In Halo 5 this takes less than ten seconds. Even if Atriox only needed 4 minutes to destroy the Infinity that’s still more than enough time to deploy the Weapon.
I mean I am not entirely sure why the Chief would need to collect Cortana in the first place. If the Weapon can lock Cortana down and remove her from the Domain and she has her own deletion protocol what prevents her from deleting Cortana on the spot? An elaborate ceremony seems unnecessary.
Also just as an aside. The Weapon is depicted as this really innocent character. But she didn’t have any questions about killing somebody when asked? You could have been asked to kill a Saint or blow a planet up. That’s a big red flag there.
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the difference in the first is the infinity may have just jumped in system when it happened. so maybe there is a cool down period or were attacked immediately by ramming disrupting command and control, where as with the guardian they had been just sitting there a good while and the guardian had to charge up. (just my guess).
As for having a AI to lock out regular Cortana and then picking her up for deletion may have just been a contrivance for the sake of the plot. But also could have been that they may have wanted to examine Cortana after the fact. She did have a lot of data regarding the forerunners and they did not want the weapon having it. They may have feared the weapon having the info and being driven to the same logic, which is why they made the weapon to be a single use tool.
Also Weapon is a program, sentient but still built with a purpose. Mr.meseeks is a great example. It was built to kill Cortana, she knew her mission and purpose. Even her avatar is a example of her core trait, she is Loyal to the UNSC and the chief. The weapon is also very straight laced at first as well. Openly advocating for her own deletion. She trusts the superiors and was committed to the mission. Kind of like how a fresh recruit can be innocent and hopeful but is given a rifle and pointed at a enemy. They may wonder what the enemy did that was so bad to deserve death, but a fight is not a time to be philosophical.
It is the common trope in war stories. a fresh faced recruit who believes in the cause only to discover his cause isn’t as noble as first thought. Then either rebelling against his faction or finding a reason to continue the fight but being a bit more jaded as they lose their innocence.
For the weapon it seems like her arch is the fact she was made as a copy of a monster. So she is innocent as she has not done anything monstrous yet. But rather she is trying to avoid that same path.
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Bit of an assumption and how would Atriox possibly time the attack that precisely. You’d have to know exactly where and when the Infinity would be there. Since this isn’t presented as a mystery or questioned by the characters in what’s meant to be a simple game it’s far too contrived. There’s nowhere to hide in space and the Guardian would kill them if they just waited around.
If they thought they could rely on the Weapon to shoot first and then kill herself I don’t see why they wouldn’t trust her with killing Cortana. If they trust her enough to kill herself that’s pretty absolute.
That’s not a good thing though. Imagine if the Weapon was that blindly loyal to a malicious political regime. Go kill these people. Make arrangements to see it done. It runs counter to the character supposedly being compassionate. Also if the Weapon knows nothing like what a Banished is how does she know what humans and the UNSC are?
Also there’s no narrative tension in an arc regarding the Weapon at risk of becoming like Evil Cortana. If you retcon the character offscreen then you’re obviously never going there with the clone.
Yeah but they establish that the Chief considers it a failure that he didn’t protect Cortana and they very deliberately position Atriox in the flashbacks so that you’re hating him for that as well. It’s a little off that the Chiefs okay with the character who put the noose around Cortanas neck. I’d want nothing to do with the clone. But you can’t have it both ways where the Chief is mourning Cortana but okay with being friends with the clone that had a hand in her death and is trying to take her place.
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It isn’t that much of a assumption. Most scifi universes have methods of tracking incoming ships. Halo is no exception as this ability has already been displayed in halo 2 and reach. its not exactly a new tactic in halo either. the infinity is seen doing something similar to a covenant ship. it comes out from slip space and rams it. As for specifics of a ambush, your right that it is not given to us, nor questioned. But I guess I don’t put too much thought into that being weird since ships are blown up all the time. Plus the master chief was on it when it happened so why would be question is to hard? It is why I think that the tutorial mission should have been the ambush and escape from the infinity rather than the banished ship. Also for the fight to have been more than 4 minutes. Because it would be more interesting and believable.
There is a cool concept I saw in another scifi series called expeditionary force. It basically says that in space how you fight is primarily based on sensor data. But the trick is the data is minutes maybe hours out of date by the time it reaches you, so you must predict what they will do. Halo has not gone over that idea before but would be interesting to see.
as for the weapon VS Cortana, this is where I am kinda confused. The UNSC is not benevolent. They are such a regime, just cause who they fight is usually worse doesn’t mean they are good. However what the UNSC is scared of is the weapon taking the same path, that may be linked to how Cortana looks at the information or a particular experience. by taking memories or information away you can change how a person develops. That is why when manipulating people you only give them access to info you want them to have. Their plan very clearly relied on manipulating the weapon and ending both Cortana and the weapon before anything could come of it. a specific one time use. the Banished attack was not taken into account. it isn’t a good plan or even rational but it is a desperate one of people who have become paranoid of their own creations. Reminds me of the geth and quarrians from mass effect and how all it took was one justified robot rebellion for all of the galaxy to say no more sentient AI, ever for any reason.
I do not think it runs counter to the being compassionate. good intentions with bad beliefs/info is always a horrible mix. the greatest evils of reality have all been committed for the “greater good” or for the victims “own good”. You are correct that if placed in the wrong hands the weapon would be a real problem. Not the UNSCs first time though. remember the flood experiments?
But if you really think about it 343 wrote themselves into a hole in halo 5. This is them trying to write their way out of it. I happy the story was more coherent than halo 5 and built on halo 4s idea of exploring character emotions(the del rio scenes made no sense). This game clearly is acting as a soft reboot after halo 5 dropped the ball.
If you hated atriox after those flash back scenes then we process info differently. I felt bad for the guy and felt that he was justified in his anger. Attacking the infinity made no sense. He was angry at Cortana so he blew up people going to kill her? seems weird to me. Pretty much his motivations puzzle me more than methods. But I thought it was a great scene where he is the one to storm in and not the chief.
It was something she had not expected which stands in contrast to her arrogance earlier.
As for the chief being ok with the new AI, idk if he is happy about it at first. But I think this is a sort of, “I cannot operate without some sort of help” and then gradually warms up to her. He mourned in halo 5, I thought in this one he was more resolved to get the job done this time. He Confirmed the kill of the old Cortana and stopping the banished operation.
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That’s far too convenient that he has a neat ambush all set up. Doesn’t make any sense.
If you listen to the Atriox towers you get his philosophy. He is a Brute Nationalist who believes the old ways held his people back from their great Destiny. That the Brutes are in danger of having their freedom taken by the oppressive and obviously tyrannical humans. It was their plot to use the Created to control the Galaxy. So we need to exterminate humanity by using the power of the Halo rings so that we can be strong and achieve our destiny. He doesn’t have a square moustache but he’s on point other than that.
Plus every Brute you meet is a monster who enjoys massacring innocent civilians and eating their flesh. This does not endear me to them.
Why should I invest in a story if they retcon it every game? The level of hand waving and retcons they’ve had to bring to bear to fabricate this plot is pretty bad. Halo 5 had a major cliffhanger and brought in some universe changing events. So what, UNSC back to normal, everything rosey with AI again, like a bad dream; okay. It was confusing because they didn’t bother to expand on the post Halo 5 Created lore (because they planned to retcon it) for 6 years and spent that time writing about everything other than that. See, you can’t accuse them of retcons if they don’t write about it; big brain move that.
How do I know that if this game nose dives they don’t change course again?
You could have wrote an interesting story with Halo 5, they were hardly in a corner. They just threw the towel in like they did with the Halo 4 and Spartan Ops plots; only they were much less significant. I was more interested in the flashback stuff than the Banished never getting close to firing an array or the Endless doing something something dark side.
Yes, because a Covenant Remnant faction trying to fire a Halo ring is original and has never been done in a book or game.
Yeah but the Weapon isn’t Cortana. The magic of that came from playing the previous games so that when they asked you to care it worked. Why should I care about this clone who I know nothing about and have no stake in keeping alive? As I said, I don’t believe anyone would want to be near somebody who is a permanent reminder of what you consider your greatest failure and had a hand in killing Cortana. It’s just weird and it’s an attempt by 343 to pretend like nothing has changed from Halo 3. They throw that quote from Halo 4 around a lot and don’t seem to have got the meaning and sentiment behind that.
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you keep saying they retconned it. what do you think the word means?
as I know it the word means that they changed a piece of the story that has already been added to cannon. Like how Halo reach retcons the entirety of the battle of reach depicted in halo fall of reach.
another example is how they retconned the forerunners into being separate from humanity.
Or how halo 2 and 3s between game timelines are really screwy (due to the additions of halo ODST and their starting positions in the games)
I could go on, even bungie made a habit of changing cannon in post. it is a issue with long standing series. star wars, star trek, terminator, pretty much any long running series ends up having them. Anime series have them the most. so do comics.
however as far I know halo infinite just didn’t do a idea for the story they had in mind when working on halo 5. but that’s not really a retcon, just a revision of a draft.
either way while you were writing this up I went out into the cold Alaska winds to grab some beer for the weekend.(roads are real icy so I didn’t drive) and remembered a video one of the halo lore channels made that has a better theory for how it was taken out. I doubt it will help because your anger seems to be less to do with the plausibility of the ambush and more just the whole game not delivering on the created storyline, as well as just being frustrated at the direction of the story/ artistic integrity of the writers. but I will link it anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teSL7–SGHU&t=870s&ab_channel=Installation00
That’s semantics. Infinite ends with the Chief back with normal untainted Cortana as the UNSC prepares to fight the Covenant who want to fire a Halo ring. That’s telling the audience that we’re back to doing normal Halo adventures as they’ve done the bare minimum to lay the past to rest. Really they only did what they did so they could sell Cortana 2.0.
If you don’t acknowledge something and write it out of the story that’s basically a retcon. It means that those plot lines have been permanently cut and erased from the canon. They aren’t going to drive future plot or story beats. They aren’t going to be brought up or mentioned and I reckon the next DLC will have even less reference to it.
To take an example. You might think these characters would have a lot more to say regarding the fate of Earth. What’s happened to my family? Are they alright? What happened after we beat them? Nothing. Not a whisper, not a query. It’s written as if we shouldn’t ask the question and from that Id infer that it’s status quo again. Nothings wrong. So, yeah, that’s a retcon. Earth should have drastically changed as a result of being taken over and occupied by AI for a year. Flipping a switch and saying yep, UNSC back; nothing to see. That’s a retcon. No consequences means it didn’t happen. Doesn’t matter if they acknowledge something vague and I’ll defined happened in a cutscene if it has no bearing on the plot.
I mean, the Chief is going to walk around the UNSC with a copy of the AI that conquered them and nobody is going to demand she be destroyed? Really? None of the marines have thus far. I don’t think we’re meant to question this too much.
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Probably for the same reason Pillar of Autumn didn’t when the Covenant were already upon them when they fled from Reach.
I agree, it feels like course correction, everything from story narrative to the art styles. The Spartans of halo 4+5 looked almost too sci-fi for the series including Chief. Elites are back to the original aesthetic as well.
I just hate that Blue Team suffered massively from halo 5. Hopefully they get another shot to be shown as the chief’s family in a future installment.
As for the future I hope we never see another Guardian, and I hope the endless are not time manipulators that open up a multiverse… I despise multiverses, they open up too much confusion and a sure sign of creative bankruptcy.
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Early in the campaign, Master Chief checks for any other UNSC ships, and the Infinity is definitively listed as missing… not destroyed, when all of the other ships are listed as destroyed. Based on the audio-logs, we hear that the Captain ordered a full evacuation, but that doesn’t completely preclude Roland from making an emergency jump afterwards.
By the way. It’s mentioned in one of the Laskey audio logs that they deployed the Weapon remotely and later I think Chief tells the Weapon that Atriox came for her.
So, Atriox took her chip from the Infinity, used his magic Slipspace crystal to teleport to the SA and that’s how the Weapon was there when all this happened? 
I am guessing if Atriox can teleport wherever he wants then he could just go straight into the Infinity’s engine room or sensor deck.
I did not notice the scan at the beginning pinging the infinity as MIA instead of KIA. I just took the many red blips as KIA pings. But you know I didn’t think of Roland jumping away afterward. that is certainly possible. The banished certainly think the infinity is gone. But either they are unreliable narrators, or it could have gotten away but the slip space jump made it look like it blew up.
wouldn’t be the first time people teleported on the ship with Forerunner tech sorcery. Spartan ops showed people teleporting in and off the infinity all the time.
Yeah in the audiologs it’s a different Dumb AI that seems to act as the Infinity’s AI when it’s speaking to the Spartans.
So, maybe Laskey took Roland with him, or asked Palmer to mirroring how the Chief was given Cortana.
I must say, they decide to abandon ship really quickly. I’d love to know how many Banished are on these Dreadnoughts to be such a problem for a few hundred Spartans.
It’s just a little odd to think that Atriox must have got the Weapon, or else her AI chip would still be on the Infinity; wherever that’s gone.