The shot of his hand lying next to his weapon, disconnected from it, serves as a nice little visual cue for the scene that follows where Cortana has to tell John that she’s rampant – that she’s dying, and there’s nothing he can do about it.Īlso, we see this exact same image in the trailer for Halo: Xbox One when John goes up against the Warrior-Servant construct (which may or may not be a War Sphinx). In these moments where John has to openly address his feelings and emotions, his assault rifle is generally nowhere to be seen. It comes as no surprise then to see that Halo 4’s most emotionally charged moments are the ones where John has no physical objective to achieve, where he can’t reconcile his situation with a mission or rationalise things away, but he instead has to confront these obstacles in ways that will change him as a person. The assault rifle is the means through which John is able to fall back into his comfort zone, into being the hero who is looking for a directive – a new objective to physically pursue. John can often be seen to turn away from Cortana and awkwardly check his assault rifle, a relatively meaningless gesture because he knows it’s in perfect condition, he knows his weapons inside and out. At numerous points through the game, we see him confronted by these personal obstacles which force him to come out of his shell a bit, like the moments where Cortana’s rampancy becomes a topic of discussion between them. In Halo 4 though, it’s a means through which John is characterised – the Spartan ‘side’ of his personality, to be specific. This image is incredibly important… The assault rifle is a subtle little prop that we see throughout the game, we tend not to notice it much because it has been the default weapon in almost every cutscene in almost every game. With nothing but the sound of flames licking the air from the wreckage of the Dawn, we pan over to John’s assault rifle and his hand. It’s very much in-keeping with that striking theme of going back to basics, mixing together the elements that worked in the first three games but in a different way. “Crazy fool, why do you always jump? One of these days, you’re gonna land on something as stubborn as you are – and I don’t do bits and pieces…” In fact, going back to how I concluded my previous post about Dawn, this set-up is reminiscent of a line spoken by Sergeant Johnson in that scene. Sticking with that theme of familiarity, Requiem’s opening is a perfect reflection of the openings of all three games of the original trilogy – you have the objective of getting to an escape pod to land on an alien world concluding the previous mission, the destruction of a Covenant vessel while John floats through space, and the memorable fall to the surface of a planet which punctuated Halo 3’s opening scene.
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This is where we see the stakes get raised alongside the progressive complication of the narrative, John and Cortana are bombarded with both internal and external issues which continue to set up the central conflicts of the story.
#Halo 4 requiem series#
Following directly on from the disastrous events of Dawn, the Master Chief finds himself in the midst of a series of exploding Covenant vessels as he plummets through the planet’s gravity well and into the Dyson Sphere. Roll on, Requiem! One of my favourite missions in the entire series, it has to be said, which further means that I have a lot to say about it. Halo Infinite Campai… on So, I’ve played Halo Inf… Timothy Smith BLM AC… on So, I’ve played Halo Inf…
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