It’s 500 years in the future, wouldn’t we have vehicles that didn’t require wheels anymore? I know Bungie (and now 343) want(ed) to ground the Halo Universe in a real world setting. But if we can build spacecrafts that can travel at the speed of light, wouldn’t we have more advanced vehicles? Your thoughts?
Because it’d make the aliens seem less alien. Otherwise you’d have the blocky bullet-firing ghost vs the sleek purple plasma firing ghost. Instead we have a clear distinction in how vehicles of the two factions function.
I think one of the halo 4 maps had flying cars in the background though. Wheeled vehicles are probably just more reliable and safer.
Good question. Probably would be cool for lore reasons but I wouldn’t care for it in multiplayer. We already have the ghost and that’s enough for me.
We have the Kestrel in Spartan Strike and possibly Halo 5, but that hovers on propellers rather than anti-grav tech
I would argue that the UNSC would not really need to upgrade the types of vehicles they had. Similar to the swords and shields of Rome, if a weapons platform works, why change it? I’m sure there were upgrades to the tires and machinery of the vehicles (I doubt you can find Warthog tires at Bridgestone for example) but the UNSC seems to have excelled with the tried and true methods of the past. You have the tires and tank treads of the Warthogs and Scorpions for a specific set of missions and air power for others. As far as I can tell, the anti-grav of the Covenant vehicles offer no significant difference to the UNSC’s methods of propulsion. This may be due to gameplay concerns, but my guess is that they are more or less equal. The only major difference comes in the form of the various weapons both factions place on their vehicles (this is where the Covenant has an advantage as plasma>projectiles).
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> Because it’d make the aliens seem less alien. Otherwise you’d have the blocky bullet-firing ghost vs the sleek purple plasma firing ghost. Instead we have a clear distinction in how vehicles of the two factions function.
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> I think one of the halo 4 maps had flying cars in the background though. Wheeled vehicles are probably just more reliable and safer.
Since I’ve never been a fan of flying cars in sci-fi, I prefer to think of the blinking lights flying through the air as just a bunch of transport crafts.
I look at technology think that it’s what humans rely on. We created starships and the slipspace drive as well as terraforming gadgets because Earth was becoming to crowded, which would hinder our survival. Hover vehicles have no real purpose to our survival means so we don’t need them. Same with plasma weapons, yes it burns and hurts like hell, but it doesn’t get something lodged in your body like a lead bullet would.
The reason the Covenant have these things is because the Forerunners had it and they reversed engineered their old tech and made it their own. We advance our technology so that we have a better chance of survival, we focus on those that will allow us to survive as a species. Hover technology, while cool, serves no purpose.
That is why I believe Halo has a realistic idea of what the future will be like. We have colonized space, we have highly advanced medical and military gear to the point where glasses and more are not needed. We don’t have chrome buildings, robots and androids, flying cars, laser guns, or any of that stuff we see in media. Humanity in 2552 have heavy use of science, while at the same time keeping in tact with what keeps us human.
Wart hogs can fall from space and still work fine.
That’s good engineering.