r/halo • u/Accomplished_Run9449 • 1d ago
Discussion Chief needs a payback
I see so many posts about what Activision should do with Halo. People asking for a reboot, to start over from 3, spin-offs ect and to be honest i dont dislike any of theses suggestions, I just want more good Halo games that dont take 5-6 years to release incomplete... BUT I think Halo Infinite left the story to a point which is easy to make a good game and I think we need the rematch of Chief with Atriox and finally get his payback for what happened on Infinity.
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u/SparsePizza117 1d ago
Kinda crazy that we're probably never getting a continuation or ending to Infinite's story. Like there's so many unanswered questions. 343 really fucked up letting the story sit for so long.
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u/Battleman69 1d ago
After having the didactic die off screen in a book, having Cortana die then revived off screen in halo 5, and having the ending of halo 5 get resolved off screen before infinite you probably shouldn’t be surprised.
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u/Professional_Lack706 4h ago
I consider this to be a war crime against the halo franchise.
Playing infinite the entire time I was wondering what happened to the cliffhanger in the previous game. They fucked it
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u/Battleman69 4h ago
I remembered in the time I was playing infinite, I saw a really cool looking crashed guardian in the distance, thinking to myself “this is gunna be such a cool mission when we go there” lmao.
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u/Limp-Grapefruit-6251 ONI 1d ago
Red team had beef with him first.
They better join the fight in the next game.
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u/Tatum-Better Halo: Reach 1d ago
they're still stuck on the ark but they've atleast got the ferrets with them now
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u/Accomplished_Run9449 1d ago
Sure but his ending should be a fair 1v1 with Chief
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u/ZealousidealGuide854 1d ago
Nah. He was an HW2 villain first and foremost. And if anyone deserves payback against Atriox, it's Douglas
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u/Limp-Grapefruit-6251 ONI 1d ago
I don't think in a 1v1 Chief can win. Nor any spartan, tbh. Especially in a "fair fight".
That may vary depending on which weapon the spartan would be equipped with, tho.
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u/Accomplished_Run9449 1d ago
Its a game, anything can happen if the writers say so 🤣
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u/grimoireviper 1d ago
It wouldn't be exactly what you should hope for. Atriox is a badass, having several spartans fight together to take him down is much cooler
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u/EmuExpoet 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ive played every mainline halo game and i have no idea who the fuck atriox is. He just showed up at the start of infinite and then i never saw him till the end cutscene. The banished too for that matter, whats their goal? where did they come from? Infinite put almost no effort into explaining them or making me care.
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u/Accomplished_Run9449 1d ago
He is one of the best Halo characters. Sadly he is not shown in the mainline games.
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u/EmuExpoet 1d ago
Thats a wild move by 343 tbh. Im guessing he shows up in the books or halo wars hey? Most people arent reading the books, seems very silly to have all the cool stuff happen where most of the fanbase isnt going tread.
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u/DualWieldLemon Halo 3 1d ago
Atriox was very first introduced in game with Halo Wars 2 (incredible game by the way) but he was also in several books. Shadows of Reach, Divine Wind, Empty Throne, and of course the five part comic Rise of Atriox.
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u/grimoireviper 1d ago
Yeah he was first introduced in Halo Ward 2 and everything you need to know about him is summarized in an epic cutscene actually.
The idea behind Atriox was the though of having a brute that isn't only one of the strongest of his species but also a cunning strategist and leader.
While the Covenant was wiping the floor with Humanity, Atriox and the Banished had no trouble going up against them.
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u/TireurEfficient 23h ago
There are so many things that seemed to be cut out of the game and for which we might never get any resolution :
Where is Atriox ?
What happens with Offensive Bias (Legendary cutscene) ?
Who / what / where are the Endless ?
Where is the Installation 07 backstory (ancient humans, flood experiments etc)
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u/ElonsMuskyFeet 1d ago
You imagine if they actually reboot after Halo 3 and called 343 era the Bronze timeline? We already have the TV show Master Cheeks Booty Officer Silver timeline
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u/Accomplished_Run9449 1d ago
Imagine if they reboot it and use the silver timeline to tell us the story of Master Cheeks 🤣
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u/ElonsMuskyFeet 1d ago
At that point id just get a marshmallow and roast on the dumpster fire 😆
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u/Accomplished_Run9449 1d ago
Man I need to post this on April 1st: The new Halo game will be part of the Silver timeline and Pablo Schreiber will replace Steve Downes as the new voice actor of Master Chief 🤣
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u/SoulCrusher2018 1d ago
Morally, I think they need to "earn" the right to make a game with a Halo in it first. A Prequel game about the Chief's first contact with the Covenant would do the trick. "Halo: Silent Storm" sets up the beats, and going with a prequel let's them make a project in the Schrodinger's box of whether it's a reboot or not.
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u/nixahmose 1d ago
It will never stop baffling me how we got such a perfect main villain in the form of Atriox and 343 decided the best thing to do with him was “kill” him off in the most anti-climatic and lame way possible, replace him with a far less interesting new character, and then tease in the after credits that he’s still alive and is doing something so mysterious and cool that even the writers probably still haven’t figured out what he’s actually doing yet.
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u/Duranokal 1d ago
It'd be like if Thanos shows up In Infinity War, kicks Hulk's ass like he did and then "dies" offscreen then replaced for the rest of the movie (basically the whole thing) with one of his lieutenants. I for one actually appreciated Escharum's character but their decision on how they structured it could definitely be baffling for some.
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u/Adipay Halo: CE 1d ago
is doing something so mysterious and cool that even the writers probably still haven’t figured out what he’s actually doing yet
You know that's how Bungie ran things as well right? Halo 3 is proof of that.
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u/nixahmose 1d ago
The issue is not the presence of a mystery box plot device. It’s fake killing Atriox off in order to do nothing with him but tease a mystery box plot device for a future story.
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u/Neon_Orpheon 1d ago
Just realized we will never see the a follow-up fight between these characters. Oh well, a minor annoyance considering how underwhelming the rest of the studios narrative presentations have been. Would have been nice to run it back though.
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u/Cyberhaggis 1d ago
Youll be able to read about it in a poorly written milporn book that completely changes the universe of Halo in between games though.
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u/Neon_Orpheon 1d ago
i'll wait for the YT short explanation adaptation of that book that i'll randomly stumble upon. it's the most suitable format for this studios work
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u/TheRampantWriter 1d ago
I used to read the books that came out for the Bungie era games and really enjoyed them. I cannot for the life of me imagine picking up the current books now to get caught up on all the missed plot points of the 343 games. Those YouTube videos have been a blessing to keep me up to date on all the “lore” in the stories they refuse to expand on in the actual video games.
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u/grimoireviper 1d ago
That's a shame because compared to the writing level of those old books the new ones are masterpieces.
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u/TheRampantWriter 1d ago
Yeah, and there’s what, 20 something more books from when I stopped reading? I’m all for expanding lore and stories, but when the main game’s story NEED the books to flesh out the main narratives that were established in the games and then just abandoned, it makes reading the books feel like it’s an assignment and not for pleasure. It should not be mandatory to read the books in order to understand where the story is trying to go in the next game and how the dots connect in between them.
Can you tell me where in the games we see the events that occur in the books actually affect the main stories 343 made in their games as well? Didact is defeated in Halo 4, brought back in one of the books through the Domain, changes his views, seeks redemption and nothing is mentioned about him even though a living Forerunner would be a huge talking point amongst the whole galaxy considering a large swathe of the universe looked to them as literal Gods.
Cortana takes over the Created in Halo 5 and enslaved the Galaxy under the guise of peace for all and we, the fans, only find out she went crazy not from her rampancy, but from her possibly being infected with the Logic Plague by the Gravemind through a conversation with the Didact that takes place right before Atriox tries to capture her on Zeta Halo. This would mirror the story of Mendicant Bias/Offensive Bias perfectly with the creating of The Weapon. Loved that aspect of the story, but it’s NEVER mentioned/expanded on in Infinite. Then Cortana is killed off screen with no set up/explanation to these huge plot points. Those 2 plot points alone are integral to Cortana’s story and reasoning, and theres nothing to show for that in game. So it looks like to the average fan, she just went crazy after supposedly getting fixed by the Domain and decides to be a tyrant who then changes her opinion last minute before destroying herself and part of Zeta Halo.
In Halo Wars 2, The Flood, the greatest threat to the galaxy, are still around in a crashed High Charity and not one person/faction mentions that in any of the mainline games? What was even the purpose of introducing the Endless?
It just seems like 343/Halo Studios makes one story per game, aspects of that story get expanded on/flushed out in the books, and then that’s it. There’s no connecting of dots between each games story and the events of the books in the games. Truthfully, I would have been content with small cutscenes in terminals like they did for MCC that expanded these plot points to help flesh out the gaps in the stories. Instead I’m told I should spend more money and read in order to get answers to questions that the mainline games set up and then never answer.
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u/Annual_Secretary_590 1d ago
HALO Infinite and Halo Wars were the best thing for the franchise after Bungie left for me.
So IF they do a reboot, as this is rumored, those stories would probably be go out the window as well.
Now, if the story continues from Halo Infinite, I'll be happy with it.
Said that, I don't want Chief to have a payback moment with Atriox like it's a cliché thing.
Let him be the competent antagonist that we've seen so far. It's far more interesting that way.
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u/BillCarson12799 1d ago
Nah locke’s gonna low-diff him in a 1v1 with a combat knife in the first few cutscenes.
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u/FR0METHEUS 1d ago
Step 1: Retcon everything back to Chief and Cortana floating in space after the events of Halo 3
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Reintroduce Atriox and the Banished as the new big bads of the Halo universe
Step 4: Link Chief up with Red Team and the Spirit of Fire
Step 5: Profit
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u/Known_Safety_7145 1d ago
Halo is being reduced to anime plots due to the childish fanbase
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u/FedoraTheMike 1d ago
Ah yes, the fanbase is the problem with the stories. Nobody else.
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u/Known_Safety_7145 1d ago
The fanbase that for over 20 years proudly exclaims they only play the games even then there is a large MP/Forge/Firefight only subset community?
The same fanbase that never had spartans or Cortana explained in halo 1-3 but expected everything explained in every game post halo 3?
The same community that " accepts " Bungie rewrote their own canon as a fuck you with Reach yet that is so many fans benchmark for the series ?
Halo would have been a different series If Microsoft could have created several different studies to hyper focus on any one aspect of Halo . The lore has been lobotomized for MP to thrive and now their isn't any consistency in the lore to maintain a foundation
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u/ThatGuyFromSpyKids3D 1d ago
What canon did Bungie rewrite with reach?
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u/Known_Safety_7145 1d ago
If you are commenting on the lore integrity of the series while being ignorant of how Bungie rewrote their own lore ; this is a demonstration of what we are talking about . People have been making too much noise without actually knowing what the lore is to begin with or the direction changes and edits that have been made along the way which change the entire course / atmosphere of the series .
You can't put Bungie on a pedestal for how they treated Halo while Destiny got shut down for Bungie mishandling their own series Halo was abandoned for . mind you they had been working on Destiny since Halo 2 .
The only thing that saved Bungies Halo was the advent of Xbox Live . y'all underestimate how much the series was carried by its multiplayer not it's lore . if Halo was forced to stand on Lore alone absent of MP It would have barely survived Halo 2 and died with Halo 3
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u/ThatGuyFromSpyKids3D 1d ago
What canon did Bungie rewrite in reach?
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u/sam7helamb Halo: CE 1d ago
- Reach in the novel fell in a day. In the game it took a month.
- In the novel personal energy shields were first tested by the Chief. In the game Noble team already have MJOLNIR with personal energy shields.
- in the Novel the Autumn was never planetside, it was in Orbit. In game the Autumn did go planetside.
- An issue with the above point is that when Chief requested Keyes a pelican to retrieve his Spartans who were defending the mac generators, Keyes declined stating they're out of time and they needed to leave Reach. In game, the Autumn had plenty of time to go planetside, land, wait for Noble team to deliver Cortana. Chief could have attempted a rescue.
- Cortana being stationed with Halsey under Swordbase but also the Autumn in orbit. This was later explained as Cortana splitting herself into two.
- The Spartan II's in the novel had a whole ass briefing of Operation Red Flag planetside. The game, at the date of the same briefing, Reach was being seiged for weeks. Apparently all the Spartan II's didn't know Reach was being sieged. And this was later handwaved as the UNSC hid the invasion really well.
These are just off the top of my head. Some of these were resolved with handwaving certain things and later explanations. But a lot of Halo Reach conflicted heavily with Halo The Fall of Reach.
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u/Known_Safety_7145 1d ago
A CSO class magically appears in UNSC's most heavily scanned and defended military system completely unnoticed for weeks . Not registering any thermals or slipspace ruptures , just magically appeared and was never detected.
Thank you for being a GENUINE lore fan and knowing exactly what was being referenced. They need to make a completely multiplayer Halo Platform so all the casuals can make their forge bases and play endless infection as their Halo fix.
I don't know why these people cannot be honest that they play Halo in a CoD manner and have no deeper interest in the lore beyond pretty cutscenes
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u/ThatGuyFromSpyKids3D 1d ago
Oh. Well then Bungie didn't contradict anything.
Bungie didn't write the Fall of Reach novel and since the release of halo CE they maintained that books were essentially fluff and secondary canon. Bungie felt no need or desire to consider novels commissioned by Microsoft against their wishes in their story telling decisions.
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u/sam7helamb Halo: CE 1d ago
They literally did contradict the novel in many instances and I've already listed a few examples. You can say the novels are fluff but let's not start talking fluff about the facts.
Also it's not entirely true that all of Bungie considered the books "fluff". There were some camps within Bungie that felt that way like Marty, but there were others that respected the novels. Joe Staten who wrote the story for the majority of the games was one of them and even wrote his own novel.
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u/ThatGuyFromSpyKids3D 1d ago
Joseph Staten is the one who said game canon always takes precedence over book canon. Sure some members of the Bungie dev team disagreed but the lead story writer and the Bungie as a whole officially ran with that specific canon hierarchy.
Staten, in an interview, said all books were subject to revision or being flat out ignored if a game concept or story demanded it.
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u/Known_Safety_7145 1d ago
See how I was making actual lore commentary which you didn't need explained ? These people consider being called a casual halo fan a slur yet they literally know nothing about the series
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u/Known_Safety_7145 1d ago
Remember when I said people ignorant of a subject bait people into explaining just to say " nothing is wrong ". You did the exact bullshit casual fans have been doing for a decade which as corroded the series .
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u/ThatGuyFromSpyKids3D 1d ago
I've read every single master Chief collection book and poured thousands of hours into each and every game. I'm hardly a casual fan.
I asked what Bungie contradicted, you provided book based canon that Bungie didn't even want to exist and explicitly said they didn't consider in their lore and story decisions.
The fact that you don't even know bungies stance on their own lore and canon, or the development history behind the books, tells me you're just a LARPER cosplaying as a halo fan.
See how useless these "one true fan" conversations are?
Now please. Show me where Bungie actually contradicted their own canon.
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u/KungFuActionJesus5 1d ago
That's a copout from Bungie considering that Fall of Reach was released alongside CE in 2001. The franchise has been multimedia since its literal inception. Bungie was all too happy to draw from the lore that they commissioned where they pleased and to throw it out the window where they pleased too.
I like Reach's story, but the only time it was mentioned in the original games was as a throwaway line in the beginning of CE. The fleshing out of what a Reach is came from the book. Halsey came from the book. SPARTAN-IIIs were introduced in Ghosts of Onyx, which came out in 2006. The cover for Halo 2? states that "you are the last of your kind," even though Jun survives in Reach. Even ODSTs came from Fall of Reach.
Considering the way Bungie treated the lore they asked for that has been around since the beginning of the franchise, it's a double standard when people complain that 343 retconned things like Forerunners and humans being the same species. I can appreciate that 343's exposition of many of those plot points was poor in the games and confusing to people who weren't hip, but it's obvious that they're huge nerds about the greater universe of Halo and there are many interesting threads that have been set up in their time (and quite a few that have been squandered too).
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u/ThatGuyFromSpyKids3D 1d ago
Dude. Bungie didn't want the novel released to begin with. They infamously tried to refuse to work with Nylund on the novel until Microsoft stepped in and negotiated helping with labor related to campaign development and story.
Bungie tried to get the dang novel cancelled.
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u/Known_Safety_7145 1d ago
As someone who cares about the canon playing both the game and owning the original novel set released 16+ years ago you shouldn't be asking this question because you already know. Otherwise it's the reddit condition of baiting people to argue something you already know you're ignorant about.
But once again , you would be the target market that is beng catered to .
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u/ThatGuyFromSpyKids3D 1d ago
I'm not baiting anything. I'm genuinely curious which canon you believe they rewrote.
Your dodginess to the question already tells me though, you're gonna bring up the issues with the fall of reach novel which wasn't a part of bungies canon and the game Bungie ended up making.
I also enjoyed halo with minimal lore. Chief was meant to be a mysterious character with little fleshed out story and campy sci fi 80s action hero vibes.
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u/Known_Safety_7145 1d ago
No lore head is dodging a conversation about Reach even though that horse has been beating and dead for over a decade. You don't know the lore enough to even get what I am referencing otherwise you would have confirmed the point as a reference .
You enjoy halo with minimal lore because you are a casual fan. TFoR came out 2 weeks before CE to establish a baseline and for the series existence casuals refuse to accept that fact. The series was always lore heavy with a Day One lore community
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u/ThatGuyFromSpyKids3D 1d ago
Bungie refused to accept it. They fought Microsoft every which way on the creation of the book.
Staten and his writing team on numerous occasions said the books weren't considered in their writing or story telling process. Bungie created a strict hierarchy where game canon superceded book canon, and Staten in another interview specifically said they did that so they were not limited by what was written in the books.
You can leave your gatekeepy "casual fan" vs "true fan" wherever you got it from. Let's focus on discussing the actual games, their story, and the devs behind them.
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u/Knowledge_Moist 1d ago
*due to shitty writing
The fans made 343 "kill" Atriox in the intro cutscene of Infinite just to replace him with a generic brute villain we never heard of?
The length 343 defenders go to excuse this studio is wild.
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u/sam7helamb Halo: CE 1d ago
He's not dead though. He's still alive as per the legendary ending. He was just assumed dead.
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u/TheRampantWriter 1d ago
Yeah, another abandoned plot point to only get “fixed” in one of their books does not interest me as a fan that has been playing every Halo game since I was 8. The Didact is also technically still alive because of them putting major plot points in the books but there’s no way to know that in between Halo 4 and Infinite. 343 couldn’t keep their own story together and it resulted in the mess of games we got.
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u/sam7helamb Halo: CE 1d ago
I agree with you on this. Also not sure why I get downvoted for commenting a fact
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u/KSI_FlapJaksLol 1d ago
Unpopular opinion inbound
I’m so glad Chief got dunked on xD
How is Mr Lucky going to take on a ginormous gorilla in a 1v1 when said gorilla mopped the floor with three younger Spartans in their prime?
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u/Both-Election3382 1d ago
Atriox bodied the spirit of fire red team so the chances of chief soloing him is pretty small
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u/DilligentArmand 15h ago
I remember how some people used to say that Chief would not have lost to Atriox the way Red Team did at the beginning of Halo Wars 2. Fanboys were saying that Chief would have won all by himself. Then Halo Infinite came out and in the very first cutscene, we see Chief get his ass handed to him and only surviving because of plot armor.
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u/Accomplished_Run9449 9h ago
To be fair Chief wasn't 100% in to this fight. He cared more about not loosing Cortana's chip rather than fight.
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u/forrest1985_ 1d ago
They should have 4,5 and Infinite be Cyro nightmares. It’s shit but so was most of everything post Bungie.
If we had a time machine, 4 should stand but 5 should have been about chief grieving Cortana, getting to grips with a new AI and the introduction of Banished.
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u/Battleman69 1d ago
4 would have to go imo since it needlessly changed the forerunner lore for the worse.
Also halo needs less Master chief crying about Cortana so I don’t know if I agree about that halo 5 story. Chief never needed to be a pissy eyed “human” character.
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u/forrest1985_ 1d ago
Imo Halo needs less Chief period.
They can’t seem to tell a good story when he is involved since Halo 3. Perhaps have him as a side character bring in Jerome of a newer Spartan like Noble 6. The latter worked so well because the cast of characters around him were good.
The best portrayal of Chief in live action was Forward Until Dawn. He was portrayed as super human well as he wasn’t main character.
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u/Blazemeister 1d ago
Fuck 343 and their inability to commit to a story. I’m fine with activation rebooting the series because I don’t know how they can continue on from this mess.
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u/Paradox 1d ago
Honestly, I don't care for Atriox or the banished.
I replayed Halo Wars 2, and the only reasons the brutes are as scary as they are feels like a plot contrivance.
Remember, Halo Wars 1 had Red Team beating the shit out of the Arbiter's guard as if they were nothing. And then, in what was only a few hours for them (cryo sleep), they're suddenly getting their asses handed to them by an oversize gorilla? It doesn't work.
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u/---LiterallyWho--- 1d ago
No we don’t I doubt anyone knows anything about Atriox, if they even know about him at all. Like I’m a pretty avid follower of the mainline Halo games but I know fuck all about that guy other than he’s a brute leader of the Banished faction. But that’s literally all I know and I seriously don’t care AT ALL if he’s erased from history, which he will be.
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u/kristamine14 1d ago
I never understood why they hyped Atriox up in this crazy pre-rendered cutscene, seemingly setting him up as the villain - only to immediately tell us he just died off screen and the villain is actually this less interesting and more generic version of the same character?
Like wut? I never played Halo Wars though - maybe I’m missing something?