- "Friendship" never gets used as an excuse for the banished beating the covenant - New is never established as the selling point for the banished, and I don't think it should the ideal by which they are judged. New does not mean quality. The story of it's members and their characteristics are what make them good in short. Not how different they are from the covenant. The members journeys and character enjoyable, engaging, and logically made. They're also pretty fucking cool.

So, the Precursor's being the Flood (and the Precursors themselves) is a 343 thing, but Forerunners not being human is as old as Halo 3's marketing, and it's a pretty poorly thought out theory to begin with given the precedent Bungie laid out in their other franchises. All of which, at least according to Alex Seropian, the CEO at the time, were connected in some metaphysical/multiversal sense with master Chief being an incarnation of another hero, the Security Officer from the Marathon games. That theme's been canonized by Bungie for other franchises beyond Halo and marathon aswell, by the way, what with their Anniversary event in Destiny. The other Forerunner analogues in Bungie's universes were the Jjaro, and they were very much either aliens or outright machines, which was a core part of the themes behind them. But I digress and that goes down a deep rabbit hole that we don't have time for. Essentially the only justifications that really existed were Guilty Spark's rampant dialogue (again, I must stress, rampant, as in not all there, the man's fucking coocoo for cocoa puffs after being left alone for 100,000 years in a floating ball of a body), an easily misinterpreted comment from another rampant Forerunner AI in Contact Harvest written by Joseph Staten (who as evidenced by Halo 3's and Infinite's swiss cheese of narratives is not the most consistent or competent writer), and a non-canonical and scrapped story board from Halo 2 that showed a Forerunner skeleton which looked human. It was always a pretty weak theory. Separately, I liked the Banished Halo Wars 2, and they definitely had potential, they were just neutered in Infinite in terms of... well, all their interesting bits. It's not so much an instance of "let's make more enemies to fight," as it is "we don't know how to write interesting characters beyond what's already established post Halo 4." Which, to be fair, is more our fault for ripping Halo 4 apart the way we did than 343's for listening to us. This is a reaction to us. They're also not all that poorly written in how they rose up and started resisting the Covenant. The Covenant was already occupied with Humanity and it's a populist revolt against an openly oppressive and racist (I mean that in the most literal sense, by the way) religious regime that treats many of its member races as expendable cannon fodder at best and on rare occasions literal fodder, as in food stuffs. I can absolutely believe the idea that a charismatic figure like Atriox could rally enough people to his side to stand a chance. Also worth remembering that most of this happened towards the tail end of the Human-Covenant War, so on top of dealing with a weakened enemy, they didn't have to survive for that long. Maybe five years at most. I would have preferred if such a large uprising were mentioned elsewhere prior to this point in the canon, but otherwise it fits perfectly.

I mean I wouldn’t be surprised

Other than Cortana I suppose lmao

Not really. Everything in Infinite got nerfed, from "female" Spartans to Weapon to original Cortana. The only exception was evil Cortana because they reused her Halo 5 model.

@@YarugumaSou female Spartans don’t count because they literally just don’t exist in infinite. They gave all characters the crappy genderless models that are almost entirely identical to each other

@@YodaOnABender full agreed. Genderless bs is just that bs.

Me with my god of war lore: "change nerd to batshit crazy need to control everything'

At least atriox isn’t actually dead. Cortana better not be actually dead but she probably is. That was the part where I basically lost interest in halo infinite’s plot. When they killed Cortana AGAIN, this time for the sake of 343 being lazy. Elfanso wasn’t a bad villain, but he’s just discount atriox. Harbinger is discount didact. And where is my boy Warden Eternal???

@@darkspark5854 Never say that name 🗿

I think it was done in order to have an explanation for the gameplay first. They wanted to go back to the classic Halo enemies and they felt the Banished were the best way to accomplish that while not bullshitting the Covenant back into existence like with Jul M'dama's faction. The story came second, so they had to write the story around the gameplay. Especially given everyone's reaction to Halo 5, they were probably afraid to go anywhere near that, like AH said in the video.

Agreed Kevin

I’m pretty sure the very basis might’ve been in the Halo 3 terminals. Just my guess from what I remember

@@LeQuartermaster ah yeah the domain and the didact were introduced in those, I don't recall the precursors being name dropped but I might be wrong

All dead cortana kills everyone ... It's a pretty bad plotline

@@nkosig4995 no way bruh 💀 you’re trolling right…

@@rezboifrybread I wish I was all that's left are the drones who cortana isn't messing with because the halo 5 writers forgot to have them in their speech

The Grunts on Balaho as far as we know all sided with Cortana. That's still the case, despite... Cortana not really being much of a factor anymore.

Should’ve had some kinda of created Ai/ Promethean hybrid enemies. The banished was an interesting enemy, but I still didn’t get why they were on the ring. Or how the Unsc manage to trap Cortana. I mean she has access to nearly all knowledge in the Domain, which includes prometheans, forerunner facilities and weapons, and the Created Allies all on their side. The idea that a crippled Infinity managed to trap such a powerful adversary, one that could destroy planets at will, but couldn’t handle the banished onslaught due to be undermanned and caught off guard just doesn’t sit right with me. Also, how does Cortana blow up the ring if she’s on lockdown? And why would the Forerunners lock away the endless instead of just eradicating them? On top of that, they decided to move them to the same ring that has flood on it. Logistically, that makes no sense.

@@samuelgiroux6819 Infinite was written and designed to distance itself from the Halo 4 and 5 as much as possible. Plot events in Halo Infinite relating to the created are written based on convenience. No major characters from Halo 4 and 5 have a significant presence in the game. Most are simply absent, with a few minor references. Even Cortana was written as background character. Prometheans enemies and weapons where cut because it was a convenient thing to do. Other weapons,vehicles and enemies that were strongly connected to Halo 4 and 5 were also cut. I believe this is why we have no Rail gun, Saw, Mantis, Grunt Goblin etc. Only the hydra and wasp were kept.

@@samuelgiroux6819 The Banished, like the Covenant, believe the ring will take them on the Great Journey. Also, the Harbinger told Atriox to do it. The Forerunners could not destroy the Endless also. Something about them is near impossible to erradicate. So they had to be locked up.

@@deerecoyote2040 I’m pretty sure that the banished denounced the ludicrous notion of “the great journey” that the covenant followed. It’s why their willing to accept all worthy species of fighting alongside them, and I think some humans might be part of their ranks, but I’m not entirely sure. My understanding is that the banished were going after Cortana, as well as what secret is lying within the rings history (endless). As for the forerunners, from what I understood, the halo rings couldn’t wipe out the endless, for whatever reason. That’s why they were a greater threat than the flood, because they couldn’t be wiped out, and were food for the flood simultaneously. Thats doesn’t mean the forerunners couldn’t wiped out the endless through other means beside the rings. I mean look what they did to the precursors. Look what they did to ancient humanity. The idea that the forerunners had no means to eradicate the endless is ridiculous. I mean Master Chief managed to kill one of them, so what’s the excuse? My point: the endless, if surviving the blast of a halo ring, should’ve been dealt with thru other measures. As seen in Halo infinite’s final boss fight, the endless are not invincible, as the super solider of a weakened humanity managed to solo the endless boss with projectile based weaponry.

Who will ever see the same again

But the problem with that, and a lot of 343's writing, is that they can't just keep ditching all their major plotlines. First they were gonna have the Didact and Jul'Mdama as the main villains but then they didn't execute it that well in halo 4 so instead of improving on it in halo 5 they just killed the Didact in a comic and killed 'Mdama in the FIRST LEVEL of Halo 5. Then in Halo 5 they decided to bring Cortana back as the villain alongside Warden Eternal but then that got even more backlash so instead of rolling with it and trying to make something interesting out of it, they got rid of Cortana altogether in Infinite. My point is that the new trilogy wouldn't be so bad if it didn't keep doing 180s. If 343 actually did stick with their more controversial plotlines and improved upon them with feedback rather than ditching them completely, their games wouldn't feel so incohesive.

@@elliesteele2027 Oh yeah, fully agreed on all three points that it's not _good_ or _smart_ writing, I was just saying that I can see where it might be coming from. It's the easiest way out to appease writer-anxiety rather than fighting through that to potentially make something people will come around to in the end.

@@Brawl847 like I've said many times. This game is a cheap copy of what was good before (halo3) a cowardly response to the criticism of halo 5. The rise of skywalker of video games.

Don't think. Just consume.

she was unsealed from a cylix to help the banished repair the ring and release the endless, and gave atriox the key to the cylixes

It falls into the same pit as cyberpunk 2077 tho when it comes to people saying “how come we just got this montage of working as a merc with Jackie? Why couldn’t we play that and experience it ourselves” and the answer by the devs was simply you can only do so much with the game and at some point you either have to start everything from scratch in which case you play through a lot of stuff that they didn’t want to do, or you set up a backstory in some way and get the player to play through what you want the story to be about. And whichever way you go people are always gonna complain about it. On one side you get people with the complaint that everything happens in the backstory and on the flip side you get people that will complain about the game feeling empty because what they are playing is something the devs only ever intended to make into a backstory not the focus of the game itself

Hey don’t forget the grapple hook! Who needs a dynamic open world, exciting storyline being experienced in real time, when you can just use the grapple hook!

Couldve had the banished release the flood and the ensuing chaos forces the created to focus all their efforts on them. Leaving cortana vulnerable to attack from all 3 factions (banished unsc flood) banished solar system was destroyed outright in order to stop the flood from spreading. And cortana was destroyed. Now no loose ends. Would also be a sweet excuse to slap all the halo enemies and weapons into one sweet game.

@@manz7860 Halo 9, we have a Prometean knight/bank, brute machine gunner, elite sniper on our side and we're fighting the arbiter.

@@alexMendoza-wl5oj and after chief is done slaughtering hordes of them. He can finally exposition to the audience "they were soldiers just like me" I hate halo infinite 😂

They were, but were released in Halo Glasslands

@@MrAvakstone92 thanks it’s been a long time (obviously if the last book I read was Ghosts of Onyx) but I may start getting back into it

Though the endless have been released. Lots of directions they could take.

Actually, the Precursors' first mention was in Halo 3's Bestiarium, but all their background was made by 343i

Worst halo campaign ever. I'm fully convinced people will enjoy whatever garbage plays in front of them. From tv shows and movies to video games.

I find the explanation better, at least for the flood, the forerunner portion feels the same as the mystery. I always seen them as alien space “gods” anyway

Well, this franchise has run its course. The mystery once surrounding the forerunners and the flood was inevitably going to be given an explanation in a piece of external media the more time has passed, and the more commercialized Halo has become.

The problem has always been that my boyfriend plays Xbox and I play PC.

Those are crossplay too I believe

@@aboveaveragebayleaf9216 are they? I know they're splitscreen at least, right?

@@darkmatter-mc5iv yeah but I'm pretty sure mcc allows crossplay with campaigns. I'll double check.

@@darkmatter-mc5iv it might only be H3 and odst

We weren't shown outside a downed guardian on the ring. Grunt broadcaster explicitly states they have control of the whole ring. Minus the area master chief is in. There could be an excellent reason for all I know. But what I do know is that it's never explained. It came across as more of a retcon/bad writing to me personally.

The Encyclopedia reveals that Cortana wanted to control Zeta Halo to make it her new base of operations

Fair enough, but I wish there was a prologue dedicated to ending the created plot line, like show the promethians, banished, and unsc fighting, then have the created shut off mysteriously, later revealed that they shut down when Cortana died, or something along those lines.

It’s the fans that something like Reach isn’t the lore

Same with Cortana, in regards to her fate after the game. They set her up as the big bad at the end of Halo 5. Kill her off before the game even begins.

Didact didn't died in Escalation either

I will say CE didn't age as well as the rest(not that I don't love it), but halo 2, 3 and reach are all excellent experiences. I'd recommend you go back and play them. More for the story though, and play a higher difficulty if you don't find the gameplay interesting. Halo 2 has better writing than some movies, and those blur cuts scenes in the anniversary version are simply amazing.

Nerd

@@AscendHyperion Yep. Lol. Video and topics were great otherwise though 😁

Cortana was a far more fascinating enemy than Atriox or Eshcharum. "Fans" still bitched and complained.

@Manz First off, not what my comment was about. I was just saying that I'm glad it isn't just fighting the Prophets and their minions game after game. Secondly, I disagree. Cortana as a character is interesting, but her villain debut just doesn't work, especially when it came at the cost of the finality to her story in the previous game. Her reasons for opposing the protagonists are far too convoluted, and her actions are too evil to be justified as in-character or logical. That and the faction she represents has been pretty awful in terms of gameplay. Lastly, don't pull out the "real-fans" card on a subjective opinion like who's a more interesting antagonist. It makes you look condescending. I personally do like Escharum and Atriox as antagonists, mostly for the presence they have as villains. Comparing the depth they have to a character who has been here since the first game (technically before that) is just unfair.

I wish they chose a different name. Because I just think of the Harbinger from Mass Effect.

@@manz7860 yeah, honestly when I hear “harbinger” I think of W2daERN (an old stop motion youtuber who stopped uploading) and get sad. For context, one of W2’s characters was a creature called the harbinger.