What type of enemy are the Endless? 343 need fo remember to make them fun in combat encounters. As great as the Elites and not as shit as what we got in H4
Prometheans but meaty.
Infinite possibilities?
You already fought an Endless (the Harbinger is Endless). Cortanaâs reasons seem to be easy enough to understandâŚshe wants the Mantle for herself and thinks her rampancy is cured by her ascension into the Domain, so she thinks she is clear headed despite clearly still being rampant.
I do think they should expand more on what happened in those 12 months prior to MC being tossed from the Infinity though. Having that war with Cortana merely get described is really bad imho, but the rest of the storytelling was stellar imho. They really, really nailed the emotion here. The Legendary ending is hype af for lore fans too. 0.0
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The Harbinger is 100% an Endless. Itâs explicitly stated in the game.
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Yeah, there was a bit I didnât add, where I think the Endless and Flood are the same. I said Precursor, but meant in a similar vein as the Primordial who was supposedly the last one, who told the Iso-Didact that the Flood and the Precursors are one and the same. Iâm thinking that whilst she wasnât part of the group of Precursors who devolved themselves into the Flood form as we know, perhaps she purposely remained in her Precursor form to help facilitate their return.
So, what are people thinking of the post-credits scene with Atriox, Offensive Bias, Despondent Pyre, and the Grand Edict? I think, given their naming conventions, Despondent Pyre and Grand Edict are Forerunner AI, perhaps?
I think they did to âeraseâ the badly recepted story parts of Halo 4-5, itâs no coincidence no side character introduced in those games (Lasky, Palmer, Roland, Team Osiris and Team Blue) is part of the game, some of them are merely quoted in the audio logs (outside Lasky, which is confirmed to be on the ring and speaks directly). Honestly they have already described this conflict in three books (Bad Blood, Shadows of Reach and Divine Wind) and imo itâs already enough, considering also it was badly received by gaming audience.
IDK why they would call her Endless if she was a Precursor, also that species (and the Flood, their corrupted version), was specifically targeted by Halo array weapons, which also destroyed their neural technology (an exception, the other techs were unaffected), while the Endless were considered dangerous by the Forerunners because they were the only living thing immune to Halo array. They are a different species.
Despondent Pyre was the female monitor of Installation 07 killed by the Harbinger, Grand Edict could have been another AI or a Forerunner, they had that kind of names (Librarian, Didact, Faber, etc). I think Offensive Bias will be discovered by Chief and it will aid against the Endless, it is the greatest AI ever built alongside Mendicant Bias (its countepart corrupted by the Primordial).
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With a new race entering the battle, I wonder what kind of weapons theyâll bring with themâŚ
Brutes - projectile and plasma, spiked ammo.
Humans - projectile based, bullets and explosives.
Banished - energy, electrical.
Covenant - plasma.
Forerunner - hardlight.
Maybe theyâll have more melee weapons and some kind of advanced plasma.
Maybe the electric weapons introduced in this game are Endless designed.
Could be, but I find it strange for the Banished to have it so quickly.
They are scavengers, using human and Covenant weapons with no distinction, also they are pretty effective (the rifle imo is much better than the plasma equivalent), anyway I find the official reference and they are made by the Banished.
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Story was great, all in all. Iâm very happy and itâs a great foundation for Halo going forward.
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They were smart enough to get rid of the badly received parts of H4-5 and taking Atriox and the Banished from HW2, which were the best received things of the spin-off. Also many people didnât like the Didact and the Prometheans (even if the Forerunner trilogy written by Greg Bear is a great lore fundation) and I suspect this new species is meant to replace them as villains, considering no one is so stupid to release the Flood, again. XD I would like to see a more fleshed out Forereunner AI like the legendary 343 Guilty Spark, the two monitors seen in this game were merely side-characters (also the H5 one), my bets are on Offensive Bias.
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it could be like halo 2, and noone releases the flood, there is a breach and they escape
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The installation was secure for 100000 years and it was breached coincidentally enough alongside Covenant and humans messing around to retrieve the Index, I think the Flood wonât be released anymore outside intentional actions by some faction (which would be insane, but thatâs another story XD).
Hiding that conflict in books is a nonstarter for most Halo fans. Itâd be markedly worse even than what happened with the Didact after Halo 4 and MCâs reunion with Blue Team. I expect those characters to actually be prominent in campaign DLC in the future. I think thereâs a super narrow line 343 is trying to walk here where they donât wanna give up on the Reclaimer Saga arc but also know they need to package its conclusion in a way that can bring in new players to make them care first after not having played 4 or 5.
The reason I bet they dive back into how this stuff came to be is they deliberately put that Guardian on the horizon for us to see. I bet that we get DLC taking us back in time where we see Blue Team (MC included) going to Reach to get the Weapon while Cortanaâs story is playing out in parallel or something. 343 needed to get audiences invested in MC and the Weapon as characters first since to many the core story beats were not digestible in 4 and 5.
Wrt the Endless, if the arrays cannot kill them off they are dangerous to Forerunners by virtue of being natural vectors for everlasting Flood infestation. Firing the rings would no longer wipe out the Floodâs food if the Endless were still around to play host to the parasite, which makes the effort to make/fire the rings worthless.
I friggin LOVE how the Legendary end credits scene came together. Itâs beyond exciting for me.
I mean, MC and Blue Team going back to Reach to get the Weapon and Atriox coming back from Ark is the story of Shadows of Reach, I doubt theyâll adapt it in a videogame. I agree with you they should close-up the loose ends: show the destiny of the aforementioned characters (Lasky, Palmer, Roland, Team Blue and Osiris) in some way, shape or form during Infinite post-launch support (even if there is a strong possibility the SPARTANs were not on the Infinity, so there are only Lasky and Roland on Zeta Halo), while the Created conflict is done: Cortana died on Installation 07 and thatâs it, I donât see the necessity to show other things, outside knowing what they are gonna do with the other rogue AIs which banded together with her. Anyway, next year with The Rubicon Protocol (quoted in the audio logs), weâll know more about it.
Halo: The Rubicon Protocol - Novel - Halopedia, the Halo wiki
Yeah, I think thatâs the catch with the Endless, anyway I find a bit retcon-ish they appeared from thin air, while we know the other great race other than Forerunners were the Precursors (also the ancient humans and prophets were allied against the Forerunners, what irony, but thatâs lore stuff not needed).
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I just am skeptical they would use 2 games to build up to a war as a consequence of a âreclamationâ where Cortana claims the Mantle and then sweep that aside. Itâs one thing to sweep things under the rug that are only gonna be appreciated by lore fans a la Blue Team, but I canât see them throwing the baby out with the bathwater here for stuff two whole games built up to. I also donât see any reason to avoid telling stories and making somewhat brief campaign DLC for stuff from books. Reach did that and ppl loved it.
I really hope we can get more campaign stuff on a somewhat regular cadence and not too far off into the future to answer these questions. They should try real hard to capitalize on the excitement and positivity around the campaign right now.
It happens when the last game story was overwhelmingly panned by fans and critics together. Now they are obviously trying to right the ship, anyway I agree with you they should show the characters destiny and do not kill them off screen, which is the worst solution possible.
I think all the Infinite DLCs will be located on Zeta Halo, but I can be wrong. Iâm still torn between yearly story DLCs or bigger expansions every 2 year, anyway itâs clear as hell they ring is far from being done, but at the same time they canât reuse it for another major installment, so theyâll squeeze out as many DLCs as they can.
EDIT: I replayed some audio logs (not all, so I could have missed something) and Palmer appears to be on the ring, while Locke is said to be part of operation BREAKER TRIP (which can be sowewhere else) and Team Blue is confirmed to have been dispatched to another location before the battle with the Banished.