- anton1792
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- Noble Legendary Member
"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum
Posted by: ROBERTO jh
Posted by: anton1792
It also means that 343i has already started to retcon its own material, as the Return doesn't mention any of this.
Or maybe that's because you're wrong and are overdramatizing things? Jul M'dama can promise something for the faith-shattered Elites the Prophets could never promise, which is to actually meet one of their gods and talk to him. Imagine the potential millions of Elites who would flock to the possibilities that their gods had not in fact abandoned them, doubly so for the Zealots, who as fate would have it, now run the show.
That same logic can be applied to the Grunts, who though operated out of fear for the most part, were still strong believers one way or another. The Hunters and Jackals on the other hand are mercenaries, their being there does not mean anything beyond the Storm having something to offer, something Arbiter wouldn't offer seeing as "all who served the Prophets will be punished."
We know that there were a lot of neutral Elite Keeps who didn't seem to particuarly care either way about the civil war and humans, but what they probably did care about was their entire reason for living being thrown out when the Prophets abandoned them. They would be a breeding ground for Storm soldiers.
The Arbiter didn't have to lose. He might be outnumbered, but nothing we have indicates he was destroyed beyond wild guess work based in vague details.
Keep up the pessimism people, really enjoying it here.
This is all just patchwork and ad hoc rationalising to justify a lazy "story".
The path that they chose to go down, by having the Covenant rebuilt because of the Didact returning and wanting to kill Humans (What a completely original plot) is an inferior substitute to tackling the existential crises, the cultural changes, the changes in mindset and the break down in species defined loyalties, that the "Covenant" would otherwise be having in the absence of such a contrived plot. And it is contrived, because invoking the Forerunners to get that to happen is literally invoking an act of God in the story. No matter how well you "justify" having the Covenant rebuilt and coming back as enemies in pretty much their old functional role, it is still inferior and always will be because it is cutting corners, skipping over more interesting material that could literally fill entire books and multiple viewpoints, and aspires to nothing more than getting back to "All Aliens hate all Humans". The fact that they are also not only the same Covenant functionally, politically, religiously and socially, but are also characterized by the desire to destroy Humanity is, I'm afraid, nothing short of BS of the laziest calibre. It renders the entire past trilogy - meaningless and pointless.
It's actually that bad that I can't seriously view it as a continuation of Halo's story. I just can't. It's a different universe than what it was 5 years ago with altered facts to make this all fit. It's clear, at least to me, that this is a different story and universe merely with the privilege of using the copyrighted material - names and visuals - from Halo. But it can't Halo as far as I'm concerned, identity wise.
It is just a completely boring turn taking us back down the same old road that we have been travelling for the past 10 years, and it was so heavily implied to get more interesting after Halo 3 as well. I don't care how they justify it; having the Forerunners as enemies is in itself quite awful, because it is also the same deal, and also because it is irrelevant. All the issues they could focus on is instead "avoided" by playing the "Forerunners are enemies" card. For 10 years we have had cookie-cut Covenant, and now we'll always get that, won't we? I should have saw this coming when they had Raia 'Mdama killed off. It seems that in Halo canon, any Covenant character with an interesting and dynamic personality is killed off to keep the status quo going. And now they even have the unimaginative look to go along with the unimaginative personality that they have been given.
I mean you are operating under the assumption that there would be a landslide majority to draw from in terms of religious zealots when in actual fact it has been implied so many times now to the point of being anvilicious that the Elites were fractured and divided to the point where Truth discarded them entirely. It therefore doesn't seem like this species natural evolution, after having several major tenets of their faith destroyed and the rest thrown into doubt due to the lies that the Prophets told, suddenly jumping back into the role of the Old Covenant and pushing that agenda when they were not happy in it in the first place. Oh of course, they can "Bring back the Forerunners and have them as enemies to make it work" - if I had read that in a fanfic I would have closed the browser window. Well, unfortunately, the Elites were fractured and divided over their faith before the Schism, so I don't see what good that would do. But of course we can always pretend that they weren't fractured and divided before the Schism, right?
And yeah, "the grunts are afraid therefore will join" - Don't you see what the -blam!- I'm talking about? STEREOTYPES. We're back to it! "Jackals are pirates and go for the best deal" - Stereotypes again. Because no Jackal leaders could ever have a set of principles to stick to and say "No" to the Storm, right? The living standards and rights that these species received under the Covenant were atrocious, but yet they just want to go back to that rather than take the opportunity to rise up whilst it is in tatters? I mean, they just skipped over that rather pertinent issue too? Who writes this?
Blah.
And why would Thel still be alive if he lost? That implies that he ran away. Mind you he has already been portrayed as weak and pathetic leader with no charisma by Traviss so maybe they would actually have him slip away to save his own back. Even if he is still alive, somehow, the fact that he has lost any chance to turn things around is still an invalidation of his entire story.
343i lied to us. They said at SDCC10 that there were many different viewpoints to explore before Glasslands. That was a lie, wasn't it? Frankie said that the Covenant were overhauled. That was a lie in all but graphical terms. He said that the Storm was a faction. That was a politician's answer because what he forget to mention was that they are the only faction left.