- DecepticonCobra
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- Fabled Heroic Member
@accordingto343
Your one stop shop for all of 343's fabulous errors and ridiculous notions in the Halo lore.
Posted by: Black Eagle X99
Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: Connor Kenway 99
Can you explain how and why? I honestly find most of halo 4's flaws in the multiplayer.
My problems occur with the pacing of the story and treatment of the expanded universe canon that was included in the game. Let me start with the Big Bad of Halo 4, the Didact. He was the villain, but he wasn't a very good one. His motives are relatively vague and his character in the games does not align with his character in the novels. His motives boil down to "Grr, I hate humans!" and to achieve his goal he wants to use a Forerunner superweapon. Where have we seen this before except in every Halo game ever? The Terminals, which I'll cover in more detail, didn't help matters either. No doubt he was bitter after the Human-Forerunner War shown to John by the Librarian, but in Cryptum 1,000+ years had passed since that event and he didn't start ripping humans to shreds the moment he got out of the Cryptum on Earth. So why exactly is he peeved now? I would've prefered the Master Builder, an already established bad guy in the Forerunner Saga who hated humans and other non-Forerunner races. He would employ torture on his enemies, he repeatedly violated the Mantle and constructed the Halos. The Didacts goal of having the Forerunners rule the galaxy again would be better suited under the Master Builder.
Now let's talk pacing, events just happened way too fast for my taste. So Chief and Cortana crash on Requiem, okay that's fine and expected. Then within minutes the UNSC Infinity tries to contact them. I get the Infinity found Cortana's signal, but it seems like a pretty big coincidence that they just happened to be that close to the Dawn and Requiem. Soon after that, we are introduced to the Didact. Now I wouldn't be disappointed in that if there had been some build up, maybe have some references somewhere about a "prisoner". But it just happens and nothing much is done with him. He is an unseen presence for most of the game and only comes out to just Force choke Chief and talk Yoink!. And then he falls off a bridge at the end of the game like a punk.
As for the Terminals, the first problem with them is that they require me to sign onto Waypoint just to view them. I take it they were last minute ideas, but it is inconvenient since they apparently tell the story of the game more than the game does. However, the Terminals aren't exactly clear in terms of where they stand within the lore. The first few are fine, but after that it gets weird. But then we see two Terminals with seemingly conflicting timelines. We see humans in their de-evolved state on a Halo ring and then we go back to Charum Hakkor and see the Lord of Admirals before he is Composed by the Composer. Shouldn't these be switched? Up next we see the Librarian and Master Builder working together despite being foes for quite some time, she had to fight tooth and nail to put humans with the Composed memories of some of ancient humanity on some of the Halos and yet here they are as chums against the Didact. And speaking of the Didact, which one is in Halo 4? The Terminals make no mention of the Ur-Didact being forced into exile by the Master Builder, make no mention of Bornsteller Makes Eternal Lasting, makes no mention of Bornsteller finding the Ur-Didact, no mention of the Ur-Didact being cast into a Flood infected star system by the Master Builder, none of that.
Yet we see the Didact, whatever one it is, Composing humans on a Halo ring in the midst of the Forerunner-Flood War. Yet at this point, weren't the remaining humans taken off the rings and put back on Earth? Perhaps light will be shed in Silentium, but it still stands at a weird spot in the lore. Other curious things missing that bugged me was the exclusion of the Primordial and Mendicant Bias among some things.
So in conclusion, I think the Halo 4 campaign suffered by being too dependent on the expanded universe yet bungles the connections and making it a schizophrenic mess. The other Halo games, quality of story notwithstanding, at least had core narratives and didn't expect you to read every book and comic before playing.
Primordium as a whole is such a great set up for a solid story that it makes me sad they went the direction they did. I mean, a second larger Ark containing the remains of the Forerunner race and the Bornstellar-Didact and Librarian who lead them, 343-GS revealed as an ancient human and going to find his friends memories in living humans after he hijacks a UNSC vessel, and of course the Flood being everyones enemies unable to be defeated it seems. Holy crap. If none of that is executed on in Halo 5 they are just idiotic.
One thing about 343 Guilty Spark, he is still dead. Primordium mentioned how he was a fragment of the narrator, ie Chakas. One of several fragments in fact. Personally I think he made those fragments to look for Riser, Vinevra(?) and the Librarian. The Spark fragment got lucky and Chakas simply reconnected with him. At least, that is how I saw it.
I asked Greg Bear about this and said more should be revealed on the Chakas-343 GS relationship in Silentium.