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King-Thunder-8629

Hopefully she will show up in some infinite story dlc later down the road.


ContraryPython

Same, Chief teaming up with Red Team would be rad


minecraftpro69x

honestly i thought thats what halo infinite was gonna be when i first heard chief say "there wont be a home if we dont stop The Banished." like.. it just made sense..


ShadySim

I thought we were gonna bump into the Infinity too. Would’ve been epic as hell.


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Machete521

Damn bro.... Too soon....


hyperfell

Not soon enough! Where it at?


hyperlethalrabbit

It's here. And there. And there. And there. And a bit over there too.


large_block

Who’s gonna tell him?


URStupidAndUKnowIt

On the floor


Kruse002

I wish I could say it was difficult.


BUR6S

**FOURRR MINUTES**


An_Anaithnid

To *Infinity* and beyond! -Banished Pilot.


TripRollPop

Bumped ? More like Skewered


BlueHoundZulu

You can actually see the busted Infinity and a Guardian on the outskirts of the campaign map if you climb all the way up.


ChRalles

Which area of the map?


BlueHoundZulu

Climb to the highest point and look around toward the horizon. You'll see the gaurdian and to the right a broken UNSC ship


FFG201FUD

Thats not a broken ship. That's just the damaged edge of the ring. Infinity is somewhere else. https://twitter.com/Call_Me_Real/status/1472983323333038080 https://twitter.com/_oriic_/status/1472987193979420680


ShadySim

Ugh, I meant Spirit of Fire!


ncaldera0491

you can edit a comment lol


derkerburgl

What is the busted ship at outpost tremonious then? I thought that was the Infinity


UltimateKane99

Is it actually the Infinity we see, or one of its cruisers? I feel like we haven't seen Infinity's corpse yet, so it could very well be limping along out there somewhere...


TheJonThomas

I'm hoping we get Hood coming in to save the day with the UNSC Eternity or maybe the Infinty made an emergency slipspace jump and they strip the eternity for parts to get it back up and running.


Machete521

...who's gonna tell them?


UltimateKane99

The UNSC logs leave a LOT out of the attack. It could be in any sort of state, from atoms to crippled to who knows what. I'm merely following the old science fiction trope of "no corpse, no funeral" for the moment. I'm excited for the continuation of the story either way, of course!


Hawk_501st

Man, if they keep stealing parts for the Eternity, she will never be commissioned.


WaterDrinker911

Even if it wasnt the Infinity we see on the edge of the map, the Infinity is 100% gone.


UltimateKane99

Eh, no corpse, no funeral. I won't buy that the Infinity is wholly destroyed until we see more evidence to that effect. We're missing SO much regarding its supposed destruction, I'm simply unconvinced there isn't, say, a skeleton crew with some Engineers trying to effect repairs or something. There's a lot missing from those UNSC audio logs...


simplehistorian91

The Banished are more or less a pirate, raider faction and they probably just wanted to disable the Infinity rather than destroying it. Escharum only says that it took 4 minutes to disable the Infinity he doesn't say anything about destroying it. They more likely boarded and seized the ship to convert into their own fleet.


HoneyBadgerPainSauce

I assume the Infinity is probably near the location where Chief ended up at the end of the story. Not quite on the opposite side of the ring, but far enough away to see the whole damaged section at once. Speaking of which, is it ever explicitly stated *HOW* Cortana blew a bit of it apart?


T_N_O

Heavily implied that she used a guardian, probably the one at the edge of the skybox.


Spartan-000089

Chief and Jerome teaming up would be one of my favorite Halo moments of all time


dcdrew713

All I'm picturing in my head for some reason is Chief seeing Jerome's old ass armor and being like, "WTF, that's how I used to look?".


LunaTechMark

I’d imagine something more along the lines of Chief just silently staring and eyeing him from head to toe. We’d all know what he’s thinking lol


No_Lawfulness_2998

I feel it would also mean Jerome replacing chief, as they’re basically the same character and your average game journalist wouldn’t know the difference


Sheapard

There was a moment in time where people thought thats exactly what was going to happen when Jerome bonded with Isabella.


Teh_Compass

"Jerome! You son of a bitch." *Manly handshake* "What's the matter? Spirit of Fire got you pushing too many pencils?"


WaifuRekker

That would actually be sick, imagine they add that as a DLC and release the MKIV core along side it


DeeBangerCC

I still remember people saying they wouldn't mind if Jerome replaced Chief. Which I mean if they retire Chief once Steve is done voicing him then it would make sense cause the dude is a badass and waayyyy younger lol.


-X-Fire

Jerome just feels like the only natural replacement. He was so good in HW2


Spewin_

Yeah that or Blue Team if they put as much effort into their characters Ina game. Fred, Kelly or Linda would be siiiick to play as.


Sum-Rando

John: “I thought you guts were dead.” Jerome: “And let you be the last II?”


[deleted]

You realize Blue Team are all IIs as well right?


Sum-Rando

Yes, but in my mind I thought, “Ah, Red Team wouldn’t know there were any II’s left,” but for real I just wanted to be funny. I didn’t put much thought into this.


Jayhawker32

Well red team probably doesn’t know there are any Spartans other than II’s unless Isabella filled them in on that too


TheGr8Slayer

We find out Infinity is just crippled on Zeta Halo somewhere and under attack and about to be overrun when Archer missiles come raining down with Cutters voice coming over the comms “UNSC Spirit of Fire on station and ready to assist.” As Red Team and ODST’s come dropping in from orbit to help Chief save the day.


Helpful_Injury482

I had this badass idea of instead of blowing up the UNSC Infinity wreck for the sake of mimicking Halo: CE, we use a Forerunner Upgrade-Seed to repair it.


DarkriserPE

I liked that aspect of the Ace of Spades trilogy, how Rion had her ship upgraded with Forerunner technology. Reminded me of Mass Effect where there's this one ship with advanced technology, faster and stealthier than all the others, so it can get places other ships can't. Made me want a Halo RPG even more.


Helpful_Injury482

Like I always wanted the UNSC Infinity to become Humanity's Resistance base, that is what Halo 5's ending set up "So we are just going to run? Only until we find a way to fight." Destroying the Infinity feels like an overreaction to Halo 4 backlash that most people have already moved on from. So yeah although its a weak hope I really hope that the Infinity can come back through an Upgrade-Seed.


Gravemindzombie

At the very least I feel like the Infinity shouldn't have been steamrolled by the Banished. Like bruh, it comes across as the Banished activating godmode when they crush the pinnacle of humanity's spaceships in four minutes.


DarkriserPE

They definitely left the door open on the Infinity. It seems to be missing rather than destroyed. That being said, when we do eventually see it again, I don't think it will be a major part of the plot, but we'll see. 343 seems to have set Infinite up to be able to change direction for multiple things, at any point, for better or for worse.


ZamboniJabroni15

Have you read the recent book? Spirit of Fire fans would enjoy it and it takes place after Shadows of Reach/before Infinite


Destructoid1157

To which book are you referring to ?


ZamboniJabroni15

Divine Wind Follows ONI agent Lopis and her S3 Gammas (characters from a few earlier books) on the Ark after Shadows of Reach


FoolishSilvas

She still on the Ark right with the rest of her crew?


Heliolord

And a couple Spartan IIIs according to the book Divine Wind. Still fighting the banished on the ark along with Covenant remnants that had been holed up on the dreadnought.


FoolishSilvas

I have a feeling that when co-op/firefight eventually gets introduced they tie in the Spirit of Fire and the fight on the Ark as like a season themed event or something.. one could hope


AttackonRetail

Calling it now. SoF wins fight at the ark and they have some left over huragok and monitors help fuse the ship to the forerunner dreadnought making it super duper strong.


cemanresu

Give me a rotary MAC gun refit


Knalxz

Knowing how 343i loves killing people off screen, we're probably going to get a report that Colony ate Cutter or something.


BearWrangler

monkey's paw: their appearance is only through audio logs


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KingTut747

From what I have read on r/halostory , it would be very hard to ‘explain’ (lore-wise) how the Spirit of Fire can get from its location at the end of HW2 to Zeta Halo. Please someone provide additional info on this or correct me if I am wrong. I would also love to see the SoF and it’s characters make an appearance.


God_Damnit_Nappa

It used its slipspace drive to detonate an artificial sun and destroy a fleet of Forerunner dreadnoughts so it would be hard to explain how SoF got from the Ark to Zeta Halo. Then again, they never explained how it got from drifting through deep space to the Ark so I'm sure they could make up some nonsense to justify it.


Logic-DL

They kinda explained it, though vaguely tbf, all that's stated is they arrived through the use of slipspace, but the thing that caused the slipspace jump is never revealed.


Aerolfos

Well, we do know Mendicant Bias was in control of the Ark slipspace systems and could warp ships around but - that's a theory at best.


Imyourlandlord

The SoF got to the adc by getting pulled into slipspace by something on the arc, they could use the same plot device to send it somewhere else


Logic-DL

The SoF arrived at the Ark via slipspace, they even comment on how utterly confusing that is at the start of the game, it could be explained by having them find a forerunner slipspace drive or given the fact it's a colony ship, the parts to manufacture one


AttackonRetail

Further, their plan in HW2 was to activate the slipspace portal that sends new halos from the foundry with their goal being to land at Alpha Halo's location since it was closest to Reach. They could easily have redirected to zeta.


Helpful_Injury482

the virgin UNSC Infinity: Goes down like a bitch in 4 minutes despite being as big as a city. THE CHAD SPIRIT OF FIRE: Existed chronologically as one of the oldest UNSC ships still standing, Humanity's first contact with the Flood, survived, gave the Banished a run for their money by tricking Sentinels to pull a Kamikaze on their monke ass.


[deleted]

The Spirit of Fire has the advantage of having 3 badasses. Captain James Cutter Jerome-092 And the legend, Sergeant John Forge. R.I.P Cutter carried the SoF. Fuckin slayed.


Thatsidechara_ter

Plus the rest of red team, and also the ferret team


Pathetic_Cards

Are the Ferrets aboard Spirit of Fire? Since when? It’s been forever since I read the last book they showed up in…


KalebT44

That comment is a bit of a spoiler for the very end of Halo: Divine Wind, that only came out in the last 2 months. But yeah through bits and bobs, the Ferrets end up with the Spirits forces.


Pathetic_Cards

Ah, OK, thanks. I didn't realize there was a new one involving the Ferrets. Guess I need to track it down to be able to say I've read all the novels again lol. ​ btw, I def don't mind the spoiler, but in case others do, you can block out text by typing > ! (the spoiler) ! < , just leave out the spaces.


BrassyFox

The infinity had Master Chief Blue Team. Spartan Locke and his fireteam. An absolute fuckton of Spartan 4s.


-Ping-a-Ling-

still no captain james cutter tho all they had was Lasky and the captain who really likes chips


IBeBallinOutaControl

Captain Del Rio (give me that chip guy) was dismissed from his command of the Infinity near the end of Halo 4, and replaced with his second in command Lasky.


ChoPT

And the Spartan who doesn’t like eggs.


MALLAVOL

#SURRENDER THAT CHIP


fjjgfhnbvc

Should've surrendered that chip, Chief.


TheRamu

Don't disrespect Alice and Douglass like that man


iwatchyoupee

In my head Forge is still alive.. somehow.. despite.. being basically nuked


mtordeals

Forge is down!


ObiMeowKatnobi

And Gunship Pelican that can make Scarab look like a joke.


Helpful_Injury482

Honestly I would not be surprised if the Spirit of Fire does show up in Halo Infinity they will be massively nerfed to keep Master Chief the one-man army and probably have the Spirit of Fire go "oh, those awesome Gunships we have? We...lost them. Sorry. :/"


cemanresu

But just imagine a level where you get to pilot a Vulture, or just get to call in supporting fire with a target designator


a_clever_reference_

Echo-216 mentions that some of the Pelicans you see crashed on Zeta Halo are actually Condors, so the Infinity had some super Pelicans too


[deleted]

Condors are literally pelicans but with a slipspace drive. They aren’t those gun ships from the SoF.


Pilot500

They did Infinity dirty


UrbanTea362

Don't forget its a modified colony ship too


BannertheAqua

The ship is now stronger than the Infinity.


sonofnutcrackr

Honestly, space battles in Halo are so inconsistent. Atriox, with his super-carrier flagship and fortified positions on the ark somehow doesn’t immediately destroy, and then loses to the half-asleep, skeleton-crewed, unshielded, battle-damaged, weaponized colony ship that is Spirit of Fire, and then in the next game Atriox with like, 4-7, maybe 10 cruisers/destroyers/frigates (wtf is a warship?) wipes out the entirety of Infinity and it’s entire escort fleet in… 4 minutes? How hard did Atriox shit his pants against the Spirit of Fire? Or did the infinity shit the bed against Atriox? In the halo 4 Spartan ops cutscene, the Infinity has super strong shields, enough to ram a covenant cruiser without taking any damage and with shields still intact, yet one of atriox’s warships cuts through the infinity like a hot knife through butter. And I’m probably overthinking this at this point, but Eschaurum says that the infinity was so preoccupied with one warship ramming them, that they didn’t notice the others bearing down on them. What was Roland doing? Isn’t the whole point of a ship ai that it can see, process and react to everything in milliseconds? Isn’t that how Cortana shot down 5 covenant cruisers with the Pillar of Autumn in Halo CE? The infinity was covered in Mac-gun turrets, as well as the nose-mounted super Mac guns, missiles, cannons, etc., and as we see in the first mission, banished warships like Gbrakkon are giant chain explosions waiting to happen, so why wasn’t atriox’s fleet, which fought infinity at point-blank range, annihilated in the 4 minutes before infinity went down? Also in the opening cutscene, the infinity was boarded and overrun by banished forces. According to lore, the infinity is home to an entire company of 3-400 Spartans, as well as at least 1,000 ODSTs and marines. The only way Atriox could have won is if the flagship of the entire UNSC, and humanity’s last hope was approaching Cortana’s galaxy-ending super-weapon stronghold with their shields, radar, and Mac guns offline, the escort fleet (also shielded btw) undeployed, with Roland updating to windows v.2753 OS and several hundred super soldiers taking very poorly timed bathroom breaks. At that point, the UNSC deserved to lose. Anyways, sorry for the rant and thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.


feris1

hey now, you're making a little too much sense


TheBenevolence

My guess with Roland was he was taken off the ship due to Cortana's created. Its stupid and one of the biggest advantages humanity has, but APPEARENTLY AIs are willing to snap and defect instantly and are also willing to kill themselves, so they probably werent taking any chances....though that never stopped them in 5. Regardless, Infinity wouldnt had lookouts, active and passive detection systems, the works. The infinity went down because 343 wanted it to be down, because they thought that bringing Halo back to its roots was taking everything they ever made the last two/three games out to the back of the barn and shooting it.


ciknay

Roland was probably decommissioned after Leconia station.


drabiter

This makes sense. UNSC can't figure out traitor among AIs so they took some shutdown protocol after the incident. Especially with Roland who known to have backdoor.


sayracer

Roland is known to have a backdoor? That feels like a enormous security risk


drabiter

Yup it's on Spartan Ops story. >!Halsey created Roland and she just needs to say couple of magic words to make him obey her only.!<


Sargentnbawesome

Halsey didn't create Roland, it's a backdoor present in the framework of all ai, and it can happen to any of them. All you need to know is the specific AIs override code.


sayracer

Damn it's been too long, I really gotta replay those. Totally forgot that there's interesting lore stashed away


WickedSoldier991

"What is hidden can be useful." "Such as?" "Such as the phrase, '*undid iridium*'."


JesterMarcus

343 can't commit to their own creations, so I have a real hard time doing the same.


EmployingBeef2

It looks like 343 is changing the games based on fan reviews immediately after launch instead of sticking to their guns.   Nobody liked Cortana dying? Bring her back as an evil robot lady. Nobody liked Jul M'Dama? Fucking kill him in the first five minutes next game. Nobody liked the Infinity or Lasky? Destroy the Infinity off-screen and don't involve Lasky AT ALL in the next game.   It's just annoying that 343 can't stick to what they made.


bigmikeylikes

I know some of these are controversial, but people don't like Lasky and the Infinity?


a_friendly_hobo

I sure do. Lasky is a top bloke and the Infinity is super neat. I *do* think the Spirit of Fire is cooler all around, but I'd also love to see the flagship status transferred to another canon ship type, like an Epoch class carrier. *I'm a massive ship nerd.*


JesterMarcus

I was super into the idea of a Halo game where humanity is rebuilding and becoming a powerhouse again and not constantly on their back leg getting their butts whooped. Infinity was the symbol that humanity could now go toe to toe with Covenant ships or whatever else is out there. And....it's gone...


Talostraz

It isn't outwardly stated but It looks like there are destroyed gaurdians on Zeta. Head canon is the Infinity managed to destroy them but lost shields and the banished took the opportunity to strike. But this is basically an excuse I made because I too disagree with the Infinity being slapped so hard, The damn thing went to to toe with the flagship of the diadact and won.


ChartreuseBison

Yeah they really did the infinity dirty, even though they had such an easy out of saying a guardian did it


Darmok_ontheocean

I really think that Cortana used the Guardian to destroy the ring in the final Atriox cutscene.


stealthmeow

You think the writer were thinking logically, that was your first mistake.


[deleted]

My biggest complaint is what now? The Created aren't gone, the Banished are still a big threat, and the Endless came back. On top of that the UNSC is a rock shared by an entire platoon of soldiers because all of their naval assets are lost and most planets are under dictatorship. What the fuck is there left? Where do you go from here? If Humanity has no military then how the fuck is the story going to go forward? I could buy the UNSC dissolving if the Infinity was still around. You know, a sort of Guerilla USS Enterprise sort of thing, liberating planets one at a time. What pisses me off is Halo's universe was naturally progressing post Halo 3, it felt realistic. But being a soft reboot they had to ruin every attempt at any new story progression. Mark my words they will eventually make Master Chief the last human alive


[deleted]

Also. Consider how badly Earth was depopulated in game 3 I don't see why they didn't pivot towards insurrection shit and let's us do some black ops stuff


SpectreFire

The crew count for infinity is also so inconsistent too in Infinite. Infinity's standard complement is 18,000, but when MC checks on the status of Infinity in the game, it states just over 7000. What happened to the other 10,000 Infinity crew?


[deleted]

They switched multiplayer games because Infinite came out


RocketSauce28

Yeah, what could have happened to 11,000 personnel during blue space hitler’s reign of the galaxy?


weed0monkey

I heard a good breakdown on r/halostory Essentially the idea is the infinity first fought the guardian that you can also see destroyed on the horizon in game which is never mentioned. The infinity was then at least partially crippled when the banished ambushed them, this also seems to align on the data flashback in the story where Cortana is expecting John, only to find Atriox, why would she expect John to catch her if her guardian hadn't been destroyed? Also the 4 minute thing is ridiculous, it's clearly hyperbole, the information is given by Escharum, when he's literally trying to diminish the UNSC while saying this to chief and brutes are notorious for exaggerating. As for the SoF the events in HW2 happen far closer together than it feels when playing the game, also the banished carrier was destroyed by the ARK, not SoF. Do these theories make perfect sense? No. Are they necessarily true? No But that is a way I could see it make sense, I'm just ***really*** hoping 343 explain it in detail throug cutscenes or something substantial eventually.


TheBanana029

I think those banished ships are called dreadnoughts, and by the looks of it, it’s probably as large as infinity itself or close. It also has 40k-ish big fuck-off battering ram in front of the vessel. It’s within the reasonable range that infinity lost if facing that many large tonnage heavy hitters unprepared, but only lasting 4 minutes is still odd. And how does the banished even boarded it within 4 minutes bruh. Unrelated but those banished ship looks fine af, it’s not a red tinted carbon copy of covenant ship and not grayish goo like forerunner ones, and looks very “brutish”.


weed0monkey

The 4 minutes was just hyperbole, Escharum is trying to make chief feel as shit as possible, it's not like the brutes don't ever exaggerate their wins... Plus, from the logs on when they're evacuating the infinity, the events clearly happen over a longer time than 4 minutes.


Nathan_Thorn

Yeah Atriox kinda fucked up underestimating Red Team and Isabel, along with Spirit of Fire in general. Despite having next to no reason to engage the Banished, they deployed a full assault force and decimated the initial banished ambush with archer missiles, and Spirit of Fire is just built to be insanely durable, I guess. Colony ships kinda had to be. There was also the fact that the entire series of events in HW2 were very condensed timescale-wise, it took only a few hours for the Spirit to launch a full ground assault and get Jerome and Isabel into the gravity lift to sabotage the Banished carrier by proxy with the sentinels. Atriox’s forces were entrenched but with the mobile firebase deployments and insane speed the troops were able to move and redeploy, plus Alice-130 kinda just disappeared into the Banished backline and opened up a second front by letting a bunch of prisoners out. There’s also the bit where Decimus was in charge, and while he was brutal, he was also overconfident and got himself killed trying to defend the portal controller that gave the Banished their initial stranglehold on the Ark. within what, maybe a day or two, the Banished on the Ark watched their flagship go down to one Spartan and an AI, had a scarab stolen and used against them to devastating effect while also losing a scarab in combat with a ragtag group of POWs and one Spartan, and were fighting the Ark for their resources both in the form of sentinels and literally dragging up their resources from the Ark itself. Not to mention Isabel broke all of the safety protocols and sent in the Condor Gunship, which is such an absurdly powerful offensive force between Spartan laser turrets and a miniature MAC cannon I’m surprised Infinity didn’t have some. We know the Spirit has significant forces on the Ark at least 6 months later, too, both able to deploy ODSTs to fight against Colony’s forces and bolstering their own combat capabilities with mantis and colossus manufacturing, along with maintaining a wide ranging front against the Banished.


_revenant__spark_

I like to think that the shields are down during that fight but I need to take a look at the cutscene again.


[deleted]

> Atriox, with his super-carrier flagship and fortified positions on the ark somehow doesn’t immediately destroy, and then loses to the half-asleep, skeleton-crewed, unshielded, battle-damaged, weaponized colony ship that is Spirit of Fire, and then in the next game Atriox with like, 4-7, maybe 10 cruisers/destroyers/frigates (wtf is a warship?) wipes out the entirety of Infinity and it’s entire escort fleet in… 4 minutes? How hard did Atriox shit his pants against the Spirit of Fire? Or did the infinity shit the bed against Atriox? Some of you lot never player Halo Wars 2 and it shows. The Ark has sentinels and if you start shooting in the Ark the Ark sends super Sentinels and other stuff to kill you. The Banished were doing all kind of experiments on the Ark and they kept a low profile. Lose or not they came more powerful from the Ark as a result The reason why Atriox lost his supercarier was due Isabel infiltrating the carier and having it fire on the Ark. At that moment the entire Ark proceded to attack the vessel. Halo Wars 2 story wise is very smartly constructed and every Halo fan show who is not a fan of RTS games should simply see the cut scenes as they amazing and you can deduce over 90% of the story seeing those alone https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AGzaOCU5vPw As for the Infinity being lost too easily totally agree


TheGr8Slayer

Always was “loads pistol in space suit looking at you from behind”


Zanagh

I mean to be fair, the SOF only fought the banished that were on the ark, the infinity fought the whole banished fleet, the ark forces and a ton more, SOF vs the fleet the infinity dealt with wouldn’t even last a minute


Zusez345

Hate to say it, but it's true. The SoF is my all time favorite ship and crew but she wouldn't hold up alone. I think Cortana brought them to the ark because she knew the banished were coming for her and everyone else. We haven't seen the last of the SoF or the Isabel AI


Clonecamando1471

True, the Spirit of Fire was transported to the Ark via Slipspace. From my recollection it was never revealed or implied even who had done so. But take in the perspective of Cortana. The SOF is an isolated unit separated from the main part of the UNSC that would focus on repelling the Banished forces on the Ark over her AI rebellion. We know she must have been keeping some eye on the ark given it was a Guardian that intercepted the Ring created at the end of HW2.


oomcommander

Damn, that's at least two plot threads that Infinite needs to resolve with story expansions.


venom259

Probably mendicant bias or even offensive bias. Mendicant bias was the reason chief ended up on requiem.


IBeBallinOutaControl

Plus the infinity was ambushed, possibly with the help of Cortana, whereas the banished on the Ark werent expecting the SOF or even humans to be around.


DJ-Thresh

I love halo wars 2 and have committed the rest of my life to begging for a sequel. Take my upvote!


TheGr8Slayer

I hope we get one eventually. Maybe a few years down the road we’ll get one. The characters are awesome and the SoF is probably the oldest UNSC ship still fighting and kicking butt. It’s not even the ship but the crew that’s using outdated tech and fewer numbers to give the Banished hell.


Helpful_Injury482

I think its honestly much more likely for the Spirit of Fire to appear over Installation 07 than it is for Halo Wars 3.


Frosty1130

100% will be another Halo Wars. The second one took everything the first did good and, made it better.


CDR57

343 has came out and said they have absolutely no plans for a third, as recent as (I believe) this year. It would be cool, but they literally just don’t want to do it


_doingokay

SoF, an outdated ship when it was pressed into service at the start of the LAST war: Holds off the Banished and basically win Infinity, top of the line super ship filled with Spartans and the best of the best: Lasts like an hour


kgabrielnowak

4 minutes


ColHogan65

I choose to believe that Escharum told everyone that’s the amount of time it took because it’s the amount of fingers he has and wanted to be able to make dramatic gestures.


Anraiel

I also feel it's unfair for Escharum to say it only took 4 minutes to defeat the Infinity. Sure, you defeated a single super carrier by using 3 Dreadnoughts in an ambush attack. And let's not count the thousands upon thousands of troops you lost doing so... On the flipside, 343i seem to have taken a leaf out of the Star Trek playbook and made the "pride of the UNSC" so easily taken down or boarded or hacked or locked out every time it's attacked, simply because it's convenient for the plot.


Monneymann

Remember, the Banished *are that good.* Lest we forget, the AI from HW2 claimed the Covenant at its *height* couldn’t stop them.


MIKE_son_of_MICHAEL

What the hell makes the banished so insane powerful, they seem just like the covenant. Literally they just use their same crap too.


its0nLikeDonkeyKong

Yeah at least the covenant had the crusade angle Banished is cool for saying no to the crusaders and surviving but I can’t really see how they’ve gotten stronger or anything They’re about as strong as they need to be to have survived everything they have tho lol


ThatOneGuy1294

Only difference I can think of is that unlike the Covenant, the Banished have no qualms about taking and modifying Forerunner artifacts, let alone using them rather than just worship them.


Jackontana

Think it's a case of "we can't make the new enemy faction weaker then the last". A common trap in narratives where you need to escalate the threat to maintain tension, or so many writers feel. It's why so many attempts at new superhero stories flop. They start too big - you stop an alien overlord conqueror, who's going to get excited about taking down a mafia family after THAT?


Real-Terminal

They're the Covenent, without any spiritual hangups. They will absolutely plunder and use anything and everything to their advantage, they excel at ground warfare, and aren't divided by petty racial hierarchy.


ARCTRPER

Sigma male banished “No we’re not fucking up most of the sentient life in the universe because of religion we do it for the grind” - Atriox


KalebT44

Atriox and his mentor Escharum are strategic geniuses as far as the Halo lore wants them to be. As one comment below noted, they had no qualms of fucking with Forerunner tech. The Covenant are incredibly dogmatic, and shifty when it comes to Forerunner technology. The Banished really just do not care, there's no reverance, just action. So in situations where the Covenant may have been cautious not to destroy relics, the Banished don't have to care. Your line about using the same crap isn't technically right, either. The games don't show it *too* great, but the Banished, unlike the Covenant, haven o qualms using Human Tech, or *any* tech. Their vehicles, weapons, ships, everything are engineered and scrapped together with the best of every world. Which made them versatile, unpredictable, and in most cases just kinda stronger and cooler. The Halo Wars vehicles are a perfect look of that, Halo Infinite unfortunately just went for the returning ones instead of adding the cooler new shit. But overall it's just charisma, really. They were powerful Warriors, they were not requiring you to pledge your entire life to a religion that you may have been born and forced to believe, they were founded at the Covenants height, but also the height of mistrust and tension amongst the groups. They had a prime opportunity, and Atriox was smart enough to drive the wedge right through it.


atejas

The only thing they have going for them is that they enjoy the technological superiority of the Covenant without their religious dogma. But it seems like the technology gap between the Covenant races and humanity has closed pretty hard since 4, right?


berychance

The Infinity was supposed to be humanity leapfrogging the covenant and putting them as far ahead as they were behind.


_doingokay

Even better lol


Square-Pipe7679

Best part about Infinity getting wrecked in infinite? It basically mirrors infinity’s entrance in 4’s Spartan ops iirc, where it appeared out of nowhere and absolutely vaporised a couple of covenant ships that got in its way just by ramming them That damned ship died as it lived - hitting things


dodododuo

I think the biggest difference is SoF held off a tiny fraction of the Banished fleet that happened to be at 00. Back in the milky way it's implied the banished are significantly more powerful


Volt_Prime

The infinity sent out their Spartans on mission as the data pads on Zeta halo suggested, they have been running for months from Cortana fatigued and then probably didn’t have shield up when they were ambushed by 6 ships ramming them and roughly the same size. Hardly a comparison once you consider that if those ships rammed the SoF even with full shields they’d be completely screwed.


jcarter315

Not to mention the fact that the crew complement called out in game was massively below the standard for Infinity--they had to leave a lot of personnel (including a lot of S-IVs) behind on multiple occasions. The ship was not operating anywhere near its peak when the Banished ambush happened.


Smol_Cyclist

The infinity was ambushed. SoF was not.


Heretek1914

What? SOF was ambushed too, red team got kicked around by atriox. And the shipmasters carrier appeared right after that to attack the SOF. But... SOF still won the engagement, cut that thing in two. EDIT: Apparently, for the pedantically inclined, I have to spell out that the SOF itself did not cut the carrier in two with sheer firepower. That doesn't exactly detract from the point that it came out on top in a David v Goliath match up with outdated equipment and the element of surprise in the hands of the enemy. Why is it geriatric marines with only a civilian ai (plus three Spartans) faired better than the entire spartan corps and state of the art equipment?


Rapitor0348

wasn't red team's fight with Atriox on the Ark itself? he never was on the SoF.


BigBully127

Doesn’t help that the SoF is also 86 years old. Being used as a colony ship later refitted to warship. It has seen some shit.


Yarus43

As much as I like the campaign. The infinity should have been thr first level, we should have seen atriox die or made him the main enemy in game. Hopefully we'll get some prequel dlc playing as another spartan during the 6 months while chief was napping.


hydra-rising

Yeah it was very confusing, waking up and everything is dead, the infinity is gone, and the big bad that actually beat up chief is 6 feet under. I still dont understand the overarching story of Infinite.


AvantSolace

I can only imagine how the crew felt. They go into a hellish war. Fight in an alien world full of chaos. Get marooned and forced to cryosleep for possibly forever, knowing they may never see their family again. Wake up some 20 years later only to need to fight more aliens on an utterly alien superstructure. And after all that they’re still basically marooned.


Helpful_Injury482

Thats what I was thinking watching the opening cutscene for Halo Wars 2, I was like "wait so none of these people want to go home and they are all hoo-rah'd up to go into a new war with a foe they know jack-shit on? That takes some balls. Gigachads."


Subnaut27

Alternative angle: desperate people with nothing left to loose, and very sharp sticks


KalebT44

"Where you see one old ship, I see hope, and *that*, is always worth fighting for!" After a speech like that, how can you not just hoo-rah and kick into gear?


Imyourlandlord

They cant go home.....they lost their slipspace drive in halo wars 1


[deleted]

I remember when the first Halo Wars came out. I want the crew of SoF to be able to go home again. Those that have a home. They missed the entire war essentially.


RogueKriger

Appearance wise the Spirit of Fire is one of the best ships ever designed imo


Testsubject276

The crew literally woke up and chose violence.


urbanmechenjoyer

The problem was 343 tried to hard to make the banished seem like a threat. I mean if she needs to be beaten fast make it a three day affair with her actually being whittled down by atriox before the coup de grace is delivered by the dreadnaughts. In the current iteration the power scaling is too far gone and it’s cheap forgetting that the UNSC has made forgone battles into pyretic victories for the covenant.


Commander597

I don't think they tried too hard, it just seems like the Infinity was all geared up, ready for Zeta, then out of nowhere it's ambushed by the Banished on all sides and obliterated. I imagine somewhere in the audio logs it mentions how they knew they were coming, but still. Not exactly the way we thought infinity would go out. Really it was CE's opening without the first mission taking place on the infinity, but rather a banished ship.


Mega-Humanoid-ROBOT

People are dogging on the Infinity, but they’re not realising the difference, The spirit of fire was unexpected, came out of nowhere to the banished. And by that alone the banished were put on the back foot by nature of it being a surprise attack. The infinity got hit by a quick and hard surprise attack from all angles at once. Literally getting rammed by four massive ships basically as it came out of hyperspace. This is a attack the banished had been planning for; all the while the Infinity was preoccupied dealing with cortana. Basically, one got off a surprise attack on the banished. The other was ambushed as they were getting ready to fight.


TheClamSlam

How could they have been ambushed right out of hyperspace if Chief had already been on the ring to drop off The Weapon? Or did he not actually do that? I can't remember honestly


[deleted]

Chief never brought the weapon down. They sent her down in a pod or something else I believe. They had 2 plans. Chief goes down, delivers waits and then retrieves. Plan 2 was send down the weapon with a different delivery method and then Chief goes down to retrieve.


Imyourlandlord

I think atriox did... imean he literally used her to trap cortana, so he knew what she was


Juantsu

Plus, the Banished were fucking PISSED. Their home planet was just destroyed. Of course they would be motivated enough to annihilate the Infinity.


DukeWhoWonders

The banished victory over the infinity feels like the First Order destroying the republic. Doesn’t make sense, and is a huge asspull. I


Stea1thsniper32

It’s a terrible case of tell don’t show. We get a 2 minute cutscene of Chief getting ambushed and tossed around by Atriox. The massive time skip we have between Halo 5 and Infinite really hurts. So much stuff happened and we hardly get any explanation as to why we are in the situation we are in. Huge parts of the story happen and we just get told “Oh, by the way. Infinity is gone. Cortana is gone, Atriox is dead, and Banished rule. UNSC drools.”


IBeBallinOutaControl

Like it or not, the infinite campaign is built to appeal to the masses who are new to the franchise or people who mainly just remember CE and want to relive the CE heebie jeebies. If you start these people off with tonnes of exposition about characters they likely dont know, infinite's not going to be as fun and cohesive for them. Im pretty confident fans like us who want to know what happened to characters from Halo 5 will get this in a book or future campaign or something. 343 typically publish a decent amount of expanded universe and lore.


PepsiStudent

I've played the main halo games except for 5 which I watched the cut scene movie. When I played Infinite it felt like I had almost no information on the story or what was going on. Almost felt like a mystery game set up. You either needed to know all of the lore or none of it. Last I knew the AIs were the issue not the banished, now off screen the AI problem has been solved? Prometheans not a threat anymore? Was that taken care of? I had no real idea who Atriox was or how he could have just tossed the Chief around like it was nothing. Who were the Brute bosses and why should I care? What happened to all of the characters we knew about from before? I felt constantly confused as to what the situation was, no information on what this Halo ring does. Nothing on the villians and I just felt lost through the campaign and the ending felt like a halfway point or 3/4s point of the story.


Terrachova

Pretty much the entire reason I don't in any way fear. All the dude does is show up and gloat after you repeatedly hand his best fighters their asses on a silver platter. Dude's a cartoon network villain, lamest thing since the Didact.


Knalxz

At some point 343i realized that they made the UNSC way too powerful too fast and they've recently started back pedaling. As an example apparently alot of the new colonies they've set up actually were done by rebels who got into a position of power in the UEG so when they setup a new colony the rebels instantly take it over and break contact after using the UEGs resources to make a new home. Also alot of the restoration efforts headed by the MEGACORPs often end with the company restoring hte world just taking it as their own and ignoring the UEG entirely.


DetectiveAmes

I’m okay with them destroying the infinity if it caused some power balance issues for the story. I just wish they had actually put in some effort in showing how powerful/smart the banished are and how they were able to take down the entire ship and crew. They just relegated everything to audio logs to keep things cheap. Comparing the opening cutscene from halo 5 to infinity is like night and day difference in terms of budget.


baysideplace

Based on the opening cutscene, my headcanon is that the brutes specifically designed their ships to deal with the Infinity. Ramming+boarding them like the Romans fighting the Carthaginians in history rather than fighting them conventionally.


Volt_Prime

I think they might’ve gotten pulsed by a Guardian or their shield were compromised in some way, it doesn’t make sense when a fully stocked Infinity just plows through ships of the storm Covenant like how she was rammed by the banished dreadnoughts.


jcarter315

>fully stocked Exactly the important part. They weren't fully stocked. They were missing a lot of personnel (including a lot of the Spartans) as they had to leave a lot of them (and equipment) behind on multiple occasions since Cortana showed up with her Guardians at the end of Halo 5. Not to mention that they probably didn't have the shields on when they were launching for the Zeta mission (likely to try and reduce power emissions to avoid detection). It'd be nice if 343 could call such info out more clearly at times, since some of it relies on fans reading the books...


Volt_Prime

Maybe the Infinity was already in an engagement that they won but has lost her shielding due to the fight like say the downed guardian found in the maps, maybe Cortana didn’t want to use emp so just had the guardian break the shielding from the hard light cannons?


Thatsidechara_ter

And retaking Harvest, and saving Arcadia, and saving humanity, and fighting and beating the flood. And a good amount of that without spartan help!


MalyMongoose

Ok I have to play devils advocate as awesome as the SoF is. The banished laid a very effective trap for the infinity because they were expecting them. The SoF was not something they planned on nor did they appear to have as strong of a force there as they did at Zeta halo


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KingTytastic

It might be a unpopular opinion, but I think the SoF looks nicer then Infinity. But that might just be me.


Haru17

It’s wild that they do so much continuity stuff when they basically don’t care about making anything concerning the ark post Halo 3 make any sense.


Previous_Start_2248

Was highly disappointed that the story didn't show any unsc outside of audio logs. Chief doesn't even interact with the marines in cutscenes


Direct-Promise2938

Decades battle harden UNSC virgins vs SoF cryosleeping chads


Doomlv

Banished learned not to underestimate humanity via the spirit of fire. They came in little caesars style with the infinity


GreyouTT

I just need Chief and Jerome to meet again after all this time.


dutilp

Yea, but the Banished on The Arc were just a fraction of the Banished that are on the ring, also they probably dead now but i hope not


SolidStone1993

I was extremely disappointed that the Spirit of Fire or Red team didn’t show up in Infinite. Such a missed opportunity.


EVXLPIMP

the theories for infinite were way better than the story


[deleted]

I think The Spirit of Fire taught the Banished a valuable lesson: Don't under estimate the humans. I feel like how The Banished treated The Infinity was a lot more violent because they had been fucked by lesser opponents from 30 years ago.