(L) Halo - The Anime (anthology)

[Alchemist007]

A bit OT but here's the new Halo Reach trailer

Spoiler:

[Roger Rambo]

I'm kinda wondering why the Covenant felt the need to retreat and let the Spartans escape with Dr.Halsey (MILF alert!). It seems a bit hard to swallow that a gigantic Covenant fleet couldn't take out a handful of human ships trying to escape.

It's not like that ONI stealth ship offers any resistance.

Originally Posted by Alchemist007

A bit OT but here's the new Halo Reach trailer

Spoiler:

Fuck year. This just made my day. Anyone else digging into mr war face and his kukri knives?

[Nappy Hared Azn]

Lieutenant? I thought that all Spartans were enlisted except for Kurt (who was commissioned after his "death") and those who were crippled during the augmentation process and ended up working in intelligence.

[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by Nappy Hared Azn

Lieutenant? I thought that all Spartans were enlisted except for Kurt (who was commissioned after his "death") and those who were crippled during the augmentation process and ended up working in intelligence.

I'd like to point out that John's rank of Master Chief (E-9) always did seem a bit low for a guy who was commanding a platoon of super special forces soldiers. I suppose the only Master Chief got ranked teh way he did was because Master Chief sounds more badass than Chief Warrant Officer/Ensign/Lieutenant. It does seem strange that this guy who's supposed to just be a regular spartan is at minimum two ranks above Master Chief. It's even crazier when you consider that The Carter fellow in command of the Spartan team has to be even higher ranked then him.


I suppose it's like in Heart Break ridge, where everyone sort of inherently knows that the NCO is overtly better than the Officer, so nobody even bothers to look to him for orders until the NCO gets wounded.

"OH CRAP! The Gunnery Sergeant's been hit! Who's in charge now?"
"I don't know, the Lieutenant maybe?"

[Alchemist007]

Halsey was way too damn hot/young. Can't complain though, Cortana is modeled after her (they sure made that clear with the recurring lines).
Also lol'd at "A thousand hells await you!"

[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by Alchemist007

Halsey was way too damn hot/young. Can't complain though, Cortana is modeled after her (they sure made that clear with the recurring lines).
Also lol'd at "A thousand hells await you!"

Halsey's appearance believe it or not, isn't that ludicrous in actuality. The Spartans were ready for action with the Mjolnir armor in 2525 (the firs year of the Covenant human war). At that point Halsey was only 33 years old. So if the package takes place a few years after the war began (Halsey in her mid 30's), her appearance actually is somewhat believable.

[Alchemist007]

No way, that was a 22 yr old max. I'm not blaming the facts, but the designers of this ep

[SoldierOfDarkness]

Wouldn't spending time in cryo slow the aging process?

Slipspace jumps can take from days to months or years, hence the use of the cyro, she could be older but the cryo slowed her aging process.

[Tk3997]

With regards to the series itself so far, in an attempt to be on topic before going off below, I acutally liked Babysitter myself. (though I will admit to quirking an eyebrow when Sheryl appeared out of the half ton battle armor.) I sort of like it because it was different to me at least it seems sort of a waste to just do a bunch "cool action" shorts since really we sort of have the games for rip roaring gunfights. It's harder to do a character piece in the medium of a fast paced first person shooter and though not perfect I appreciated the attempt at something beyond "HURRR KILL ALIENS!!! DAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAA!!!" The continuity issues I for one didn't think were that large. The MIA thing to me is a non-issue for example it's simply not going to be possible to hide that fact that a Spartan went out, but never came back, even if they SAY she's MIA the fact is I think most people would see through it. The MIA ploy seems to be aimed mostly at civilians for propaganda I doubt if it ever fooled anyone closer to the action and in the military. Appearance didn't phase me that much either, it's an amine for god sake so proportion are exaggerated and people are stupidly pretty with improbable hair you might as well complain their eyes are too big. Overall I found the adherence to canon at an acceptable level and liked it.

Duel... not so much. It was just too wildly divergent from what we know and too against stuff that's been set up in other works, combined with an art style that I simply couldn't look past as above and this was a real miss for me. A shame as we don't get allot of supplemental materiel from the Covenant side and seeing some real history would have been nice, but somehow despite the gapping holes they had to work with they still managed to slaughter established canon.

I haven't watched The Package yet, I was waiting for the whole thing to come out before I did so I'll have to comment on that later.

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

I'd like to point out that John's rank of Master Chief (E-9) always did seem a bit low for a guy who was commanding a platoon of super special forces soldiers. I suppose the only Master Chief got ranked teh way he did was because Master Chief sounds more badass than Chief Warrant Officer/Ensign/Lieutenant. It does seem strange that this guy who's supposed to just be a regular spartan is at minimum two ranks above Master Chief. It's even crazier when you consider that The Carter fellow in command of the Spartan team has to be even higher ranked then him.

I suppose it's like in Heart Break ridge, where everyone sort of inherently knows that the NCO is overtly better than the Officer, so nobody even bothers to look to him for orders until the NCO gets wounded.

"OH CRAP! The Gunnery Sergeant's been hit! Who's in charge now?"
"I don't know, the Lieutenant maybe?"

Depends the way he was talking about the "lone wolf" thing seems to imply this guy might not be a regular Spartan at all. I've never heard of them working alone until now, by design anyway. He also mentions reading his file "even the parts ONI didn't want me to" which makes me suspect this guy might have been working really black ops away from the majority of Spartans hence his rank being odd in comparison to them.

Edit: Wait a second "I didn't think anyone survived Pegasi" Son of a bitch he's a Spartan-III no wonder his rank is odd and he's treated as an outsider who ONI tried to cover up details about!

It's also possible for the squad leader to retain command without having to be of a higher rank. It's a general, but not iron clad, rule that the superior officer will lead a unit but if a nominally higher ranking individual lacks the needed skills, and particularly if he's only attached on a temporary basis, he may effectively defer to a lower ranking officer or even enlisted. This isn't ideal as there's always the lurking potential for the higher ranked officer to try and pull rank, but in a small tight knit unit which is more concerned with personal loyalty and history then rank, like say a tiny and extremely elite special forces unit with decades of combat time, it could work in the short term at least. For an example see the novel First Strike where for sometime the Master Chief effectively uses his reputation and the fact his skill set is the most suited for the task at hand to effectively ordered around an navy Lieutenant.

Originally Posted by miroku2192

Definitely liked this animation a LOT more. (Some parts - the technology of the human-weapons reminded me of macross frontier...anyone else get that vibe?)

And this is older too, but I'm bored and wanted to comment on it so I will. I've acutally noticed some of the same stuff indeed there does seem to be some tech overlap and the power levels are acutally pretty comparable too. (IMO both sides having a few insane outliers) I've considered doing a crossover a few times, but I'm lazy.

Hell even the stories have some vaugely similar elements and themes. Like how the human only win by teaming up with a bunch of alien traitors for a start. Oh and the aliens gained there power from long dead ancient alien races who weren't very tidy and left crap scattered all over the place... Frontier sort of pushed it even further showing inter-human conflict and politics; although this does reveal some key differences. UN Spacy apparently began granting colonies more rights to stave off rebellion, and also got a vasectomy along the way. The UNSC started dropping A-bombs on them... So yeah it's not exactly a perfect comparison.

[Nappy Hared Azn]

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

Halsey's appearance believe it or not, isn't that ludicrous in actuality. The Spartans were ready for action with the Mjolnir armor in 2525 (the firs year of the Covenant human war). At that point Halsey was only 33 years old. So if the package takes place a few years after the war began (Halsey in her mid 30's), her appearance actually is somewhat believable.

You're over-thinking it, since this clearly isn't canon.

I'm pretty sure that John is wearing the Mark VI armor, which he got right before Halo 2. There would not have been an opportunity for this mission to take place between the events of Halo 2 and the end of the war.

[Alchemist007]

Actually...

Six of the stories are officially part of the Halo canon, with the seventh, made by Toei, is intended to be a parody of the universe.[2]

From wiki.

[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by Alchemist007

No way, that was a 22 yr old max. I'm not blaming the facts, but the designers of this ep

Well being mid 30's and looking 22, is less egregious than being 60 and looking 22.

They could have made more more milfy looking though.

Originally Posted by Tk3997

as talking about the "lone wolf" thing seems to imply this guy might not be a regular Spartan at all. I've never heard of them working alone until now, by design anyway. He also mentions reading his file "even the parts ONI didn't want me to" which makes me suspect this guy might have been working really black ops away from the majority of Spartans hence his rank being odd in comparison to them.

Edit: Wait a second "I didn't think anyone survived Pegasi" Son of a bitch he's a Spartan-III no wonder his rank is odd and he's treated as an outsider who ONI tried to cover up details about!

Then there's that Q/A on Bungie.net where one of the Bungie guys answered the question of whether Team are Spartan II's or III's with the answer of "Yes".

Originally Posted by Tk3997

[URL="http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Far_Isle"]The UNSC started dropping A-bombs on them.[/URL

case in point, if the Covenant hadn't shown up for the UNSC to fight to save humanity, they'd quite clearly be the big bad guys of this franchise.

As an organization, the UNSC is pretty despicable.

Originally Posted by Nappy Hared Azn

I'm pretty sure that John is wearing the Mark VI armor, which he got right before Halo 2. There would not have been an opportunity for this mission to take place between the events of Halo 2 and the end of the war.

I'm pretty sure the armor they're using is Mark IV. They just decided to stylize it around the Mark VI, since that's what most people are familiar with.

It's just like them drawning O'brian as being 5'0 next to the other ODST when in actuality he's supposed to be 5'10.

[Alchemist007]

Well being mid 30's and looking 22, is less egregious than being 60 and looking 22.

They could have made more more milfy looking though.

I just hope their thought process is leading them to that sort of look in any future works (milfy, not 22 still ).

[SoldierOfDarkness]

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

case in point, if the Covenant hadn't shown up for the UNSC to fight to save humanity, they'd quite clearly be the big bad guys of this franchise.

As an organization, the UNSC is pretty despicable.
.

That's debatale.

Like all Empires/Nations, as it gets bigger and bigger, people start thinking about carving their own nations and rebel.

In one rebel engagement the UNSC lost 7-8 destroyers in those cases. Nukes would have to be an extremely last resort.

Hence, the Spartans, their purpose was to get in and put out the fire before it even started. That was their original purpose which was headed by Dr. Hasley. UNSC projected that the whole nation would erupt into total civil war within the next few decades if something wasn't done.

Instead of using a nuke, use a knife to root out the problem.

[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

Then there's that Q/A on Bungie.net where one of the Bungie guys answered the question of whether Team are Spartan II's or III's with the answer of "Yes".

Oh Bungie why do you love ambiguity so much…?

I googled around and found that Microsoft also released a press release that said something like “step into the boots of a Spartan III on Reach”, some of the more informed gaming sites figured it was a typo and changed it to II, Microsoft e-mailed them and said “there was no typo in the press release” but wouldn’t say anything else.

Still kind of makes my Halo Nerdom seem almost worth it, it's fun to spot things other people might miss. Makes having read all the novels and bought all the games seems worth it.

case in point, if the Covenant hadn't shown up for the UNSC to fight to save humanity, they'd quite clearly be the big bad guys of this franchise.

As an organization, the UNSC is pretty despicable.

Actually it would have simply been morally ambiguous IMO as the books show the rebels aren't any better with stuff like blowing up spacecraft full of civilians among other things. It's also somewhat implied that the nuking of Far Isle was an extreme over reaction that got the guys that did it in deep shit. You have to recall that in most canon the UNSC doesn't have FTL comms, which means it's possible for one overzealous local commander which access to WMD to do something crazy when out of contact with higher channels.

Even so the occasional massacre when putting down a rebellion has a long history... Even the US is in little position to talk given what we did to Mexico, the Indians, and our own Civil War. The fact is most nations were built on violence and blood. The UNSC is somewhat hardcore, but IMO not even quite as bad as say the Roman Republic or even the US in the early 1800. (When we did such lovely things as drive thousands of people off there lands on forced marches with barely a pittance of supplies killing thousands of them.)

We all have skeletons in the closet; we just get the see some of the UNSCs unlike allot of “heroic” nations.

I'm pretty sure the armor they're using is Mark IV. They just decided to stylize it around the Mark VI, since that's what most people are familiar with.

The armor is Mark IV it looks very similar to the Mark IV armor seen in Halo Wars observe:

Spoiler for Mark IV:

It's just like them drawning O'brian as being 5'0 next to the other ODST when in actuality he's supposed to be 5'10.

Still harping on that. Well anyway it's very close to what I happen to consider the canon look of Mark IV, and it really makes sense that the various Marks as basically upgrades of older models would look pretty similar to each other.

[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by SoldierOfDarkness

That's debatale.

The UNSC put down a civil uprising with nuclear weapons.

In most series that would be sufficient to categorize someone as "the bad guys".

Originally Posted by SoldierOfDarkness

Hence, the Spartans, their purpose was to get in and put out the fire before it even started. That was their original purpose which was headed by Dr. Hasley. UNSC projected that the whole nation would erupt into total civil war within the next few decades if something wasn't done.

Which to be fair, was always a silly idea. For a society to devolve into civil war, there have to be ALLOT of political/social/economic forces pushing the nation in that direction. Having a handful of leaders murdered does nothing when there are still billions of people who still want something different. In all likelihood, the UNSC would have still devolved into civil war.

Then there's the question of if a government that's so despised that it's only option are "nuclear genocide" or "child soldiers" really deserves to not fall apart.

Originally Posted by Tk3997

It's also somewhat implied that the nuking of Far Isle was an extreme over reaction that got the guys that did it in deep shit.

I just read the quote on Far Isle in Ghost Onyx.

Originally Posted by Ghost Onyx pg 183

"Bandersnatch" was the code for radiological- or energy based disaster. Dr. Halsey haad heard this used before from planetary bombardment by Covenant plasma and during the UNSC nuking of the Far Isle Colony to put down the Rebellion of 2492

There doesn't seem to be any strong implication here that the nuking of the colony was in any way the works of some off the wall rogue officer.

[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

I just read the quote on Far Isle in Ghost Onyx.

There doesn't seem to be any strong implication here that the nuking of the colony was in any way the works of some off the wall rogue officer.

IIRC it was mentioned again in a later book with a bit more detail, but I'd have to check. Even so we have no idea of the circumstances around it.

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

The UNSC put down a civil uprising with nuclear weapons.

In one incident we don’t know the exact circumstances of. In most cases the insurgents were dealt with using much more conventional counter insurgency tactics as seen in both The Cole Protocol and Contact Harvest. Also the quote itself simply says "nuking to put down the rebellion" it says nothing about WHAT was nuked, which means it could have been a tactical strike targeting rebel positions for all we know. It's possible the UNSC forces on the ground couldn't contain the situation and were being overrun and with no choice may have used tactical nuclear weapons to defeat the rebels. In any case without more details we can't make a very good call on how bad this really was. (It seems quite a leap to assume they just nuked everything and killed everyone as that's frankly out of character, while limited tactical employment in a dire situation is not.)

In most series that would be sufficient to categorize someone as "the bad guys".

Only in the most simplistic of universes could you class an entire government as “bad” based one isolated incident or even a string of them. Using this logic we could easily argue that in WWII the US was the bad guys because we nuked Japan, and firebombed them and Germany enough to kill tens of thousands to millions of people. We fucking burned Tokyo to the ground killing something like 100,000 people minimum for very vague military reasons.

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tokyo.htm

Read that and then see if your righteous indignation at the UNSC dropping perhaps as little as a single nuke in unknown circumstances is such an outrageous totally unforgivable act. If it still is then England, The US, Japan (who dropped chemical weapon on the Chinese among other horrors), Russia, Germany, Italy and pretty much every western democracy is also the bad guys whose governments don’t deserve to survive. Don’t be so quick to judge someone until you take a hard look at yourself.

Which to be fair, was always a silly idea. For a society to devolve into civil war, there have to be ALLOT of political/social/economic forces pushing the nation in that direction. Having a handful of leaders murdered does nothing when there are still billions of people who still want something different. In all likelihood, the UNSC would have still devolved into civil war.

Your critical mistake is in thinking this rebellion was that large, at the time it wasn’t. It was for the most part a fairly small group of very hardcore dissents with most of the population largely indifferent to either side and just wanting stability. No planets were in open revolt and the rebels power base was quite limited. It was at the time the Spartan were thought up a cancer that could still possibly be routed out and destroyed before it spread. Civil War was considered a possible outcome in the future, but not an inevitability that was imminent.

The Spartans were also merely one aspect of it as we see in other areas that much of the UNSC military was geared for counter insurgency and would be supporting the effort. The original plan was also to have a much larger number of Spartans probably going up into the thousands, a plan likely to have been met without the sudden and massive sapping of resources fighting the covenant created.

Then there's the question of if a government that's so despised that it's only option are "nuclear genocide" or "child soldiers" really deserves to not fall apart.

As I noted the rebels were no better with some of there preferred tools being "bombing civilians" and "political assassination". It's not like the UNSC was dealing with the civil rights movement with deadly force, it was dealing with something rather more like the Iraqi insurgency.

The assumption that a bunch of people that see bombings and assassination as viable tools for political change would create anything but an even more authoritarian and violent regime is also highly suspect. The simple fact is in almost all cases violent revolution produces something as bad, and often worse then what it replaced. Even the example often held up as a good example the American Revolution has its warts.

Lets be frank the government that emerged out of the revolution in the late 1700s was only very marginally more liberal blacks were still slaves, woman still had almost no rights, only white men with land could vote and the natives were still godless savages taking up space that we could use much better. The major change was now you paid taxes to a local official who then ignored your wishes instead of sending them to England to be ignored.

I'm not sure what history you've read, but frankly it's not nearly as neat and tidy as you seem to think if you think the UNSC is much worse then most modern nations.

[Alchemist007]

Originally Posted by Tk3997

Still kind of makes my Halo Nerdom seem almost worth it, it's fun to spot things other people might miss. Makes having read all the novels and bought all the games seems worth it.

Surely you're not implying it wasn't otherwise

[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by Alchemist007

Surely you're not implying it wasn't otherwise

Well sometimes dealing with all the haters can get tiring after awhile makes it hard to keep the faith you know.

[SoldierOfDarkness]

Which to be fair, was always a silly idea. For a society to devolve into civil war, there have to be ALLOT of political/social/economic forces pushing the nation in that direction. Having a handful of leaders murdered does nothing when there are still billions of people who still want something different. In all likelihood, the UNSC would have still devolved into civil war.

I think your getting the wrong idea.

It's exactly like I said about empires, when an empire gets big and bigger, the outer colonies/lands start thinking about making their own empire. Any governor general stationed in a remote colony would go, "Hmm, I'm 100 million light years from earth, I have my own army, why do I have to listen to a bunch of shmucks on Earth and send them raw materials?" It really takes one guy to gather the like-minded individuals to carry it out.

The UNSC's main concerns were the outer remote colonies (Which makes sense because they are on the outer fringe of the "Nation").

The UNSC main priority was to avoid an all-out war and that's where the Spartans came in. Take out the leader before the faction grows up too big (pre-emptitive strike).

In fact, Johnson assassinated a rebel leader on Harvest before he became too big of a threat.

By 2517 the Office of Naval Intelligence concluded that the instability of the outer colonies would continue to escalate and unless drastic military measures were taken, it would result in a massive war between the inner colonies and the outer colonies. The SPARTAN-II project, was conceived by Dr. Catherine Halsey of ONI's Section 3, as the successor to the original ORION project and the best possible solution to end the conflict with the Insurrectionists. The project was created with several goals in mind: First to create a group of elite soldiers meant to subdue insurrections in their infancy, without substantial military casualties. Second to minimize civilian casualties, and advert civil war. And third, to substantially reduce the cost of conventional means of pacification.

Your critical mistake is in thinking this rebellion was that large, at the time it wasn’t. It was for the most part a fairly small group of very hardcore dissents with most of the population largely indifferent to either side and just wanting stability. No planets were in open revolt and the rebels power base was quite limited. It was at the time the Spartan were thought up a cancer that could still possibly be routed out and destroyed before it spread. Civil War was considered a possible outcome in the future, but not an inevitability that was imminent.

Which it really was. An example would be the most recent one prior to the covenant where the rebels initiated several coups and tried to take control of several systems which forced the UNSC to send in a large task force to deal with it and crush it.