer had composed one city. The next large settlement would be some distance away and the thing probably doesn’t even target city by city. After defeating the didact master chief would have had quite a bit of time to deactivate the composer and ask boarders to assist in the capture of the forerunner ship. Master chief lives,Cortana lives , The unsc attain an extremely powerful warship and the scientists gain access to both the composer and what is likely the controller for all Prometheans (both an army, and a knowledge base in both form and mind.)
  • even if chief had to blow the bomb. he could have done so anywhere/quite a few on the ship and in a few places he could have escaped too.
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I respect your opinion but I disagree with it.

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  1. it’s called science fiction for a reason. The concept of hardlight seems plausible at first glance but in reality it doesn’t work that way

  2. with that kind of logic every movie, every book, every game would be stupid if you think about it. Take Lord of the Rings for instance. It took them 3 books to destroy a ring but 2 seconds on an eagle to travel back to where they started. Why didn’t they just fly over mordor and drop the ring in that way. You know why…cause it makes for a better story.

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Real life is boring, I agree with the above.

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> 1) it’s called science fiction for a reason. The concept of hardlight seems plausible at first glance but in reality it doesn’t work that way

The problem isnt the hardlight itself the problem is where is it coming from?

117 was in the exact center of a nuke going off…what is projecting the hardlight? We were never shown where it was coming from, we are only shown 117 floating around and pieces of the composer all around. So where was the hardlight box coming from?

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Normally I dont respond to these sort of threads but since I just finished the campaign so I wanted to throw in my 2 cents.

> 1: After the didacts ship is destroyed, there is nothing to sustain the hard light which saves and encompass chief.

She draws energy from Infinity’s power source to create the ‘hard light’ bubble.

> 2: Making an avatar made of Light move into a place where the light doesn’t go to is really, really silly.

Not sure what this means.

> 3: Cortana wouldn’t “feel human” because she doesn’t have eyes and likely looks at herself in third person through chief. Furthermore (to add too point 2) she’s never used a hard light bridge to project herself and would probably do it wrongly (if there were a right way to do it)

She may not have “eyes” as you say but she does have a mind which would lead her to state “I think, therefore I am”. As for the ‘hard light’ bridge, she’s possessed knowledge of ‘hard light’ since Halo:CE which would make her an expert on how to create them.

> 4: Grabbing the didact in place and saving chief from a nuke just feels like cheating. Unrealistic cheating might i add.

Meh.

> 5:The player doesn’t even feel clever for killing the didact. I was robbed of a bossfight. On why the quicktime event on a light bridge was bad:
> - He’s more than capable of removing that grenade.
> - He can manipulate gravity and throw you a hundred feet.
> - He could have just turned the bridge on whilst you were walking on it. Or made it flicker so that it re-hardens at a point where it cuts you in half.
> -Such a high value target should obviously have at least two personal guards. Or have the ability to call in guards.

A boss fight with the didact would have only worked if he was depowered some how which would have been cheesy IMO.
-He’s still just a humanoid, not a god so he’s still suceptible to making an error.
-Yes but he likes to toy with his quarry, like most hyper powerful villians.
-Again, theres not sport in either of those which is why the Didact didnt do it.
-He had dozens they were called the Prometheans.

As for your last points you said you didnt want any feedback so I wont give you any.

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I thought Halo 4’s ending was great…

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Just because something isn’t possible in our understanding, doesn’t mean it isn’t possible with the advanced technology and understating that extremely advanced species such as the Forerunners have.

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> > 5:The player doesn’t even feel clever for killing the didact. I was robbed of a bossfight. On why the quicktime event on a light bridge was bad:
> > - He’s more than capable of removing that grenade.
> > - He can manipulate gravity and throw you a hundred feet.
> > - He could have just turned the bridge on whilst you were walking on it. Or made it flicker so that it re-hardens at a point where it cuts you in half.
> > -Such a high value target should obviously have at least two personal guards. Or have the ability to call in guards.
>
> A boss fight with the didact would have only worked if he was depowered some how which would have been cheesy IMO.
> -He’s still just a humanoid, not a god so he’s still suceptible to making an error.
> -Yes but he likes to toy with his quarry, like most hyper powerful villians.
> -Again, theres not sport in either of those which is why the Didact didnt do it.
> -He had dozens they were called the Prometheans.
>
> As for your last points you said you didnt want any feedback so I wont give you any.

You really just made it sound worse.

  1. So? That was a dumb mistake. An unbelieveable mistake, and anyway, a Pulse Grenade has blown up in one way, then somehow it just blows up completely different? Yeah, no.

  2. Then it makes the ending Cliche and dumb.

  3. When your fighting for survival, you don’t fight for sport, you fight to survive. Besides he’s used Constraint fields on Chief constantly, how is that Sportsman like?

  4. None we around him… You’d think he would have some close by.

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Yeah, the Halo 4 ending was just a big Deus Ex Machina.

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Halo 4’s ending was a bad joke, for all the reasons OP stated and then some.

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I liked the ending as well… 1.not all the ship blows up at once… Shouldn’t… Some parts should remain operational even for a bit.
2. What?
3. She became the hard light as well. Imagine an AI who never held a fired a MAC before, but she’s had extensive knowledge of unsc systems. Then you put her in the controls of a ship and she finds the Mac networked. Are you saying the AI can’t fire a Mac or will surely miss?
4.5.
Do you realize that the didact is very likely not dead? Slipspace thingy was below… Also, to kill the didact in a non-“cheating” way would likely be inconsistent. The didact is beyond John. He cannot defeat him normally. Cortana used the ship against the didact, who seemed ancilla less. And he did have his knights.

And for your extra reasons, you’re making assumptions. The composer might have already been set to compose the entire earth.

Assumptions get you killed -Medez

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The whole nuke debate is easy, first off before we start the final run cortana says there’s a “slim chance” of getting out, now to me slim chance means 30 seconds - 1 minute it’s possible that cortana teleported chief to a safe zone and light bridged him until he was safe, you notice the debris doesn’t fall until cortana lets go and fades away, chief is protected until the power of the light bridge is destroyed, chances are he had armor lock on as well, oh and light bridge now last time I checked could be wrong now but Light bridge has never been stated to be made of light, it could be another source of power that is just called a light bridge because it looks like light,

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> 1: After the didacts ship is destroyed, there is nothing to sustain the hard light which saves and encompass chief.

I agree with this, I do find this odd.

> 2: Making an avatar made of Light move into a place where the light doesn’t go to is really, really silly.

I dont know what you mean by this. Light doesn’t go? Unless there’s a blackhole I’m missing I dont see what you’re talking about.

> 3: Cortana wouldn’t “feel human” because she doesn’t have eyes and likely looks at herself in third person through chief. Furthermore (to add too point 2) she’s never used a hard light bridge to project herself and would probably do it wrongly (if there were a right way to do it)

She doesnt mention anything about feeling in that video, just ‘always wanting to do that’. She’s probably just registering resistance to the projection.

Hardlight projectors could be similar to forerunner hologram projectors, which is just using “softlight” so-to-speak.

> 4: Grabbing the didact in place and saving chief from a nuke just feels like cheating. Unrealistic cheating might i add.

Its a bit unsatifying, I wouldn’t call it cheating though. You’d probably be here saying the didact fight was boring, as was every other halo boss fight against a humanoid for the most part.

> 5:The player doesn’t even feel clever for killing the didact. I was robbed of a bossfight. On why the quicktime event on a light bridge was bad:
> - He’s more than capable of removing that grenade.
> - He can manipulate gravity and throw you a hundred feet.
> - He could have just turned the bridge on whilst you were walking on it. Or made it flicker so that it re-hardens at a point where it cuts you in half.
> -Such a high value target should obviously have at least two personal guards. Or have the ability to call in guards.

This seems like point 4, heck 1-3 are very similar and related and you’re using them to support eachother.

  • He is, and it exploded before he could do so.
  • That he can, and DOES if you dont plant the grenade. But he was distratced by cortana.
  • Distracted by cortana.
  • He had a ton, you killed them to reach him. He wasn’t sitting on an evil throne, he was at a console surrounded by guards.

> Food for thought notes that i don’t realy want to have people point out as flawed, post about how they are flawed and then assume that the rest of my points don’t work.
> - The composer had composed one city. The next large settlement would be some distance away and the thing probably doesn’t even target city by city. After defeating the didact master chief would have had quite a bit of time to deactivate the composer and ask boarders to assist in the capture of the forerunner ship. Master chief lives,Cortana lives , The unsc attain an extremely powerful warship and the scientists gain access to both the composer and what is likely the controller for all Prometheans (both an army, and a knowledge base in both form and mind.)
> - even if chief had to blow the bomb. he could have done so anywhere/quite a few on the ship and in a few places he could have escaped too.

-There’s no garuntee the ship wasn’t put on automatic, or how fast it could move from city to city. Despite its size, the didact ships move pretty fast. Honestly I find it odd how long it took him to charge the thing up the 2nd time (like, the entire on-foot portion of the level, compared to 1 survival bit on the Composer level). Its possible he was locking in coordinates to beam. This is all hypothetical, but so is yours.

  • Yeah, but that would have made a very boring level. You’d have been even more robbed of a boss fight.
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> Spoiler thread. Turn away if you don’t want to find out what happens.
>
>
> Maybe it’s because the Bungie games were much more science fiction than science fantasy (at least compared to 343). But the ending of halo 4 was total -Yoink!-. Finding one giant flaw is bad enough. Finding 5 or 6 is unforgivable.
>
>
> (there’s an actual hypothesis on making solid light)
>
> 1: After the didacts ship is destroyed, there is nothing to sustain the hard light which saves and encompass chief.
>
> 2: Making an avatar made of Light move into a place where the light doesn’t go to is really, really silly.
>
> 3: Cortana wouldn’t “feel human” because she doesn’t have eyes and likely looks at herself in third person through chief. Furthermore (to add too point 2) she’s never used a hard light bridge to project herself and would probably do it wrongly (if there were a right way to do it)
>
> 4: Grabbing the didact in place and saving chief from a nuke just feels like cheating. Unrealistic cheating might i add.
>
> 5:The player doesn’t even feel clever for killing the didact. I was robbed of a bossfight. On why the quicktime event on a light bridge was bad:
> - He’s more than capable of removing that grenade.
> - He can manipulate gravity and throw you a hundred feet.
> - He could have just turned the bridge on whilst you were walking on it. Or made it flicker so that it re-hardens at a point where it cuts you in half.
> -Such a high value target should obviously have at least two personal guards. Or have the ability to call in guards.
>
>
>
>
> Food for thought notes that i don’t realy want to have people point out as flawed, post about how they are flawed and then assume that the rest of my points don’t work.
> - The composer had composed one city. The next large settlement would be some distance away and the thing probably doesn’t even target city by city. After defeating the didact master chief would have had quite a bit of time to deactivate the composer and ask boarders to assist in the capture of the forerunner ship. Master chief lives,Cortana lives , The unsc attain an extremely powerful warship and the scientists gain access to both the composer and what is likely the controller for all Prometheans (both an army, and a knowledge base in both form and mind.)
> - even if chief had to blow the bomb. he could have done so anywhere/quite a few on the ship and in a few places he could have escaped too.

sigh Implying Bungie never denied us of several boss fights…
Implying we actually understand the extent of forerunner hard-light technology and what governs the way Cortana was able to use it. As if you you knew as much as Cortana knew on how to manipulate both Covenant and forerunner technology.

To say the UNSC would actually be able to understand how to utilize Didact’s ship or the rest of his Promethean knights is fantasy itself, it would take an extremely long time for them to gain a significant grasp.

The bomb had to be activated by hand, and Chief had to be at the core of the ship. There are numerous reasons why Chief’s mission wasn’t that simplified other than finding a way to give Cortana a heartfelt a death.

Boarders would be massacred. Cortana was barley able to help Chief herself. How would Unsc boarders be able to navigate the labyrinth of the ship, let alone board it ? All other exterior weapon systems were firing away at attacking ships, keeping them at bay.

The Composer targeted the closest target it could find that was significantly populated. It makes sense that it chose that city to compose, and it’s entirely possible for the beam to increase in strength over time. If Chief took any longer in destroying the Composer, we don’t know how much more damage would have been done.

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> The whole nuke debate is easy, first off before we start the final run cortana says there’s a “slim chance” of getting out, now to me slim chance means 30 seconds - 1 minute it’s possible that cortana teleported chief to a safe zone and light bridged him until he was safe, you notice the debris doesn’t fall until cortana lets go and fades away, chief is protected until the power of the light bridge is destroyed, chances are he had armor lock on as well, oh and light bridge now last time I checked could be wrong now but Light bridge has never been stated to be made of light, it could be another source of power that is just called a light bridge because it looks like light,

I agree completely, people should pay attention to details before ranting.
THE ENDING WASN’T THAT BAD! I actually liked it.

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To many unknowns man… to many unknowns.

Also we don’t know how 343 will treat there cannon… So even if everything you said was true… nobody at 343 will probably care if it gets in the way of the developing lore.

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> > > 5:The player doesn’t even feel clever for killing the didact. I was robbed of a bossfight. On why the quicktime event on a light bridge was bad:
> > > - He’s more than capable of removing that grenade.
> > > - He can manipulate gravity and throw you a hundred feet.
> > > - He could have just turned the bridge on whilst you were walking on it. Or made it flicker so that it re-hardens at a point where it cuts you in half.
> > > -Such a high value target should obviously have at least two personal guards. Or have the ability to call in guards.
> >
> > A boss fight with the didact would have only worked if he was depowered some how which would have been cheesy IMO.
> > -He’s still just a humanoid, not a god so he’s still suceptible to making an error.
> > -Yes but he likes to toy with his quarry, like most hyper powerful villians.
> > -Again, theres not sport in either of those which is why the Didact didnt do it.
> > -He had dozens they were called the Prometheans.
> >
> > As for your last points you said you didnt want any feedback so I wont give you any.
>
> You really just made it sound worse.

> 1) So? That was a dumb mistake. An unbelieveable mistake, and anyway, a Pulse Grenade has blown up in one way, then somehow it just blows up completely different? Yeah, no.

Sorry friend but if you notice, the pulse grenade doesn’t actually “blow up”. All you see is the Didact scrambling to remove it before it does with him then falling to his supposed death. Now you could call the mistake being that he underestimated John or you can call it the Didact having the same sense of self presevation that all thinking creatures have. Your choice.

> 2) Then it makes the ending Cliche and dumb.

Wait, you mean to tell me that Halo, a story about killing aliens bent on mankinds destruction isnt original? Stop the presses!

> 3) When your fighting for survival, you don’t fight for sport, you fight to survive. Besides he’s used Constraint fields on Chief constantly, how is that Sportsman like?

Okay maybe ‘sportsman’ wasnt the right word. I guess I was thinking about how the Predator who could easily kill humans would somtimes give them a chance to fight on his level by removing his weapons and armor. The Didact didnt kill Master Chief for the same reason all supervillians allow the hero to live. They want the hero alive to see his own failure. A fate worse than death.

> 4) None we around him… You’d think he would have some close by.

Again, he vastly underestimated John and never in a million years thought he’d make it that close.

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And you expect the UNSC to know how to properly control and maintain a Forerunner flagship and control the Primetheans?

As shown in Spartan Ops, most of the top tier scientists barely ileven know how to work the Forerunner tech they already have. Halsey is theony person who would have any idea whats going on, and I doubt ONI would put her in the pilot seat of a Forerunner warship. Preserving the ship was not an option, especially since we had no idea what the Composer is able to do. That energy field would grow after time perhaps.
We had the Composer for a while on Installation 03 and Ivanoff. Yet they still didn’t know much about it. Trying to stop it while firing, on a hostile ship… not likely.

The Didact underestimated Chief. He didn’t believe a humanwarrior would make it that far, or his malfunctioning compainion would even last long. Cortana barely held him off.
The Didact wanted a simple fight. To laugh as Chief throws himself at him. Thats why there were no guards, he wanted to personally exterminate the Librarian’s Champion.

And do you have any idea how lopsided a true boss fight would be? The Didact would float up and shut off the bridge. He’d grab and throw you with a Constraint Field. Even if the Didact just used a weapon, there was no cover for Chief. And the Didact’s armor is several times more powerful than the Chief’s. Chief would run out of any ammo he has before he is even able to break the Didact’s armor or shields. Chief would be crushed without any help. Cortana had to restrain him, or else Halo 4would end with Chief’s death and Humanity’s destruction.

The endingwasn’t bad or illogical. They did what was needed to be done. Cortana has been working with Hardlight since CE, so she would have some understanding of how to operate it. She took the light bridge to form a harrier around Chief, probably teleported him to. It took all she had left, and was why she couldn’t make it anymore. Her rampancy was subsiding as she died, or she was reaching metastability, where AIs truly believe they’re alive.

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Not initialy, they would learn. forerunner items aren’t instant technological jumps but rather signs for the scientists working on them to tell them where to go.
An ai Could probably handle most aspects of the ship if put in the right place.

a didact bossfight wouldn’t be too bad. if chief gained the ability to work out where didact was aiming his gravity gauntlet and if the guantlet had a small charge up time then a boss fight would be fine. Health wise he’s probably as strong as a promethean knight. (he’s a lot smaller). It’s still ilogical for cortana to restrain him.

She turned bridges on and off. 1/0. that’s not the same as using a bridge as a projector which it was undoubtedly not designed for (and isn’t possible) Furthermore if the didact’s ship had teleportation gates installed it’s unlikely that he had a teleportation grid that can teleport you from anywhere.