My Halo:Infinite Spartan Ops Campaign

Community General Discussion
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This is a post to compliment another one that I wrote about a possible Halo: Infinite Spartan Ops. Though 343 won’t take my ideas, I think they could tell a different type of story then the traditional Master Chief fare offered in a mainline Halo game. If I had my way, Spartan Ops campaign would play out similar to this:

Your Team: A team with a badass Greek Letter-Number name, like Kilo-5 or Alpha-9. You are a special ONI Spartan team, carrying out sanctioned hits, asset retrieval, and black operations. You fly around in sweet Blackhawk-esque falcons instead of Pelicans. You have a shadowy handler from ONI who orders you around. You have a large stealth ship the shuttles you around the galaxy. Maybe even a cool AI. The team is led by you, whose name is [REDACTED] in all official documents. Throughout the missions, your squad refers to you with a nickname. Your team member’s names are officially [REDACTED] as well, but known by the player. They have cool banter, differing personalities, and different relationships with each other, like the ones displayed in ODST, Reach, and the awesome Republic Commando! Basically they are well written haha (I know, easier said than done, and I am no writer!)

Your Mission: ONI has confirmed intelligence received upon the location of the Janus key. It is has somehow fallen into the hands of a Brute Chieftain. One of Tartarus’s chief lieutenants, he was able to get away with a vast amount of Covenant tech after its civil war and eventual collapse. Using his influence, he has been able to carve out a mini-empire in the ruins of the Outer-Colonies far from the power base of the UNSC. He has a sweet/special gravity hammer and still wears his Honor Guard helmet as a crown. He is very cunning and keeps his base of operations mobile. ONI has no idea of his exact location, but the Chieftain is still ignorant as to the true purpose of the Janus Key.

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Act I: The Informant
Mission 1: Start out with a bang. Big battle, your team goes in loud and proud. Mission along the same lines as Tip of the Spear from Reach and Uplift preserve from ODST. Big open battle. Your mission is to capture/kill a Brute Lieutenant and discover the whereabouts of his chieftain. You fight your way to his base, but it is a trap! The level ends with a mini warthog run to escape a massive Covenant-esque ambush force. Your team escapes alive but it is clear the Chieftain knows you are after him and his Forunner device. ONI’s Kig-yar forces must have sold you out.

Mission 2: Fight Humans! Plan B to find the chieftain. ONI has a double agent imbedded in the largest post Covenant insurrection with connections to Kig-Yar pirate king that operates within the Chieftain’s fiefdom. The insurrection is led by a seditious ONI admiral and has been waiting out a month’s long siege on a world left untouched by the Covenants glassing. Your team lands at the Army Group’s forward operating base just in time to help fend off an insurrectionist counter attack. The mission is kind of a marriage between ONI: Sword Base from Reach and ONI Alpha Site from ODST. New human enemies are introduced in waves.

Mission 3: Lead the assault on the Insurrections stronghold and extract the informant during the fighting. Lots of urban warfare and vehicle, reminiscent of Exodus from Reach and Tayari Plaza from ODST. Ends with finding the informant and killing his former comrades. He is very jumpy and eager to get off world. You call for extraction when suddenly, a nuke goes off. (Seriously, how have we not seen a UNSC tactical nuke in game yet??)

Mission 4: Your team is reeling from the nuke explosion; you can’t get the Army Command on comms. You begin to fight through the city. Level atmosphere reminiscent of New Alexandria or the COD:4 Nuke scene; chaotic fighting in the fresh destruction. You find allies and work with them to restore communication with the UNSC. You learn the insurrectionists have set off a nuclear device in their desperation. Most of the command staff is dead, so you make a decision to change the mission and secure any nukes before they can be transferred off-world. The informant will have to come with you.

Mission 5: Assault on insurrectionist stronghold. It is an ONI bunker. Lots of close quarter fighting. End up face to face with insurrection leader. Turns out he only had the one nuke. He tries to blow up bunker but your team is able to partially stop him. Your armor protects them from the resulting explosion but the informant is gravely injured. The Act ends with you carrying him in your arms waiting for a medical evac to your ship.

Epilogue: The informant is badly injured but alive. It will take a few days at least before he wakes up and can help you find contact the Kig-Yar pirates. You may face serious consequences for endangering the mission. Meanwhile, ONI has learned that the Chieftain has acquired a few Huragok to help him figure out the true purpose of the Janus Key.

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Act II: The Key
Mission 1: The informant finally contacts the Kig-Yar pirate-king he was working with for the insurrection. The Kig-Yar pirate king is willing to help. He is high ranking enough in the Chieftain’s organization to be of use, and ambitious enough to want to escape from under the Chieftain’s thumb. ONI doesn’t want him dead as he may be useful later. He agrees to help you if you eliminate one of his rivals, a brute Captain. You stealthily enter the captains ship. Standard covenant ship mission like Truth and Reconciliation from CE. You fight your way to the bridge and wipe out the rival.

Mission 2: The Kig-Yar lied, or perhaps the Chieftain was able to threaten him. The pirate king refuses to give up the information you need. You will have to take it by force from his ship. You assault his fleet with your stealth vessel. Get another awesome space battle like the one from Long Night of Solace from Reach and Midnight from Halo 4. You land on the pirate kings ship, fight through some enemies and enter the captains chamber. He is on a high platform with. He tries to snipe you Halo 2 Legendary style. You move from cover to cover, closer and closer until you get into melee range. You beat the information out of him and tell him he is going to help you assault the chieftain’s fortress.

Mission 3: Stealthy mission – in the vein of Halo Reach’s Nighfall mission. You travel aboard the Kig-Yar vessel to the Chieftain’s Lair, which is actually located on a large Covenant space station. Kind of like a mix between High Charity and the map Assembly from Halo 3. He is using this station as a base in addition to allowing him to supply his burgeoning empire. While the Pirate king meets with the Chieftain, your team stealthily disembarks to attempt to locate the Janus Key. Maybe there is a mechanic where you have to eliminate all the enemies in a section within a certain time limit lest they alarm the entire base of your presence. You find that the Chieftain keeps the key on his person when an alarm goes off. The Kig-Yar has betrayed you yet again! The Chieftain has unlocked the purpose of the key and is trying to escape.

Mission 4: Continues from Mission 3, but stealth is out the window. Your team must fight through a covenant factory in order to reach the landing platform where your Brute target is making his escape. Lots of moving platforms/map geometry and environments that can kill you. Kind of like that Attack of the Clones scene. Eventually you make your way to the landing platform just in time to see the Chieftain abscond with the Janus Key in a phantom. You fight his bodyguard and steal a phantom of your own to chase after him

Mission 5: As you chase the Chieftain’s phantom, an old Covenant Supercarrier exit’s Slipspace. This event shocks your team, as they were all believed to be destroyed during the civil war. Scans reveal this to be the former flagship of Tartarus himself! This marks the Chieftain as the most powerful Brute currently in the galaxy and reveals the true engine of the Chieftain’s power. You follow the Chieftain and crash land on the Supercarrier under heavy fire. You fight desperately to the bridge as the Supercarrier re-enters Slipspace. Finish up with a boss fight against the chieftain. During the fight, there is a massive blow out on the bridge and the Janus Key and your team are exposed to raw Slipspace. In the end you are forced to choose between protecting the key or saving the team. Hopefully, by now you love your team so the choice your Spartan makes to save your team makes sense. Finally, the bridge blowout is ends, the chieftain is dead, and the Janus Key is secure.

Epilogue: Your team has been de-briefed. The Janus Key was largely corrupted due to exposure of Slipspace radiation. Over time some useful knowledge may be gleaned by ONI scientists but the core mission is deemed a failure. Some at ONI want you cast out from the Spartan program over your decisions to secure the nukes in Act 1 and save your teammates vs the Janus Key in Act 2. Instead, due largely to your heroism and the recovery of an intact Covenant Supercarrier, you are instead rotated out from team leader and your team is transferred back into the mainline Spartan program on the Infinity as a new fire team. (I think the Janus Key MacGuffin is too powerful to keep a part of the Halo storyline with the knowledge of all forerunner tech. I think its presence changes too much about the balance between the factions.)

So that is my idea for an AWESOME Spartan Ops Campaign. What do you think of it? What types of things would you like to see in a Spartan Ops? I just imagine all the cool moments this campaign could provide and how the characters in your squad could really grow and interact. How would you like the story of the Janus Key finally concluded? This was a fun exercise for me to try and mix a story and gameplay! Try thinking of something similar yourself. The Halo universe is big enough for us all to explore!