Yeah, it’s like 343 don’t wanna give essential story info to fill the gaps. Weird.
Kinda hurts the Infinite story with so many gaps to be filled and left unexplained
Where was their destructive limit established? She surrounded the planet with them.
In the Canon Fodder article or the Ship Encyclopaedia on them I think they mention that a Tier 2 Custodian (Halo 5 Guardian) only has minor secondary offensive weapons with the EMP being its main weapon. It’s also said they would be useless against the Flood because they can’t counter Forerunner ships. This lines up with what we see in Halo 5.
That seems a bit far off seven of them being able to destroy a planet. I am sure you could find a use for that against the Flood combined with its EMP. 
Now, possibly these Guardians had been modified to do that or, drum roll, they weren’t Tier 2 Custodians. They just looked exactly like the Guardians from Halo 5 if, presumably 
, not to scale in the Hologram visions.
The new Halo Encyclopedia confirmed that in addition to standard Banished humans from Divine Wind, there are also human clans in the Banished with human leaders. Just as there are Elite clans with Elite leaders (like Let 'Volir).
Only the 15 Banished humans that Pavium had on the Ark were expelled, other humans remain in human clans of the Banished such as the Order of Harmony.
Well, these mercenaries hopefully understand that they’ll be shot or imprisoned for treason if they don’t realise the error of their ways.
Helping an army of Aliens massacre innocent civilians and bombard their cities isn’t exactly endearing behaviour. Atriox is the “Warmaster” of a criminal regime engaged in an Imperialist war.
Any humans in the Banished are traitors and criminals. They’ve betrayed their families, their communities, their nations and their species. You are talking about the lowest kind of scum here.
Also Atriox says in a cut audio log that he’s okay with humans in the Banished…if they serve him. Meaning he’ll kill any human or human state that refuses to submit to his and the Brutes rule. That is Imperialism. Just because Rome had auxilia units didn’t mean it never did horrendously evil things and wasn’t about Empire.
1 Like
Update from the book Rubicon Protocol: There’s a human inspector in the Banished who had a rise to prominence due to earning respect. This human is still in the Banished and fighting against the UNSC on Zeta Halo.
Let 'Volir could rise to prominence in the Banished despite the Brutes hating his species, no reason a human couldn’t too.
It also mentions how the Banished started liberally massacring and presumably eating humans in their own ranks since they blamed them for Cortana and the destruction of Doisac. So traitors (which is precisely how he is presented from other human POV) like him are rapidly fading breed. Plus given the surprise the human characters have and how few we see that likely means it’s very rare.
Which is absurd. If humanity had really wanted the brutes dead they could have put a nova bomb into everyone of their planets. One world breaker nuke for each planet. So, it’s really on them for getting killed by a malfunctioning Nanny Bot. Killing their own human soldiers kind of shows that the movement is just a bunch of Brute nationalists pretending to be about “honour” and “brotherhood”.
What’s absurd is the Elites aren’t shown to be liberally mascaraed to the same degree by the Brutes, for what the Silent Shadow and other genocidal Elites did to them. Although many Banished Elites were sent to their deaths by Decimus for what they had done to the Brutes, hopefully we see more of this too.
It’s apparent that high ranking Elites like Let 'Volir and high ranking humans like the inspector, are high enough to avoid being abused like what Decimus did to Banished Elites.
Quite simple, the Brutes don’t care about lives killed and don’t think like that. Its about power. Losing Doisac is bad because they’ve lost their power, the heart of their civilisation, that was what Cortana took from them; the Elites just killed their brood. It’s a possessive thing. Not born out of any concern for the many billions who died. They would have surrendered if they gave a dam about that. Escharum himself describes this as being a good thing because it beat the weakness out of them. That’s the mentality of the Brutes.
So they don’t kill the elites because they need them. They know if they killed their elites it would massively weaken the Banished, whereas killing their humans wouldn’t. They see humans as small, weak and often just a source of food. So why not use the excuse to indulge in a rush of adrenaline and a kill. There’s a conscious disregard towards life. The only reason they regard the Chief with interest is because he can butcher thousands of them.
You see this same hypocrisy with them using AI technology even when you just had your planet destroyed by a rogue artificial intelligence. I really doubt a rampant Brute AI would bother with trying to make sure Organics got free ice cream.
They want power, they’ll do anything to get it and they have no principles or morality. These are human concepts that are meaningless to Brutes.
It’s almost good they have this mentality because it means Chief can destroy Zeta Halo which they’ve conveniently parked themselves on. For a smart Brute Atriox sure forgot about one of his armies getting thrown into space. Be a real shame if the last few, what, a billion? Million? Less? If all those Brutes were on the ring and it goes boom. Real tragic loss for the Galaxy.
I kinda hope they just rework the plot put more time into polishing it because 34ei historically execute poorly on great concepts and bring it all back to the logic plague have atriox side with didact have him turn on didact when its revealed the flood had been manipulating him since requiem and that he had been pulling cortanas strings post halo 4 show sòme remnants of the many cortana aspects through the campaign having her slpwlt be restored inside cortwona until a new stable rampancy résistant cortana+ is formed have this AI heal didact who at this point will have been our prophet character for a while and have him be ashamed in his actions and choose to honor his wifes wishes while the final battle sees us on the back foot arbie, chief, blue team, osiris, half jaw, lasky and didact all losing to the flood until atriox and the bamished roll in to turn the tide.
I think the other eu characters and alpha nine should take a back seat.
And palmer and majestic should be seen doing things parallel to the player(s)
The endless obviously cant just be dropped but should be worked into this and ultimately just consumed by the gravemind who had only pretended to not be able to consume them as a tactic a la humanity.
Reveal the common ancestory of forerunner and humanity as skmething purged from the domain and that forerunners simply chose to force evolution depicting them as the inevitable conclusion to the spartan 2 program.
Obviously adding this much nuance and development while retaining halos Baction presentation will mea a long on going story that makes a fun easy to follow casual story and a finak continuity for fans of deeper lore. But ultimately the narrative needs to show these characters grow and interact and be just instruments in the right place at the right time for the flood to test for the mantle and dispel this chosen one the universe revolves around these 5 characters approach 343i has taken.
Rather than mythologise characters make them mortal and instead mythologise the player.
By giving the villains stories like we saw in the covenant with infighting and changing allégeances it is a tools to flesh out motivstions and characters build them up and also create reason for shifting permutations of characters in encounters and more of that classic halk 3 way combat scenarios.
Utilise the characters as tools for unique and exciting variations in the gameplay scenario.
The writing is supposed to accomodate the fun and mystery not bog it down with characters who get written out or exposite poorly at a detrent to casual comprehension of the universe or pacing of the games.
So my issue with atriox is hes been written as a god dkne next to nothing made the universe feel smaller due to his design, once again derailed any sence of continuity between games and direction of narrative and apparently is a time traveler oh god no 343i dont add to the contrived plot with the gold standard of lazy writting
1 Like
I think it matters that Escharum isn’t just inherently evil like the prophets were. He’s just a legendary, honorable warrior. I loved his character tbh.
1 Like
I didn’t realize “honor” means kidnapping your foe’s friend, and strapping him in some ‘pain transference’ device during your duel.
You duel after sending your forces to their death since you intended to fight chief 1v1 all along anyway, meaniing Escharum’s forces were al meant to die, cause if they killed chief he wouldnt get his duel…
1 Like
The problem with Escharum is that he’s too cartoonish. He’s setting up all of these challenges for the Master Chief and he wants to fight him and he’s explaining his plans the whole time. It’s like an old comic book super villian. His actions don’t make any real sense.
3 Likes
It’s make sense for him to want to fight the Master Chief, hoping an honorable death instead of his disease, or a great victory before his death. However, as you said, he talk too much and became ridicoulous at the end.