Lets try a bit of star trek in our Halo , imagine Dr Halsey was killed before she did anything of value. Got sick when was a kid , died in a ship crash when she was 17 or shot by insurrectionists.
Point being ,Halsey is dead and it happened before she could have had any meaningful impact on the Universe. How does everything proceed ? Does The covenant end up destroying Humanity quickly? Does Oni end up using some secret doomsday weapon? What about not having Cortana or the Chief around?
You don’t get Cortana, that’s a given. You might have a power-armor system of sorts, Halsey basically refined what already existed, but probably nowhere near the sophistication of MJOLNIR. You might have a Spartan program of sorts, but I imagine it’d be more like how ORION was. However, given ORION’s shortcomings it’d be nowhere as proficient as the Spartan-II Program. Frankly, I could see the Covenant winning the war at a much faster pace without the Spartans being a decent bulwark of resistance.
Without her contributions,the Covenant would’ve driven Humanity to extinction in a jiffy.
At the end the covenant would have won,but it would still have taken them years to achive it.
Snuffed out. This is the glory of the Halsey moral reasoning debate: dead if you don’t, -Yoink!- if you do.
There’s not enough information. Without Halsey, there’d be no successful Spartan Program, which means all of those resources might have gone into a different project (like the Prototype), so instead of 30 Spartan 2s, and roughly a thousand Spartan 3s, you could have multiple thousands of non-augmented humans with far heavier firepower and durability than most Spartans ever got their hands on.
I suspect the universe would self-correct and humanity would be in a similar situation.
Without the spartan program kidnapping kids, chief never becomes a spartan. Maybe he enlists and is still lucky and becomes an ODST or the highest level of soldier possible in this scenario and does spec-ops. However it is unlikely that he reaches a Halo or contacts Mendicant, the Librarian AI and the Didact.
I don’t know how many resources the spartan program drained but I’d imagine it was quite significant. So I could see the UNSC / ONI developing something different to compensate for the lack of super soldiers. Perhaps:
more super weapons like the NOVA bombs and maybe try kamakazing them into the heart of covenant fleets? - better weaponry such as lasers, plasma or smaller MACS. More soldiers with better, non-ballistic weapons would fare better against covenant shielding in the long run as a marine could take on an elite by dropping its shields and then pulling out a pistol or something. Smaller / portable MACs would allow for better air defense and anti-vehicle capabilities (like a towed MAC could take down scarabs and then run away), and many more could be put on UNSC ships. - A better Navy since winning in space means you essentially win the planet. Possibly the UNSC and ONI could figure out shielding for their ships earlier and maybe start a massive manufacturing buildup. Now even frigates could take more hits and so all UNSC ships could use their MAC’s and other weapons longer and take out more covenant ships. So imagine Admiral Cole but his ships don’t die very quickly, he could do so much more damage.Otherwise Halsey’s absence just more likely means:
Operation Red Flag is not approved since the UNSC’s best are just ODST’s and they could never get such a job done. - The Pillar of Autumn doesn’t find Halo by randomly jumping based on Cortana reading that crystal’s coordinates and so the Covenant don’t either (I believe they only found it by following the Autumn). And so the covenant don’t take a blow by losing a holy ring and just continue their attacks. Humanity is slowly pushed back further and further until either dying out, the UEG collapses, ONI pulls off all restrictions and any method of killing is granted (so I guess sacrificing entire planets and civilians to lure and bomb covenant fleets with NOVA’s or something as deadly) or humans just run away far enough that the covenant declare victory and humanity lives in small hidden pockets. - Librarian’s plan for Chief doesn’t happen since as a civilain or at best, an ODST, he is killed or never able to get close to Requiem / forerunner stuff. So the forerunners and Precurser’s plan for humanity to be tested / take the mantle is lost since the covenant wipe us mostly out to the point where we can’t explore or gain enough strength. - Covenant may find a Halo, figure out the activation proccess, bring High Charity over and all forces to “ascend to the god land or whatever” and then just all die. This is maybe the best scenario as the covenant are gone and Human pockets could grow and take back their place in the galaxy (after decades+ of course).
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> There’s not enough information. Without Halsey, there’d be no successful Spartan Program, which means all of those resources might have gone into a different project (like the Prototype), so instead of 30 Spartan 2s, and roughly a thousand Spartan 3s, you could have multiple thousands of non-augmented humans with far heavier firepower and durability than most Spartans ever got their hands on.
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> I suspect the universe would self-correct and humanity would be in a similar situation.
That’s not really the Halo story though is it? The whole point is that it’s the outcomes of whole civilisations governed by the choices and actions of a few individual actors.
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> > 2533274883501878;6:
> > There’s not enough information. Without Halsey, there’d be no successful Spartan Program, which means all of those resources might have gone into a different project (like the Prototype), so instead of 30 Spartan 2s, and roughly a thousand Spartan 3s, you could have multiple thousands of non-augmented humans with far heavier firepower and durability than most Spartans ever got their hands on.
> >
> > I suspect the universe would self-correct and humanity would be in a similar situation.
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> That’s not really the Halo story though is it? The whole point is that it’s the outcomes of whole civilisations governed by the choices and actions of a few individual actors.
The story is propelled by the choices and actions of significant individuals, but I’m saying that in the absense of a specific significant individual, others would rise to significance (not in the same way as Halsey, but still significant). That doesn’t make it “not really the Halo story”.
Little changes have big consequences. For instance, without Halsey, the Orion project ends after the first round of disappointing results, and all of that funding and research goes into combat mechs like the one we see in “Prototype”, and as a result the super-soldier last hopes for humanity are their Mech pilots, (it’s a bit like the reverse of the moble games, where you play a Spartan in the role of a team of Marines, but instead, it’s squads of soldiers filling the roles of Spartans that never were.
Also consider that in the Halo universe, the Precursors are timeless deities who planned out the whole timeline, so if Halsey and the Spartans wasn’t going to happen, they’d have had other plans.
I think it’s a bit of an assumption that the Precursors “planned out the whole timeline” and could simply course correct to get whatever desired result they wanted. They certainly existed on a different level than most could fathom, but their conception of the Mantle accounted for life and development as well as death, and competition. All of these are wildly inconsistent parts of life. Even the Precursors themselves seemed willing to let the randomness of life dictate how they lived with their forms sometimes being highly advanced and sometimes being planet-locked primitives.
All this to say that the idea the Precursors meriticlously hovered over a timeline and manipulated it to get specific results seems antithetical to what the Precursors were all about. The only time they seemed to have a direct role in the affairs of the Galaxy was when they sought to destroy the Forerunners when they were deemed to not be worthy of the Mantle. However, that was information told by a Forerunner and that era of Halo is very hazy in what the precise truth was. Otherwise, the Flood stands as an example, yet one where the Precursors have twisted priorities.
Still, I imagine much the same that different priorities would be emphasized without Halsey. Maybe the UNSC does focus on mechs. Maybe they keep going with ORION. It’s hard to tell, but a lot came from Halsey’s work that it’d be hard to imagine how that gets replaced.
I hear you JNDreher, I’m saying though that while others could and likely would rise to prominence, the observation that they wouldn’t reach of the heights of Halsey is exactly what would mean it wasn’t the Halo story.
The Halo story is about the absolute cream of the crop, the irreplaceable once-in-a-lifetime set of circumstances and characters that come together to make things happen the way they do. No Halsey, no Spartans. No Spartans, no John, no John no “Halo story” of individuals combining against impossible odds, just a tale of a bunch of dudes in mech suits fighting a losing battle.
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> I hear you JNDreher, I’m saying though that while others could and likely would rise to prominence, the observation that they wouldn’t reach of the heights of Halsey is exactly what would mean it wasn’t the Halo story.
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> The Halo story is about the absolute cream of the crop, the irreplaceable once-in-a-lifetime set of circumstances and characters that come together to make things happen the way they do. No Halsey, no Spartans. No Spartans, no John, no John no “Halo story” of individuals combining against impossible odds, just a tale of a bunch of dudes in mech suits fighting a losing battle.
“no “Halo story” of individuals combining against impossible odds, just a tale of a bunch of dudes in mech suits fighting a losing battle.”
You haven’t considered John being in one of those mech suits. It wouldn’t be the SAME Halo story, but it would still be a Halo story. Halsey is irreplaceable for what she can do, but that doesn’t mean others couldn’t have risen to prominence by other means.
You can rise to prominence all you like, that only means you’re the best available. But I think Halsey’s so much more pivotal than that. No Halsey, then definitely no Cortana and arguably no John.
Yeah, the only reason John became a Spartan was because of Halsey’s efforts. She had specific criteria she was looking for. Maybe John could be a mech pilot or even be a prominent Marine or ODST. Or he could die in a rebel terror attack at age six. Nobody is garunteed anything.