How Do You Guys Feel About Halo 4?

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I've decided to reopen the thread under the condition that the topic remain solely on the game itself and the story line. Comments regarding 343/Bungie or actions by other players will only help to derail the thread. Keep it civil.
 
mashall you got some good points but I've got one little thing that bug me more then ever when it comes to halo 4 where the #### was halsey during the game, in the last kilo five book that came out she was on the ship and if not there then at halo 03 so where?

During the events of Halo 4, Dr. Halsey was in prison on Earth, in relation to war crimes. In other words, she was arrested by ONI for creating the SPARTAN-II's, then kidnapping one of said SPARTANs again (in 2552). The only reason she was on Infinity in the first place is because she is one of the few human forerunner experts. Or, as she says in Spartan Ops

Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey said:
I'm not walking around the ship that I built with my hands cuffed.
 
I thought Doc Halsey was at the Ivanoff Research Station in orbit of installation 3 during/slightly before Halo 4's plot?
 
I thought Doc Halsey was at the Ivanoff Research Station in orbit of installation 3 during/slightly before Halo 4's plot?

According to a audio recording in the level Composer, she was only at Ivanoff Research Station until 2554, and the Halo 4 campaign takes place in 2557.

The Halo Wiki said:
The room with the Hunters has several specimens from Installation 03. There is also a small room within it with two of Dr Catherine Halsey's personal log entries. It is possible that she had used it as an office earlier when she was sent to this station after being arrested on Shield World Trevelyan. Also in this room is the activation index for installation 03.
 
Was anyone else left wanting to work a bit more with spartan 4's during the solo campaign?

I know that spartan ops was set 6 months after the single player but surely they were on Infinity?
 
Was anyone else left wanting to work a bit more with spartan 4's during the solo campaign?

I know that spartan ops was set 6 months after the single player but surely they were on Infinity?

They were on the Infinity. They man the gun and stuff in the level Reclaimer. And are (I'm pretty sure) Invincible.
 
blackout11c said:
They were on the Infinity. They man the gun and stuff in the level Reclaimer. And are (I'm pretty sure) Invincible.

That last bit alone has at least made them more useful than AI in just about every other Halo game. Still can't drive for nothing, but they make for good distractions the few times you actually get to use them.
 
Thats my point, they were there - and there was plenty of chance for them.to meet up with MC - a team of spartan 4s with Chief on point? Surely you could have given the Diadect a hand spankin without the whole storyline :)
 
I felt like the SIV's were slightly pointless in the campaign.. They were functional and all, but really boring to have around compared to the usual banter and silliness of the Marines.
Maybe they need a little more personality? Or at the very least a spotlight during the Halo 5 campaign that actually has some impact to make them stand out.
 
To this day it still unsettles me the way that Halsey was turned into a target of convenience by pretty much everyone that had a beef to grind against her to begin with.

Palmer and the S-IV's: To me their hatred of her seems to be only based on select documents and smooth moves made by ONI.

Parangosky(sorry for the spelling if incorrect): So let me get this straight, the queen bee of this whole mess that AUTHORIZED the S-II project in the first place is pissed that it succeeded? Um.. I get that the clones and Halsey not telling her about that was a big oops, but for that to be the main reason for this (in my opinion) phony crusade is a bunch of self centered BULL****!

Lord Hood: At least he seems like the only reasonable person and isn't on the bandwagon in all of this.

Lasky: While i think he's a good officer the fact that he's also on the Halsey hating committee speaks to his naivety.

S-III's: I think that besides MCPO Mendez that they have a legitimate reason to dislike her, I mean would you let a women you have never known that is not part of you command structure or ever been present in your life start throwing her weight around and have command authority. To say nothing of the spite Halsey had for the S-III's, in particular Lucy.

Kilo-Five: Spoon fed by ONI and yes with the addition of an "ex-Spartan" and a veteran Spartan on the team the picture is colored, but still that image is sketchy.

While Halo 4 and Halo: Glasslands where somewhat enjoyable I find it in inconceivable that Halsey is this really bad person that everyone should hate. Yes she was very harsh to the children and the augmentations were a horrible, emotionally traumatizing experiance but does that make her a war criminal? And then stealing Spartans from the battlefield is a very bad thing it still doesn't make her worthy of hatred...well possibly but still. Then the charge of helping the enemy...um..what?

Only time i saw her aiding the enemy at any capacity was in Spartan Ops!!!! And that was when Halo 4 was released way after the book was.

I mean if they really wanted to hate her they didn't have to make a trumped up offense that would be punishable by death. but then again it seems that when ONI says something it is regarded as holy as scripture....

Anyway not what i was expecting it to go at all.
 
Indeed, it does seem rather inconceivable... But at the same time, it does what all good sci fi always does, it raises an ethical question that makes the audience question how they feel about the subject.
 
The S-IVs, Palmer included, only act on orders. If the question Halsey posed to Carter on Reach was asked to them, they would have to answer "puppet." Palmer took the hit job because she was ordered to. Majestic took on the failed rescue mission because Laskey ordered them to. At least that's the in-game impression they give off.

Laskey seemed fine enough with Halsey, he just didn't like her constantly giving him reason to regret vouching for her. Don't know if there's more story outside of Halo 4 on it, but considering he ordered Majestic to rescue Halsey against the advice, and orders, of a superior officer (something that could get him court-martialed), I can't see how he's "in on the hate." He seemed quite content to just put her back in a cell, maybe ship her back to the holding facility, but the whole execution thing didn't seem to sit well with him.

As for the general animosity and accusations against her: kidnapping children for a military experiment was a civilian crime, albeit "government sanctioned/ignored". Cloning her brain to create Cortana violated military, naval, and civilian law, basically the equivalent in our world to a Navy SEAL going AWOL to steal a Marine humvee and do donuts on the freeway, maybe worse. Simply put, it gets everybody mad at you. And it is one of the reasons why she is considered a "war criminal," as she made illegal use of military and naval resources. And again, going back to Reach and Carter's "reading suggestion," Halsey's not exactly known for following the rules, bending or outright breaking them as she saw necessary.

Which brings us to the general animosity and why everyone looks at her as a dangerous threat: a person who feels that they are above any and all laws in the pursuit of their desires is, indeed, an extremely dangerous individual. She's essentially proven time and time again that she will go to any extreme measures to get what she wants, including but not limited to kidnapping, illegal cloning, unsanctioned experimentations, and hacking a shipboard A.I. (namely, Roland). We maintain a sense of peace and security by enforcing the assumption that people will obey, without question, any law or rule put in place. When someone basically says "screw your rules, I can, and will, do whatever I want to get what I want," yea, that puts quite a few people on edge. lol.

And as for assisting the enemy, I would imagine her conversation with Jul M'dama isn't the first time she's stepped outside the box to get information she finds valuable, even at the cost of trading her own intel. I'm sure we've all seen at least one movie where the ambitious scientist aids the villain bent on world-domination simply to gain access to information, materials, or other resources they could not get their hands on normally. Halsey is one such scientist, only far more crafty, devious, and ambitious. She summed it up rather succinctly in Sp Ops: "If people would just tell me what I want to know I could solve all the world's problems." She has it in her head that what she is doing is for a noble cause, the ends justify the means. That's the same line of thinking that says "if I can get the resources to feed and clothe a million people by sacrificing a thousand, then I will sacrifice a million people to feed and clothe the entire world." Sure, the "end" is a noble cause: feeding and clothing the world's population. However the cost of that "noble ambition" is mass genocide. The average person would say that killing one to aid a hundred is still one death too many. She would see it as an "acceptable loss," and that's what makes her dangerous.
 
Her comment about her Spartans being Humanities next step may explain her commitment to the scientific exploration of Forerunner history/technology.
Every new thing she learns about them creates new possibilities for the betterment of Humanity etc etc.
Given the mounting threats Humanity faces it is conceivable that taking extreme measures would be the only logical choice for someone with her intelligence and power.

The parallels drawn in the plot between early Human scientific exploration and the opposition to the push for more research and experimentation on the Spartans are quite fascinating for me personally... I'm not sure why but I've always felt an odd connection to Halsey's logic and actions.
There has always been an element of opposition to new discoveries and new knowledge, just like how the masses feel about current fusion experiments for instance.

The difference between Humans now and Humans in Halo is the threat of complete annihilation of all of us no matter the geopolitical relation.
I'm not confident any current person could accurately state how they would act when faced with the extermination of the entire race.

IMO, moral ambiguity is the soul of a good science fiction.
And possibly one of the most important parts of being Human.
The ability to think critically and change ones perspective blah blah blah... I'm going to sleep now... Please excuse the late night Philosopause.
 
Both of you make good point to think and mull over but it still is a bit a confusing as to the hard liner stance against Halsey that 343 took. In Reach I think it was totally justified.
 
Have to figure within the context of the games themselves we don't really see at all what Halsey is up to between Reach (the prequel) and Halo 4 (several years later). I haven't read any of the books aside from the Flood (which was basically Halo: CE in book form), so I don't know if any of them touch on what all Halsey's been up to while Chief's been doing his thing and then floating around in cryosleep.

As Serin pointed out, she does see the Spartans as the next step in human evolution. And as Serin likewise touched on, the mere mention of phrases like "the next step in our evolution" is something that tends to put people on edge (especially those like me who feel that evolution, or at least macro-evolution, is all a crock). Add too that trepidation the simple fact that this was not a natural step (bio-engineering and artificial genetic augmentations as opposed to an inherent trait that allows for better adaptation than others) and even the evolutionarily-minded start to get a bit antsy, as that goes beyond simply "denying God" and dives head first into "playing God." And when it comes to playing God, as a general rule nobody is comfortable with the idea unless they are the one in control of it. Halsey is, well, an arrogant control freak. She wants to do what she wants to do and she feels that not only should no one oppose her in what she's doing, but that everyone should support her because, in her mind, she knows what is best for the universe and they would all be so much better off if they would just allow her to take control over, well, everything. So she's kind of like Magneto in many ways.

Of that topic for a moment to slide over to gameplay-related observations: anyone else feel like matchmaking was just a little more smooth before the seemingly endless parade of updates? Or that we spent far more time actually playing and less time staring at a respawn timer before the so-called "balancing" of the weapons? Kinda feels like not only has 343 been perpetually late with fixing issues, but that every "fix" just makes things that much worse somehow. I used to enjoy matchmaking, even if it was far more laggy than other Halo games when it first came out. Now it just seems even more sluggish, even more prone to glitching, and have had far too many matches end with everyone being booted back to the lobby before the game is actually over. Still have like 550 more matchmaking games to go to reach the 1,000 needed for the Raider DIST helmet, but I don't know that I can sit through that many more games of being thrown into the middle of a one-sided match or not being able to finish the game. Not sure that either of those actually count towards that total to be honest.
 
Let me play Halsey's advocate here for a second... Which is unsurprising similar to the role I play in real life.
She, like a majority of scientists would never even consider this aspect of "playing god".
Statistically speaking, those who study science and are active in their various fields pay very little attention to the qualms of those who believe in supernatural beings.
This goes double for someone like Halsey who I suspect feels the idea of such preordained moral rules to be utterly without merit and probably something to be challenged at every step.

In the case of what was revealed about the Forerunners in their trilogy, it seems their entire existence was one of advancement of their own species through genetics, they lived astronomically long lives because of their knowledge and abilities.
This is something I believe the good Doctor believes to be a worthy goal.

There was a 343 vidoc after the release describing the story process and their pillars for creating the narrative.
From what I can remember they used Halsey as their icon for the 'hope for Humanity' pillar.

Personally, being a scientist myself(plasma physics), I do run with the logic that bettering ourselves through genetics is the next step.
Obviously not for the reasons some would ascribe to the idea of genetic modification, but more for the ability to create healthier kids and weed out the defects that gene's inherently have.
I could get into a huge section on how the advent of global travel has inadvertently stopped the usual evolutionary isolationism process that most species go through, but that subject is best explored in ones free time and probably not on a Halo forum :p


And yeah, I basically gave up on Halo 4's multiplayer a few months ago... I feel like perhaps it's too much a departure from the old days.
 
Ahh i get what you mean Serin - intresting view and i like it.

Yeah iv often felt the same about Halsey, i think shes what everyone could become if you stepped through the moral looking-glass so to speak, and began down that darker path of "for the greater good"

Its interesting how she still wrestles with those deamons of guilt - but it never alters view of it being the right thing to do.

Valid point though about comparing her to renisance scientists - early Anatomists were seen with similar victimisation of defiling the body... and look what that lead to.

Cheers, Chris.
 
Halo 4 ruined the Halo online gameplay. Campaign was alright. I don't like how the elites are the enemies again.
 
Laskey ordered Majestic to rescue Halsey against the advice, and orders, of a superior officer (something that could get him court-martialed)QUOTE]

didn't we see this is halo 4 foreword unto dawn? he's making bold move's something most people won't do. once he was ordered to back at CAMS and he just said screw it and broke the rules, and he's the captain of the biggest war ship ever built it's not like ONI can stop him if they wanted.

and another thing during Spartan ops you think you would have heard something about the chief from some of the ONI guys, like you said it was six months later so where so he?
 
Serin, the thing is that while she might not consider it to be "playing god" on the basis of not thinking there even is a god, in essence she is still playing god in that she took it upon herself to decide "what's best" for humanity, the direction human adaptation should take, and how it should get there. And unfortunately this "self deification" is something far too many scientists are prone to, both in fiction and in the real world. And we've seen it many times in the world, the way that our "scientifically advanced medical procedures" have caused far more complications and detriments by disturbing the human body's natural process. We inject painkillers and medications into a birthing mother thinking "we're making the process easier" when all that needs to be done is for her to put herself in a more natural position. I have several "all natural mothering" friends who could give you entire volumes of information on how "science" has made a perfectly natural process into something far more complicated, painful, and potentially fatal than it would have been if they just let nature run its course. All too often scientists fall into the trap of thinking that they know "what's best" for the rest of humanity, but a firm argument can be made that what's best is what we've always done for generations upon generations before all of our technological advancements. Not to say that all progress is bad, it's just that in general we have the misconception that "new" is automatically "better" and we jump in before we truly have all the facts. In the case of Halsey and the Spartans, as was pointed out in the HAlo 4 Prologue interview, the Spartans, while physically and instinctually superior (better reflexes, quicker thinking, faster problem-solving) they are psychologically imbalanced and display antisocial and even psychotic behavioral patterns. You don't get as much of that from the games alone, but even from just reading that one book and seeing the "behind the scenes" for CE, the "regular" people (Marines, etc.) looked at CHief and the other Spartans as freaks and monsters, while the Chief pretty much looked at all of them as weak, pathetic, infantile. They were still human to him, and thus he had a certain respect for them as living, sentient beings, but it would be like us suddenly becoming aware that cockroaches are sentient and intelligent. Sure, it might change our perception of them in some way, but in the back of our minds we'd still see them as "puny insects." Personally, not the greatest pattern for humanity's future unless everyone is equally modified, and I Would assume not everyone could be modified in such a way, otherwise Halsey's group wouldn't have been so selective in which children they kidnapped for the experiment. Plus as Halo 4 shows, adults undergoing the modifications don't take to it quite so well as the children did.

And Fox, yea, Laskey does seem to have a habit of feeling that just because someone is in authority, doesn't mean they're infallible or that their orders are the best, or even the only, option available. He's much more of a free-thinking and outside-the-box kind of guy, which is great for a leader but not so much for a subordinate.
 
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