Why did the Prophets make him an Arbiter? It seems incredibly illogical. For one, he was coming off an massive failure resulting in the destruction of a Halo ring, and had been sentenced to death. The Prophets are depicted as crazy religious zealots, so their mercy here is extremely uncharacteristic of them. Furthermore, its not even clear what they needed an Arbiter for. Arbiters had been reserved for times of extreme need, and here the Arbiter was just conscripted for to put down a relatively mundane rebellion. Then we learn that the Prophets were going to betray and kill the Elites anyway (why isn't clear). If the Prophets wanted to get rid off the Elites, wouldn't using the Elites failure to protect Halo and the rebellions as an excuse to do so be more prudent than restoring honor to a disgraced Elite and having him take care of the rebellion. This shit doesn't make any sense.
Why did the Prophets make him an Arbiter? It seems incredibly illogical. For one...
keith david
They made him arbiter so they could send him on ridiculous suicide missions to get rid of him.
He already had been sentenced to death. All they had to do was execute him.
He was still useful to the prophets. He killed the heretic, which bought them time, and acquired the icon which nearly allowed Truth to run off and eliminate most of his enemies (if Tartarus sets off the ring the bulk of the elite forces are obliterated, Johnson+Arbiter+Miranda dead, Flood crippled, etc).
the entire point of naming Elites as the Arbiter is sending them on suicide missions to cleanse them of their heresy
Executing a highly respected Elite would turn him into a martyr, he’d die bringing an Elite rebellion which is something the prophets already feared incoming.
Turning high ranked political elites into arbiters was for the purpose of taking away their credibility and clout and tricking them into thinking they were failures that had to die a glorious death to make up for whatever mistake a prophet accused them of. Other elites would look down on what could’ve been a true leader to them and maintain loyalty to the prophets
Why execute someone who’s skilled in tactics and combat and is still loyal to the cause?
God, just remembering how much shit Arby got when Halo 2 dropped, it's kind of ridiculous.
Raiden all over again.
This. They wanted him dead but knew he could also still be useful and killing him off in this way would also give them a fresh martyr to their cause for them to galvanize their followers. Pure propaganda move.
When I first played halo 2 all those years ago I had zero issues playing as Arby, infact I loved his levels, i will never understand what people had against him, was it because they weren't playing as MC?
Even if he fucked up, he was one of the relative few covenant to survive Halo and Master Chief. He obviously had use, and being from the equivalent of an elite noble house in charge of a whole continent, he was way too important to kill off with a civil war right about to kick off. Might as well send him on a suicide mission.
I think so. Or maybe without human military guys cracking wise to the chief every five seconds, all the dudebros realised they were playing a scifi game and couldn't handle it.
The prophets themselves said that they knew the trial was a witch hunt. They knew he wasn’t guilty of heresy. But the people wanted him dead. Him being a highly trained and skilled Elite. So they let him become and Arbiter (New identity) and sent him on extremely difficult missions. Putting him back in the rank and file would not have been politically accepted.
It was sort of spurred by MGS2 with Raiden. Everyone was hyper-sensitive about bait and switch back then. Plus, we were lead to believe Halo 2 was mostly going to be a battle for Earth, and people were mad Earth was only 2 missions
Maybe if you played halo games then you would KNOW
Do you think the Flood will return in the next games in the timeline?
We god 'rid' of the Gravemind, but more than one Gravemind can and has existed.
He will still respected by the prophets as a commander, the prophets especially truth realised the flood were a more pressing threat to destroy than the small human forces on halo 04, therefore he understood that the aribiter was unlucky in his inability to stop the destruction of halo, the aribiter was concentrating all his forces on containing the flood, so the human plot got through.
Since he was a respectable commander the prophets gave him mercy to be an Arbiter.
I hope not. I like the Flood, but its too early to bring them back. Give us another game or two first
You're right, but at the same time, they're always usually the big-bad by the end of the game of the main trilogy.
Their purpose was simple, and they were an effective and frightening enemy that was a legitimate threat. A reminder that the rings were made almost entirely to destroy the Flood. They really are the main antagonists of the original trilogy and I find that the new games have been struggling for purchase on an antagonist that isn't the Covenant or the Flood - since they are effectively both gone save for the Covenant Remnants - that can actually take the place of such a simple and effective villain.
I feel the Forerunners are really cool, but they don't really explore much of the understandable reasoning as to why the Ur-Didact was doing what he was doing outside the Novels or supplementary material. And so when put in the games, they seem to lack a lot of the understandable motivation.
Halo's Original Trilogy was very self-contained and I think the Flood being a simple videogame antagonist helped that.
this thread is really gay
The elites have a hyper rigid samurai like society, and the arbiter was at the apex. This isnt explained in base halo 2 but the arbiter was insanely successful in his campaign against the humans after a significant stalling period in the offensive when humans had learned how to outmaneuver the covenant. The arbiter was also responsible for finding and destroying reach, which was thought to be the penultimate victory in the war by covenant officials. Although the prophets convicted him of heresy, elite leaders would have been beyond pissed if he was executed shamefully after such an illustrious career. Promoting him to arbiter was a pragmatic solution: a powerful political rival would be killed and he would hopefully go off and murder some dickheads they didn't like in the process. The betrayal of the elites was part of Truth's powergrab, only he knew he was going to wrest power away from the elites and replace them with the more obedient brutes. Rough for him in the end that the elites, naive as they were, had lots of brilliant tacticians in their ranks and basically annihilated the covenant's main fleet in one of the most hilarious offscreen ass kickings of the series.
because the job of arbiter WAS a death sentence. they knew he'd most likely get killed relatively quickly if they just kept sending him on suicide missions without a team.
why didn't they just kill him straight up? two reasons. the first is because he was still a very capable pawn they could use to take out other enemies and complete missions. aside from that, the job was still technically seen as an "honor" and would likely boost morale of others who knew that there was an arbiter once more and especially for those who did cross paths with him.
Bringing in Forerunner enemies is't a bad idea, its just that 343i did it very poorly. Their designs were garbage, and they just weren't fun to fight.
Halo universe has always been a sort of generic mash-up of other sci-fi universes. There are plenty of enemies we can have that aren't the flood. Perhaps the firing of the Halo ring in 3 awoke some sleeper civilization that had previously concealed their existence. Maybe black holes are a portal to another galaxy and a new alien civilization pours through and threatens to conqueror ours. What if all the AI go rampant at once and take over all the ships like Skynet? Flood should come back at some point, I just want something different for now.
>offscreen ass-kickings
Link me to this. I wish to read.
I understand the need for something different. And I think the Forerunners were more fun to fight in 5 - and I generally believe 5 was more entertaining to play for the first time than 4 was and the Covenant were more like the Covenant in 5 and lacked a lot of personality in 4 - but at the same time, I'm not really feeling it.
When 4 came out I had a bit of a problem with it was that there were too many similar enemy types and weapon types across all three factions.
The Covenant was still the covenant with not much new, and we began fighting the Prometheans shortly after getting to Requiem and their weapons fucking sucked.
We continued to fought both factions throughout the entire game with very little new encounters.
What I'm saying is that we started to fight the Prometheans too soon. In the earlier games, the Flood was introduced about half-way through the game and we would more or less fight them for the rest of the game.
We didn't get that with the Prometheans and we barely had any time share done with the Covenant Remnants in H4.
Basically there's a lack of encounter pacing and variety as well as weapons that more or less mirrored weapons in other factions.
This isn't to say that the first three didn't do this, they just did it to a lesser extent.