Thoughts on Halo: Warfleet

I recently got Halo: Warfleet and have been reading through it. I want to share some of my thoughts and hear other people's opinions on the book.

This is a big illustrated "coffee table" style book. It has 10 illustrated cross sections and many more scale renderings. It's kind of like a cross between Star Wars Incredible Cross Sections (same artist too!) And Metalball Studios spaceship render videos on YouTube. We only get 10 cross sections and to be honest I am disappointed in the Covenant and Forerunner cross sections since they aren't very detailed and show minimal cut outs from the alien ships.

In that regard the UNSC cross sections fare much better. We get some good detail of many UNSC ships, Spirit of Fire being my favorite in that section. The book's writing is lore dense. We read about the UNSC's plan to use the Infinity as an emergency colony ship to evacuate human space in the event of a Covenant victory. We see "Half Jaw's" command ship during the Sanghelli civil war, learning how the ship is tattered and beaten since it has been unable to go into dry dock for full repairs since the events of Halo 3. We learn that when the Mantle's Approach was destroyed all computer systems were instantly dumped to Genesis, explaining how Halo 4 &5 are linked.

Overall it's a good book, but I wish it had more. Some ships such as Forward Unto Dawn are notably absent. I wish we got a better look at the Covenant cross sections especially. Still, I recommend it as a good book to purchase.

It must be hard as story writers to try to make a book with all the ship blue prints. They aren't engineers. They're artists.

Legobrick1000 wrote:

I was somewhat upset at just how limited it was. I was expecting at least illustrations for most of the ships - especially the new Sangheili ones - as well as illustrations of both the phantom and the spirit.

Yeah I agree that it was a bit more limited than I was expecting. In a way it reminded me of the issue I had with Halo Wars 2's cutscenes, we saw in the advertisements all the Blur studio crazy cool ones and were surprised to see that most of the game was in engine RTS animated cutscenes with the Blur ones used only to highlight specific moments. Seeing those plain renders in most of the book was a little upsetting, especially given that what we saw mostly in the advertising were those hand drawn cut out paintings.

Speaking of those hand drawn paintings, for comparison I pulled out my Star Wars Incredible Cross Sections Revenge of the Sith book and compared the artist's work side by side. His old Star Wars ship drawings were teaming with detail, such as little figures walking through them and small ships in hangar bays; etc. The Halo ships seem kind of empty in comparison, no figures in them... and the only ships noticeable in the hangars being either Pelicans or Phantoms depending on the faction. I don't know if that was a result of the artist not knowing Halo as well so he didn't have as much to work with, or if the interior of many Halo ships haven't been fleshed out much and the artist didn't want to try and imagine new stuff.

With that said, interestingly enough I remembered after writing the original post was that the Ardent Prayer from Halo: Reach is one of the most open ship cut outs. It faithfully replicates how the Halo: Reach Long Night of Solace level looks!

Wulfgaard117 wrote:

It is a good book, though. I plan to buy another for my nephew.

With all my complaints said, I still agree its a good book! Your nephew will have fun with it ;)

Seconded on all your points honestly. I was hoping for Star Wars level cut-aways with dozens of little notes, rather than the dozen or so we get for each ship.
Was also kind of hoping for something on Forward Unto Dawn too, or possibly the Everest...but I'll take what I can get.

Forward Unto Dawn would be tricky. They'd probably base it on the Halo 3 Dawn, but then they'd have to fit the Halo 4 Dawns interior into it. Perhaps that's why they skipped it?

total war1402 wrote:

UK here so can't get the book yet.

Any nice hints towardS Halo 6? I know some of the Forerunner stuff like Guardians are in. Any new info on them?

Not anything really overbearing hinting about the future of the franchise but a few things of note. When the Mantle's Approach was destroyed not only did it shunt its computer data to Genesis, but also large amounts of empty shells for the Prometheans... explaining how Cortana not only arrived at Genesis but got an army pretty quickly too. The Guardians are described as having sort of a policing role in the Forerunner Empire, something that automatically policed out of the way worlds; so often doing its jobs so quickly the Forerunner ecumene didn't even get many reports of what the Guardians did because they saw it as "beneath them." In short, Guardians are seen as intergalactic traffic cops by the Forerunners. Even the floating bits in the Guardians were less a battle design choice and something the Forerunners saw as a way to intimidate lesser species.... :P

Okay maybe they aren't really traffic cops, but that is how the Forerunners seemed to treat the Guardians. Furthermore it mentions Guardians were the first line of defense against the Flood and got their butts kicked quickly as soon as hordes of Flood infected ships overran them. So in theory, fighting the Guardians might be easier than we guessed. although still posing some challenge to our heroes. The reintroduction of the Flood in Awakening the Nightmare might also suggest that the Guardians will soon find themselves up against an enemy that can take them down again... It is no wonder then Cortana has been shown of taking over Halo Rings, since when the Guardians fail the ability to hold a gun to the universe will ultimately be what could keep her crazy rampant self in control... Flood, Human, Covenant, Banished... all of them have to respect the person/computer who can destroy them in a moments notice with the Halo Rings.

Jacob Ly44 wrote:

total war1402 wrote:

UK here so can't get the book yet.
Any nice hints towardS Halo 6? I know some of the Forerunner stuff like Guardians are in. Any new info on them?

Not anything really overbearing hinting about the future of the franchise but a few things of note. When the Mantle's Approach was destroyed not only did it shunt its computer data to Genesis, but also large amounts of empty shells for the Prometheans... explaining how Cortana not only arrived at Genesis but got an army pretty quickly too. The Guardians are described as having sort of a policing role in the Forerunner Empire, something that automatically policed out of the way worlds; so often doing its jobs so quickly the Forerunner ecumene didn't even get many reports of what the Guardians did because they saw it as "beneath them." In short, Guardians are seen as intergalactic traffic cops by the Forerunners. Even the floating bits in the Guardians were less a battle design choice and something the Forerunners saw as a way to intimidate lesser species.... :P
Okay maybe they aren't really traffic cops, but that is how the Forerunners seemed to treat the Guardians. Furthermore it mentions Guardians were the first line of defense against the Flood and got their butts kicked quickly as soon as hordes of Flood infected ships overran them. So in theory, fighting the Guardians might be easier than we guessed. although still posing some challenge to our heroes. The reintroduction of the Flood in Awakening the Nightmare might also suggest that the Guardians will soon find themselves up against an enemy that can take them down again... It is no wonder then Cortana has been shown of taking over Halo Rings, since when the Guardians fail the ability to hold a gun to the universe will ultimately be what could keep her crazy rampant self in control... Flood, Human, Covenant, Banished... all of them have to respect the person/computer who can destroy them in a moments notice with the Halo Rings.

You know, that computer data thing for the Mantle's Approach actually makes a lot of sense. For a species so reliant on the Domain, I suppose it makes sense to try and recover all of a ship's data and send it to the Domain. Although it does somewhat upset me since it seems like yet another made-up explanation after-the-fact.
Would've loved if the ending of Halo 4 had some hint about that(if it were thought of at the time), like, maybe they notice a large data transfer from the Mantle's Approach as it was destroyed.

EDIT: Actually, Cortana says in Halo 5 that she was pulled into slipspace and sent to Genesis. Most of us assumed she meant the Didact's physical ship, but she must've meant data - since Forerunners, Covenant, even humans use slipspace to transmit information. So maybe it wasn't so after-the-fact.

What about those physical plasma torpedoes, anyone?

UmbraKnight6161 wrote:

What about those physical plasma torpedoes, anyone?

Yeah. There's some cool lore in here. That bit about the UNSC Eternity. The way that Seraph pilots jack into the matrix to control their ship. The little tidbit that there's, like, a friggin' cabal in the engineering sector of an ORS-class heavy cruiser 'cause the engineers need to appease the Forerunner intelligence within the shrine-core. The Spirit of Fire is a massive RTS-justifying machine, apparently (granted, the Halo Wars 2 stuff hinted pretty heavily at this). The categories of personnel in Covenant ships are interesting; heiromonk is, frankly, just silly. Obedientary is a novel term, though.

Just, lots of weird, interesting little notions that I hope to see explored sometime.

I'm hoping for a second volume with more info on the post-war UNSC and Sangheili ships.

• Brigantine
• Carrack
• Man o War
• Poseidon light carrier
• Anlace frigate
• Vindication light battleship