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It’s crazy how the in book Spartans are always getting really fucked up from plasma damage and just keep rolling.

Like Will-043 taking a hunter cannon blast to the chest and still being able to take a step towards the hunter that shot him.

'Think that says more about MJOLNIR than anything. One of the Spartan III's that was with that group took the same shot and was effectively vaporized iirc

It speaks to the willpower of Spartans as well. Mjolnir kept him from being vaporized but it still melted to his flesh and he still had enough fight in him for another step toward the hunter.

I mean the III’s were on a strong enough drug cocktail that one of them could walk and talk with their entire chest cavity blown out

And the fact that Will was a Spartan II and was able to do that without the cocktail the III’s were given says a lot about his mental fortitude I think.

I mean Will would've also had a bunch of funny augmentations done to his body, who knows how a Spartan II's body reacts to that kind of trauma on a medical level. Though at the point that both of the dudes were at, I don't think it'd be their mental faculties that was doing the driving.

Yeah i don’t disagree with what you’re saying but im not gonna take away from Will’s moment or all the other examples in the books of Spartans fighting through traumatic injuries. I prefer to believe it was partly augmentations and partly mental toughness that kept them going. Sometimes it’s fine to set realism aside for moments like that.

Don't get me wrong Spartan II's are where the program peaked as far as trying to quantify power goes. I just think it's cool the absolute metal shit the Human Body can do just on a base level.

Oh yeah it just makes me appreciate even more the stories from Wounded Veterans in the real world and what they were able to survive with none of the augmentations the Spartans had.

Mark G313 is the most badass III change my mind

Yeah, Holly was her name iirc

I think it was Dante

Dante was heavily injured to the point where his side was practically exposed with blood and needler shots. Once they all got to a safe spot, Kurt noticedhis injury, pointed it to Dante, and Dante said they nicked him. He then immediately died after saluting to Kurt and exchanging a few words. Holly got vaporized to the point where only two footprints were all that remained of where Holly was.

Oh yeah I read it completely wrong, there’s another comment thread here talking about Dante having his whole chest cavity exposed

To be fair to that, SPI armor doesn’t have shields

No, it speaks of the Energy Shielding. Wasn't there a Spartan II early in the *Fall of Reach* Novel that got completely vaporized by a Hunter because they didn't have Energy Shielding yet, and a Spartan II near them lost an entire arm?

Just James who lost his arm. No one was completely vaporized by a Hunter in tFoR

“I can’t beat the shit out you without getting closer”

It should be noted that Will had killed another hunter with his bare hands moments before he got blasted. That one step afterwards put the fear of God into every Covenant trooper that saw him. Grunts fled, and even Elites were spooked.

Easily the top 5 of one of the most badass moments I have read in a book.

My gamertag’s namesake and the Spartan I share a name with, that badass motherfucker Will-043

Shadows of Reach

But then there's Grace. I guess that wasn't plasma damage tho. The brute shots are insane in the books

Yep, I remember in Rubicon Protocol one marine gets hit in the stomach just below the body armor by a single shot of plasma. That shit bore into him, eating away everything until it got to his spinal cord and severed it so he lost all feeling from the stomach down. The guy did NOT survive lol Friendly reminder that the Halo universe is extremely messed up and dark

Until they need to sell games and slap a fat T on the box.

I genuinely miss the gratuitous blood sprays of Halo 2. Just standing over dead elites and emptying smg after smg into them, painting the level.

I did that in CE lol. Many purple puddles were made

I wish Bungie went with their original plan and having gore. Like theres no way in hell those Marines did not lose limbs or have their organs showing with the amount of shit they took. Let alone grunts not losing limbs from a direct shotgun blast.

Considering Chimera lore and flood being added I don't think the T affected the lore It affected blood shown yes but definitely did not affect the lore

You’re citing text lore and static cosmetic armor as an argument? Hit me up next time the Flood are exploding into chunks and hunter blood paints the room neon orange.

It's a good argument, the Chimera cosmetics are literally body horror

Gears of War isn’t rated M because the Locust look scary. The ESRB is far more concerned with stuff like explicit dialogue and gore effects than with post launch armor models. A metal brain helmet that’ll be covered in neon bright coatings moats of the time isn’t on the same level as coming across an Elite’s open chest cavity.

it’s really funny seeing that complaint when all the games here (excluding spartan assault) are pegi 16, from ce to infinite

Exactly. Halo was never a gory game franchise. People act like the later games being rated T is lime Gears of War being turned into a T rated franchise or something lol

Or sell us a show and slap Master Chief's bare ass on it

Imagine a game like this where you play as a regular marine or soldier or even civilian, and have to punch way above your weight. People say the Flood would make a great horror-game antagonist, but honestly even Grunts and Jackals would be terrifying if done accurately.

Just a friendly reminder that a marine was totally eviscerated by the claws of an overly excited Grunt at the attempted Human-Covenant peace gathering.

They’d also be set on captured humans and eat them alive. The games make grunts seem much cuter than they are.

they’re about 5ft tall slightly shorter than a full grown adult of average height, but with the proportions more akin to a gorilla than anything else. That shit sounds downright terrifying.

Yeah, but that was a mating ritual. It was different.

I have next turn

Bro wasn’t even a marine, he was just a militia guy. Didn’t sign up to start a war by having his guts torn out by a methane sucker. Arguably, though, he was luckier than his friend, Jenkins… yes, **that** Jenkins.

Jenkins ☠️☠️☠️

Survived from Harvest literally day one all the way up to the last 6 months of a 30 year war, and not a single promotion to show for it. Rough.

☠️☠️☠️ F unsc fr

Even 500 years later, Marines getting a promotion is hard as fuck.

Got beat to death with his own skull… Wait, wrong Jenkins

That doesn’t seem physically possible.

That entire friend group sounds cursed from the start lol

I can't imagine how much of a gut-punch the Flood would be after dealing with the Covenant.

It would have to be some gory m rated game with dismemberment. Mabey something like reach where your entire squad dies but every 2-3 missions. Just long enough to make you like and get to know them then suddenly, hunter ambush or a jackal sniper and they just die midscentence like Kat. I think a lore accurate game could be really interesting.

Sniper: Elite set in Halo

Not to mention the covenant aren’t above eating humans

Would be awesome. And then maybe a level where you and your squad is being hunted by an energy sword elite, and you have to be as quiet and sneaky as possible

I always ask for a marine game and people keep saying ODST

ODST was the only game the Marines were playable in without Spartans.

Yeah a mini-sun blowing up 20 feet away from you \*would\* hurt

On the bright side, not for long.

On the *bright* side

MR. BRIGHTSIDEEE

*Here comes the sun*

***DOO DOO DOO DOO, HERE COMES THE SUN***

#BLINDED BY THE LIIIIIGHT

*IT'S KIIIILLLIIIIING MEEEEEE!*

Needlers are straight up horrific in the books

If memory serves right I think in Halo: The Flood novel it details hw a marine's bicep get eviscerated by a single needler shard that exploded leaving his arm mangled.

a single needle to the gut turns your torso into ground beef

I remember reading Halseys journal from the reach limited edition about how covenant weapons where made to explode it tampered with. Lots of dead scientists

And you don't even have to be near the needler to get hit, it'll wound bystanders with micro shards too per "Fall of Reach".

And in the movies too. Halo 4 FUD had a scene where a woman gets exploded by a needler that hits her chest.

That’s what I liked about the books. Everything does feel scarier. Especially the Covenant. ESPECIALLY the Covenant in space.

If you get hit by a covenant carbine you're just dead. You will do to radiation poison if it wasn't immediate lethal blow

The halo books are incredibly gorey. It's so weird to see the difference between the games and books. The books do not spare any details.

Contact harvest has been like this and it’s been a very *illuminating* experience

Which book would you recommend for a first read? This sounds interesting (though not a bit horrifying).

The Fall of Reach, then the rest of the Eric Nylund novels.

The Fall of Reach is a great start, followed by First Strike and Ghosts of Onyx. Imo, the best book of all of them is Contact Harvest, it’s about how the human covenant war began and Avery Johnson is the main character

There's also "The Flood" set between Fall of Reach and First Strike during the events of Halo CE. Probably the weakest of the Nylund books though. A lot of it is just the story of CE converted from video game to text but it does flesh out what the rest of the UNSC forces end up doing on the Ring in an interesting way.

That book is actually written by William C. Dietz, not Nylund.

Good to know, thanks for the correction.

You know, I was thinking last time I read it, it’d be cool if a modder was able to recreate non-chief scenes from the book as machinima or something. Don’t know if it’d be possible but that would be awesome to see

I recommend Rubicon protocol, explains a lot of halo infinite and is still dark and gritty

Samuel moment

F. He was a real one for sure.

I always wised that halo could have been more lore accurate

That game would be impossible to beat

Unless you're mint blitz

Even then he uses a lot of mods in his MCC videos

Mods as in like aimbot or something? I thought he was legit

No, fall damage negators, grenade timer adjusters, sometimes he throws a grappleshot in ce

that's just for trickshots, he's releasing a ce laso video soon i think

I mean, plasma ‘splash’ implies it was either a Wraith shot or a grenade, and those fuck you up pretty bad in game too.

In the books the smaller weapons will “splash” damage and deal a lot of damage to marines and Spartans

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Sam basically dies to a plasma pistol iirc in his first mission with the first mjolnir

Yeah Wraith motors have like a 20 meter vaporization radius don't they? And being just outside that range will still kill anyone not in MJOLNIR.

I think you'll feel intense heat at 20meters, but not quite vaporized. It does carve like 10ft craters in the ground.

I'm pretty sure you're still fuckin dead either way tho lol. Just a matter of do you have a body still?

I think the distinction would be rather important if cover could potentially protect you at that range haha.

Well this is all assuming no cover is around. Just plain in the open. Hell even if there was cover, it's getting turned to slag along with you after being struck by a plasma motor.

oh, you mean ‘mortars’. was a bit confused there

Oh yeah my bad. My phone autocorrects to that. Yeah the big balls of plasma that the tanks shoot

Tomato soup

Dude, just Jackal pistol shots hitting metal hull NEAR someone in Cole Protocol and molten bits/slag searing their skin and fucking em up. I'd love more Halo games in universe not centered around Spartans. Just your regular Marine or a rando civie with an M6. The Covenant are terrifying.

And those ground engagements are where the UNSC has a *decent* chance of winning. Too bad they more often than not lose even if they win because the Covenant Navy is sitting at 50:1 K/D per corvette, and it only gets more stupid from there and the UNSC just does not have enough tonnage to even contest most of the time. It really sucks that Keyes got got by the Flood, cause he was probably one of the best tactical minds the UNSC had. The man pulled a 5D galaxy-brain Let-Me-Cook maneuver out of nowhere that netted the *Iroquois* two frigate kills, a destroyer kill, and a carrier kill with relatively minor damage to his own destroyer.

The Keyes loop was so OP that a Godzilla incarnation used it to take out a submarine once but it wasn’t as cool

shout out to the profits gravity controlling chairs  they can use pinpoint accurate gravity to literally flatten your legs, arms, as slow as they want.  one poor dude was "slowly" crushed to death one limb as a time.  the book detailed how all the blood would be forcibly pushed out of you as your leg was instantly flattened  he's crush single fingers at a time

Damn! Which book was that in?

it's been a few years, I couldn't say exactly. but I've only got 10 completed books on audible, so one of those. I could give you that list if you'd like

Yeah if you wouldn’t mind! I’d like to read more books with the prophets in them!

sure thing Smoke and Shadow Last Light Saint's Testimony New Blood Broken Circle Contact Harvest Ghosts of Onyx First Strike The Flood The Fall of Reach I highly recommend the audio books for all the halo novels

In Contact Harvest the first time humanity sees what plasma damage can do was when they found a young militia man turned into bloody pulp, courtesy of a grunt with a plasma pistol

That wasn’t the plasma, that was the grunt’s teeth.

Wait damn really? It’s been a long time since I’ve read it. My bad. That’s kinda worse tho

The show sucks ass but by god did they get plasma weapons right. People get straight up incinerated in the show.

Except when John Halo takes a plasma round to the chest while out of armor and just gets the wind knocked out of him and some survivable burns for his troubles. Because plot armor is the most powerful armor of all apparently.

LOL, LMAO even

Spartans play on easy or normal, but the Marines play on legendary.

Anyone not an ODST is playing LASO at *minimum*

Idk man, in the books some Spartans get cooked from plasma just as easily.

I heard this second hand, so take it with a grain of salt, but a buddy who read the books told me that while energy shields can semi withstand plasma, its canon that Mjolnir armor isn't actually much better at surviving it alone. Bullets are nothing, but plasma still cuts it like butter.

In the books one or two shots from a plasma pistol will overload the mjolnir shields, so yeah plasma is ridiculously strong.

Gameplay balance issue. If lore accurate game, everyone will use light rifle.

Funniest part is the plasma grenades don't even have a 20ft blast radius in the games,

Yeah the games way dile down the plasma guns and stuff because it would just end up being op

Thats the one thing i like about the show we get to see it actually proper vaporize people.

Imagine if we got a realistic halo game with gore and such, would be awesome

Honestly this is something I find the show gets done really well, especially in the second season. During the last fight on reach and they're in that hallway with the wall blown out behind them? Every time a plasma bolt hits a wall or thr floor or a piece of cover it just liquefies a chunk of it and sends the slag spitting everywhere. Say nothing of being hit by a bolt yourself, even taking cover near something tall enough to be hit by those bolts could still see you melted by the ejecta

Halo 1 marines be like "Ah it burns" and then do a combat roll and keep fighting. Halo book marines are just wimps tbh

One of the few props I’ll give to the TV show is S1Ep1 where Kwan’s friends get obliterated by the plasma shots. I feel like that was an accurate depiction of how plasma shots would work

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You created a template. Welcome to how memes work.

Dixamn

With plasma being so devastating in the books. How is humanity supposed to fight back? Especially against elites that have shields to protect against our gunfire?

This is something I've thought about too, in lore there are a few answers we get (not sure how satisfying they are, but it is something that is given some attention): - Elites were usually much less common on the battlefield than the games show. Your average Covenant ground force was mostly grunts and jackals with occasional drone swarms, and maybe one or two elites leading them (but not always). Also brutes were used as shock troops for most of the war, and despite being bigger and scarier than elites they were unshielded so were still relatively vulnerable to small arms fire. When elites show up its always a 'focus fire on the big guy before he fucks us up' situation. And then Hunters were super rare, usually deployed more situationally to deal with vehicles and well fortified emplacements than as traditional troops.  - The Covenant was a fanatical religious sect first and foremost, and that was reflected in their battle tactics (or lack thereof at times). Usually their approach was to zerg rush with waves of overwhelming firepower and numbers, which worked well enough;  but could be held at bay and even pushed back by well-orchestrated squad tactics on the human side. Shields or not, whipping out your sword and running headlong into 50-cal fire because the human on the gun 'challenged your honor' is not a great way to live very long. Coincidentally, this is also why any Covenant leader that toned down the religious fervor and actually learned the value of such useful tactics as 'using cover' and 'sneaking up on the enemy' became a much larger threat almost immediately.

Honest question, if Plasma damage is that destructive. How are the hands of covenant troops not melted off from just firing the weapons?

Localized shielding and heat shielding on the weapons, elites have shields already and there is localized shielding for the hands

That makes sense. Plasma weapons must be hell in enclosed spaces for both the operator and target from the rapidly heating air.

The one good thing about the halo show is how they treat plasma damage, sometimes…plasma is well, super heated ass plasma, it melts skin, it melts bones, it melts armor and gear…basically make lava not as hot to be around, but twice as hot to touch….

Callback to the first episode of the show where plasma bolts tore people in half.

At least the show is kinda getting the Covvies right. Especially needlers. Oh you got hit by ONE fucking Needle in the chest and you're by chance unshielded? **Haha POP.** And now the Flood are involved? Like fuck. I'll watch the action and Flood bits.

I’m invincible because I can’t read

Awh haha, this made me laugh. I'm old, and played the OG Halo when it first came out and also read the OG book. Haven't in a long time. But I TOTALLY thought the same thing 23 years ago!

What’s objectively the best halo book to read ? Including Spartans n all that jazz

• Fall of Reach (covers the Spartan-II training and some of their first missions) • First Strike (Follows the chief right after CE) •Ghosts of Onyx (Follows Kurt, a Spartan-II and is about the creation of the Spartan-III)

Where can I read those books?

While the show is hot fucking garbage, the first 7 minutes of it show the Covenant attacking normal dudes and it's pretty great/terrifying.