The Halo Megathread
Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn:
IF YOU DON'T LIKE HALO, DO NOT POST HERE. NO CALL OF DUTY FANBOY RAGING.WHAT IS HALO?Well I'm glad you asked!
Halo is a massively popular FPS franchise. I will go thru each game in the main series in chronological order explaining the basic plot.
**MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD.**
The game opens with the planet Reach in ruins after its destruction by the Covenant before flashing back to before the invasion. Noble Team, dispatched to discover why a communications relay has gone offline, discovers Covenant forces on Reach. Soon after, the team defends "Sword Base", an Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) installation, from a Covenant vessel. The team meets Catherine Halsey, a scientist and the mastermind behind the Spartan program and their MJOLNIR powered armor. Halsey informs Noble Team that the Covenant forces at the relay were searching for important information.
Jun and Six are dispatched on a covert mission to assess the Covenant's strength and discover an invasion force gathering on the planet. The following morning, Noble Team assists UNSC forces in assaulting a Covenant ground base. When a massive Covenant super-carrier joins the fight, Jorge and Six take part in a plan to destroy the carrier using a makeshift bomb. The Spartans use starfighters to infiltrate a smaller Covenant corvette, prepare the bomb and set the corvette on a docking course with the carrier. The bomb's timer is damaged, so Jorge stays behind and sacrifices himself to destroy the carrier. Moments later, huge numbers of Covenant ships arrive at Reach and begin a full-scale invasion.
Six returns to the surface and travels to the city of New Alexandria. The Spartan aids the local military in fighting the Covenant and evacuating the city, reuniting with Noble Team along the way. They retreat to an underground bunker when the Covenant begin to bombard the city with plasma, but Kat is killed by a Covenant sniper before they reach it. Recalled to Sword Base, Noble Team is guided underground to an ancient artifact that Halsey believes is key to winning the war against the Covenant. Six, Carter and Emile are entrusted with transporting the artificial intelligence Cortana, and the information she carries concerning the artifact, to the UNSC ship Pillar of Autumn. Jun leaves the team to escort Halsey to another base.
En route to the Autumn's dry dock, Carter is critically wounded. He rams his ship into a Covenant mobile assault platform, allowing Six and Emile to safely reach the shipyard. Emile uses a mass driver emplacement to defend the Autumn while Six fights through Covenant ground forces to get Cortana to the Autumn's captain, Jacob Keyes. When Emile is slain by Elites, Six remains behind to control the gun, ensuring the Autumn's escape. The Autumn flees from Reach and discovers a Halo ringworld, sparking the events of Halo: Combat Evolved.
The post-credits scene puts the player in control of Six's last stand against overwhelming Covenant forces. After sustaining heavy damage, Six drops his or her shattered helmet and is overwhelmed and killed. Years later, Six's helmet remains on the grassy plains of a now-restored Reach. A narration by Halsey eulogizes Noble Team, who ultimately enabled humanity's victory over the Covenant.
Beginning immediately after the events of Halo: Reach, the game opens as the Pillar of Autumn exits slipspace near a mysterious ring-shaped space station, called "Halo" by the enemy of the game, the Covenant. A Covenant fleet attacks and heavily damages the Pillar of Autumn. Captain Keyes initiates "The Cole Protocol," a procedure designed to prevent the Covenant from learning the location of Earth. While Keyes prepares to land the ship on Halo, the Master Chief and Cortana escape via an escape pod, which crash lands on the ring. Cortana and the Chief are the only ones who survive the impact of the escape pod crash.
Keyes survives the Autumn's crash landing, but is captured by the Covenant. In the second and third levels of the game, the Master Chief and Cortana gather human survivors and rescue Captain Keyes, who is imprisoned aboard the Covenant ship Truth and Reconciliation. Once rescued, Keyes orders the Master Chief to beat the Covenant to Halo's control center and to discover its purpose. The Master Chief and Cortana travel to a map room called the Silent Cartographer, which leads them to the control room. There, Cortana enters the systems and, discovering something urgent, suddenly sends the Master Chief to find Captain Keyes while she stays behind. While searching for his commander, the Master Chief learns that the Covenant have accidentally released the Flood, a parasitic alien race capable of spreading itself by overwhelming and infesting other sentient life-forms. Keyes falls victim to them while looking for a cache of weapons. The release of the Flood prompts Halo's AI monitor, 343 Guilty Spark, to recruit the Master Chief in retrieving the Index, a device that will activate Halo and prevent the Flood from spreading beyond the facility.
After the Master Chief retrieves and prepares to use the Index, Cortana re-appears and warns him against the activation. She has discovered that Halo's defense system is a weapon designed to kill all sentient life in the galaxy, which the Flood requires to spread, a revelation which Guilty Spark confirms.
Faced with this information, the Master Chief and Cortana decide to destroy Halo to prevent its activation. While fighting the Flood, the Covenant, and Guilty Spark's Sentinels, Cortana discovers that the best way to accomplish this is to cause the crashed Pillar of Autumn to self-destruct. However, Captain Keyes' authorization is required to destroy the Autumn, forcing the Chief and Cortana to return to the now-Flood-infested Truth and Reconciliation to search for him. By the time that they reach Keyes, however, he has been infected beyond the point of no return by the Flood. The Master Chief retrieves Keyes' neural implants directly from his brain and retreats to the Autumn, where Cortana activates the ship's self-destruct sequence. However, 343 Guilty Spark reappears and deactivates the countdown, discovering the record of human history in the process. The Master Chief manually destabilizes the Pillar of Autumn's fusion reactors, and he and Cortana narrowly escape the destruction of the ring via a fighter.
Taking place shortly after the events of the novel Halo: First Strike, Halo 2 opens with the trial of a Covenant Elite commander aboard the Covenant's mobile capital city of High Charity. The Elite is stripped of his rank, branded a heretic for failing to stop the humans from destroying Halo, and is tortured by Tartarus, the Chieftain of the Covenant Brutes. On Earth, the Master Chief and Sergeant Avery Johnson are commended for their actions at Halo. Lord Terrence Hood awards the soldiers alongside Commander Miranda Keyes, who accepts a medal on behalf of her deceased father, Captain Jacob Keyes.
A Covenant fleet appears outside Earth's defensive perimeter and begins an invasion of the planet. While the UNSC repels most of the fleet, a single Covenant cruiser carrying an important member of the Covenant hierarchy, the High Prophet of Regret, assaults the city of New Mombasa, Kenya. The Master Chief assists in clearing the city of Covenant; with his fleet destroyed, Regret makes a hasty slipspace jump, and Keyes, Johnson, Cortana and the Master Chief follow aboard the UNSC ship In Amber Clad. The crew discover another Halo installation; realizing the danger the ring presents, Keyes sends the Master Chief to kill Regret while she and Johnson find Halo's key to activation, the Index.
Meanwhile, the disgraced Covenant commander is presented before the Prophet Hierarchs, who acknowledge that though the destruction of Halo was his fault, he is no heretic. They offer him the honored position of Arbiter so that he can continue to fight for the Covenant. On his first mission to kill a heretic, the Arbiter discovers 343 Guilty Spark, who the Covenant calls an "oracle," and brings him back to High Charity. Responding to Regret's distress call, High Charity and the Covenant fleet arrive at the new Halo, Installation 05, just before the Master Chief kills Regret. Bombarded from space, the Chief falls into a lake and is rescued by a mysterious tentacled creature.
The death of Regret sows seeds of discord among the races of the Covenant, as the Hierarchs have given the Brutes the Elites' traditional job of protecting them in the wake of the death. The Arbiter is sent to find Halo's Index and captures it, Johnson, and Keyes before being confronted by Tartarus. He reveals to the Arbiter that the Prophets have ordered the annihilation of the Elites, and sends the Arbiter falling down a deep chasm.
The Arbiter is saved by the tentacled creature and meets the Master Chief in the bowels of the installation. The creature, Gravemind, is the leader of the Flood on Installation 05. Gravemind reveals to the Arbiter that the Great Journey would destroy Flood, humans, and Covenant together. Gravemind sends the Arbiter and Master Chief to different places to stop Halo's activation. The Master Chief is teleported into High Charity, where a civil war has broken out among the Covenant; In Amber Clad crashes into the city, and Cortana realizes that Gravemind used them as a distraction to infest In Amber Clad and spread the Flood. As the parasite overruns the city, consuming the Prophet of Mercy in the process, the Prophet of Truth orders Tartarus to take Keyes, Johnson, and Guilty Spark to Halo's control room and activate the ring. The Master Chief follows Truth aboard a Forerunner ship leaving the city; Cortana remains behind to destroy High Charity and Halo if Tartarus succeeds in activating the ring.
The Arbiter is sent to the surface of Halo, where he rallies his allies to assault the Brute's position. With the help of Johnson, he confronts Tartarus in Halo's control room. When the Arbiter tries to convince Tartarus that the Prophets have betrayed them both, Tartarus angrily activates the ring, and a battle ensues. The Arbiter and Johnson manage to kill Tartarus while Keyes removes the Index. Instead of shutting down the ring entirely, a system wide fail-safe protocol is triggered, putting Installation 05 and all the other Halo rings on standby for activation from a remote location, which Guilty Spark refers to as "the Ark". As Truth's ship arrives amidst a raging battle on Earth, Hood asks the Master Chief what he is doing aboard the ship. The Chief replies, "Sir, finishing this fight."
In a post-credits scene, Gravemind is seen arriving on High Charity, where Cortana agrees to answer the Flood intelligence's questions.
After the events of the comic tie-in Halo: Uprising, the Master Chief crashes in eastern Africa, where he is found by Johnson and the Arbiter. The Chief, Johnson, and company fight Covenant in the jungle and arrive at a UNSC outpost. Here, Keyes and Lord Hood plan a final effort to stop the Covenant leader, the High Prophet of Truth, from activating a Forerunner artifact uncovered outside the ruins of the city of New Mombasa. The Chief clears anti-air Covenant defenses so Hood can lead the last of Earth's ships against the Prophet, but Truth activates the buried artifact, creating a slipspace portal which he and his followers enter. A Flood-infested ship crash-lands nearby; Elite forces arrive and vitrify Flood-infected areas of Earth, stopping the threat. Following a message Cortana left aboard the Flood ship, the Chief, Arbiter, Elites, Johnson, Keyes and their troops follow Truth through the portal. Joining them is 343 Guilty Spark, who aids the Chief as he has no function to fulfill after the destruction of his ringworld.
Traveling through the portal, the humans and Elites discover an immense artificial structure known as the Ark, far beyond the edges of the Milky Way galaxy. Here, Truth can remotely activate all the Halos. The Flood arrive en masse aboard High Charity and begin infesting the installation. Truth captures Johnson, as he needs a human to use Forerunner technology. Keyes is killed attempting a rescue, and Johnson is forced to activate the rings. Gravemind forges a truce with the Chief and Arbiter to stop Truth. The Arbiter, Master Chief, and Flood forces arrive and overwhelm Truth's guards, rescuing Johnson and halting the installations' activation. After the Arbiter kills Truth, Gravemind turns on the Chief and Arbiter.
The Chief, Arbiter and Guilty Spark discover that the Ark is constructing a Halo to replace the one that the Chief previously destroyed. The Chief decides to activate this Halo; the ringworld would eliminate the Flood infestation on the Ark while sparing the galaxy at large from destruction. To activate the ring, the Chief rescues Cortana, who has the Activation Index of the destroyed Halo, from High Charity and destroys the city. Arriving on the new Halo, Cortana warns that Gravemind is trying to rebuild itself on the ring. The Chief, Arbiter, and Johnson travel to Halo's control room to activate the ring. Guilty Spark explains that because the ring is not yet complete, a premature activation will destroy it and the Ark. When Johnson ignores his warning, Guilty Spark kills him to protect "his" ring. The Chief and Arbiter destroy Guilty Spark, activate the ring, and escape the ring's self-destruction on the UNSC frigate Forward Unto Dawn. However, the force of Halo's blast causes the slipspace portal to collapse, resulting in only the front half of Forward Unto Dawn, carrying the Arbiter, making it back to Earth.
Believing the Chief to have perished, a memorial service is held on Earth for the fallen heroes of the Human-Covenant war. After the memorial service, the Arbiter and his Elite brethren departs for their home planet. Meanwhile, the rear half of Forward Unto Dawn floats in unknown space. Cortana drops a distress beacon, but realizes it may be years before they are rescued. The Chief enters cryonic sleep, telling Cortana to "wake me, when you need me." If the game is completed at the Legendary difficulty level, the scene continues to show the piece of Forward Unto Dawn drifting towards a planet.
Having been lost in space since the finale of Halo 3, Master Chief and Cortana drift aboard the wreckage of the UNSC frigate Forward Unto Dawn. Cortana wakes Master Chief after a mysterious disturbance and warns him Covenant forces are trying to board the ship. They find themselves near a mysterious Forerunner planet, Requiem, where much of the game takes place. This planet asserts a gravity well, causing the remnants of the Dawn to crash-land on the surface of Requiem.
Cortana confirms that the Covenant forces opposing the Chief are a splinter faction called the "Storm Covenant" who have come to Requiem for reasons currently unknown; they are also opposed by cybernetic constructs called Prometheans. She reveals that the normal lifespan of an AI is seven years and she is currently in her eighth year. Her exposure to Halo and her operation beyond her natural lifespan have contributed to her becoming "rampant", a mental state of aged AIs akin to insanity, and which normally results in the "death" of the AI. She also receives radio signals from a human ship, the UNSC Infinity, whose captain, Andrew Del Rio, and executive officer, Thomas Lasky, have picked up the distress beacon from the Dawn. Cortana tries to warn them away, lest they also be dragged into the gravity well, and directs the Chief to the source of a jamming signal that is interfering with her broadcasts. Unfortunately, it is actually a trap laid by the Didact, a Forerunner first introduced in Halo Legends, who has summoned both the Storm Covenant and now John-117. John inadvertently frees the Didact from his imprisonment, and the Didact, now supported by both Storm Covenant and Prometheans, sets out to achieve his goals, which begins with an assault on the Infinity.
After helping Lasky, Del Rio and Sarah Palmer, member of the SPARTAN-IV corps, repulse the attack on the Infinity, the Master Chief sets out on a mission to destroy the gravity well so that the UNSC ship can escape. Cortana's Rampancy continues to plague her, as she loses her temper and is not always able to complete mission tasks. Additionally, the Chief is contacted by the Librarian, long-deceased Forerunner, protector of humanity, and former wife of the Didact. She explains that after humanity was cast down after their defeat in the Human-Forerunner War (first detailed in Halo: Cryptum), The Flood began to encroach upon the galaxy, and the Forerunners were divided on how to protect humanity from them. The Didact advocated using a device called the "Composer" to convert humans into digital AIs to power up his loyal Prometheans, some of whom the Chief has already fought, and currently seeks this tool as the means to his conquest. The Librarian grants John-117 immunity to the compositing process and returns him to the UNSC forces. The gravity well is successfully demolished, but Captain Del Rio orders a full retreat to Earth instead of staying to oppose the Didact, using Cortana's Rampancy to attack the veracity of her and John's testimony. The Master Chief refuses these orders and remains on Requiem with Cortana.
The Master Chief and Cortana attempt to sabotage the Didact's ship. They are unsuccessful, but by stowing aboard a phantom they are taken to the location of the Composer: the Ivanoff Research Station recently established near Installation 03, one of the remaining Halo rings. Despite the combined efforts of the Chief and Ivanoff research staff to destroy the Composer, the Didact is able to gain custody of it with a gravity beam. He then tests the weapon by firing it at the station, burning the entire crew except for John and Cortana into ash. The Didact then departs for Earth, with John and Cortana pursuing in a Broadsword fighter stowed in the outer hull of the Didact's ship. Aided by a UNSC defense fleet headed by the Infinity, the Chief boards the ship with a nuclear warhead in tow, whilst Cortana takes advantage of her Rampancy-caused personality fragmentation to overwhelm the enemy computer systems. The two together defeat the Didact, and John detonates the bomb. John finds himself in a mysterious region, then Cortana appears. She explains that she used the rest of her power to form a shield of hard light around John's body where she can actually touch him for the first and final time, and is seemingly at peace. John protests this, insisting that he could save her again as they go together, but she welcomes him home and disappears completely along with the destroyed ship.
Weapons:
UNSC Covenant Forerunner (scroll down some)I can't put too much more on here due to character constraints, so if there's anything else you REALLY SERIOUSLY want on here, I'll try to squeeze it in.
Poll