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This topic has moved here: Subject: covenant language--lead to theWhales storyline rant
  • Subject: covenant language--lead to theWhales storyline rant
Subject: covenant language--lead to theWhales storyline rant
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ok..as any1 who played Halo:CE knows, the covenant do not speak english. each covenant form seems to speak in its own form of gibberish, even tho some of it, at times, have sounded (imo)like it could be english.
but in halo2, they all seem to magically start speaking english, and all the human characters, as well as urself, can understand what they are saying!
why do you think this is??? isnt this slightly unrealistic (figuratively speaking)? even if they "learned" how to speak our language, isnt this slightly contradicting?? they reguard humans as demons, as evil..why would they want to learn and speak our language???
to me, just the fact that they all speah english in H2 sort of makes the game seem more... like a cartoon or sumthing..

ill tell u wat would have been cool tho; if you couldnt understand the covenant as MC (they talk gibberish), but, you can as the arbiter...i think it would have made the campaign seem just that lil bit cooler. youd be like "cool, we know wat they are saying!".

i suspect that this was bungies plan, in the beginning... covenant talk thier own languages when you MC, and english when your the Arbiter...but maybe they didnt have time, in the end, to do this.. and thought people wouldnt really care, since wat the covenant said needed to be translated during certain cutscenes, anyways.

on another rantish note; i think people found it cooler to not know the inside details/politics of the covenant, and thier armada.. after the first game, people had come to hate the covenant, and saw them as a more mysterious enemy. making us play as a covenant, and writing in a covenant racial fraction/rebellion, and then making us ally with some of them, imo, was a stroyline gamble that wasnt very effective.

as i said, people had come to hate the covenant, and i think that playing on this hate, and making us to hate them even more in the 2nd game, would have been a more effective, and dramatic stroy line move. i think the public would have preferred to loathe and hate the covenant for wat they have done to us, and use this hate to feul them in the quest of standing at arms against them. fighting no matter wat the odds were -and never giving up. this could have lead to a story that ended with a deep emotional bang. and a dramatic ending that wouldnt have been too complex, but could have been powerful.

instead of feeling hate (which i beleve is something we wanted to feel, and kept telling ourselves to feel throughout the H2 campaign) we found that the story was trying to make us feel sympathy for a race that was trying to wipe us out! we then find ourselves with mixed emotions at the end of the game, and makes the idea of marching into an all out war against them a little less appealing..a little less dramatic..

did we know all of Germany's or Japans inner politics during WW2?? no. wat we knew was that the -blam!-'s were evil, and the japanese were allied with them.

i think that the inner-meaning of the original story(CEs campaign) was about humans rising up against astounding odds, to be victorious, because of our determination, and instinctive habit of adaptation, and survival, we are able to out perform other races that are statistically more powerful than us in all aspects..this is wat we have done for millions of years in order be the dominant species on our planet. overcome the odds.
if halo 2 had simply built on its foundation, and expanded it to a grander scale (all of humanity being the under dog, not just MC) i think we could have had something serious.
my suggestion to Bungie; keep the story simple, easy to understand, but powerful. the it was in CE, rather than have a complex, and harder to understand story with multiple factors to keep track of (the dual story lin of H2).

  • 05.16.2006 4:57 PM PDT
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Posted by: theWhale
ok..as any1 who played Halo:CE knows, the covenant do not speak english. each covenant form seems to speak in its own form of gibberish, even tho some of it, at times, have sounded (imo)like it could be english.
but in halo2, they all seem to magically start speaking english, and all the human characters, as well as urself, can understand what they are saying!
why do you think this is??? isnt this slightly unrealistic (figuratively speaking)? even if they "learned" how to speak our language, isnt this slightly contradicting?? they reguard humans as demons, as evil..why would they want to learn and speak our language???
to me, just the fact that they all speah english in H2 sort of makes the game seem more... like a cartoon or sumthing..

ill tell u wat would have been cool tho; if you couldnt understand the covenant as MC (they talk gibberish), but, you can as the arbiter...i think it would have made the campaign seem just that lil bit cooler. youd be like "cool, we know wat they are saying!".

i suspect that this was bungies plan, in the beginning... covenant talk thier own languages when you MC, and english when your the Arbiter...but maybe they didnt have time, in the end, to do this.. and thought people wouldnt really care, since wat the covenant said needed to be translated during certain cutscenes, anyways.

on another rantish note; i think people found it cooler to not know the inside details/politics of the covenant, and thier armada.. after the first game, people had come to hate the covenant, and saw them as a more mysterious enemy. making us play as a covenant, and writing in a covenant racial fraction/rebellion, and then making us ally with some of them, imo, was a stroyline gamble that wasnt very effective.

as i said, people had come to hate the covenant, and i think that playing on this hate, and making us to hate them even more in the 2nd game, would have been a more effective, and dramatic stroy line move. i think the public would have preferred to loathe and hate the covenant for wat they have done to us, and use this hate to feul them in the quest of standing at arms against them. fighting no matter wat the odds were -and never giving up. this could have lead to a story that ended with a deep emotional bang. and a dramatic ending that wouldnt have been too complex, but could have been powerful.

instead of feeling hate (which i beleve is something we wanted to feel, and kept telling ourselves to feel throughout the H2 campaign) we found that the story was trying to make us feel sympathy for a race that was trying to wipe us out! we then find ourselves with mixed emotions at the end of the game, and makes the idea of marching into an all out war against them a little less appealing..a little less dramatic..

did we know all of Germany's or Japans inner politics during WW2?? no. wat we knew was that the -blam!-'s were evil, and the japanese were allied with them.

i think that the inner-meaning of the original story(CEs campaign) was about humans rising up against astounding odds, to be victorious, because of our determination, and instinctive habit of adaptation, and survival, we are able to out perform other races that are statistically more powerful than us in all aspects..this is wat we have done for millions of years in order be the dominant species on our planet. overcome the odds.
if halo 2 had simply built on its foundation, and expanded it to a grander scale (all of humanity being the under dog, not just MC) i think we could have had something serious.
my suggestion to Bungie; keep the story simple, easy to understand, but powerful. the it was in CE, rather than have a complex, and harder to understand story with multiple factors to keep track of (the dual story lin of H2).

1)The covenant CAN speak english.
2)If they had made it a single line story, and had not had the whole break up in the covenant thing, for one it wouldn't have worked out right, and also since when has bungie liked simple????????????????
3)personally i like playing as the arbiter and actually if you payed attention during the game, you should understand that the covenant is now devided, and part of them are on our side, and that if we hated both sides we would have a MUCH more complicated game, and the humans would die indefinately. And we'd probably end up hating the humans for being traitors.

  • 05.16.2006 5:06 PM PDT
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The covenent have been gathering info on the humans for many many years. They could have learned the language and such.

  • 05.16.2006 5:08 PM PDT
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Posted by: Mah0neskeet
The covenent have been gathering info on the humans for many many years. They could have learned the language and such.

They DID learn the language, its in the books.

  • 05.16.2006 5:09 PM PDT

1. Most people found it effective.
2. I can't speak covenant.
3. Too late now.
4. You suck :).
(sorry I just had to. Nothing personal just I disagree with your opinion).

  • 05.16.2006 5:10 PM PDT

"In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and was widely regarded as a bad move." -Douglas Adams

You have new translation software. And it advances the plotline, consider it artistic license.

  • 05.16.2006 5:11 PM PDT
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i thought that not nowing what the covenant were saying made them more animalistic, and slightly more sacry.

  • 05.16.2006 5:11 PM PDT

Posted by: Ada Astra
gruntfarmer is a cheeseburger.

Eight out of every six people are Chinese.

the new suit you get in h2 has a translater.

  • 05.16.2006 5:13 PM PDT
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First of all, they DON'T Speak Engish. They speak their own language. Let me explain.

Remember in the first Halo when Cortana decodes the Covenant transmission during the campaign level "Halo". Well to do that you would think that she must have some grasp on the language. Is it farfetched to assume that Chief's new armor had a chip in it that could decode convenant speech and translate it into english that he could understand? No, it's not, and if I'm not mistaken that is exactly what happened.*

*Disclaimer: Might be pulling that out of my ass. Not sure if that is accurate but I remember reading it somewhere.

EDIT: Oh, you guys are dicks. While I was writing my intelligent post explaining the translation in the suit, like three people beat me to it. Teach me to be full of myself. *Smacks self*
*Smacks roommate*
*Runs*

[Edited on 5/16/2006]

  • 05.16.2006 5:14 PM PDT
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hmm sorry i havnt read the books...are the books actually cannon? i think not..the author tailored the books to the happenings of the games! the games were first..and if we were speaking by official cannon (only by wat is in the games) we would see that in the first Halo, the covenant only spoke english...when Bungie creats halo3 i hope that they do wat they want to do, not wat is in some halo novels..even tho the novels ma have been good, they werent actually created by Bungie (i do believe).

  • 05.16.2006 5:15 PM PDT
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Posted by: Mad Max 77
First of all, they DON'T Speak Engish. They speak their own language. Let me explain.

Remember in the first Halo when Cortana decodes the Covenant transmission during the campaign level "Halo". Well to do that you would think that she must have some grasp on the language. Is it farfetched to assume that Chief's new armor had a chip in it that could decode convenant speech and translate it into english that he could understand? No, it's not, and if I'm not mistaken that is exactly what happened.*

*Disclaimer: Might be pulling that out of my ass. Not sure if that is accurate but I remember reading it somewhere.


why would their english be so flawless?
there should've been less to their vocabulary, they knew bigger words than i did.

  • 05.16.2006 5:16 PM PDT
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Posted by: theWhale
hmm sorry i havnt read the books...are the books actually cannon? i think not..the author tailored the books to the happenings of the games! the games were first..and if we were speaking by official cannon (only by wat is in the games) we would see that in the first Halo, the covenant only spoke english...when Bungie creats halo3 i hope that they do wat they want to do, not wat is in some halo novels..even tho the novels ma have been good, they werent actually created by Bungie (i do believe).


READ THEM.



they are really good books.

  • 05.16.2006 5:17 PM PDT
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Posted by: X 10000 Fists X
Posted by: Mad Max 77
First of all, they DON'T Speak Engish. They speak their own language. Let me explain.

Remember in the first Halo when Cortana decodes the Covenant transmission during the campaign level "Halo". Well to do that you would think that she must have some grasp on the language. Is it farfetched to assume that Chief's new armor had a chip in it that could decode convenant speech and translate it into english that he could understand? No, it's not, and if I'm not mistaken that is exactly what happened.*

*Disclaimer: Might be pulling that out of my ass. Not sure if that is accurate but I remember reading it somewhere.


why would their english be so flawless?
there should've been less to their vocabulary, they knew bigger words than i did.


Bro, I don't think you got what I said. They don't have flawless English because they don't speak English. We are translating THEIR language.

  • 05.16.2006 5:18 PM PDT
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Because "we" wouldn't enjoy a realistic storyline and it's more "fun" with these little changes that "improve" the game......honestly I blame children

[Edited on 5/16/2006]

  • 05.16.2006 5:18 PM PDT
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Yes, the books are canon.

Also, I'm almost positive that whoever posted about the translation software is correct. Once Cortana was able to translate the Covenant language while by using the Covenant AI's lexicon, it would be very easy to upgrade the neural implants in all UNSC personel to have some sort of uato-translation function permanently active. Since every UNSC personel has some sort of neural implant, anyone in the UNSC could understand Covenant speech.

  • 05.16.2006 5:21 PM PDT
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Posted by: Aerien
Yes, the books are canon.

Also, I'm almost positive that whoever posted about the translation software is correct. Once Cortana was able to translate the Covenant language while by using the Covenant AI's lexicon, it would be very easy to upgrade the neural implants in all UNSC personel to have some sort of uato-translation function permanently active. Since every UNSC personel has some sort of neural implant, anyone in the UNSC could understand Covenant speech.


Bravo!

  • 05.16.2006 5:22 PM PDT
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Posted by: Aerien
Yes, the books are canon.

Also, I'm almost positive that whoever posted about the translation software is correct. Once Cortana was able to translate the Covenant language while by using the Covenant AI's lexicon, it would be very easy to upgrade the neural implants in all UNSC personel to have some sort of uato-translation function permanently active. Since every UNSC personel has some sort of neural implant, anyone in the UNSC could understand Covenant speech.


"good excuse" i say
a believable cover story
im sure Bungie wasnt thinkin this when they released the game ;\


addition:
Posted by: MC Enders
here's the thing about it adam. I dont like the halo series. I like halo 1. and I'm telling you right now that I read books, simply put, to know. I didnt read the halo books. when i was in the 8th grade, I had decided that I knew enough about the world. enough about anything. therefore I didn't read the halo books, because I was expecting the highly anticipated sequel to be based entirely ON THE GAME like anyone else. at any rate halo 2 is supposed to be a sequel to halo 1 THE GAME. not [the] book series written by Nylund.


from his moved thread..quoted because he has a point. i think there should to be contiuity from game to game completely independant of other sources, namely the books..even if the books were good

[Edited on 5/16/2006]

  • 05.16.2006 7:06 PM PDT
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Okay, first off, turn caps lock off. It's that small button to the right of the 'a' key. It's even labeled "Caps Lock", so people with low intelligence can find it.

But yes, during Halo: CE, humans have already partially translated some Covenant speech. Even if they had the whole thing, though, it doesn't explain how everyone could learn it so fast; learning a new language usually takes years to learn well. My idea of using the neural implants to do various things like translation would make sense, but I can't prove it, so it's just as good as any other theory with no evidence.

  • 05.16.2006 8:13 PM PDT
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The small button to the right of the "a" key, i think, is the "s" key.

  • 05.16.2006 9:13 PM PDT