No flying enemies = No prometheans?

Games Halo Infinite
1

So as we now know
skimmers don’t fly and it sounds like buggers are axed.
So do Sentinels only come in the friendly variety? Are enforcers off the table?

But most importantly are the Prometheans removed from the sandbox?
They had issues but I hoped infinite would serve as a visual and gameplay transition that establish a cohesive continuity between bungie and 343i era design and onboard new and returning players into the EU, current threads and the next chapter of halo.

Prometheans aren’t all that hard to fix imo.
The all units serve knights set up was unique in halo 4.
Build on that.
Add more feedback to damage.
Blasting off and dismembering robots isn’t M.
Have them flinch when damaged make the particle disintegration be a head shot reward and the usual animation an explosion like Sentinels.

make them more defined in their roles and simplify the design. They can change shape in lore so its as easy as a line of dialogue, “She’s been busy” “these new Promethean designs are worse to fight than the old ones.”

Make 3 knight variants a grenade launching LR one, a sword arm heatwave one and a hammer fist incineration one. Standard, cqc and antitank respectively.

3 watchers 3 designs, See’er: active camo + turret,
Speaker: repulsor + grapple tongue,
Hearer: long range treat detect + marksman beam.
They have a hard light umbilical cord to connect them to one knight, if you kill said knight and then kill the watcher mid revival you gain a CE style power up 1 for each knight variant.

Crawlers have a pack alpha with a suppressor that fires rounds the splinter it like so: < a suppressive fire weapon for wide areas that when scope join into a guided projectile size based on rounds fired. Kill pack leader the crawlers go into a frenzy running around on walls or circling the player. Standard crawlers are melee only.

Soldiers come as marshels, shield bearers and snipers all cover the knight, injured knights missing limbs can call nearby soldiers to reform its damaged body by way of dismantling the soldier.

Make the teleport a telegraphed move that shows its end destination and has a wind up.

Spawn them in by having phaetons come apart and send parts crashing to the earth around you then hover upwards and build prometheans to fight. Shooting at pillars before they form prometheans kills or spawns a weaker unit instead depending on damage done.

Have weak spots the blast off limbs like the sticky bomb on the arachnitron in doom eternal but when you blast off a weapon it is sent right at you to catch.
Tie hard light weapon ammo to promethean souls and have knights drop rare memory fragments that show images/maps on hud or play short dialogues when picked up.

Have one or 2 turn on allies, recognising a loved one from before the new pheonix incident or a crying knight that protects a corpse of a marine from banished or chief, distorted almost human crying sounds coming from them.

Show in gameplay what they really are inside their shells.
Forerunner/ancient human/modern humans.

I think this makes for a real fun and impactful enemy faction that adds to halo and creates a continuity for new and returning fans to understand.

Also LR should have stabilise from h5 as an ads utility and cause harslight to explode to make it a unique mid tier power weapon.

2

> 2535411919953126;1:
> So as we now know
> skimmers don’t fly and it sounds like buggers are axed.
> So do Sentinels only come in the friendly variety? Are enforcers off the table?
>
> But most importantly are the Prometheans removed from the sandbox?
> They ahd issues but I hoped infinite would serve as a visual and gameplay transition that establish a cohesive continuity between bungie and 343i era design and onboarded new and returning players into the EU, current threads and the next chapter of halo.
>
> Prometheans aren’t all that hard to fix imo. The all units serve knights set up was unique in halo 4.
> Build on that. Add more feedback to damage.
> Blasting off and dismembering robots isn’t M.
> Have them finch when damaged make the particle disintegration be a head shot reward and the usual animation an explosion like Sentinels.
>
> Kmake them more defined in their roles and simplify the design. They can change shape in lore so its as easy as a line of dialogue, “She’s been busy” “these new Promethean designs are worse than the old ones.”
>
> Make 3 knight variants a grenade launching LR one, a sword arm heatwave one and a hammer fist incineration one. Standard, cqc and antitank.
>
> 3 watchers 3 designs, See’er: active camo + turret,
> Speaker: repulsor + grapple tongue,
> Hearer: long range treat detect + marksman beam.
> They have a hard light umbilical cord to connect them to one knight, if you kill said knight and then kill the watcher mid revival you gain a CE style power up 1 for each knight variant.
>
> Crawlers have a pack alpha with a suppressor that fires rounds the splinter it like so: < a suppressive fire weapon for wide areas that when scope join into a guided projectile size based on rounds fired. Kill pack leader the crawlers go into a frenzy running around on walls or circling the player. Standard crawlers are melee only.
>
> Soldiers come as marshels, shield barers and snipers all cover the knight, injured knights missing limbs can call nearby soldiers to reform its damaged body by way of dismantling the soldier.
>
> Make the teleport a telegraphed move that shows its end destination and has a wind up.
>
> Spawn them in by having phaetons come apart and send parts crashing to the earth around you then hover upwards and build prometheans to fight.
>
> Have weak spots the blast off limbs like the stick bomb on the arachnitron in dolm eternal but when you blast off a weapon it is sent right at you to catch.
> Tie hard light weapon ammo to promethean souls and have knights drop rare memory fragments that show images/maps on hud or play short dialogues when picked up.
>
> Have one or 2 turn on allies, recognising a loved one from before the new pheonix incident or a crying knight that protects a corpse of a marine from banished or chief, distorted almost human crying sounds coming from them.
>
> Show in gameplay what they really are inside their shells.
> Forerunner/ancient human/modern humans.
>
> I think this makes for a real fun and impactful enemy faction that adds to halo and creates a continuity for new and returning fans to understand.
>
> Also LR should have stabilise from h5 as an ads utility and cause harslight to explode to make it a unique mid tier power weapon.

i mean there are forerunner weapons in the game. they might be coming back. it would be strange to just ditch the Prometheans altogether when they have been pivotal to the last two entries.
i would hope they are in the game as it brings in more enemy varieties.

3

Might be some promethians from the crashed guardian, depends what’s going on with Cortana.
As for flying things, with all the verticality that is now possible, it might feel a bit too offset with flying enemies. Unless you count the suicide grunts being thrown through the air at you.

4

> 2535441052281740;3:
> Might be some promethians from the crashed guardian, depends what’s going on with Cortana.
> As for flying things, with all the verticality that is now possible, it might feel a bit too offset with flying enemies. Unless you count the suicide grunts being thrown through the air at you.

Wouldn’t the new verticality accommodate flying enemies more than ever?
Imagine grappling a watcher and using is as cover and rain death from above .

5

There has been 0 indication thus far that Prometheans will be in this game. And I’m 99.99% sure that’s because they aren’t. They simply weren’t received well enough by the community after Halo 4 and 5. Variety can be achieved elsewhere.

And all the forerunner weapons, the sentinels, etc. - those are different. All of these designs harken back to Halo CE through 3, before prometheans were a thing. 343 is clearly taking a step back and trying to work off of those classic forerunner concepts. There’s plenty of room for innovation and variety there, but I think you gotta look at this realistically here- the main enemy is the Banished, Cortana and her army of AI’s are the secondary enemy force, and since it’s a Halo Ring, sentinels and other autonomous droids will be there. The only other faction we might get would probably be related to the Harbinger, and those Skimmers might belong to her, but that’s enough enemy variety, the Prometheans are clearly being left behind and abandoned.

6

While they did not specifically axe al flying enemies in general, they do seem to be steering away from them as they might be hard to deal with/343 believes it can be frustrating to deal with things flying above your head all the time that isn’t a flying vehicle. As for that being an indication that prometheans are not in the game, I’m not so sure. The only real flying unit that was Promethean that I could think of were the watchers and in my opinion they were certainly pretty annoying with their flying around and shielding enemies as well as trying to raise them back from the dead all the time. So they can certainly bring back the prometheans but simply axe the watchers from the ranks. Plus there will be some Promethean type enemies from the looks of it with the skimmers which certainly seem Promethean inspired at the very least. The Harbinger as well also has a very Promethean inspired design and look. I won’t be surprised though if they don’t include Prometheans in the first campaign and wait to bring them back in a future DLC or something. The Halo community seems to kind of have a love-hate relationship with the Prometheans at the moment so I think it’s best that they wait to bring them back until they can figure out how to make them better/more distinct.

7

> 2533274860752574;5:
> There has been 0 indication thus far that Prometheans will be in this game. And I’m 99.99% sure that’s because they aren’t. They simply weren’t received well enough by the community after Halo 4 and 5. Variety can be achieved elsewhere.
>
> And all the forerunner weapons, the sentinels, etc. - those are different. All of these designs harken back to Halo CE through 3, before prometheans were a thing. 343 is clearly taking a step back and trying to work off of those classic forerunner concepts. There’s plenty of room for innovation and variety there, but I think you gotta look at this realistically here- the main enemy is the Banished, Cortana and her army of AI’s are the secondary enemy force, and since it’s a Halo Ring, sentinels and other autonomous droids will be there. The only other faction we might get would probably be related to the Harbinger, and those Skimmers might belong to her, but that’s enough enemy variety, the Prometheans are clearly being left behind and abandoned.

Even if you hate the prometheans, they are integral to the story and it would be stupid (story wise) if they aren’t in Halo Infinite. Halo Infinite is not a sequel to Halo 3, it is a sequel to Halo 5, that is not to say that Prometheans should be front and center and the only enemy you fight, but it would a slap in the face to fans of 4/5 if that story arc is not finished.

They’ll probably just be closer towards the end of the game, so after you fight that Banished dude (forget his name, sorry folks)

The fact we haven’t seen any weapons/maps whatsoever that are promethean is a bit meaningful, lets hope they don’t just end it on a cliffhanger and we have to wait a few years to finish this story arc.

8

> 2533274845983347;7:
> > 2533274860752574;5:
> > There has been 0 indication thus far that Prometheans will be in this game. And I’m 99.99% sure that’s because they aren’t. They simply weren’t received well enough by the community after Halo 4 and 5. Variety can be achieved elsewhere.
> >
> > And all the forerunner weapons, the sentinels, etc. - those are different. All of these designs harken back to Halo CE through 3, before prometheans were a thing. 343 is clearly taking a step back and trying to work off of those classic forerunner concepts. There’s plenty of room for innovation and variety there, but I think you gotta look at this realistically here- the main enemy is the Banished, Cortana and her army of AI’s are the secondary enemy force, and since it’s a Halo Ring, sentinels and other autonomous droids will be there. The only other faction we might get would probably be related to the Harbinger, and those Skimmers might belong to her, but that’s enough enemy variety, the Prometheans are clearly being left behind and abandoned.
>
> Even if you hate the prometheans, they are integral to the story and it would be stupid (story wise) if they aren’t in Halo Infinite. Halo Infinite is not a sequel to Halo 3, it is a sequel to Halo 5, that is not to say that Prometheans should be front and center and the only enemy you fight, but it would a slap in the face to fans of 4/5 if that story arc is not finished.
>
> They’ll probably just be closer towards the end of the game, so after you fight that Banished dude (forget his name, sorry folks)
>
> The fact we haven’t seen any weapons/maps whatsoever that are promethean is a bit meaningful, lets hope they don’t just end it on a cliffhanger and we have to wait a few years to finish this story arc.

If you really want to go at it from a lore standpoint, were Prometheans ever on a Halo ring? From what we’ve seen they’ve been on Requiem and Kamchatka, from there they just kinda appear wherever.

I dunno, I don’t think the Prometheans are really anything special, the guardians are the more important aspect of Halo 5 to be brought forward, and there’s a crashed Guardian on Zeta Halo so we at least know there’s continuity there.

I think 343 has been pretty clear about the spiritual reboot bit. Fans of the storyline of Halo 4 and 5 will get some threads tied up in the game through collectibles, a plot thread, and whatever else, and the rest will be relegated to books like how Halo has handled most of it’s EU stuff and problematic plot issues before.

9

> 2535411919953126;4:
> > 2535441052281740;3:
> > Might be some promethians from the crashed guardian, depends what’s going on with Cortana.
> > As for flying things, with all the verticality that is now possible, it might feel a bit too offset with flying enemies. Unless you count the suicide grunts being thrown through the air at you.
>
> Wouldn’t the new verticality accommodate flying enemies more than ever?
> Imagine grappling a watcher and using is as cover and rain death from above .

Iv’e never liked watchers, Halo 4 on legendary they were a nightmare, although they got toned down in H5, It’s something that’s unlikely 343 would bring back.
I think skimmers kind of address a few things, while they don’t fly high, they still hover around eye level which to me is a better compromise.

10

To me, no flying enemies means:

  • No Drones. They were basically flying grunts that could throw grenades, kamikaze, or use vehicles/turrets. They only appeared in swarms and never with other units. Worst of all they only carried Plasma Pistols, so killing them wasn’t even worth the trouble. They could Hijack though which was cool I guess. Overall, very bland, but also poorly used. - No Watchers. They were just flying crawlers, but they could shield allies (this would be cool if the hardlight shield wasn’t impenetrable), summon more crawlers, raise knights from the dead, throw grenades back (this is their best trait IMO). Because of all these support traits, there was no reason not to kill a watcher first every time, but of course they run away like little -Yoinks!-. Also they only carried boltshot, a weapon totally unsuited to kill both watchers and the knights they spawn from. I feel that watchers suffered more from their dynamic with knight, soldiers and crawlers than actually being bad enemies.I think we will fight sentinels. Firstly, because Cortana controls forerunner AIs, so that should include sentinels. Under those circumstances, there’s also no reason for them to be friendly to Chief. Also we have new forerunner guns, but they fit the Sentinel aesthetic, not the promethean one. It would be super lame if enemies don’t shoot at us with those guns. Although this could just mean that the sentinels have a new, flightless, class (which would be kinda weird). Lastly, sentinels are famous for being very slow, and their beams are easy to dodge unlike the buggers’ PP spam or the watchers’ auto-lock boltshots. So I think they fit in with the “flying enemies are disorientating” narrative.

One flying enemy that no one’s talking about are our lovely “squid bois”, the Engineers. They were the better watcher imo. WE know the banished have some because of Wars 2. They were a support class, but they importantly didn’t attack. In fact, the only way for an engineers to kill you was if you got caught in their suicide bomb. And speaking of the bombs, Engineers had two was to be killed: Crack their shields, or kill the Brute Captain that has the dead man’s switch (they didn’t actually have one, but that’s my head canon for that mechanic. Also it would be cool if the HUD actually identified which brute had it so you could prioritize that brute since the engineer is making the whole pack more powerful). I think Engineers would explode if you got too close as well. Engineers were also slow, in fact they made very weak attempts to avoid your fire since they didn’t really have a mind for combat. I hope engineers have some more abilities beyond “giv monke gud sheld”.

11

> 2533274923428997;8:
> > 2533274845983347;7:
> > > 2533274860752574;5:
> > >
> >
> > Even if you hate the prometheans, they are integral to the story and it would be stupid (story wise) if they aren’t in Halo Infinite. Halo Infinite is not a sequel to Halo 3, it is a sequel to Halo 5, that is not to say that Prometheans should be front and center and the only enemy you fight, but it would a slap in the face to fans of 4/5 if that story arc is not finished.
> > They’ll probably just be closer towards the end of the game, so after you fight (Escharum/Atriox).
> > The fact we haven’t seen any weapons/maps whatsoever that are promethean is a bit meaningful, lets hope they don’t just end it on a cliffhanger and we have to wait a few years to finish this story arc.
>
> If you really want to go at it from a lore standpoint, were Prometheans ever on a Halo ring? From what we’ve seen they’ve been on Requiem and Kamchatka, from there they just kinda appear wherever.
> I dunno, I don’t think the Prometheans are really anything special, the guardians are the more important aspect of Halo 5 to be brought forward, and there’s a crashed Guardian on Zeta Halo so we at least know there’s continuity there.
> I think 343 has been pretty clear about the spiritual reboot bit. Fans of the storyline of Halo 4 and 5 will get some threads tied up in the game through collectibles, a plot thread, and whatever else, and the rest will be relegated to books like how Halo has handled most of it’s EU stuff and problematic plot issues before.

Infinite is meant to be a platform for the next decade
Of halo so I’m unsure how relegation of prometheans to books make sense tbh. Its an on ramp for new fans in many respects if it doesn’t establish a continuity in gameplay that is a big failure imo. As a Spiritual reboot it cleaned up the sandbox and return to core elements of the franchise, seemed the needlessly axe blue team sadly. However it is also the sequel to halo 5 and by now 343i should see ignoring the past is not the best course of action. It is the reason they had a spiritual reboot to begin with. The issue now is they created an entire generation of fans that are just as deserving of being catered to as the CE and reach fans Infinite is trying to entice.

The sandbox argument ive seen quite a bit but it feels pretty weak to me.

I mean the unsc and banished sandboxes have both been overhauled almost none of the classic weapons return and we know there is forerunner weapons.

As for lore prometheans can appear anywhere cortana can open slip space. If a guardian is present it traditionally is accompanied by promethean ground forces to combat civil unrest so the fact shes on the ring suggest her armigers would be also. At least to me. It will take lots of unnecessary hand waving to to explain away can be done but sort of slaps EU and 4/5 fans in the mouth.

Windjammer19 and Vinylshack33That’s very much treating the symptoms not the cause. They can be easily redesigned just as brute were in halo 3 or knights in halo 5. I even already provided a solution to the very issue you put forward in my initial post. Easy peasy, done.
The engineers are great but the watchers can be made a much more interesting unit over all imo
I doexpect to see both shield/vehicle(day) repair engineers and healthregen/revive(night) engineers in game. The option to board them and remove the vest if you’re fast enough and have them go friendly being a big hope for me.

AveryArmoryFor me the symbiosis of the units in 4 was the best way to make them stand out and the watchers’ support systems where crucial to that.
If they return without them I feel they will be even less interesting as before rather than an iteration that utilises the inherent potential of the faction’s design.
My initial post provided some quick fixes to their issues. Such as the umbilical cord to keep them in view when looking at their designated knight. It seems to me they are easily improved while retaining the core philosophy of their encounter design.

ItalianForce94The flood were largely maligned by the community in the trilogy as where the brutes by many in halo 2, less so 3. So I dont really accept abandoning the faction outright is sound logic. People are requesting the flood now. The return of brutes is a major selling point of Infinite. Also the redesign of the knights was cited as a vst improvement by many if not most in Guardians.
It seems best course of action is to tweak them and have them return in the sequel to their 2 games where they still have plot points to resolve than abandon them because a faction in a game almost none of the fanbase played/bought proved more well recieved in some marketing materials. Rare achievements in halo wars 2 are crazy high for a halo game for a reason haha.