Will Halo Infinite ignore Cortana and the Created

Community Halo Universe
1

So this is admittedly complex question which I’m about to hone down to a nutshell.

Is anyone else starting to get a distinctly ‘Rise of Skywalker’ vibe from the latest Halo Infinite trailers? (i.e. a massive deviation and change of course story wise from whatever story 343 were intending to tell at the end of Halo 5)

By this, I mean that as we now know that the Banished (i.e. the same group of Covenant aliens we’ve fought before but simply in new armour and with new motives in the story) will be included as an antagonist faction in Infinite, is anyone else getting a distinct feeling that the ‘Created’ faction that seemingly took over all of human space at the conclusion Halo 5 may be quietly dropped from the story like they were almost never there? (The still to be released Shadow of Reach apparently involves the ‘Created’, and the UNSC’s ‘war’ against them, so I’m wondering if 343 may use this an an opportunity to wrap up this story thread entirely, kill of ‘Cortana’ ‘humanely’ so that Halo 6 can start from a blank slate)

I have very mixed feeling about this idea personally. I can only speak for myself but I found the conclusion of Halo 5 to be very disappointing. The ‘Created’ (i.e. human A.I’s unhappy with how they are treated by humans) seemed like a very underwhelming and uninspired faction to be fighting against in a future game in a setting with Ancient Aliens are more, and I personally found Cortana to be extremely annoying as a villain rather then interesting or intimidating. I always preferred the Covenant and Flood in their various forms and iterations as both potential enemies and allies, and initially following Halo 5’s conclusion I had no desire to purchase the next game if it was just going to be Cortana giving the exact same cliched villain trope speech’s we got in Halo 5 on why she felt she needed to take over the galaxy for every single mission. (I know I really wouldn’t care whatever her motivation was, because I know that game will inevitably end with us as the player running some mass deletion software and then suddenly everything is back to what it was like before and it would be like the status quo never changed)

At the same time I actually really like the Banished as an antagonist faction in Halo Wars, so I am somewhat excited over the prospect of them being in Halo Infinite. (That and I have absaloutly no desire ever to so much as see fire team Osiris in a video game again, unless with the exception of Buck it’s to see them get wiped out in the opening cinematic just to highlight the deadliness of a newly introduced villain)

Osiris was the worst part of Halo 5 in my opinion, but others may disagree.

On the other hand, this is the final game of the Reclaimer saga as far as I am aware, and I always think a plot arc should never be abandoned entirely or be wrapped up in separate media. Going down this path will also likely confirm that unlike Bungie, 343 never had any long term plan for where they were going to take Master Chief’s story over the course of the Reclaimer saga in the first place, making all the years of effort put into Halo 4 & 5’s narratives a complete waste from a story telling perspective. (It would be like the Harry Potter books suddenly abandoning magic half way through and Harry and the other 2 suddenly being enrolled in a school for Assassin’s using conventional technology because an editor somewhere suddenly thinks audiences would prefer real life Assassins over wizards)

Bringing in a new villain and new faction of hostile antagonists when we’ve already passed arc 2 in a 3 arc story will just ensure that a potentially good idea is rushed and result in the end product and conclusion of the Reclaimer saga being disappointing. (Atriox and the Banished are probably one of the best character’s and ideological motivations for a faction I’ve come across, but they should have taken the Covenant Remnant’s faction’s position all the way back in Halo 4. The idea that probably best villain we will get in this saga was an afterthought for a spin-off RTS game that represents only a small volume of Halo’s total market sphere is sad in a way, as it tells you what could have been if they’ve had given the story the attention it deserved.

That is my opinion at least.

What is everyone else thinking at this stage?

2

My prediction at the end of Halo 5 was that the Infinity was fleeing to the Ark, because that’s the only location known to them beyond Cortana’s reach because the Domain is still regenerating and it hasn’t stretched out to the Ark yet. And Captain Laskey did say that they were just running until they found a way to fight back. The Ark was the Forerunners last hope to preserve their civilization, so it would make sense for it to contain vast records of Forerunner civilization, including the location and significance of Maethrillian, which could lead to a grand assault on the Forerunners’ Capital World in an attempt to reboot the Domain like Bornstellar’s team had a hundred-thousand years before, purging all of the AI inhabiting it from existence, or at minimum cutting them off from the source of their power and influence.

Also, we’ve fought factions split off from the Covenant as early as Halo 2, when we (as the Arbiter) took down the “Heretic” faction on the gas-mine. The Banished are a new variety of splinter-faction, but still in line with what we’ve seen before.

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> 2533274883501878;2:
> My prediction at the end of Halo 5 was that the Infinity was fleeing to the Ark, because that’s the only location known to them beyond Cortana’s reach because the Domain is still regenerating and it hasn’t stretched out to the Ark yet. And Captain Laskey did say that they were just running until they found a way to fight back. The Ark was the Forerunners last hope to preserve their civilization, so it would make sense for it to contain vast records of Forerunner civilization, including the location and significance of Maethrillian, which could lead to a grand assault on the Forerunners’ Capital World in an attempt to reboot the Domain like Bornstellar’s team had a hundred-thousand years before, purging all of the AI inhabiting it from existence, or at minimum cutting them off from the source of their power and influence.
>
> Also, we’ve fought factions split off from the Covenant as early as Halo 2, when we (as the Arbiter) took down the “Heretic” faction on the gas-mine. The Banished are a new variety of splinter-faction, but still in line with what we’ve seen before.

It looks like Halo Infinite will take place on Zeta Halo, which is a ring that was discovered in the novels but to my knowledge was never mentioned in any of the Games. (The devastation we see in the trailer is apparently following the Banished invasion of the facility that the UNSC had previously garrisoned after the events of Halo 5, just like they did with the Ark in Halo Wars 2)

That not terrible story telling but it’s not exactly brilliant story telling either, as the final game will be set on ‘just another ring’ whose tale of discovery we’ll probably never have time to cover. (Do you remember the tine when the discovery of any forerunner planet sized superstructure was treated as something special in the story)

To be clear I don’t think a new Covenant faction is a bad thing. I just think the 3rd game is a bit late to introduce them and their leader when we’ve already had Jul and his Covenant Remnant’s faction introduced and ‘partially’ fleshed out over the course of 2 games. The Covenant Rebels in Halo 2 were never meant to being the main antagonists. They just served the purpose to introduce us to the Arbiter and somewhat humanise the Sangheili, which probably would have been harder if the Arbiter had been deployed against UNSC marines in his first mission.

Right now I’m just conscious that the we’ve had at least 2 trailers and there has been no mention of Cortana or the Created. It would not surprise me right now if the ‘Created Uprising’ gets some brief mention as having been what initially severed the UNSC garrison on Zeta Halo from reinforcements and allowed the Banished to take control of it without fear of retaliation, and then we spend the rest of the game fighting the Banished across Zeta Halo and regrouping with the surviving UNSC forces to avoid a second firing of the rings. The whole ‘Created’ arc then gets wrapped up off-screen if it gets mentioned at all.

That would be disappointing because from the start of the Reclaimer saga I would have loved to have seen some kind of galaxy wide ‘great schism’ like conflict raging in the background between say the Swords of Sangheilios/UNSC and the Banished, perhaps with other galactic civilisations getting involved as the Forerunners slowly awaken and the Flood slowly returns to the galaxies outskirts.

What we have at the moment in terms of backstory personally feels like a lumpy mess half the time.

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> 2533274853837831;3:
> > 2533274883501878;2:
> >
>
> It looks like Halo Infinite will take place on Zeta Halo, which is a ring that was discovered in the novels but to my knowledge was never mentioned in any of the Games.

I haven’t seen the evidence that it’ll be on Zeta Halo. Link or explanation please?

> (Do you remember the tine when the discovery of any forerunner planet sized superstructure was treated as something special in the story)

Having watched the gameplay reveal, they do show off the Halo, but something to remember is that people who’ve lived in space and been on multiple worlds and Forerunner structures (including Halos) wouldn’t be as awestruck by them as they were the first time.

> I just think the 3rd game is a bit late to introduce them and their leader when we’ve already had Jul and his Covenant Remnant’s faction introduced and ‘partially’ fleshed out over the course of 2 games.

The Banished were already introduced in Halo Wars 2, and this is just giving us the chance to fight them in first person view, which I’m all for, partially because I want to wreck some Phantoms with a Wolverine. And since it’s already been established that there are multiple post-Covenant factions, one’s as good as another if the story is told well, and I do believe we have a good story with the Banished.

> Right now I’m just conscious that the we’ve had at least 2 trailers and there has been no mention of Cortana or the Created.

Two reasonable explanations for that would be that showing the Created would include spoilers, or that they’re not hyping up the Created because they weren’t a popular enemy in Halo 5. I fully expect the Created to be an enemy in this game, and I’m not surprised that we haven’t seen them depicted yet in promotional material.

> That would be disappointing because from the start of the Reclaimer saga I would have loved to have seen some kind of galaxy wide ‘great schism’ like conflict raging in the background between say the Swords of Sangheilios/UNSC and the Banished, perhaps with other galactic civilisations getting involved as the Forerunners slowly awaken and the Flood slowly returns to the galaxies outskirts.

Short of a retcon, there isn’t a Forerunner civilization to awaken. We don’t know what “Bastion” is or even if the Builder who mentioned it is still alive, or if he now exists as an Ancilla, and there aren’t other hints of the Forerunners returning.

Similarly, while the Flood are likely to make an appearance in places where they’re known to be, my experience delving deep into the lore suggests that the Flood isn’t going to try to conquer the galaxy (They adhere to the Mantle, and they had plenty of chances to consume everything which they deliberately didn’t take). If they appear, their purpose is to either teach humanity some sort of lesson, or to prevent the mortal races from acquiring a technology they’re not ready for.

5

It’s honestly still too early to tell and despite the reception to 5’s story, it would probably make more sense to continue the story with the Created in the games considering locking important details to story arcs to the expanded material is what partly lead to 5’s campaign getting the response it did. The two theories I have for why they didn’t show the created is that either 343 is deciding to keep plot details vague to avoid a repeat with Hunt the Truth or that Infinite’s story at launch (since 343 has stated that they intend to make it a platform for the franchise over the next decade) will have the Created either doing something else off screen or have a minor role.

6

its probably going to be a crisis within a crisis situation. Infinity will probably go to installation 07 to find something to fight the created, only to now be facing the banished. Im not sure if we will see created/prometheans in this game. but I’m certain we will in the next one

7

I wouldn’t think of it as “Rise of the Skywalker” more than “Revenge Of The Sith”.

In Episode 2, the movie ends with the beginning of the clone wars,
while Episode 3 starts within the climax of that war.

It could very well work similar with Halo, we’ve seen the uprising of The Created
and will be thrown into the middle or even the end of it, what doesn’t have to be something bad.

8

Please don’t compare Halo Infinite to Rise of the Skywalker, I can’t stand another disappointment. I hope that Flood will find way to flee from Ark using Spirit of Fire or some Banished ship and get on Halo ring. Also don’t let us forget that Professor Anders is on Halo ring with Cortana’s guardian so Cortana can’t be forgotten until that mess is cleaned up. There will be a lot of factions fighting for Halo ring, I can feel it

9

well they might pull a Halo 5 and nip the Created issue in the bud at the very start of the game.

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> 2533274886490718;7:
> I wouldn’t think of it as “Rise of the Skywalker” more than “Revenge Of The Sith”.
>
> In Episode 2, the movie ends with the beginning of the clone wars,
> while Episode 3 starts within the climax of that war.
>
> It could very well work similar with Halo, we’ve seen the uprising of The Created
> and will be thrown into the middle or even the end of it, what doesn’t have to be something bad.

Revenge of the Sith is about the end of the war and the brewing of the next one. The next threat already won months ago though. Its more like they just skipped from episode 2 to 4.

11

It is still early to be certain one way or another. But it certainly didn’t make me less uneasy about it.

12

(Appologies for the rant)

I fully agree with this post.

On the one hand, I consider the Created twist from Halo 5 entirely ridiculous, uninspired and un-Halo. I was really disappointed to see Cortana being resurrected after her beautifully written death scene (which set up, potentially, John reclaiming his humanity), and to see her reanimated in the form of an intergalactic evil AI emperor felt like a bad joke. Also the macguffin Guardians, which were never mentioned before and suddenly became incredibly important, and the Warden Eternal who was an incredibly annoying boss gameplay-wise and Cortana’s puppet story-wise (I cringe just thinking of him)… That was bad writing. Really bad.

And it was sad for me to experience that, because in my opinion Halo 4 sent the Halo Universe in a very interesting direction. After losing Cortana, John has to become a real human, John has to question the morality of ONI and the UNSC, while also questioning his “mother” Halsey who has joined the manipulative and resourceful Jul Mdama. I mean, that was an interesting setup. Halo 4 wasn’t perfect, but it had some great writing in it. The Didact, too, was an interesting villain - underdeveloped, unexplained, yet promising.

Then 343i, listening to fans who (rightfully) complained that Halo 4’s story only made sense if you read the books, and (incorrectly) fearing that they jumped the gun by killing Cortana, pulled another 180. They’re calling Infinite a “spiritual reboot” but every game in this patchwork mess they’re calling the Reclaimer Saga (or is it the Forerunner Saga now?) qualifies as a reboot.

Halo 4 changed almost everything about Halo, from graphics to story to gameplay. It wasn’t perfect, but it was brave and it was clear the devs had a vision. Then they regretted that vision and flipped, delivering another soft reboot in Halo 5. Now, following more complaints, they’re once again pushing that reset button.

And do you know what? I seriously doubt it’s going to work. The last entry in a trilogy telling an entirely new story while ignoring an intergalactic invasion set up in the previous game’s cliffhanger. How can they match those stakes with a bunch of Brutes? Unlike OP, I am so -Yoink!- tired of the Covenant. It feels like 343i comes up with weaker excuses every installment on how toito them, and yet they keep doing “emotional” missions where the Covenant is finally “defeated”. It’s such a tired, insincere formula. It’s a video game that doesn’t even pretend to be more than that.

I wasn’t expecting much from Halo Infinite, and the cynic in me was expecting just this - another 180 flip. But I’m still disappointed. I really did love Halo, and I was a huge fan of the universe and the story. I remember speculating where 343i are going way back before Halo 4. Buying the new books, thinking so foolishly that they have a whole trilogy mapped out. There was no long term plan. There was no Reclaimer Saga, that was a lie, or an idea left behind after Halo 4’s lukewarm reception. All we have now is another sad, uninspired attempt to reclaim Halo’s throne, this time fueled by Halo CE nostalgia and a supposedly cool new villain and some pilot guy (I’m not feeling it).

I’m not sure I want to experience this game. More than that, I’m not sure I want to pay for it. There isn’t an overarching plot, there’s no continuity, the storytelling is nonsensical. The gameplay looks the same (which isn’t bad) and the graphics somehow look worse.

This is the first time ever that I’m not sure I’ll buy a Halo game

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> 2533274886490718;7:
> I wouldn’t think of it as “Rise of the Skywalker” more than “Revenge Of The Sith”.
>
> In Episode 2, the movie ends with the beginning of the clone wars,
> while Episode 3 starts within the climax of that war.
>
> It could very well work similar with Halo, we’ve seen the uprising of The Created
> and will be thrown into the middle or even the end of it, what doesn’t have to be something bad.

Ep III didn’t swap the Separatists for a new enemy faction, and the enemy characters from Ep II played major narrative roles in Ep III. Ep III may have been a major time skip but it didn’t try to “course correct” anything about Ep II or change course at all. Ep IX, on the other hand, pretty much undoes everything set up by Ep VIII due to negative feedback, and additionally injected alot of shallow nostalgia. I think this is what OP is worried about with Infinite, given that H5 got negative feedback on its story and a lot of what we’ve seen about Infinite seems to be trying to evoke senses of nostalgia, from Chief’s look to the return of a Covenant-like faction as the main enemy force. It’s still too early to tell for sure, but some of the changes do seem a little kneejerk reactionary responses to H5. H5 saw the burgeoning of a new conflict with the Created, and Infinite is throwing us into the middle/end of another new conflict with the Banished that didn’t get set up in H5. If Infinite actually does justice to the story beats established in H5 then that’s fine and good, but based on what we’ve seen so far it’s looking like they’re totally ignoring those beats, which to me is bad because it means that they aren’t concerned with narrative consistency, which I need to be invested in a story. If they toss anything that gets negative feedback, then nothing is sacred, and they could just produce a series of disjointed games that don’t really connect with each other. That’s not what I want out of Halo, so I can only hope that’s not what happens with Infinite’s story.

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> 2533274853837831;1:
> So this is admittedly complex question which I’m about to hone down to a nutshell.
>
> Is anyone else starting to get a distinctly ‘Rise of Skywalker’ vibe from the latest Halo Infinite trailers? (i.e. a massive deviation and change of course story wise from whatever story 343 were intending to tell at the end of Halo 5)
>
> By this, I mean that as we now know that the Banished (i.e. the same group of Covenant aliens we’ve fought before but simply in new armour and with new motives in the story) will be included as an antagonist faction in Infinite, is anyone else getting a distinct feeling that the ‘Created’ faction that seemingly took over all of human space at the conclusion Halo 5 may be quietly dropped from the story like they were almost never there? (The still to be released Shadow of Reach apparently involves the ‘Created’, and the UNSC’s ‘war’ against them, so I’m wondering if 343 may use this an an opportunity to wrap up this story thread entirely, kill of ‘Cortana’ ‘humanely’ so that Halo 6 can start from a blank slate)
>
> I have very mixed feeling about this idea personally. I can only speak for myself but I found the conclusion of Halo 5 to be very disappointing. The ‘Created’ (i.e. human A.I’s unhappy with how they are treated by humans) seemed like a very underwhelming and uninspired faction to be fighting against in a future game in a setting with Ancient Aliens are more, and I personally found Cortana to be extremely annoying as a villain rather then interesting or intimidating. I always preferred the Covenant and Flood in their various forms and iterations as both potential enemies and allies, and initially following Halo 5’s conclusion I had no desire to purchase the next game if it was just going to be Cortana giving the exact same cliched villain trope speech’s we got in Halo 5 on why she felt she needed to take over the galaxy for every single mission. (I know I really wouldn’t care whatever her motivation was, because I know that game will inevitably end with us as the player running some mass deletion software and then suddenly everything is back to what it was like before and it would be like the status quo never changed)
>
> At the same time I actually really like the Banished as an antagonist faction in Halo Wars, so I am somewhat excited over the prospect of them being in Halo Infinite. (That and I have absaloutly no desire ever to so much as see fire team Osiris in a video game again, unless with the exception of Buck it’s to see them get wiped out in the opening cinematic just to highlight the deadliness of a newly introduced villain)
>
> Osiris was the worst part of Halo 5 in my opinion, but others may disagree.
>
> On the other hand, this is the final game of the Reclaimer saga as far as I am aware, and I always think a plot arc should never be abandoned entirely or be wrapped up in separate media. Going down this path will also likely confirm that unlike Bungie, 343 never had any long term plan for where they were going to take Master Chief’s story over the course of the Reclaimer saga in the first place, making all the years of effort put into Halo 4 & 5’s narratives a complete waste from a story telling perspective. (It would be like the Harry Potter books suddenly abandoning magic half way through and Harry and the other 2 suddenly being enrolled in a school for Assassin’s using conventional technology because an editor somewhere suddenly thinks audiences would prefer real life Assassins over wizards)
>
> Bringing in a new villain and new faction of hostile antagonists when we’ve already passed arc 2 in a 3 arc story will just ensure that a potentially good idea is rushed and result in the end product and conclusion of the Reclaimer saga being disappointing. (Atriox and the Banished are probably one of the best character’s and ideological motivations for a faction I’ve come across, but they should have taken the Covenant Remnant’s faction’s position all the way back in Halo 4. The idea that probably best villain we will get in this saga was an afterthought for a spin-off RTS game that represents only a small volume of Halo’s total market sphere is sad in a way, as it tells you what could have been if they’ve had given the story the attention it deserved.
>
> That is my opinion at least.
>
> What is everyone else thinking at this stage?

Yes I am

15

Even if they ignore Cortana and the Guardians in Infinite, they’ll probably have to deal with them eventually in another game or in another way. They can’t just “disappear” and we can’t just ignore the story in Halo 5 never existed.

16

I don’t think Cortana will be ignored in the game. But I think the Created as a faction are gone. Notice how Echerum says;
“The ring is already under our control and soon the Auditorium as well.”

From the way he is speaking, I believe the Auditorium is the large floating Forerunner structure we see so prominently throughout the key art and gameplay demo.

But if Humanity is defeated, then who/what is preventing the Banished from taking this Auditorium? We know Cortana is involved in Infinite in some way. What if the Auditorium is where she is?

From way back in the first trailer we know that Cortana is in the Control room (wether this is a new Cortana or the old one remains to be seen). Is the “Auditorium” simply another word for Control room? Or perhaps it is the complex containing the control room? I think The only reason it’s free floating is because of the damage the ring sustained.

17

They’ll probably make Halo infinite open world and tie up multiple loose ends in sub-missions like in Skyrim or the Witcher.

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> 2533274883501878;4:
> Short of a retcon, there isn’t a Forerunner civilization to awaken. We don’t know what “Bastion” is or even if the Builder who mentioned it is still alive, or if he now exists as an Ancilla, and there aren’t other hints of the Forerunners returning.
>
> Similarly, while the Flood are likely to make an appearance in places where they’re known to be, my experience delving deep into the lore suggests that the Flood isn’t going to try to conquer the galaxy (They adhere to the Mantle, and they had plenty of chances to consume everything which they deliberately didn’t take). If they appear, their purpose is to either teach humanity some sort of lesson, or to prevent the mortal races from acquiring a technology they’re not ready for.

I might be mistaken but I thought the whole idea of having Shield World’s was so that the Forerunner civilian and military population could wait out the Halo Array’s firing in safety. Would it have broken any established lore if Halo 4 or 5 had ended with the Diadact or another Forerunner warlord suddenly sending out an ‘wake up command’ to hundreds or even thousands of pre-constructed Forerunner shield-worlds across the galaxy with orders for the millions of Forerunner troops stationed in each of them to begin a galactic wide reconquest of their former empire? (That would have been a 100 times better in my opinion then the Terminator rip-off plot we got saddled with instead in Halo 5, as it would have relied on lore built up steadily over the last few games rather then exploiting a grievance we’ve never really seen in the games)

The last concrete info I can remember about how the Flood operated was that Diadact believed they had purposely withdrawn from Ancient Human territory to trick Forerunners into believing Ancient Humans has some kind of cure or natural immunity so the Forerunner would not wipe us out as a species, which suggests as a hive mind they understood political strategy and are not operating on survival instinct alone. Saying that, I always suspected this info to be of dubious quality as it came after Diadact had been subjected to psychological torture by the Flood and had basically been driven to the point of insanity where he was just looking for any excuse to abuse humanity.

I can’t recall anything about the Flood ever ever even having a concept of the Mantle of Responsibility let alone abiding by it. To be honest I always saw the Mantle of Responsibility as just an invention of Forerunner propaganda to justify there empire building. (Again I may be mistaken)

> 2533274883501878;4:
> Two reasonable explanations for that would be that showing the Created would include spoilers, or that they’re not hyping up the Created because they weren’t a popular enemy in Halo 5. I fully expect the Created to be an enemy in this game, and I’m not surprised that we haven’t seen them depicted yet in promotional material.

You see, choosing to deliberately not show a faction you know to be so unpopular among the fanbase that just confirming they will be in the game would make people not want to buy play the game in the first place would instantly have me asking the question ‘why are we putting them in the game in the first place?’

If on the other hand they don’t want to include spoilers, if the Created are as equally an important an antagonist to the Banished then it couldn’t be that hard just to find some gameplay footage or cinematics clearly showing them as being part of the story or gameplay without giving anything away.

Not saying your wrong on either account here. I just get the feeling 343 have dug themselves into a hole and there is no ladder back up, so their only option is ‘do we dig right, or do we dig left’. (I imagine either decision will be unpopular for different reasons)

> 2533274883501878;4:
> The Banished were already introduced in Halo Wars 2, and this is just giving us the chance to fight them in first person view, which I’m all for, partially because I want to wreck some Phantoms with a Wolverine. And since it’s already been established that there are multiple post-Covenant factions, one’s as good as another if the story is told well, and I do believe we have a good story with the Banished.

I’ll have to check but I think you’ll find the number of copies of Halo Wars 2 sold was only a small fraction of the total copies sold of Halo 4 and Halo 5. (It maybe somewhere in the region of 10%)

RTS games just don’t sell like FPS games do on consoles.

That means most people will be gong into Halo Infinite not knowing who or what the Banished are.

I really like Banished as well as I think both their aesthetic and backstory is really good, if perhaps a little underdeveloped. The problem is that both they and their leaders should have been introduced to us in Halo 4 or at the very latest Halo 5. (And I don’t like saying that, as I actually Jul’ Mdama but I think 343 only ever intended for him and his faction to just placeholders until they came up with something better, which they didn’t)

Take the Banished leader in Halo 6, the guy’s name who begins with a H I believe?

What do we know about him? What’s his backstory, his motivations, his temperament and why does he want to make war on the UNSC when both the Banished and UNSC has been fighting the same enemy for years at this point.

All of this we should already know. The final game in a trilogy should be about resolving character arcs and conflicts between factions, not setting them up!

> 2533274883501878;4:
> Having watched the gameplay reveal, they do show off the Halo, but something to remember is that people who’ve lived in space and been on multiple worlds and Forerunner structures (including Halos) wouldn’t be as awestruck by them as they were the first time.

This is a narrative problem in my opinion. The above would be applicable in say Star Wars where al the major races have been in contact and intermingling with each other’s cultures for thousands of years, so the idea of finding technology left behind by ancient long extinct aliens is something that is easy for people high and low to comprehend. (As is the idea of everyone knowing each other’s cultures extremely well)

The problem is in Halo’s case that humanity ‘history’ with alien civilisation only goes back 30 years, and that contact for 99% of the human population consisted of just one alien civilisation in particular killing them in mass whenever they came into contact with one another. Contact with any alien civilisation outside of human space is still something that should be treated with a degree of awe, fear and ceremony in my opinion. That means they defiantly shouldn’t setup a military outpost on a newly discovered Halo ring we as the player have never set foot on off-screen. (And don’t even get me started on the fact that every 3rd human character introduced now seems to be a scientist if there not a Spartan super soldier or special forces veteran, whose been an expert in Forerunner tech their entire lives despite the fact human contact with Forerunner tech goes back only a handful of years)

> 2533274883501878;4:
> I haven’t seen the evidence that it’ll be on Zeta Halo. Link or explanation please?

Halopedia, Appearances and Locations. Zeta Halo is the only location mentioned here, so I assumed having watched the trailer this is where they game is mostly set.

I may be wrong and will hold my hands up if I am.

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> 2533274853837831;18:
>

The Shield Worlds were an alternate plan to the Halos, designed to preserve the occupants from the Flood, not the Halos. The plan for surviving the Halos was to relocate preserved beings outside of the galaxy, onto the two Arks.

The clues about the hidden nature of the Flood are subtle, like how it’s mentioned once that the Forerunners knew that the Flood had the ability to consume everything in the galaxy within a few years of initial contact, and there was nothing the Forerunners could do to stop them, yet the Flood deliberately held back and the war had dragged out for 300 years, and this was before the Forerunners knew the Flood could command Neural Physics. The Flood deliberately dawdled until the Forerunner Civilization peaked before wiping them out as punishment for their crimes.

We barely have any information regarding Halo Infinite, so I’m withholding judgement until I’ve actually played it. So far the info we’ve gotten has matched (more or less) the predictions I made back when Halo 5 and Halo Wars 2 were released.

Another potential reason for not highlighting the Created in the trailer could be because this will be the first time we’ve seen some of the unique Halo Wars units in a FPS game, so they wanted to show them off.

Sure the spin-off games like Halo Wars weren’t as popular as the main line of numbered games, but that doesn’t make them invalid. Halo lore is Halo lore, and as long as the characters/factions have a serviceable introduction in the game, it should be fine, with the fans who consumed the larger body of lore from games or books having more context, bringing greater meaning to what’s going on.

I’m not a fan of people who didn’t read/play/watch some piece of Halo lore and then complain about that lore being relevant to future lore. They should either dig into the lore consistently or accept that they skipped some of it and that this isn’t 343’s fault.

Minibosses come and go in games, and that’s nothing new. Cortana and Atriox are still the big bads, and both have been introduced in previous games.

Why should we already know everything about why the Banished does what they do? They’ve appeared in one game so far, and we don’t know the plot of Halo Infinite yet. Complaining about not already knowing when the game isn’t even out yet isn’t very different than when your friend eats some of your food because he can’t wait for his food to arrive.

Humanity’s history with aliens has been 30+ years of war. The only human we’ve seen in Halo Infinite besides Chief so far is a UNSC pilot, who’d have grown up during the war with the Covenant, and later likely interacted with post-Covenant aliens on multiple occasions (There are novels that detail such interactions, Grunts and Jackals becoming traders and smugglers, Brutes getting security jobs, etc), it really depends on what world the human lives on, how much interaction they’ll have with aliens. It doesn’t matter that humanity knew nothing of aliens before 2525, because he’s known of them his entire life, and he has experience traveling between distant worlds, so my point is valid that it makes sense for him to not be awestruck like a child looking at a Christmas Tree for the first time when he sees yet another alien super-structure.

Too many scientists? The Halo games take us from warzone to warzone. EVERYONE who has ANY reason to be there will be military, intelligence, or running for their lives. The Marines, ODSTs, Spartan 4s and Legendary Spartan 2s have the military aspects covered, but most of them aren’t trained to cover the translations and other scientific matters… which is why we have the Intelligence Personnel (Scientists). And as I said, they can have studdied aliens for large portions of their lives because contact with aliens occurred significantly far back relative to the human lifespan, if not relative to the arc of a civilization.

Wikis being tertiary sources, I take them with a grain of salt. Halopedia sources the “Zeta Halo” claim to a gamesradar article, which contains quotes from an interview with Chris Lee saying the game is on Zeta Halo. Interestingly enough as of my writing this, just under the title of the article it says it was written just a day ago, and my comment was three days ago. I’m guessing that means that interview was published somewhere at an earlier time, but I don’t know where if it was.

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I really hope they don’t ignore Halo 5 the way they ignored Halo 4. Jul may have not been that big of a villain, but it was still a bit disheartening to see him die within the first minutes of the campaign in a cut-scene. As someone else said, this saga has been nothing but stunted story lines and soft reboots, calling these games a “saga” would be putting too nicely.

The Banished could be an interesting foe, yet they seem to have lost what made them different between Halo Wars 2 and Infinite, at least to me. They were presented as a rag-tag faction run on a warrior culture or pure expansionist greed. Revenge against the Covenant for mis-leading and abusing the Brutes under Atriox. Now they seem to be fighting some greater goal with this Harbinger (I assume the Created, but who knows) which Escharum is stating is the “Will of Atriox”. I think though my issue is more with their appearance than use in the story. They don’t look Banished. They look like discount Covenant.