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It's been four years since I wrote this post, and after having watched a old video by Raycevick on Halo 5 out of curiosity (I disagreed with a fair amount of his takes), it did make me think about how I would carry this franchise forward with a new entry if I had total control. Which brought me back to that old thread I made on the Flood. I still really like the idea of a new faction being a somehow failed weapon made by the Forerunners against the Flood using biotech, but that's only a start and lacks detail as I said in that thread already. So I will tentatively try to fill those needed details in, and also expand more on where I think the story in general should go next.
First of all, I would like to just pretend that Halo 5's story just plain didn't happen. This would be a remake and complete redo of it all. I could probably still get my ideas to work with Halo 5 still being canon, but I would have to jam them in, and that's just not good for anyone. It would be so much better to forget that Halo 5 happened at all. And with that, we move on now to a huge story decision that, while I know this is disruptive to a ton of lore, I still think this needs to happen regardless.
At the very start of the game, one or more Halo rings will fire.
Now, this firing(s) WILL actually be a misfire, but it's still a fucking Halo ring firing regardless, so the devastation to life would be massive, even if not total. Due to the enhancements the Master Chief got in Halo 4, he will be unaffected. As is consistent with the lore, all digital life will be completely unaffected as well of course. All in all, in terms of the impact, if a living thing was not under adequate shelter, there would be about a roughly 5-10% chance of that life surviving simply due to the energy being too scattered and weak at times to affect that particular living thing.
So what would this mean for humanity? Obviously catastrophe. Thankfully, all those on starships with some kind of shielding would be protected from the weakened Halo blast. Most of those on Earth though? Gone. Once this misfiring has happened, the Chief takes command of a ship and pilots it to his only known lead. The Halo ring from which the blast first issued. Because of the firing, the Covenant species would be extremely suspicious of humanity, and so, when the Chief gets to the Halo ring, he'll see that those Covenant species are, therefore, no longer very friendly with him. I'm not sure if I would have them be a fightable faction in the game though. We'll just say they're peaceful for now, but wildly unhelpful.
This brings us nicely to the new faction I was thinking about. These are my thoughts on such. The new faction would be somewhat like the Flood, except it doesn't consume humanoids, animals, or plants... No, instead, this faction feeds directly on Flood matter to survive. This species would be shelved by the Forerunners though because they, of course, didn't think it would be a good idea to let yet another Flood-esque species go wandering around the galaxy, even if it technically did only consume the Flood. This new species would have a deep jungle-green theme and would look like a mix between walking scaled reptiles and leafy plants. Areas under their influence would have this kind of glowing jungle growth that is growing and spreading upon everything.
They would either have the ability to control minds through touch, or have the ability to shapeshift. They can't have both though. Too overpowered. lol At first, when the Chief first confronts them, they'll be almost instinctual but will still have a bit of intelligence, and their first instinct will be to unleash the Flood upon humanity so they have a steady supply of food. This will change though as this new faction becomes more powerful, and with that, begin to have some intelligence and, most importantly, empathy.
Putting all that aside, as all this chaos is going on, the Chief will still be grieving over the death of Cortana at times. In this game, Cortana will be gone. Like, actually gone. She is not coming back. There will be no AI copy of her. No hardlight body. Nothing. And though the Chief may sometimes look desperately for a sign that she is still out there, there will, in reality, be nothing more than dust and echoes. As the game progresses and concludes, the Chief will learn to put his past behind him. To respect and honor it but also let things be. One door may close for good, but at least one other always opens in its place.
As to who exactly fired the Halo ring and how this game would conclude, I don't know yet, but I think these major plot points are enough to really make something special and unique here. One thing I forgot to mention too but would be incredibly important is that this new game would return to the somewhat hard sci-fi that Halo was known for. No more invasions of fantasy tropes into the Halo franchise. No more wild and rampant overuse of Forerunners. No more ridiculous and absurdly powerful Flood. The Forerunners basically go back to being the mysterious and powerful alien race that came before. The Flood go back to being space zombies that can spawn very intelligent graveminds. And this game's story will have a very grounded and intelligent sci-fi feel with just a dash of fantasy to spice things up a little.
A great example of this is comparing Guilty Spark's dialogue at the start of Two Betrayals in Halo CE to pretty much any dialogue involving the Forerunners at all in Halo 5 and some of Halo 4. Notice how in CE, the dialogue of Guilty Spark is very hard sci-fi and scientific. And that right there... I want THAT to return. Again, a dash of fantasy is great for Halo and does wonders for its immersion and the awe you can feel at times with the series, but it has to be used very carefully for best effect. 343 just rammed a bunch of fantasy-esque writing in without any grace or understanding of what Halo actually was.
Ok, that's about it. I think making this thread was probably a wildly useless endeavor, but hey, at least it was fun to write.
First of all, I would like to just pretend that Halo 5's story just plain didn't happen. This would be a remake and complete redo of it all. I could probably still get my ideas to work with Halo 5 still being canon, but I would have to jam them in, and that's just not good for anyone. It would be so much better to forget that Halo 5 happened at all. And with that, we move on now to a huge story decision that, while I know this is disruptive to a ton of lore, I still think this needs to happen regardless.
At the very start of the game, one or more Halo rings will fire.
Now, this firing(s) WILL actually be a misfire, but it's still a fucking Halo ring firing regardless, so the devastation to life would be massive, even if not total. Due to the enhancements the Master Chief got in Halo 4, he will be unaffected. As is consistent with the lore, all digital life will be completely unaffected as well of course. All in all, in terms of the impact, if a living thing was not under adequate shelter, there would be about a roughly 5-10% chance of that life surviving simply due to the energy being too scattered and weak at times to affect that particular living thing.
So what would this mean for humanity? Obviously catastrophe. Thankfully, all those on starships with some kind of shielding would be protected from the weakened Halo blast. Most of those on Earth though? Gone. Once this misfiring has happened, the Chief takes command of a ship and pilots it to his only known lead. The Halo ring from which the blast first issued. Because of the firing, the Covenant species would be extremely suspicious of humanity, and so, when the Chief gets to the Halo ring, he'll see that those Covenant species are, therefore, no longer very friendly with him. I'm not sure if I would have them be a fightable faction in the game though. We'll just say they're peaceful for now, but wildly unhelpful.
This brings us nicely to the new faction I was thinking about. These are my thoughts on such. The new faction would be somewhat like the Flood, except it doesn't consume humanoids, animals, or plants... No, instead, this faction feeds directly on Flood matter to survive. This species would be shelved by the Forerunners though because they, of course, didn't think it would be a good idea to let yet another Flood-esque species go wandering around the galaxy, even if it technically did only consume the Flood. This new species would have a deep jungle-green theme and would look like a mix between walking scaled reptiles and leafy plants. Areas under their influence would have this kind of glowing jungle growth that is growing and spreading upon everything.
They would either have the ability to control minds through touch, or have the ability to shapeshift. They can't have both though. Too overpowered. lol At first, when the Chief first confronts them, they'll be almost instinctual but will still have a bit of intelligence, and their first instinct will be to unleash the Flood upon humanity so they have a steady supply of food. This will change though as this new faction becomes more powerful, and with that, begin to have some intelligence and, most importantly, empathy.
Putting all that aside, as all this chaos is going on, the Chief will still be grieving over the death of Cortana at times. In this game, Cortana will be gone. Like, actually gone. She is not coming back. There will be no AI copy of her. No hardlight body. Nothing. And though the Chief may sometimes look desperately for a sign that she is still out there, there will, in reality, be nothing more than dust and echoes. As the game progresses and concludes, the Chief will learn to put his past behind him. To respect and honor it but also let things be. One door may close for good, but at least one other always opens in its place.
As to who exactly fired the Halo ring and how this game would conclude, I don't know yet, but I think these major plot points are enough to really make something special and unique here. One thing I forgot to mention too but would be incredibly important is that this new game would return to the somewhat hard sci-fi that Halo was known for. No more invasions of fantasy tropes into the Halo franchise. No more wild and rampant overuse of Forerunners. No more ridiculous and absurdly powerful Flood. The Forerunners basically go back to being the mysterious and powerful alien race that came before. The Flood go back to being space zombies that can spawn very intelligent graveminds. And this game's story will have a very grounded and intelligent sci-fi feel with just a dash of fantasy to spice things up a little.
A great example of this is comparing Guilty Spark's dialogue at the start of Two Betrayals in Halo CE to pretty much any dialogue involving the Forerunners at all in Halo 5 and some of Halo 4. Notice how in CE, the dialogue of Guilty Spark is very hard sci-fi and scientific. And that right there... I want THAT to return. Again, a dash of fantasy is great for Halo and does wonders for its immersion and the awe you can feel at times with the series, but it has to be used very carefully for best effect. 343 just rammed a bunch of fantasy-esque writing in without any grace or understanding of what Halo actually was.
Ok, that's about it. I think making this thread was probably a wildly useless endeavor, but hey, at least it was fun to write.
