Divine wind is literally a sequel to awaken the nightmare 100% canon and even if it weren’t withing the logic of bungie era halo, halo 3 didn’t do anything to stop the floods return just a delay at most.
Flood is being replaced by flappy hover grunts. Flappy hover grunts are worse than the Flood according to Cortana.
And this is why I hate 343.
RETCON
RETCON
RETCON
Halo 3 was the end of The Flood. The Gravemind moved High Charity onto The Ark and John activated a Halo Ring to cleanse it.
But then Halo Wars 2 came around and said “acktually The Gravemind was able to shelter the flood inside of a shielded barrier that somehow kept the flood safe inside.”
Which in all honestly is a load of bull, considering that a Halo ring’s blast went through the shields of EVERY SHIP THAT THE FLOOD HAD INFECTED DURING THE FORERUNNER-FLOOD WAR ACROSS THE GALAXY.
The only Flood that exist now are the small samples left inside the Halo Rings and whatever possible outbreaks that might be contained within contaminated Shield Worlds like the one from Halo Wars 1.
BUT 343 insists on retconning EVERYTHING they like for the sake of having a story, that while good on its own, breaks the spirit of the series narrative as a whole.
Humans are Forerunners?
“NOPE NOT ANYMORE ! Here are three books that explain our new universe backstory, please feel free to ignore all the stuff in Halo CE thru 3 that points to the fact that Humans are Forerunners.”
An unessessary art style change?
“Master Chief’s set of Mark VI was unique and it had nanobots that repair it. Cortana redesigned his armor from the ground up to pass the time.”
A lazy excuse to explain the art style change in the missions prior to regrouping with the UNSC Infinity, since it changed all of the weapons, vehicles, and the Forward Unto Dawn to become a Strident-Class Frigate instead of a Charon-Class Light Frigate.
Oh and also, how did Cortana miraculously redesign John’s armor so that his Exosuit and hand-guards matched that of the Spartan IVs?
Retcons
are
lazy
and
insulting.
2 Likes
You have a whole lot of errors here. So ill reply to each paragraph in order.
Bungie retconned all the time, reach, Johnson surviving, the prophet of truth being a believer then being not a beliver or maybe being a beliver, beta 3s on reach and so on.
Halo 3 in 2007 made no sense.
We didn’t fire the ring we blew it up and it didn’t eradicate the flood or at least there was no reason to believe it did. This was a huge debate on bungie.net.
HW2 only stated that some of the parasites survived inside the shields on high charity that would protect from a normal explosion on the arc. ON, not blowing the ark itself.
Again we did not fire the ring.
Yes? As was the case in the bungie games on their own.
Nope is pretty much identical to the prior approach to story.
Halo 3 states humanity aren’t forerunners first though.
Marty o donnek just liked the line so they put it in for no reason.
The books actually serve to explain the inconsistencies in bungies writting that contradicted itself in the games so it would actually make some sense.
Ya I didn’t like the art change or logic but no worse than suddenly having loads of new suits appear on reach that contradicted the lore or the entire story for that matter or how did johns armour change colour and design and get those new gauntletwhile he was on the keyship oh right bungie didn’t care enough to even pretend to have an answer.
By all means give criticism but be fair and don’t act like anything you said was new when 343i showed up. We all have nostalgia for bungies halo but they weren’t THAT great at continuity either they just told less ambitious stories post halo 2.
Johnson Surviving wasn’t ret-conned.
You had a fun bonus scene if you beat the game on Legendary.
If you read the book Halo - First Strike, it explains his survival.
He was originally a background character that had a strong pull with the fans, so they made him a named character of importance.
As for Halo Reach, yes I am annoyed with that ret-con as it makes Dr. Halsey contradict herself in Halo - First Strike and Halo - Ghosts of Onyx.
But this was back in the day where the books were less of required canon and more of “just to provide filler content”. And thus writers in every franchise didn’t really pay them any mind. 343 now makes books required and they jump around too much with their mainline story games so players get annoyed that they have to read a dozen novels to understand what should be an isolated narrative.
We did fire the ring.
Cortana had the index and we fired the ring. That was one of the main reasons we went into High Charity to retrieve her. The Index and the fact that John wanted to save a friend.
It was destroyed however because the ring was structurally unsound and incomplete. It was able to fire, but like a damaged gun; it would destroy itself in the process.
That was the entire reason why 343 Guilty Spark blasted Johnson and became a fight against Master Chief, because he was about to lose another of the rings he was supposed to monitor and be the caretaker of.
Martin O’donllel is a sound designer, not the series writer.
Within Bungie’s writing staff, some wanted Humanity to be separate from Forerunners while most wanted Humanity to BE the Forerunners.
It is the reason why we are known as Reclaimers. We are RECLAIMING what was once ours once again. You cannot reclaim something that wasn’t yours in the first place.
It is the reason why Humanity was the species that was the best at inventing stuff. Humanity made the Shaw-Fujikawa Slip Space Drive through their own intuition. Meanwhile The Covenant just found old Forerunner stuff and learned how to reverse engineer crude mock-ups of the tech.
But when Bungie left Microsoft and then 343 Industries was founded, the staff members that stayed behind to continue making Halo were the ones that wanted Humanity and The Forerunners to be separate entities.
Halo’s overarching theme was originally “The Flood came around and the most advanced species in the galaxy couldn’t fight it without literally restarting the galaxy and set everyone back to the stone age. And though they slowly climbed from the stone to the more advanced technologies, slowly returning to their prime; other aliens found and reverse engineered our very tools and used it against us. And not only that, but that cosmic horror that caused us to turn everything back to the stone age? It is a piece of our past that now haunts us once again.”
But then 343 decided that Humans and Forerunners were separate species, there are these things called The Precursors that became The Flood (which is ANOTHER CARDINAL WRITING SIN. The Flood is Cosmic Horror. YOU DON’T EXPLAIN THE COSMIC HORROR OR THE ORIGINS OF IT !!), and to explain how Humanity were able to intuitively use Forerunner tech they made The Librarian program our genes with Geas stuff.
And the only place that Halo 3 distinguishes Humanity and Forerunners to be separate are The Terminals. Which were written by Frank O’Connor, who funilly enough stayed behind and wrote Halo 4’s main story. Frank literally set up the next chapter of the story with The Terminals and their conversations about The Didact and The Librarian. But LITERALLY every other part of Halo CE through 3 shows that Humanity are the Forerunners.
Retcons by a change of who is lead writer.
Lazy and despicable.
The re-entry into atmosphere without a proper drop-pod burned away at John’s green paint coat.
And as for the hands redesign? Minor touch-ups are preferable to CHANGING EVERYTHING for no reason.
1 Like
Actually the flood has proven to still exist from Halo Awakening the Nightmare.
A retcon is still a retcon
I’m not interested in arguing the point.
The fun Easter egg was home stconds before death, they retconned his death on halo in booms so he could be in halo2. Ie required reading. If you intend to create empty caveats to support poj t dont follow it up with something that undermines your logic right after.
Nor do you have to read the novel to understand seeing as I had no issue and read the books in question after halo 5.
The index was used to start the rings rising sequence that caused a reaction that caused the ring to explode.
If you were correct chief would have been destroy in the blast of the halo.
I never made any of those claims about marty being a writer. Halo 3 famously had no real story direction of clear narrativefor the majority of its dev cycle as I’m sure you know. Marty has stated in multiple in terviews he picked that line as fan service in a recording session.
The line is contradicted in the game.
Again can you please stop acting like I’m an idiot an explai ing things that do no need explanation. It makes you very hard to speak to.
I only point this out for your own benefit.
And if you fo take that route now your definitions first.
Reclaim means to retrieve what has been lost you don’t necessarily need to be the one who lost is to reclaim it. It need only be lost and then found and take to be reclaimed.
What staff? The writing staff at 342i are almost all new. This those who stayed behind narrative has been discredited. The fact is Joe statem changed his mind on that plot poi t during halo 2s dev cycle.
The reason humanity invented fukushiwa drives is by requirement. Had we found alien tech sooner we would have also attempted to reverse engineer it. And their tech was furore advanced as a result not due to lack of imagination of whatever nonsense just by chance.
Then halo 2 shouldn’t have explained the covenant? Are you a writer? Where did you study? Most of the great works of cosmic horror explain the monster. Lovecraft and the hyperion series for example.
Not to mention precursors created as many questions as answers and made the flood even more devious and scary.
Fankie did not write halo4s main story.
This is just false.
So you are just nitpicking cause nostalgia then? The halo 2 and 3 armours are quite distinct but thats fine cause it was bungie is a very weak argument my friend.
Like I said I’m all for valid or well co strutted criticism but none of that is being provided.
By all means have your own opinions but when being subjective dont try make your stance into an objective argument especially when you are only capable of doing so poorly.
Now that I dont have the interest to continue this conversation as it won’t serve any purpose.
I’m no fan of 343is narrative choices but to pretend bungie era halo was consistent when the leads in those days, will literally tell you otherwise is asinine.
As you said “retcon is still a retcon.”
The index wasn’t used to get the ring out of the Ark’s primary foundry. It rose up at the press of a button.
And it didn’t fall apart while it rose up.
Have you played Halo 3? Because the point of the entire final mission was “Activate the ring, and warthog run it to the Forward Unto Dawn so we can all go home !”
To Reclaim something means that it was yours in the first place.
If it wasn’t yours to begin with, then you are just Claiming it, not Reclaiming it.
And if it belonged to someone else in the first place and they were passing it down to you, it would make you an Inheritor, not a Reclaimer.
Frank O’Connor was a member of Bungie that stayed behind to continue making Halo. Yes, over 90% of the staff that worked on Halo 4 were newbies; but there were those who had worked with the franchise and carried over to continue their work.
Frank O’Connor was one of the few who wanted to make Humans and Forerunners be different. And when he assumed the position of Narrative Director from Joseph Staten, he was no longer relegated to writing short stories and terminal entries. He was now able to make the franchise go in any direction he wanted. And so came the first ret-con.
Bungie has noted that their decision of story alterations were due to time-constraints. They cut nearly six missions from the first two parts of Halo 2 and the final part had to be cut-off due to time constraints; hence why we had that cliffhanger of “Sir… Finishing this Fight.”
The story was then altered during development to lead in a similar direction, but not quite the same. The end result was Halo 3.
If you want the full story that they had planned in Halo 2’s story-boards, I can post that link right here. Bear in mind, these were the story-boards from AFTER they decided to cut the missions from the first 2/3 of Halo 2.
- https://www.artstation.com/artwork/68xkw5
The Covenant weren’t cosmic horror lovecraftian monsters. They were an alliance of aliens that were united by a religious fervor.
Yes I am a writer.
No it doesn’t matter where one studies because one of the main rules of Writing 101 is “DO NOT EXPLAIN THE MAGIC/COSMIC HORROR.”
What is funny is the fact that 343 explained the origins of The Flood, but they decided to make The Precursors the Cosmic Horror entity of the series. A species who’s origins are not accounted for, a species that has presumed mastery over the universe and knows secrets that drive men mad to the point of self-harm (like with what The Primordial did in those 343 books)
Part of the horror is not knowing the origins of something. Because if you know it has a beginning, you can logically assume that it must have an end. Which is what helped make the Flood terrifying. We knew little about it, but by assimilating someone, it knew all about you.
In the original rendition of Halo, where Humans are Forerunners, each species excelled at somethings. Humans were the best at inventing things. Our creativity and ingenuity put other species to shame.
The original reason that The Covenant went to war with Humanity is because the Prophets realized “Hey you know those gods we worship? Well it was a translation issue. Turns out they are mortals and they are that species over there. So… do we want to risk us losing our thrones and our heads… or do we want to continue manipulating the others in the Covenant and declare Humanity to be an unholy species and cause them genocide so the secret doesn’t get out?”
As Narrative Director, he was on the writing board and had final say on what was approved and what wasn’t. Basically you have the writer who submits a draft. And then ND goes and looks at it, makes their desired edits, and sends the draft to the writer again.
Frank O’Connor even stated that his own mother’s dementia diagnosis was something he struggled when writing for Cortana and her Rampancy.
Like I said. A few edits and minor updates between games is STARKLY different than “hey, your armor is 100% different for some reason.”
Halo CE to Halo 2 we got new armor as an upgrade.
Halo 2 to Halo 3, we updated your handguards and chestplate slightly. Barely enough for most to notice beyond the handguards
Halo 3 to Halo 4, Chief went to sleep and woke up in a brand new suit.
Halo 5 to Halo Infinite, Chief was given Mark VI Gen-3 about 8 months before the game took place.
The only one that I have a major issue in is when Chief woke up with a new design. I would rather prefer that we had classic Mark VI and then upon reuniting with the UNSC, we get to see a cool upgrade sequence of Chief getting the new armor design.
But no, they didn’t do that.
I’m not saying Bungie was consistent. No one is 100% consistent when a writing team makes the story and terminals tell contradicting information.
But 343 just hardly tries to stay consistent. And I have an issue with that.
Believe me, I hate 343.
I like what they have done with Halo Infinite.
Do I think The Flood should come back?
No.
That would be like if Thanos was beaten in Endgame, and then a decade later; HE IS BACK for some reason.
If the Flood come back, make it a spin-off horror game where you are a Marine or ODST, who like Johnson, became immune to infection so now it is a Dead Space-esque survival-horror game.
Like I said I’ve interest in arguing with you.
I dont have any issue with you having opinions.
You can “correct” me all you like but you are missing the nuance in places and we fundamentally disagree on points.
Like the fact that frankie stayed on but not as a writer with is the poi t in made in response to you incorrectly stating otherwise.
And dont do the passive agressive thing of “did you play halo3?” Please its juvenile and only invites bickering. As stated its my favorite ge of all time so the question was unnecessary.
Also the ring was days off being ready to fire as spark said directly and if you had fired the ring it wouldn’t have killed the flood.
I we fired the ring in halo 3 by the logic of the bungie ra games the ring would have killed all other species on the ark and started the flood but the flood would have been able to move from or the ark itself or found ships and just slowly made its way to sol.
So in halo 3 we ignite an unfinished ring to cause a chain reaction I hopes of damaging gravemind and the ark. Like I said inconsistent writing. Bungie literally didn’t care about story at all where 343i despite you thinking other wise at least attempts to fill gaps and give solutions.
It does feel had some if not most the issues you have had happened in bungies time you wouldn’t be fighting tooth and nail.
I will provide some advice though.
When fighting someone on a point dont bring up something that has no baring on the point being responded to or that suggests you failed to read the entirty of there statement. Example: dont keep telling me what the plan was when I already acknowledged that and have stated it pivoted.
Cherry picking responses weakens your over all argument.
Enjoyed jur chat all the same have a good one.
Spark said it would be days until it was “safe to fire” not “days until we can fire it”.
Premature activation would destroy the installation. But it would still get the job done where it mattered, being The Ark.
We weren’t out to hurt the Gravemind in that mission. We were outright attempting to kill all the life on The Ark, an isolated cleansing.
Like I said I’m not going to argue with you nor will I respond again. But seriously if you do intend on counter arguing in future do so by acknowledging the entire thesis.
The ring wasn’t finished so.
Starving the flood on the ark doesn’t end the thread only delays it.
John was in an open cargo bay and only half of the FOD made it through the portal by all acounts John should have died in the arrays blast a single ring firing as you say it did would have killed him.
Look you’ve made plenty of course corrections, contradictions, hyperbolic half truths and bad faith responses in your argument and are selective in you counter thesis as to maintain face but its OK not to be right yano. I really do not have any interest in arguing over 2 diametrically opposed view points.
My initial thesis holds true that all the issues you have bemoaned of 343i are present in the early games and In some cases are worse. Your counters have been illogically based in your subjective opinion.
An opinion i believe you are more than entitled to have.
That said we can be far more effective in our discourse when we take a step back sometime.
This is my final reply to this thread as its just a waste of both our tme.
Again I wish you a pleasant day.