(According to the propaganda grunt, Infinites plot starting from Warship Gbrakkon to the end of the campaign takes place within one day)
The UNSC Infinity and Chief gets obliterated by The Banished and then Chief just wakes up, engages kill mode and then destroys The Banisheds leadership in a single day, when UNSC on the ring tried to do so for 6 months.
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Well yeah, he’s lost Cortana, he’s got nothing but his rage now. 
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Yeah I remember doing a bunch of exploring, side missions and collectibles for like dozens of hours and then in the pelican down mission the pilot was like “we only met 6 hours ago” which felt weird.
Still funny to think Master Chief woke up and was like “welp, time to clean up this mess”. It also kind of makes sense why Chief wasn’t backed up by tons of UNSC troops in the final campaign missions after securing tons of FOBs and rescuing troops. The marines have barely gotten back to FOB camps to regroup and then they’re like “oh never mind, Chief dismantled all of the banished on this side of the ring.”
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It’s just sloppy writing, they wanted Chief to be in the spot light again and this is a spiritual reboot to the franchise. No one knew or even cared who the Banished was so they had to establish that they were a serious threat by destroying UNSC in 4 minutes… Then magically, The Chief stands up and conquers the campaign all on his own… even though he was helplessly beaten while surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of allies.
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To play devil’s advocate, I would consider the fact that the UNSC was preparing to fight Cortana, not the banished. After all, in Shadows of Reach they fought Banished forces, but their main concern was not alerting Cortana. If they travelled to Zeta Halo for a fight against her and guardians/Forerunner tech, then they might not be prepared to enter into combat immediately against Banished forces who have been amassing at Zeta for some time.
Also, and I could be wrong here, but I’m pretty sure the Infinity was the only ship they had. It’s not like they were go to Zeta with a whole fleet. Even with the size and resources of the Infinity, it’s still possible for the UNSC forces to be routed if they’re attacked from a large Banished fleet on all sides.
If real life history has anything to teach us, it’s that conventional military tactics have a hard time against insurgencies (French Indochina/Vietnam, Middle East). When you consider the fact that the one using these tactics is a highly trained super soldier, it’s not unbelievable that it’ll cause a lot of damage to Banished forces.
Although I must agree, the time frame for the actual combat is pretty short. If the Infinity was beaten in an hour or two instead of mere minutes and the Master Chief beat the Banished over the course of a month instead of days, then I think it would make more sense.
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First off, Atriox would have crushed John’s skull, not toss him into space like some common enemy. Atriox knows Spartans are resourceful and he should have definitely heard the legend of John’s incredible luck, I mean skill, by now.
Escharum was partly to blame for this too, because he wanted to die in glorious combat. So he told Jega to follow and observe… and Bassus just puts his paw on Chief’s shoulder and spins him around instead of smashing him right then and there like they did the Infinity… The writers purposely made the Banished flawed to give Chief and one pilot with one pelican a huge advantage.
How did Banished amass at the ring without the Infinity and a small fleet of ships not see this happening? There was also more than one ship, Outpost Tremonious is in the ruins of a smaller ship that was accompanying the Infinity(UNSC Mortal Reverie). The Infinity is the biggest and most advanced ship in the UNSC arsenal, behind only the Eternity which was still being built when Cortana’s Guardian EMP’d Earth.
Unfortunately, we still don’t know the whole story yet about the battle. So there is missing information that seems to have been done on purpose to create a plot twist. We will have to see how the rest of the story unfolds to see if all the other pieces fit the puzzle too.
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There’s a few issues with that though:
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Previous Halo games established that the Brutes are a primitive species. They shouldn’t have advanced warships and weapons of their own. The idea of a Brutes as a galactic power is ridiculous. Now if they’re pawns of Mendicant or Offensive Bias or the Endless/Precursors fine but at face value I question this. It would be like if the Insurrectionists suddenly became a superpower with 20 legions of super soldiers. You can write it, but it flies in the face of what we know.
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We don’t see a large Banished Fleet. We see a handful of Dreadnoughts which aren’t even the same size as the Infinity.
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They were expecting a fight though. It’s not a true ambush.
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Plus how did they sneak up on them in space. How could they know they were there on a top secret mission.
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How could they possibly have timed this so that they let the Infinity lock Cortana down and then attack?
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There were hundreds of Spartans on the Infinity. There’s not that many Banished. The UNSC Infinity Army should be able to beat the Banished on the ground.
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To be fair, Esharum does say the Banished aren’t going anywhere even if he dies. You only took that section of the ring. Atriox is back. So really not much has changed. You’ve just woke up, learned Cortana died and proceeded to go on a murderous rampage.
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The issue with four minutes is that in Halo Wars 2 the much smaller, low tech and undergunned Spirit of Fire managed to last several hours against a CAS Assault Carrier.
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That is true, I totally forgot about the wreckage of the other UNSC ships on the ring.
When it comes to not seeing the Banished at the ring, I can only guess the need to hide from Cortana and surprise attack her at Zeta meant they could send advance craft or some kind of sensor ahead of time, but who knows.
Although I feel like it’s not unreasonable the ways that the Banished leadership acted, at least compared to how Brutes and Elites normally are. If Atriox just blew up the Infinity and most of the other UNSC forces and was about to throw Chief into space, he might’ve thought there was no way for him to possibly survive.
I also don’t think it’s necessarily bad writing on the part of Escharum, Bassus, etc.'s actions. All over the lore there’s info on how Brutes love combat, glory, and victory. So the fact that Bassus wants to best Master Chief in single combat or Escharum is almost asking for Chief to show up and fight wouldn’t be too far from the normal Brute instincts.
At the end of the day, and I hate to say this, it’s a video game and it needs something to kick off the plot. This reminds me of the common complaint from Lord of the Rings about how the good guys should’ve just flown on the giant eagles to the big volcano instead of taking forever to walk there. In that case and in the case of Atriox killing Chief when he had the chance, both would be easy and make sense, but wouldn’t necessarily be fun or entertaining for the audience.
I don’t think the Banished are really being portrayed as a galactic power though. The best I can compare them to is pirates. They can attack fast and raid vulnerable areas, but probably wouldn’t be good in long, large campaigns against another military force. Some of the bios for the high value targets seems to imply the banished show up to colonies to raid them and then get out of dodge.
Plus, while I remember reading the Brutes had bombed themselves back to the stone age by the time the Covenant first found them, they aren’t totally stupid. There were Brute leaders and I even read in Halo: Warfleet that Brute Seraph pilots were more feared by the UNSC than their Elite counterparts.
Not to mention the fact that the Banished has all kinds of aliens in it. While it is led by Brutes, it’s possible that it also has Elite leaders and ship masters as well, considering Jega seems to have such an important role.
I must admit though I don’t know the timeline of events for when the UNSC was attacked at Zeta. I assumed they just came out of slipspace at Zeta and where immediately attacked by the Banished, but since you mentioned the fact that the UNSC was able to lock down Cortana I guess that must mean they were attacked after the did that. That, or Chief rushed to the ring to lock her down in the midst of the battle before coming back to the Infinity.
Maybe the four minutes thing isn’t the entirety of the fight, but just how long it took to destroy the Infinity after it was boarded. IDK, it still seems like a crazy number to me
I would be interested to see how the UNSC landed on the ring overall. The player is so focused on UNSC forces in the area we play in, but I suppose it could be possible that Spartans and other UNSC troops could’ve landed on the far side of the ring.
You’re exactly right, and I understand this. The thing is the Halo universe is very intriguing to me, and with Infinite they went a very different direction that contradicts or ignores things we should already know in the story. And I honestly feel they could have done it better than this.
BUT until they flesh out the entire plot for us all to see, we really don’t know what’s going on, and judging by Infinite’s 10 year plan, it’s going to take plenty of more time to tell this new tale.
They were portrayed this way in Halo Wars 2. An oppressed Brute, named Atriox, rises up and takes command of all the Covenant rejects. They are essentially the Vikings of Outer Space, but instead of fighting for a new homeland like the Vikings did, the Banished were just pirates striking back at the Covenant for mistreatment, and then eventually the UNSC for trying to takeover the Ark.
This is kind of similar to how the Norse/Danes/Scands/etc landed and beat the dog snot out of England for a little while. So this isn’t far fetched, but so much information was misplaced in Infinite, like the Created and the Prometheans, and a lot of that other missing information also makes this clash with the Banished very strange.
Again, we are forced to wait for more story to be revealed.
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It is frustrating to not have all the info to begin with, but considering the troubles 343 allegedly had in reworking the story it still seems rather decent.
I’m hoping at least that they can use their 10 year plan to develop and reveal a lot more through novels, comics, games, etc. Plus then there can be time to add finer details and lore.
It’s not an ideal situation, but I at least feel like they haven’t given up on the universe and story. No matter what their plans were, it must’ve been hard to steer away from the things that irked fans in the last two games (promethean, Cortana) without straight up retconning them.
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My understanding of the four minutes is how long it took before Infinity was unable to mount any meaningful resistance, including its engines and defensive armaments going offline.
Regarding ringfall on the undamaged parts of Zeta Halo, I’m pretty certain that’s where characters like Lasky and Osiris ended up, and where Horvath was headed to in his final transmission. Hopefully Rubicon Protocol fills us in on these details.
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The audio logs have the Infinity attacked and then Laskey orders the Weapon deployed immediately. Apparently this is before she had the half hour (Guardian?) she needed to make her preparations. Odd detail to add.
So, presumably, she had enough time in those four minutes to disable Cortana? Iam not sure how she was able to connect to Zeta Halo without her chip being out into the system. I’d have thought she was on a chip and that’s what Atriox was after.
Be funny if Cortana wasn’t actually locked down and she just casually absorbed the Weapon. She simply assumed Chief would kill Atriox and would then come to the Silent Auditorium. Then she could recapture him again which is why she’s so unconcerned about being captured and having lost until she realises Atriox is there. She does ultimately try to kill him. It would also make it more tragic because she could have intervened and didn’t.
Lore accurate master chief be like… 
Having so much question about the scenario is nonsense. The defeat of the Infinity, the greatest UNSC ship, appear in a quick cinematic and it’s disappointing. We should have fight the Banished in the Infinity and live this defeat ourselves.
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Its also weird in the context that the game has a day/night cycle (even if night is only slightly dark), meaning the player has very likely seen multiple days pass in the game before the end of it. Now, a ring’s day-length isn’t tied to earth’s, so you could argue he’s referring to earth days not ring days, but this isn’t told to the player, and the human brain naturally associates a light/dark cycle as days.
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