Reminder that the Hiigarans would kick the UNSC's ass six days to Sunday without even trying

what the fuck is going on in this thread?

conversation between higher beings

The manual was dope. Kind of a shame they don't make manuals like that anymore, but I guess I don't need another manual clogging my drawers.

ah yes the good book.

Feels bad man.

Nearly cried when reading it. The manual is more of a novella than anything.

...

retardation of the highest degree

It gets fucking better, Infinity was under construction for 10 fucking years before the Covenant-UNSC War ended, and 6 months after Halo 3 it was fully operational, completely destroying the suspension of disbelief that humanity was on it's last stand during that time, good job 343, you fucking hacks.

If only Bungie didn't jew out

It was either jew out or do nothing. They didn't want to continue the story past 3. Just consider post bungine non cannon

Reminder that the people who developed Homeworld Deserts of Kharak never even read that small book or probably even played the first game.

It kills me to know we'll never get something like Homeworld ever again.

I would have been quite happy with upgraded Homeworld 1 that had bit more complex damage system than just one based on overall HP. Kinda like Rule The Waves.

Good?
Yes.
Amazing?
Never.
Axiom verge and ori make metroid prime look like shit.

I'm not talking setting guy, I'm talking game mechanics. While Yharnam does feel like Dracula's castle, I'm talking strictly about playability.

You don't have auto save checkpoints
Your actions matter, and if you do stupid shit you're rightfully punished for it
It takes trial and error, and memory to figure out your best routes
Game isn't bullshit unfair to you, for the sake of being unfair, and is all about pattern memorization.

Its been fucking years since I felt the need to get out a graph pad and draw maps/take notes for a videogame, I felt like a fucking kid again.

This is the answer to those "why does Holla Forums like Geoff now?!" threads. He just fucking BODIES Jose here.

Halo lorefag here

The issue you are going to run into with comparing the UNSC or Covenant to other scifi factions is that fleet sizes in the Halo universe, and the Halo universe in general for them, is way, way more grounded in reality then other sci fi universes in most respects. For example: The Covenant Fleet of Particular Justice was one of the largest Covenant Fleets, yet it only has 60 ships in it. The entire Covnenat navy likely only has a few thousand ships in it, i'd guess 3000 at the absolute maximum. And we know the UNSC navy is likely even smaller.

Compare that to most other sci fi universes and that's pitiful. That said, the actual strength of UNSC and Covenant ships is usually underestimated: MAC cannons are OP as fuck (pic related), as are Covenant glassing beams. Covnenat ships are also fucking gigantic even by the standards of other sci fi universes. But that really don't mean jack shit when they are as outnumbered as they are faction wise.

Obviously, this is not a concern at all for the Forerunners, who could probably solo most of the 40k universe; the Flood, provided they are allowed to infect multiple systems, at which point they start to become some of the most OP sci factions in fiction, and i'm not even going to get into the Precursors.

In case anybody wants to see the full set of scale charts, they are here, just click the red boxes to zoom in: halo.bungie.org/misc/sloftus_scalecomparison/1280h.html

While I agree the Infinity is absolutely retarded, 343 has actually done a good job with the lore on a novel by novel basis: Their good to bad to meh book ratio is basically identical to bungie. Just going EVERYTHING 343 DOES IS NON CANON LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU isn't the solution, because they've added legimately good content to the canon.

The issue, as you point out and what the Infinity is representative of, is that they are rushing the state of the universe to a retarded degree. The UNSC recovering from a 30 year long war that nearly wiped out the entire human race in less then a decade, Jul being able to raise a faction of his own, the UNSC fighting them off and defeating them, and then having a new galactic threat in the Didact and the Promethians, the UNSC beating THEM, and then ANOTHER galatic threat with the created and Banished… again, all in under 10 years.

It's absolutely absurd. The actual events in question there aren't even necessarily bad, they just shouldn't be happening this fucking rapidly.

Also, keep in mind most technology in Bungie era Halo lorewise is about 50 years old and had slowly evolved during the trilogy. Problem is that you went from having a gun at the start of Halo 1 to a slightly better gun at the end of the trilogy lorewise while now you go from having fuckall nothing to MEGA SHIP and HARDLIGHT weaponry.

ah yes, thank you jews

one of the last console games I ever bought desu

Halo lore is shit and retarded.

Interesting read

none of those things mean it's a good speedrun, which is what that guy called it.

On what site?

Soul reaver

All of those qualify as one of the types of Zelda games

But you'd be a useless fuck, regardless. Whether you like it or not, those people digging holes are doing something to provide you with the chance to be here on Holla Forums. A lot of you faggots need to be grateful for even having the ability to be here. There's a lot of liberties you take for granted.

Anyone want to make one just for shits and practice?

It's rather disappointing for a porn game. You'll occasionally get CGs, but the plot is too silly to really have much investment in any of the characters so it's just playing a JRPG for the occasional tits and sex stories.

People will stay they "stayed for the gameplay" because there wasn't really much else there.

I hope you plan to lose the final battle. Best ending.

I doubt it, I find these settings to be perfect for when emulating the Ace Combat games.

...

Should I play 1 to 4 before 5D and VI come out, or are they pretty self-contained?

I wish I had that manual. Guess I'll have to find a pdf of it.

test

What the fuck why did this post go through but this one won't

Gameplay isn't canon.

The standard US infantry weapon is the M4 Carbine which shoots a 5.56×45mm round wheras the MA5 series shoots a much larger 7.62x51mm round, In the novels it doesn't display the terrible accuracy it has in the games (though in halo 5, the AR is actually extremely accurate, way more in line with how it would be lore wise, at least relative to the sandbox as a whole and how lore accurate they are).

The MA5C, the only MA5 rifle with an official effective range, does have a shorter effective range then the M4, of 300m vs 500m, and just to continue to use the MA5C as an example, does have a lower fire rate of 600 rpm vs the M4's 700rpm, bbut at those ranges you are better off using other weapons anyways (go read up on why the US armed forced adopted the AR15 platform to begin with), and the 100rpm difference really isn't going to be significant since most of the time soliders are going to be firing in bursts and when you are firing fully automatically, getting the extra rounds off really doesn't matter so much as making sure that you hit the other guy first anyways, and while it's not really a sigfinciant advantage either, the MA5C does have a slightly higher muzzle velocity by 70 feet per second over then M4.

Not to mention that all the MA5 series rifles have integrated electronic suites which feed into the user's HUD (which actually IS canon), which, you know, is what the big bulky thing is that the screen is housed on, and is why there's no visible iron sights: You don't need them, which is also a pretty big adavtage since you don't need to take the time to take aim, it's all done for you by your visor in the event of the user being a SPARTAN or ODST, or your tac goggles/eye screens/shooting glasses.

Also, the suite is removable to reveal actual iron sights in case you lose your gear to use it with, in case you were wondering, pic related

CE actually only takes place around 2 months before Halo 3, so any military hardware you see in Halo 3, for the most part, also existed when CE took place. The Pillar of Autumn either just didn't have it on hand, or if it did, the Chief never happened to see/use one during the events of CE.

After reading Glasslands, renting 4 for free, and watching Spartan Ops on Youtube, I'm calling bullshit. Those faggots don't know how to do anything right and it reflects the series taking a nosedive in every aspect.

And this.

Testing because once again I can't fucking post

I'm trying to respond to your post user but posting is being retarded and won't let me. Let's see if this works:

Tl;dr, I agree glasslands isn't great, though I don't think it's complete ass. The Sanghelios bits are good and while the Kilo 5 team shouldn't perhaps be as hostile to halsey as they are, to a degree it is warrented and unless it's already said in glasslands and I got it mixed up, the sequel sort of expands a bit on why in particular they act how they do. It's not a very good one, but it's there and for me at least it was satisfactory.

Bottom line, here's how I rate the books, i've read all but the two most recent ones:
Silentium (343)
Contact Harvest (bungie)

Ghosts of Onyx (Bungie)
Broken Circle (343)
Cryptum (343)
Last Light (343)
Evolutions (343)

Shadow of Intent (343)
Fall of Reach (Bungie)
Primordium (343)
First Strike (Bungie)
Hunters in the Dark (343)
Saints Testimoney (343)

Cole Protocol (Bungie)
Glasslands (343)
Thursday War (343)
New Blood (343)

The flood (Bungie)

Mortal Dictatata (343)

Thank fucking christ, here's a short version of the rest of it that I had to remove:

I agree Halo 4's story is terrible as well, both the actual campaign one and spartan ops, and the multiplayer is very subpar for the series. But I said the books were good, I didn't say anything about 343's writing for the games. In any case, Halo 5's MP is actually fantastic, my second favorite in the series behind 2, and it's unqestionably got the best forge and potential for custom games. Its almost a dev tool by now.

Sadly, the single player is still a dissapointment. If 6's SP is as good as 5's MP was, without the MP for 6 being any worse, 6 could actually be among the top 3 games in the series.

You gave me a list but didn't explain why they're good. I didn't really say why I'm so pissed at 343, so let's start there. I'm only focusing on the story.

Karen Traviss is a butcher when it comes to working on EUs, be it Star Wars or Halo. She doesn't give a shit about what anyone wants but herself and it shows. The best praise I can give is that she can at least write and make something good, though at the expense of everything around it, unlike Chuck Wendig. I get the kind of story they were making, but it was handled incredibly poorly. Traviss sperged out and everyone acted way too out of character. It just became Traviss bitching about the series she's writing for again and trying to rewrite it into Noble Warrior Land. That's fine for something like Gears, but not for the other two series. I am fucking done with the author preaching to me about anything, just tell the fucking story.

Once again with 4, I get what they wanted to do, but scenes like the bridge felt incredibly contrived. I still can't decide if I like the idea of a romance between Chief and Cortana. There were parts I enjoyed. The ending did hit me a little, seeing him finally come home after losing Cortana, but overall the Promethean Diadect or whatever the new enemies were didn't do much for me. It felt like Kingdom Hearts 2, where you had to be balls deep in the EU to know heads from tails. I love EUs, but the main series is supposed to be at the top for a reason.

Spartan Ops was disgusting. Fuck Palmer and ONI. Gabriel and Lasky (can't remember) were the only redeemable things about it. Halsey did nothing wrong. There are other bits like the novel where they shit on the ODSTs that I heard about and disliked, but never read. I never got around to watching the cutscenes of 5 because I know I'll go nuclear if they fuck with Blue Team. My biggest complaint is that it doesn't feel like Halo anymore. They shit on all the old guard and changed the core of the series to something unrecognizable. Thinking about it again, there were tiny parts where there was some good, so it wasn't a total disaster like Disney Wars, but it's just not the Halo I enjoyed.

Well, to begin with, what halo novels have you already read? It'll be hard to explain what's good about each of the 343 ones, otherwise, and I don't even know which ones I can skiip.

Yeah, other people have said more or less the same things in conversations i've had with people, and to an extent, it's present in glasslands and thrusday war (the sequel): She's said in intereview she wants to explore Halsey as morally bankrupt person, or at least people's preception of her that way, which a lot of people think she pushes past what's reasonable, but at least for glasslands and thursday war, I don't think it actually goes that far. That's certainly a plot point, but then again, that's always sort of been a part of the lore, it was just never really explored that much from that perspective.

Mortal Dictata (the final book in her halo triology), on the other hand, is actually just garbage, it takes everything bad about glasslands and thursday war, makes it worse, and removes the actually good things they had going for them. It's the only halo novel I actually tell people to skip. There are actual nonstop comparsions between halsey and hitler. It's stupid.

I do think it's worth noting though her short story in Evolutions is easily the best part of that Anthology, she wrote a story detailing what Cortana went through when she was trapped with the Gravemind.

1/3

Cont:

My issue with 4 is that Cortana and MC both act out of character, and how rampancy is displayed is entirely incossitent with how it is in the novels. the tl;dr of it is that MC has only known her for 3 months, as a SPARTAN, I think it's unrealistic that he would be that emotional over an AI, something he would be well trained to treat as equipment, especially one he's only known for that short a time when he's had to send countless other S2's to their deaths who he's known since he was a child and did so steel faced. Not that he shouldn't be emotional, but he should have been able to keep them in fact to not act and make stupid descisioons/clinging to false hopes like he does.

Meanwhile, Cortana acts like a scared little girl, when in past media she's assertive, cocky, and in control. I get they were trying to drive in that she's actually in danger, but Rampancy has always been described as AI's getting delusions of power and superirotiy over humans. Instead of making her scared and having temper tantrums to show it, they should have had her getting increasingly possessive of MC, among other things which I can't say sadly due to spoilers.

I would have changed the plot so instead, cortana becomes the villian by the middle of the game, wanting to trap her and MC on requim forever, and taking control over the native promethain forces. MC would have to put her out of her delusional misery at the end of the game. This still can end in an emotional farewell, but in a way that doesn't feel contrived. The Didact would still be awaekened, but only at the end, and as the villian for 5… instead of what we got.

Speaking of the Didact and your comment that "You need to be balls deep into the EU to understand it", 4 actually explains itself more then CE did, if you actually think about it, which gave absolutely no context for what the UNSC is or what Spartans are or what the covenant is, wheras What the promethains are and who the didact is given some context, especially if you do spartan ops and watch the terminals. The Didact and the Librarian were also both mentiooned in the Halo 3 terminals

2/3

Yeah, Palmer is an annoying ass and S4's in general act like dudebros. To an extent, it makes a little bit of sense: S4's are supposed to more or less just be skilled marines and ODSTs who are given MJOLNIR armor and augmentations, now that the UNSC has the tech to do it without kidnapping childern for it, so it sort of makes sense that already gung ho marines would get a power high on becoming SPARTANs. If you really think about it, their and plamer's behavior actually isn't that far from Johnson's. The difference is that Johnson's gung-honess was endearing, not annoying.

Also while the story in 5 isn't good (not as bad as 4's, though, at least IMO), Blue team is protrayed well in it. But yes, there's no disputing 343's storytelling for the games is different from bungie's, but as far as most of their novels, the 343 ones tonally match up with a lot of the bungie ones well, though there are obviously exceptions, for better (the forerunner triology) or worse (the travis triology/new blood).

3/3

I'm heading to bed but i'll be happy to give you a breakdown of why I feel how I do about the 343 books in the list once I know exactly how many of the novels and which ones you've already read yourself so I can word it accordingly

I read every Bungie book except for Cole Protocol and Evolutions. As for 343, I only read Glasslands and the first page of Thursday War. I'm fine with your tier list for those.

I'm not surprised her best work is about an (AI) woman losing her mind. As for Halsey, Traviss doesn't set it up as a fair fight. It's the same bullshit she does in every novel where she talks through a character to bitch about the setting while the receiver just takes it without any pushback. That's my number 1 complaint with her. She cannot play nice in these universes. It's either the way she likes it, or it must be rewritten. Halsey would not take that shit lying down if Nylund was behind the wheel. The other characters complicit in the Spartan program had no right to talk the shit she made them talk.

Agreed with 4, but the reason I'm not entirely against the idea is just some feeling I got playing and I guess I'm projecting onto Chief. After everything he lose, Cortana just seemed to be one too many. As for CE not making sense, I thought the manual gave enough. Still counts as EU, but I would argue it's more acceptable as it was back when people still read them and it was only a few pages at most.

I know the S-IVs are overpromoted ODSTs and it always comes back to that argument that they didn't get the training S-II/IIIs did. It just feels so jarring that they get to that level of in-universe power without any sacrifice like the ones before them, but don't deserve it aside from a couple exceptions. It makes logical sense, but it drives me insane. What I hate the most about Palmer is the sheer disregard for science she has. If it wasn't for the tech guys, just like the spartans, humanity would be space dust. Show some fucking respect for the people that gave you Spartanhood you insufferable piece of shit. At least Gabriel has an once of humility for what he is and is trying to do. Palmer just talks shit and has no real positive traits besides hollywood badass. I'll watch 5's cutscenes then. I don't know why I'm so attached to Fred, Kelly, and Linda, but I want to pop a vein in my head thinking about 343 killing them off or ruining them for some reason.

You can give a breakdown of them if you want. I'm going to bed too.

Yeah, your opinion seems to be pretty wrong there friendo. Everybody knows it goes

Reach's multiplayer was ruined by armour lock. If they had removed it from all playlists except invasion and big team battle, and replaced it with the regen-bubble shield they had in big team battle, the game would have been much much better.

There's litterally nothing about 3's MP that's better then 2 that's significant.. The only advantage it has is for customs due to forge, but that's it.

I like reach a lot more then other people do, to the point where I think it'd tied with 3 in the MP department, but it's real strength is with customs and just the general quanity of content.

5, mechanically, feels amazing. Probably my favorite core gameplay mechanics (as in, just how the aiming and physics feels, how weapons are balanced, how core play abilities work, etc) in the series. The maps are pretty good, though not CE/2 level. The forge is absolutely absurd in how much it can do now.

Other people have made this point but I really don't think it's unreasonable for mendez to have regrets about what he did. It's very common for people in wars in real life to have no issues taking lives at the time but feeling deeply bothered by it later in life.

This is about how I feel as well about the S4's existing at all. It makes sense the UNSC would want to have them be a thing, but their concept just sort of defeats the point of SPARTANS as a narrative/thematic thing. At the very least, they shouldn't exist this soon timline wise, but that goes back to what I said earlier in the thread about 343 rushing the state of the universe.

Well, i'm not sure I would exactly reccomend you watching 5's story, at least not yet. Almost nothing of importance happens except for 1 thing in the first mission which shouldn't havem, it's almost all build up for 6, so there's no point in being aware of what happens till 6 comes out, and it's not like there's anything actually interesting enough to warrent it on it's own. Unlike the other 343 novels I had in my ranking list, which I DO and would have recommended even if you had said you had given up on Halo.

Speaking of, i'll post the explanations on the novels in my next post

They are written by a veteran classic sci-fi author, and it shows:The writing style here is very unlike any of the other books, and in terms of actual quality they are heads and shoulders above them, too.

In particular, the way forerunner technology and society is described is very well done. In sci fi/futuristic settings, super advanced tech tends to be not actually seem novel because it's just modern technology, but better/shinier/with "energy", or it's not applied in actually novel ways. That's not the case here. Forerunner stuff actually comes off as absurdly advanced, and the books go into detail explaining how stuff like complete mastery of FTL, technology that can back up/transfer /merge consciousnesses, subatomic construction, etc; impact the everyday lives of forerunners. On the flip side, this also means they are dense reads, since a lot of it is very complicated and not very initutuive. It also ends up slowly spiraling down into really good cosmic horror by the third book. Just keep in mind that the really stupid explanation for something you'll read about in the first book isn't what it seems like at first…

Covers the formation of the covenant, and then the great schism. Other then the setting being interesting, there's really nothing I can point to that makes it great, but it just is. I guess it's notable in that it actually features prophet characters that aren't just giant manipulative assholes, and it's also refreshing because it involves sangheili that learn the truth about the forerunners and still interact with forerunner technology. Overall, only is barely beat out by GoO for my overall third favorite halo novel.

1/2

Essentially, this is a sort of branching sequel from Glasslands, following up with what happened with Blue team and the remaining Gamma S3's after they got out of the Onyx dyson sphere. Unlike the travis books, though, this is really excellent. It's essentially a murder mystery, where a investigotor for a colional police force is trying to figure out who is killing people on their colony, all while the UNSC is stationed there researching stuff, and she starts to suspect the murderer is somebody on Blue team, while the colional goverment, who is associated with the innsurection, starts to get more and more agitated. Like Broken circle, it's really well written and reminds me of the nylund novels.

Follows Rtas Vadum (Half jaw, aka the spec ops commander from 2 and 3) after the events of Halo 3, and is written by Joe staten, who was the lead writer for CE, 2, and ODST, and pretty much singlehandly made all the lore for the Covenant inner workings, as well as being the one who wrote Contact harvest. Any explanation beyond that on why it's good shouldn't be necessary.

I'd make a post about Evolutuions too, but since it's an anthology of short stories, there's a lot to cover, but it's well worth checking out. I already mentioned the Cortana/gravemind one, Other highlights are a very resident evil inspired story where the UNSC raids a prisoner ship where ONI had been experimenting with the flood, a story that gives the origin of the Rookie. Worth noting that a lot of these have motion comic adaptions you can find as well. Hunters in the Dark is also pretty decent, but it's not as great as the others here. It follows the two co-op elites from Halo 3 working on a joint UNSC/sangheili mission back to the ark.

2/2

Good fucking OP, embed related is this board.

Well thanks for getting back to me. I will take a look at the last two books you mentioned. Even if I did want to get back in to the games, I also gave up the Xbox brand entirely after Halo 4. It was just the last straw after watching the exclusives either end up as multiplats or going downhill. I'm solidly in Sony's (just as shitty) territory, so I won't bounce back this gen. Maybe I'd pick one up when it's dirt cheap. I'll try to give the lore another chance and see what happens.

If you didn't want the thread to shift into halo, you should've actually talked about your game.

If he didn't want halo to be disscused maybe he shouldn't have mentioned a halo faction in the OP post.

Also, people who were 3 years old when the first Halo game came out are 18 now.

I think one of my favorite things about the prequel trilogy was how well it captured the feeling of truly alien settings. All the tech, the interactions, the expectations of the character, even the characters themselves were so strange that it reminded me sort of like reading the 4th Dune book.

Go read your shitty novels and raped lore.
I bet you faggots started reading that shit because Microshaft forced you to before Halo 3s launch with Uprising which is fucking trash.
Only decent piece of media on this tradh franchise is Breaking Quarantine.

Go back to your fucking Xbones now

Nope, I saw CE at a friends house back in 2002, played it with him a bit, then bought the Fall of Reach a few days later.

Its not that I didnt gitgud but it was basically any other rts but with forgettable units and THREE DIMENSIONAL MOVEMENT that really only affected how long it took units to arrive to a destination.
REMASTERED IS NOT THE SAME AS THE ORIGINAL YOU GIANT FUCKING PLEBIAN

It is now
gearboxsoftware.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205281840-Homeworld-Remastered-Collection-Update-Information

I tried looking for engine and collision
user do you even know the difference between the homeworld 1 engine and the homeworld 2 engine?

Play it and see for yourself

i stopped playing after 3 and i watched legends a while ago. explain to me the human empire and the forerunner and all that other pre halo shit to me. promethians optional

...

I quit halfway through number 4 because it's so shit, but what I get from the lore is, the humans and the forerunners we both advanced, spacefaring races thousands of years in the past. The forerunners have like, this superiority complex where they can be the only intelligent life in the galaxy, so they go to war with the humans and eventually win. As punishment for losing, they selectively breed humans into neanderthals and then strand them on the earth. Then the flood came and the forerunners built the halos to kill them, and they preserved specimens of every species in the galaxy, except themselves for some reason, and then activated the halos, wiping themselves out and leaving humanity to evolve to a spacefaring race once again. I dunno if I'm recalling correctly, but I think the prometheans were the diadect's personal army to fight the flood, and the only was to get high quality AIs was to program it with the brain of an existing organism, so they harvested all the humans that they didnt selectively breed and made them into robo slaves.

Pic 100% unrelated

user you sound retarded
Are you retarded?
Did your mother drop you as a child, or was it your father?

elaborate please

They DID try, that's what the plan for the Spartans was before Reach got fucked up.

All of the lore that Bungie made about the Human-Forerunner dynamic has been retconned, now humans were a rival race to the Forerunners, and they accidentally lured the Flood to our galaxy. Not entirely sure why they made us the Reclaimers.

How the fuck is that any better than what we currently have? In 500 years humanity didn't mange to come up with anything better and instead raped rifle designs until they started looking like Nerf guns?

That's pretty much all I know. I know that 343 Guilty Spark and the other monitors used to be humans, or forerunners, I don't recall which, and they were later made into robots to manage the installations. Also, the entire events of Combat Evolved are entirely the forerunner's fault since they kept some of the flood to study and thats how they ended up escaping again.

What? The books were successful since like 2002, Uprising was a fucking comic. Two different mediums.

Why don't you go play Cataclysm and Deserts of Kharak, enjoy your oh-so-pure series some more?

tell me about the retcons

Bungie spent Halo 1 through 3 and then Reach wink-wink-nudge-nudging the player that the Humans are actually Forerunners (at the end of 3, 343 Guilty Spark basically admits it), and then 343 (the devs) just throw it all out with Halo 4 which basically trashes all the previous media.

A lot of the reason behind the lack of tech in the first game is explained in Fall of Reach when the Autumn takes on a few too many broadside hits, and loses the entire section the Spartans were keeping all their special gear in. That, and everything else being under development either on earth or Reach at the time, which is also the excuse for the armour abilities in Reach, and why it doesn't make any sense for armour abilities in 4.

Seriously, since when can Chief just slot an active camo module into his armour? That would have been very well utilized in 3, considering they were directly allied with the Elites.

and who were the forerunners before the forerunners?

He is right. Most of the lead up is based on the concept of a "Reclaimer", a person able to operate the high level Forerunner relics such as the Halo itself. It's why in the first game Spark needed Chief to use the Index to activate the Halo, and the Brutes needed Johnson and Miranda to try the same thing in 2: None of the Covenant species are designated as Reclaimers, only humans.

The Covenant war actually started because of poor translation. When the Brutes made first contact at Harvest, and sent the information back to high command, the Forerunner ship they'd been using as an Oracle in it's half awakened state gave them a text that they translated as "Heretic". Given their religious zeal, they took this as a sign to burn the human world to the ground, and then tried going back to the Oracle for their brownie points. However, this only pissed it off, wherein it woke up, called them all retards, and started speaking their own language to call them retards for mistranslating "Reclaimer" so badly. It then told them to go to hell and tried to fly off to go hang out with the humans, at which point the Prophets panicked and shut it off.

The 3 of them swore each other to secrecy, as if the Covenant at large knew that not only did their gods leave a successor species behind after their supposed ascension, but that they had just killed billions of said successor species, the whole Covenant would have fallen apart. These three then did some political gerrymandering to usurp the position of the High Prophets, becoming Truth, Mercy and Regret, all to wipe the rest of the humans from the galaxy and to ensure nothing would challenge their religion's legitimacy.

343 changed the background to this, so that now the Forerunner are the original inhabitants of this galaxy, and the humans were an invading force of nearly equal size who were fleeing their own galaxy from the threat of the Flood. War happens, and the Forerunner are divided on how to deal with everything, which leads to the more militaristic members like the Didact to essentially "conscript" the surviving humans by converting them into AI constructs like the Promethians, and more importantly, the Monitors. These Monitors included 343 Guilty Spark, and the AI of the ship that the Covenant ended up using as their Oracle, and were some of the only surviving intelligences left behind after the Forerunners fired off the Halo rings in a final fuck-you to the Flood.

Halo is shit because humanity isn't busy genociding every Covenant species in the galaxy. It's cuckold porn in "military" sci-fi format.

In Bungie's lore, the Precursors are vaguely hinted at, only really being described as a possible origin of the Forerunners in the same way Forerunners may have been the origin of us.

In 343's lore, they are fairly explicit: The Precursors were able to essentially manipulate matter to the point of being able to create life, and ended up creating the Forerunners and the humans. The Forerunners were salty that the Precursors were going to give the mantle of responsibility to the Humans, essentially being the older brother mad that dad is giving their little brother the keys to the Jag while they're away, and reacted with genocide.

This worked, but it also prompted the Precursors to leave their desicated corpses as a dust that, when it comes into contact with organic life, triggers the formation of a Proto-Flood, eventually evolving into the modern flood when it makes it's way to the Forerunners. The way they coped is as previously described.

"Muh baddass space humans, muh genocide"

Did you even read Starship Troopers? It's fairly similar to Halo. If you're more of a 40K guy, humanity isn't exactly doing so good there either.

You mean the book that opens up with Rico firebombing the skinnies in a terror raid to force them to break off their alliance with the bugs?

You mean the book where it's unequivocally said that either humanity wipes out the bugs or the bugs wipes out humanity? Where the reader is told there are no other outcomes possible?

Fuck off you pathetic cuckold and maybe work on your reading comprehension.

They're the dominant force of the galaxy and have been kicking the everloving shit out of every other race for the past ten thousand years, on top of consistently foiling the designs of malevolent deities bent on their destruction.

343 is pretty gay for that

why would they even do that if the forerunners all died. what would the purpose serve

The monitors did the studying, I think. Shit, I don't know.

study for what though. if they just wiped out the flood then and there, there would be no reason to study.

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remember when she wrote republic commando

Yeah, I remember when it read like some shitty fanfic bashing Jedis and turning the Mandalorians into ubermensch. It's not like I even like Jedi all that much, but those books weren't subtle about any of it.

Mandalorian Racemixer.

The UNSC was designed to be shit, that's how Green Halo Man looks like a messiah in comparison, and thus allows the power fantasy. Halo only good for music and nostalgia because im newfag

They could have given the player proper power armor and let you buzz around like a fucking hornet, dropping mini nukes on any asshole that looked at you funny, or just powerslamming on top of them at mach speed.

But they retooled the game for consoles and for the moronic dudebro audience, the kind that can't understand why a gun wouldn't be shooting bullet, hence why humanity in the year 2500 somehow has shittier equipment than soldiers do today.

forgot

Human Weakness > The Mona Lisa > Dirt > Heart of Midlothian = The Return > Headhunters > Palace Hotel > Pariah > Stomping on the Heels of a Fuss > The impossible and Possible death of Cole > Soma the Painter

Except the Halo 3 terminals near explicitly say that Humans and Forerunners are seperate. There are no retcons there.

Regarding the point of the prophets and the concept of reclaimers, this is easily explained by the prophets, once again, misunderdtanding what the glyph meant. It didn't litterally mean forerunner, it meant, a reclaiming of the mantle in a more general, metaphorical sense, the same way that 343 guilty spark meant it in Halo 3.

There's no question that bungie's original intent was fore humans to be forerunners, but it's clear that by Halo 3 bungie decided not to do that, hence why the terminals have the librarian calling earth and humanity special, which, you know, would make zero sense if humans were forerunners.

It;s actually handled very well in the context of the forerunner novels.

That's sort of the issue with the forerunner triology: Virtually everything inside them sounds stupid as shit out of context explained to you, but in terms of actually reading the book, it comes of extremely well.

Also he's a faggot for not using spoiler taghs for that

Actually, thinking about it, the only thing 343 has retconned that matters is the Foward Unto Dawn's design in Halo 4

But then they retconned that retcon, so it still had the same design it did in 3, and the new design is instead for a new class of frigates called the Strider class

Armor lock was a joke and don't cry about "frosting". The people who genuinely bitch about AL are the people who tend to act like ADHD children and run up to and punch everything.

The Flood and the Forerunners both get wiped by the Culture though.

I'm not too familar with the culture but based on what I have heard I don't think the Forerunners are at much of a disadtvage at most people think when I see these arguements.

How the flood fares against any other faction is completely depdent on how seriously a threat they are taken early on. Even modern day humanity could deal with them no problem provided that the conditions are right and they take them gravely seriously from the get go.

On the other hand, if the flood is allowed to devolp and take over multiple star systems, it's pretty much an impossible battle, even if you are absurdly advanced, because they become reality warpers whose sheer amount of mental thought due to all the minds they've absorbed allow them to tap into deep cosmic forces. In the final forerunner novel, you have them litterally throwing stars around as weapons and cutting slashes across the fabric of the universe in space battles that can only be described as biblical in scale. They don't even need to infect other beings physically, they can just corrupt AI and living things vi astral bullshit.

And then the Precursors, who they are reincarnations of, are just straight up eldrtich elder gods that have lived through multiple big bangs and big crunches.

I don't like bringing that up though, because as I said above, the forerunner triology lore sounds dumb in explanation, but in the actual books it's all really well done sci fi and cosmic horror.

The Culture has completely control of physics, creates pocket universes for fun and can hide anything in "sub"-universal pockets for as long as they want. If they decide, they can just step sideways "out" of reality and burn the entire universe at once by unleashing the Gridfire.

what

It never feels like you're truly having an impact on the battle even when you're kicking ass. The industrial design of the units and the music was incredible though.

That's really not that different from the Forerunners, aside from just being scaled up a bit. The Forerunners do the same pocket dimension stuff with slipspace and basically tried the exact tactic you mentioned to try to kill the flood by building dyson speheres that only exist in slipspace, then lighting the Halo rings, and then coming back out after that, though obviously that never panned out.

As far as "control over physics" goes, the Forerunners have a pretty extensive mastery over it, but only to as much as it could realistically go while staying grounded, wheras by your discription it seems like for the culture it's more of a handwaved thing bordering on reality warping.

Basically it seems the culture is what the forerunners would be if Halo wasn't trying to be Hard sci fi as much as it does. Not that Halo is hard sci fi, but it tries to be and it sort of exists 2/3 of the way there. I mentioned it above, but a lot of what makes the forerunner books good is how detailed it's explained how forerunner tech works while also still having it actually feel esoterically advanced rather then just "modern concepts but better".

If you like sci fi in general, especially classic stuff, the forerunner triology is worth checking out even if you don't into halo at all.

Only the CRS light crusier, which is basically just a minature version of the actual covenant cruisers, which are all bigger then the corvette

It still bothers me, even a light cruiser should be far larger than a corvette

Go read the Culture. Star with Use of Weapons. Halo is fucking pleb tier nonsense. They just took Starship Troopers and Ringworld and pressed blend.

That's certainly how it started but it hasn't just been that for a while. I'm telling you the forerunner triology is legitimately good sci fi.

And I'm telling you that you are an uncultured pleb who probably hasn't read real books.

Don't bother. It's boring. The Culture AIs are so overpowered compared to everyone else. There is no suspense. You start rooting for the bad guys to win. That’s always a sign of bad writing. Worst of all, AIs run the Culture and humans are completely useless. AIs treat humans like pets and only keep us around for sentimental reasons.

The Culture are the bad guys, user.