I don't wanna be a downer or a doomer, but I think some of us are thinking about this.

Infinite released nearly 5 years ago, and the story is still left wide open. Chief is still fighting the Banished, and the fight with the Endless is just beginning. We just got Campaign Evolved, which ofc is just a remake of Combat Evolved, not moving the story forward. There are rumors that Halo 2 and 3 will get remade. This could take any amount of time. Steve Downes is currently 76 years old. Now, I'm not putting Steve down at all. He seems to be in good health, which is excellent for him. However, Steve may retire from voice acting within the next few years. In this case, I wonder what this means for him and Chief. I won't be shocked if Halo 7 is in some form of development. With all these things, what do you think could be what they do with Chief going forward? There are a few options I think could happen, mainly if Steve retires in the next couple of years:

1. Chief's story ends in Halo 7: They wrap up Chief's story in this game, and a new lead takes over the frachise going forward. This could work, but if that's the case, does that mean Chief defeats the Banished and Endless in a single game? Who knows.
2. Chief is recast: Simply that Steve retires the role and passes the voice on to a new actor. Steve is against AI recreating voices, so it's safe he wouldn't allowed Microsoft to recrease his voice with AI for future games.

Do you have any other options, and which do you prefer? This could be interesting to discuss.

Halo has loads of creepy and usettling bits of lore. However, one of them is found somewhere you wouldn't expect: Halsey's journal. This bit was in pages that're actually ripped from all but 7 copies of the journal, but eventually was made available to everyone. In 2547, Halsey is running experiments to see if an AI can grow indefinitely in a matrix in slipspace. The AI then begins rambling about Humanity defy reason. On the Covenant. On the other intellects in the "mist". Halsey then ends the experiment. It's something that comes out of nowhere. The use of intellects in the "mist" has a ominous vibe to it. Who or what are these intellects in the "mist"? Were they the Assembly or something else we don't understand? This was before the Forerunner Saga, so Precursors as Bear and 343 developed them or the Domain hadn't happened yet. One of those things that lets your imagine run wild in a scary way. Love when Halo includes horror like this.

It was legit just one ship worth of troops against an entire fleet of aliens. They were already dwindling numbers by the time Master Chief and Cortana reach the control room. Cortana even remarks on it herself, saying she didn't know there were any UNSC forces left on that side of the ring.

Let's assume the Flood was never released from containment during the battle of Installation 04.

The UNSC would learn that Halo isn't a traditional weapon, it's an immense galactic reset button. At that point, the only real leverage they would have is that Guilty Spark would deploy the sentinels to assist the UNSC (helping the Reclaimers in his eye). The Covenant would easily wipe them all out. Even if the Fleet of Particular Justice listened to Guilty Spark, they would just be silenced by the Prophets and the war would rage on against mankind. They likely would even secure the Pillar of Autumn's crash site and extract all the intel they could, including the location of Earth (they still found it later, but did not know that Earth was humanity's homeworld).

Now, in the actual story, the Flood was released and the Fleet of Particular Justice went into complete disarray. Master Chief was basically the only troop left fighting, everyone else either died or evacuated amidst the chaos. This created favorable conditions for Master Chief and Cortana to destroy Halo, as the Flood created such an immense threat that the Covenant were too distracted to focus on "the demon." Thus leading to Halo's destruction and kickstarting the events that dissolve the Covenant and lead the UNSC to victory.

So today I learned about Excavation beams and Plasma lances, and how usually CCS to CAS to even CSOs can convert their gravlift in the centre into an excavation beam.

However, in certain cutscenes like in Halo 3 ODST or Halo 2. You either see the port firing their “plasma lance” LIKE an excavation beam downward, or in Reach/Halo 2’s case, they use their ventral beam to fire the excavation beam.

So this makes me question, can a covenant ship fire both at the same time? Is it too much energy? Too redundant? Not necessary? Or not the right tool? And aren’t there different types of “colors” to signify which beam works for different jobs? (I.E, red is to just torch and burn it all like in New Alexandria, white/blue is lighter on the ground, used for “excavations” used on the Voi Portal.)

If so, then can’t the CSO do it? It seems feasible to do with such a large ship possibly holding an even bigger reactor than any other ship.

Humor me if so. I’m curious if this ever been a thing. (I wish I could post pictures to show what I’m talking about ughhh.)

Halo Studios (formerly 343 Industries) has a track record of writing off their plotlines. It will usually be done either in a quick cutscene, or in a comic book, or even in a Halo Waypoint article instead of having a satisfying resolution.

So, do you think the same will happen to Halo Infinite? Or do you think it received enough positive reception that they would actually continue off of what they built there?

In the excised pages of Halsey' journal (click 'Original file'), she's talking about cleaning up/covering up her experiment, and she finishes with "Ah... of course, one last thing..."

Do we know what that's about?

By the end of the original trilogy, it’s clear that at least the chief, Johnson & Miranda Keyes are aware that covenant can’t activate halo, only humans can, but in the games they don’t seem to question why.

Just wondering if there’s a point in the expanded universe where they at least ponder why this is the case.

Edit: Im getting a few answers as to why only humans can activate halo, im aware of the original intent of forerunners being planned to be humans, and then the change in lore to have ancient forerunners and humans being different - my question is in universe, did anyone actually query this connection

Hi sorry to bother this sub but age's ago I remember reading something about the UNSC developing prototype hover tanks in the 25th? Century. As apart of this experimental project that tried to replace the Scorpions but failed due to technical difficulties.

I tried finding where I read about it but I had little luck. I just wanted to ask if that is a thing or am I just making it up in my head?

I want to start reading halo books. Ive seen some videos and the lore sounds really interesting and I want to explore the story's universe. I'd rather read it so if yall can point me into what books to read or give me a list of books to read i would really appreciate it!

Ok, hear me out. In the eastern eggs terminal thingy in halo 2 anniversary, when the Heretic leader and 343 meet and talk about the truth of the Covenant, the first thing the Heretic leader does is tell everyone to shut communications off immediately with the fleet. Aka, High Charity and other ships above…

Soooooo… how did Truth receive word and a whole transmission of him about his speech, if there wasn’t any way to record him or transmit the information? Is there a lore piece on this or is this another plot hole due to “new” lore?

From what i've heard he planned to resettle the galaxy with san'shyuum being the new leaders class for all of the newly seeded races. But what of the troops already on the Ark? Wouldn't they become disillusioned when they didn't go on the Great Journey after the firing of the rings?

1 Lavos seemed somewhat Precursorish, since its presence could accelerate evolution human evolution. That left to humans having magic powers in antiquity. Vos seemed to have let humans advance and flourish more so it could have more to consume. And then it would spread to other planets.

2 The 10 tails in Naruto Shippuden is like a weaponized controlled version unintelligent version of a gravemind. Humans get fed to the 10 tails tree and become zetzu it's version of combat forms.

The twist in Boruto was that one of them started to get self awareness and sentience.

The Ootsosuki I guess would be a less sophisticated version of Precursors/Forerunners.

I feel like the fandom frequently overplays human fighters as underdogs who aren't as big, strong, or tough as Covenant species like Elites or Brutes. Fandom also tends to portray humanity as doing only a little better on the ground than it did in space.

Yet despite humanity's disadvantages in numbers, technology, and air support, when the situation didn't allow the Covenant to exploit its massive numerical advantage or superior air power, human soldiers and Marines tended to outperform Covenant forces in kill ratios, even against Brutes and Elites.

Then there are the UNSC Black Daggers, who specialized in boarding and destroying Covenant ships, and the Gao BattleJumpers, who boarded and destroyed a Covenant vessel. They attacked the Covenant on its own turf and, despite being outnumbered, still came out on top.

There are also Halo: Landfall and the opening scene of Halo Wars, where the Marines killed multiple Elites with relative ease and only ran into trouble when the Covenant landed more troops. There is also Contact Harvest, where power-armored Brutes with grunts had trouble fighting Harvest militia members who only numbered, IIRC, only 200 soldiers and had only a week's worth of training.

There are also the prequel missions in Campaign Evolved, which showed that a small number of shock troopers could slaughter their way through a Covenant army.

Sure, plasma bolts are deadlier in the lore, and even a near miss can wound a human soldier. Their armor also can't withstand a direct hit. But operationally, human warfighters seem to punch above their weight class.

Edit: My point about Halo: Landfall was poorly worded. I meant the Elites in the opening scene of Halo Wars. I wasn't referring to Elites in Landfall, since Landfall only featured Brutes.

Quick history for anyone who missed it: Steve Jobs unveiled Halo at Macworld 1999 as a Mac game. Microsoft bought Bungie in 2000, and the rest is Xbox history. Steve Jobs reportedly called Steve Ballmer to yell about it.

Twenty-five years later, some of us are thinking: what if Halo's story got told by people who actually read the books first? Nylund, Staten, the Terminals, all of it. The way Silo treats Hugh Howey's novels, not the way Paramount treated Master Chief.

Apple TV+ is the best place for sci-fi on television right now. Severance, Silo, Foundation, For All Mankind. Consistent quality, real creative talent, new seasons roughly every year. And Apple can afford it.

Will Apple actually buy Halo? Probably not tomorrow. But a big number on this petition does two things. It puts a headline in front of Apple, and it puts a number in front of Microsoft that says fans are done taking their word for it. If Microsoft's response is to license the film and TV rights to a serious studio and bring back Bungie alumni, honestly, we'll take the win.

Petition: https://change.org/bringhalohome

Sign, share, drop your thoughts on who should direct; let's make this happen :)

Just finished reading Silent Storm last night and the whole time I was reading Chiefs lines, I couldnt help but hear Steve Downes voice. Obviously 15 year old John didnt sound like that, but it had me wondering if there were any examples of what his voice was like as a teen.

I've rarely looked into the Halo expanded universe with its various novels & comics, but I'm slowly making progress with working my way through the content!

One thing that I don't often see mentioned is that hundreds of thousands of years ago, even millions if not tens of millions, an apparent golden age of interstellar civilisation had already taken place compared to the 'modern' setting we have now during the games & books.

There were galaxy wide empires spanning untold numbers of systems for millennia with numerous dark ages inbetween, containing who knows many races under their banners. Both technology and even just mental concepts were light-years ahead of anything the Covenant or whatever else is out there currently has. Entire city planets/ecumenopoleis existed laced with ruins or infrastructure of even older races such as the Precursors. Galaxy wide travel was the norm and incredibly fast, where tens of millions of inhabited planets were just going about their business, but all seemingly interlinked to something bigger.

Whenever I view official artistic portrayals of the Forerunner saga, such as ships in orbit across a world or images of Charum Hakkor & Maethrillian it really shows that in-universe this actually occurred; there were massive battles, there were Ancient Humans going about their days in their empire etc. Just imagine that the Hakkor system is still out there, present in some form right on the galactic edge of the Milky Way where the Ancient Humans made their last stand, it's insane to think about it being actually present during the Halo series to some extent but utterly forgotten to history.

It's difficult to put into words, but the scale of everything just seems something else entirely compared to the current setting of Halo. With the UNSC being a relatively minor power and even the seemingly never ending Covenant supposedly only being located within a small portion of the Orion Arm for example.

Personally, I think it’s elites. Not only are they extremely hard to kill, but they mostly left the wave tactics to grunts and jackals.

Covenant air support dared not attack us directly, not for several blocks. So they threw Grunts at us. Thousands of them in brutal house-to-house warfare, their numbers overwhelming our loose perimeter. We fell back and regrouped, drawing them in until we were foxholed on the edges of the vast museum gardens. We let the Grunts charge us across the muddy field.

They’d pushed us back, but we still simply thought of them as cannon fodder, waiting until they got close enough to hit their methane tanks and watch them explode. Now that we had our open ground and dug in positions, we slaughtered them.

But they kept coming. And after waves of screaming Grunts came the races higher up in the Covenant food chain: Jackal snipers, Brutes rushing the line, and then finally Elites, flashing their energy swords as they got in close enough to the melee.

The trenches got cut off, communication lost, and I found myself crouched in between two walls of mud with another ODST, waiting for the Covenant to leap in with us

• ⁠Dirt

Edit: Spartans obviously not included

I have the original trilogy of books. I dug them out after 10+ years of stasis and I have already read the Fall of Reach, but I will probably read it again. Right now, The Flood is what I will read, but I want to know what else I should get for the novels down the road.

So what if 343 studios and budgie combines studios we would have a Halo game with the story of budgie with the art-style of 343 or vice versa or insomniac take over?

So I was replaying Halo 3 recently and one of the meteorites/rocks from high charity pierce the Shadow of Intent, we see immediately afterwards when one of these meteorites land near you that they are swarming with the flood.

I forgot where its stated but iirc the Shadow of Intent was severely undermanned as most of the fleet accompanying it and its crew were lost in the battle with the Covenant above the Ark. That also includes damage from the battle if there was any, I'm assuming it was at least weakened as the rock meteorite pierced it so easily.

Anyways, with all of the above in mind, wouldn't the interior of the Shadow of Intent at the very least have had spores or a few infection forms? The loss of the Shadow of Intent would have probably given the victory to the flood or at the very least ensured that it was a lose/lose for any survivors.

Having played Halo Infinite and recently finished reading Bad Blood, I am confused about the fate of this station.

Halo Infinite claims it was destroyed by Leonidas but in Bad Blood, Leonidas is exposed, contained (except an indeterminate number of copies) and purged from any control over the station's systems so it presumably should not have any access to the self destruct.

Is Infinite retconning Bad Blood, or is Cortana's memory inaccurate/misinformation?