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• Why didn't the Forerunners just kill off the remaining flood if they had them all trapped inside the Halo rings? It makes more sense since they already had massive numbers of floating robots already inside the Halo rings, and the Flood had absolutely no way to expand their population so it would be a long but obvious outcome.
  • Apparently, those were research centers before they blew up the universe, and they never gave the kill order. Also, there might be more in another galaxy, and if a cure or prevention could be discovered before they arrive, you'd be glad you kept some to study.
  • Why bother killing them? They're a unique species that could yield valuable research, and they're all safely contained on the rings. The Forerunners' extinction was not Part of The Plan.
    • Nor was some ignorant alien shmuck blinded by religious dogma and unable to read the warning signs pressing the "Open" button.
  • If you recall the Terminals from Halo 3, you'll note that the Flood had consumed most life in the galaxy; the Forerunner, prior to firing the Ark, only had little more than ten thousand ships commanded by one AI as a last line of defense. This was against a fleet of five million ships, commanded by the Gravemind and a rampant AI. So prior to the first firing of the rings, the specimens on the Halo Installations were just an infinitesimal portion of a galaxy-spanning infestation.

• Where did 343 Guilty Spark get the Spartan Laser from? We see him in Halo 1 & 2, and he's pretty much defenseless, except for the gravity manipulation thing he has. Then suddenly, in Halo 3, he apparently has a Spartan Laser in his eye. wtf?
  • There's a difference between not having it and not using it. He really never has a reason to use his laser in Halo or Halo 2, even when he's captured by the Covenant. There's no reason for him to break free of the Covenant, since his main reason for existence (04) is gone and they're using him to help them figure out how Halo operates.
    • There are two points in the first game - when you first figure out what Halo really does and when you're hard at work tossing grenades into the Autumn's engine - where Spark is present, has both opportunity and reason to kill you, and instead settles for sicking his Sentinels on you. I'm sure everyone's shot him with a rocket towards the end of the game there, and noted how it does no damage to him - but he just keeps floatin' around, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he could fry you in an instant...
    • You're the Reclaimer, heir to the Forerunners. Guilty Spark very likely has inhibitions against attacking you, just as he would inhibitions against attacking any Forerunner. It isn't until the very end of the third game, when Guilty Spark has clearly gone rampant, that he can attack you at all. (Apparently, adding you to the Sentinel targeting lists is a loophole in his programming, but then Guilty Spark's been slowly going insane for eons, its just that it isn't until the final scene that he completely loses it.)
  • Clearly, during Halo 1 he was still charging up his lazer. And furthermore, it looks more like a overclocked Sentinel Beam than a Spartan Laser. It only stands to reason that as the installation's monitor he would have an extremely powerful form of self defense.

• Similarly, what was up with those Cortana sequences in Halo 3?
  • It's possible that both the Cortana sequences and the Gravemind communiques are either a form of biological telepathy- not actually that improbable, scientifically speaking- or utilizing the Master Chief's helmet communications systems. Cortana clearly has a very close attachment to the Chief, and she is being tortured horribly and having her programming screwed with by the Gravemind. More than likely the transmissions are her desperate, instinctive cries for help as Gravemind toys with her, and in her weakness she cries out to the one person she thinks could possibly help her- the Chief.
    • We know the Gravemind has telepathic capacities. Remember when Gravemind itself broadcasts to you the same way? 'I am peace... I am serenity' and all that? And the psychic scream you hear right after you've 'stolen' Cortana back? The Flood themselves and their hive mind? Gravemind's voice speaking to you through various Flood drones, towards the end of 'The Covenant' in Halo 3? If Gravemind is a telepath, and Cortana was directly interfaced to its mind while being tortured, its plausible she could have been using his faculties to sneak-broadcast messages to you.
    • Also Gravemind's dialogue in Halo 2 hints strongly at it being psychic:

      Gravemind: There is much talk, and I have listened. Through rock, and metal, and time.

    • Tell the truth, none of that really struck me as "psychic" powers. Just about everything the Gravemind is capable of doing could be accomplished by some form of transmitter; the Halo 3 Terminals even specifically mention that the Gravemind is clogging the various Forerunner communications channels with its transmissions. (my main objection to Gravemind being psychic is that, up until that point in Halo, there's been not even a single mention of psychic powers in any way, shape, or form.....)
    • Incorrect. Remember how Gravemind speaks to you through the Flood drones several times? Not to mention that Flood are capable of conducting coordinated attack plans across multiple locations without needing to use radios — hell, according to some of the Terminal Dialogues, the Forerunner War had the Flood capable of instantaneous communication across all of its various components over interstellar distances. There were more than a few indicators the Flood are a telepathic hive species. Granted, there's no other examples save the occasional visions of Master Chief as to the Flood being telepathic outside their species, but that's where Cortana and her almost symbiotic rapport with Spartan 117 comes in.
    • Just because the Gravemind is speaking to the Master Chief, it doesn't mean that he's using some psychic goobldygook. Its entirely possible and significantly more plausible that the Flood are using a biological analogue to radio; we know that animals are sensitive to magnetism, radiation, and high-frequency sounds humans can't hear, so its no stretch to imagine the Flood developing a simple biological method of transmitting/receiving data. Communications over interstellar distances are easily explained by the use of Covenant interstellar communications tech.
    • Except for two things: 1) your EEG spikes and flatlines in funny ways while receiving one of Cortana's 'transmissions', and 2) nobody else: not the Marines on their helmet radios, not the comm sections of the Tsavo base or the Forward Unto Dawn, not Commander Keyes in the Pelican, reports hearing any transmissions whatsoever. If Gravemind is communicating with you on RF broadband, you'd think someone would have noticed. As for 'psychic gobblydegook', we are in a game with portals that instantly bamf starships a quarter of a million light-years away, energy swords, a parasite species that is flat-out impossible to have evolved naturally anywhere, and nine-foot-tall reptilian alien badasses who can flip over tanks with their bare hands. This is not the game setting for strict scientific realism.
    • Also, the principle behind something having basic telepathy isn't really too implausible, especially for a hyper-advanced, ludicrous, borderline Eldritch Abomination species like the Flood. All it requires is an extrapolation of Gravemind's demonstrated ability to control or direct the Flood to its whims.
    • There's a big fat hint that Gravemind is psychic in Halo 2, with his very first lines, when Cortana, who is inside John's head as he looks at Gravemind for the first time, asks him, "What is that?" Gravemind replies to her, "I am a monument to all your sins." The fact that Cortana seems to have said this to John upon first introducing herself to him long before this occurs (recalled in one of the 'transmissions') would further suggest Gravemind is a bona-fide mind reader.
    • The Flood do nothing that cannot be explained by some form of biological capacity to mimic electronic signals. This is capacity is confirmed in Halo Wars with the proto-Gravemind creature, which actually can mimic a specific signal to lure in the Spirit of Fire's crew.
    • Wrong. Until the seventh level, "The Covenant", Cortana's communications with you occur while she and Gravemind are in another star system. Either the Master Chief has an FTL communicator built into his armor (hint: he doesn't), Gravemind can use a "biological capacity to mimic electronic signals" to send ordinary radio signals across interstellar distances at FTL velocities (hint: that's ridiculous)... or, the sonofabitch is psychic.
    • Critical Research Failure. The Covenant have FTL comms. Gravemind is in the middle of a Covenant holy city. Do the math. Also, its strange that one would consider a biological capacity to use FTL communications to be ridiculous, but at the same time you're perfectly willing to accept psychic powers as somehow being more plausible - in a universe that already has confirmed FTL comms.
    • Critical Reading Comprehension Failure: Gravemind's access to FTL comms means exactly jack unless you also posit that a) Master Chief has a Covenant FTL receiver built into his armor and b) The comm sections of the Forward Unto Dawn and Tsavo Base somehow utterly fail to detect an incoming Covenant FTL communication. Which, y'know, we already pointed out.
    • It doesn't need to be able to detect Covenant FTL comms. The Flood can mimic UNSC signals, as Halo Wars has already shown. The Flood can also mimic and jam Forerunner FTL comms, as Halo 3 has already shown, and Forerunner signals can be picked up by UNSC transceivers, also shown in Halo 3. And again, you are positing that psychic powers in a setting that has otherwise never even hinted they existed are a more plausible explanation than FTL communications when the Flood have already been shown to have FTL communication capabilities. There is nothing the Gravemind does that cannot be explained by that capacity.
    • Also, where exactly was it said that Tsavo base or Forward Unto Dawn didn't detect anything? When you're inside Tsavo Base, it is being invaded by the Covenant. They're not going to care about random, nonsensical incoming transmissions when they're hip-deep in brutes and engaging in a fighting evacuation. The only time Forward Unto Dawn is really in a position to pick up the incoming transmissions is when the transmissions are coming from High Charity while it is on the Ark, at which point - again - they have vastly more important things to worry about than sorting out a couple of random, nonsensical messages.
    • So, Gravemind can use Covenant FTL equipment to send a signal to Earth so precisely that he can hit one guy's helmet radio in the middle of a forest without any other UNSC receiver in the area hearing even a whisper? Remember, you're only a few miles away from Tsavo Base during the first stage, and to a guy shooting a beam at you from thousands of light-years away that's effectively no relative distance at all. And yet, nobody else with a USNC radio hears a single damn thing. There is also that the Master Chief's armor has no FTL receiver. It doesn't matter if Gravemind can mimic UNSC communications protocols, you don't have a UNSC FTL comm either! All you have is a tactical radio! So, sorry, the theory still doesn't hold.
    • ...and somehow, Psychic Powers are more plausible?
    • Entirely more plausible. The "radio" theory requires direct violations of canon (i.e., an FTL receiver being in Master Chief's armor), the 'psychic' theory simply requires believing that a game already up to its damn armpits in "rubber science" space-opera tropes is using yet another such trope, notably, psionics.
    • There's also that the 'Flood use biological radio' theory would make both the Forerunner and the Covenant look like total idiots. Remember, a Gravemind does not form until there is a certain density of Flood. This means that the Flood need the hivemind in order to be intelligent at all. And if their hivemind ran on electromagnetic frequencies, it would be vulnerable to electronic jamming. The Flood would be walking around with a giant neon sign saying "Please, shoot me in this horrendous weakness with your ECM jamming pods until I am totally lobotomized". Granted that even a non-sentient Flood rush is still a dangerous local hazard, its only a local hazard. The thing that let the Flood destroy a galaxy was that they were as intelligent as we were and could fly starfleets... but they're only that intelligent when there's a lot of them and they can communicate amongst each other. And yet, a species as technologically sophisticated as the Forerunner is supposed to have never thought of trying to disrupt the communications medium so as to render its enemy enormously more easily killed? No, its much more plausible that what the Flood use to network among themselves is not biological radio, because otherwise they'd be enormously less of a menace than they were.
  • Some of the transmissions seem to to be deliberately vague allusions to her plan; e.g. her statement that "I'm a thief, but I keep what I steal" referring to the Index. She has to keep whatever she says difficult to understand, because the Gravemind is listening.
  • First set of communications (during Sierra 117 and Crow's Nest) are her verifying who she is to the Master Chief, using phrases he knows from when he was inducted into the SPARTAN program. The second set (The Storm and Floodgate) are her trying to explain what she's doing and why she's being obtuse (she can't tell the Chief everything, but she is trying tot ell him she's on his side). Note that afterward, when you arrive at the Ark, communications with her cut out until High Charity itself arrives. Then Cortana begins actually telling the Chief things useful, like how she hints she has the Index, and then leading him to the panel to activate and reveal Halo. Everything after that is Cortana breaking down while being tortured by the Gravemind for information.

• Why, in the finale bit of "The Covenant" mission, couldn't the Arbiter and the Chief just hop in either the hornet or the handy-dandy Phantom there and just fly up to where Truth was, instead of taking the elevator and forcing Keyes to do it instead?
  • They probably didn't know they could break through the glass. Remember, this is Forerunner engineering. They probably felt they had enough time to reach Truth and stop him without risking plowing through potentially-impenetrable Forerunner transparent substances, until Truth turned on the rings. That was when Miranda did her desperation move with the pelican.
  • Also, it would have been pretty embarassing to break through the top window and then find out that the transmitter room was in an armored sub-basement. It wasn't until the Master Chief & Arbiter were already inside the building at the bottom of the shaft, and radio'ed how far away from Truth they still were, that Miranda could make an educated guess as to Truth's location.
  • Why didn't truth fire the rings before The Chief and The Arbiter attacked, he'd reach the citadel and nothing was stopping him.
    • He needed a human to activate the control systems, in the form of Johnson, and he had to go through his sermon before firing it. Scary Dogmatic Alien and all.
    • Alternatively, they were fired already. Remember at the end of Halo 2, there are several minutes between when Tartarus forces Keyes to enter the Index in the console and when the ring would've fired, had Keyes not ganked it. It's entirely possible that Truth doing the same with Johnson on the Ark is the exact equivalent; the rings were just building charge until the could fire, and John canceled it before it could finish, just like Keyes did.

• Also why do the shield doors block everything but organic creatures, vehicles and bullets just stop. Not only that but the armor should have gotten in the way.
  • You mean the ones on Tsavo Highway, right? I figured those just stop anything travelling too fast or with too much mass, which would stop vehicles pretty effectively.
    • One problem: I'm pretty sure that Master Cheif weighs somewhere around seven tons.
    • Only about half a ton actually, which is still far lighter than the six ton warthogs.

• "Wake me... when you need me." Uhh, Chief? You do remember that Cortana is the type of AI that dies after seven years, right? Meaning that, unless there's a planet really close by and/or your half gets there really fast, she's not gonna be there on the other end, right? What gives? Did the "Smart AI" thing get cut out of canon? Or is the Chief just being his normal self?
  • ...that did not occur to me. Maybe she doesn't decay if she's not running full-out? She could go into stasis herself, setting a few surface algorithms or whatever to activate her if something interesting happens/.
  • Smart AI lifespan has apparently been cut from canon. The latest novel, Contact Harvest, has Loki/Mack, who is/are a smart AI(s) that has/have been around for decades, alternating when they reach a point of rampancy. Keep in mind, Bungie's own canon policy is new stuff overrides old stuff, and Contact Harvest was written by Joeseph Staten himself.
    • As of The Cole Protocol it has been reduced to "Legally, after seven years, we gotta put you down" Juliana, it is implied, is older than the mandatory seven.
  • There's also the possibility that either A: She IS rampant and well past the point where an engineered death SHOULD occur, or B: accessing Forerunner tech and Flood hivemindery have left her with a severely expanded amount of 'room', and in turn lifespan.
    • You forget that the final stage of Rampancy is Meta-Stability, a phase when the AI finally gets over the fact that it's not real. from what i've noticed, cortana hit meta-stability when Chief rescued her from Gravemind.
  • There is a planet really close by, didn't you see it turn to the day side as soon as he said that line?
  • It is also possible that Cortana KNOWS she's not going to be around forever. With her ability to make trillions of calculations, and many of them within the space of an instant, it is entirely possible that she (and perhaps even the Chief, what with them being so synced up) knows of the possibility of her lifespan coming an end on the trip. Therefore, the Chief says to wake him so that they can be together in her final moments
  • I thought that after seven years AI just started to go rampant (crazy), and they were "put down" or erased. Cortana could have easily lived for as long as necessary, as long as they had power. However she wouldn't be all that reliable after a few decades.
• In a future so distant, why are humans still using pistols and shotguns?
  • What alternative is there to pistols and shotguns? Explain carefully.
  • Why should they be? Projectile weapons work very well at their job, and its obvious that UNSC firearms are doing their job pretty damn well when they can be used effectively against enemies with much more advanced technology, including personal shielding. You don't update your military technology when there's no concrete benefit to be had with updating it.
  • In the 26th century (when Halo is set) mankind would be using laser guns, not obsolete bullet firing ballistic guns. In 2008 people use machine guns instead of flintlocks. Mass orbital bombardment and relativistic missiles can be used to destroy Covenant worlds.
    • First of all, they don't know where the Covenant worlds are. Secondly, your silly attitude that guns would just go from "bullet" to "laser" has no justification at all. It's like saying that because people have gone from biplanes to supersonic jets, the future will be full of jetpack wearing humans who use flying cars. What about the problems inherent in using flying cars? The training? The plasma weapons the Covenant have are not amazingly more effective than the bullets of the UNSC either.
    • Look at the history of weapons development instead of assuming ignorance that "our" current technology is the apex of weapons technology. Weaponry 600 years from now will be more advanced its called "technological advancement."
    • They will be more advanced. This does not translate directly to 'lol laser guns'.
    • Plus, there are already a few legitimate laser weapons in the games. Halo 2 brought forth the Sentinel Beam, a laser beam that sucks compared to other weapons. Halo 3 brought us the Spartan Laser, which has the explicit purpose of being a rocket launcher in laser form.
    • "In the 26th century (when Halo is set) mankind would be using laser guns, not obsolete bullet firing ballistic guns."
    • Wow, you can see into the future! There are a whole host of reasons why "primitive" weapons like ballistic firearms would still be used, not the least of which are cost, efficiency, and effectiveness. And to tell the truth, lasers are terribly inefficient as infantry weaponry anyway; the kinetic energy emparted by solid-slug projectile weapons can do a lot more damage to a soft target than direct energy transfer, and has better penetration ability when it comes to armor.
    • Ballistic weapons do have drawbacks. Ammunition for starters is unsafe no matter the storage. Coil guns that use bullets without a charge would be safer to store. Besides, over the next six centuries weapons technologies will advance eneough to make laser weapons effective. Remember how ineffective the first ballistic weapon was back in the 1400's. Check the history books.
    • I see. Tell you what... check back with me in 600 years, then we can have this argument with a little more weight behind it. But as long as you have decided we'll DEFINATLY have lasers in 600 year, I've decided that in 600 years.... we won't even exist
    • And why would the batteries powering these portable coil guns be any safer to store than ammunition? Current capacitors explode violently when overcharged. Just saying something does not make it true. What about the inefficiencies of laser weaponry? The limitations present in them being limited to line of sight? The laws of physics will not be radically different five centuries from now, whatever you might think.
    • WRT ammunition safety, I have a simple question - how many times has a soldier's ammunition cooking off actually been an issue in combat? Current ballistic ammunition is actually quite safe, and is usually quite securely stored. And more importantly, its cheap, its effective, and again, kinetic energy is more effective at both penetration and damaging soft targets than direct energy transfer. The same amount of energy you'd expend producing a laser beam or ball of plasma you could spend far more efficiently on a projectile.
    • Its worth noting that the UNSC's "primitive" firearms are also capable of defeating Forerunner-crafted super-alloys, penetrating Forerunner shields, and penetrating Forerunner and Forerunner-derived armor. Not to mention that such weapons have comparable performance characteristics with much, much more "advanced" Covenant and Forerunner weapons, and the armor crafted by UNSC technology is able to match up against "advanced" alien/Forerunner weaponry as well. That alone indicates that "primitive" UNSC weapons and armor are far more advanced than outward appearance would indicate. More likely than not, the UNSC put its efforts into further boosting the effectiveness and efficiency of its available technology, refining their weapons' capability once form had been perfected. After all, current firearms technology is simply a refinement of the basic firearms developed centuries ago, so who's to say that the UNSC hasn't been refining its tech in the intervening centuries? Just because the rifles and shotguns they use look like current ones doesn't mean that they are exactly the same.
    • "Mass orbital bombardment and relativistic missiles can be used to destroy Covenant worlds. Yeah, they have those. They're called MAC guns. They accelerate thousand-ton slugs at close to the speed of light and impact with force comparable to mind-bogglingly powerful nuclear weapons. Covenant Shields are STILL able to withstand the ship mounted ones to some extent (but not the planetary orbit ones).
    • Messy ballistic weapons with there recoil and muzzle flashes also have the advantage of being placed in the darker and edgier catagory.
    • As any troper knows, Sword > Gun. So doesn't it stand to reason that Sword > Gun > Laser? The level of broken that the melee weapons are seems to indicate that this was the line of logic followed by the developers.
    • I find it interesting the original poster is arguing for laser guns over projectile guns and then brings up mass driving as a viable weapon in his very next comment. Oops.
    • You would think that 600 years in the future we'd at least have an automatic shotgun that can shoot farther than five feet.
    • Considering that we currently have automatic shotguns that fire mini-grenade rounds that go fairly far, i.e. more then 10 meters, I do find it a bit jarring that humans aren't using more advanced weapons, on a regular basis.
    • Hi there, welcome to Standard FPS Guns.
    • Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better
  • Humans hadn't needed to deal with anyone other than other humans so they didn't NEED laser weaponry. Human ships are armored, not shielded, so a MAC gun and Archer missile pods were all that was necessary in most space engagements. On the ground, people still tend to die when shot with bullets, so that's what they used.

• Why is the insurrection in the books but not the game? After all, it's a shooter, more enemies equals more fun, well usually. But still, having humans that hate the UNSC and as Master Chief, you must shoot through them while also fending off the Covenant. I'm not whining that they aren't in the game, the games are awesome. It Just Bugs Me that they would have a faction in the books that's nonexistant in the game.
  • Because it would have seemed really stupid for the humans to fight each other when they are under threat of extinction. The anti-UNSC factions are in the books to add detail to the universe, and to explain why the SPARTAN program was originally begun.
  • Because the story is entirely about the human war with the Covenant and the mystery of the Forerunner. Adding in minor factions of irrelevant human terrorists would be pointless and silly.
  • Not only that, but by Halo 2 Earth is the only planet humanity has left. There's nobody left alive in the insurrection.
  • The rebels appear as minor AI enemies in the Halo Wars multiplayer.
  • That's because Halo Wars it set before the colonies started getting glassed.

• Why does all the creepy forum stuff and marketing have absolutely nothing to do with the game? The pre-release marketing is brilliant, with brain-melting puzzles and snippets of Forerunner logs and such that inspire passion-filled debates/flame wars, and the actual game is a FPS with far less cerebral thinking, bar the pain of Legendary and Mythic difficulty. Why?
  • You answered your own question with the word "marketing."
    • Not funny. Seriously, if Bungie's marketing team can come up with better, more fantastic stuff than the actual team of programmers, modellers, etc., then why not give them a crash-corse in gamemaking and let them get on with it? The ensuing game would deserve to be Game of the Year then.
    • Who said the "marketing" comment was meant to be a joke? Some of the marketing tends to aim for fringe elements, the hardcore fans and the like, while the game itself is designed to be accessible to a wide range of players - multiplayer fans, casual gamers, hardcore fans, etc. There's a reason they included different difficulties, to accommodate different fans. Just because the game has an easy difficulty does not mean it is a bad game.
    • Certainly making good puzzles does translate directly to making a next generation game, with all the 3D, sound and AI assets that come along with it.
  • Who says the viral marketing stuff doesn't relate to the game? The Iris ARG ties directly into the story told in Halo 3's Terminals.

• That boat in Halo 3, it looks like you can get on it, but I can't pull it off. It's in the level before the flood show up, so could someone tell me if anything is on it?
  • Here.

• How exactly does a man in half a ton of armor float in a creek? For that matter, since when are metal guns bouyant?
  • The SPARTAN and Elite character models have about the same weight as Marine models. Its simply an oversight in the game design.
    • It should be noted that the Master Chief doesn't float; after all, in Halo 2 he jumps into a lake and sinks like a rock. The Chief floating in Halo 3 is definitly an error.
    • I prefer to think that the suits activate some sort of inflatable inner lining that allows half-ton suits to float.
    • The suits have a balistic gel layer that activates when anything goes wrong. This probably activates to keep them from drowning.
• How the heck can Master Cheif flip over a tank? I know he's bio-engineered, but it seems odd. These tanks are probably many tons, and Master Cheif can just throw them about 30 feet like a human can throw a ball.
  • The tanks are lighter than normal tanks and the MJOLNIR suit gives him Super Strength.
    • It still seems unrealistic, especially when he's also holding a rocket launcher, and about to die.
  • Because losing your tank after it gets flipped over is not fun.
  • A quick look at the manual for at least one of the games lists most of the vehicles as weighing several tons. The warthog was listed somewhere from 3 to 8 tons, so this really isn't limited to tanks. On another note, the AI marines in some games have been noted to flip vehicles, and this troper don't see any heavily engineered armor on them..
  • I'm pretty sure Word Of God is that Master Chief can't really flip a tank, but they let you do so in-game anyway because losing your tank in the middle of a mandatory vehicle segment would suck.
• Another on the topic of "why are Spartans..." The world has established them being around a half ton of mechanically and bio-mechanically enhanced super soldiers, who can flip tanks and-
  • Survive almost any fall (providing it wouldn't prevent the player from continuing the mission)? From Halo 2 onward they completely removed fall damage in order to incorporate the Banshee and to make the game easier for people who don't understand that you shouldn't be able to jump off a 50 foot ledge without taking damage. Never mind that you are an incredibly dense, heavy, un-aerodynamic lump of metal. What should happen is when you hit the ground, the torso of your body comes down on the leg armor so hard the armor would probably impale itself, and you in the process, if it didn't just fracture on impact and liquify you too.
    • Read your fluff. Spartans are able to survive falling thousands of meters into the ground at terminal velocity. Falling fifty meters is nothing to them.
    • even then the results weren't pretty. A few Spartans didn't make it.
  • Can somebody tell me why Spartans, in their massive armor with uncountable computer assisted parts and buffers, still have to deal with recoil when using the standard army issue SMG in both hands? I know, oooh, gun recoil makes it seem more "real," but that only really applies when you aren't a walking tank with the military training since childhood, schooled in all manner of weaponry and combat. If the SMGs actually had enough recoil that even holding one with both hands while wearing a massive, engineered for battle stress suit of armor, while you yourself are 8 feet tall and have more muscle than a buffalo, that means that any regular infantryman would immediately have his arm ripped from his sockets when firing the first shot. Which also doesn't make any sense at all, as the SMG is an incredibly weak weapon.
    • Because its a video game.
    • Game balance. Strangely, I've heard Halo 1 fans take that exact thing as an example of the "dumbening" of the series, despite the Halo 1 Magnum having more per-bullet kick than the SMG. I'm not sure of the physics of the argument, but I believe the suit is largely supported by both itself and the SPARTAN inside it, meaning the load the SMG recoil lifts might not be as large as one thinks.

• For the http://www.ilovebees.com story, Jersey mentions a draft at the end and he has to go to war, as he is now 18. But what about Kamal? He's twenty five, but isn't at war. Why hasn't Kamal been drafted?
  • Clearly, he's a draft dodger. This would earn him a trip to Firing Squad Land.
• In Truth and Reconciliation, you troop around the walls of the plateau and fight your way to the elevator, then ride it up to a blatantly predictable ambush where your entire team is probably slaughtered and the ship is put on high alert. Sure, typical FPS silliness. Then when you need reenforcements, Cortana just tells them to fly right into the docking bay and unload, which they can do repeatedly with impunity. Why wasn't this Plan A?
  • Because the docking bay is locked from the inside. You have to physically lower the shields from a control terminal inside the docking bay before your reinforcements can enter the ship.
• What's the deal with the human grenades? They don't even kill, at worst they mess up your shield, or they tip your vehicle. Even if you're standing right on top of it. Are the humans trying to lose the war?
  • *facepalm* It's because of game mechanics. Do you really think that the games are an accurate depiction of the actual war?
    • No, which only makes things even stranger. It sorta made sense when it was a simulation of war, as those grenades might've been made for squishier people. However, with game mechanics, the grenades are made for Spartans, shouldn't they be able to kill a Spartan?
    • No, the grenades were not made for a Spartan. The grenades were made for ordinary human marines who make up the vast majority of the UNSC's military. And they were made to kill Covenant, not humans, but what kills Covenant kills humans just as easily.
    • ^Point of order: UNSC weapons were made for humans, Covvie weapons were made for Covvies. Which is why Covvie weapons are good against shields, but not so much with unshielded opponents. Hence, the infamous "n00b combo".
  • Throw a frag grenade next to a Marine, Grunt, Jackal, or any other low-tier badguy or character. There's a great chance they die. Spartans and Elites tend to survive grenade explosions because of that pesky Super Soldier status, and all that Powered Armor and Energy Shield.
  • Also, most modern grenades won't make a light vehicle even budge. The fact that the humans have grenades that can knock around huge, multi-ton armored military combat vehicles syays something about how powerful those weapons really are.

• Technical question. The shotgun has fairly good range in campaign, if you're the host in an XBL match, or in a LAN match. However, if you're not the host in an XBL match, the shotgun has fairly weak range. On Halo 2, in Xbox Connect, the shotgun is also a decent weapon, compared to its pathetic counterpart in the Live matches. So, what is it about Live matches that makes the spread so much more? This leads me to believe it's lag, but in that case wouldn't it affect it in Xbox Connect? Even if it is a form of lag, I could see how that'd make you miss a shot, or if it registered you hit them later, but why would it make your spread so much worse?

• At the start of the first game is said the covenant were talking about Halo being a massive weapon, hence the reason why we went to such great effort to search it and stop them. The only thing they didn't expect was the Flood being sealed, never stated they were going to activate the rings at least not without proper study. This doesn't match up to the second game when they thought it was a way to the great journey and wouldn't have known about it being a weapon.
  • According the Covenant, it's both. They believe it'll take them on a Great Journey, and kill all humans and heretics.
  • In the first game, Cortana says that she believes that the Covenant think that Halo is a weapon. She adds the caveat that "If I'm analyzing this correctly...." Cortana isn't infalliable, as the rest of the game shows, and she wasn't analyzing it correctly. She probably confused all the refernces to "cleansing fire" and "divine light" as references to weapons.
  • The Covenant think it will send all true believers on the great journey while wiping out the rest of existance. They still think it's a weapon, just that it works differently.

• Also what happened to all the flood? They were released, took out a number of convenant ships and landed on Earth. Sure some followed to the ark but after the end of Halo 3 suddenly they're all gone?
  • It's implied all the Flood that landed on Earth were on Africa, which got glassed. You kill the Gravemind at the end so now they're scattered and unfocused. Are there more out there? Well, that's the mystery, now isn't it?
  • The Terminals indicate that when the Gravemind perceives a threat to itself, it launches all available forces against it. All or most of the Flood were located on High Charity, and they went straight to the Ark without stopping. Any that escaped Halo by other means could have been tracked by the Elite fleets and destroyed.
    • Never understood that weakness of Gravemind as he can rebuild himself (or rather the flood makes a new one) provided there is enough biomatter so his death wouldn't have mattered. You would think he would send a bulk to the ark A) to prevent the rings from firing B) if the rings fire they're outside the range but also leave behind a suitable number to go to weaker planets and rebuild their numbers in the event of their success. Also if all of the Flood went to the ark why did we only see High Charity. I thought Cortana said a fleet of Flood controlled ships where on their way to Earth?
    • Cortana says he's coming with an "army" of Flood, not a fleet.
    • The fastest way we know of to reach the Ark is through the portal they opened on Earth. Being direct Forerunner tech, it should be faster than the derivitive Covenant tech. It's very possible that the human fleets simply fought off the Flood. Miranda's ship was the only human ship that went through, the rest were Covenant Separatists. There was still a sizeable human force on Earth under the command of Lord Hood.
    • Or of course, it could be that the Flood really will return. When Halo 3 ends on Legendary we see Master Chief floating to a planet. What's to say this isn't hundreds of years into the future, and all that is left are Flood in hibernation?
    • Also, don't forget that the Flood are extra-galactic in origin - meaning there could very well be a whole galaxy full of flood out there we.

• I have a gameplay problem which is really bugging me as I try for 100% completion at long last. Why do the covenant and the humans have so littletactical knowledge? I know 'it's a game' but Halo was marketed on its intelligent AI. On Halo 3, the level 'The Ark' the Scarab, thethree brute choppers, the ten or so ghosts, in fact, every single soldier in the covenant army, focuses on killing you. Normally I would not mind, but they focus on killing you at the expense of killing the tank squadron rolling down the hill spewing flaming death. I was on foot, with a rifle and a plasma pistol. I know I'm a super soldier but even I can't compare to four tanks! It would make far more sense if the covenant blew the tanks, then came for me, or spilt their troops evenly, or anything other than throwing them all at me. It breaks the faint illusion of reality when they focus that heavily.
  • They're focused on killing you because you are the Demon that has slaughtered tens of thousands of Covenant soldiers all by your lonesome and destroyed one of the centers of their worship. In the Covenant's eyes, you are the greater threat than the tank squadron rolling down the hill.
• On a related note, haven't the human forces heard of backup plans? Same level, the marines response to seeing a Scarab is 'I want everybody supporting the chief, he'll take it down.' Again, I know I'm the main character and a super soldier, but I am trying to imagine that this game is placing me in a real war, and the elite-marines have just said, 'wel screw it, our tanks, jeeps with rail guns and rocket launchers are clearly going to do no good, leave it all to the man with the rifle, he can take it. It wouldn't even have bothered me had the marine sergeant not said that, but it really broke me out of the flow of the game.
  • Presumably, if you had died while attacking the Scarab, they would have proceeded tot ake it down themselves. That's what's considered a "backup plan." The Chief can bring down a Scarab without risking the lives of any additional Marines who would have been killed fighting it, so why not rely on him to destroy it in a manner faster and more efficiently than they can?
  • On a related note, it is way easier for the Chief (and the Arbiter) to defeat a giant walking tank, mostly because of the amount of Brutes on board the thing. Not only would the Scarab have to 'land' for the Marines to get on it, but then they have to fight off anywhere from 4-8 Brutes to even get the chance to blow its power core. Considering that the Chief (and the Arbiter) are almost even matches for Brutes, it a sound plan.
    • Even matches for brutes? Master Chief blows the crap out of tons of Brutes along the way, many in groups. How is that an even match?
    • That's mostly because Brutes are dumb, but they are a match, or perhaps stronger, then him physically, which is what I meant. Brutes can manhandle Marines far easier then the Chief and the Arbiter.
    • You sure about the physically stronger part? I haven't ever seen a Brute flip one of the way-too-freaking-heavy tanks yet.
    • Considering that an Enraged Brute can kill you in one-hit melee, with full shields; Yes, I consider them physically stronger then the SPARTANS and the Elites. But both of them can defeat Brutes by using their brains.

• This Troper's reaction was more like 'What is this, a UNSC propaganda movie? An unaugmented human beats a senior Elite with an energy sword in melee? Supposed Honor Guards that are Blue Elites, without headdresses, who go down more easily than Jackals? Supposed Honor Guards that actually forget they have guns and could just shoot at the three Spartans who are out in the open? Man, even Grunts are smart enough to remember that you can throw a grenade or something.'
  • First off you need to separate gameplay from other canon, Elites in the games are strong, but in the novels short bursts of gun fire do kill them fairly quickly and they'd NEVER say take a rocket or sniper bullet to the face and live. Frankly the novels and other sources have always portrayed the Elites as so driven by a thirst for glory and honor it blinds them to logic at times. Also for the first bit it's not like Forge got him a boxing match and won or something, he went after him with a bloody assault rifle at first, and still pretty much got his shit completely ruined until he out right tricked him by exploiting his enemies one weakness: pride. A well known Elite Achilles heel. To me this made it even more awesome.
    • Absolutely nothing you said above even remotely explains how or why alleged Honor Guards entirely forgot to just stay back and use carbines and beam rifles, which would have the range advantage against Spartans armed with SMGs and shotguns. Or why three enemies standing clumped next to each other in a narrow place they can't maneuver in was not treated as the obvious plasma grenade bait they were. Or how an unaugmented human being supposedly tackled an Elite and knocked it flat on its ass, when the Elite is twice his size, three times his weight, and ten times his strength. Or how he actually survived being punched by the Elite's full strength repeatedly. Or any of the other ridiculous crap in that video. Hell, that video isn't even consistent with itself — the Elite that Forge fights takes multiple assault rifle and pistol shots on its shields without flinching, but all the "Honor Guards" go down from single SMG bursts or shotgun blasts as easily as unshielded Grunts would have. Seriously, the UNSC war propaganda office needs better CGI.
    • Fan Dumb see Culture Alien that's you right now, seriously. Halo is more or less an action movie you can play and you're complaining about the hero being improbably tough and beating the villain in a somewhat unlikely way... I'm pretty sure you really just don't get the genre at this point.
    • The one Forge was fighting wasn't another honor guard; It was a previous version of the Arbiter. You also need to keep in mind that Forge was beat to hell after that battle, had obvious signs of internal bleeding, and was going on sheer adrenaline. He knew he was in bad shape, which is part of the reason he volunteered to detonate the bomb.
    • Forge also only took a single punch; other than that, he was simply being thrown around by the Arbiter. And its worth pointing out that Forge was pretty much out of the fight immediately after that initial punch, most of which was absorbed by his armor, and as the above troper pointed out, he was obviously suffering from serious internal injuries.
    • WRT to weapons: the Honor Guard in Halo Wars do not have guns or plasma grenades. They're melee fighters, pure and simple. If they had guns or grenades they would have used them, and I sure as hell do not see any guns or grenades on the Elites in that cutscene.
    • WRT knocking the Arbiter down: I've personally witnessed a one-hundred pound girl knock down a two-fifty pound man flat on his ass with a tackle. All it takes is speed, balance, and center of gravity. The Arbiter was moving foward in that scene and his arm was extended high up in the air after slashing with his sword. That's the perfect time to slam into him with a two-hundred plus pound ball of man and armor. Strength has little to do with it unless your feet are set, and the Arbiter's weren't.
    • WRT shielding: Elites in Halo Wars do not start with shielding in the first place, and must upgrade to it. Since these were obviously rookies, judging by their armor color, they probably haven't been equipped with upgraded shields yet. The Arbiter's armor is simply superior and thus lets him wade through rifle fire like its a gentle shower, which is completely consistent with how the Arbiter can wade through fifty Marines pouring bullets into him in-game.
    • For whatever reason, none of the normal elites seem to have any energy shields in the cutscenes and they all seem to have the light blue armor of rookies, although why they would assign rookies to protect the Arbiter and a Prophet is beyond me.
    • Presumably, the red-armored Honor Guard departed with the Prophet of Regret when he returned to High Charity. The troops with the Arbiter were probably just recruits or raw, fresh, young soldiers. Its not like you need to protect the Arbiter, anyway.
  • Dude, Rule Of Cool.
  • Isn't it entirely possible that the Honor Guards didn't have any guns? I don't remember them using guns ingame, who's to say that they were equipped with them at all? Maybe Honor Guards didn't use guns until the FPS Halo games, maybe due to religious reasons, but switched to using guns after events like Halo Wars.
    • The above troper is correct: the Honor Guard in Halo Wars do not use guns, and in the FPS games they alternated between swords and guns. In Halo Wars they stick exclusively to melee weaponry.
  • After watching that video again, I wonder how the hell the Covenant recovered the Arbiter armor. One of the spartans tossed it over the edge, and then they blew up the planet.
    • They could have simply built a new suit, or keep multiple suits around.
    • It's explicit in Halo 2 that it's always the same suit, and they always get it back. Arbiters are generally all but expected to die during the course of their duties.
    • No, it isn't explicit. The only indicator that the suit itself is old are references to the suit's cloaking device being not as "new" as the Spec Ops Elites' units, which could mean something as simple as the cloaking device is old and hasn't been replaced.
    • Close inspection will show that the Halo Wars Arbiter's armor does look different; it has more jagged edges and spikes on the arms, as well as bigger handguards.

• Here's one thing that bothers me: Forge is a sergeant. He's virtually in command of the Spirit of Fire's thousands of Marines, he's tasked with a huge range of dangerous missions, and he has enough apparent technical knowledge to design advanced tanks. Yet he's only a sergeant? If you replaced every instance of "sergeant" with "colonel" it would have made sense.
  • Apparently Forge has a big discipline problem (Military Maverick), so it keeps him low on the totem pole. Doesn't explain why he seems to be second in command of the Spirit of Fire's crew after Cutter or why he gets special tank upgrades, though. A similar scene in Halo 3 also kinda bugged me; Lord Hood wants to make humanity's last stand on Earth, while Chief wants to go to the Ark and find Cortana's solution. Lord Hood more or less acquiesces, despite the fact that Master Chief Petty Officer is way lower on the totem pole than Admiral (I guess at least in that instance it can be handwaved that Hood realized that there was really nothing he could do, save hope the the Chief pulls a miracle out of his hat. Again.)
    • Lord Hood was more or less just taking advise from Master Cheif. Every good leader knows when and how to take advise from those under them. Also, let's not forget that Cheif also probably had Commander Keyes on his side, who, while beneath whatever rank Lord Hood is, is still a comissioned officer. I got the feeling that, if Lord Hood wanted to, he could've told Cheif to stuff it, and forced him to stay on Earth. He chose not to though, as they would've been dead anyway if he didn't send any human reinforments. Especially considering the Elites, who don't take orders from any of the humans, already decided to go through.
  • A note on the original premise: Forge could never get to be a Colonel unless he went to Officer Candidate School. There's actually two sets of ranks in the military: Officer (Lt, Cmdr, Capt, Maj, Col, Adm/Gen, etc) and Enlisted (Pvt, Corporal, Sgt, etc). (Look up "Pay Grades" on The Other Wiki for more details.) Whatever rank you have, you can give orders to anyone below you... But Officer outranks Enlisted, period. A Second Lieutenant who just graduated from Annapolis this afternoon can still give orders to the highest-ranked Enlisted soldier alive—incidentally, "Master Chief Petty Officer"—and that Master Chief has to follow them, because he is outranked, regardless of things like experience, length of service, Hollywood Cyborg Super Soldiery or, say, actually knowing what to do. (Of course, if the MCPO has an opinion, even an Admiral would be a fool to ignore it, much less a 2LT.) Now, as to Sgt. Forge: he's, what, E-5? A Navy Captain is O-6, so a Sergeant has enough experience and tenure to serve as an ad-hoc XO to a Captain, even if he is way lower on the comparative-ranking totem pole.
    • The problem is that the Spirit of Fire carries a huge compliment of Marines - enough so that the highest-ranking Marine officer should be at least a Lieutenant-Colonel. Yet the lowly E-5 is the one commanding battalion-strength UNSC ground forces?
    • As opposed to the Navy, who address petty officers by "petty officer," "chief," and "master chief," the Marines tend to address any sergeant as just "Sergeant," even up to a Sergeant Major of the Corps. Forge could very well be an E-7 (Sergeant First Class or SFC) or E-8 (Master Sergeant or MS) and they STILL address him as "sergeant." Also keep in mind, the Human-Covenant War has severely depleted the UNSC of commanders and candidates for command. Spirit of Fire might be lacking officers qualified for field command and thus have to give the reigns to an enlisted man for groundside combat.
    • Except even in the manual, his rank is explicitly referred to as "sergeant" - including in his character profile. Not "Master Sergeant Forge" or "Sergeant Major Forge" - just vanilla "Sergeant." Also, Halo Wars is taking place toward the beginning of the war, and as such the UNSC hasn't suffered that much depletion in its military ranks yet.
    • The other answer is that you, the player, are the field officer and Forge is your Sergeant. Although the manual might just list him as a Sergeant, he's probably a much higher rank than that.
    • That would work if it weren't for the fact that Cutter repeatedly, consistently, and directly orders Forge to do what you're doing during the course of the games.
    • Oh waaa. Maybe you're conveying the orders from' Cutter to Forge in those instances.

• This has always bugged me since Halo 2: It makes sense that the first Halo they run across (Installation 04) would be referred to as Alpha Halo, but why is the second one (Installation 05) Delta Halo? Wouldn't something like Beta Halo (since it's the second one) or Epsilon Halo (since it's the 5th Halo installation) make more sense?
  • Another meaning for delta is "different." 05 is a different Halo, ergo, Delta Halo, as opposed to the first Halo, which is Alpha.

• Okay, how did the Rookie (or anyone for that matter) survive their drops? It seems as though they all got scattered and blown apart before the emergency pod braking systems came on. If thats true, the fall should have killed everyone.
  • First, if you watch and listen closely, Rookie's team was far enough away that they only got hit by the EMP, not the actual blast wave, frying the electronic systems (and even then radio, at least, still worked, as you hear Buck talking after the wave hits) but not the pods themselves; an assured rough landing, but not necessarily a fatal one. Second, the pod chutes did deploy just before the wave hit them (look closely). Third, due to Capt. Dare's interference, the squad was far enough away to avoid the brunt of the blast; most of the other pods of other squads were obliterated.
  • Maybe ODST pods are just that good at shock absorbing. In the books it's said that a Spartan could survive a drop from orbit if they wear their armor (well, they could survive an equivilent fall, they can't survive an actual fall from orbit due to atmospheric burning). If future human tech can make such efficient shock absorbers into a relatively small suit of armor, then logically they should be able to build it into a pod specifically designed to drop from space. Also, it's not like they didn't get banged up; the rookie was knocked out for six hours.

• Why does no one play as the Elites? I heard it's due to balance issues, but I heard that bungie fixed that by giving the Elites invulnerable points, like if someone shoots their neck, the bullet will merely pass through. Why the Elite hate?
  • Well, is there any particular reason someone would want to play an Elite as opposed to a human? I certainly can't think of any.
    • Because they're awesome.
    • Fair enough, but is there any practical reason?
    • ....it's a skin for an online multiplayer avatar. They're awesome is a practical reason.
    • So, going back to the original question, why is it that they are not used so often?

• How come when a ship enters Slipspace while in an atmosphere, like Regret's assault carrier, it causes a tremendous backlash wave of energy, yet whenever we see a ship exit Slipspace into an atmosphere, like in cutscenes in Halo 3 & ODST, this doesn't happen? Has this particular mechanic of Slipspace been explained yet?
  • In an interview with the Halo Story Page, Joseph Staten (Halo's head script writer) explained slipspace mechanics using the following analogy, supplied to him by Robt Mclees (another of Bungie's main story writers):
  "If we look at the mechanics of a Slipstreamspace jump in its most basic form, the exit and re-entry points into real-space could be represented as two panes of Plexiglas suspended parallel to one another. The pane representing the exit has a hole drilled in it - say, big enough to accommodate a ping-pong ball - and a sheet of latex attached to it opposite the re-entry pane. A "rupture" is created when the ping pong ball gets pushed through the hole, stretching the latex until it touches the re-entry pane. The mechanics of how the ball passes through the pane are much less interesting than what happens to the stretched latex after the ball is removed. Basically, it snaps back. And this is why traveling through Slipspace is so dangerous: if you do it haphazardly - if you don't have good math - there's a good chance somebody is gonna get smacked (see the citizens of New Mombasa in Halo2)".
  • In short, the forces at the jump entry point are far more violent than those at the exit point. Here's the full interview if you're interested.

• How does the Covenant not know where Earth is until they stumble upon it? Knowledge of where Earth is qualifies as common knowledge to humans, the specific coordinates would be known by a smaller amount but still quite a few, and all it would take is just ONE person with that knowledge breaking under torture for them to get the location and glass Earth.
  • .....because of the Cole Protocol? You know, the thing they go into major detail regarding in the games and books that is specifically intended to prevent the Covenant from finding human population centers.
    • The Cole Protocol is only nigh-foolproof from the electronic side. While they do wipe all electronic information, and USNC ships are supposed to self-destruct to avoid capture, that doesn't change the fact that the Covenant can and do get human prisoners, and that all it takes if for one human with the right knowledge to break under torture. Even with Orwellian misinformation campaigns(which is risky on military) and prisoners giving false information that leads to ambushes (which is countered by scout ships), the Covenant have to get lucky exactly once.
    • Except the Covenant don't usually take prisoners. They simply kill all humans they encounter, without bothering to interrogate them.
  • Heh... One also wonders how the humans of earlier in the war would've reacted if told that even after the Cole Protocol and all the other security, the Covenant were going to find Earth by complete fucking accident.