Greetings, Waypoint! I’m currently in the process of writing a fan-fiction that takes place a few months after Spartan Ops. I would like to use just a couple Spartan IVs, as we know there are hundreds of unnamed characters.
The Spartan IVs are currently trapped in a firefight with the rest of the team that are with, and I want to have one of said Spartan IVs die of his/her wounds. Now my main question here is, <mark>do the Spartan IVs have shields?</mark>
From what we see in the Spartan OPs cutscenes, they do not, as Madsen takes Light round to the arm, and it appears that they don’t have shields, but when Hoya is pummeled by a Knight, the shield indicator flashes at the top of his HUD when we get the view of inside his helmet.
Similarly, in the first scene, inside Thorne’s helmet, the same shield indicator is shown right where it should be for the player during the Spartan Ops campaign.
I recognize that there is not a lot of information released on the Spartan IVs yet, but I was thinking their armor was more like a combination of the MJOLNIR MARK VI worn by the Spartan IIs, and the SPI armor worn by the Spartan IIIs. This could give it the cheapness of the Spartan IIIs, with the durability of the Spartan IIs. (Without shields, of course…)
I’ve added a pole to see what the Waypoint community will think…
I’ve been told that there has been a Spartan Ops cinematic where we see a Spartan’s shields “flicker” as they go destroyed, but I can’t remember which Episode it is from.
I’ve been wondering the exact same thing as I am working on Halo fan fics of my own, too. What really annoys me is that 343i just called so many things in Halo 4 “canon” without giving proper (or any) explanations. In my opinion, Bungie did much better with explaining everything in the lore and games.
The SPARTAN-IVs do have shields, but I’d assume shield strength is significantly weaker in the cinematics to make the cinematics shorter and “action-packed”, as ZombieFrogHorde has already said. Also, do not mistake gameplay for canon. Weapon damage and shield strength in gameplay may not exactly be to scale in actual Halo lore.