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Loved this video Mr zammit We've talked about war for / fall of Cybertron but I can remember if I recommended transformers devastation to you It has a lot of shell shading and is a modern take with g1 disignes Think you'd really like it
Nah, the Spirit of Fire is one of the oldest. She was originally a colony ship, expanding humanities reach from 2473 out. She was eventually refitted to being a a Amphibious Assault Ship as Insurrection broke out. She already had the factories, living quarters, and endless cargo bays; they just retooled/repurposed them from creating colonies, to making war. Pillar of Autumn launched 37 years after the Spirit of Fire. 2510. And with Halo Wars 2 happening in 2559. The Spirit of Fire is 86 years old.
@@Wentzyyy I always remembered the Pillar of Autumn; while being outdated, also being the ship that could absorb a huge amount of damage as its hull was over engineered to do so. While the Marathon-class succeeded her, the UNSC Admiralty chose to refit and upgrade the Halcyon-class for Operation: Red Flag as she was expected to perform a suicide mission and needed survivability over firepower.
@@Daginni1 I may be mistaken but I believe Cortana chose the Autumn to be refitted for a special mission that got interrupted by the attack on reach. She was chosen for her honeycomb design like you said being able to absorb tons of damage and still be combat capable. Her new power plant and experimental Mac that could fire 3 "light" rounds on one charge made her punch a bit above her weight class.
Also, near 100 year old beefy tank of a ship was probably relatively cheap vs a new battle ship of similar size, and when each of the Spartans cost almost as much, some cost cuttings take place.
Fun fact: there was a flood outbreak on the ship while they were all in cryo-sleep and serina woke Jerome (Spartan with red accents) up to destroy the outbreak, and he did so with a chair😂
They had to kill off Forge and put Cutter, his crew and Red Team into cryo sleep because had Forge, Cutter, and Red team been around during the main games, the Covenant wouldn't have stood a chance lol. Just imagine Master Chief and Jerome leading Red and Blue team, Cutter and Keyes leading ships, and Forge and Johnson leading ground troops all together.
Ensemble Studios actually had a basic idea draft about what To-Do next if XBOX gave them the task for a Halo Wars 2 way back in 2009. Forge was going to survive because it was going to be revealed that he was Teleported by the Shield World into another nearby planet, the SoF goes there a little after they pick up his signal from his transponder and they all happily reunite and go into cryo after beating the "placeholder thread and plot of Halo" in that planet. Ensemble was shutdown not long after Halo Wars and the very basic DLC for gamemodes and two skins for the Warthog and Wraith so that plotline wasn't followed up by neither 343i nor Creative Assembly and thus Forge IS canonically dead now.
16:00 I LOVE that you picked up on that. The three high prophets during the Human-Covenant War were Truth, Mercy, and Regret. Truth was the genius political schemer and charismatic one, Mercy was the very old deep state religious figure, and Regret was the comparably MUCH younger and more rash one in their shadow who was kinda blackmailed as Truth's lacky. Regret is the one in Halo Wars. A LOT of the times when you notice some weird quirks in the Covenant, especially with competing interests or infighting, it somehow ties back to Regret and Truth's cold war power struggles. Truth was ALWAYS in the dominant position and his hold over Regret was hugely important for his power, but Regret never liked that. The funniest way this played out was that often Regret would be leading some concerted direct effort to genuinely fight the war, either disrupting some plan of Truth's or getting sabotaged by Truth. Regret using the Arbiter (Rippa Morame) here and trying to raise a Forerunner-based fleet of his own was a very early example of that. This is basically REGRET'S faction doing this. A power play. Halo 2 is basically just the story of Truth finally cutting out Regret (and by fortune Mercy) to grab absolute power. Regret was always closer to the Sangheli do to his more direct war efforts, while the Jiralhanae were Truth's pet project. Regret was deliberately led to attack Earth understrength with false info to try to get him killed, and set up the Great Schism to cut out the elites and put Truth's pets (the brutes) in power. This was ALSO supposed to be followed by Truth's secret armada of brute ships then immediately attacking and taking Earth, but Blue Team stopped that before Halo 2 so he just fired the plan and adlibbed to make up for it. That's why Halo 2 all but directly says you're doing EXACTLY what Truth wants on the level where you kill Regret, even following it with seeing Truth's manipulation via the Arbiter (Thel Vadame) right after. Once Regret was dead and couldn't reveal Truth's secrets or defend the elites, Truth was safe to essentially hostile takeover the whole Covenant.
At 13:50 it's important, but not spoken. Even 20 years before Halo: CE it is not common to see Spartans in every day combat. Cutter is judging whether or not he should use his resources to get involved. As soon as he sees Spartans, he knows it's serious and instantly decides to engage as backup.
At 18:17 ign skipped a small cutscene showing a view from the planet as the ships come out of ftl, it shows an infected elite watching the ships from the surface.
@@assassinenzo1373 I'm thinking it was more likely an oversight in editing, you can see the score screen from the end of a mission once in the video indicating it was taken from a full campaign play through. When it cut to black on the previous cutscene the editor probably thought that was the end of that cutscene and skipped forward to the next score screen. It would be an understandable mistake to make when editing down so much content.
The ending is bitter sweet or a hollow victory because, not only did they lose a great leader in Sergeant Forge, but they are also stuck in the middle of nowhere with no FTL capabilities. I loved Halo Wars and it's cutscenes. I thought it was a great job for the time
There's a documentary that goes into the making of Halo Wars and the trials and tribulations that Ensemble Studios had to go through. There seemed to be some animosity from Bungie, as it was a game that wasn't under their wing and they didn't make things easy for Ensemble, such as taking a while to respond to lore questions and details and such. Some say that Cutter's speech in the beginning alludes to what they had to go through, and this ended up being their last game before they closed down the studio. It's a great addition to the Halo universe for sure.
Legally, Halo was Bungie's intellectual property, along with the Marathon and Myth series. Microsoft Xbox, being the publisher, went over their head. There's also a few things which changed the course of the saga, with 343 Industries releasing Halo Legends in 2010. The Elites were literally elite warriors, and were basically equivalent to a Spartan in strength and intelligence, without their own power-armour. Basically, they were ace pilots and elite commanders that were only brought in near the end of the war--against Reach, and Earth itself. They would never have destroyed 'the holy relic' because they were smarter than Brutes, or killed civilians, as seen in Arcadia City, outside of a Flood invasion threat. Ensemble and Blur made Elites look inferior, and brought them in at the start of the war, because fighting against endless waves of grunts and jackals (where are the drones in Halo Wars?), with the occasional brutes or hunters thrown in, wasn't fun.
@kaizammit Oh yeah, I always hated the Windhelm scream stock audio. Never understood why big producers fall back to it. It's like, you can't spend 5 minutes to grab a guy, record his scream, and use it?
Ppl judge these games as they will- but remember; Halo 3, ODST, Halo Wars, and reach all came out within 3 years. 3 years. It took like 6 years for 343 to release Halo Infinite after Halo 5 (2015-2021) with no new stories in between besides Halo Wars 2 which i did actually really like as it remained faithful with its cutscenes and story telling
Tbf tho, some people hated this game because it was what made bungie mad at microsoft because microsoft gave their IP to another studio to make another halo game and tbh I think microsoft made the right choice considering what they’re doing with destiny now. Anyway, Halo Wars was a great addition to the halo universe and I do hope that it becomes a trilogy even if the chance is slim.
@@LeHarmacist Yeah the conditions during that era were great- and MS needs to analyze that- they were able to hire another studio to make a different style Halo game; they did it with flying colors- they want 343 to make a new style of Halo game that sticks like a BR game The task is possible but the demands are dumb. MS shoudlve let 343 continue trying to mend Halo with a good campaign and gameplay that stayed true to what old gamers want And then just hire a third party to make some BR garbage/"new modern game" instead of trying to make 343 do both simultaneously
My absolute favorite piece of mini-lore comes from this game! In some of the supplemental story material, there's an entry just after the professor was kidnapped and the Spartan (Douglas, I think? It's been awhile) and Sgt Forge were talking to Cutter about going after her. Basically, Forge confronted the Spartan for having suggested using weapons to eliminate her since she's a security risk, and the altercation ended in some interior damage to the ship. It then notes that Forge and the Spartans would often be seen dining together after the incident.
The Pillar of Autumn was a very old, retired ship when it refitted for Captain Keyes prior to Halo 1. There is a good deal of lore and history to the ship.
Weren't the Halcyom class cruisers kinda shitty at their job, but Autumns retrofit made it so good that UNSC started to manufacture that retrofit as a whole new ship class, after the war.
@@battedbook5811 yeah they were super underpowered because of how heavy they were which meant they weren't fast but they were nearly indestructible. The Autumn's refit fixed that issue, made the weapons more effective And made it so effective that they made a new heavy cruiser class called the Autumn class post-war.
@@battedbook5811They were considered unnecessary before the war but during the war they were pretty good and could take a beating but their only problem was that they were cumbersome in maneuvering, they were slower than most ships, and their MAC wasn’t very good compared to other ships. The only good thing about them was the honey comb interior. Pillar of Autumn ended up getting an upgrade to the MAC which allowed it to fire 3 consecutive shots, an engine upgrade, a reactor upgrade, and total system upgrade. Post upgrade the ship was very good and led to the creation of the Autumn class cruiser because of how good it was post upgrade.
@@battedbook5811 Many of them were overly expensive and quite survivable, but they were not designed with a lot of weapons by design and their engines were very underpowered, so after an initial production run of, if I remember correctly, 50 Halcyons, they cut production and shifted over to mass producing Marathons which were, in many ways, a superior design, if a little less survivable. And only a dozen or so Halcyons even received the honeycombed interior which made them nigh-indestructibe, but the rest of the ships were still very tanky. And the post-war Autumn-class is only partially based on the Pillar of Autumn's upgrades because, from what I read, it doesn't have the honeycombed interior or the three-round burst-fire MAC system, so, once again, the UNSC is cutting costs. Lore aside: in my opinion, the way Halo lore itself deals with Halcyons is silly. They quite literally fit into a sort of "Wonder Weapon" niche, and when it comes to a war for the very survival of the species, I don't think the UNSC would spare any expense in producing more of them, and finding ways to mount more weapons on them than World War II battleships.
@@battedbook5811Halcyons had not much weapons so it was underpowered compared to others unsc cruisers and it was mych heavier which made it slower but thanks to the Halcyons honeycome design it could take enormous amounts of damage i think it even said in halo warfleet book that a halcyon cruiser can still fully operate even if the hull was 85% destroyed
“Not much of the spartans are there?” 24:00 Game: *Cracks knuckles* *Cracks neck* 24:32 *Proceeds to make one of the most beautiful cutscenes in gaming with Spartans*
The game was done by Ensemble Studios, who went bankrupt mid production of the game, The cutscenes were done by Blur again, same guys who did the cutscenes for Halo 2 and Halo Wars 2. And yeah, the captain and professor are the same ones from HW2. They just got completely redesigned to match what the new VAs looked like. Even though it doesn't look as good as their newer stuff. When this came out, these were some of the greatest looking cutscenes for halo.
So at this point Keyes isn’t the captain of the Pillar of Autumn. Keyes became captain just before the Reach campaign. The pillar of Autumn was at Reach for refitting in preparation for Operation Red Flag and Keyes was the best captain they had so he was put in command of the Autumn for that. His ship before the Autumn was a destroyer named the Iroquois. The Spirit of Fire was lost because a person named Terrance Hood later called Lord Hood decided to ignore his orders to pick up the Spirit of Fire’s log buoy and instead engaged the Covenant when the UNSC was ordering to abandon the planet. Hood’s ship was destroyed and they lost the buoy. It got picked up later and then that ship was destroyed completely losing the buoy entirely. The ship was designed as Lost With All Hands by the UNSC but the families of the people serving on board didn’t accept that and they all hold out hope that it will be found. The daughter of Forge decided to go into the salvage business so she could try to find her father. She goes on many adventures with her crew. They actually ended up finding the planet they destroyed and they found some of the Spirit of Fire. The crew realized the Spirit of Fire survived and is still out there. They found a broken ai they named Little Bit and they ended up finding 343 Guilty Spark’s damaged remains. Guilty Spark was alive but only his human memories remained and he decided he wanted to go by his human name Chackas. Little Bit kept it from Rion Forge but he had the message from Forge and he decided she should know of her father’s sacrifice. The Halo Wars storyline is actually my favorite Halo storyline. It’s basically an underdog story. By Halo Wars 2 the Spirit of Fire is nearly 100 years old. It began life as a colony ship and got retrofitted early on in the war to be a carrier and an orbital factory. It’s the second largest UNSC ship at 2.5 kilometers long. Humans on the Ark have made contact with the Spirit of Fire but last we hear of it they are still stranded at the Ark.
@@sappygooberthe books covering Rion’s story are Smoke and Shadow, Renegades, and Point of Light. I can’t remember exactly what order they go in though. From what I’ve heard the Forerunner trilogy helps inform the story a bit too but I haven’t read those so I couldn’t say for sure.
Oh man, these cutscenes are some of my all time favourite halo cinematics. The characters, sets, tone and I can go on forever about what I love about it. Enjoy kai because this is worth the title epic
The intro cinematic actually symbolizes the development of the game by the devs. Halo Wars had a notoriously rough development that took *5 years* to finish. Microsoft put the project upon Ensemble Studios, and Bungie felt like their franchise was being pimped out so they weren't thrilled with the arrangement. Ensemble Studios was basically the guy in the middle just trying to finish a chaotic project. "At first, it was going well, then setback after setback, loss after loss, made what was supposed to be a quick and decisive win into *5 years* of hell." Another fun fact is that Halo CE was supposed to be an RTS in the early stages of development. This means that Halo Wars is a look at what the franchise would have been if Bungie never changed it from its original genre. This was also Ensemble Studio's final game before they were dissolved. Halo Wars is special because despite all it's obstacles, it turned into a great game.
Also something that was probably mentioned is Keyes was not the Captain of the Pillar of Autumn during the Battle of Arcadia, who the Captain was at the time is unknown. As far as I remember, Keyes didn't get his first command, the UNSC Iroquois, until April of 2552, 5 months before his death in September the same year. He didn't get command of the Autumn until August of 2552.
These cinematics were some of my favorite back in the day and what drew me to Halo Wars. You can definitely see the age in some moments but man does so much of it hold up. And yeah, I forget why it happened specifically but the recast of Anders and Cutter was odd to me and a lot of others. Is what it is :P
Forge was part of the Orion program, basically spartan 1's, so that's why he was such a badass. Not to mention, he's the only human to ever kill an arbiter, not even a spartan has done that
This reaction series has really made me so nostalgic. Halo was one of those franchises that really shaped my childhood and was a fun escape from reality for me. Thanks for all the insight and great reviews.
And changed Anders race entirely. She went from Asian to white, but I think it had to do with Bungie possibly owning the old character model rights or the original data was lost when Ensemble folded.
Halo Wars 1 is one of my favorite games of all time and is a cherished part of my childhood. It really is a joy listening to you break down all the subtle parts of the cinematography I never picked up on back then. Thanks for making this video Kai.
4:50 this dialogue of the intro of the game, its also in a way represents what the team of the game went throug when making the game, as the studio behind the game it was their first and only halo game, before hand they were doing medieval type rts games, they asked bungie for assitance on some aspect but since bungie was quite pissed at microsoft as they quite legit used the ip to make a rts wihout bungie's knowlegde, so the studio went a bit of delevopment hell and that the studio had to close some time later when the game launched, thats why halo wars 2 its been made by 343 studios
That small part about the Autumn, It's just because the ship was crazy old by 2552. In fact, when Cortana chose the ship, it was just an ancient, sluggish, poorly armed brick. It was a death trap - though it would've been a slow death thanks to the comically strong armor. After it was refitted though, with much more powerful engines, a MAC able to one-shot any Covie ship, and most importantly Cortana and Keyes flying it - not to mention the 30 Spartans on board - it was nearly impossible to take down. Matter of fact, it took an entire fleet several hours to disable the Autumn with no support whatsoever. And Cortana even managed to kill 4 Covie ships before going down. Not to mention this was right AFTER the last stand at Reach, where the Autumn also scored a few kills and took a lot of damage.
this is missing a cutscene - the Flood reveal when they reach the planet - comes after the Serina leaving note and before the Covenant alerted to the ship
The Autumn is 43 years old by the time of Halo CE, Keyes was not it’s captain during halo wars. He was reassigned to it right for Halo CE for operation Red Flag
13:05 the pillar of autumn wasn’t commanded by keys yet as he took over the autumn during operation red flag. The Pillar of Autumn is a og model of halcyon class light cruiser, old but tough, in this cutscene we learned its been damaged in battle, it will be decommissioned to the planet Reach until it is retrofitted into its customized version turning it closer to being a modern Marathon class heavy cruiser as we see it in halo reach and halo ce. Post Human Covenant war the pillar of autumn becomes its own class of ships shortened to autumn class cruisers as a heavy medium between firepower, durability, and speed which we see a few in halo 5’s cutscenes surrounding Earth and the Infinity
This missed a cutscene, there was one that introduced the flood and it was really cool (it had the 2 ships exiting Slipspace form the ground POV and a flood combat form watching them)
Another absolutely cool video by you that points out little cinematic notes that I enjoy, yet don't think about until you point them out. Even as a creative myself, it's refreshing to see another person recognize certain aspects that I enjoy without realizing. Top video as always, thank you!
The shield worlds where the forerunners bunkers from the halo array but there A.I in charge of defence mercendient Bias (I think that’s it) was infected with the floods logic virus and was convinced to turn on the the forerunners ultimately firing the halo array a day early before the forerunners could get to the bunkers (shield worlds) Those sentinels that came out when the spirit was being pulled into the planet was a form of decontamination checking the ship for flood spores
What’s cool is that Omega team from the trailer are a real Spartan team. Leon, Robert and August. I wish we got to continue the Spirit of Fire story. We got an operation themed after them in Infinite. It’s also funny how the Spartans are 20 years old at this point. Still young kids.
You know what mate, I have loved Halo since I was about 5 in 2001, and watching you explaining the cinematography within these games has explained why I loved Halo to begin with. The storytelling and how they portray the story visually is incredible. Despite completing the Bungie era games 100s of times, watching you has made me play them again. Me and a friend have started Halo 2 on Legendary recently.
I love the contrast between the Arbiter's taunt about humanity and the way the Spartan's fight scene prove him wrong. These animated cutscenes are higher quality than anything Paramount put in its streaming series. This is the movie we should have gotten.
The harvest intro, spartan fight scenes and forges fight scenes are my favorite. The characters have loads of personality which makes up for the short cgi cut scenes
One of the recurring background theories in Halo is that some of the more awkward Halo footage/pictures are actually doctored or staged propaganda, so it's possible the Elites stupidly waltzing towards the marines and getting gunned down could be canonically explained as bad UNSC propaganda. The most well known example of that is Halo 2's cover art. It's canonically an actual photo of Chief. Heavily doctored. The guy who took the photo was actually the propagandist who was made to edit it. He wasn't a huge fan of that.
26:19 Ripa Mora is... a big sonuvabitch, even by sangheili standards, as seen in the earlier cutscene where he backhands his subordinate. He is big, strong, and angry. His lore states that before becoming the arbiter, he would fly into rages when in battle, and slaughter indiscriminately, often being the last living thing on the battlefield. and it shows in gameplay too. In Halo Wars 1, only the Covenant fielded their leaders onto the ground, the UNSC could field Spartans as Hero units, but if you were playing the Arbiter, you could send him into combat directly, and his unit power was called "Rage" he would draw his swords, an aura would surround his hands, and you'd take direct control of him, using the left analogue stick to move, and the right analogue stick to attack. This Elite could take apart whole armies single handedly, including hero and super units, even leaping into the sky to uppercut aircraft. a fully upgraded and veterancyied Arbiter could 2v1 Scarabs and win, with health to spare.
Pillar of autumn was the ship often dedicated to carry experimental weapons. It often carried Spartans. So it being present was an excuse to have the rhino's and Spartans
4 and a half minutes in and I have to agree that the Elites in these cutscenes are my favourite. As for the Spartan armour, it's MK4 Mjolnir, the predecessor design (in lore) to what the Chief wears in CE, and the main platform of what Jorge wears in Reach (his is heavily modified to his liking, much to the disapproval of Halsey)
You're just going to have to get over the Wilhelm scream, it's everywhere and you know this. Every medium of entertainment has these iconic memes that are persistent in everything.
Something fun, all the Spartan IIs not featured in this game are only 20, those that are featured in this game are between 16 & 18 thanks to being in Cryo after they died in the augmentation process. Their existance/survival is kept a secret from the Spartan IIs.
With the halo Wars games there has been issues between the Gameplay devs and the Cinematic studio Not coordinating what the Spartans look like So thats why the trailer Spartans look different i think But i know this was the issue in HW2 with amazing Spartan models but when your in game the Spartan armour is quite different. Btw there are Halo books around the aftermath of Halo wars one The books are based from the point of view of Forge's Daughter. Oh and about the Pillar of Autumn it would not be captained by Keys due to him either being captaining his Halberd Class Destroyer He was put in charge of the post refit POA just before reach
Might have already been answered by the reason why Cutter looks different in Halo Wars 2 compared to how he does in this is because, if I remember correctly, in Halo Wars 2 they are modeled off their actors instead of being entirely designed models like in Halo Wars 1.
A Rather neat piece of irony that can be found within this, Is that when originally beaten down by this Arbiter, and when finally coming out ontop during their second encounter, Forge pulls his combat knife both times, A Combat Knife which he affectionately named 'Lucy" in external material. Bringing a little bit of Irony to this Arbiters statement of "There will be no Female to save you this time" As a Feminine named Knife possibly in the first, But most certainly in the second encounter Saved his life.
First time I saw that intro cinematic was after my friend and I rented the game. Needless to say, our 12 years old mind were just blown by it all. We finished the game in one sitting. X)
Something to keep in mind about Jerome's voice is he's literally 15 at the time of this game, same with all the Spartan II's. Make's sense that his voice would drop in the years until Halo Wars 2
Arbiter before Keith David Arbiter. Blur studios are legendary for their cutscenes and trailers. They definitely outdid themselves for Halo wars 2 though, I really hope they do more in the halo franchise moving forward.
Halo wars is a great spin off game made by ensemble after they worked on the age of empires series. It plays entirely different as it is an RTS, but it is a fun game and was a great idea as a spin-off
Also yeah that first interaction with this Arbiter really sets him apart from Thel. "I care not for your little life" in contrast to Thel saying "That makes two of us" when Rtas tells him that his Elites lives are valued over him
Halo wars came out in 09, so it’s likely the cinematic were being worked on since 2008 which makes it 15 -16 years old. The video also misses one cutscene where they arrive at the shield world.
Kai, you should try and watch some of the halo infinite campaign cutscenes, I think you would love it as a longtime fan of halo as some scenes are literally gems, full of emotion and all… Great video by the way! 👍🏻
Thank you for watching and I am making my way there! I put out a halo poll every month on the Patreon to see what the next two games we're covering are. Stay tuned and you will see it ✌🏻
It is the same captain and professor Anders, they just couldn't get the same actors for some reason, so rather than put the old character models on the new mocap actors, they based the new character models on the new actors. Both sets of actors a great job in my opinion.
Yes, there was a lot that they cut out. A Covenant campaign and a Flood campaign, for one, and a sequel where Sergeant Forge survives (which we get in Halo Wars 2 multiplayer). Halo Wars 2 changed a lot of lore, being a prequel. UNSC armies in the original lore spent twenty-seven years fighting grunts and jackals before the Elite force (pun intended) were called in for the invasion of Reach, and subsequently, Earth, but that wasn't fun. Yes, it was graphically fantastic when it came out--although I saw the Lost in Space movie the final cutscene cribbed from. Interestingly, Halo Wars and Halo Wars 2 completely removed the Drones (flying bugs). No idea why.
Halo wars is one of my favourite games in the franchise i loved all the characters i was very sad about forge dying and serena dying before halo wars 2
These cutscenes are missing a scene around 18:10 where the pillar of autumn comes out of slip space and a flood form is seen on screen not sure why but its missing in here
At that point in the lore i think Keyes is still teaching at the naval academy since they only brought him out of his dead end when they were getting desperate
You mentioned that the game appeared to have had a smaller budget then HW2. This is actually an understatement. Ensemble studios didn’t actually aim to make a Halo title. They had actually made an original science fiction game for console, but after finishing production, meeting every quota Microsoft had asked, then finally got to present it, Microsoft went, “Yes. Great. Perfect. Now make it halo.” undoing years of work, and making them turn assets into Halo assets, and redoing entire assets all together. Not to mention working around a time-line that had already been established by other sources. And Bungie actually was also put in a bad position , now having to hand hold a separate studio in their universe. However, folks from Ensemble would note Bungie having a notorious bad attitude towards them, not even answering questions about art or story direction. Seemingly directing unpleasant feelings towards them and not Microsoft. This is actually why there are things like the Halo: CE assault rifle, as Bungie just wiped their hands of Ensemble’s predicament, contributing to their stress, only momentarily saying yes or no to something they had made. This game was also the first canonical representation of the first MJOlNIR suit, the MK-4 suit. The Arbiter was also the second to last named Ripa ‘Moramee. And unlike his more established and notable peer, he was taken from a Covenant prison colony. And, if you are curious about John Forge, he had a daughter Rion Forge, who would spend decades of her life searching for answers to her father’s fate in the series of books by Kelly Gay.
Whoever was playing this for ign missed a cutscene at 18:00 theres supposed to be one that shows the spirit of fire going out of slipspace and ending up above the flood infested planet
The scene where the SoF comes out of the ground, with the trees showing scale to just how fucking massive it is. That is why we need a Halo space combat game. We got Sins of the Prophets, and that is awesome, but its still nothing official.
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Loved this video Mr zammit
We've talked about war for / fall of Cybertron but I can remember if I recommended transformers devastation to you
It has a lot of shell shading and is a modern take with g1 disignes
Think you'd really like it
Just to answer the Pillar of Autumn question. During the Reach incident it was in the dry dock for repair and retrofit.
aye man, you should react to SODAZ - remember. great side story during the reach invasion
@@sappygoober he did
Unfortunately it's on his patron only
@@WyattCreel-wc5wf oohh okey
The pillar of autumn is one of the oldest ships to have survived to nearly the end of the war.
Nah, the Spirit of Fire is one of the oldest. She was originally a colony ship, expanding humanities reach from 2473 out. She was eventually refitted to being a a Amphibious Assault Ship as Insurrection broke out. She already had the factories, living quarters, and endless cargo bays; they just retooled/repurposed them from creating colonies, to making war.
Pillar of Autumn launched 37 years after the Spirit of Fire. 2510.
And with Halo Wars 2 happening in 2559. The Spirit of Fire is 86 years old.
@@Daginni1 Then they are both really old ships.
@@Wentzyyy I always remembered the Pillar of Autumn; while being outdated, also being the ship that could absorb a huge amount of damage as its hull was over engineered to do so. While the Marathon-class succeeded her, the UNSC Admiralty chose to refit and upgrade the Halcyon-class for Operation: Red Flag as she was expected to perform a suicide mission and needed survivability over firepower.
@@Daginni1 I may be mistaken but I believe Cortana chose the Autumn to be refitted for a special mission that got interrupted by the attack on reach. She was chosen for her honeycomb design like you said being able to absorb tons of damage and still be combat capable. Her new power plant and experimental Mac that could fire 3 "light" rounds on one charge made her punch a bit above her weight class.
Also, near 100 year old beefy tank of a ship was probably relatively cheap vs a new battle ship of similar size, and when each of the Spartans cost almost as much, some cost cuttings take place.
Fun fact: there was a flood outbreak on the ship while they were all in cryo-sleep and serina woke Jerome (Spartan with red accents) up to destroy the outbreak, and he did so with a chair😂
something about red team and chairs
Source?
@StickmanGamer-yf3jt An old Halo comic, I'm trying to find it but this is true information and I'll get back you you when I figure it out.
@@HelljumperE7ZJ yeah mb i found the source already
They had to kill off Forge and put Cutter, his crew and Red Team into cryo sleep because had Forge, Cutter, and Red team been around during the main games, the Covenant wouldn't have stood a chance lol.
Just imagine Master Chief and Jerome leading Red and Blue team, Cutter and Keyes leading ships, and Forge and Johnson leading ground troops all together.
Damn. Now that is something i would love to see.
I'd love to see this alternative universe, would be wild
Forge being a son of an Orion(or Spartan 1) makes him perfect to be with Johnson too since he’s also an Orion.
hopefully one day we get to see Jerome and chief meet.
Ensemble Studios actually had a basic idea draft about what To-Do next if XBOX gave them the task for a Halo Wars 2 way back in 2009.
Forge was going to survive because it was going to be revealed that he was Teleported by the Shield World into another nearby planet, the SoF goes there a little after they pick up his signal from his transponder and they all happily reunite and go into cryo after beating the "placeholder thread and plot of Halo" in that planet.
Ensemble was shutdown not long after Halo Wars and the very basic DLC for gamemodes and two skins for the Warthog and Wraith so that plotline wasn't followed up by neither 343i nor Creative Assembly and thus Forge IS canonically dead now.
Lord Admiral Hood was actually Captain Cutter’s Executive Officer before climbing the ranks. Shows how long Cutters been in the UNSC.
And to this day in current cannon he holds himself responsible for the Spirit of Fire being “lost with all hands”
I want a reunion between hood and cutter so bad.
same but how trippy will it be that cryo has changed how big the age gap is
sgt forge is the only human including a spartan to kill an arbiter, and the only marine to wield and energy sword
He's also half Spartan (son of an Orion/Spartan I)
Fun fact: Gideon Emery voices Jerome-092 (Spartan Red Team leader) in Halo Wars 1 and he voiced ( and mo-capped) Captain Cutter in Halo Wars 2
And then also Governor Sloan in Halo 5 lol
@@Adam-ry6ze ah of course! I nearly forgor
@@Mega_Xenomorphhe seems to be everywhere now that I think about it, he’s also Biggs in FF7 Remake/Rebirth
I know that I think about it they do sound alike.
He beat the Flood with only a chair!
16:00 I LOVE that you picked up on that.
The three high prophets during the Human-Covenant War were Truth, Mercy, and Regret. Truth was the genius political schemer and charismatic one, Mercy was the very old deep state religious figure, and Regret was the comparably MUCH younger and more rash one in their shadow who was kinda blackmailed as Truth's lacky. Regret is the one in Halo Wars.
A LOT of the times when you notice some weird quirks in the Covenant, especially with competing interests or infighting, it somehow ties back to Regret and Truth's cold war power struggles. Truth was ALWAYS in the dominant position and his hold over Regret was hugely important for his power, but Regret never liked that. The funniest way this played out was that often Regret would be leading some concerted direct effort to genuinely fight the war, either disrupting some plan of Truth's or getting sabotaged by Truth.
Regret using the Arbiter (Rippa Morame) here and trying to raise a Forerunner-based fleet of his own was a very early example of that. This is basically REGRET'S faction doing this. A power play.
Halo 2 is basically just the story of Truth finally cutting out Regret (and by fortune Mercy) to grab absolute power.
Regret was always closer to the Sangheli do to his more direct war efforts, while the Jiralhanae were Truth's pet project. Regret was deliberately led to attack Earth understrength with false info to try to get him killed, and set up the Great Schism to cut out the elites and put Truth's pets (the brutes) in power. This was ALSO supposed to be followed by Truth's secret armada of brute ships then immediately attacking and taking Earth, but Blue Team stopped that before Halo 2 so he just fired the plan and adlibbed to make up for it. That's why Halo 2 all but directly says you're doing EXACTLY what Truth wants on the level where you kill Regret, even following it with seeing Truth's manipulation via the Arbiter (Thel Vadame) right after. Once Regret was dead and couldn't reveal Truth's secrets or defend the elites, Truth was safe to essentially hostile takeover the whole Covenant.
very well said!
Halo wars was the "most halo looking" of all the franchise, the art direction was just top tier
At 13:50 it's important, but not spoken. Even 20 years before Halo: CE it is not common to see Spartans in every day combat. Cutter is judging whether or not he should use his resources to get involved. As soon as he sees Spartans, he knows it's serious and instantly decides to engage as backup.
Remember that the Spirit of Fire is 2 and half kilometers long as well, so when you see it in the expansive set pieces, they are ASTRONOMICALLY large.
The part where they enter the hollow planet fits that perfectly, where you can see how big it is compared to the pine trees.
At 18:17 ign skipped a small cutscene showing a view from the planet as the ships come out of ftl, it shows an infected elite watching the ships from the surface.
I was wondering why that Elite wasnt shown, one of the creepiest parts in the 2nd half of the game
Probably because of YT and gore I think
@@assassinenzo1373 I'm thinking it was more likely an oversight in editing, you can see the score screen from the end of a mission once in the video indicating it was taken from a full campaign play through. When it cut to black on the previous cutscene the editor probably thought that was the end of that cutscene and skipped forward to the next score screen. It would be an understandable mistake to make when editing down so much content.
That scene horrified me my first time playing the game. I wasn't expecting the flood to be in it
The ending is bitter sweet or a hollow victory because, not only did they lose a great leader in Sergeant Forge, but they are also stuck in the middle of nowhere with no FTL capabilities. I loved Halo Wars and it's cutscenes. I thought it was a great job for the time
It still is a great job
@@benjaminbatema6963 exactly and ensemble deserves an apology from everybody, the community, microsoft, and bungie
There's a documentary that goes into the making of Halo Wars and the trials and tribulations that Ensemble Studios had to go through. There seemed to be some animosity from Bungie, as it was a game that wasn't under their wing and they didn't make things easy for Ensemble, such as taking a while to respond to lore questions and details and such. Some say that Cutter's speech in the beginning alludes to what they had to go through, and this ended up being their last game before they closed down the studio. It's a great addition to the Halo universe for sure.
Legally, Halo was Bungie's intellectual property, along with the Marathon and Myth series. Microsoft Xbox, being the publisher, went over their head.
There's also a few things which changed the course of the saga, with 343 Industries releasing Halo Legends in 2010. The Elites were literally elite warriors, and were basically equivalent to a Spartan in strength and intelligence, without their own power-armour. Basically, they were ace pilots and elite commanders that were only brought in near the end of the war--against Reach, and Earth itself. They would never have destroyed 'the holy relic' because they were smarter than Brutes, or killed civilians, as seen in Arcadia City, outside of a Flood invasion threat. Ensemble and Blur made Elites look inferior, and brought them in at the start of the war, because fighting against endless waves of grunts and jackals (where are the drones in Halo Wars?), with the occasional brutes or hunters thrown in, wasn't fun.
I never noticed before but when the Arbiter ignites his swords, look at the elites behind him!! 15:15
No one expects weapons to be drawn by a Prophet, especially from a servant of the prophets (the arbiter). I thought it was a cool touch tho fs.
remember by lore he is not allowed to deactivate it until something has died
Filmmaker: "Oh, is that a Windhelm scream? Fuck you!"
I laughed more than I probably should've.
I'm sorry if you love it, does my nut in.
@kaizammit Oh yeah, I always hated the Windhelm scream stock audio. Never understood why big producers fall back to it. It's like, you can't spend 5 minutes to grab a guy, record his scream, and use it?
@@cleanserofnoobs4162 It's actually mostly editors that put it in, not producers.
It would still need to be signed off by the Director. If an editor put that in my film without permission, I'd slap him back to his birth.
@@kaizammit As would I. Hearing that takes me completely out of a film.
Ppl judge these games as they will- but remember; Halo 3, ODST, Halo Wars, and reach all came out within 3 years.
3 years.
It took like 6 years for 343 to release Halo Infinite after Halo 5 (2015-2021) with no new stories in between besides Halo Wars 2 which i did actually really like as it remained faithful with its cutscenes and story telling
Tbf tho, some people hated this game because it was what made bungie mad at microsoft because microsoft gave their IP to another studio to make another halo game and tbh I think microsoft made the right choice considering what they’re doing with destiny now.
Anyway, Halo Wars was a great addition to the halo universe and I do hope that it becomes a trilogy even if the chance is slim.
@@LeHarmacist Yeah the conditions during that era were great- and MS needs to analyze that- they were able to hire another studio to make a different style Halo game; they did it with flying colors- they want 343 to make a new style of Halo game that sticks like a BR game
The task is possible but the demands are dumb.
MS shoudlve let 343 continue trying to mend Halo with a good campaign and gameplay that stayed true to what old gamers want
And then just hire a third party to make some BR garbage/"new modern game" instead of trying to make 343 do both simultaneously
My absolute favorite piece of mini-lore comes from this game! In some of the supplemental story material, there's an entry just after the professor was kidnapped and the Spartan (Douglas, I think? It's been awhile) and Sgt Forge were talking to Cutter about going after her. Basically, Forge confronted the Spartan for having suggested using weapons to eliminate her since she's a security risk, and the altercation ended in some interior damage to the ship. It then notes that Forge and the Spartans would often be seen dining together after the incident.
T’was jerome not douglass
Spartan 1.5 vs Spartan 2
@@AlbertWillHelmWestings2618 Not a 1.5
John is either an Orion or not one at all. Lucy is the one that could be a 1.5
@@cpMetis people usually refer to the children of Spartan 1s (aka Orions) as spartans 1.5, John Forge is the son of a Spartan 1
@@Diego-fn3qlsweet, that’s something I didn’t know
The Pillar of Autumn was a very old, retired ship when it refitted for Captain Keyes prior to Halo 1. There is a good deal of lore and history to the ship.
Weren't the Halcyom class cruisers kinda shitty at their job, but Autumns retrofit made it so good that UNSC started to manufacture that retrofit as a whole new ship class, after the war.
@@battedbook5811 yeah they were super underpowered because of how heavy they were which meant they weren't fast but they were nearly indestructible. The Autumn's refit fixed that issue, made the weapons more effective And made it so effective that they made a new heavy cruiser class called the Autumn class post-war.
@@battedbook5811They were considered unnecessary before the war but during the war they were pretty good and could take a beating but their only problem was that they were cumbersome in maneuvering, they were slower than most ships, and their MAC wasn’t very good compared to other ships. The only good thing about them was the honey comb interior. Pillar of Autumn ended up getting an upgrade to the MAC which allowed it to fire 3 consecutive shots, an engine upgrade, a reactor upgrade, and total system upgrade. Post upgrade the ship was very good and led to the creation of the Autumn class cruiser because of how good it was post upgrade.
@@battedbook5811 Many of them were overly expensive and quite survivable, but they were not designed with a lot of weapons by design and their engines were very underpowered, so after an initial production run of, if I remember correctly, 50 Halcyons, they cut production and shifted over to mass producing Marathons which were, in many ways, a superior design, if a little less survivable. And only a dozen or so Halcyons even received the honeycombed interior which made them nigh-indestructibe, but the rest of the ships were still very tanky. And the post-war Autumn-class is only partially based on the Pillar of Autumn's upgrades because, from what I read, it doesn't have the honeycombed interior or the three-round burst-fire MAC system, so, once again, the UNSC is cutting costs.
Lore aside: in my opinion, the way Halo lore itself deals with Halcyons is silly. They quite literally fit into a sort of "Wonder Weapon" niche, and when it comes to a war for the very survival of the species, I don't think the UNSC would spare any expense in producing more of them, and finding ways to mount more weapons on them than World War II battleships.
@@battedbook5811Halcyons had not much weapons so it was underpowered compared to others unsc cruisers and it was mych heavier which made it slower but thanks to the Halcyons honeycome design it could take enormous amounts of damage i think it even said in halo warfleet book that a halcyon cruiser can still fully operate even if the hull was 85% destroyed
“Not much of the spartans are there?” 24:00
Game: *Cracks knuckles*
*Cracks neck*
24:32 *Proceeds to make one of the most beautiful cutscenes in gaming with Spartans*
The game was done by Ensemble Studios, who went bankrupt mid production of the game, The cutscenes were done by Blur again, same guys who did the cutscenes for Halo 2 and Halo Wars 2. And yeah, the captain and professor are the same ones from HW2. They just got completely redesigned to match what the new VAs looked like. Even though it doesn't look as good as their newer stuff. When this came out, these were some of the greatest looking cutscenes for halo.
So at this point Keyes isn’t the captain of the Pillar of Autumn. Keyes became captain just before the Reach campaign. The pillar of Autumn was at Reach for refitting in preparation for Operation Red Flag and Keyes was the best captain they had so he was put in command of the Autumn for that. His ship before the Autumn was a destroyer named the Iroquois. The Spirit of Fire was lost because a person named Terrance Hood later called Lord Hood decided to ignore his orders to pick up the Spirit of Fire’s log buoy and instead engaged the Covenant when the UNSC was ordering to abandon the planet. Hood’s ship was destroyed and they lost the buoy. It got picked up later and then that ship was destroyed completely losing the buoy entirely. The ship was designed as Lost With All Hands by the UNSC but the families of the people serving on board didn’t accept that and they all hold out hope that it will be found. The daughter of Forge decided to go into the salvage business so she could try to find her father. She goes on many adventures with her crew. They actually ended up finding the planet they destroyed and they found some of the Spirit of Fire. The crew realized the Spirit of Fire survived and is still out there. They found a broken ai they named Little Bit and they ended up finding 343 Guilty Spark’s damaged remains. Guilty Spark was alive but only his human memories remained and he decided he wanted to go by his human name Chackas. Little Bit kept it from Rion Forge but he had the message from Forge and he decided she should know of her father’s sacrifice. The Halo Wars storyline is actually my favorite Halo storyline. It’s basically an underdog story. By Halo Wars 2 the Spirit of Fire is nearly 100 years old. It began life as a colony ship and got retrofitted early on in the war to be a carrier and an orbital factory. It’s the second largest UNSC ship at 2.5 kilometers long. Humans on the Ark have made contact with the Spirit of Fire but last we hear of it they are still stranded at the Ark.
thank you, what books do i need to read? or do i need to find all the black boxes?
@@sappygooberthe books covering Rion’s story are Smoke and Shadow, Renegades, and Point of Light. I can’t remember exactly what order they go in though. From what I’ve heard the Forerunner trilogy helps inform the story a bit too but I haven’t read those so I couldn’t say for sure.
@@Giddog40 thank you very much
David sobolov kills it as Ripa's(arbiter) voice in this game
Oh man, these cutscenes are some of my all time favourite halo cinematics. The characters, sets, tone and I can go on forever about what I love about it. Enjoy kai because this is worth the title epic
They left out the cutscene of the spirit of fire arriving at the shield world and getting a tease of the flood
The intro cinematic actually symbolizes the development of the game by the devs. Halo Wars had a notoriously rough development that took *5 years* to finish. Microsoft put the project upon Ensemble Studios, and Bungie felt like their franchise was being pimped out so they weren't thrilled with the arrangement. Ensemble Studios was basically the guy in the middle just trying to finish a chaotic project.
"At first, it was going well, then setback after setback, loss after loss, made what was supposed to be a quick and decisive win into *5 years* of hell."
Another fun fact is that Halo CE was supposed to be an RTS in the early stages of development. This means that Halo Wars is a look at what the franchise would have been if Bungie never changed it from its original genre.
This was also Ensemble Studio's final game before they were dissolved. Halo Wars is special because despite all it's obstacles, it turned into a great game.
Also something that was probably mentioned is Keyes was not the Captain of the Pillar of Autumn during the Battle of Arcadia, who the Captain was at the time is unknown. As far as I remember, Keyes didn't get his first command, the UNSC Iroquois, until April of 2552, 5 months before his death in September the same year. He didn't get command of the Autumn until August of 2552.
These cinematics were some of my favorite back in the day and what drew me to Halo Wars. You can definitely see the age in some moments but man does so much of it hold up. And yeah, I forget why it happened specifically but the recast of Anders and Cutter was odd to me and a lot of others. Is what it is :P
Forge was part of the Orion program, basically spartan 1's, so that's why he was such a badass. Not to mention, he's the only human to ever kill an arbiter, not even a spartan has done that
He’s actually the child of an Orion program participant if I remember correctly
Oh dude the excitement you get when the spartans come on screen, its like being back in my mates basement playing these for the first time. Love it!!!
This reaction series has really made me so nostalgic. Halo was one of those franchises that really shaped my childhood and was a fun escape from reality for me. Thanks for all the insight and great reviews.
5:35 We will respect the Wilhelm scream in this Halo Wars fandom. Sheb Wooley put his soul into that scream in the 1950s.
You can keep it.
25:05 Elites: "Those are Spartans, the elite soldiers of humanity, let's charge them with spears.."
I do love that Jerome’s voice in HW1 is Cutter in HW2. No clue why they de-aged Cutter 😂
And changed Anders race entirely. She went from Asian to white, but I think it had to do with Bungie possibly owning the old character model rights or the original data was lost when Ensemble folded.
Halo Wars 1 is one of my favorite games of all time and is a cherished part of my childhood. It really is a joy listening to you break down all the subtle parts of the cinematography I never picked up on back then. Thanks for making this video Kai.
I'm pretty sure Sgt. Forge was part of the Orion project along with Sgt. Johnson which was the first attempt at making supersoldiers.
4:50 this dialogue of the intro of the game, its also in a way represents what the team of the game went throug when making the game, as the studio behind the game it was their first and only halo game, before hand they were doing medieval type rts games, they asked bungie for assitance on some aspect but since bungie was quite pissed at microsoft as they quite legit used the ip to make a rts wihout bungie's knowlegde, so the studio went a bit of delevopment hell and that the studio had to close some time later when the game launched, thats why halo wars 2 its been made by 343 studios
That small part about the Autumn, It's just because the ship was crazy old by 2552. In fact, when Cortana chose the ship, it was just an ancient, sluggish, poorly armed brick. It was a death trap - though it would've been a slow death thanks to the comically strong armor. After it was refitted though, with much more powerful engines, a MAC able to one-shot any Covie ship, and most importantly Cortana and Keyes flying it - not to mention the 30 Spartans on board - it was nearly impossible to take down. Matter of fact, it took an entire fleet several hours to disable the Autumn with no support whatsoever. And Cortana even managed to kill 4 Covie ships before going down. Not to mention this was right AFTER the last stand at Reach, where the Autumn also scored a few kills and took a lot of damage.
this is missing a cutscene - the Flood reveal when they reach the planet - comes after the Serina leaving note and before the Covenant alerted to the ship
halo wars had some of my favorite music for all of halo
The Autumn is 43 years old by the time of Halo CE, Keyes was not it’s captain during halo wars. He was reassigned to it right for Halo CE for operation Red Flag
13:05 the pillar of autumn wasn’t commanded by keys yet as he took over the autumn during operation red flag. The Pillar of Autumn is a og model of halcyon class light cruiser, old but tough, in this cutscene we learned its been damaged in battle, it will be decommissioned to the planet Reach until it is retrofitted into its customized version turning it closer to being a modern Marathon class heavy cruiser as we see it in halo reach and halo ce. Post Human Covenant war the pillar of autumn becomes its own class of ships shortened to autumn class cruisers as a heavy medium between firepower, durability, and speed which we see a few in halo 5’s cutscenes surrounding Earth and the Infinity
This missed a cutscene, there was one that introduced the flood and it was really cool (it had the 2 ships exiting Slipspace form the ground POV and a flood combat form watching them)
Some of the best cut scenes in the Halo Uni.
Blur Studios never disappoints
Another absolutely cool video by you that points out little cinematic notes that I enjoy, yet don't think about until you point them out. Even as a creative myself, it's refreshing to see another person recognize certain aspects that I enjoy without realizing. Top video as always, thank you!
Ensemble Studios Final Swansong! this was them saying Goodbye as a Company.
The shield worlds where the forerunners bunkers from the halo array but there A.I in charge of defence mercendient Bias (I think that’s it) was infected with the floods logic virus and was convinced to turn on the the forerunners ultimately firing the halo array a day early before the forerunners could get to the bunkers (shield worlds)
Those sentinels that came out when the spirit was being pulled into the planet was a form of decontamination checking the ship for flood spores
What’s cool is that Omega team from the trailer are a real Spartan team. Leon, Robert and August. I wish we got to continue the Spirit of Fire story. We got an operation themed after them in Infinite. It’s also funny how the Spartans are 20 years old at this point. Still young kids.
I main Robert as my armor in halo infinite because I loved his weird promethean heavy gun in halo wars 2
That ad for the wallet was spectacular 😅
You thought it was awkward?
@kaizammit nah I found it entertaining🤙
@Kdeem.224 thank you fella! I don't really take them seriously but I definitely believe in the product. Literally have the wallet in my hand now.
You know what mate, I have loved Halo since I was about 5 in 2001, and watching you explaining the cinematography within these games has explained why I loved Halo to begin with. The storytelling and how they portray the story visually is incredible. Despite completing the Bungie era games 100s of times, watching you has made me play them again. Me and a friend have started Halo 2 on Legendary recently.
That's so cool to read fella!
Underrated AF game, i had so much fun with it. Lots of the story picks up right where the cutscenes end in game, so its told as you play
Halo wars trailer are next level. I’ve played these games since the very first Halp came out on the original Xbox. They hit you in the feels
for a game that came out 2009 those citamatics looks good!
I love the contrast between the Arbiter's taunt about humanity and the way the Spartan's fight scene prove him wrong. These animated cutscenes are higher quality than anything Paramount put in its streaming series. This is the movie we should have gotten.
The harvest intro, spartan fight scenes and forges fight scenes are my favorite. The characters have loads of personality which makes up for the short cgi cut scenes
One of the recurring background theories in Halo is that some of the more awkward Halo footage/pictures are actually doctored or staged propaganda, so it's possible the Elites stupidly waltzing towards the marines and getting gunned down could be canonically explained as bad UNSC propaganda.
The most well known example of that is Halo 2's cover art. It's canonically an actual photo of Chief.
Heavily doctored.
The guy who took the photo was actually the propagandist who was made to edit it. He wasn't a huge fan of that.
26:19
Ripa Mora is... a big sonuvabitch, even by sangheili standards, as seen in the earlier cutscene where he backhands his subordinate.
He is big, strong, and angry. His lore states that before becoming the arbiter, he would fly into rages when in battle, and slaughter indiscriminately, often being the last living thing on the battlefield.
and it shows in gameplay too. In Halo Wars 1, only the Covenant fielded their leaders onto the ground, the UNSC could field Spartans as Hero units, but if you were playing the Arbiter, you could send him into combat directly, and his unit power was called "Rage" he would draw his swords, an aura would surround his hands, and you'd take direct control of him, using the left analogue stick to move, and the right analogue stick to attack.
This Elite could take apart whole armies single handedly, including hero and super units, even leaping into the sky to uppercut aircraft. a fully upgraded and veterancyied Arbiter could 2v1 Scarabs and win, with health to spare.
Pillar of autumn was the ship often dedicated to carry experimental weapons. It often carried Spartans. So it being present was an excuse to have the rhino's and Spartans
I think the team that rendered the cutscenes and trailers was blur studios. The same people that did all the h2 anniversary cutscenes
Correct bro
I wish they could have made Halo movies for us instead of Paramount.
4 and a half minutes in and I have to agree that the Elites in these cutscenes are my favourite. As for the Spartan armour, it's MK4 Mjolnir, the predecessor design (in lore) to what the Chief wears in CE, and the main platform of what Jorge wears in Reach (his is heavily modified to his liking, much to the disapproval of Halsey)
You're just going to have to get over the Wilhelm scream, it's everywhere and you know this. Every medium of entertainment has these iconic memes that are persistent in everything.
Something fun, all the Spartan IIs not featured in this game are only 20, those that are featured in this game are between 16 & 18 thanks to being in Cryo after they died in the augmentation process.
Their existance/survival is kept a secret from the Spartan IIs.
I still can’t believe how good these look all these years later
With the halo Wars games there has been issues between the Gameplay devs and the Cinematic studio
Not coordinating what the Spartans look like
So thats why the trailer Spartans look different i think
But i know this was the issue in HW2 with amazing Spartan models but when your in game the Spartan armour is quite different.
Btw there are Halo books around the aftermath of Halo wars one
The books are based from the point of view of Forge's Daughter.
Oh and about the Pillar of Autumn it would not be captained by Keys due to him either being captaining his Halberd Class Destroyer
He was put in charge of the post refit POA just before reach
Might have already been answered by the reason why Cutter looks different in Halo Wars 2 compared to how he does in this is because, if I remember correctly, in Halo Wars 2 they are modeled off their actors instead of being entirely designed models like in Halo Wars 1.
A Rather neat piece of irony that can be found within this, Is that when originally beaten down by this Arbiter, and when finally coming out ontop during their second encounter, Forge pulls his combat knife both times, A Combat Knife which he affectionately named 'Lucy" in external material. Bringing a little bit of Irony to this Arbiters statement of "There will be no Female to save you this time" As a Feminine named Knife possibly in the first, But most certainly in the second encounter Saved his life.
First time I saw that intro cinematic was after my friend and I rented the game. Needless to say, our 12 years old mind were just blown by it all. We finished the game in one sitting. X)
The shortness is due to the cutscenes being continued with in game scenes as they introduced you to the combat scenario that you're about to take on.
Something to keep in mind about Jerome's voice is he's literally 15 at the time of this game, same with all the Spartan II's. Make's sense that his voice would drop in the years until Halo Wars 2
25:35 Forge tackling the arbiter like a nfl line backer is peak halo to me.
That bit was epic!
In my opinion 'spirit of fire' is the best halo theme that was ever created. Its the perfect balance of emotion and epicness
The characters in Halo Wars 2 were motion captured and that is why they look different to their same characters in Halo Wars
One of my all-time favorite cinematices
Arbiter before Keith David Arbiter. Blur studios are legendary for their cutscenes and trailers. They definitely outdid themselves for Halo wars 2 though, I really hope they do more in the halo franchise moving forward.
the interaction with the pillar of autmn is the plasma based rhinos used to take down a covenant shield
Halo wars is a great spin off game made by ensemble after they worked on the age of empires series. It plays entirely different as it is an RTS, but it is a fun game and was a great idea as a spin-off
Halo Wars has one of my favorite stories and it isn't even one of the mainline games
Fun fact: el profeta tiene la misma voz que niles en gears of war, ambos son antagonistas con la misma personalidad
The sad piano version of the halo theme is my favorite version
BLUR studios, who also did the halo wars 2 and halo 2 anniversary cutscenes, was rumored to be a million dollars a minute even for these
Honestly Halo Wars might be peak Halo in terms of soundtrack and art direction
The soundtrack and designs just hit so right
Also yeah that first interaction with this Arbiter really sets him apart from Thel.
"I care not for your little life" in contrast to Thel saying "That makes two of us" when Rtas tells him that his Elites lives are valued over him
This man got robbed of that starting scene of the Shield world and the first look at the flood.
Halo wars came out in 09, so it’s likely the cinematic were being worked on since 2008 which makes it 15 -16 years old. The video also misses one cutscene where they arrive at the shield world.
Kai, you should try and watch some of the halo infinite campaign cutscenes, I think you would love it as a longtime fan of halo as some scenes are literally gems, full of emotion and all… Great video by the way! 👍🏻
Thank you for watching and I am making my way there! I put out a halo poll every month on the Patreon to see what the next two games we're covering are. Stay tuned and you will see it ✌🏻
was that THE ARBITER(Thel 'Vadam) no but it was an Arbiter aka Ripa' Moramee
It is the same captain and professor Anders, they just couldn't get the same actors for some reason, so rather than put the old character models on the new mocap actors, they based the new character models on the new actors. Both sets of actors a great job in my opinion.
Yes, there was a lot that they cut out. A Covenant campaign and a Flood campaign, for one, and a sequel where Sergeant Forge survives (which we get in Halo Wars 2 multiplayer).
Halo Wars 2 changed a lot of lore, being a prequel. UNSC armies in the original lore spent twenty-seven years fighting grunts and jackals before the Elite force (pun intended) were called in for the invasion of Reach, and subsequently, Earth, but that wasn't fun. Yes, it was graphically fantastic when it came out--although I saw the Lost in Space movie the final cutscene cribbed from.
Interestingly, Halo Wars and Halo Wars 2 completely removed the Drones (flying bugs). No idea why.
Gotta have the scream😂 in starwars the clone wars the animated series, almost every episode had it once 🤣
Halo wars is one of my favourite games in the franchise i loved all the characters i was very sad about forge dying and serena dying before halo wars 2
These cutscenes are missing a scene around 18:10 where the pillar of autumn comes out of slip space and a flood form is seen on screen not sure why but its missing in here
At that point in the lore i think Keyes is still teaching at the naval academy since they only brought him out of his dead end when they were getting desperate
@Kai Zammit the voice actor for Nathan Drake and Sargent Forge is Nolan North
And deadpool
and to say its 15 years old. Looks better than most disney spin offs
You mentioned that the game appeared to have had a smaller budget then HW2. This is actually an understatement. Ensemble studios didn’t actually aim to make a Halo title. They had actually made an original science fiction game for console, but after finishing production, meeting every quota Microsoft had asked, then finally got to present it, Microsoft went, “Yes. Great. Perfect. Now make it halo.” undoing years of work, and making them turn assets into Halo assets, and redoing entire assets all together. Not to mention working around a time-line that had already been established by other sources. And Bungie actually was also put in a bad position , now having to hand hold a separate studio in their universe. However, folks from Ensemble would note Bungie having a notorious bad attitude towards them, not even answering questions about art or story direction. Seemingly directing unpleasant feelings towards them and not Microsoft. This is actually why there are things like the Halo: CE assault rifle, as Bungie just wiped their hands of Ensemble’s predicament, contributing to their stress, only momentarily saying yes or no to something they had made.
This game was also the first canonical representation of the first MJOlNIR suit, the MK-4 suit. The Arbiter was also the second to last named Ripa ‘Moramee. And unlike his more established and notable peer, he was taken from a Covenant prison colony.
And, if you are curious about John Forge, he had a daughter Rion Forge, who would spend decades of her life searching for answers to her father’s fate in the series of books by Kelly Gay.
Great lore read there, thank you!
Whoever was playing this for ign missed a cutscene at 18:00 theres supposed to be one that shows the spirit of fire going out of slipspace and ending up above the flood infested planet
Bunch of saps mate.
Hey man im here! Happy to see this.
The trailer plays during the main menu in the bg.
love your videos, brings back good memories as well of reminding me the halo universe is my favorite.
Thank you so much for watching fella!
Oooooo been waiting for this one!
The scene where the SoF comes out of the ground, with the trees showing scale to just how fucking massive it is. That is why we need a Halo space combat game. We got Sins of the Prophets, and that is awesome, but its still nothing official.