Halo Infinite | Story and Lore (Spoilers)

[Skywalker333]

Finished the game

Definitely the best 343 campaign and the best one since Reach.

It's kind of funny how Halo 5 was sort or swept under the bus and addressed at the same time.

It feels like the stuff that happened after Halo 5 and before Infinite could have been its own game.

But I understand the clean break.

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In our review, I cheekily used the subtitle "Halo 7" for Halo Infinite.

For older gamers who played adventures, there is a famous joke about a game which never got out, "Leisure Suit Larry 4: The Case of the Missing Floppies", where the developers for fun jumped from no3 to no5, and supposudly no4 existed and got lost so we can't see the story, but 5 happens after that lost 4.
Eh in this case, methinks we have Halo 6: The case of the missing blu-rays. One day, someone will discover these somewhere :P

On the other hand, i admire them for choosing this narative structure and not jumping in for a halo 3-ish epic showdown with cortana and they went with a more grounded personal story.

 

[GenTask]

find out on the next episode of dragonball z

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Halo: The Unleashing

Next time on dragon ball z

episode is the unleashing i do not own this video i should get double views from the old logo

youtu.be

 

[oriic]

Does the cutscene take place then, or just the VO? Does the timestamp show up on difficulties below Legendary? I didn't see it on Heroic at least, and that doesn't have the VO.

I somehow doubt Atriox jumped back to before the firing of the Array.

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Only on Legendary.

 

[spootime]

Anyone surprised that they had Cortana destroy an entire species / planet? She wasn't entirely irredeemable after halo 5 IIRC -- sure she was a benevolent space dictator but she did it with minimal violence ... blowing up a planet tarkin style is cartoonish. "There will be no more violence .. no more pain ... unless ur boy atriox keeps talking this shit, see what happens then"

 

[Blue Ninja]

Only on Legendary.

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Very odd indeed. I'm still guessing it's only about the VO... But it's a very strange way of showing it, that's for sure.

 

[iFirez]

And the Brute is Atriox at the end. (97,368 BCE)

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As others have already discussed this could just be the audio taking place in 97,368 BCE or if it's the whole scene then the ramifications of that are huge. I'd guess it's just the audio taking place then though.

 

[Plasma]

I really liked all the story stuff about Cortana and the Banished and I loved the game itself but man I'm a litte apprehensive about that ending. Did we really need another precursor races showing up in Halo?

 

[JigglesBunny]

Anyone surprised that they had Cortana destroy an entire species / planet? She wasn't entirely irredeemable after halo 5 IIRC -- sure she was a benevolent space dictator but she did it with minimal violence ... blowing up a planet tarkin style is cartoonish. "There will be no more violence .. no more pain ... unless ur boy atriox keeps talking this shit, see what happens then"

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I know blowing an entire planet is infinitely more shocking but I was really fucked up by her taking out the Spartan-IVs.

 

[ajoshi]

I'll look up the specific entry but I'm pretty sure there's a Banished lore card from the second island that directly says the skimmers are associated with Harbinger. Would be kind of weak if those turds are the Endless but I get the feeling they are more like huragok.

 

[BrightLightLava]

Finished a bit ago, and I've been mulling over it and while I adore the gameplay and had a great time throughout, the lore pervert in me can't help but be a bit disappointed with what they did with Cortana.

Having spent the last two games turning her into a villain and then having her redemption story all done before the game even starts and then shown in flashback wasn't all that narratively satisfying to me. Especially because the major story beats that it was replaced with was introducing another ancient alien race that we don't even really get to see.

I can understand frustration with where they'd taken the series, and having a massive army of Spartan-IVs does negate a lot of threats, so clearing them off the board makes sense, but part of me is still going to miss all those characters. I guess we don't see corpses, so they could always bring them back if they wanted. It was nice to hear Lasky in those audio logs.

I heard one mention of Locke, and Blue Team potentially being out on their own missions, were there others that I missed with any elaboration? Any mentions of Buck anywhere?

 

[Milk]

Man there is so much to unpack with this story. It took me about 20ish hours, 343 fucking nailed it. The entire thing just felt like one big love letter to the Halo series.

If there's one immediate comment I have to make it's that I was SO disappointed that Chief didn't have a comment to make when I killed Hyperius and looked at Locke's helmet on his shoulder. They straight up put the helmet of the previous game's protagonist on the pauldron of an enemy deemed a spartan killer and didn't actually acknowledge it at all. What?!

I don't assume Locke is actually dead, I'd be pretty disappointed with that. The whole game I thought we were gonna build up the squad and find all the major characters on the ring (Lasky's certainly on it somewhere... or are we to assume that everyone in the audio logs has died in the past six months?), but they didn't go that direction, which still ended up being cool. I assume those kinds of stories will be explored in campaign expansions like how Destiny does it.

 

[LegalEagleMike]

Just give us halo odst 2 covering the attack on Sydney please.

 

[Blue Ninja]

I really liked all the story stuff about Cortana and the Banished and I loved the game itself but man I'm a litte apprehensive about that ending. Did we really need another precursor races showing up in Halo?

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For the Endless, it all depends on how they pull it off. There were dozens, if not thousands of species in the Forerunner ecumene and beyond We know barely anything right now, except that they're apparently scarier than the Flood... Yet the Forerunners were able to beat them easily and imprison them on a Halo. Feels like they might be another Precursor-created species, like humans and Forerunners, that threatened Forerunner supremacy. Having a foe like that could be interesting.

Or it could be another Promethean situation, lmao.

 

[Heysoos]

Anyone else a little disappointed we didn't see the Spirit of Fire? I was half expecting them, I'm not sure why. I mean I know why, if Atriox is at Zeta then that means he made it off the Ark which should mean the Spirit of Fire should have too, unless they're just going to kill them off off-screen.

 

[Milk]

Escharum was soooooo good. I absolutely, positively, loved how when you're nearing his boss fight and listening to audio logs, you can tell that he knows he will not win this fight. But that doesn't matter. In his old age, he gets to either kill the legendary Master Chief, or die battling the legendary Master Chief, and either outcome is satisfying to him. I love that so much, it's just so cool to me. The fact that he's just along for the thrill of one last oorah. Legendary.

 

[oriic]

Anyone else a little disappointed we didn't see the Spirit of Fire? I was half expecting them, I'm not sure why. I mean I know why, if Atriox is at Zeta then that means he made it off the Ark which should mean the Spirit of Fire should have too, unless they're just going to kill them off off-screen.

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I was waiting to hear something about it. :(

 

[Couscous]

I just finished the game and I think the campaign is great. It's definitely the best Halo game since Reach. I like how 343 handled the ending of Halo 5 by giving us snippets throughout Inifinite of what happened after the ending of 5. The thing I don't like about the narrative is that you're supposed to feel sympathetic towards Cortana even though she is a genocidal maniac.

 

[DemonCarnotaur]

Man there is so much to unpack with this story. It took me about 20ish hours, 343 fucking nailed it. The entire thing just felt like one big love letter to the Halo series.

If there's one immediate comment I have to make it's that I was SO disappointed that Chief didn't have a comment to make when I killed Hyperius and looked at Locke's helmet on his shoulder. They straight up put the helmet of the previous game's protagonist on the pauldron of an enemy deemed a spartan killer and didn't actually acknowledge it at all. What?!

I don't assume Locke is actually dead, I'd be pretty disappointed with that. The whole game I thought we were gonna build up the squad and find all the major characters on the ring (Lasky's certainly on it somewhere... or are we to assume that everyone in the audio logs has died in the past six months?), but they didn't go that direction, which still ended up being cool. I assume those kinds of stories will be explored in campaign expansions like how Destiny does it.

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I bet when developing the assets they planned for Locke to be dead, but then went in a different direction and decided to keep it ambiguous.

 

[BrightLightLava]

I don't like about the narrative is that you're supposed to feel sympathetic towards Cortana even though she is a genocidal maniac.

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The rapid off-screen, only seen in flashbacks redemption story is my big sticking point too.

 

[ChrisBliss117]

I'm more convinced the Endless are somehow related to the Precursors. There was an audio log or cutscene where the Harbinger said something like "I shall talk, and you shall listen" and it's what the Gravemind says in Halo 2 when he has both Chief and Arby in his tendrils.

 

[Deleted member 5745]

Basically sounds like I need to read that Shadows of Reach novel for whatever happened between 5 and Infinite.

 

[KillLaCam]

Most of the story wasn't that interesting to me but the Legendary ending makes me excited.

 

[Neverx]

Just beat the game on legendary, easily one of the best Halo campaigns, thought it was a great return to form with a lot of heart in it's story. So the Endless have to be the precursors right? The legendary ending definitely has me intrigued, glad they didn't kill of Atriox (unless he was sent to the past? bit confused considering the BCE mention in the vo). Overall highly enjoyed, would definitely put this up there with Reach and Halo 2 as my favorite campaigns.

 

[DemonCarnotaur]

I sorta wonder if they were originally going to make new Cortana look less like Cortana - the reveal felt a little silly with the snaps, as like, we knew this from the first second? Maybe no the nuance of how, but that doesn't really matter lol

Side note - it seems before they settled on a more classic Halo art style they were going full Halo 4/5 with the Infinite Brutes: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/DAAqA9

 

[Milk]

Little thing I really liked was how for the first time in 14 years, Lord Hood finally got mentioned in a mainline Halo game lol. He still exists!

I agree that I was kinda confused about Cortana's redemption. Cortana became space God and was ruling planets with an iron fist, sometimes blowing them up, but then Atriox plans to fire the ring* and she's like oh snap, that'd be evil! Wait, I've been evil too? I was kinda confused.

I was confused in general about the timeline of how things went down with her. Atriox got to her first, and evidently had "beaten" her so to speak, which was like, how? How do the Banished beat Cortana? Can't she just teleport herself away across the galaxy then send 20 Guardians to erase the Banished from existence?

*And speaking of that, why do the Banished want to fire the ring anyway? It's common knowledge at this point among all the races that they are simply galaxy-wiping death machines, correct? So what do they get out of that?

 

[Neverx]

I sorta wonder if they were originally going to make new Cortana look less like Cortana - the reveal felt a little silly with the snaps, as like, we knew this from the first second? Maybe no the nuance of how, but that doesn't really matter lol

Side note - it seems before they settled on a more classic Halo art style they were going full Halo 4/5 with the Infinite Brutes: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/DAAqA9

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Thank god they reverted back to the classic style, they would've looked horrible, I hate how the elites look in 4/5

 

[Absent]

I sorta wonder if they were originally going to make new Cortana look less like Cortana - the reveal felt a little silly with the snaps, as like, we knew this from the first second? Maybe no the nuance of how, but that doesn't really matter lol

Side note - it seems before they settled on a more classic Halo art style they were going full Halo 4/5 with the Infinite Brutes: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/DAAqA9

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Bunch of other cool other explorations there.

More ambient wild life. Also lots of focus on sectioning off small parts of the ring.

Desert spaces.

Mech-suit?

 

[Noble]

Skimmers seem to be a new race belonging to the Banished, maybe they were part of the Covenant Fringe before.

Harbinger is an Endless, it seems. The lore seems to indicate they're NOT Precursors, but something different: a species unaffected by the Halo effect. That apparently scared the Forerunners enough that they decided to lock them away inside Zeta Halo. One of the audio logs seems to call them the Xalanyn.

That's what I said. The Endless/Xalanyn seem to be synonymous, unless the Endless are some kind of subset of the Xalanyn.

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The Harbinger doesn´t seem to be an Endless. At some point you get to see her Cylix, and the "cover portrait" is very different from the ones in what Atriox seems to be unleashing at the end.

Also, the Harbinger definitely seems to talk about "The Endless" as "them" not as "we" when she dies at the end.

 

[JigglesBunny]

Side note - it seems before they settled on a more classic Halo art style they were going full Halo 4/5 with the Infinite Brutes: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/DAAqA9

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Crisis averted. Personally, I think Infinite still has some spots that are a bit too busy, mainly some of the spire interiors and corridors. I would have been miserable with another line-filled mess.

 

[Noble]

Crisis averted. Personally, I think Infinite still has some spots that are a bit too busy, mainly some of the spire interiors and corridors. I would have been miserable with another line-filled mess.

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With that art style 343 could create some freakin amazing new IP though...

 

[Neverx]

Okay I rewatched the normal version of the end credits scene and it definitely implies the VO forerunner stuff is set in 97,368 and the Atriox stuff is present day, was kinda confusing on the first viewing

 

[Noble]

From that Artstation account... that´s definitely the Infinity crashed on the ring, right?

 

[Gotchaforce]

So Escharun is Atriox's mentor/boss? Did Escharum know Atriox was alive the whole time? How did Atriox "die"?

 

[Neverx]

So Escharun is Atriox's mentor/boss? Did Escharum know Atriox was alive the whole time? How did Atriox "die"?

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Escharum is Atriox's boss, he didn't know from my understand thinking that Cortana killed Atriox when the ring split

 

[Nooblet]

This kind of just ends.
Zeta Halo has that whole Primordial thing and I wasn't really expecting them to go there just yet. Infact I was guessing that they'd stretch/push that story as far back as possible.

But now they've started a new thing with the Endless, who are somehow worse than The Flood but we don't really know why they are worse than flood. heh

 

[Willin]

So Cortana was able to completely fuck both the UNSC and the Swords of Sanghelios with her Guardians, but one splinter Covenant faction was able to defeat her? What?

 

[Couscous]

So Cortana was able to completely fuck both the UNSC and the Swords of Sanghelios with her Guardians, but one splinter Covenant faction was able to defeat her? What?

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The weapon defeated her. At least it seems to me that the story heavily implies that.

 

[Iso]

For those who have read the Forerunner trilogy of books by Greg Bear... the Silent Auditorium has to be the Palace of Pain, yea? The weapon describes the room you fight the Harbinger as "It's a courtroom. A prison. A place of execution. All of these things. Together."

Even before the cutscene, I was wondering if we'd see it and right when you enter the room I felt like it had to be, with the four pillars in the center being the things that confined the Primordial. It has been years since I've read the books, though, and don't remember how it was described back then.

Or maybe I am completely off-base lol.

 

[Welfare]

I just reached the part where Weapon finds out she's a Cortana copy

Why do they act like Cortana didn't go rampant and connect to the Domain to become what she ended up as?

It was a specific sequence of events that lead her there. Chief knows this and I can understand his choice to keep the Weapon at arms length because of his experience but come on they act like Cortana was always going to become tyrannical.

Also feel bad for the Banished.

 

[Geist]

Just beat it on Legendary. Time travel eh? Not sure how I feel about it. I love time travel stories but it doesn't feel like something that fits with Halo.

 

[Jellycrackers]

For those who have read the Forerunner trilogy of books by Greg Bear... the Silent Auditorium has to be the Palace of Pain, yea? The weapon describes the room you fight the Harbinger as "It's a courtroom. A prison. A place of execution. All of these things. Together."

Even before the cutscene, I was wondering if we'd see it and right when you enter the room I felt like it had to be, with the four pillars in the center being the things that confined the Primordial. It has been years since I've read the books, though, and don't remember how it was described back then.

Or maybe I am completely off-base lol.

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I was wondering what the relationship there was as well. The track right before "Silent Auditorium" in the soundtrack album is actually called "Palace Arrival", and I think it plays when you first land at the doorstep of the Auditorium after rescuing the Pilot.

 

[Señor Sepia]

Finished everything, campaign on legendary and all the things to do in the Open World.

Spoiler: A few negative opinions with spoilers:

• Vehicles are ass and need a huge phyics/health points system/damage redesign, all of them. They are all useless in legendary.
• I wish the open world was more of a post game coop with monthly expansions thing instead of part of the main campaign because:
• Missions are kinda bad IMO, the first ones are ok but at some point the game just stops caring and they make you repeat hundreds and hundreds of Forerunner rooms with bad guys, its even worse than Halo CE: No vehicles, no feeling of progression, not much creativity, no scripts, no nothing. It kinda ruins the game for me. Idk if their intention was for the open world to fill the need for vehicular action and marines, but its not enough
• Not sure how i feel about the revelations in this game, the whole THE ETERNALS THE HARBINGER THE *weird concept you dont understand yet* felt very Halo 4 to me, im kinda interested but not enough to be intrigued, yet.

Spoiler: A few positive opinions with spoilers

• The gameplay is absolute GOLD and it saves the entire game, holy molly, best gameplay in the series since HCE, even better IMO. Pure perfection.
• Bosses are kinda spongey, but also very good, only disliked the duo-boss with the brute chopper and 2 hunters in the open world.
• The overall feeling of the world, the characters, the music, the designs... is SO halo, i love it. I want to mention that finally: polychromatic Forerunner structures are back baby, like in Halo 1 and 2.
• Open world became a really fun activity after completing the main game, i hope we get to see a lot of improvements in this regard with the next campaigns, and i also hope we get some good linear levels.
• The ending, with the 3 main characters in the pelican made me very happy, i cant explain it but i was glad to finally have a good character trio in a Halo game, i was smilling like a little kid during that last shot.
  
  
  
  
  Its fucking iconic man.

 

[xGeneral Ice]

He was just a soldier; hoping he'd done the right thing


god what a powerful message. I love chief.

 

[BrightLightLava]

Basically sounds like I need to read that Shadows of Reach novel for whatever happened between 5 and Infinite.

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Not really.

You'll spend some more time with the Banished bosses from this game, but that story sets up the making of the Weapon (in the vaguest terms, not by name or anything), nothing about finding the Zeta Halo or anything that happens with Cortana and Atriox.

 

[HockeyBird]

So I haven't played the game but I did watch spoiler videos and read a plot summary. About the legendary ending...

So it seems the dialogue takes place after the Forerunners fired the Halo rings to wipe out the Flood. They were supposed to end all life but The Endless survived. Believing this made them a threat, the Forerunners imprisoned them on Zeta Halo. To help ensure that The Endless remained locked up, the Forerunners gave the orders for Offensive Bias, one of the AIs talked about in the Halo 3 terminals, to safe guard the facility.

So this suggests that in the next single player campaign, whatever that ends up being, it is like there will be at least one new enemy faction, The Endless, but Offensive Bias is now reactivated, potentially another party to the conflict.

 

[spootime]

Mech-suit?

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This suit-over-suit concept is fucking sick. I woulda loved to have seen that in-game.

Reminds me of 40k centurion armor

Maybe this is how Chief eventually takes Atriox 1 on 1.

 

[Porcine prophet]

So I haven't played the game but I did watch spoiler videos and read a plot summary. About the legendary ending...

So it seems the dialogue takes place after the Forerunners fired the Halo rings to wipe out the Flood. They were supposed to end all life but The Endless survived. Believing this made them a threat, the Forerunners imprisoned them on Zeta Halo. To help ensure that The Endless remained locked up, the Forerunners gave the orders for Offensive Bias, one of the AIs talked about in the Halo 3 terminals, to safe guard the facility.

So this suggests that in the next single player campaign, whatever that ends up being, it is like there will be at least one new enemy faction, The Endless, but Offensive Bias is now reactivated, potentially another party to the conflict.

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That dialogue happened in 97,368 BCE and the rings were fired in 97,445 BCE. So this def happened after the rings fired. Who the grand Edict is? I have no idea. I 1st would have though Bornstellar but the years would not make sense given he would be dead.

I def think the next campaign is endless focused and Atriox focused. How though, I am not sure. I also dont know if the dialogue infers offensive bias is going to be involved to prevent their awakening. Its entirely possible, and maybe mendicant bias is involved given he was essentially stored on zeta halo as well. I mean this image from a trailer never appeared in the current campaign:

 

[Porcine prophet]

Just beat it on Legendary. Time travel eh? Not sure how I feel about it. I love time travel stories but it doesn't feel like something that fits with Halo.

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there is 0 time travel in that cutscene. Hell, I think its a push to even say there is time travel in the game. They infer the endless having some form of time manipulation but at the same time, they may not be referring to that at all either

 

[HockeyBird]

That dialogue happened in 97,368 BCE and the rings were fired in 97,445 BCE. So this def happened after the rings fired. Who the grand Edict is? I have no idea. I 1st would have though Bornstellar but the years would not make sense given he would be dead.

I def think the next campaign is endless focused and Atriox focused. How though, I am not sure. I also dont know if the dialogue infers offensive bias is going to be involved to prevent their awakening. Its entirely possible, and maybe mendicant bias is involved given he was essentially stored on zeta halo as well. I mean this image from a trailer never appeared in the current campaign:

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Offensive Bias was the lack thing mentioned. I think it's supposed the big mic drop cliffhanger of the scene. So I definitely think it's going to play a role in the future.

Again, not having played the game myself, the story does seem like it ends at weird spot. When that Bloomberg article mentions that 2/3s of the game was cut that statement might be literal. Having the one biome and there being no brand new enemy faction to fight in what is supposed to be the start of a new saga definitely suggests to me that campaign in Infinite was supposed to be the first half and then you would go to other locations to fight the Endless. The cut content would also explain why there are screenshots of stuff that didn't happen in the game. But definitely in the next campaign the Endless will for sure be a new faction to fight. I'll be curious on how and when 343 will deliver the new story stuff.

 

[Toxi]

They managed to actually pull out of the hole Halo 5 made for the story. Good work.

I said "holy shit" when Cortana blew up Doisac.