Visionary Nexus Network

Oh, god dammit, Microsoft, stop changing which Saturdays you’re going to air these episodes on. I nearly missed it again, but it’s clearly their bad this time. As a “plus” (if you could call it that), the entire episode was uploaded, rather than part 2 only, which makes me reviewing this harder. Oh well, time to deliver.

… Pun intended.

After some 300-styled slow-motion dashing, Frederic blasts through a sealed door and the trio blitzkrieg across the ship, gunning down hordes and hordes of Covies. During this, there’s several clips from the first-person view, showing the familiar HUD found in the video games. I thought it was nice, if a bit tacky. They didn’t try to depict the realistic movement of arms aiming firearms around, for instance, and the crosshairs always remained stuck in the center of the screen. Guess they didn’t really care for extra details there.

Eventually, the unnamed Elite Major and his guard intercept the Spartans. Frederic blocks an energy sword with his Spartan laser (lolwut? Shouldn’t it cut through it?) and then knives the fucker in the eye (which I’ll admit, was badass). Then he holds off the Major and his remaining lackey so John and Kelly can go on ahead.

Desperate as the Spartans come closer to their objective, the Commander/Shipmaster/Fleet Admiral/Thel(?) accesses the bridge controls and starts detaching parts of his flagship and letting the hull pieces fly off to space in an attempt to impede the Spartans’ advance. As for the poor bastards still occupying those sectors, the Commander claims that he’s “letting them die with honor.”

After frolicking their way through Dead Space (*rimshot*), Kelly grabs Chief and tosses him through the vacuum so he goes ahead to “go get her.”

The Package turns out to be Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey, founder of the Spartan-II project, in cryogenic stasis. Worth it? I s’pose. She’s important, and stuff. If it wasn’t for an unnamed female at the beginning of part 1, I would’ve wagered that Halsey or Cortana was the titular package. Speaking of Cortana, the design team lets us know they know Cortana’s based on Halsey, which allows them to get lazy and recycle nostalgic Cortana lines from Halo 1 & 2… except in a British accent. They hurry up and scoot, but their escape is blocked.

The Major shows up (Frederic’s nowhere to be found). Chief unloads a full magazine on him, only for the Major to casually block it with his sword. He’s like “lol wtf was that n00b fgt” and throws a sword hilt to Chief a la Meta-Knight from the Kirby games. In fact, that’s his new name: Meta-Knight. In fact, he proves he’s god-tier.

Unnamed Elite Major MetaGame-Knight made “the Master Chief” John-117, iconic protagonist/unbeaten one-man army of the Halo trilogy, his bitch. In 15 seconds flat. Before delivering the deathblow, however, alarms sound off; the fleet’s left the “magnetic interference” distortion field it was in, so the Covenant are abandoning the system. The section they’re in is promptly scuttled by the Commander, which mocks Meta-Knight claiming all he would make a good Arbiter (+prequel irony). Meta-Knight is beamed up to the working remnants of the flagship, nastily cursing the Commander a thousand hells or something fierce. Makes me wonder why the Commander saved the guy; he’d already sacrificed thousands of poor bastards under his command. Why not some prick he hates?

Knowing they’re seconds away from being blown up to the other side of the galaxy (hopefully, somewhere friendly with sunny beaches and without dogmatic aliens), Chief and Halsey hijack an escape pod and GTFO the scuttled flagship as it blows to bits. They’re chased by even more poor bastards that were ditched by Commander Jackass. They don’t have to for long, though, as Frederic and Kelly come to the rescue along with the UNSC stealth ship they deployed from.

What the fuck, Frederic? How did you make it out? Did you run away like a pussy from Meta-Knight, or something? Seeing he totally owned Master motherfucking Chief in 15 seconds flat, I wouldn’t doubt it.

In the end, they are united in the ship, where Halsey congratulates them. But because they lost two Spartans, the Chief gives off some forced speech about how he wasn’t “strong enough” and that he “needs to get stronger.” You know the one. Remember who makes these?

TL;DR: Spartans plow thrugh clusterfuck, get package (Spoilers HOLY SHIT IT’S DR. HALSEY), ironic events surrounding future Arbiter Thel, Spartans and Halsey ride into the sunset … go home?

Conclusion: Nothing much to say here. There’s little to poke fun of. Not a very thrilling conclusion, either. Surprisingly, though, the short is 14:08 long, total. So I guess I was off by 4 minutes in that aspect.

Something struck me, and it’s related to the Arbiter. If you couldn’t tell from the summary, he used to be a major dick. At this point, I’m starting to think they’re putting in a bit of prequel irony to ensure us that yes, Thel is a jackass and his conversion to Arbiter was deserved…

This, after two games of making us sympathetize for him getting ostracized by the fanatical religious empire he swore to serve for the destruction of Installation 04 (the first Halo) and his entire armada. So first, they make us sympathetize him in the games (where it’s implied he wasn’t incompetent, and that he wasn’t to blame) and now he’s portrayed as an overzealous asshole. I haven’t read the novels, I’ll admit, so I’m not sure if this is news, but he’s never portrayed that way in the games, so it came as a bit of a surprise. I’d call his case (as well as the other characters) “character derailment”, but I would just be assuming there.

Alternatively, I might have been misinformed and it turns out the Major is the future Arbiter, not the Commander. If that’s the case, it explains why he kicked John’s ass so easily, and it might explain his personality and the sympathy we’re supposed to have for him (which makes the above paragraph invalid). The irony loses its sting, though, as it was the Commander which jested about the Major being Arbiter one day. 

As of this point, I’m not sure anymore and, frankly, I don’t give a damn. The events are still ironic, no matter which one’s Thel.

If I’d read the novels, I could probably form a better opinion, but I haven’t. Something tells me they messed with the characters a bit too much, though, and I’d be able to pick that apart rather easily. Though not as easily as how the anime companies seem to like picking apart decades of progress from the U.S. civil rights movement. No wait, mainstream rap music already did that first… Never mind.

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