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Looking forward to Halo 4. Maybe I can share some experiences from the game tester side of things since I was on the campaign test team. Oh boy, that one has some fun stories.
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Dec 21, 2015 06:52
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Farseli posted:Looking forward to Halo 4. Maybe I can share some experiences from the game tester side of things since I was on the campaign test team. Oh boy, that one has some fun stories. Oh man, I can't wait to hear about all the awful poo poo you must have gone through.
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Dec 21, 2015 09:13
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oh yes oh god yes form the head FORM THE HEAD unghhhh...
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Oh yessss. Halo CE is literally my favourite game, and I've spent the past year and a half or so (failing) to speedrun it, and paying quite a lot of attention to the community surrounding that. Excuse my sperging for H1 and 2. I've definitely played more of this than anything except MMOs. Since we're kind of talking about it, I will say that I think the Anniversary graphics for H1 are really ugly. They're incredibly busy and it's just visual noise. I've never been on a battleship, real or spacey, but look at the bridge. All those weird lines all over the place. The people all look awful, too. At least the old ones, the awfulness kind of fits. I admit it's probably also a large lump of nostalgia, but I have a lot of problems with the way this game looks in anniversary and also most of what happened to halo post-3. Playing the clearly much prettier ancient PC version also means you don't have to play an FPS on controller. I'll jabber something else about weird stuff the new graphics do later on, when we come to it. I have exactly one positive thing to say about it! Talking about this video, you don't need to repeat the controls thing so many times if you start it inverted and then swap in the options after that bit of the tutorial. OP, can I jabber about speedrun tricks and nonsense as we come to them? Unless someone better at it turns up, anyway.
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Dec 21, 2015 10:35
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Farseli posted:Looking forward to Halo 4. Maybe I can share some experiences from the game tester side of things since I was on the campaign test team. Oh boy, that one has some fun stories. Oh wow, may have to actually invite you on for a video so you can talk about this! I'll have to make sure I don't forget by the time we get there. MooCowlian posted:OP, can I jabber about speedrun tricks and nonsense as we come to them? Unless someone better at it turns up, anyway. Jabber away!
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Dec 21, 2015 11:57
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I haven't played anything after Reach so I'll really be looking forward to 4 (and hopefully 5) as well as this facelifted CE since I never played that one either. You guys are right though, Captain Keyes looks loving strange.
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Dec 21, 2015 16:41
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I forget if the power has been consistent across games; but I remember in Reach using the Plasma Rifle quite a bit more in that one. oh right I remember now, the Elites on Heroic and higher would dive out of the way of the charged plasma pistol bolt often, enough that I found it much easier just to do a couple 3-5 round bursts from the plasma rifle to take down their shields.
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Dec 21, 2015 19:09
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I found uses for the Plasma Rifle the moment I was able to duel-wield it. Made a world of difference.
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Dec 21, 2015 19:25
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I played Halo CE on PC way back when it was actually original and unique in what it did (hard to believe nowadays, isn't it?) and I vaguely remember the intro cutscene changing, depending on what difficulty you played on. As in, the higher the difficulty, the more pumped the Sergeant would be when giving his speech to the marines. I also definitely remember the ending cutscene changing if you were playing on Legendary.
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Dec 21, 2015 22:46
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SovietPotatoe posted:I played Halo CE on PC way back when it was actually original and unique in what it did (hard to believe nowadays, isn't it?) and I vaguely remember the intro cutscene changing, depending on what difficulty you played on. As in, the higher the difficulty, the more pumped the Sergeant would be when giving his speech to the marines. I also definitely remember the ending cutscene changing if you were playing on Legendary. Yep, Johnson's dialogue (and Buck's in ODST) traditionally changes in each game based on difficulty. Although while the dialogue in question is in the beginning in 1, 3 and ODST, in Halo 2 it doesn't happen until Metropolis.
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Dec 21, 2015 23:06
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Yeah, but Halo 2 has the best Johnson lines in the series, so it's ok. 
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Dec 22, 2015 03:04
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It's actually timely that this LP is happening because I picked up Destiny for cheap on Amazon with all the expansions, which is quite literally "what if Halo was an MMO" (I think Warframe is better, even if it is ten times more grindy) tlarn fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Dec 22, 2015 |
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Dec 22, 2015 03:52
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Dex01 posted:Oh wow, may have to actually invite you on for a video so you can talk about this! I'll have to make sure I don't forget by the time we get there. I'd love to help out. Maybe vent some frustration that comes from spending 2 weeks scouring every little corner of a 3 room, 2 hall section of a map. Shoot every surface with every weapon available in the level to verify that each surface made the right decals and effects when shot. This did not always happen. Sometimes metal items got marked as glass and glass items were marked as metal. I still play Halo 4 every so often just to remind myself of what QA goes through.
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Dec 22, 2015 07:02
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Update! After a rude awakening and a mad dash to the escape pods, our big green hero has made it to the titular Halo. It's time to regroup with the other soliders and figure out just what the hell this thing is! Part 2: Halo Cut: [YouTube]/[Polsy] Uncut: [YouTube]/[Polsy]
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Dec 24, 2015 17:34
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The outside areas are where the new graphics actually look good, because outside actually has lots of textures. I still maintain that when you're running around ships and stuff it's mostly just ugly and busy. Grenade chain reactions, which you mentioned, are the loving worst thing. If they did take them out, it's probably because killing things Time for some notes on stuff to do to speed up this level. You can also skip having to fight the banshees and the first few covenant by grenade jumping up the cliff rather than crossing the bridge. That first wave fight with the dropships, it's possible to skip the fourth if you kill numbers two and three quick enough. There seems to be a limit of two on the level at one time, and I believe it triggers the next one when there's only two enemies left from the previous one. If you get the first few quick enough, the previous ones are still there so it fails to spawn the fourth. That's usually accomplished with getting grenades down fast enough to kill everything as soon as the doors open. That bridge opening cutscene once you get inside is really boring and you can't skip it if you trigger it. It is possible to skip it, though, but not going up the ramp. If you're good, it's possible to fling yourself out of the warthog and bump yourself over onto the slope above the wall up to there. If you're not good, you can climb up onto the hog turret or the head of the guy in it if you've not killed him for some reason, and jump up there. Stick toward the chasm and you won't trigger the cutscene when you hit the button, and thus save yourself a good long time. I'd like to take issue with you saying the proper strat for the marines is to hang back and snipe the covenant. The actual best way to do it is to kill all the marines. For some reason, probably because it's actually kind of hard to keep them alive on Legendary and sort of on Heroic, you're allowed to fail the objective. Cortana gets all disappointed and starts telling you "they're all dead" like she's disappointed in you and that sort of thing, but it just says move on to the next one. I'm not sure this was discussed yet, but usually killing too many marines too quickly upsets them. I think on easy you can kill four or five but legendary only gives you one chance. Luckily, the game considers it an accident if they get run over or killed by a grenade. Thus, the best tactic for the first two marine saves is to run over who you can and kill the rest with grenades. You have to wait the last one out, so you may as well keep the marines friendly and use their help, since you only get to leave the level once you kill all the covenant in the last area, but it still saves time. Also, notably, you can do those last three in any order you want. There's a fastest way, of course, but you can do it in whichever order you want.
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Dec 24, 2015 18:15
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If you aren't fishtailing everywhere while you're driving the Puma, you're not driving it right. In fact, fishtailing is pro strats for vehicle kills Yeah I remember seeing those orbiting Banshees before, good poo poo
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Dec 24, 2015 19:38
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I think I know where the two glitchy banshees came from. If I'm remembering correctly, two spawn the first time you're in the 'hub' area of the 3 stranded marine squads and usually get shot down by the warthog gunner. Since you didn't shoot them down ,I think they were trying to reach you when their pathing went haywire and they started looping.
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Dec 24, 2015 20:19
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Grunts get the Covenant equivalent of rocket launchers in this game.
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Dec 24, 2015 21:14
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Man one time, I don't know how I did it, but, I was able to kill one of the elites piloting the two Banshees at the beginning. I was stoked, like "HOLY poo poo CAN I FLY THIS THING THROUGH THE REST OF THE LEVEL," but alas, it was not to be. It had come to rest upside down and wedged between a rock on the far cliff face. I went over to it, pressed X to flip, and... splattered myself.  E: Also, on the topic of Warthogs, I always thought it was kinda funny that the UNSC's workhorse recon vehicle/APC was actually just a technical. Tofu Survivor fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Dec 24, 2015 |
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Dec 24, 2015 21:20
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I think my biggest problem going back and playing this game now is that everything is so drat long and repetitive. It's not quite apparent now but later on the levels just go on forever and forever. When the developers expect a "par time" of 15+ minutes you know you're in for a treat.
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Dec 25, 2015 03:38
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Yeah, Bungie did a lot of cool stuff with this game but level design isn't on the list.
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Dec 25, 2015 04:16
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HOOLY BOOLY posted:I think my biggest problem going back and playing this game now is that everything is so drat long and repetitive. It's not quite apparent now but later on the levels just go on forever and forever. When the developers expect a "par time" of 15+ minutes you know you're in for a treat. George posted:Yeah, Bungie did a lot of cool stuff with this game but level design isn't on the list. Considering three of the levels are retreading old ground (and Two Betrayals is essentially Assault on the Control Room backwards) and Library is like 5 levels of the same exact poo poo, repetitive is probably the only way to describe it.
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Dec 25, 2015 04:52
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That seems like a product of its turbulent development to me. It started out as an RTS sometime in the late nineties, then because a third person shooter by 1999 when Steve Jobs apparently announced it would release on OSX and PC at the same time. Then in mid 2000, Microsoft bought Bungie and wanted a big flashy flagship FPS for their brand new console which had to be released in November 2001. I kind of doubt they ended up actually spending all that much time assembling the levels, which is why some of them are so broken and several of them are near-repeats. That's also why I like speedrunning it. You never spend too long at a time on one level, you skip most of the enemies and then it's over in an hour and a half, at which point you angrily start again because of bullshit rocket launcher dudes. Deformed Church fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Dec 25, 2015 |
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Dec 25, 2015 09:25
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Tofu Survivor posted:Considering three of the levels are retreading old ground I actually liked this when I originally played the game, it may be padding and just squeezing as much out of the maps as possible, but it still felt really neat to me to spend an entire level fighting to get somewhere, and then once you're there you gotta go "Aww, gently caress me!" and fight your way all the way back. Plus, it doesn't hurt that one of the retread levels is the best level in the game.
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Dec 25, 2015 12:59
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MooCowlian posted:That seems like a product of its turbulent development to me. It started out as an RTS sometime in the late nineties, then because a third person shooter by 1999 when Steve Jobs apparently announced it would release on OSX and PC at the same time. Then in mid 2000, Microsoft bought Bungie and wanted a big flashy flagship FPS for their brand new console which had to be released in November 2001. I kind of doubt they ended up actually spending all that much time assembling the levels, which is why some of them are so broken and several of them are near-repeats. Ill talk about this during the LP, but they coded the E3 demo WHILE at E3 because they had just.. no time to do it. Its hilariously amazing how everything just fit together.
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Dec 25, 2015 19:48
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The Little Vidya That Could
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Dec 25, 2015 23:42
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To build on the Needler rundown you gave in the video, basically all the homing needles that the weapon fires will burst after a short time. This causes the weapon to deal a small amount of damage when it hits, and then more damage (Or an explosion) when the needles pop. Once you get enough on target to hit critical mass, (which I want to say was six? It's been a long time since I played) then whenever the first one goes the others will all chain-detonate and it causes an explosion that's almost as powerful as a plasma grenade. I want to say something like 75% as powerful, and with 50% the range, maybe? There are things in the game that can survive it, and I've also seen it kill nearby enemies that are caught in the blast. Either way, if you don't get enough hits it will still deal good damage when the needles pop. As amazing as the pistol in Halo 1 is, Needler is probably my favorite weapon, followed closely by one we'll get at the start of the next level.  Edit: Whoops, looks like you get it in this video, I forgot about that. Guys, the sniper rifle in this game is SO GOOD. Double Edit: I don't think either of you pointed it out, but my favorite thing about the sniper rifle is that the scope works even when you're not aiming, if you'll watch it when he's just walking around it shows what he's looking and it just looks so loving cool and I just love it! Captain Bravo fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Dec 26, 2015 |
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Dec 26, 2015 05:48
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Captain Bravo posted:which I want to say was six? It's been a long time since I played Seven. Because Bungie. Although it does start to vary after Halo 3. On the sniper rifle scope, I think I liked the sort of monochrome vector-graphic thing they had going on in Halo 3 as opposed to 2's picture-in-picture scope. Dex didn't show it, but the original CE sniper scope just sort of has a green line, like some sort of blurry waveform. Now if you'll allow me, I'm going to go off on a weird tangent. I'm kind of bummed that Dex keeps dropping the assault rifle at the earliest convenience. CE's assault rifle is by far my favorite of the entire series, with 4's a close second. Even though it's pretty inaccurate at great distances, it's great up close and not too shabby midrange, and it's got one of if not the fastest melee in the game. I'm also a huge soundwhore, and I feel like Bungie was never quite able to really recapture that brutal rawness in subsequent games. 3's AR sounded downright pathetic and it didn't get much better in Reach. I have very... strong feelings about 343's foray into the Halo universe, but they've been doing okay soundwise. I feel like they dropped the ball with the BR's sound design, but they more than made up for it with their AR. I'll usually toss it as fast as Dex has been in any other game just because I can't stand how pathetic it sounds, but in CE and 4/5, I always find myself coming back to it. Tofu Survivor fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Dec 26, 2015 |
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Dec 26, 2015 07:01
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I never got into the Assault Rifle (Despite how badass it looks) for one main reason: Nonlocational damage! When the shield goes down, pretty much ever enemy from grunts, to jackals, to elites can be taken down with one well-placed pistol or sniper rifle shot, as long as you get that 360noscopeheadshot. Assault rifle doesn't do this, I think they've said it was too intensive to program? For whatever reason, however many bullets it takes to kill Elite X is exactly as many as it will take to kill Elite Y, and Elite Z, the only skill is keeping center mass within your crosshairs and not dying. Yes, I am a dirty camping gently caress who'd rather sit behind a rock for 30 seconds lining up the perfect shot and then start cursing when I miss.
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Dec 26, 2015 12:17
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The Needler has always been my favorite weapon in the Halo series, partially because of the slight homing, and partially because of the explosions. It is a shame that the Needler, for the most part, never really improved much (unless that changed in Reach, 4, or 5, never played those), however, the Needler in Halo 2 is the best Needler imo.
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Dec 26, 2015 16:53
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I've always just found the needler inconsistent, much like the charged shot of the plasma pistol. The homing is too unreliable, I like to point and shoot, and I don't really like the feeling of missing when I feel like I shouldn't have. Even if it's all in my head, I like knowing it's my fault when something goes wrong, not because the slow projectile didn't home enough.
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Dec 26, 2015 19:58
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Captain Bravo posted:I never got into the Assault Rifle (Despite how badass it looks) for one main reason: Nonlocational damage! When the shield goes down, pretty much ever enemy from grunts, to jackals, to elites can be taken down with one well-placed pistol or sniper rifle shot, as long as you get that 360noscopeheadshot. Assault rifle doesn't do this, I think they've said it was too intensive to program? For whatever reason, however many bullets it takes to kill Elite X is exactly as many as it will take to kill Elite Y, and Elite Z, the only skill is keeping center mass within your crosshairs and not dying. Oh don't get me wrong, man. I love semiauto weapons. I have a really fast trigger finger and I've generally gravitated towards pistols and semiauto rifles in games like CoD. Generally I'll only switch to an automatic when my finger starts to get tired. The DMR is my spirit animal, like no joke. I'm actually completely garbage in Halo MP unless I have a precision weapon in my hands. I was pretty decent with the BR in H3, but once Reach hit and I got my hands on the DMR I turned into a monster. 99% of my kills in H5 have been with the magnum, and I really prefer it to the BR in SWAT and Warzone, especially since I haven't unlocked the DMR yet. Also the fact that it's a late game REQ. Man I miss the loving Needle RIfle.
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Dec 26, 2015 20:43
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The first Halo game works best when you pretend the Master Chief is a mute with retard strength being led along by whoever is currently holding his leash. In Halo 6 his mask will come off and it will be revealed that he is an especially intelligent doberman.
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Dec 27, 2015 11:11
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I had no idea Halo 1 was such a hacked together rush job. I mean yeah the level design is extremely lackluster but everything plays and feels incredibly smooth. Really, really, really smooth. Consider how it came out at a time when the hot thing with FPS'es was Half Life 1 it's really easy to see how it ended up revolutionsiing the genre.
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Jan 1, 2016 05:31
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Update! And we're back! The post Holiday and New Year period is a difficult one to overcome especially with all the fun new distractions that come with it, but! I have fought my way past the post-festivities stupor to resume our journey through the Halos starting this week and continuing until forever! (Well, probably not forever but we're likely gonna be here a long time so, get comfy) This week, Vile has gone AWOL so my good buddy JordanKai has graciously agreed to be my wingman, however this is just temporary and Vile should be back next week. Back to business! Today's mission is to board an alien space craft and rescue Captain Keyes. We're also gonna learn about Active Camo, Overshields, and how online players still don't know how to deal with circle strafing or jumping. Part 3: The Truth And Reconciliation Cut:[YouTube]/[Polsy] Uncut:[YouTube]/[Polsy]
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Jan 17, 2016 21:49
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Wow, the age behind the level design is really showing in this game.
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Jan 17, 2016 22:42
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I'm such a nerd for knowing this, but the reason why normal people can't use power armor is because, like Dex said, it will tear them apart. The TLDR is basically Power Armor is super loving heavy, in order to move inside it they have to link up circuits to a person's muscles that activate motors moving the suit, whenever a normal person tries to wear it they inevitably make a minor mistake, which breaks a bone, causing their muscles to spasm from the pain and the suit flips out and murders them from the spasming.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:07
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VNDLP is dead, long live JNDLP.
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Jan 18, 2016 03:31
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The Covenant were originally united by religious faith channeled by the race that's actually in charge. The degree of loyalty and to which they participate voluntarily depends on the race. For example, the Elites are gung-ho zealots, the Jackals are kind of opportunists, and yeah, IIRC the Grunts are basically enslaved.
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Jan 18, 2016 04:45
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On Keyes somehow understanding Covenant speech: Cortana is tracking Keyes by his brain implants, and has no trouble understanding Covie communications herself. Presumably there's some translation software in Keyes's brain chips.
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Jan 18, 2016 05:21
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Wow, the moon looked terrible in the before-times when hoverboards didn't exist!  I wonder how butt-ugly those early generation Covenant looked before the new models burst out of their cloning vats.
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Jan 18, 2016 07:59
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