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> > I also agree with you about Cortana, 343 should have left her RIP after the well executed death they gave her in Halo 4. I would love if the ‘Swords of Sangheilios’ turned out to be a silent antagonist of Halo 5, with the Arbiter unveiling a fleet of tier 1 class Sangheili warship’s and warriors outfitted with Promethean like armour and weaponry in place of the Guardian’s which he would then turn loose on Earth at the end. (That, you may not have seen coming if it happened!)
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> That’s also quite a strange way to take things, especially considering that as Halo 5 began we already had a hostile Covenant faction under Jul 'Mdama, with the potential for more to be developed from the aether of ex-Covenant space such as the Banished. We would be sacrificing the SoS, the only significant post-Covenant faction that doesn’t obsess about human extermination, in the pursuit of creating a high degree of redundancy among hostile Covenant factions.
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> It is also very questionably OOC character for Thel 'Vadam and Rtas 'Vadum, and would mean that for whatever reason the SoS had decided to take a course of action that would be long term political suicide in the face of the Covenant masses becoming more and more anti-war as time went on.
You changed your profile picture fast!
Turning the SOS from ally to enemy would be a risky move, but I think it could work well if handled correctly.
I don’t know if you remember, but in Admiral Preston Cole’s autobiography Cole raised an really interesting theory that I really wish 343 would elaborate on. One thing Cole could never understand is why the Covenant didn’t just use their superior technology to triangulate Earth’s location from the numerous wireless signals bouncing around the Outer Colonies, and then use their superior numbers and resources to attack Earth and the Inner Colonies directly rather than fighting blindly through the Outer Colonies. Cole theorized that there was some kind of Covenant shadow faction at the heart of the Covenant leadership deliberately sabotaging their war-effort and maximizing the length the human-covenant war could be stretched to. Dr Hasley raised a similar question when she came to the conclusion that the Covenant was many times the size of human space, but up until 2552 only a tiny portion of their available military had been committed to the war.
I’ve always wondered what the story behind this was, and what this shadow groups’ motives were for indirectly prolonging the UNSC’s survival. Personally I don’t think this was the work of a small number of Covenant officials and officers who felt guilty over the atrocities their forces were committing. Rather I think this was the work of some kind of sinister and clandestine society withiin the Covenant which were using the UNSC (and perhaps countless other alien races) as a type of sacrificial lamb, keeping the Covenant military and its leadership occupied while and they worked towards something else. (Perhaps to keep them from finding the Halo Array)
During the marketing for Halo 5, there was a very interesting trailer narrated by Thel’ Vadam himself. During the trailer, Thel said that the Master Chief had considered him a friend, but questioned if we would still have thought of him as a friend if he knew what he had done.
The Master Chief must have known that Thel was a Covenant Supreme Commander (It was common knowledge amongst the Covenant rank-and-file, so this information must have become common knowledge amongst the UNSC to after 2553)
I think Thel was referencing something else that he had done, something that if the Master Chief found out, he could consider Thel an enemy, which begs the question what…? (I can provide a link to the trailer if you want)
The only thing I can come up with is that Thel is actually part of this clandestine shadow society at the heart of the Covenant leadership, and more sinisterly that he played a leading role in laying the ground work for the human-covenant war.
Thel is a very sympathetic character amongst fans because although he participated in perhaps the largest act of genocide in human history, he was doing this under the belief that it was what the Forerunners wanted. (I actually give more credit than this. We know the Covenant as an institution use collective punishment, so I think Thel and countless others participated in this was because if they didn’t, their clans and families would face retaliation)
This all changes if we and John-117 finds out that Thel could have stopped the war at the very beginning, but due to reasons (which may be justified) chose to allow it to proceed.
All of this is just theorization on my part, but I still think the SOS would make a good enemy. The reason I say this is that like the OP, I want to see a new unified Covenant Empire rise from the ashes of the old Covenant, bigger, stronger and even more technologically advanced than its predecessor to once again pose a overwhelming threat to the UNSC and humanity’s survival. This can’t happen while the Covenant is in a state of civil war with Sangheili fighting Sangheili, as logically neither side will want to break off this fight to go after the UNSC, thus loosing the initiative against their enemy on the home-front.
My main concern with having Jul Mdama Covenant faction wiping out the SOS and reunifying a Covenant Empire hostile to humanity is that it resets the status quo and eliminates all the development within the Covenant from the end of Halo 2. The exact same problem occurs with the ‘Bansished’ if 343 wanted to go down the route of a reunified Covenant led by the Jiralhanae rather than Sangheili, in that no matter how hard 343 try, Atriox will just appear to be an attempt to mould Jul’ Mdama and Tartartus into a single character. (A strong, militarily competent alien leader with a metaphoric idea number 3 stamped on their forehead)
By having the SOS defeat their rival faction led by Jul’ Mdama during th course of Halo 5 and then turning them against the UNSC at the end of the game, 343 could really mess with the dynamics of Halo in a good way. Halo 6 could have us (Blue Team, Osiris die in mission 1!) allying with former enemy Jul’ Mdama or Atriox, with a portion of the game taking place on Dosiac maybe as its come sunder invasion of SOS Sangheili equipped with state of the art tech and supported by Forerunner Prometheans.
Just to clarify, I’m not advocating that 343 turn Thel’ Vadam into a raging anti-human zealot like Jul’ Mdama was initially depicted. On the contrary, the entire war between the UNSC and SOS would be carried out as part of some kind of pre-determined master plan to remove the UNSC as a potential threat, and would actually involve the SOS allying themselves with human insurrectionists.
The most surreal moment of the game of this alternative Halo 5-6 would come at the end when the Master Chief realizes that Thel is actually trying to prevent the return of some kind of uber-powerful Forerunner/Flood character whose agents have infiltrated the UNSC, and so by extension Blue Team has been fighting on the wrong side.
Just a very rough idea in my head right now, but I hope that gives you an idea of how I think this particular plot twist would work if the Covenant was to come back ‘different’, but more powerful then it was before.
