This is something that I just now dug up that I can’t believe I ever missed. According the Graeme Devine (former lead developer for Halo Wars), the opening script for Halo Wars 2 that Ensemble created was quite radically different than what 343 and CA gifted us with.
He did a Reddit AMA that I’ll link that contains some of the dialogue that would’ve graced us if Ensemble hadn’t have gotten the axe.
Thoughts?
I don’t like it.
I feel like folk are too scared to kill off beloved characters nowadays. Lowers or removes the stakes from everything and doesn’t help the narrative at all.
Yes, let forge die in a supernova, his forge hog has caused too much pain for Halo Wars 2 already, and he’s supposedly “dead”. Imagine his power when he’s alive, first 300%, then, 3000%! MWAHAHAHA!!
Ahem I mean, while many characters have lived through the impossible(Chief falling from space twice or punching a nuke and living is an example of this) I think they should just leave him dead. His sacrifice was so great because he knew he was going to die, but him coming back and just “magically” living would ruin this moment.
In my head-cannon, Forge would stay dead, but Anders would make a clone of him to be raised by various groups of soldiers individually taken out of cryo for short periods of time. He’d be taught by Serina who would leave programs for him to learn about history and his old self until he was the same as OG Forge, then go into cryo himself right before the portal opens.
Forge isn’t Johnson. Back in time, Johnson’s survival to Halo:CE was hard to swallow, but he made up for that plothole in Halo 2&3. Forge is not a character i particularly like