With all of the buzz about the who the main antagonist will be in Halo 5 on both here and the Halo Archive, I’m starting to think that instead of fighting to stop a specific villain, such as the Gravemind, the Didact, or Jul 'Mdama, we’ll be fighting to stop a specific inevitable conflict:
Intergalactic war.
The true enemies in Halo have been, and will always continue to be, the Flood/Precursors. However, with them only being properly explored in the games hidden within text-based terminals, suddenly having the Primordial’s prophecy all come to place during Halo 5 is a bit of a stretch in terms of story progression. That being said, I don’t think that Halo 5 will focus us on stopping the Flood, nor do I think that it will focus on us stopping a specific villain.
Halo: Escalation has tripled the amount of factions within the Halo Universe. No longer are we fighting a simple two-way war against the Covenant, but now, NOW, we’re fighting a war not only against ourselves, but with everyone in existence. Each faction, large or small, young or old, wants to pull out the blood-vessels of anyone who’s not them.
The New Colonial Alliance wants to topple the UEG. Jul 'Mdama wants to prevent humanity from going full imperialist against the weakened Sangheili. Avu med Telcam wants to give the Arbiter the Oberyn Martell treatment. The Office of Naval Intelligence wants to indirectly wipe out anyone that’s not a human.
There are hundreds of factions out there, each of them right and wrong in their own ways. While none of them pose a dire threat on their own, the political fragmentation that is occurring from the bloodbath that we call the Great Schism is giving our good friends, who are already pissed off, the Floodcursors, a perfect time to quickly and efficiently take control over every living thing in existence.
This concept, the galactic “Cold War” ties in pretty well to both the Halo 5 E3 2013 Trailer and the recent trailer for Halo 2: Anniversary. Last year’s E3 showed us a tease of the Master Chief seemingly finding his own way through the semi-uninhabitable wastelands that now define the Lesser Ark. The announcement for H2A/TMCC showed us the Arbiter giving Agent Locke a very concerning speech about the conditions that are currently facing all who inhabit the planes of Living Time.
We can easily conclude that the Master Chief is on the Ark to find Mendicant Bias, but the intentions behind Thel 'Vadam’s speech can be heavily interpreted.
When I first heard the Arbiter say “because all of our lives are at stake”, the return of the Flood was the first thing that came to my mind. However, as I’ve stated many times before in this post, it may not be the return of the Flood just yet.
All of our lives are at stake not because the Flood is frolicking through galactic meadows and dancing to the music of mental torture, or because Jul 'Mdama has a 50-50 chance of getting access to every Forerunner artifact in existence, our lives are at stake because the Milky Way galaxy is like a malnourished lamb that cannot stand on its own. There’s no leadership, no unity.
And with Halo 5, we’re fighting to stop that war from fully escalating. We’re not simply killing aliens, or protecting humans, we’re protecting the very freedom for all of those that linger with the change that is thought.
For if we continue to slaughter each other, the Flood will return, and bring us all unity.