The Didact *Spoiler Alert*

Community Halo Universe
1

So, I just got my hands on the 2 volume library edition of initiation and Escalation. On every page, there is a small blurb abouy the creative process or what was going on during the opening, writing, and development stages for that specific story thread. After rereading The Last 72 Hours I was sure the Didact was gone but Brian says he’s very much still out there.

What do you Spartans think about that? Personally I love the idea. I didn’t care for the boss like battles of H5 Warden (5 times really!?) and the H2 climax with Tartarus, but having a persistent villain like the Didact might help solve some of the problems in the Halo Lore…but then again…I’m just not sure, thinking back Truth was a wonderful villain and I was happy to watch Arby stab him instead of doing it myself, ala the weird Regret battle at the Zigurat on the lake…

Thoughts?

2

Halo is in some ways dangerously close to a trap adopting the worst trait shared by Marvel and DC. That is to say, Comic Book Death. When characters are repeatedly killed and brought back, death loses its gravitas, and the story looses the good faith of the fans because we know that anything can be undone without any real concequences.

The Didact was injured by a grenade and then fell through a portal through space. This apparent death was a fakeout because he was brought back in the comics, only to be killed again (on a piece of an activating Halo as it burns up entering a planet’s atmosphere) but this is again a fakeout because for no apparent reason the Composers (which the Didact canonically told his subordinates wouldn’t work on him) randomly activate and compose him. I don’t believe bringing him back would do the franchise more good than harm.

If Halo 6 crosses paths with the Spirit of Fire, then we can have the Banished as antagonists, which I believe would work extremely well.

3

He will come back,the question is only how and when.

4

> 2533274883501878;2:
> If Halo 6 crosses paths with the Spirit of Fire, then we can have the Banished as antagonists, which I believe would work extremely well.

I hope this is not the case primarily because unlike the Flood dynamic in previous games, the need to justify old Covenant archetype enemies like 343i has done in Halo 4 and 5 really takes away from developing the Forerunners/Created as primarily antagonists and it’s clearly been problematic thus far when it’s clear that 343i wants to have Forerunners/Forerunner type enemies at the forefront at this stage.

They need to commit to one or the other while having the other faction get scaled back. Having both faction archetypes getting the spotlight equally when there’s only so much space to fill in a campaign just serves as a detrimental rush that feels incomplete for both of them in the end. As much as I like the Banished as a faction, I’m hoping they don’t get shoehorned into being this big bad threat equal to the Created in the mainline game only to have the issue quickly rushed and resolved just as quickly as they’re introduced.

5

> 2533274799483156;4:
> > 2533274883501878;2:
> > If Halo 6 crosses paths with the Spirit of Fire, then we can have the Banished as antagonists, which I believe would work extremely well.
>
> I hope this is not the case primarily because unlike the Flood dynamic in previous games, the need to justify old Covenant archetype enemies like 343i has done in Halo 4 and 5 really takes away from developing the Forerunners/Created as primarily antagonists and it’s clearly been problematic thus far when it’s clear that 343i wants to have Forerunners/Forerunner type enemies at the forefront at this stage.
>
> They need to commit to one or the other while having the other faction get scaled back. Having both faction archetypes getting the spotlight equally when there’s only so much space to fill in a campaign just serves as a detrimental rush that feels incomplete for both of them in the end. As much as I like the Banished as a faction, I’m hoping they don’t get shoehorned into being this big bad threat equal to the Created in the mainline game only to have the issue quickly rushed and resolved just as quickly as they’re introduced.

I disagree. The Infinity is fleeing Cortana’s “Created,” and the only location the characters canonically know of that is beyond Cortana’s reach is the Ark, so it is perfectly viable for the Infinity (and possibly the Arbiter’s forces as well) to flee to the Ark.

At the Ark they’d rescue the Spirit of Fire from the Banished, possibly confront the Flood in the quarantine zone, and they’d be encountering previously unseen Forerunner technology along the way. As I’m imagining it within the Flood Quarantine Zone would be a database containing information on the Domain, prompting the Infinity to send Spartans to fight their way to it. This information once acquired, would inform them of how Bornstellar’s team rebooted the Domain a hundred thousand years before, and reveal the location of Maethrillian, possibly hinting at the existence of Abaddon. The Spartans would have to fight their way out of the quarantine zone, and what was left would be nuked/glassed by the capital ships. I believe all of this is enough for one game (Halo 6)

Then there’d be another spin-off game, then Halo 7 would conclude the Created Story Arc with the final push to Maethrillian, confronting Cortana’s forces along the way, likely having to sacrifice the Infinity to destract her, giving the Spartans the chance to infiltrate Maethrillian, and once inside, they’d have to face whatever Abaddon has created in the intermittant 100,000 years.

6

He’s second death wasn’t “death” at any point. It was pretty obvious that he got digitalized.

7

> 2533274883501878;5:
> > 2533274799483156;4:
> > > 2533274883501878;2:
> > > If Halo 6 crosses paths with the Spirit of Fire, then we can have the Banished as antagonists, which I believe would work extremely well.
> >
> > I hope this is not the case primarily because unlike the Flood dynamic in previous games, the need to justify old Covenant archetype enemies like 343i has done in Halo 4 and 5 really takes away from developing the Forerunners/Created as primarily antagonists and it’s clearly been problematic thus far when it’s clear that 343i wants to have Forerunners/Forerunner type enemies at the forefront at this stage.
> >
> > They need to commit to one or the other while having the other faction get scaled back. Having both faction archetypes getting the spotlight equally when there’s only so much space to fill in a campaign just serves as a detrimental rush that feels incomplete for both of them in the end. As much as I like the Banished as a faction, I’m hoping they don’t get shoehorned into being this big bad threat equal to the Created in the mainline game only to have the issue quickly rushed and resolved just as quickly as they’re introduced.
>
> I disagree. The Infinity is fleeing Cortana’s “Created,” and the only location the characters canonically know of that is beyond Cortana’s reach is the Ark, so it is perfectly viable for the Infinity (and possibly the Arbiter’s forces as well) to flee to the Ark.
>
> At the Ark they’d rescue the Spirit of Fire from the Banished, possibly confront the Flood in the quarantine zone, and they’d be encountering previously unseen Forerunner technology along the way. As I’m imagining it within the Flood Quarantine Zone would be a database containing information on the Domain, prompting the Infinity to send Spartans to fight their way to it. This information once acquired, would inform them of how Bornstellar’s team rebooted the Domain a hundred thousand years before, and reveal the location of Maethrillian, possibly hinting at the existence of Abaddon. The Spartans would have to fight their way out of the quarantine zone, and what was left would be nuked/glassed by the capital ships. I believe all of this is enough for one game (Halo 6)
>
> Then there’d be another spin-off game, then Halo 7 would conclude the Created Story Arc with the final push to Maethrillian, confronting Cortana’s forces along the way, likely having to sacrifice the Infinity to destract her, giving the Spartans the chance to infiltrate Maethrillian, and once inside, they’d have to face whatever Abaddon has created in the intermittant 100,000 years.

For the first part I think you’re missing the point of what I was getting at. I do not mind the Banished appearing in Halo 6. In fact, I welcome it and the Spirt of Fire alongside having the Ark as a location as it can provide a justifiable reason to expand the gameplay sandbox and lore implications for the game in the way the Infinity arriving on Requiem allowed players and the Chief to get access to the sandbox after being stranded there.

I’m talking about the use and emphasis of the Banished as a faction in relation to the story presentation itself and how it could possibly dilute where the story goes if 343i tries to give equal importance to all antagonistic factions in a single game. By your own theory, it’s highlighting the issue I’m bringing up story wise in how there would need to be a spin off game to conclude one story thread, and that’s just problematic. Each mainline game should stand on its own. A spin off shouldn’t be required to conclude a major story thread started in the mainline game. Spartan Ops from Halo 4 is problematic of this thanks to attempting trying to flesh out the Jul’s Covenant intentions despite attempting to set up the Didact as the primary antagonist. The latter suffered thanks to barely having any screentime to push balancing out the Covenant agenda. In Halo 5 it’s a similar issue where the mystery of the Forerunner resurgence thanks to Cortana is set up to be the primary antagonist… yet that in turn suffers to being relegated to a third of the game thanks in part to trying serve a secondary plot of completely ending Jul’s Covenant.

Now we have the Banished and still many splinter forces of Covenant for the game’s sandbox of usual suspects which will no doubt be used. But with the story in Halo 5 left off on focusing on the Created threat it would be an incredible shame if (for example let’s theoretically say the next game has 10 missions) the first 4 missions deal with the Created specifically, then the Banished and Spirit of Fire crews are met and the remaining 6 are focused on dealing with the Banished as the primary threat with the Created mixed in for the final mission. It’ll turn into another half step forward of half baked ideas trying to balance out who the primary antagonist will be in the context of story.

Halo CE did this well. Within universe the primary antagonist is by all means the Covenant. But within the context of just the game itself, the antagonist is set up to be anyone who gets control of Halo itself. From the moment the Flood are introduced, the primary concern for the story is getting control/preventing control of Halo from whatever the predominant threat is. The Flood become the most imminent threat and thus the threat of the Covenant is scaled back, but they’re still very much so present within subsequent levels with just a mere one level dedicated to the Flood as the only threat. So even though there’s a revolving door of enemies in the sandbox from the Covenant, Flood and Forerunner sentinels, they all serve their purpose to the plot sufficiently whilst still having purpose as cannon fodder to the players. Halo 4 (to a lesser degree of the three), Spartan Ops (worst contender) and Halo 5 (leaning on the border between worse and midrange) basically took that sandbox and just dumped everything in whilst throwing sufficient plot development of factions involved to the wind.
Currently we’ve got the Didact still waiting in the wings. The “Covenant” which is still guaranteed to be a faction archetype despite supposedly ending once and for all after Sunion (which is in of itself doubtful given how small a scale that battle was to be the end all similar to The Ark in Halo 3 or the Second Death Star assault in Star Wars, and that’s not even considering all the other splinter factions not calling themselves Covenant but still composed of the same enemy types and religious motivations) . The Banished. The Created. And we’re slowly getting more and more hints of the Flood and Precursors becoming a prominent force in the future. So while the sandbox of old enemies will for sure be there, it’s going to be an interesting endeavor to see how 343i is going to develop the varying factions involved in relation to whatever the main plot point Halo 6 will center on because there are a lot of new factions in play that barely get fleshed out as it is. And it’d be a shame if spin off games and other media like comics, novels etc become a crutch to explain events occurring in stand alone game stories.

8

> 2533274799483156;7:
> > 2533274883501878;5:
> > > 2533274799483156;4:
> > > > 2533274883501878;2:
> > > > If Halo 6 crosses paths with the Spirit of Fire, then we can have the Banished as antagonists, which I believe would work extremely well.

I clarified and defended my position which you critiqued to be a bad idea, initiating this conversation. I’m telling you that I understand what you’re saying, but I respectfully disagree. An over-arching narrative does not have to drive unerringly towards its conclusion. If done well, the twists and turns on the journey can make it a far more interesting experience.

I never suggested that all factions had to be equally represented, making this an instance of you misunderstanding what I’m saying. Halo 6 (as I suggested it to be) would at times feature the Banished, the Flood, and the Ark’s defenses (Sentinels, not Prometheans or Crawlers). This is not unmanagable, being as Halo CE, Halo 2, and Halo 3 all included the three enemy factions of Covenant, Flood, and Forerunner Sentinels.

Your second misunderstanding of my suggestion is in regards to the spin-off title, which would not be a branch-off from Halo 6’s story. It would be a tangential game set in the Halo universe, most likely licensed out to another developer (especially if it is a venture into another genre (like Halo Wars), but in this case possibly turn-based strategy commanding fleets of capital ships (like Halo Fleet Battles), or even an open world rpg (like Fallout 4). This provided 343 Industries more time to perfect Halo 7, while also giving us another piece of the Halo universe to consume in the intermittent time between Halo 6 & 7. The spin-off game would be a stand-alone game.

Back to Halo 6… The Infinity has already fled Cortana’s Created. Halo 6 can have an establishing cutscene, then launch into the Infinity’s rescue of the Spirit of Fire from a Banished attack. So the first few levels would be combating the Banished, reuniting with the Spirit of Fire, and making plans on what to do about Cortana. After the Banished are defeated (or at least pushed back out of a facility they’d controlled, the human forces could find out about a repository of Forerunner Knowledge on the Ark, that’s near enough to the Flood Quarantine Zone that it was infested in spite of the Banished’s best efforts. A team of Spartans fight their way in and recover the information, which when read back on the ship reveals that Cortana can be defeated if the Domain is forced to hard-reboot, wiping out Cortana and the other Created inhabiting the Domain with her. The Created would not be fought in Halo 6, but they would be the looming threat in the distance driving the push for knowledge and power. Halo 7 would be the final push to defeat Cortana, heading to Maethrillian (much like how Halo 3 was the final push to defeat the Flood, heading to the Ark)

I explained my reasoning why I don’t want to see the Didact in future games. You didn’t counter my reasoning, so I’ll leave it at that.

The Covenant Splinter Factions have no reason to appear in the versions of Halo 6 or 7 I suggested. Having the Banished, there’s no benefit of shoe-horning in other Covenant, so it was not part of the suggestion (the non-related spin-off game between Halo 6 & 7 could focus on other Covenant factions without affecting this story, if desired).

Dispite our lapses in communication, I believe your last point is something we can be sure we agree on. Plots from novels and comics shouldn’t be required reading to understand game plots, and story arcs begun in games should be concluded in games, not comics.

But I believe that when done well, it is perfectly fine for stories from other mediums to grant greater context to the stories in the games (such as how the Flood in their games have understandable motivations, even though careful reading of the Forerunner Trilogy shows that those motivations are a facade, concealing far different plans for the galaxy).

9

When John is asked “Did you kill him” he says “I would rather say he is contained for now”.

That leaves the door open for his return. It could look like he is digitized rather than burned up in Escalations from what I saw of it.

I did not care much for the Warden being introduced in Halo 5 I would have rather kept going after Didact and Jul to get to The Absolute Record with both parts of the Janus Key. Perhaps then the Warden could have been introduced maybe even with Cortana. Halo 5 just messed everything up for what had been a great lead up in Halo 4 and Spartan Ops

10

the didact obiusly got digitalized but as i was thinking ptrometheans as prymary enemys wouldnt work as well as the covenant or the flood but the idea of having the banished flood prometheans covenant remainings and the didact back would be very awesome in my point of view

11

> 2533274852968937;9:
> When John is asked “Did you kill him” he says “I would rather say he is contained for now”.
>
> That leaves the door open for his return. It could look like he is digitized rather than burned up in Escalations from what I saw of it.
>
> I did not care much for the Warden being introduced in Halo 5 I would have rather kept going after Didact and Jul to get to The Absolute Record with both parts of the Janus Key. Perhaps then the Warden could have been introduced maybe even with Cortana. Halo 5 just messed everything up for what had been a great lead up in Halo 4 and Spartan Ops

343 inserted so many new and random characters in H5 it was all one blurr. And fighting the Warden like 10 times…whoever at 343 thought was a good idea should be fired.

12

He got digitalized, and he’s probably going to get a new body in time for Halo 6

13

> 2535408730995228;3:
> He will come back, the question is only how and when.

If the 343 wants the Didact back into the halo timeline and story, they WILL bring him back, also, the book isn’t really new so this isn’t really a spoiler thread. But I cant talk because last year I wrote a thread on how sergeant Avery Johnson survived.

14

I thought Tartarus was a lot like the Didact actually, a villan with much potential that should have been in more than one Halo game, though Tartarus had a much better boss fight.

15

> 2533274799483156;7:
> > 2533274883501878;5:
> > > 2533274799483156;4:
> > > > 2533274883501878;2:
> > > > If Halo 6 crosses paths with the Spirit of Fire, then we can have the Banished as antagonists, which I believe would work extremely well.
> > >
> > > I hope this is not the case primarily because unlike the Flood dynamic in previous games, the need to justify old Covenant archetype enemies like 343i has done in Halo 4 and 5 really takes away from developing the Forerunners/Created as primarily antagonists and it’s clearly been problematic thus far when it’s clear that 343i wants to have Forerunners/Forerunner type enemies at the forefront at this stage.
> > >
> > > They need to commit to one or the other while having the other faction get scaled back. Having both faction archetypes getting the spotlight equally when there’s only so much space to fill in a campaign just serves as a detrimental rush that feels incomplete for both of them in the end. As much as I like the Banished as a faction, I’m hoping they don’t get shoehorned into being this big bad threat equal to the Created in the mainline game only to have the issue quickly rushed and resolved just as quickly as they’re introduced.
> >
> > I disagree. The Infinity is fleeing Cortana’s “Created,” and the only location the characters canonically know of that is beyond Cortana’s reach is the Ark, so it is perfectly viable for the Infinity (and possibly the Arbiter’s forces as well) to flee to the Ark.
> >
> > At the Ark they’d rescue the Spirit of Fire from the Banished, possibly confront the Flood in the quarantine zone, and they’d be encountering previously unseen Forerunner technology along the way. As I’m imagining it within the Flood Quarantine Zone would be a database containing information on the Domain, prompting the Infinity to send Spartans to fight their way to it. This information once acquired, would inform them of how Bornstellar’s team rebooted the Domain a hundred thousand years before, and reveal the location of Maethrillian, possibly hinting at the existence of Abaddon. The Spartans would have to fight their way out of the quarantine zone, and what was left would be nuked/glassed by the capital ships. I believe all of this is enough for one game (Halo 6)
> >
> > Then there’d be another spin-off game, then Halo 7 would conclude the Created Story Arc with the final push to Maethrillian, confronting Cortana’s forces along the way, likely having to sacrifice the Infinity to destract her, giving the Spartans the chance to infiltrate Maethrillian, and once inside, they’d have to face whatever Abaddon has created in the intermittant 100,000 years.
>
> For the first part I think you’re missing the point of what I was getting at. I do not mind the Banished appearing in Halo 6. In fact, I welcome it and the Spirt of Fire alongside having the Ark as a location as it can provide a justifiable reason to expand the gameplay sandbox and lore implications for the game in the way the Infinity arriving on Requiem allowed players and the Chief to get access to the sandbox after being stranded there.
>
> I’m talking about the use and emphasis of the Banished as a faction in relation to the story presentation itself and how it could possibly dilute where the story goes if 343i tries to give equal importance to all antagonistic factions in a single game. By your own theory, it’s highlighting the issue I’m bringing up story wise in how there would need to be a spin off game to conclude one story thread, and that’s just problematic. Each mainline game should stand on its own. A spin off shouldn’t be required to conclude a major story thread started in the mainline game. Spartan Ops from Halo 4 is problematic of this thanks to attempting trying to flesh out the Jul’s Covenant intentions despite attempting to set up the Didact as the primary antagonist. The latter suffered thanks to barely having any screentime to push balancing out the Covenant agenda. In Halo 5 it’s a similar issue where the mystery of the Forerunner resurgence thanks to Cortana is set up to be the primary antagonist… yet that in turn suffers to being relegated to a third of the game thanks in part to trying serve a secondary plot of completely ending Jul’s Covenant.
>
> Now we have the Banished and still many splinter forces of Covenant for the game’s sandbox of usual suspects which will no doubt be used. But with the story in Halo 5 left off on focusing on the Created threat it would be an incredible shame if (for example let’s theoretically say the next game has 10 missions) the first 4 missions deal with the Created specifically, then the Banished and Spirit of Fire crews are met and the remaining 6 are focused on dealing with the Banished as the primary threat with the Created mixed in for the final mission. It’ll turn into another half step forward of half baked ideas trying to balance out who the primary antagonist will be in the context of story.
>
> Halo CE did this well. Within universe the primary antagonist is by all means the Covenant. But within the context of just the game itself, the antagonist is set up to be anyone who gets control of Halo itself. From the moment the Flood are introduced, the primary concern for the story is getting control/preventing control of Halo from whatever the predominant threat is. The Flood become the most imminent threat and thus the threat of the Covenant is scaled back, but they’re still very much so present within subsequent levels with just a mere one level dedicated to the Flood as the only threat. So even though there’s a revolving door of enemies in the sandbox from the Covenant, Flood and Forerunner sentinels, they all serve their purpose to the plot sufficiently whilst still having purpose as cannon fodder to the players. Halo 4 (to a lesser degree of the three), Spartan Ops (worst contender) and Halo 5 (leaning on the border between worse and midrange) basically took that sandbox and just dumped everything in whilst throwing sufficient plot development of factions involved to the wind.
> Currently we’ve got the Didact still waiting in the wings. The “Covenant” which is still guaranteed to be a faction archetype despite supposedly ending once and for all after Sunion (which is in of itself doubtful given how small a scale that battle was to be the end all similar to The Ark in Halo 3 or the Second Death Star assault in Star Wars, and that’s not even considering all the other splinter factions not calling themselves Covenant but still composed of the same enemy types and religious motivations) . The Banished. The Created. And we’re slowly getting more and more hints of the Flood and Precursors becoming a prominent force in the future. So while the sandbox of old enemies will for sure be there, it’s going to be an interesting endeavor to see how 343i is going to develop the varying factions involved in relation to whatever the main plot point Halo 6 will center on because there are a lot of new factions in play that barely get fleshed out as it is. And it’d be a shame if spin off games and other media like comics, novels etc become a crutch to explain events occurring in stand alone game stories.

Precursors are gonna be enemies in a game?!?!?

16

The likely answer is that they planned to use the Didact in Halo 5, and wanted to continue that plotline between 4 and 5, but didn’t want to have Halo 4’s problem of half the story being in expanded media.

It’s less a case of comic book death, and probably more writing the story to end in a way that they can move into Halo 5 without having to reference it. For someone that only played the games, they’d just be able to assume that the Didact ended up how he did due to Halo 4, rather than the comic.

17

I really rather liked the Didact. I was hoping there would be some reveal that the Warden was him…

18

> 2533274842918190;16:
> The likely answer is that they planned to use the Didact in Halo 5, and wanted to continue that plotline between 4 and 5, but didn’t want to have Halo 4’s problem of half the story being in expanded media.
>
> It’s less a case of comic book death, and probably more writing the story to end in a way that they can move into Halo 5 without having to reference it. For someone that only played the games, they’d just be able to assume that the Didact ended up how he did due to Halo 4, rather than the comic.

Uh. . . guys halo 5 came out like two years ago and. . . the didact is not in it.

19

> 2535410704700107;18:
> > 2533274842918190;16:
> > The likely answer is that they planned to use the Didact in Halo 5, and wanted to continue that plotline between 4 and 5, but didn’t want to have Halo 4’s problem of half the story being in expanded media.
> >
> > It’s less a case of comic book death, and probably more writing the story to end in a way that they can move into Halo 5 without having to reference it. For someone that only played the games, they’d just be able to assume that the Didact ended up how he did due to Halo 4, rather than the comic.
>
> Uh. . . guys halo 5 came out like two years ago and. . . the didact is not in it.

I’m working under the assumption that that was the intent when the comic was written.

Halo games have a habit of eleventh hour rewrites and rebuilds. And given that Halo 5 marketing was vastly different to the final product, and Halo 5 brings little over from Halo 4, odds are Cortana’s resurrection was part of the rewrite process.