Halo was made by unicorns and such end game discussion. Warning: Spoilers.

[Quo]

An interesting thought. The wiki on Marathon is here.

It states that the UESC (the ship on which the story takes place) was converted from one of the moons of Mars (Deimos), which could make it look like a large disc or moon like the one in the last scene. Marathon takes place a few hundred years after H3 (ends in 2553 per the wiki), and MC freezes himself in cryo to stay alive...

I'd still prefer they go with bringing the Ghosts into gameplay and upping the ante on the co-op play as much as they can.

[Wondermonkey]

Originally Posted by Quo

I'd still prefer they go with bringing the Ghosts into gameplay and upping the ante on the co-op play as much as they can.

Yeah, not to mention that they were right above the planet, so Master Chief wouldn't have to stay frozen for one year, let alone 241.

Halo may have originally been developed to tie in, but Marathon is about as relevant to Halo anymore as Alex Seropian is.

[Epyon MX]

Yeah, well, maybe, when Installation 00 exploded, it, uh, turned the portal into a time portal. And then... well, and then... it sent the MC into the future and yeah.

I agree. Halo and Marathon are very well established universes. There are winking references (terminals, logos, stereotypical one-man supersoldier, Mjolnir armor, SPNKr rockets), but it's like the Edgar Wright movies like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. They use a lot of the same catchphrases (What's a matter? Never taken a shortcut?) and the lead characters are sort of the same, but they're two different universes.

[Wondermonkey]

Originally Posted by Epyon MX

I agree. Halo and Marathon are very well established universes. There are winking references (terminals, logos, stereotypical one-man supersoldier, Mjolnir armor, SPNKr rockets), but it's like the Edgar Wright movies like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. They use a lot of the same catchphrases (What's a matter? Never taken a shortcut?) and the lead characters are sort of the same, but they're two different universes.

Excellent analogy!

Yeah, the nods to their roots are always there, but with the ending theme of "solitude" and "loneliness," the prospect of Master Chief actually stumbling on other Spartans is waaaaaay more exciting than it coming full circle to a barely matching universe.

Dr. Halsey would shed some interesting light on the story line I think, and I'd love to see her interact in a game with Master Chief.

[Quo]

Originally Posted by Wondermonkey

Dr. Halsey would shed some interesting light on the story line I think, and I'd love to see her interact in a game with Master Chief.

You dirty old man...

Crip and I were talking earlier about remaining Spartans. From what I remember and kinda find from Ghosts of Onyx, there's:

Spoilers:

Spartan II: Master Chief (John 117) Fred (104) Kelly (107) Linda (058) Spartan III: Tom (B-292) Lucy (B-091) Olivia (Team Saber) Mark (Team Saber) Ash (Team Saber) Team Katana -- (unknown number, all in suspended animation. There were originally 5 Spartans in Team Saber) an additional 315 deployed elsewhere before the events of Onyx. So that makes 13 in the Micro-Dyson Sphere, pluc MC?

I think that's right. I'm thoroughly confused.

EDIT: actually, never mind. I've determined there's no real way to tell how many are supposed to still be alive. Several websites appear to disagree... Bottom line though, is that there are 4 Spartan II's remaining, and a couple out there MIA that could potentially be revived by having their storyline filled out.

[Wondermonkey]

Originally Posted by Quo

From what I remember and kinda find from Ghosts of Onyx, there's...

I think as long as you add Linda-058 to the list, you're good.

BTW,

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[Quo]

dang, it must've taken 45 minutes to type all those annoying tags!

Yeah, me too... I just didn't want to ruin the books for those who haven't read them.

On that note, there's a new one coming out in early October... looks like it's based on Sarge, and outlines the events of the initial encounter between humans and the Covenant.

[Wondermonkey]

Originally Posted by Quo

dang, it must've taken 45 minutes to type all those annoying tags!

Yeah, me too... I just didn't want to ruin the books for those who haven't read them.

On that note, there's a new one coming out in early October... looks like it's based on Sarge, and outlines the events of the initial encounter between humans and the Covenant.

It took most of today actually, I'm so distracted right now. Work is pointless.

Yeah, the new one is written by Joseph Staten, so I have really high hopes for it. I love Johnson too, so it should rock.

While I would love for Bungie to work on something else, I still want the Halo universe to expand and grow, and if these damn comics could come out faster, I'd like to find out what happened between when the chief was on the Forerunner ship to when he's riding a piece of debris down to Earth like a comet.

[Epyon MX]

I was really surprised that we never found out what exactly that thing they unearthed in the middle of Africa was. We know it opens the portal obviously, but we never see the inside of the structure, hear any dialogue on it or go inside. That was really unexpected.

And I can't help but say it, but again we don't stay on Earth. They've got it in their heads that a Halo game should have a Halo in the game since there's Halo in the title. *shrug* I still would have liked for the game to center entirely on earth, but I totally understand why they moved it in this game. Scenery. Being on a Forerunner installation, you get tons of different kinds of environments (snow, desert, forest, indoor). If all the levels were on Earth you'd have Africa indoors, outdoors and Forerunner indoors (underground) only. Probably would've gotten boring quick. So I don't complain, I only note.

[Desi Cuse]

Just finished it on Heroic by myself.

My favorite aspects of the game:

Suicide Grunts
Crazy Marine terrified by Flood
Talking Flood
Many allies and betrayals
Several, strong, opinionated groups (Flood, Covenant, Guilty Spark, Humans , and Elites)
Great symbolism - when Sarge is carrying Covenant weapons and when the Arbiter is carrying Human weapons.
Many environments/ weapons/ vehicles

Just my thoughts.

[Desi Cuse]

I just noticed at the end, during the credits, under messages one message stated:

dmiller - thanks to Trisha and (I forgot)

[D_Litch]

Not the same DMiller. I saw that too.

[Prophet0ne]

Originally Posted by Wondermonkey

Yeah, not to mention that they were right above the planet, so Master Chief wouldn't have to stay frozen for one year, let alone 241.

Halo may have originally been developed to tie in, but Marathon is about as relevant to Halo anymore as Alex Seropian is.

Nerd entry #1:
The "half-ship" Cortana and the Chief are on could very well have gone into a slowly, (very slowly), degrading orbit around the so called "city planet" which could eventually cause the ship to crash land on said planet.

Nerd Entry #2
After being in orbit for “x” amount of time the Chief is discovered by the planets’ native occupants and brought down to the world……yada yada yada, I could go on.

Nerd Entry #3
Some cataclysmic cosmic event takes place causing a sort of “butterfly effect” eventually making Cortana into my sexy holo-girlfriend, (best idea evar).

Love, Prophet0ne

[Peench]

I'm a little late to the party but I finally finished the game last night. Wow. That was awesome. I was sad for cortana too because she has to chill out there all by herself by Master Chief goes into cryo sleep.

One thing that didn't make sense to me, however, is based on the books. If I recall correctly, the AI's in the books couldn't "live" forever because they eventually degraded into craziness or something strange. My initial thought when they were running the ads was that Cortana had entered this type of initial degradation of herself (either that or b/c she was full of the forerunner stuff she grabbed). But much of talk in the game centered around "never losing her" and such. How do we reconcile these two points? Or am I totally off?

[Quo]

I think you're right on the premise. That point was made several times in the books. AI's grew