Remnants - Chapter Sixteen Notes

This one should've come out sooner honestly. But between getting the proper tone down, wanting to get more ahead and finish the actual Reach plot and then a damn infection that left me in pain for a little over two weeks, I couldn't get shit done. Ugh, well, the process for this has been grueling and I feel like I'll have more to say about next chapter than this one, but you guys deserve the full treatment in any case. So, here we go...


I wanted to pay off or at least allude to some things happening on Zek's side of things, as well as finally force him to pay his dues. I can't have Zek coercing the UNSC into every bullshit scheme he comes up with. Haverson is ONI, he should be able to eventually skirt around his silver tongue and Retz's. So here, he does. He finds an angle to work with, one he learned form Shepard after acquiring the Chorka.

This allows me to show that Haverson is capable of learning from his experience and that humanity is not going to be a pushover or muscle for Zek's ambition. I needed to make Zek work with the ODSTs for once and accomplish a mission of human interest rather than his own in any case. It's important for Zek's own personal growth that he see things from their perspective and that requires getting stuck with them from time to time. And by the end, as I hope you saw, even the Drop Troopers began to open up to him a little, if only a little.

Also, the flight on the Phantom sequence with Zek trading insults with the ODSTs was a clear homage to Predator, sans the mildly homphobic slurs. I switched it to racial slurs instead! Improvement! Maybe. Probably. Most likely not. There was an attempt.

The Insurrectionists were another story, I wanted to use them in some capacity for the longest time. But there is very limited space for someone to accomplish that. Like, none really. My timeframe mostly consists of fighting the Covenant menace, so if I wanted to use Innies at any point it had to be in this story in very select moments. Reach was one of them. So I thought up the idea of a group of Prisoners, a whole cell of Inssurectionists the UNSC captured, locked away in an ONI Internment Facility somewhere on Reach. Think Gauntanamo times a hundred, I don't think the UNSC has the same qualms about civil liberties and proper channels concerning imprisonment that we would consider morally upright. There's probably a whole discussion in there, but for another time.

For the moment, just picture these guys, as the whole planet is glassed around them, escaping in the chaos and making a run to get off the planet. Their best bet, an ONI Prowler and hey, I finally get to use that thing! They make their way to an ONI facility offsite nearby and prepare for the long haul. Wait there until it's safe to move on and join up with another cell with the intel you snagged from the spy station you found. At least they're loyal to their cause.

I don't see many people trying to defend the Insurrectionists in the Halo community. Which is weird honestly, I find there's always someone in any fandom willing to try and forgive a bad guy or people who do shitty things. Here? Nothing. I can't honestly say I'm sympathetic to them either. Given literally everything they are reportedly doing in the lead up to the war with the Covenant, I find it hard to give them the benefit of the doubt. I mean, getting pissed off because Earth is so far away and demanding more from you than seems fair, sure, get angry. Tell them off. Thing is, the UNSC might not be very Outer Colony friendly, but they need them. Realistically they're also a democratic government, the UNSC only takes over as a military junta once the Covenant show up. You could petition Earth to give yourself more say in colonial affairs.

Instead the Insurrectionists start attacking the very colonists they mean to liberate. And brutally. Like lots of people start dying. Vicious, overblown, overkill, uncaring for collateral damage terrorist attacks. There's a reason Halsey thought Spartans were their only option. Not because the UNSC was losing, it was because the war was dragging on indefinetly and no one was really winning.

As an aside, I always found Halsey's interrogation in Halo 4's prologue strange. She's arrested for kidnapping children? Yeah, fine, but your government sanctioned it. Hell, considering she's ONI and the only people who could be holding and questioning her ARE ONI themselves, seems a bit hypocritical. Especially when the guy interrogating her accuses her of making the Spartans to fight humans, not Covenant. Yeah, the Insurrectionists, who were also your enemy and killing innocent people. What's your point? I mean, sure, the circumstances that made Master Chief and the Spartans are super shitty and horrible, monstrous, but there are more people to blame than just Halsey and that doesn't take away from their accomplishments. The Spartans are child soldiers and it's horrible, but lets not pretend the context for their existence doesn't have some precedent.

Ultimately the Spartans are the heart of this chapter, as I wanted to show more of Chief's leadership skills and abilities. I feel I've more than established his bro-ship with Commander Shepard at this point. I needed to showcase his sense of responsibility, friendship and position of familial importance his Spartan team has in his heart. That meant making a lot of this chapter take place from his perspective. Specifically about Reach, his time there and his team. Hpefully their addition to the cast is a boon, not a detriment.

I have still not played Halo 5, and refuse to until Halo 6 offers me some kind of better resolution to things than what I feel was offered in the conclusion to Guardians. From what I understand, a lot of people find Chief's team, Blue Team as it is sometimes called, consisting of Chief, Kelly, Linda and Fred... were boring. Which is honestly a shame if they were. I can't speak for the game itself, but I feel like that was a missed opportunity to better showcase Chief's relationship to his squad, his family, the kids he grew up with and survived with. I hope to at the very least do better in the eyes of the fandom of capturing their dynamic and personalities. I can try in any case. I like to think I know enough about the Spartans at this point to safely presume how they function as a unit. But, we'll see. I guess it's up to all of you to decide.

Anything more I have to add can be saved for next time. As that chapter is... heavy on some interesting developments. Plus more Spartan action, so get ready for that. See you then.