Visionary Nexus Network

Wow, I almost forgot the new episode came out today, and that would’ve been completely terrible for this blog. I mean, just look at it. These come out every two weeks and nobody’s made any entries except me. As for almost screwing this up, I blame the coquito I’ve been drinking. Curse you, pagan holidays!

Contrary to popular belief, coquito is, in fact, not made of coquis or the legendary coqui water.

Inside jokes aside, worry not. I have ceased drinking the stuff to watch this 5-minute action-fest known as “The Package” (Part 1). Spoilers: MASTER CHIEF, SPARTANS FROM THE NOVELS, ARBITER FROM HALO 2-3! HYPE!

The Covenant has captured a “high-priority package”, and a Spartan squad only has 10 minutes to retrieve it. They include John-117 (better known as the “Master Chief”) and his fellow Spartans, Kelly-087, Frederic-104, Solomon-069, and Arthur-079. The Spartans hail from the novels, excluding the latter two; they’re redshirts debut characters. If they run out of time, the UNSC will simply annihilate the entire fleet alongside the package and the Spartan strike team. When the titular package is revealed, it better be something really worth it or I’ll facepalm at the opportunity to take out, you know, an entire fleet of evil genocidal aliens.

A “stellar field” something I didn’t quite catch is keeping the Covenant fleet from simply doing a Slipspace jump and high-tailing it to another system. Handwavium aside, the Spartans deploy in what are essentially space fighter jet motorcycles and an epic Star Wars-styled space battle ensues.

The first scan reading reveals the package is in the ship. Solomon goes for it and asks Kelly to back him up. The Chief knows “something’s off” when the first reading, out of a whole fleet of ships, turned out positive. Knowing it’s too good to be true, he goes in after the pair to save them. John manages to save Kelly because she’s in the hangar bay; Solomon, however, isn’t so fortunate and perishes when an antimatter bomb blows up in his face, taking the entire cruiser with him.

I just know you guys are at the edge of your freakin’ seats now (This is intense!!!), but I’m pausing the plot now for humor something I noticed.

Remember that whole business with “Chad” (whose name turned out to be “Checkman”) back when this whole thing started? Yeah, meet this week’s redshirt:

This guy.

I’m starting to notice a trend here, and to my surprise when I went to fetch this link, so has TVTropes. In Solomon’s defense, though, the Covenant sacrificed an entire battlecruiser, several kilometers wide, with or without its crew just to eliminate him. Granted, it was a trap to lure every present Spartan-II to their destruction, seeing they’re widely feared by the Covenant (they’re so notorious, the Covenant calls them “Demons”). So, in super-soldier space marine-ology, this is the equivalent of dying from a firecracker. Unfortunate implications indeed.
By the way, his last words were, “It’s a trap!” Make of that what you will.

Resuming the plot (lol), the Covenant Fleet Admiral, revealed to be Thel ‘Vadamee (The Arbiter from Halo 2 & 3), plays his role of the villain by laughing evilly and rubbing his hands together and such, while some unnamed Elite aide insists to not underestimate the Spartans. Thel chastises him for being the sole survivor of his battallion and not dying with honor.

The Spartans realize the Covenant are wary to their objective when they get multiple readings from every ship in the fleet. Because of this, good ol’ Chief somehow comes to the conclusion the package is at the Covenant flagship. Yes, really. So they go there, lose debuting stand-in Arthur in the process, and bomb the shit outta Thel’s flagship’s hangar bay (including pulling an unmanned kamikaze attack with their space motorcycles. Remember who animates these?)

Meanwhile, Thel’s aide starts getting edgy and decides to leave the bridge to go meet the Spartans head-on when they do board the flagship. Thel scoffs at this notion, claiming he is merely overestimating them.

John, Kelly, and Frederic land in the bay, and after the smoke clears, they are inside a bubble shield, waiting for it to dissipate, so they can get a move on through thousands of enemy combatants. As the tension rises from waiting for the bubble to go down, Kelly says they only have 3 minutes left. Interestingly, the short if only 5:16 long. 

The Master Chief simply utters, “Go!”, the bubble shield disappears, and they head out to kick some ass.

A big, fat, “To be continued” pops up on screen. I totally didn’t see that coming, not at all.

TL;DR: Master Chief and other Spartan-IIs have a space battle against a Covenant fleet.

Conclusion: At only 5 minutes and 16 seconds, this week’s short is an improvement. Although the shortest episode so far, it has what everyone wants (and indeed expects) from a sci-fi blockbuster like Halo — Action. Unlike the other entries insofar, this one keeps completely faithful to Halo canon by not having ancient alien Japanese ruins (which, since then, I’ve read also included statues of Buddha) and Elites in samurai armor. The fact it has actual memorable characters from the games and novels is another sweet treat for fans. That and the fact Elite mandibles were actually properly animated unlike in the abomination known as Duel.

This CGI explosion fest should prove entertaining the whole way, but did it really need to be divided into two parts? It has little plot, and it’s only 5 minutes long.
Five. Freakin’. Minutes. Seriously. What. The. Fuck.
Even if you had the whole package, it would, presumably, be approximately 10 minutes long. The Babysitter was about 18 minutes long, whereas Duel was about 12. It makes no sense. Honestly, they probably decided to divide it into two parts because I’d bet my money it’ll be the best of the 9 shorts. It wasn’t excellent, but this is honestly the best I see these short films getting. Well, unless one of them averts the whole “black dude dies first” thing. Then that one will have me sold.

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