I’m sure by now you’ve all heard about Halo 5’s misleading marketing in regards to the story. The various advertisements had us believing that the Master Chief was activating the Guardians for unknown reasons, that ONI officially declares him dead, and that the UNSC secretly sends Osiris to hunt him down and stop him.
If you’ve beaten Halo 5’s campaign, you know that this isn’t exactly what happened. So then why in Hunt the Truth does Ilsa Zane mention that Master Chief is dead? What led people to believe this?
There’s no particular conflict in the story line - Halo 5 didn’t mention the chief being dead, as it wasn’t relevant to the narrative of Halo 5. Chief goes ‘AWOL’ and Osiris is sent to bring him back. In ‘Hunt the Truth’ the world is informed of Chief’s ‘Death’, as a PR exercise (help cement the hero image, given that at the time, it wasn’t known as to what the Chief was doing - causing the problem, or what). What happens next is another matter - do they resurrect him? Given the chaos with the AI going nuts throughout human space, having some bad combat intel is easily explained (the local AI was already on board with Cortana and contributed to the deception). Similarly, the fact that the Chief was unaccounted for, for a period of time, is equally explainable - either the local AI was causing a bad feed, or Chief saw an opportunity to pursue the root cause and due to the disruptions couldn’t provide feedback to the UNSC (and no doubt a dozen more ways to spin it).
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> I’m sure by now you’ve all heard about Halo 5’s misleading marketing in regards to the story. The various advertisements had us believing that the Master Chief was activating the Guardians for unknown reasons, that ONI officially declares him dead, and that the UNSC secretly sends Osiris to hunt him down and stop him.
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> If you’ve beaten Halo 5’s campaign, you know that this isn’t exactly what happened. So then why in Hunt the Truth does Ilsa Zane mention that Master Chief is dead? What led people to believe this?
Because 343 lied.Way I see it, it was all just a massive misdirection campaign. But it just makes the story more awkward when pretty much none of it mattered.
Per the Collector’s Edition materials, ONI gave Locke confidential orders to eliminate the Chief if he couldn’t be brought in peacefully. There was also concern that the Chief was connected with the Guardian’s activation. No one realizes that the Chief isn’t in league with Cortana until Osiris catches up with him on Genesis.
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> > 2533274876456769;1:
> > I’m sure by now you’ve all heard about Halo 5’s misleading marketing in regards to the story. The various advertisements had us believing that the Master Chief was activating the Guardians for unknown reasons, that ONI officially declares him dead, and that the UNSC secretly sends Osiris to hunt him down and stop him.
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> > If you’ve beaten Halo 5’s campaign, you know that this isn’t exactly what happened. So then why in Hunt the Truth does Ilsa Zane mention that Master Chief is dead? What led people to believe this?
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> Because 343 lied.Way I see it, it was all just a massive misdirection campaign. But it just makes the story more awkward when pretty much none of it mattered.
Like hell they did.
Did Chief go AWOL, with his objective ultimately unknown? Yep.
Did Osiris hunt Blue Team? Yep. Just not antagonistically the whole time.
Did they all hunt the truth behind the Guardians? Yep.
So, what did 343i lie about?
Was the marketing exactly depicting the game’s full plot? No, it never has. Halo 2 and 3’s marketing campaigns were widly off from the actual story. And revealing much past the Chief going AWOL would have revealed the biggest plot point in Halo 5, Cortana. Like the direction or not, it’s common sense that they wouldn’t focus on that. So they worked with the AWOL part and gave us an inside look of how ONI operates and responds to all this and how fragile the state of the colonies is.
Chief’s “death” is absolutely still relevant. When he went AWOL and appeared on Meridian, ONI announced him dead. The colonies are on the brink of open rebellion, ONI is stuggling to contain and respond to catastrophic events on planets, and Chief potentially defecting would give rebel groups all the reason they need to bolster their cause for a final push. Chief was declared dead to stop the potential dissent if people found out he might have defected, and it makes it easier for Osiris to move in and hunt him down.