Halo (series)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

* Rampancy is a side-effect of having too much data to index and maintain. It's not that after seven years an AI automatically goes rampant, it's just that 7 years is about how long it should take an AI functioning normally before it happens. Since they're adrift in space, it's possible that Cortana won't be getting enough data to push her over the edge for a very long time, especially if she can put herself into some kind of standby mode.

* They changed it. Old rampancy - "Smart" A.Is slowly become irrational and "die" in a logic loop. New rampancy - "Smart" A.Is go insane and wreak havoc, until they have to destroyed or the A.I stops acting crazy.

* Either way, she seems pretty fine by the time [[Halo 4]] begins. Not counting the whole "ship falling apart and being dragged towards a mysterious planet" situation.

* The thing about UNSC firearms isn't so much will we be using bullets it's that they're less advanced than what we use now? Where are their under slung grenade launchers, scopes, [[UA Vs]], automatic shotguns? There is an Israeli weapon they use now that tells you if your bullet has hit the target or now. I know dialogue gives the hint the [[MA 5]] series is like their AK47 but you'd expect to see fancier weapons around. Sure the bullets may be cool enough to go through energy shields and other super hard alloy but the guns that fire they’re pretty low tech. There should also be mroe caseless ammo as they have solved the problems with it. I know the answer in reality to the debate is as said above they used standard FPS guns but that’s not a valid in universe explanation.

** Yeah, this is my major problem with the Halo series (well, the first game at least, I haven't played much of the others). The human weaponry is at best on a par with what we have now, and at worst is far inferior. The [[MA 5 B]] assault rifle is accurate to about 10 yards, and you'll be lucky to land a single bullet out of a magazine on a target at anything beyond about 30 yards. Compare this to a standard modern assault rifle, which can accurately hit targets at 500+ yards. I would certainly take an M16 over the [[MA 5 B]]...in fact I would probably take virtually any weapon of the past 100 years over the [[MA 5 B]]! I understand the need for game balance, but I think they really mucked up that weapon; for instance, why say that it fires 7.62mm bullets, and then give it a level of power resembling a BB gun? A 7.62mm bullet carries far more energy than the .50 bullet used by the Halo pistol, yet does far less damage in the game.

*** 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.

** Precisely how do you improve on that kind of a design? Its a tube that shoots grenades. Its simple as hell. There probably were minor improvements made on the design over three hundred years, but the fundamental design of a grenade launcher is so simple that it's hard to improve on it in general.

*** By that logic there should be a dozen types of guns in the world. An AK-47 and an M-16 both perform the same role, after all. And I seriously doubt the company that produced it in the 22nd Century was still producing it in the 26th. If anything you'd see new designed as corporations tried to compete with each other.

* Game balance. Strangely, I've heard Halo 1 fans take that exact thing as an example of the "dumbening" of the series, [[Double Standard|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.

** The Halo 1 magnum was said to fire a .50 round or something similar. It would have more kick.

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

** 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''

** The Covenant always knew where Earth was. Regret went there to use the Ark. What they ''didn't'' know was that the planet listed in Forerunner records as containing the Ark was ''also'' the homeworld of the human race, which is why Regret was attacking with such a small fleet. Remember, Lord Hood comments that the Covenant attack on Reach was 50 times the size of their attack on Earth... but that's because the Covenant were actually ''planning'' to attack Reach, while what's happening here is that the Prophet of Regret and his escort fleet is having an unplanned meeting engagement.

* It's shown in ''First Strike'' that the Covenant had found Earth and were readying themselves for an attack, though this contradicts Cortana's version in the game, where she says that the reason there weren't that many ships was because they didn't expect humanity to be there, whereas the Covenant fleet in the book had HUNDREDS of ships.

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

== How did the ''elite'' survive? ==

* Because its a non-canon Easter Egg that has no bearing on the actual plot.

All the weapons UNSC ever use are bullet-based. Suddenly, with absolutely no explanation, Master Chief pulls out a laser gun halfway through the third game. Huh? Who invented this? Also, since Spartan Lasers are so dangerous, why doesn't the UNSC equip ships with laser weapons? In fact, how did they develop man-portable lasers before huge, cumbersome ship-based ones? In the early days of gunpowder, guns were heavy and usually used on ships, then became smaller and easily carried. In the Halo-verse, the opposite is apparently true (this applies to UNSC ship shields too, but that's already been discussed).

* Lasers vs. Kinetic weapons has also already been discussed in depth further up the page. Pretty sure that argument will answer some questions. Or just make you angry. It's the 2500s, with FTL travel, crazy aliens and handheld plasma weapons. We have lasers that can shoot down missiles right now, so a man-portable anti-tank laser isn't particularly far-fetched. As for early gunpowder weapons, you are incorrect in stating that the earliest gunpowder weapons were large and ship-based. The earliest known firearms were man-portable cannons. As for why up-sized lasers aren't mounted on UNSC space vessels, the energy requirements might have been too great for an effectively destructive beam (scaling issues, you can't just make it twice the size for twice the firepower), the diffusion of said laser over space combat distances might have been too great (which is really true), or [[Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better]]. Also, the Spartan Laser might just be ridiculously expensive to manufacture in any sort of large quantity.

*** Because the Spartan Laser has been in use since 2531. It's used by members of Red Team in ''Halo Wars'' -- that's probably how it got the nickname.<ref>For reference, Red Team are all Spartans.</ref>

** True, but even in Halo Wars it's not explained who invented the lasers (although I assume that Anders might have). Also, that causes a slight continuity error: Why are there Spartan Lasers in Halo Wars but not in Halo 1 or 2? A meta explanation is that the dev team hadn't thought of them yet, but there is no in-universe explanation.

** True, but there's a lot of talk throughout the overall Halo franchise about human separatist groups in the outer colonies or some such thing. IIRC, putting down colonial rebellions was why the SPARTAN program was started up in the first place. You'd think that at least ''one'' of the games in the Halo franchise would feature human separatists as minor antagonists in at least one level.

** 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.

*** Either that or humans just aren't very good enemies. Marines are unshielded, and don't really have any edge over elites. It'd be like fighting taller grunts.

** 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.

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

The reason it grates is mainly because by the end of Halo CE, the Flood still aren't an active threat to the galaxy: they have two broken ships that, given time, they would have been able to repair, but neither was off the ground yet - so there didn't seem to be any need for a response with effect beyond the actual surface of the ring. (And it doesn't need to be chalked up to storytelling necessities; the Covenant were actively meddling with the facility and the weapon systems, so the story could easily have gone the same way.) I know that half the point was that Spark was insane/evil and lying to the Chief for his own reasons, but it bothers me that this was never ''mentioned'' at any point.

** The Sentinels ''are'' containment systems. They're specially designed to deal with Flood infection forms, and when you compare the Sentinels to what the Forerunners' ''actual'' weapons systems were capable of, it becomes quite clear that the Sentinels are little more than tasers by comparison. The Forerunners seemed to be operating under the assumption that anyone who came to the rings would be aware of the dangers of the Flood and treat them with respect; they didn't anticipate morons like the Covenant who'd just go bashing down every door. They also seemed to have anticipated that someone would be on hand with actual military forces comparable to their own to deal with the infection. Judging by how the Forerunners' technology works in ''Cryptum'', a ''single'' soldier with a Class 12 combat suit could have obliterated both infections by himself with about as much ease as stomping a roach, let alone someone with a "serious" weapons system. Admittedly, these are both mistaken assumptions, but the Forerunners' designs make a lot more sense when you consider that the Array was supposed to be occupied by Forerunners or humans with comparable technology to the ones who built the rings. They weren't ''supposed'' to just be sitting out in space waiting for a bunch of idiots to show up and let the Flood out.