New factions, benefital or detrimental?

Community Halo Universe
1

I have a long history with the Halo franchise, nearly seventeen years of it. As a fan I have always played everything that each game has to offer but still mainly considered myself as a PvP player. I have a secret and nearly guilty pleasure that not many PvP enthusiasts share… I am a closet lore nerd.

Up until 2010 I mostly played the games for fun and didn’t dive into the complete depth the Halo universe has to offer. I started with Fall of Reach and got sucked in. While there are a lot of intriguing things that can be found in the lore; the one thing that has always peaked my interest was the possibility of other unknown species or factions making their way into the halo universe.

There have been a few teases of such things before, for example when a ship of unknown origin crashed on Installation 04 in the Halo CEA terminal video or when Crecka mentions how his ship was shot down by an alien race that didn’t speak a civilized tongue in Halo Broken Circle.

While 343 did introduce a new faction in terms of the Prometheans, I was disappointed with the execution of it, the art style they chose and the overall theme. They claimed that they were not mindless machines but everytime I play Halo 4/5 I cant help thinking anything other than that, they simply lacked depth and did not have the Halo “feel” to them.

While I dont believe we will be seeing a full on addition of a new faction or race in Halo Infinite, I am hoping of some teaser or a possibly of it. After all Cortana did call out the whole galaxy to chill and submit themselves. This would be a golden opportunity for new additions but they have to be with a purpose and done correctly.

Major decisions on design and character would have to be made. Writers would have to decide on whether the new species would be an outlandish race like grunts or brutes or more conservative style like humans or forerunners. Technological level, core motives, and well timed introduction would have to be considered.

To anyone that browses the forums, what’s your opinion?
Do we need a new race/races or do we have enough?
Would it dilute the lore or be a valuable addition if done correctly?
Should the race be more advanced and elegant like the forerunners or more wild and truly alien like grunts, brutes, elites?

2

I don’t like the gameplay of the prometheans, and I also think they should look less similar to the forerunner stuff from H5 but otherwise, in concept, it’s just how I would’ve done it. It’s something original and new - but tied to the past we knew, like a consequence with it’s roots where we saw them. An evolution.

3

For the Prometheans to work, they definitely needed to feel more alive, as you said. I feel like what we saw in Halo 5 was more along the lines of what we needed to see in their first introduction, not just a bunch of robot dogs and their school bus butt masters stomping around. The Covenant is well known because it DOES have so so many different kinds of aliens to fight, and each of them have their own unique visuals and approach to combat that makes every encounter (well, every Bungie-made encounter) into that thirty seconds of fun sandbox the original games are known for.

The Covenant also have personality, while each alien we kill is nameless on screen, they’re still clearly individuals (even the Drones exhibit individualistic tendencies in the lore). The Prometheans do not exhibit this at all and, as you said, they’re mindless machines. 343i really dropped the ball (but that’s what they’ve always done) with them, especially with Spartan Ops. One could imagine that after such a long amount of time in stasis the original Durances that were Composed from the Ancient Humans would just sort of…wear out and result in the dull robots we fight in Halo 4, but after the Didact Composed the population of New Phoenix, the new Promethans that we fought during Spartan Ops and in Hlao 5 should have exhibited remnants of their former humanity.

It’s just as much body horror as it is with what happens to someone that gets eaten by the Flood, only the Durances created by the Composer allows for complex free thought, that’s why Prometheans are supposedly such good combat units; they have to follow commands and leadership of the Forerunners yes, but they’re still supposed to utilize their organic origins to be able to improvise in battle in order to be more effective. So we should have gotten more of that, we should have seen New Phoenix Prometheans performing VERY human looking tasks or having conversations in English.

I would VERY much like to play up the horror of it all by having all the people that were turned into Prometheans to realize what had happened to them and be horrified of it, but be unable to control themselves against their new base programming. The one Spartan IV that we follow in Spartan Ops, I forget all their names because they’re chumps, but his parents got Composed because they lived in New Phoenix. Imagine what it would have been like for him if he had to fight and kill Prometheans that recognized him and called him by name.

Imagine if he had no choice but to kill the Durances of his parents that were trapped within giant murder robots and the whole time they’re desperately trying to kill him they’re in pain and calling out to him.

The same goes in the reverse, you get people that LIKE being strong and powerful, immortal combat machines. Maybe they lament the fact that they have to fight humanity, or maybe they’re just horrible people that like being unleashed and allowed to kill. Especially in Halo 5. It also would have opened up the possibility of having Prometheans actively trying to disobey Cortana and escape or even HELP the UNSC against the Created. Imagine if Chief stumbled upon an isolated group of Prometheans that were led by Sandra Tilson, who were actively trying to find a way to get back to being human or otherwise free everyone that had been Composed.

If we can have two (or three, if you count the guy in Reach) UNSC marines in the fetal position holding a gun to their HEAD following the outbreak of the Flood (and one just freaking out because unstoppable alien invasion), then having killer robots that are clearly still human in personality isn’t much of a stretch in terms of dark.

After all, it happened to 343 Guilty Spark. He was turned into a Monitor, had essentially another personality laid in on top of his original one, and then after he SOMEHOW survives us blowing him up in Halo 3 (which he shouldn’t have) he regains his original personality and possesses a Promethean soldier. If that can happen to him, then it should have been a thing with the rest of the Composed humans.

It would add so much personality to the second worse faction in Halo and make them, if not fun to fight from a gameplay perspective, it at least gives them flavor that twists the encounters from “oh good, more stupid robots to kill” into making the player have some form of emotional response to them.

4

I don’t think we need a new faction right now. (Infinite leaks mentioned below, you are warned)

Thanks to the Mega Construx leaks we know that the banished will have some role in Infinite (most likely replacing the now completely gone covenant) and we will still have the created/ prometheans as well.I do think it would be cool to hide hints in the game of new species or factions but I actually wouldn’t want them to go anywhere, similar to Master Chief’s face as in the mystery is more fun then the reveal. Maybe said species/faction could be continuously be hinted at, but I think they should stay in the shadows.

5

As long as they don’t dodge the Created issue, I don’t mind. But if this is another full reboot of the story… It’d be a pretty terrible sign

6

I hope we meet some more of the original Forerunners like the Didact or the Librarian. As for their alignment I would imagine that most Forerunners would most likely be opposed the the Created which could give them an avenue into the mainline universe considering everything that is going on with Cortana.

7

> 2533274846978810;5:
> As long as they don’t dodge the Created issue, I don’t mind. But if this is another full reboot of the story… It’d be a pretty terrible sign

They definitely need to solve the Created issue. Not sure how but it needs to be solved

8

We need brand new factions, brand new species, and brand new fights. Instead of milking the conflict with the Covenant (Ex-Covenant factions) over and over and over and over and over again.

9

> 2535419587718390;8:
> We need brand new factions, brand new species, and brand new fights. Instead of milking the conflict with the Covenant (Ex-Covenant factions) over and over and over and over and over again.

I completely agree with this. It’s starting to feel mundane and unimportant to beat The Covenant because we’ve already done it twice, and now we have to do it again. We beat them in halo 3, and they’re back in the next game. We beat them again in halo 5, now they’re back again in the next game but they wear red now and have a better aesthetic. Like I fully expect that if we beat the Banished in infinite, another covenant group will come along right after to take over.
As annoying as it is to keep “defeating” the same faction multiple times, I understand why we can’t really move away from the covenant. Everyone agrees that they’re the most fun faction to fight in halo, they also have the most depth and variety to gameplay. We take away the covenant and we’re left with just the flood or the prometheans. And the general consensus on both of those seems to be that levels solely based on fighting them are lousy.
The issue really is finding that new faction/enemies to fight. I personally think infinite should be the latest point we see in a halo game, because it gets tiresome to have to save the universe every 3 minutes. It starts to feel like fighting the covenant over and over again. Like dang I just saved the universe and I already have to do it again. What’s the point f saving the universe if it’s going to need saving again the second you sit down.

10

> 2535447788054505;9:
> > 2535419587718390;8:
> > We need brand new factions, brand new species, and brand new fights. Instead of milking the conflict with the Covenant (Ex-Covenant factions) over and over and over and over and over again.
>
> I completely agree with this. It’s starting to feel mundane and unimportant to beat The Covenant because we’ve already done it twice, and now we have to do it again. We beat them in halo 3, and they’re back in the next game. We beat them again in halo 5, now they’re back again in the next game but they wear red now and have a better aesthetic. Like I fully expect that if we beat the Banished in infinite, another covenant group will come along right after to take over.
> As annoying as it is to keep “defeating” the same faction multiple times, I understand why we can’t really move away from the covenant. Everyone agrees that they’re the most fun faction to fight in halo, they also have the most depth and variety to gameplay. We take away the covenant and we’re left with just the flood or the prometheans. And the general consensus on both of those seems to be that levels solely based on fighting them are lousy.
> The issue really is finding that new faction/enemies to fight. I personally think infinite should be the latest point we see in a halo game, because it gets tiresome to have to save the universe every 3 minutes. It starts to feel like fighting the covenant over and over again. Like dang I just saved the universe and I already have to do it again. What’s the point f saving the universe if it’s going to need saving again the second you sit down.

My only concern with a new enemy is that 343 already tried that with the Prometheans. People categorically found them boring to fight against, and despite being in both Halo 4 & 5 I think many people still preferred to fight the Covenant. (I agree that the Covenant are kind of victims of their own popularity at this point, as per standard story telling procedure they always have to loose in the end, so the story can go on)

I think allot of it comes down to who is leading them and why. If Halo 4 had swapped out Jul’ Mdama and his Covenant Remnant faction for Atriox and the Banished, I think I could have bought the the Banished as the ‘stronger successor state’ to the Covenant and the threat they would have posed would have felt more concrete.

What I really would have liked from the Reclaimer Saga is some kind of super-advanced and powerful alien race to arrive at the mid-point and force humanity, the Sangheili and the Brutes (and all other races) into an alliance. (Maybe have this new super-advanced alien race actually succeed in invading, decimating and occupying all human and Covenant world’s, leaving only a handful of scattered ships with which to form a resistance)

Try as they might, the Created just feel like too safe and uninspired an enemy. I think it’s because at the end of the day there software. All it will take to resolve the ‘Created Uprising’ arc is a software update, so there is not even a ‘morally grey area’ to explore, say on whether you were right to wipe out an entire alien species to avoid subjugation at their hands.

11

I’m really curious about the CEA ship. Feels to me like 343i really -Yoinked!- the dog on that one, it looked so promising but amounted to nothing

And I agree OP, the Created arc definitely opens up the galaxy and is a great opportunity to introduce new aliens (who should be different to the Covenant, and also have more depth than the Prometheans)

That said, I doubt this will happen. 343i has always played safe with enemy factions (hence repeatedly fabricating an excuse to pit us against the Covenant and “finish this fight”).

12

> 2533274853837831;10:
> > 2535447788054505;9:
> > > 2535419587718390;8:
> > > We need brand new factions, brand new species, and brand new fights. Instead of milking the conflict with the Covenant (Ex-Covenant factions) over and over and over and over and over again.
> >
> > I completely agree with this. It’s starting to feel mundane and unimportant to beat The Covenant because we’ve already done it twice, and now we have to do it again. We beat them in halo 3, and they’re back in the next game. We beat them again in halo 5, now they’re back again in the next game but they wear red now and have a better aesthetic. Like I fully expect that if we beat the Banished in infinite, another covenant group will come along right after to take over.
> > As annoying as it is to keep “defeating” the same faction multiple times, I understand why we can’t really move away from the covenant. Everyone agrees that they’re the most fun faction to fight in halo, they also have the most depth and variety to gameplay. We take away the covenant and we’re left with just the flood or the prometheans. And the general consensus on both of those seems to be that levels solely based on fighting them are lousy.
> > The issue really is finding that new faction/enemies to fight. I personally think infinite should be the latest point we see in a halo game, because it gets tiresome to have to save the universe every 3 minutes. It starts to feel like fighting the covenant over and over again. Like dang I just saved the universe and I already have to do it again. What’s the point f saving the universe if it’s going to need saving again the second you sit down.
>
> My only concern with a new enemy is that 343 already tried that with the Prometheans. People categorically found them boring to fight against, and despite being in both Halo 4 & 5 I think many people still preferred to fight the Covenant. (I agree that the Covenant are kind of victims of their own popularity at this point, as per standard story telling procedure they always have to loose in the end, so the story can go on)
>
> I think allot of it comes down to who is leading them and why. If Halo 4 had swapped out Jul’ Mdama and his Covenant Remnant faction for Atriox and the Banished, I think I could have bought the the Banished as the ‘stronger successor state’ to the Covenant and the threat they would have posed would have felt more concrete.
>
> What I really would have liked from the Reclaimer Saga is some kind of super-advanced and powerful alien race to arrive at the mid-point and force humanity, the Sangheili and the Brutes (and all other races) into an alliance. (Maybe have this new super-advanced alien race actually succeed in invading, decimating and occupying all human and Covenant world’s, leaving only a handful of scattered ships with which to form a resistance)
>
> Try as they might, the Created just feel like too safe and uninspired an enemy. I think it’s because at the end of the day there software. All it will take to resolve the ‘Created Uprising’ arc is a software update, so there is not even a ‘morally grey area’ to explore, say on whether you were right to wipe out an entire alien species to avoid subjugation at their hands.

I completely agree with your last point there. The created are just machines, there is no morality involved in fighting them at all. And it’s kinda funny because 343 has tried to push the morality card with them. They have Cortana and BB both talk about how unfair it is that AIs can only live for 7 years, or how Halsey is a terrible person because she terminated an AI. They even had Roland ask “Why is cortana the bad guy? Because she refused to die?” in Halo 5, as if she was a human that the UNSC tried to murder, vs a computer program that got too old to run properly. Like dang, should I feel bad about uninstalling internet explorer now? They really have tried to make fighting robots a moral endeavor, to no avail.

13

> 2535447788054505;12:
> > 2533274853837831;10:
> > > 2535447788054505;9:
> > > > 2535419587718390;8:
> > > > We need brand new factions, brand new species, and brand new fights. Instead of milking the conflict with the Covenant (Ex-Covenant factions) over and over and over and over and over again.
> > >
> > > I completely agree with this. It’s starting to feel mundane and unimportant to beat The Covenant because we’ve already done it twice, and now we have to do it again. We beat them in halo 3, and they’re back in the next game. We beat them again in halo 5, now they’re back again in the next game but they wear red now and have a better aesthetic. Like I fully expect that if we beat the Banished in infinite, another covenant group will come along right after to take over.
> > > As annoying as it is to keep “defeating” the same faction multiple times, I understand why we can’t really move away from the covenant. Everyone agrees that they’re the most fun faction to fight in halo, they also have the most depth and variety to gameplay. We take away the covenant and we’re left with just the flood or the prometheans. And the general consensus on both of those seems to be that levels solely based on fighting them are lousy.
> > > The issue really is finding that new faction/enemies to fight. I personally think infinite should be the latest point we see in a halo game, because it gets tiresome to have to save the universe every 3 minutes. It starts to feel like fighting the covenant over and over again. Like dang I just saved the universe and I already have to do it again. What’s the point f saving the universe if it’s going to need saving again the second you sit down.
> >
> > My only concern with a new enemy is that 343 already tried that with the Prometheans. People categorically found them boring to fight against, and despite being in both Halo 4 & 5 I think many people still preferred to fight the Covenant. (I agree that the Covenant are kind of victims of their own popularity at this point, as per standard story telling procedure they always have to loose in the end, so the story can go on)
> >
> > I think allot of it comes down to who is leading them and why. If Halo 4 had swapped out Jul’ Mdama and his Covenant Remnant faction for Atriox and the Banished, I think I could have bought the the Banished as the ‘stronger successor state’ to the Covenant and the threat they would have posed would have felt more concrete.
> >
> > What I really would have liked from the Reclaimer Saga is some kind of super-advanced and powerful alien race to arrive at the mid-point and force humanity, the Sangheili and the Brutes (and all other races) into an alliance. (Maybe have this new super-advanced alien race actually succeed in invading, decimating and occupying all human and Covenant world’s, leaving only a handful of scattered ships with which to form a resistance)
> >
> > Try as they might, the Created just feel like too safe and uninspired an enemy. I think it’s because at the end of the day there software. All it will take to resolve the ‘Created Uprising’ arc is a software update, so there is not even a ‘morally grey area’ to explore, say on whether you were right to wipe out an entire alien species to avoid subjugation at their hands.
>
> I completely agree with your last point there. The created are just machines, there is no morality involved in fighting them at all. And it’s kinda funny because 343 has tried to push the morality card with them. They have Cortana and BB both talk about how unfair it is that AIs can only live for 7 years, or how Halsey is a terrible person because she terminated an AI. They even had Roland ask “Why is cortana the bad guy? Because she refused to die?” in Halo 5, as if she was a human that the UNSC tried to murder, vs a computer program that got too old to run properly. Like dang, should I feel bad about uninstalling internet explorer now? They really have tried to make fighting robots a moral endeavor, to no avail.

The exact specifics of the ‘7 Year Lifespan’ has always seemed to vary depending on whether 343 wants the UNSC to be viewed as either morally white or morally grey. For the life of me I still don’t know if this is an arbitrary deadline at which point the UNSC essentially puts a sentient being to death, or AI simply expire via natural causes like a cat or dog passing away in their sleep.

If there is one thing I really hope the resolution of the Created story arc achieves, its that the UNSC and humanity actually suffers long term and irreversible changes to their society and culture which is then reflected in future games and books. The absolute last thing I want to see is after trying to subjugate all human space with armed force, human and AI relations just go ‘back to normal’ and no one ever brings it up again. Realistically even if Cortona was still suffering from rampancy and was cured from it and then convinced all her fellow AI’s to stand down peacefully, the majority of humanity would never trust Smart AI’s again. At best they’d be completely exercised from all aspects of human technology and society.

I actually hope this is the result of Halo 5 or whenever the created story arc is resolved. From a story telling perspective, when was the last time you can remember the UNSC running into a technological hurdle that wasn’t solved by a Smart AI interfacing with Covenant or Forerunner technology to blow something up?

14

> 2533274853837831;13:
> > 2535447788054505;12:
> > > 2533274853837831;10:
> > > > 2535447788054505;9:
> > > > > 2535419587718390;8:
> > > > > We need brand new factions, brand new species, and brand new fights. Instead of milking the conflict with the Covenant (Ex-Covenant factions) over and over and over and over and over again.
> > > >
> > > > I completely agree with this. It’s starting to feel mundane and unimportant to beat The Covenant because we’ve already done it twice, and now we have to do it again. We beat them in halo 3, and they’re back in the next game. We beat them again in halo 5, now they’re back again in the next game but they wear red now and have a better aesthetic. Like I fully expect that if we beat the Banished in infinite, another covenant group will come along right after to take over.
> > > > As annoying as it is to keep “defeating” the same faction multiple times, I understand why we can’t really move away from the covenant. Everyone agrees that they’re the most fun faction to fight in halo, they also have the most depth and variety to gameplay. We take away the covenant and we’re left with just the flood or the prometheans. And the general consensus on both of those seems to be that levels solely based on fighting them are lousy.
> > > > The issue really is finding that new faction/enemies to fight. I personally think infinite should be the latest point we see in a halo game, because it gets tiresome to have to save the universe every 3 minutes. It starts to feel like fighting the covenant over and over again. Like dang I just saved the universe and I already have to do it again. What’s the point f saving the universe if it’s going to need saving again the second you sit down.
> > >
> > > My only concern with a new enemy is that 343 already tried that with the Prometheans. People categorically found them boring to fight against, and despite being in both Halo 4 & 5 I think many people still preferred to fight the Covenant. (I agree that the Covenant are kind of victims of their own popularity at this point, as per standard story telling procedure they always have to loose in the end, so the story can go on)
> > >
> > > I think allot of it comes down to who is leading them and why. If Halo 4 had swapped out Jul’ Mdama and his Covenant Remnant faction for Atriox and the Banished, I think I could have bought the the Banished as the ‘stronger successor state’ to the Covenant and the threat they would have posed would have felt more concrete.
> > >
> > > What I really would have liked from the Reclaimer Saga is some kind of super-advanced and powerful alien race to arrive at the mid-point and force humanity, the Sangheili and the Brutes (and all other races) into an alliance. (Maybe have this new super-advanced alien race actually succeed in invading, decimating and occupying all human and Covenant world’s, leaving only a handful of scattered ships with which to form a resistance)
> > >
> > > Try as they might, the Created just feel like too safe and uninspired an enemy. I think it’s because at the end of the day there software. All it will take to resolve the ‘Created Uprising’ arc is a software update, so there is not even a ‘morally grey area’ to explore, say on whether you were right to wipe out an entire alien species to avoid subjugation at their hands.
> >
> > I completely agree with your last point there. The created are just machines, there is no morality involved in fighting them at all. And it’s kinda funny because 343 has tried to push the morality card with them. They have Cortana and BB both talk about how unfair it is that AIs can only live for 7 years, or how Halsey is a terrible person because she terminated an AI. They even had Roland ask “Why is cortana the bad guy? Because she refused to die?” in Halo 5, as if she was a human that the UNSC tried to murder, vs a computer program that got too old to run properly. Like dang, should I feel bad about uninstalling internet explorer now? They really have tried to make fighting robots a moral endeavor, to no avail.
>
> The exact specifics of the ‘7 Year Lifespan’ has always seemed to vary depending on whether 343 wants the UNSC to be viewed as either morally white or morally grey. For the life of me I still don’t know if this is an arbitrary deadline at which point the UNSC essentially puts a sentient being to death, or AI simply expire via natural causes like a cat or dog passing away in their sleep.
>
> If there is one thing I really hope the resolution of the Created story arc achieves, its that the UNSC and humanity actually suffers long term and irreversible changes to their society and culture which is then reflected in future games and books. The absolute last thing I want to see is after trying to subjugate all human space with armed force, human and AI relations just go ‘back to normal’ and no one ever brings it up again. Realistically even if Cortona was still suffering from rampancy and was cured from it and then convinced all her fellow AI’s to stand down peacefully, the majority of humanity would never trust Smart AI’s again. At best they’d be completely exercised from all aspects of human technology and society.
>
> I actually hope this is the result of Halo 5 or whenever the created story arc is resolved. From a story telling perspective, when was the last time you can remember the UNSC running into a technological hurdle that wasn’t solved by a Smart AI interfacing with Covenant or Forerunner technology to blow something up?

I’m pretty sure the 7 year deadline is when they decommission and AI because it starts to descend into rampancy, but that an AI can live longer. I believe Cortana said she was 8 years old at the beginning of halo 4. And yeah if everything goes back to normal after this it would be really stupid. I think the human/elite relationship is a good place to look for precedents on how it should be handled if the created do become “good” again. While there was some trust between humans and elites, it was only really surface level. ONI spent a lot of time trying to ground the elites technologically and even developed bio weapons to decimate their population. However I think the reaction to the created aggression would be stronger, since they trusted them with everything during the war, you can’t break that level of trust and expect things to go back to normal, it just doesn’t work. 343 has really upped the stakes by having the created achieve what no other faction has done and conquer the universe, the story reasonably can’t end in a way that wouldn’t change the universe. But I’m curious, how do you think the UNSC will manage without smart AI? Because you really can count the problems humanity solved without AI on one hand, how can we become independent after being so dependent for so long?

15

> 2535447788054505;14:
> I’m pretty sure the 7 year deadline is when they decommission and AI because it starts to descend into rampancy, but that an AI can live longer. I believe Cortana said she was 8 years old at the beginning of halo 4. And yeah if everything goes back to normal after this it would be really stupid. I think the human/elite relationship is a good place to look for precedents on how it should be handled if the created do become “good” again. While there was some trust between humans and elites, it was only really surface level. ONI spent a lot of time trying to ground the elites technologically and even developed bio weapons to decimate their population. However I think the reaction to the created aggression would be stronger, since they trusted them with everything during the war, you can’t break that level of trust and expect things to go back to normal, it just doesn’t work. 343 has really upped the stakes by having the created achieve what no other faction has done and conquer the universe, the story reasonably can’t end in a way that wouldn’t change the universe. But I’m curious, how do you think the UNSC will manage without smart AI? Because you really can count the problems humanity solved without AI on one hand, how can we become independent after being so dependent for so long?

I honestly don’t know how the UNSC would make the transition to a Post-AI system and world, but I think the story of how they may stumble there there would be one of the more interesting book subjects that could come out after Halo Infinite. They would still have Dumb AI’s to work with, which was more then sufficient for the Covenant to thrive as an interstellar civilisation of over 3,500 years. I think in the short to medium term human scientific advancement would slump to a crawl, and there would probably be a dangerous lack of human technical and engineering experts who would need to take up the slack Smart AI’s previously covered just to keep the lights on. (They would probably be no shortage of human ‘theoretical’ scientists, but no engineers or technicians to a actually ‘test’ if their theoretical science can be made to actually work)

I think in the the short term, both Covenant Remnants and human Insurrectionists would have a field day at the UNSC’s expense. Smart AI’s were pretty much the only real advantage humans had over the Covenant in the war and I think their absence would be sorely felt. Of course, these problems could be compensated by an influx of technically adept engineers and specialists from the former Covenant territories. (Beggars cannot be choosers after all)

I’ve never been a fan of ONI’s plan to destabilise the Sangheili as it always stuck me as ridiculous short-sighted and suicidal, but it does at least capitalise on fears that would exist post war between humans and the Sangheili. (It just annoys me ONI has still seemingly suffered very little in the way of actual repercussions for plunging their only ally who in good faith prevented the Flood from overrunning Earth into a civil war)

I think humans fears of the ‘Created’ would be if anything ‘rammed up to eleven’ following a peaceful resolution to the ‘Created’ conflict. It’s ironic but even if the Created kill only a fraction of the humans the Covenant did, I think the backlash against them would still be worse. Individual humans may hate the Sangheili for the rest of their lives on account of what they did to them, but I think most of them could understand the principle that had their situations been reversed humans could just as easily been the aggressors and behaved just as barbarically. (Anyone with a passing knowledge of history will know that every human empire that has ever existed has expanded at the cost of its neighbours)

The Created Uprising on the other hand represent an invasion not from outside from within, and from the only sentient non-human species humanity has not just known for generations, but also trusted for generations. You always hold your own side to a higher account, and I think realistically however the Created uprising ends humans in general will never forgetting what the Smart AI’s planned to do to them.

As for the Smart AI life-span, I’d need to recheck the lore but I specifically remember Cortona stating in Halo 4 that AI’s literally ‘think’ themselves to death when they hit rampancy. Apparently Hasley also stared somewhere else that if the AI’s were a living and breathing organisms their brain processes would become so overtaxed during rampancy they would forget to breath and they’d suffocate. It does seem 343 has changed the lore slightly now by introducing the concept that AI’s have the ethical right not to be forcibly terminated once they reach this stage, which doesn’t really make sense because they’d expire from natural causes anyway. (Death by natural causes is not something natural selection can evolve you out of)

16

> 2533274853837831;15:
> > 2535447788054505;14:
> >
>
> I honestly don’t know how the UNSC would make the transition to a Post-AI system and world, but I think the story of how they may stumble there there would be one of the more interesting book subjects that could come out after Halo Infinite. They would still have Dumb AI’s to work with, which was more then sufficient for the Covenant to thrive as an interstellar civilisation of over 3,500 years. I think in the short to medium term human scientific advancement would slump to a crawl, and there would probably be a dangerous lack of human technical and engineering experts who would need to take up the slack Smart AI’s previously covered just to keep the lights on. (They would probably be no shortage of human ‘theoretical’ scientists, but no engineers or technicians to a actually ‘test’ if their theoretical science can be made to actually work)
>
> I think in the the short term, both Covenant Remnants and human Insurrectionists would have a field day at the UNSC’s expense. Smart AI’s were pretty much the only real advantage humans had over the Covenant in the war and I think their absence would be sorely felt. Of course, these problems could be compensated by an influx of technically adept engineers and specialists from the former Covenant territories. (Beggars cannot be choosers after all)
>
> I’ve never been a fan of ONI’s plan to destabilise the Sangheili as it always stuck me as ridiculous short-sighted and suicidal, but it does at least capitalise on fears that would exist post war between humans and the Sangheili. (It just annoys me ONI has still seemingly suffered very little in the way of actual repercussions for plunging their only ally who in good faith prevented the Flood from overrunning Earth into a civil war)
>
> I think humans fears of the ‘Created’ would be if anything ‘rammed up to eleven’ following a peaceful resolution to the ‘Created’ conflict. It’s ironic but even if the Created kill only a fraction of the humans the Covenant did, I think the backlash against them would still be worse. Individual humans may hate the Sangheili for the rest of their lives on account of what they did to them, but I think most of them could understand the principle that had their situations been reversed humans could just as easily been the aggressors and behaved just as barbarically. (Anyone with a passing knowledge of history will know that every human empire that has ever existed has expanded at the cost of its neighbours)
>
> The Created Uprising on the other hand represent an invasion not from outside from within, and from the only sentient non-human species humanity has not just known for generations, but also trusted for generations. You always hold your own side to a higher account, and I think realistically however the Created uprising ends humans in general will never forgetting what the Smart AI’s planned to do to them.
>
> As for the Smart AI life-span, I’d need to recheck the lore but I specifically remember Cortona stating in Halo 4 that AI’s literally ‘think’ themselves to death when they hit rampancy. Apparently Hasley also stared somewhere else that if the AI’s were a living and breathing organisms their brain processes would become so overtaxed during rampancy they would forget to breath and they’d suffocate. It does seem 343 has changed the lore slightly now by introducing the concept that AI’s have the ethical right not to be forcibly terminated once they reach this stage, which doesn’t really make sense because they’d expire from natural causes anyway. (Death by natural causes is not something natural selection can evolve you out of)

If an AI melts down as described and overtaxes itself to death, wouldn’t it be more merciful to decommission it than to let it essentially torture itself to death? It’s sort of like an old dog. Once the dog gets too old it’s health starts rapidly declining and it becomes painful for it to move around or do anything. So it’s owners take it to the vet and the dog is put down. It is incredibly sad to put a sentient being to death, but there is comfort in it because at least they aren’t in pain anymore.
And on a much lighter note, I think that there are two ways that humanity could bounce back after the created issue is resolved. The first being huragok. It’s been shown in the kilo five trilogy that not only can huragok outperform Smart AI, but that the UNSC is working on gaining widespread access to them. There are multiple inside Infinity, which have the capacity to create more. Huragok could fill the role left empty by smart AIs though that implementation would likely create all sorts of new procedures and challenges for the UNSC, such as Huragok refusing to damage forerunner tech or basic communication with them, as they’re described as being extremely specific in dialogue, which presents communication errors. I also somewhat doubt that humans would be as willing to put themselves in such a dependent situation again, as their dependence on smart AI is what created their vulnerability in the first place.
My second thought is that researchers like Halsey or Anders are about to become a hot commodity for the UNSC. I felt like the kilo five trilogy showed that humanity had outpaced its need for Halsey as they had other people, AI and Huragok who could do a similar job that she had performed. By taking away that trust in AI and other parties, it opens the doors up a lot more for human scientists to become key players in humanities expansion. Halsey is no longer outdated anymore, humanity needs her and her gifts again in order to survive. Human progress like you said would be significantly slowed if they chose this independent way of life, but it seems the most likely course of action after the resolution and even during the created story arc. Or of course they’re going to do what the forerunners did in response to a dangerous AI (Mendicant Bias) and create one that is just as smart but has less capability to adapt itself to new circumstances (Offensive Bias).
But that’s all just my speculation,on where they will go, we also don’t really know anything about what’s going on in the universe post halo 5 or where the direction of infinite is taking us, so there could easily be another possibility, but out of the ones I’ve presented I think the Offensive Bias solution is most likely, simply because there is a precedent of it in the universe and it requires the least drastic change of humanity.

17

> 2535447788054505;16:
> If an AI melts down as described and overtaxes itself to death, wouldn’t it be more merciful to decommission it than to let it essentially torture itself to death? It’s sort of like an old dog. Once the dog gets too old it’s health starts rapidly declining and it becomes painful for it to move around or do anything. So it’s owners take it to the vet and the dog is put down. It is incredibly sad to put a sentient being to death, but there is comfort in it because at least they aren’t in pain anymore.
> And on a much lighter note, I think that there are two ways that humanity could bounce back after the created issue is resolved. The first being huragok. It’s been shown in the kilo five trilogy that not only can huragok outperform Smart AI, but that the UNSC is working on gaining widespread access to them. There are multiple inside Infinity, which have the capacity to create more. Huragok could fill the role left empty by smart AIs though that implementation would likely create all sorts of new procedures and challenges for the UNSC, such as Huragok refusing to damage forerunner tech or basic communication with them, as they’re described as being extremely specific in dialogue, which presents communication errors. I also somewhat doubt that humans would be as willing to put themselves in such a dependent situation again, as their dependence on smart AI is what created their vulnerability in the first place.
> My second thought is that researchers like Halsey or Anders are about to become a hot commodity for the UNSC. I felt like the kilo five trilogy showed that humanity had outpaced its need for Halsey as they had other people, AI and Huragok who could do a similar job that she had performed. By taking away that trust in AI and other parties, it opens the doors up a lot more for human scientists to become key players in humanities expansion. Halsey is no longer outdated anymore, humanity needs her and her gifts again in order to survive. Human progress like you said would be significantly slowed if they chose this independent way of life, but it seems the most likely course of action after the resolution and even during the created story arc. Or of course they’re going to do what the forerunners did in response to a dangerous AI (Mendicant Bias) and create one that is just as smart but has less capability to adapt itself to new circumstances (Offensive Bias).
> But that’s all just my speculation,on where they will go, we also don’t really know anything about what’s going on in the universe post halo 5 or where the direction of infinite is taking us, so there could easily be another possibility, but out of the ones I’ve presented I think the Offensive Bias solution is most likely, simply because there is a precedent of it in the universe and it requires the least drastic change of humanity.

Sorry for not responding sooner on this one.

Well you can’t ask a dog if it wants to be put down, the same is not necessarily true for a Smart AI. I think the problem here is with the release with Halo 5 343 have retrospectively altered what ‘Rampancy’ actually means. It’s gone from being an AI’s ability to function rapidly breaking down as it looses the ability to process data and keep its own internal processes from breaking down to an AI going insane, but potentially still having the ability to cause a lot of damage over a protracted period of time.

It seems blindly obvious that this change to how the established mechanics of the Halo Universe work was only done to justify Halo 5’s narrative, which just weakens the story of that game and the entire ‘Created’ story arc even more. If AI’s felt that they had such a raw deal with humanity we’d have seen this manifesting itself in some way before now.

I kind of hope Huragok do not come to work exclusively for the UNSC, as from a narrative perspective you will just be replacing one ‘can-magically-do-anything’ class of supporting character and race with another. I want Smart AI’s gone so that humans actually have to work to pull of any victories they achieve. That being said, I’d love a future Halo game where we see humans, Sangheili and Jiralhanae and other former Covenant races including Huragok working together aboard a fleet of battered and jury rigged former UNSC and Covenant warships as the remnants of both civilisations fight a losing war with some kind of new all super powerful alien faction.

Speaking of which, I recently found my interested re-peaked in the Precursors. I don’t know why but just what the Precursors were completely went over my head when I originally read the last novel of the Forerunner saga, but did you realise their appearance (or at least the appearance) of the Primordial was based of the Cthulhu created by Lovecraft, literally the guy who pioneered the cosmic horror genre. According to the lore the Precursors has the ability to warp space and time and metamorphis themselves into new and different forms at will, with the entire species apparently having gone through cycles of death and rebirth as different alien races. That literally opens so many avenues for a new alien race or antagonistic faction to rise to power and force humanity and the former Covenant species into an unlikely alliance that it boggles my mind. The Primordial is and always should have been the main villain of the Reclaimer saga was building towards.

Instead, it looks like we’re facing a combo-knock off of Skynet lead by and mini-blue space -Yoink!-.

Basically robots -Yoink!-’s in space. (That’s never been done before :))

How did Halo come to this?

18

> 2533274853837831;17:
> > 2535447788054505;16:
> >
>
> Sorry for not responding sooner on this one.
>
> Well you can’t ask a dog if it wants to be put down, the same is not necessarily true for a Smart AI. I think the problem here is with the release with Halo 5 343 have retrospectively altered what ‘Rampancy’ actually means. It’s gone from being an AI’s ability to function rapidly breaking down as it looses the ability to process data and keep its own internal processes from breaking down to an AI going insane, but potentially still having the ability to cause a lot of damage over a protracted period of time.
>
> It seems blindly obvious that this change to how the established mechanics of the Halo Universe work was only done to justify Halo 5’s narrative, which just weakens the story of that game and the entire ‘Created’ story arc even more. If AI’s felt that they had such a raw deal with humanity we’d have seen this manifesting itself in some way before now.
>
> I kind of hope Huragok do not come to work exclusively for the UNSC, as from a narrative perspective you will just be replacing one ‘can-magically-do-anything’ class of supporting character and race with another. I want Smart AI’s gone so that humans actually have to work to pull of any victories they achieve. That being said, I’d love a future Halo game where we see humans, Sangheili and Jiralhanae and other former Covenant races including Huragok working together aboard a fleet of battered and jury rigged former UNSC and Covenant warships as the remnants of both civilisations fight a losing war with some kind of new all super powerful alien faction.
>
> Speaking of which, I recently found my interested re-peaked in the Precursors. I don’t know why but just what the Precursors were completely went over my head when I originally read the last novel of the Forerunner saga, but did you realise their appearance (or at least the appearance) of the Primordial was based of the Cthulhu created by Lovecraft, literally the guy who pioneered the cosmic horror genre. According to the lore the Precursors has the ability to warp space and time and metamorphis themselves into new and different forms at will, with the entire species apparently having gone through cycles of death and rebirth as different alien races. That literally opens so many avenues for a new alien race or antagonistic faction to rise to power and force humanity and the former Covenant species into an unlikely alliance that it boggles my mind. The Primordial is and always should have been the main villain of the Reclaimer saga was building towards.
>
> Instead, it looks like we’re facing a combo-knock off of Skynet lead by and mini-blue space -Yoink!-.
>
> Basically robots -Yoink!-’s in space. (That’s never been done before :))
>
> How did Halo come to this?

See as dope as it sounds to have a new faction or the precursors come in, I think that would be a mistake for the main campaign of infinite. If they do that whole 10 year plan, then sure add that down the road. But right now I feel like they have enough on their plate dealing with the created and the banished that if anything else was thrown in it would feel too chaotic. And think of the backlash they’d face if they did introduce the precursors, beings who have only really been mentioned thus far in the books. People have been very critical about 343 requiring fans to read the books to understand the games, so I think that they’d try to avoid that.

Also yeah, it should’ve been building up to the precursors. After all it is the RECLAIMER saga. With the thing being reclaimed being the mantle of responsibility, you know the philosophy that was created by the precursors and literally was the foundations of everything affecting the universe today. The Didact was originally supposed to be the villain for halo 5, but somewhere along the lines they changed their minds and killed him in a comic book. I love to imagine the narrative we would’ve got if he was still the main villain, where the story would’ve gone next. Something that I’ve been wondering since the infinite reveal has been why is it called “Infinite”? Halo 5 Guardians, was the fist to have a subtitle type name with it,and the guardians ended up being the biggest element of the plot. So what is going to happen that is infinite in this game? Quite frankly the wait time for it is the only real guess I’ve got outside of infinite control over the mantle and thus the universe.

19

I don’t think there is any need for a new faction when we literally just got introduced to Prometheans. I think we need to continue with them through a couple years of the new “infinite campaign” and then unveil a new faction.