so, I made a series of posts on Fandom about how I think Halo’s DLC called Halo: The Endless should go, so here’s the recap:
Chief travels in Echo 216 to defend FOB Echo from a Banished attack. However, Banshees attack the pelican. Chief tries to board one but it runs over Chief’s head, making him unconscious. When he waked up he discovers that an Elite spec ops stole the Weapon and went to a cave near the Spire. He pursues the Elite to discover the cave is not a natural formation. The Elite is revealed to be Jato 'Ratum, who appeared on Halo wars 2. He enters a portal, and so does Chief. Chief finds himself in a forerunner structure under a large desert area where he discovers the endless, their ranks and weapons and their agenda: to release the flood and recreate the precursors. He rescues the weapon from a heavily fortified Banished outpost and kills Jato ‘Ratum, but discovers that the Banished stole the ring’s activation index from the weapon. He finds that the endless have a device called the liberator under a forerunner jungle and goes after it, but is defeated by the endless’ leader, the council master, which imprisons him inside a cylix.
Then there’s a flashback of Locke and Tanaka during operation BREAKER TRIP, discovering the Banished are on the ring. Believing they can stop them, the Spartans and a large group of marines infiltrate the house of reckoning, where Hyperius kills Tanaka and peels Locke off from his armor. Half a year after Chief’s imprisonment, Locke reunites with UNSC forces and retrieves his armor, and even helps bring down a banished scarab. However, he is heavily effected by Tanaka’s death. After freeing Palmer and Lasky from a Banished outpost, Locke follows Chief’s footsteps and frees him from the cylix.
Chief has a plan to destroy both the liberator and a manually activated Spire above by planting a bomb below the Spire. after he does that, however, Locke’s armor turns against Chief because the council master manipulated his armor. Chief locks down Locke’s armor after a boss fight, and they both escape on a razorback. When they’re rescued by the pilot, they go to his cockpit to see the Ark.
If the game was like Destiny and you have regular events I could see them more small scale side stories.
But this seems to be not the case, so the next game or DLC kind of has to be a big deal to push the narrative forward and bring people back. What might make sense as an update one month in won’t go down well in 2025. I think people want a much grander story and make it more of a war.
Plus, they left too many cliffhanger points to resolve. Yes, the fate of the Infinity and Locke/Laskey is part of that. But they’re likely to want to tie that into some of the bigger things. Two birds, one stone. Like the threat of the Endless, Atrioxes return/plan and the mystery of Zeta Halo.
Specifically I really don’t think we’ll be leaving Zeta Halo for a very long time. They’ve made the broken ring a key part of the story and so it wouldn’t make sense to run off to the Ark. Remember, Atriox left the Ark so he could go to Zeta Halo and release the Endless; so the core conflict is being based on this ring. The Banished stated goal is to turn the ring into a new homeworld now Doisac is gone. All this is grounding the story in this particular setting.
Will thing escalate? Yes, but that’s likely to involve the whole ring moving around.
When a ring is heavily damaged it returns to the Ark. In my story, the damage that Cortana caused from one side of the ring and the spire’s fall from the other almost destroyed the ring. Also Atriox has reinforcements on the Ark
1 Like
Cortana sent the ring into Slipspace presumably with the intent of deliberately stranding the Banished in the middle of nowhere; which they complain about in the intro cutscene about being stuck there.
So the ring isn’t acting under its normal Protocol because Cortana took it over and it’s strongly implied that fragments of her shattered conscience are in Zeta Halo; including being able to do things like open doors for Chief. If there was a programme for it to return to the Ark that would have been suppressed as the Banished would want it to go to the Ark. Which is precisely the outcome a character was trying to prevent.
Also, Zeta Halo has its own internal rebuilding facility which is what the Harbinger tries to do with the Spires. So there’s no reason for Zeta Halo to return to the Ark to escalate the stakes. They obviously created the Spires to keep the story on Zeta Halo and remove the reason for it to return to the Ark for repairs.
In addition, it’s quite likely that the damage inflicted was intentional and prevents the ring going to Slipspace.
Just from a narrative perspective the focus is on the mystery of Zeta Halo and its involvement in the imprisonment of the Endless. I can’t see them dropping that just to drag us to the Ark and making this about the Ark.
Yeah but now the ring is fractured from both sides