Ranger Intel

Hi everyone, Spartan here with site poll #70. Last week we talked about your favourite cutscenes across all Halo games. There were some great submissions with everyone sharing their personal experience and connection to their selected scene. Halo Wars' killer-combat and Reach's morale-killing reality were both great entries. Click here to view the last poll, #69. What you want from the next Halo ODST game You know what I like about 343? They pay attention to what we want. I'm sure Halo 6 will get a lot of good hype, most likely after a reveal this upcoming E3, and it will feature things we've requested. Something that we have all wanted for a while is another ODST game, and I'm sure they'll provide us with one. Halo 3: ODST was great, we all loved it for what it was. Another one's inevitable, but how will it work out? Will it be a post-Human-Covenant War setting? Despite the fact they aren't seen much in Halo 4 and 5, they certainly still exist and operate as usual. We're just not in a position to see them from our point of view in those two games. When do you want it to be set? Who do you want featured? Lore classics, or some new people? Any weapons you think are necessary? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, Spartan out.

Can always rely on you to provide the most detailed contribution to each poll, reading this made the moment even more real.

I had to go with H2: Anniversary, primarily because it's a fresh view on Halo 2's classic multiplayer. As nice as it is to play Halo: CE multiplayer, because of how old it is, combat can be arduous. Things aren't clear, and mishaps are more common. Halo 2's mp is great, more so with the stunning new graphics. It's like Halo 3's multiplayer, but just looks clearer. A Halo 3: Anniversary is certainly needed, even if a few more years down the line.

Hi everyone, Spartan here with site poll #69. Last week we talked about what you want most in Halo 6, with members sharing what matters most to them and why. Art style was a popular topic, but there were many other interesting things that usually go unmentioned which were brought up as well. Some great, thought-provoking thoughts, which we can all hope 343 are keeping an eye on. Click here to view the last poll, #68. Best cutscene, ever? Whether it's giving the Covenant back their bomb, or knowing what the ladies like, Halo's full off kick-ass cutscenes that spike my adrenaline. Ever since Halo: CE, the franchise has been delivering some of the best scenes in existence, which memorable one-liners and badass sequences. Across all games, and all characters. One of my favourites has to be Chief's Lich jump at the end of Halo 4's Shutdown, Mission 6. Everything about that scene resonates with me. What scene do you think is best? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, Spartan out.

Hi everyone, Spartan here with site poll #68. In the last poll I asked what your signature UNSC weapon was, and being a tough question, I believe it's safe to say the Railgun came out on top. Many others got shoutouts, such as the shotgun ("because shotguns") and the devastating Rocket Launcher, but the common fact was the Railgun. Being a more advanced weapon, developed after the Human-Covenant War, it's not surprising it takes the lead hear. Question is, could you handle its recoil? Click here to view the last poll, #67. What do you want to see most in Halo 6? Some people claim disappointment with Halos 4 and 5, I disagree. There were indeed disappointments, but nothing too major. What I think people really want is more of the classic, Bungie-era gameplay, otherwise the story seems intact and just fine. Whether it's a specific gameplay feature, or a story-element, what matters most now is working on making Halo 6 something we'll all love passionately (and still fixing MCC multiplayer). For me, the most important thing is the Covenant species' depiction. I once made a thread on how all races should be shown in-game. With more time being spent on Halo 6, this is certainly possible. For others, it may be the multiplayer they want restored to its more 'original' state, for example by removing sprint and mobility. Something very important would be getting rid of REQ cards, because they have seen huge backlash within the Halo community, especially with a 343 Industries staff member claiming people loved them. For each of you, what do you want to see most in Halo 6? Be it a new feature, or the retirement of an existing one, post your ideas down below. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, Spartan out.

Hi everyone, Spartan here with site poll #67. In our last poll, members shared their views on the armour sets they felt most passionate about. It was indeed a very open-ended question, with many set preferences being a combination of different variants. Some preferred the more classic, original MJOLNIR design, whilst some preferred the new-era GEN2 models which incorporated highly advanced design features. It was a pleasure reading what you all had to say, and seeing different interpretations on why one variant trumps another. Click here to view the last poll, #66. What's your signature UNSC weapon? Of course the Assault Rifle is an essential for all troops, as well as your trusty M6 sidearm. The navy gets the Battle Rifle, and the army the DMR. When in the field, you'll need to utilise any weapon available to its maximum effectiveness. If you had one UNSC weapon you're going to be stuck with for the next 24 hours in a warzone, what's it going to be? What weapon do you feel you'd be most confident using? Of course different situations give certain weapons different advantages, but in the end a raider with a shotgun can't spawn a rifle out of nowhere, and that's just how it is. Whatever you deploy with, you're stuck with unless you scavenge the battlefield. Some may prefer a classic MA5K carbine, others may see the SAW as a more effective weapon. So, what's your preferred UNSC weapon? Thank you for participating and apologies for the delay with #67. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, Spartan out.

Hi everyone, Spartan here with site poll #66. Last week the Elites and Brutes went head-to-head as we compared thoughts and preferences on the two races. With two votes each, it came out as a tie. Click here to view the last poll, #65. What's your favourite armour? Armour is essential for warfare. Without it, casualties will soar. Almost all armed infantry is seen to have armour, but to narrow things down we'll only be focussing on wearable sets in the games. Yes, that does mean the legendary Elite councillor and honour guard armour sets cannot be chosen. For the first two Halo games we're restricted to Mark V, Mark VI, and Elite Minor armour. Halo 3 changed things drastically by introducing what are now classic sets of MJOLNIR and Elite armour. Then Halo: Reach added a much larger variety of Mark V sets, as well as more Elite armour. Halo 4 and 5 saw the introduction of many GEN2 MJOLNIR variants, now in use by supposedly all Spartans. Halo 2: Anniversary also revealed some never-before-seen GEN1 Mark VI variants, and a couple of Elite armour sets. Out of all available armour sets to don, Spartan and Elite, which is your favourite? Why? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, Spartan out.

Hi everyone, Spartan here with site poll #65. Last week we discussed your favourite Noble Team member. Overall it was a tie between Jorge-052 and Spartan B312, the final Noble 6. Great to hear everyone's opinion about each character, and it was interesting to learn about the irony of some members' deaths, as pointed out by Self Destruct. The rest of the team received some praise and criticism, by in the end all votes went to Jorge and B312, who were both great Spartans like the rest. May they be remembered for all they've done. Click here to view the last poll, #64. Sangheili or Jiralhanae? I find this topic to be a difficult one. I initially would have thought Elites, no doubt about it, but then again they were completely reliant on the Prophets and struggled to rebuild their society after the war. Despite their strength, Jiralhanae are even stronger, and not always as stupid. Unlike the Brutes, the Elites at least turned the tide against the Covenant and woke up, but that may only have been out of vengeance for their betrayal from the Prophets. It's clear the Sangheili have more advanced weapons and armour than the Jiralhanae throughout the Human-Covenant War, but this was due to the Prophets' engineering. As a result of this, the Elites are more capable with advanced weaponry and more familiar with complex technologically. Despite the fact they're not great at engineering, they do have a better understanding of operating plasma weaponry. The Brutes utilised more crude designs for the most part, until the Prophets began arming them with their own more advanced tech after replacing the Elites. The Sangheili really excel with naval combat. This may be because they were more privileged throughout the Covenant's existence, but if you put an Elite against a Brute in naval warfare, I'm sure it's safe to say the Sangheili will come out on top. In hand-to-hand combat, the sheer muscle mass and therefore power of Brutes will give them the upper hand, and they may have no problem against the average Sangheili. It could only take two Elites to pin down one Brute though, and they can use their claws to rip others apart. Elite's are generally more agile, it's in their physiology. Brutes are taller. So many advantages/disadvantages for each side. Both races practice discipline, and I believe both have a warrior-based culture for males. The Elites may not be more intelligent in every way, but they give off that idea due to their long-term experience on weapons systems from the Covenant. They've been there from the start, whereas Brutes were absorbed along the way. This is why the Elites are usually seen as intellectually superior, because them and their ancestors fought with more advanced ships, weapons, and strategies than the Brutes, and they did it first. I could pick Elites just from their armour and weaponry, but who's to say Brutes can't get onto equal footing with technology? If both were at the same stage at advancement, who's better? Is anyone even better? Look at the Banished. They most likely acquired scientists to develop their new tech, but even though they didn't create it they certainly knew how to use it. Small in size, but really effective with their tech, the Banished is a great example of Brutes fighting with better tech. Get a Brute in a mech suit against a Zealot Elite, and I'd like to see how it plays out. Honestly so much to talk about when it comes to this topic, and I struggled to try and condense this. Really looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts. This isn't so much a versus, but more about your preference and why you'd pick one over the other. I'm having a little cognitive dissonance myself, and would love to see what the community has to say about this. Both are formidable races, but who's your choice? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, Spartan out.

As mentioned above, no one chose to not have their shield up.

When Reach is being invaded, it'll take at least one Spartan to escort her. No way would she go alone. And what would he do? What do you think? He's a Spartan-III, there's a lot he can do. Sure if a small army decided to swarm them, they may both die, but Jun can take on any Covenant Lance threatening Halsey. He was assigned a different mission altogether, one separate from the rest Noble's. There's no time to mention him again, by the end of the next mission the rest of Noble Team are dead. Jun is mentioned in other media. Reading your post right now has led me to realise you're looking at this from a "typical gamer's" point of view (not a bad thing). Assuming you have no problem with the reality of what happened and you're just voicing your opinion, I can understand your disappointment. I personally can't relate to it at all though, I feel like if things went differently, people would still criticise the same way. What happens, happens. You can't complain about real events not going the best way, people on Reach aren't gonna be like "There's a chance we could be in a simulation right now, so lets satisfy whoever's watching with a cool death.". As a general gamer, I wouldn't be surprised if many people didn't like what happens, everyone's got their opinion. But the reality is that they died how they did, and there's nothing wrong with it. Criticising Bungie is like saying "God didn't make their deaths/exits cool enough or ran out of ideas.", it just doesn't work that way. I'll continue responding for other points not relating to personal opinion. B312 and Kat were only around 10 metres away from the rest of Noble. For a sniper that's a very small distance. By the time he spotted the first 3 and brought his aim up, Kat would've certainly been in his sight. I like what you said there about the Scarab, but what's even funnier is imagining Carter flying around a hundred times, strafing the Scarab's legs until he get it to drop, then shooting at the core at the back whilst B312 and Emile are just chilling. It wouldn't even work, keep in mind he's fatally wounded and in a Pelican, not a Banshee. Almost cracked a smile at Jorge's contract running out. How would Emile know the platform was swarmed? The dropship was behind him, and he was focussed on the zealot right in front of him. Him and the others in Noble are technically sailors, but that sounds a little wrong so you'd refer to them as Spartans. And yeah, he was a good Spartan, unfortunately not good enough to survive the encounter. Keep in mind zealots are very difficult to handle. The Elite probably wasn't dying until he finished it off, and if he was, he wouldn't just lay there. He'd get back up and make it a priority to kill Emile, read about the Sangheili and you'll get it. Unless they're dead, they won't drop and stay down. The other didn't really didn't just wait, he was making his way towards Emile and you can see that he's not there until he impales him. Yeah I agree Emile should have got the job done with more speed, but he may not have known there were others near him. I agree he should have at least glanced over, any professional warrior should have as much situational awareness as possible, but I think his flaw here is his natural personality/behaviour. Emile is real aggressive and sadistic, he was over the moon when looking straight at that zealot and blasting it to death with his shotgun. Potentially in a very mild and temporary state of euphoria. Zealots can stealth easily, like Spec Ops Elites, so it's not surprising to have one catch him off guard. I can imagine many other Spartans failing in his situation too. There wasn't long at all between the time he killed the zealot, and the moment he was impaled. Almost all media produced by anyone is done for money, no point even mentioning it, but I'm confident 343 and Bungie care a lot about the lore. Microsoft's a different story. I strongly disagree with your last three sentenced. Halo is by far one of the most realistic sci-fi titles out there. You really need to read the books because the games are real limited on showing that. Most things listed in your first out of three last sentences are already being developed or have already been developed, but to a different extent. It's hard to comment on the realism without reading many books, the more you read the more you'll learn. Halo has the most realistic situation for humanity by its timeline, and there's no unrealistic combat I am yet to encounter. I urge you to read books before making further comment on the reality of anything, even though the games don't do a bad job either.

How is Jun leaving unnecessary? Would it make sense to leave the universe's most intelligent human to leave unescorted? No. Halsey is far too valuable, especially back then. And how would you expect remains of Noble Team to 'care' exactly? You think some of humanity's finest fighters are going to have a sad moment saying goodbye to Jun as he simply goes to escort Halsey? That would be comical. Imagine a soldier or marine today giving an order to escort civilians away from a warzone to another soldier, you think the whole platoon's gonna stop and say bye to them for their [hopefully] temporary leave? Of course Jun will agree, and of course someone has to take care of Halsey. You follow orders made by your commander, unless they're completely irrational and will only hurt the objective - but even then many would still follow those orders. The phantom in which the Elite sniper was aboard may have been mobile, and this is highly likely considering if it was stationary the whole time, Noble would have noticed it. The phantom was cruising, stopped as they saw Noble Team run by, and the sniper took a shot. Kat, or who ever's at the back, is more likely to get shot because they are closer to the sniper. Makes sense. Why go for a harder target? The Elite picked the Spartan who'll most likely receive a fatal shot, and he fired. It was Kat because she was furthest behind. Not only would a target further in front be harder because of distance, but they'll also have other Spartans running behind them and getting in the way. Kat was unfortunately the most convenient shot for the sniper. A needler round in the head, which then explodes, would be a very quick death. It's one pretty big hole as well. The Covenant have a policy of wanting us all dead, they're aware of Spartan activity in the area, so I'm sure they could spare some dropships to kill at least one. So you think Carter's gonna give the scarab a few pokes whilst Emile and B312 stand and watch for half an hour? Carter was wounded badly, and may have died anyway considering he couldn't receive any medical attention. Why just lay the Pelican down and die when he could actually make the mission a success and get Emile and B312 across that scarab. Yeah, if he was in good health you may have a point, but he really wasn't. Scarabs don't go down that easily, without heavy firepower (and I mean real heavy), we all know the only way is getting inside one of them. You're spot on about Jorge, sad really, but he certainly made a difference as mentioned above. When in combat, it's best to actually look at the enemy you're killing instead of your radar. Emile was stabbed straight after finishing off an Elite. Nothing too casual about how the zealot approached him, the phantom dropped off multiple zealots which swarmed the platform. He took out one and got killed by another behind him, you don't engage in combat whilst monitoring your radar. Search into flight-or-fight responses and the sympathetic nervous system. These deaths make perfect sense, and most deaths aren't meaningful unfortunately. As we said above and you clearly acknowledged, reality isn't always like that. Maybe most people don't produce media about a 'random soldier who died from a stray bullet', but Bungie did, and many thanks to them for that. Stereotypically any 'sci-fi' media is considered unrealistic, but what most people appreciate about Halo is its realism. Look into the lore and you'll realise it mirrors modern-day life so similarly, it's sometime hard to identify a difference. I'd rather face realism that anything that's done just to entertain the masses. It's best for Halo to stay grounded into reality, though that's happening less now that the Forerunners/Prometheans are more involved, but even with them Halo does a great job of providing a plausible scientific explanation. If there's anything I mentioned which you have any questions about or disagree with, please let me know.

Well said for the first parts, though I don't see any death as stupid or clumsy. Not like Kat actually drove anyone off a cliff. Your opening line was well put - don't expect a Hollywood death for everyone, reality doesn't always work like that. When some people read the books, they'll notice how "mundane" some deaths are, and these are Spartan-II deaths I'm talking about. They happen so quickly with little to them, just like every war and battle that's ever been fought. An animated example of this is The Package, in Halo Legends. Arthur and Solomon have pretty swift deaths, deaths which most likely spared the lives of their team members and helped accomplish the mission. I wouldn't say the team had deaths in vain, and I'm certain not everyone on Reach died in vain. A lot of data and vital assets escaped thanks to those who fought.

Jun escorted Halsey, and didn't vanish for no reason. Shields were disabled due to an EMP caused by the Covenant glassing at the moment she was shot. I'm really confused as to why anyone would be dissatisfied with a death to start off with, but why with these deaths in particular? Sure if there was a plain stupid cause of death, I might even find it funny, but these Spartans died fighting the Covenant. I can't see why I'd need to explain Emile and Carter's deaths, Carter took down a scarab which might have fried B312 and Emile, and Emile was - as you said - impaled by a Sangheili Zealot. That supercarrier wasn't just any ship, and would've made the Fall of Reach a much shorter event if it wasn't destroyed. Yeah, Jorge could have let a soldier on the ship detonate it themselves (assuming there were any left canonically, and that they knew how), but you really think a Spartan would jump out and leave other UNSC personnel to die? If a translight engine is failing to operate after being fired at by plasma, which honestly isn't surprising, then it would make sense to manually activate it instead of abandoning the mission many died for. Sorry their deaths weren't 'lacklustre' enough, it's not really their choice.

Jorge-052, Spartan-B312 following closely after along with the others.

Hi everyone, Spartan here with site poll #64. Last week we discussed your favourite MCC title, and I saw some great heart-filled responses. Whilst much respected, Halo 4 and Combat Evolved received no votes, though Halo 2 and Halo 3 were tied at four votes each. I'm not surprised, those two were both extremely impressive, and I personally could never get bored of either. Thanks for the great feedback everyone. Click here to view the last poll, #63. Which Noble Team member did you like most? It's hard not to remember Reach. Its heroes are never to be forgotten either, and recently I've been thinking more and more about 343 releasing a title where we're back as Spartan-IIIs. The Fall of Reach is one of the biggest events throughout the Human-Covenant war, and Noble Team played a vital role in humanity's long-term survival. They fought valiantly, and saved countless lives in the process. Each Spartan had their specialty and characteristics. Some had seen more battle than others. Some were more up close and personal. Regardless of any minute differences, they fought as one long-standing team, with exceptional warriors who refused to fail their objectives. As a fireteam they played a pivotal role in the war, but which individual did you like most, and why? Massive respect to all members of Noble Team, but ultimately almost everyone has a preference, what's yours? (Note: This includes any Spartan that has served within the fireteam) Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, Spartan out.

Hi everyone, Spartan here with site poll #63. Last week we discussed what the next halo spin-off game would be. I heard many great ideas I hadn't even considered before, but the most popular choice was certainly another ODST game, and with good reason. Thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts. Click here to view the last poll, #62. What's your favourite MCC game? The current situation at 343 Industries is secretly a busy one. Whilst Halo 6 is yet to be uncovered, another game may be in development, and 343 have taken the responsible decision to keep Halo: The Master Chief Collection updated and running smoothly. Compared to when it first dropped, MCC has seen major improvements and additions that have, in my opinion, certainly atoned for 343's mistakes. They have recently announced that they currently have a team working on an Xbox One X update, which has been in popular demand. Halo MCC is clearly not being forgotten, and will always play an important role considering it acts as a repository for Halo's videogame-past. It's been one hell of a fight from Combat Evolved to Halo 4. Each of these four (not including ODST) legendary games detail the events surrounding the even more legendary MCPON John-117, but which do you like most, and why? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, Spartan out.