> What are you hoping to see and find out in Escalation?
What I’m looking forward to most in Escalation is the fact that it feels like something genuinely new to be honest, and not something that is merely passed off as being set post Halo 3. Spartan Ops, Spartan Assault and most of Halo 4 didn’t feel as if they were anything all that different from any other prequel game set in the Human-Covenant war. With a very few minor exceptions in their plots, they followed the same plot structure that the waning days of the Bungie era suffered from like with Reach, Bloodlines, Helljumper and Halo Wars and that was disappointing because that plot structure became so monotonous. Fighting Covenant over a Forerunner mystery, and humans save the day. The plot of Escalation actually sounds like something that deserves to be taken seriously as actually being post Halo 3 rather than just rehashing old concepts over and over again.
The Brutes and Elites willing to talk opens up many possibilities for future stories and ideas to be explored in the fiction, and I’m pleased that Halo 2’s story seems to be getting expanded upon rather than just being tossed in the gutter for a regression like Kilo 5 tried to do; adopting an analytical and problem solving mindset in exploring post war issues rather than being fatalistic about them and just rolling over and accepting it.
It’s possible that the Human-Covenant War and the Great Schism has broken the backs of the Brute’s and Elite’s warrior cultures, and that they are now willing to sit down and talk rather than draw swords. Given their prior disinclination towards each other something has to have changed in order for them to attempt this. Even though it’s just the Arbiter, he has to have some political backing and support even if not all Elites would agree with it. Same for the Brutes. The amount of destruction and death they caused in both conflicts, both to each other and the Humans, might have rotted away at their pride nationalistic mindset, turning their militaristic romanticism into a contempt for war. It’s sort of happened before in Human culture; WWI was sort of a wake up call for the world that it probably wasn’t so great anymore to conduct wars. The glorious pitched battle between two musket wielding armies and the booming of Falconets was replaced with soldiers dying in mud and filth and trenches as they convulsed in clouds of Mustard gas, and as they were mowed down by gun nests without even a chance of killing a single enemy. The Human war has maybe started to sink in, and perhaps a certain shame over their past behaviour makes them weary and willing to distance themselves from it all. I think I’d like to see something like that explored, as a cultural change is really what is needed for peace to be something plausible at all.
> What are you afraid of happening?
A league of Nations.
> And what has the events on Requiem done to the already turbulent Post-War galaxy?
I’m surprised Thel still has any power left after the Ur-Didact basically vindicated the Prophets. Evidently his Human alliance survived politically in some form, though that’s probably got more to do with the fact that the UNSC basically just have the Elites at gun point with threat of Infinity rather than there being any acceptance or understanding there, so I imagine that it might not have that much effect even if the Elites reverted to wish to continue their Jihad. Nevertheless I’d have improved trust in 343i’s writers if they foresaw the consequences of resurrecting a Forerunner enemy to Humanity, and subsequently planned to deal with those issues later on. Or maybe they have done something far more nuanced than just blind faith again and showed these sapient species’ potential for independent thought.
I’m sure ONI will be hard at work spreading news that Jul’s Covenant suffered a crushing defeat at Requiem. I’d imagine that now that Humanity can actually win fights it is even easier to spread those lies.