Hints About The Future Of Halo That You May Have Missed
By Dr. Eleanor Vance | Published on January 01, 0001
Those who love Halo but only play Halo video games may be oblivious to some of the big developments going on in the series lately. There are big things happening, particularly in the Halo comics, that any Halo fan should know about. The extended literature around Halo isn’t required knowledge in order to follow the games. It tends to simply flesh out known, historical events in the series’ lore. But some of the recent literature overseen by series caretakers 343 Industries–specifically, the Halo: Initiation and Halo: Escalation comic series–contain significant events that could potentially set the table somewhat for upcoming Halo projects. These projects include, naturally, the recently announced/confirmed Halo 5: Guardians game for Xbox One, the TV series executive produced by Steven Spielberg, royally rummy and the digital feature directed produced by Ridley Scott.cnx.cmd.push(function(){cnx({"playerId":"e3616d04-4972-4839-a63a-c6975e2e9731","settings":{"advertising":{"macros":{"AD_UNIT":"/23178111854/od.kotaku.com/article","CHILD_UNIT":"article","POST_ID":"1587302829","POST_TYPE":"post","CHANNEL":"uncategorized","SECTION":"","SUBSECTION":"","CATEGORIES":"uncategorized","TAGS":"halo","NOP":"0"},"timeBeforeFirstAd":0}}}).render("cnx-player-main")}); https://kotaku.com/halo-5-guardians-announced-for-2015-1576282395 Perhaps of slightly lesser significance to the future, the Halo: Initiation comic series fills us in on some unexplained events that take place between Halo 3 and Halo 4. The Halo: Escalation series, on the other hand, takes place between Halo 4 and the upcoming Halo: Guardians. The comics have been written by Halo writers Brian Reed and Chris Schlerf and are published by Dark Horse. Both series feature the return of characters and concepts from previous Halo games; some expected, and some not so expected. The hardest of the Halo hardcore are already keenly discussing said developments in forums all over the internet. But it seems these things have slipped under the radar of the press and the broader game-playing audience. To remind you where the games left off, 343’s 2012 Xbox 360 game, Halo 4, saw the Master Chief prevent the Forerunner commander Ur-Didact from “composing” the population of Earth (turning humans into his digitized, Promethean warriors), save for the city of New Phoenix. But it wasn’t without personal cost: his longstanding and deteriorating AI partner, Cortana, sacrificed herself to enable the Chief to defeat the Didact. And while he hasn’t officially appeared in any post-Halo 4 literature yet, last year’s E3 trailer (for what we now know to be Guardians) suggests Chief’s embarked on some kind of solo quest to restore her. https://kotaku.com/halo-4-the-kotaku-review-5957424 The following is intended to help bring those who are only familiar with the games up to speed with a few select, recent story developments that may be of interest. Obviously, spoilers follow for the Halo: Initiation and Halo: Escalation comic books. The Return of Halo: Reach‘s Jun Halo: Reach is largely known as the story of the downfall of one of the most important human colonies following an overwhelming attack by non-human Covenant forces in the year 2552. It also constituted the near decimation of the entire existing SPARTAN super-soldier population, with the exception of Master Chief and a handful of others. In Reach, we witnessed the deaths of nearly every member of Noble Team, one by one. Many players no doubt noticed that the SPARTAN-III expert sniper Jun was the only member unaccounted for by the game’s end. He was last seen escorting Dr. Catherine Halsey as they made their escape by Pelican from the destruction of Sword Base. Given that Dr. Halsey appears in Halo 4, it seems he was successful. https://kotaku.com/halo-reach-review-a-beautiful-beginning-for-a-wonderf-5635510 In Halo: Initiation, it’s confirmed that not only is Jun very much alive, but he worked with a former SPARTAN-II candidate by the name of Musa to facilitate the SPARTAN-IV program. The SPARTAN-II project required the abduction of young children who were indoctrinated and trained as military assets from a young age, eventually receiving physical augmentations. For the SPARTAN-IV project, however, Musa approached existing, decorated United Nations Space Command (UNSC) troops to volunteer for service. In fact, we learn in Initiation that Jun personally recruited and trained Sarah Palmer, the former Orbital Drop Shock Trooper (ODST) who first appeared in Halo 4 and served as the protagonist of Halo: Spartan Assault. The Return of The Arbiter It’s probably safe to say the return of the Arbiter Thel ‘Vadam–the disgraced Sangheili (Elite) commander who eventually became an ally to the UNSC–isn’t entirely unexpected. Like Metal Gear‘s rummy 365 Raiden, the Arbiter was initially detested by a great many players. This was mostly owing to the protagonist bait-and-switch technique that Halo 2 borrowed from Metal Gear Solid 2: players hungry to continue the adventures of Master Chief were shocked to discover they’d spend roughly half their time playing from a Sangheili perspective. In Halo 3, the Arbiter was relegated to AI-controlled support (or player two in co-op) where he eventually earned the affections of series fans. After assisting humanity against the Flood and separating from Master Chief in Halo 3, the Arbiter parted ways with the UNSC and left Earth (presumably to tend to his fellow Elites after the apparent dissolution of the Covenant). In recent months, the Arbiter made his first appearance since the ending of Halo 3 in issue #1 Of Halo: Escalation. In sharp new digs (golden battle armor and a cape), the Arbiter represents his Sangheili race at a diplomatic meeting with the Jiralhanae (Brutes), another alien race formerly devoted to the old Covenant. The meeting takes place under the guard rummy 51 of the UNSC Infinity, but is soon jeopardized by rogue Covenant zealots enabled by… Moles in the UNSC One of the big revelations in Halo: Escalation is that some UNSC personnel have betrayed humanity, leaking sensitive, classified information to Covenant forces (such as the details of the aforementioned meeting). In fact, one of the new SPARTAN-IVs turned
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