Hints at early Halo 5 scenario

Community Halo Universe
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I am part of those who believe that Halo 5: Guardians was massively rewritten. I’ve tried time and again to imagine what 343 wrote in the first place. I want to try and build an image of what Halo 5’s plot (other elements as well, but plot is what I’m mostly interested in) looked like - and for that I need your help.

Warning: this is not a pure speculation thread: what I want to do is recap what info we’ve been given here and there about the early developments of the plot. Of course, feel free to theorize, but I’m looking for theories that are not too far-fetched - and based on evidence such as artwork, concept arts, early menu builds and the like.

Also, let’s avoid the gratuitous 343-bashing. I don’t want this thread to be one huge complaint about all the things that went wrong in Halo 5. I’m solely interested in what 343 originally planned - let’s keep it constructive!

A huge clue to an early draft if the plot is an early menu build that shows the description of a campaign level, which seriously hints at Halsey taking on the role that Cortana later assumed. The concept art is found here, and a thread in which I theorize in greater detail where that development came from can be found here (it is somewhat speculative, so I won’t go into detail in this thread).

Multiple concepts art show that Gabriel Thorne was supposed to be part of Osiris until Nathan Fillion agreed to reprise his role.

Additionnally, it looked like John wanted to remain hidden, possibly operating without the support of the UNSC. I think this is compounded by comments from the authors about the cloak in the Halo Xbox One trailer and his complete absence in Escalation - which is notably commented upon by Scruggs. From the Xbox One trailer, it seemed like John might have been in search of a way to bring Cortana back.

Finally, concept art seems to show him fighting Insurrectionist robots - I’d be very interested in knowing who confirmed the robots belonged to the Insurrection. It’s possible that the first level, rather than Argent Moon, would have taken place in an Insurrectionnist stronghold. Interestingly, John is alone on all those artworks - although there are also pieces that show Fred with a cloak.

Any other hints that you came across? What can we reasonnably make of this to establish an image of early Halo 5 scripts?

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I’m very interested in this as well. Of course we cannot go back and change the past. I think you hit on most of the info I know of. The main point with Dr. Halsey as the villain in place of Cortana (which in retrospect, I would have been ok with). Of course, if that was the case, there would be no A.I uprising which seems to be the plot that was shoehorned in. Based on the end of Spartan Ops, having Halsey as a morally grey villain was the direction they intended on going.
So if we were even to begin to reconstruct the original plot, it seems to have centered on Halsey as the villain, Blue team going rogue to help her accomplish her goals, and Osiris going after them for that reason.
Also, If I’m not mistaken, there is a source out there somewhere that states Halo 5 was going to be twice as long, but a lot was cut. I think this cut content could have made Halo 5’s convoluted story make more sense.

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> 2533274946753626;1:
> Multiple concepts art show that Gabriel Thorne was supposed to be part of Osiris until Nathan Fillion agreed to reprise his role.

This indeed was going to be the case coming out of Halo 4, but scheduling conflicts meant they were unable to get the voice actor for Thorne back for Halo 5. AFter some discussion and a bit of luck, Nathan Fillion was found to be available and agreed to come back. Can’t remember if it was in one of The Sprint episodes they talked about this, but the info is out there somewhere :slight_smile:

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My personal making-stuff-up-with-virtually-no-sources-just-going-off-my-gut theory on what I think the original plan for the Reclaimer Saga was supposed to be, from a different thread:

> I don’t think it’s a stretch to believe that when 343 sat down in 2009, 2010, 2011 to plan out the future of the fiction and came up with the roots of the Reclaimer Trilogy/Saga, they said to themselves: “The Covenant was defeated in Halo 3, but we need a Covenant 2.0/galaxy-spanning-antagonist-empire-of-human-hating-aliens to fight, or it won’t feel like Halo. How do we get that back again?” And I personally think the plan was that way back then, the Didact was going to be the one activating the Guardians in H5, and rebooting the Ecumene for himself with the Prometheans and the ex-Covenant races allied with him as his people - we see that beginning to happen in Halo 4. That gives us the Covenant 2.0 that we needed as the antagonist, but with the Didact now in the place of the San 'Shyuum. That’s what I personally kind of think the plan was, anyway. No sources for any of it, just pure speculation.

Now I will admit, one possible confounding variable in my theory is the element of Halsey possibly being planned as the villain, at least at one point in development. That I’ll admit I’m not sure what to make of. Possibilities include that perhaps the villain was revised twice first from the Didact to Halsey, then from Halsey to Cortana; or, in the alternative, perhaps there were multiple antagonists racing for control of the Guardians - the Didact on one side, and Halsey (maybe working with the Librarian’s imprint) on the other side… ??

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Thank you all for contributing!

> 2533274961806222;4:
> My personal making-stuff-up-with-virtually-no-sources-just-going-off-my-gut theory on what I think the original plan for the Reclaimer Saga was supposed to be, from a different thread:
>
>
> > I don’t think it’s a stretch to believe that when 343 sat down in 2009, 2010, 2011 to plan out the future of the fiction and came up with the roots of the Reclaimer Trilogy/Saga, they said to themselves: “The Covenant was defeated in Halo 3, but we need a Covenant 2.0/galaxy-spanning-antagonist-empire-of-human-hating-aliens to fight, or it won’t feel like Halo. How do we get that back again?” And I personally think the plan was that way back then, the Didact was going to be the one activating the Guardians in H5, and rebooting the Ecumene for himself with the Prometheans and the ex-Covenant races allied with him as his people - we see that beginning to happen in Halo 4. That gives us the Covenant 2.0 that we needed as the antagonist, but with the Didact now in the place of the San 'Shyuum. That’s what I personally kind of think the plan was, anyway. No sources for any of it, just pure speculation.
>
> Now I will admit, one possible confounding variable in my theory is the element of Halsey possibly being planned as the villain, at least at one point in development. That I’ll admit I’m not sure what to make of. Possibilities include that perhaps the villain was revised twice first from the Didact to Halsey, then from Halsey to Cortana; or, in the alternative, perhaps there were multiple antagonists racing for control of the Guardians - the Didact on one side, and Halsey (maybe working with the Librarian’s imprint) on the other side… ??

Very speculative indeed. I have to say I was skeptical when you mentionned the Didact returning as soon as Halo 5 (mostly because of the lack of evidence), but the “race to the Guardians” scenario is attractive. I believe the Didact was to return later, in part because him returning so early after his apparent death would have little impact on the audience (in the same way Cortana’s return was, in my opinion, too early to both be a surprise and allow the Chief proper grief), and in part because Halsey was already an interesting antagonist who they’d taken the time to build up.

Still, you make a very good point, since the Didact formed an alliance with Jul 'Mdama’s Covenant in Halo 4, pretty much becoming their leader. I guess in that way he is one of the main figures behind the Covenant 2.0. I wish that relation had been elaborated upon a bit more in Halo 4, and I wonder if 343 had plans for it after Halo 5 - although this is speculation, as there was no evident plans for the Didact it seems. As for the Covenant, after Halo 5’s events, they might be replaced by the Banished.

Anyway, speculation aside, it seems that Halsey, Jul 'Mdama’s Covenant, the Prometheans and Insurrectionists were on board early on as antagonists. I wonder if the Warden was also involved in early scripts, and how he would have differed from his current iteration. Not much to go by in artworks though; he pretty much looks the way he does now.

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My theory is that it was indeed meant to be Dr. Halsey who assumed the role. The Librarian would use and manipulate Dr. Halsey’s natural curiosity to get her to seek out Forerunner technology using the Janus Key in order to get humanity to assume the Mantle, as well as prepare for the Flood’s inevitable return. Once Dr. Halsey did that, the Didact would return(from his journey to gather the remaining Forerunners that had left the galaxy, hence his end-of-Halo-4-speech), toss Dr. Halsey aside, and use all of her work to wage war against Humanity. We would probably still see a side-plot where Jul’s Covenant falls apart by the Arbiter’s hand as well.