Halo (series)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

 

== How did Johnson survive the explosion at the end of Halo CE? ==

* Because Johnson fighting with the Elite is a non-canon [[Easter Egg]].

** Johnsons escape off ring is explained in the Novel First Strike. He managed to fight his way to a surviving Pelican drop ship, get off ring and link up with Master Chief in the Long Sword.

* He didn't his death was retconned out (the Arbiter, despite not even being a character until Halo 2, also wouldn't have survived). Cortana explicitly mentions at the end of Halo: CE that there are no other survivors, no life signs and no ships after performing a scan of the entire sector. You also clearly see the entire interior of the ship was empty, so there was no way Johnson could have stowed away on board and they forgot to mention it. The only survivors of Halo: CE were Master Chief, Cortana and 343 Guilty Spark.

** The whole "Spartan-I" thing is in that dubious area of canon where the games have never (and probably will never) acknowledge it. Even so, it doesn't really provide an explanation for his survival, unless one of the Spartan-I abilities was to transform into a stealth, hyperdrive equipped ship that has no life signs.

** Exactly what constitutes the "whole area"? Master Chief escaped in a [[Space Fighter]]. It is doubtful its sensors would be that highly tuned to pick up every single object, much less a life sign, in orbit. Cortana has no sensors of her own (she's just software), so she simply assumed that was the case.

 

* 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.

** They did activate the rings, during the battle between Mendicant and Offensive Bias. That was the actual pivotal moment in the battle that let Offensive Bias win.

* The Flood [[The Milky Way Is the Only Way|originated from outside the galaxy]], so even if the Forerunner had managed to exterminate them, the prospect of being helpless against future invasions would make this a bad plan. Ideally, after wiping out all “wild” Flood in the Milky Way, the Forerunner would want to have captive specimens to research an effective counter with.

** 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.)

*** In Halo 1, Guilty Spark wanted your head intact when you were killed, presumably because he can activate the ring with only a human head in the absence of a living, consenting human. Also, Cortana was plugged into the Chief's helmet, and he wanted her so he could read through her databanks, perhaps about stuff such as human history in the last 100,000 years. He might have left the job to the sentinels because he was afraid his extremely overpowered laser would completely incinerate the Chief, therefore losing both the Reclaimer and the Construct.

* Clearly, during Halo 1 he was still [[Memetic Mutation|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.

** It's possible the laser beam was damaged, and he had it repaired between Halo 2 and 3.

** We ''know'' the Gravemind has telepathic capacities. Remember when Gravemind itself broadcasts to you the same way? 'I am peace... I am salvation' 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(or at least capable of surveilance, even over interstellar distances):

** 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.

*** How is a "biological analogue to radio" that you receive in your brain [[Sufficiently Analyzed Magic|different from telepathy in any way besides name]]?

** 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 (NOT TRUE! There is a parasite that does the EXACTLY (Brown skin and all) the same thing to ants, takes them up high, and releases spores. The Flood also start as spores.) , 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. (Compared to most Sci-fi I'd say this is fairly hard. Not counting plotholes, few things of what we know today say that these things absolutely don't/won't exist one day.)

*** 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 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.

** Two things, first psychic powers is still technically biological so it would be more appropriate to simply say they don't have built in radios. Second a medium is still required for any Psychic powers to work at such a large distance, it is impossible to say that some thing with psychic powers can instant message a guy in another ''star system'' (light year distance) espcially if the psychic powers work as a [[Hive Mind]]. Considering the distance the gap is too big for the Gravemind to use his supposed psychic powers, unless he could mystically use the FTL to use his powers instead of collective network of flood across that distance then that would make the Gravemind's psychic powers pretty much like a radio thus rendering the spychic powers being more plasuible argument moot. The key detail is distance, the gravemind cannot single out one guy who isn't [[Buffy-Speak|psychically]] standing out on a planet ''light years'' away full of living things with roughly equal... [[Buffy-Speak|psychic-ness]] without the FTL. Which would render the powers as being the same as a radio, with the same limitations.

*** Those arguments actually work fairly well. Just because the game doesn't directly define psionics doesn't mean the [[Older Than They Think|basic conventions]] couldn't apply.

*** As mentioned, psychic powers don't appear anywhere in the game before the Flood stuff. So...how ''could'' the heroes know the mechanics of Gravemind's communications? Assuming it's psychic, it'd be rather implausible to have some random [[Mr. Exposition]] suddenly know how the Flood work. Given the existence of the Flood is a [[Genre Shift]] in and of itself, I'm not sure why the existence of the paranormal has to be dismissed simply because the protagonists aren't informed on the matter.

*** 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 Aliens|Scary Dogmatic Alien]] and all.

**** That raises the question of why the Covenant, who have known since the last game that you need a human to activate Halo, just take a human, any human with them? They could have just nabbed any schlub off the streets of New Mombassa and had him turn on their galactic death machine. I mean what exactly were they planning once they got on the other side of that portal?

*** 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.

*** Why didn't Johnson stop Truth after all the brutes had run off to fight the chief, he just sits there cradling Miranda whilst an unarmed weak alien trys to destroy the galaxy. Also there's plenty of time for Mirana and Johnson to hop into the Pelican and fly away.

* ...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.

* 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.

* 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.

** "[[Fridge Brilliance|Wake me]] ... [[Tear Jerker|when you need me]] ..."

*** To be fair, the only reason the Covenant weapons arent that much better is because they dont really utilize their fullest potential, due to most of their tech being derived from Forurunner artifacts, and them viewing it all as Holy relics. It's mentioned in the novel, First Strike I think. So in universe, plasma weapons could be far better than humanity's ballistic weapons, theyre just not cause the Covenant are too stupid (or religious) to use them properly. But yeah, just cos its the future, doesnt mean humanity will be using lasers. SO I wouldnt be expectin humanity to be using lasers, or at least, I wouldnt find it farfetched that theyre not. Though the weapons do still seem fairly low-tech in some ways. No real sights on the assault rifle, no attachments on any of the guns ([[T Hough]] to be fair, the Marines helmets doo-hickeys probably render most attatchments unnecessary). I guess its just to humanize humanity in the future, too much high tech could make it harder to relate to them.

** They will be more advanced. This does not translate directly to 'lol laser guns'.

** ''"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.

*** 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).

*** 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.

*** Though, the auto shotgun has more customizable ammunition and holds far more of it then an assault rifle? Also, the bullets would be much more lethal, and have more stopping power. If the auto shotgun were using solid slugs instead of buckshot that could easily be more then .50 cal. It is more of an urban warfare weapon though.

*** It's also a balancing issue. If the shotguns could shoot 30 feet and still do a good amount of damage, they'd be too good.

* Hi there, welcome to [[Standard FPS Guns]].

* [[Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better]]

** The same way humans nowadays can carry two hundred 5.56mm rounds in a large box magazine and it's still light enough to carry. Ammunition is heavy, but not ''that'' heavy.

** But there's still no way 60 rounds could fit into a magazine of that size.

* To quote [[Mass Effect|another game]] that likes balistic weapons over directed energy: "This is a 20 kilogram ferrous slug... every five seconds the main gun of an ''Emperor'' class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3% of lightspeed. It impacts with the force of a 38 kilotonne bomb. That is three times the yield of the citybuster dropped on Hiroshima back on earth. That means: ''Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space.''" Seriously. Fuck lasers. Kinetic energy will ruin. Your. Shit.

* I think a better question is "Why are UNSC guns exactly like modern day guns?". It's a perfectly legitimate question when you compare the differences between a Matchlock musket and a modern day H&K Battle Rifle. They're both still guns, but in terms of sophistication and capability they're worlds apart. The best explanation is that they want to give the player human weapons that will be recognizable.

* Firearms technology hasn't advanced in the last 600 years at the rate you guys seem to think it has. Firearms technology did advance at a relatively steady pace from the 1300s to the late 1800s but since then, things have stagnated quite a bit. The centerfire metallic cartridge has remained unchanged in its fundamentals since the late 1800s...the major improvements have been the introduction of smokeless powder, increasing the efficiency of said smokeless powder, and the invention of primers which don't line the barrel with corrosion-inducing salts after each shot. Pistol design hasn't improved much since the M1911, you can point out a lot of things that "look" improved but the fundamentals are still there. The Glock is really more of an improvement in manufacturing techniques and strengthening cheaper materials; in the realm of steel, heat-treating has gotten a bit better but it's no paradigm-shattering improvement. The Hi-Power still uses the same overall design as the M1911, it's just using a cam instead of a rotating-link to accomplish the same movement. Assault rifle design hasn't made any drastic improvements since the AR-10 and the AR-18. Nearly all bolt-action rifle designs used today, with some notable exceptions, are direct descendants of the Mauser 98, and just about every "improvement" and "alternative" doesn't really make any quantifiable improvement in performance, the main name of the game is just making the manufacturing more efficient. The M2 machinegun was introduced in the 20's and the fundamental design has remained unchanged. The Gatling designs are from the late 1800s. Caseless ammunition flopped due to insurmountable problems with physics. The PDW concept flopped due to lack of lethality. Real improvements in bullet design have been seen but it's limited to the civilian sector where expanding bullets have used; hollowpoints have gotten more reliable and more efficient and the invention of the ballistic-tip rifle bullet was a true improvement in performance for hunting bullets. To sum up, drawing a straight line charting firearms technology improvement from 1900 to 2552 could quite feasibly produce weapons essentially exactly like what we get in Halo.

** No it couldn't because pretty much every gun is less advanced than modern guns.

** It's better in ''[[Halo: Reach]]''. The MA37 (a derivative of the MA5B) is accurate to a much greater range, as long as you fire in bursts. It also does greater damage. The M6G Pistol, meanwhile, deals much less damage, but is still effective against unshielded targets.

*** The pistol bullets are high explosive headed. And actually the pistol is the only really futuristic human gun in halo. It is a pistol yet packs a punch and has a scope.

** The same reason the Colt 1911 and M1 Browning, both almost 100 years old, are still used today. They just work.

*** They're not 300 years old though. As for the grenade launcher it suffers from the same problem as the other human weapons, fancy ammo rubbish gun. Yes it can hurl stuff at the enemy but it could do it better with a magazine so it wasn't single shot. And surely there have been some advances in grenade technology over 300 years. You're not telling me they couldn't have shrunk the grenade a bit so a magazine could take more for example. The launcher is a very 1940's gun, it just has a fancy grenade in it.

== 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.

** Also, it was mentioned that an Insurrectionist fleet fought alongside Admiral Cole during his [[Last Stand]]. It's possible that more did the same. Or, they could have hidden themselves and not take part in the war.

** The Halo games all take place on alien worlds or human planets the Covenant is invading, the Innies have better things to do than fight the UNSC with the genocidal aliens on their planets. Also the Insurrection is supposed to have been dealt huge blows in the war. The UNSC, once unpopular is now fighting desperately to save humainity the Innies would loose a lot of their support and a lot are supposed to have joined the UNSC to fight with them. Most remaining Insurrectionists by late war just hide from the UNSC rather than fighting them. Also there isn't any legal civilian slipspace travel after 2531 during the war so the Insurrection was fractured and unable to communicate or resupply itself.

== 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?

== 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?

 

== How exactly does a man in half a ton of armor float in a creek? ==

 

== Why hasn't Kamal been drafted? ==

** Clearly, he's a draft dodger. This would earn him a trip to Firing Squad Land.

** Not everyone who turns eighteen will necessarily be drafted. Arming every single able-bodies adult over eighteen would be nightmarishly expensive. Kamal probably just got skipped over.

 

== Why board the Truth and Reconciliation on foot? ==

** 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? ==

** * 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?

== How much do the Covenant know? ==

* 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.

** 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.

 

== What happened to all the flood? ==

*** 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.

*** 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.

** 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.

*** 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.

*** I've always wondered that myself. There are close to 200 caskets in the Mausoleum of the Arbiters. That armor has survived its wearer dying nearly 200 times, yet is still intact... Of course, the prophets are lying bastards so this might just be another one.

*** They could have simply built a new suit, or keep multiple suits around.

*** 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.

**** Oh waaa. Maybe you're conveying the orders ''from''' Cutter to Forge in those instances.

*** BTW; Master Chief wouldn't have to follow orders from a O-1, according to the halo wiki his rank was "Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy" which is the highest enlisted rank and given a "3-star protocol equivalency." So I guess that means only a full admiral can order him around.

 

== Delta Halo ==

** Another meaning for delta is "different." 05 is a different Halo, ergo, Delta Halo, as opposed to the first Halo, which is Alpha.

 

== What's with Slipspace shockwaves? ==

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 short, the forces at the jump entry point are far more violent than those at the exit point. Here's the [http://halostory.bungie.org/staten083106.html full interview] if you're interested.

 

*** 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.

*** Yeah, I think it's safe to say that computers would do most or all of the navigational work in this setting when the setting makes it explicitly clear that purging navigational data is foolproof enough to secure human colonies and population centers, and that the Covenant are only able to find human worlds through old-fashioned methods like bugging human ships.

*** It's pretty much confirmed in the short story ''Midnight in the Heart of the Midolothian'' (written by Frank O'Connor himself) in ''Halo Evolutions'' that only an AI actually knows the coordinates of Earth.

** No, Cortana says that they were heading toward Earth's ''location'', not that they had found the homeworld of humanity.

** A fleet of one hundred ships need not be for direct military action. When you're ascending to godhood, it's probably best to do so with a massive entourage.

* Allow me to explain. In Halo: First Strike, they stop The Prophet of Truth's invasion fleet. Truth DID know about humanity, but was a backstabbing asshole and didn't tell the other Prophets. Regret, therefor, didn't know about humanity being on Earth. He went there because they were picking artifact readings. Regret knew about the artifact, and Truth knew about humanity, but they didn't know what the other one did. Had they not been greedy, they would have won.

** There's no evidence the fleet in First Strike was Truth's.

I suppose we can assume that the UNSC's territory extends in every direction around Earth. If this were true, then the Covenant invaders would have had to sweep the entire UNSC territory for colonies, and somehow not find Earth, which is just completely ridiculous. They should have at least half, if not more of their colonies intact, which makes 400+ . This is assuming that the covenant invaded from one side the UNSC and didn't somehow simultaneously attack the entire circumfirence at once.(which would also be ridiculous.)

* This also leads to the notion of there being only 200,000,000 humans left. Even if this number is just for Earth's population, how did all those people die? From what we see, the only place that was glassed was Voi and the surrounding area. And it seems like only africa, and a few other scattered places were hit by invasion forces. A very conservative guess would put Earth's population in 2553 at around 10,000,000,000. There is no possible way that the covenant killed 49 out of 50 people on the whole planet. They only had about 27 ships left when they went through the portal to the ark, which is not nearly enough to almost completely destroy a planet like earth.

** "They only had about 27 ships left when they went through the portal to the ark, which is not nearly enough to almost completely destroy a planet like earth." Go read your fluff. 30 ships is enough to completely strip the atmosphere from a planet in 24 hours.

*** According to ''Reach'', it isn't. {{spoiler|1=It's a rumour spread by a Council of human AIs, who have secretly been aiding humanity in its advancement and (later) it's survival.}} I have also heard that that figure might simply represent the number of UNSC personnel currently serving. High, but not impossible (100 million where mobilised during [[World War II]]).

It's directly stated as being weaker than its contemporary equivalents, and, yeah, it does have symbolic value - as a direct servant of the Prophets' will. Considering how honor-obssessed the Elites are, I'm surprised they didn't destroy it.

* Two possible explanations. It was an Elite symbol of honor before it became a Prophet mark of shame, so he wears it with honor, to show his indepence of the Prophets' control. He received it at a major turning point in his life, so he might feel it's a major part of him now. As for regards to practicality, the Elites, and the Covenant in general, have shown themselves to hold honor/tradition above practicality. Hence they wear armor that's bright blue, red, or gold, as opposed to something that'll blend in with the background.

* The Arbiter is a symbol of the Elites as a whole. Note that when the Arbiter is fighting the Brutes in Halo 2, one of their responses if they kill you is to say that they've torn out "the heart of the Elites." The armor is a part of that symbol. Hell, its entirely possible that the Elites are simply viewing the armor as a different symbol now that the Arbiter has switched sides, taking it as a sign of their rebellion. Symbols only have as much meaning as those who look upon them put into them.

 

== Elites in ODST ==

Or more specifically, the fact that they're all dead. An entire city full of Proud Warrior Race Guys with dug in positions, heavy armor, and air support. Dead within seconds of a ship full of them leaving, and replaced by brutes like nothing had ever happened. the only evidence that they had ever been there is a dozen or so corpses scattered around a city they had completely occupied moments before. and we are give no explanation as to why this happened.

** ODST is pretty much one big [[Retcon]] - see the ''completely'' redesigned New Mombasa that doesn't have the suspension bridge from Halo 2 anywhere in sight.

** I'm more peeved at the fact that every single elite in the whole damn city just drops dead within seconds.

Why does the activation of the warm up sequence on Delta Halo turn the immediate surroundings into a prime futuristic battlefield complete with grav lift, ''totally'' unlike the control room of the first game?

* Because they're different Halos and thus have different design specs. I thought this was obvious, considering how vastly different the layouts between the two were.

 

== Spartan-IIIs in Halo: Reach ==.

** ...Point. The idea of variable power outputs honestly never occured to me. I assumed MACs all had only one power setting: Full Power Total Annihilation. It didn't even cross my mind that they could be fired at half-charge or 10% charge or such-and-such.

** Also, that figure is probably horribly wrong. A frigate that size is carrying around 600 ton shells? What happens after it fires all four of its projectiles?

*** We know the rounds are very dense we see the Super MAC rounds in Halo 2. They weigh thousands of tons and are barely bigger then the Chief. The ship ones could be tiny so plenty could be fitted inside. The books do mention limits to the ammo, it was three rounds on the first MAC destroyer and about 6 rounds on a modern frigate.

** Why is the animation for the Mac guns so...weak? In Halo 3 and Reach they look like pop guns. That frigate that killed the tower in Reach didn't have to be RIGHT on top of the thing to take it out. He could've sat back miles away.

*** It's all but confirmed that the Super MAC platforms are in geosynchronous orbit over certain points on the planet (most likely over the cities they're named after, i.e. Cairo Station is in geosynch orbit over Cairo, Egypt, Athens Station orbits high over Greece's capital, etc).

*** Yeah, except we can clearly see the Super MAC guns in Halo 2. They're ''not'' stationed at the Legrange points. And again, there's a weak point in the UNSC defensive sphere, which coincidentally happens to be over the point on the planet Truth is interested in.

*** Likely to be non-canon now. In ''Reach'' Jun is incredulous that the SPARTAN-IIs are being deployed to protect civilian transports. It's probable it was a cover for whatever was going down with the ''Autumn''. Most likely scenario in regards to the MAC guns is {{spoiler|the Covenant supercarrier ''Long Night of Solace'' destroyed them after Noble Team disabled its cloaking shield.}}

**** If they only had twenty I'd assume they were mobile. The ones in Earth orbit weren't, beccause they had enough to cover the entire planet. If they were mobile, then the ''Long Night of Solace'' probably destroyed them with its fighter contingent, and took down anything larger than a corvette itself. (I haven't read the revised edition of ''The Fall of Reach'', so I don't know if the MAC Cannons were actually used.)

*** Read the revised edition, all 20 super MAC guns still up and running till the final battle.

== UNSC ship shields ==

** Yeah, it is. The MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor required a ''fusion reactor'' to power its shields. The smallest one ever built, in fact. If they need that much energy to generate an energy shield around a single person, how much do you think a ship would need?

** Plus, the MJOLNIR energy shield is not all that powerful. On Heroic difficulty (which we can safely assume is the most canon choice since it's described as "the way Halo is meant to be played" as of Halo 3) the MJOLNIR energy shield can take ''maybe'' five or six direct hits from a plasma rifle before failing. If human-made energy shields can only take that much punishment from simple small arms fire, imagine how quickly they would fail under the much more powerful weapons of a Covenant battlecruiser.

 

== Why is it that, in at least Halo 2, everything from ragdolls to vehicles to broken bits broken off of stuff had full-on physics applied to them, but grenades and dropped weapons still did that annoying "Quake bounce?" ==

 

== Hammer ==

*** ...''So why does he have a flashlight?!''

**** So [[Unpleasable Fanbase|you]] can see.

**** [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]] I just re-read one of the novels. The Chief does have thermal imagery and probably quite a few other toys in his HUD we just can’t use them in game. As for why he has a light as well several guns come with it as standard and it seems sensible to always carry a torch. Maybe it’s so he can light up things for marines?

== Why did Keyes keep his pistol unloaded? ==

* The real question is why does he tell it's not loaded when it really is. You walk away without having passed any visible amories, and Master Cheif pulls out the pistol with half a magazine already loaded in it, and a few magazines ready for backup. WTF Keyes, you liar?!

** The Chief probably picked up ammo on the way to the bridge or had some on him after the battle at Reach.

 

== Where did Spartan Lasers come From? ==

== Do the humans know the Arbiter was the one that led the Covenant that bombed Reach? ==

It seems that the Chief wouldn't be so cozy with him if he knows that the guy that has his six is the one that murdered most of his team...

 

== How come you never fight humans in the Halo games? ==

** Mostly because they don't really exist by the time of the main games. The Seperatists were mostly only active in the Outer Colonies, which were wiped out by the Covenant. By the time of the main games in the main series, they aren't around anymore. That being said, in Halo Wars, Seperatists appear as minor enemies on some of the skirmish maps, protecting certain strategic points.

** It's worth noting that in the first mission of ''[[Halo: Reach]]'', wherein you investigate a Relay Outpost that's gone silent, the assumption is that it's Insurrectionists that have caused it. Also worth noting that when you play as the Arbiter in ''Halo 2'', you never fight humans '''once'''. Maybe Bungie just has an aversion to killing humans in their games.

** Actually, if you turn the Marines in the first game into hostiles, they can kill you damned fast. There was also a mod for Halo 2 that replaced the Covenant troops with Marines in each level...and the difficulty spikes dramatically.

*** Yes, but that's because the developers ramped up their accuracy to 100%. During normally gameplay, they have 50% accuracy, but to punish betrayals they get an accuracy boost.

*** One minor nitpick: there is one point in one of the Arbiter missions in Halo 2 where you can fight humans. Admittedly, they are on the other side of a chasm and are already under attack by the Flood, but if you move fast you can kill a couple of them before the Flood do. Not that there's much point in it.

 

** True, but it did make it a lot easier to snipe quickly while parked.

*** If you're gonna park and snipe, you might as well just hop out.

 

== Why don't the rings have better safety/containment features? ==

 

== Do Spartans get paid for what they do? Or have any personal property at all? ==

* I'm heard Jorge say "That's why they pay us the big bucks" in the Reach campaign. So maybe Noble Team gets paid. Or maybe he was just joking.

 

* okay, the last level of halo 3. I get that the pelican must've taken some damage, but why did it crash at the beginning? Is the chief just a really bad pilot? Was it another call back to the beginning of the last level of the first game? It just seems kind of ridiculous not to land on top of the control structure (or near it, if the pelican wouldn't fit.).

 

Also, when the Arbiter catches up to Refumee trying to escape in a Seraph, why did Refumee stay and fight? Why didn't he just get in the Seraph, where it would be near-impossible for the Arbiter to stop him?

 

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[[Category:Games/Headscratchers]]

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[[Category:Halo (series)]]