Akalabeth said:
Bruden said:
Akalabeth said:
They released the flood by accident. Morally it's irrelevant. Doesn't affect the view of humanity either way.
Letting them out, I'll let you have that one being irrelevant. It's still on rather shaky ground, ignorance is not the best excuse for galactic scale genocide. But you can not argue that blowing up the one thing that puts them back in the box is morally irrelevant.
I'm not 100% sure what the purpose of the rings is. Either it kills all life, or it kills all life save the Flood. If the former, it's stupid to use. If the latter, it's super stupid to use (or even build in the first place). Destroying the ring is the only viable option. And if suicide has anything to do with morality than in terms of morality destroying the ring was the right choice.
Destroying the ring is the only viable option for self preservation, true. It also lets the flood run wild across the galaxy causing every sentient race to die a slow fear filled death, which is in actuality far worse than just killing them in a quick manner. Yes, it's worse morally too, they're both BAD but torturing someone for years before you kill them is worse than just killing them.
By the end of the second game it's been made clear that Earth is the only remaining human population center.
That's never stated in the game so far as I can remember. Earth is important, obviously, but only remaining colony/population centre? Nope.
you're right, they never say "if we loose earth humanity is extinct." They do make some insignificant little quips about what's in orbit being humanity's last line of defense, and a few trivial little things about the covenant wiping out every human world they find. So you're right the games don't specifically spell it out, just surround the hints in giant
blinking neon lights, which the books proceed to fill in in bold.
The books are irrelevant.
As for the games, that is, the only things that matter, of course losing Earth is a big deal. And of course protecting earth is also a big deal. But the fall of Reach basically directly preceeds the fall of Earth. Are you telling me that the Covenant hit every insigificant piss ant colony before they hit Reach? Of course not. When waging a war you don't sweep through the outer worlds in their entirety you go right for the throat as soon as you can. Logically there are other colonies. But without Earth, they would also fall in time. Hence why it all depends on Earth.
Hey the games make that clear too. There's the whatever the name was protocol, they jump randomly to avoid giving away where earth is, it's why Cortana wipes the drive data from the ships computer at the start of the first game, and is why the ship jumps randomly and discovers the halo rather than just retreating back to earth. And they do mention the wiping out of other colonies. So yes, the Covenant is systematically wiping out every outlying colony, because they have the resources to do it, and because they can't figure out where the Human home world is.
Unsupported conjecture.
Did you see a stream of evacuation ships at the end of Halo 3?
Do you know what effect the energy beams from Covenant carriers have on a planet's habitability? From the GAMES that is. Not the novels.
From the game's themselves, the covenant use plasma weapons, and the energy of their beams are hot enough to cause dirt to turn to glass. If super-heating an entire continent in a single go doesn't spell global disaster nothing does. The end of Halo 3 is not filled with a dying Earth and humanity scrambling to evacuate because it's supposed to be a happy ending.
So what you're telling me is that you're right and the game is wrong?
Yeah, try again.
yes actually I am. Halo 3's ending is a hand waved happy ending that doesn't pay any attention to the plot that came before it. It happens a lot in science fiction. (see Star Wars)
Covenant regularly kill unarmed civilians in the games. This is generally considered bad. They use suicide bombers and have little regard for their own troops, again this is bad. They take no prisoners, except those important to the plot. They lie and subvert the truth to their own people, etcetera, and so on. Hell every covenant we see is a soldier. Are there no technicians on spaceships? No one unarmed for the Spartans to kill? Even the guys in wheel chairs have big laser cannons. When does humanity get a chance to be bad?
Suicide bombers, or sending your soldiers on a suicide mission it's the same thing just one gets less firepower. The humans also take no prisoners even though the grunts often scream and try to run away, heck sometimes the player doesn't even get to kill the retreating grunts because an npc soldiers steps up to shoot them in the back.
Nothing wrong with that. The grunts are running away, also known as "retreating" or more importantly "regrouping". At no time does any NPC alien try to surrender.
Please replay some Halo, at several points just before the sound of your rifle smacking them in the face you will hear the grunts yell "I surrender!"
Lie and subvert their own people, read every politician ever, and specific example from the games "no spartan dies, they're marked as missing in action." All the covenant we see are soldiers... yeah that tends to happen when you're fighting on your own home turf against an invading army.
Dude, do you know how many logistical personel are involved in a military operation for every one soldier? In Vietnam it was 10:1. That's 10 logistics for every one combat soldier. Given how many operations the Spartans undertake in enemy installations or onboard enemy starships or bases don't you think we'd see at least one unarmed tech? Especially given that more than one mission was covert or other done under situations where support personel wouldn't necessarily ready themselves for action.
But no, every one we see is patrolling. Or even on the bridge, people are apparently at stations but everyone's got assault needlers and concussion whatevers. Apparently in the covenant everyone has a side arm and grenades on them at all times, even when they're cleaning out the toilets.
Disregarded due to apparent lack of knowledge of the military.
It's not even close to legitimate. Unless your idea of supporting is watching the "master race" lose through the entire story to be saved by another race.
Oh yeah, at the end the humans are saved by the Covenant Master Race. The Elites. The best overall species of the covenant.
So the master race of white guys is saved by the master race of black guys is the explanation you're going for to make it still Nazi propaganda. That is hilarious, dumb, but hilarious none the less.
Movie Bob is reading between the lines of Reach and Reach alone. Halo Reach is not intended to be played separated from the context of the previous Halo games. It's supposed to be a low quality bone tossed to rabid fan boys.
I love how you apparently know the express intentions of the designers.
Reach was done a year after their last effort, with an identical system, and a plot so cliche you could point out how each member of the team was going to die after hearing them speak. Even the multi-player had only a few extra gimmicks thrown in and found itself lacking in maps in comparison to Halo 3. Believing Reach was anything other than a last bit of fan service would be a bigger insult to the team at Bungie than Bob's Nazi claims.
And yes, Reach is intended to be played after the other games, because if it weren't we'd like to believe they would have attempted to put in some sort of story about who the hell the covenant are or what they want, or even why the whole bloody war is going on in the first place. The only tiny bit of that you get is when they try to get to the lab under the O.N.I. building and even that isn't enough to leave anyone new to the story feeling like they've grasped the plot.
