Vaulting♥Frog

I dont think this is entirely accurate. Cortana was made from a flash clone of Halsey's brain. All other AI's made by the UNSC (smart and dumb) were made from tissue of dead people. Reason being is that the creation process destroys the brain tissue of the subject. That is what makes her unique as Halsey is still alive. Not that her DNA is in Cortana. She is digital information not organic (at least not yet some people hope). But thats my understanding of it. I have been wrong before.

After getting to Lasky you have to clear an LZ. You run across some Marines trying to get to a door that is sealed shut. Save them and hold the door while Cortana opens it up for you. That holding action is nasty on solo legendary.

Nope, though I do find your post amusing. He is in for the duration but never commissioned. Only two Spartan-IIs were ever commissioned if I remember correctly. Kurt-034 (Lt. Commander, final rank, KIA) Fred-104 (2nd Lt., unknown status) And Fred was promoted to the commissioned officers ranks by Kurt on a battlefield commission.

Yes they do revive knights, summon crawlers and put up hardlight shields to damaged enemies to protect them for a short time. Bloody annoying.

Keeping in mind that this is purely my own opinions that I have posted i still disagree with you. To me, seeing him in those scenes he is clearly loosing control of himself during a combat command. Mission choices were very poor and in all likelyhood caused heavy casualties that could have been avoided. And if I remember correctly, I did agree that removing Cortana was a good thing. I am not in argument about that. But Rio's fall out in front of enlisted personel was unacceptable. He is on the bridge and is the commanding officer. Such a person should conduct themselves accordingly. That means having the outward appearence of calm and control. The raving he showed on several segments is in direct opposition of this. To me the only solid command he had given was to remove Cortana from the Infinity's computers. But beyond that (his follow up orders) were way beyond rash, more like raving. Showing more concern for himself than anything else.

Solo or co-op? That makes a huge difference I nearly rage quit because of that going solo and I am a really really really calm player. Drove me nuts trying to hold that door. Best advice I can give you is use automatic weapons for Knights. They really seem to wilt quickly when hit with them. SAWs, Suppressors and the like are really really good for it. Also I prefer to stay at a distance picking off the trash mobs first then taking on the Knights. Oh and if you see a watcher make it your top priority. Those buggers really screw with the flow of a fight if you dont take care of them right away.

I think I ran across one right at the begining of the mission Shutdown, he is hanging out in the vehicle bay mixed among the Marines and Spartan IVs. I cant be sure though. I thought his armor was pure black yet he was outfited like a Marine not a Spartan IV.

I want to know what happens to Fred and Kelly. I havent read anything about them and their fates. I know Linda gets killed by John at some point (hated Evolutions BTW) but I know nothing about those two surviving Spartan-IIs.

I am ignoring the Audie stuff because I personally dont care about it. Ramble all you want about it, wont make a difference to me. 1: Would you follow your CO's orders if they told you to jump from a plane at 50,000 feet with no parachute or any other way to slow your decent so you would survive the impact? I dont bloody think so. Orders are rightfully disobeyed if they put the soldier, unit and or greater humanity (this is the case for Halo) at unnessissary risk. What hard intel did he have about the Didact? All he knew is that the gravity well of the planet pulled his ship down and there was supposedly a Forerunner running around now. Hmm supposedly is not exactly stong intel if you as me. So what warning exactly would he give Earth? "Umm Earth? THE BOOGIEMAN COMMITH!!!!!" Thats about as creditible as he would sound with what little intel he did have. Heck he had almost no info on the Prometheans too. Odds are the UNSC would just chalk things up to a new Forerunner AI run army similar to the Sentinals and leave it at that. What a great plan that would be... So John disobeying that order is (to me) more than lawful on his end. Even if it were just to gather creditible intel on the Didact. There is such a thing as incompetence of command and Rio fits that model to the letter. 2: Penalties are for unlawful disobediance of orders, not lawful. Rio's personal feelings and stress unduely influence his choices in this combat command. Right at the begining he starts making bad calls against an unknown force and nearly gets his ship overrun. His ability to command is non existant. Palmer didnt even want him to Captain the UNSC Infinity and as we see in the game, with good reason. The fault lays upon the commanding officer on this one due to his incompetent command. Needlessly risking the lives of his crew and equipment, lack of restraint of ones personal feelings within full visibility and hearing of enlisted personel, poor mission planing (too many unknowns to really make a mission viable). You can (well at least I can) tell that his only real concern at the end of his scenes is for his own personal safety. His outbursts and lack of leadership in prior missions lead up to this. You can see it in his eyes before you begin the Mammoth mission as he looks out a window. He might have been a fine officer but not a line officer. He ended up becoming more concerned with getting himself out of there than his ship, crew and any actual intel on the new enemy. 3: Was Cortana in the wrong with her outburst, absolutely. Was it wrong to remove her from the system, nope. Was the order for her immediate termination a good one? No I say. I say this because of the amount of data she holds about the Forerunners, Prometheans and any number of other things she picked up along the way. That would warrent isolation until a data mine could extract all data and copy it to multiple sources while not downloading any of her processes (so that she wouldnt survive). Then termination would be in order. Otherwise you are just wasting intel that you may never ever get again. Intel that allowes insight into the Flood, the Covenant and the Forerunners to a degree that the UNSC couldnt imagine with out Dr. Halsey. Was it practical of John to plug Cortana back into his head? Not really. That is the only fault I find of John's in the whole game. It wasnt the "best" choice I think. He in all likely hood should have surrendered her, but there is one thing holding me back besides the data issue. The big problem is that they are still in a combat situation and they need all the equipment they can get and an AI like Cortana is invaluable. Tossing away valuable equipement is not a viable option in combat and John was heading directly into combat. 4: As for Lasky being on the Mammoth, I am not sure as to why he was there either. However I do have a theory. He directly confronted Rio with his command of leaving for Earth in defence of the Chief. Due to Rio's cracking under the pressures of a combat command I wouldnt put it past him to order anybody objecting to his commands down planet side on a "high risk" mission. Their elimination makes for easy paperwork. Or he could end up leaving them behind at the first chance he gets citing that he was going back for reinforcements and they had enough strength to hold out till then. Thats just one theory which fits into Rio's personality (or at least the one he displays in the game). Another could be that as XO of the Infinity he is sent to personally oversee ground operations and ensure they efficently progress. Not an uncommon practice to send an XO to do something like that, just look at Star Trek. This is the most likely in any even. That he was ordered down there to oversee ground operations with no intent on Rio's part to have him harmed (though look at his face when Lasky questions him says otherwise). He is enlisted while Rio is a commissioned officer. Enlisted personel obey commissioned officers because they are exactly that. Enlisted. Thats not to say however that an enlisted soldier has lesser pull than a commissioned officer. Officers (more importantly junior officers) would be wise to listen to their senior enlisted men.

Beyond the rank issue (which clearly he is in the wrong there) I think he has issues beyond that. He, to me, has all the halmarks of a carrier desk jockey who got a combat command for some reason or other that he should not have otherwise qualified for. When we first encounter him on the mission Infinity you find out he split his forces to do a recon and attempted cover/defensive action against Covenant assaulting his ship. This was an alright choice to me but he ended up spreading his forces to thin against an enemy which he knew nothing about. The Prometheans took the Infinity by complete suprise. He left his forces on the Infinity to thin so the Covenant actually broke through during their assault. Not a great way to show your command skills in a critical situation. Afterwards during his first meeting with John you see signs of him cracking under the pressures of a combat command. His facial expressions, tone of voice and choice words all display this. He looks to be a man loosing control of himself but not entirely at that point. Warning Earth is a sound reason, though seriously lacking any hard data for their warning. Then in the very next mission where you destroy the partical canons he goes on to say that he didnt even bother with recon in the area. What a waste of personel. The Infinity is secure and your going into a heavily guarded area with an unknown amount of ground forces, defences and any other number of issues. Spend a little extra time doing a force recon and you can prevent significant losses to your forces. He was lucky that mission was a success at all. In reality that Mammoth would have been toast along with all of its escort forces. The Covenant air power alone would have seen to that if it werent for gameplay requirements. Very poor choice for that mission and definately shows that his priority is getting the hell out of there instead of getting his people out alive. Not command material with that attitude. Next we have his outburst about Cortana. Yes she is showing signs of rampancy at that point. But all of his actions prior to Cortana's outburst and afterwards show that he lost his nerve a ways back and is not suited for any combat command. No commanding officer should ever fall out like that infront of enlisted men/women. Lack of self control at that point is pretty evident, and personally I think Lasky should have relieved him of his command right then and there as he broke under stress and is a danger to the ship and its crew.

I think it is stupid to definitively state how it "should have ended" considering that is personal opinion. Games are not tailored to the individual. Enjoy the ending you already have.

They could tie in the Arbiter by having him oppose the Forerunners and the Prometheans while the other side of the Covenant civil war supports the Forerunners/Prometheans. That would be fairly interesting. Not only does he erase the Prophets and their lies about the Halo rings but he defies ancient beliefs that many of the Covenant races held about the Forerunners and invest in Humanity as the holders of the mantle.

Perhaps I might be able to help? The truce between humanity and the Covenant is still held that much is true and the Brutes are still in a civil war for control of the Covenant against the Elites. Jul 'Mdama (the Covenant leader) has been at Requiem for several years trying to get it to open. He knows the humans are causing instability within the Covenant to keep its war fighting capacity low and he has no love for humans. He got this particular fleet from a Covenant planet which had no idea the Covenant had fallen. Hence the non-standard gear they use. No Brutes in this fleet as far as I know so you dont even have to worry about them. Honestly they are a splinter group of the Covenant. As to why they are helping the Didact, he is Forerunner. One of their gods and they (the Elites) have reverted back to that mode of thinking. To serve a living god is tantamount to heaven for them. Plus they hate humans so thats a plus for them. As to why they werent turned into Prometheans themselves there is a simple explaination. The Didact couldnt until he got hold of the Composer. Without that tool he couldnt turn any organics into the AI's needed to drive the Promethean shells that we were fighting. You forget about the Spartan III program. They were producing Spartans by the hundreds within a few years worth of training at that point, with similar implants and genetic modification (improved to speed up the process). The last group of them to use that tech were produced at the end of the Human-Covenant War. Tech like that probably has been significantly upgraded due to Forerunner and Covenant tech being studied so it can be applied to adult subjects with minimal risk and greatly enhanced recovery so they could be pressed into active service. Take for instance the Infinity. It is a blend of Forerunner, Covenant and Human technology. It was a prototype during the Human-Covenant War but shortly there after it became operational and is easily the single most powerful ship in the known galaxy (until the Didact's ship became active). I dont see anything lore breaking there. Also you see in the very begining Dr. Halsey. They are talking about her choices in the Spartan II program and how to do it better. Her experience and notes probably fast tracked the Spartan IV program.

Define what humanity is. Is it a physical form (such as the one we have)? Is it an ideal? It it a vision of what could be or what is?

Well considering this is my first post dont yell at me too much. I have just a few things to say on this topic, then I will leave it alone. 1: I understand the OP's issue with the games writing as that is a personal issue. Nothing anybody says or does can change that. 2: The terminals within the game itself shead light upon the Human-Forerunner war. You just need to look at Waypoint to view them. That gives a huge amount of perspective on the events of the game. Also, from my viewpoint the story explains itself fairly well on a play through. It gives you a slight cliffhanger when the Librarian mucks around with John but that will end up being fleshed out in future games. Promethean existance was given an explaination that was decent. Sure it has holes in it if you dont watch the terminals but it is still there and makes sense. The Didact shows his "views" of the mantle through out the game and the terminals give even more life to those views. His bitterness at humanity is understandable even without the terminals. How would you react being imprisoned for 50,000 years while knowing your entire species is wiped out. 3: I think it jumped around a bit simply because we dont see the time spent traveling from point A to point B. That jumps the story around just a bit but honestly its not that bad to me. Your not missing out on much in my viewpoint. 4: As for all the new characters, I am not supprised people are having issues with them. In Halo: CE we had little interaction with other named characters (Cortana, Keyes, Johnson[kind of], Foe Hammer and 343 Guilty Spark) for the entirety of the game. Cortana and 343 are the only exceptions on that list. None of the other characters were really heavily developed at that point. And considering its the begining of a series I am not too supprised at that. I equate Lasky to Keyes and whats-her-face (the Spartan Commander) to Johnson at this point until their charaters define themselves further. Lasky got development in Forward Onto Dawn but that was history. Who knows what he will be in future games.