This past Monday, 343 Industries and Microsoft showed off the opening cinematic for Halo 5: Guardians. We’re quickly introduced to the four members of the Spartan Fireteam Osiris before they touch down on the planet of Kamchatka. The four skydive onto the Covenant-filled surface, at which point Osiris basically goes Avengers: Age of Ultron on the aliens. Y’know what, just look at it for yourself:
Is it ridiculously action packed, slightly bordering on overkill? Yes. Does it betray the canon of Halo by showing players the Spartans kicking ass and barreling through enemies like football players enacting martial arts on the field? Probably not, since the books and other media have made it clear that the Spartans fight much differently than they do in the games, where player input would be a nightmare if they could do all of that from first person. And yet, with all of that said…it’s really fucking awesome. Great action, great music, and that final shot of the Spartans jumping off the range is bloody amazing. But the best part about it has to be the new playable heroes.
Despite being the central hero and face of the games, the Master Chief hasn’t ever particularly been all that interesting. Chief’s (mostly) stoic nature was badass in the first three games, but as the years went on, things changed. Protagonists in games started to at least try and have some more personality to them, and the Spartan’s silence felt more and more like a relic of the past. There were novels and a comic that delved into his origin, and Halo 4 had him talk more, but it didn’t entirely click.
Chief is simultaneously the expanded universe’s spawn point and weakest aspect. His existence has essentially allowed for writers to use his actions to open up new avenues of the fiction, as we’ve already seen with the other Spartan programs; but he himself can’t really go through much change, and the fiction has to always make sure he’s lined up with everything else, hence the Librarian accelerating his evolution in Halo 4 and making him essentially the Greatest Spartan Ever, No Really You Guys. So unless Halo 5 is really gonna delve into the Chief’s psyche now that Cortana is gone–and I mean on an Arkham Knight level of delving in, complete with disturbing nightmare sequences and all–it’s a safe bet that nothing will really change all that much. If nothing else, his positive existence is responsible for the other Spartans in the series fiction. The newest batch of Spartans are Fireteam Osiris, and these are the heroes who should be leading the franchise going forward.
For Halo 5, Osiris is comprised completely of Gen-4 Spartans. We’ve got Edward Buck, the co-protagonist of Halo 3: ODST (voiced by Nathan Drake Fillion); Holly Tanaka, a Covenant war refugee, post-war liaison Olympia Vale, and Jameson Locke, protagonist of the Nightfall miniseries. The campaign will alternate between Osiris and Chief himself as he rolls with his old Blue Team, consisting of fellow Spartan-IIs Linda, Kelly, and Fred. The Chief and his team have been declared as going AWOL for reasons currently unknown, and Osiris is tasked with hunting them down, which we saw a little bit of in the Halo 2 Anniversary cutscenes. Given that there’s zero mention of the Chief in the opening, it’s a safe assumption that Halo 5’s true story will kick off after that bombastic intro sequence.
Even before the action begins, we get a good idea of who these four characters are and what they’re like with each other. Buck’s the wiseass, Locke’s all business, Tanaka still has some fear of the Covenant, and Vale is an expert on the Covenant and their culture. In battle, their personalities shine through; Buck is charges ahead for the others, Tanaka immediately buries her fear down to tear the aliens to shreds, Locke is confident enough in his Spartans to let them do their thing (the intro lets him mostly fade into the background to show off his Spartans), and Vale uses her Covenant knowledge to eliminate all the Covenant on a Phantom on her own and bring it crashing down.
B: “It’s not just another target.”
L: “Every target is just another target, Buck.”
B: “Every other Spartan, every soldier when they hear about this…they’re gonna hate us. You know that, right?”
We’ve talked about before how this game seems to be more morally ambiguous than the previous entries in the series, given the tagline of “two sides to every story.” But this doesn’t just go to only Locke’s view of the Chief, this also extends to his team. Locke’s dead set on bringing him in, but Buck, not so much. As the above conversation shows, this can’t just end at that, and it wouldn’t be surprising if this comes to a head during Locke’s portions of the campaign. Buck has been through enough to know when someone in the military wants more than they’re telling, but Locke’s only reasoning is that Chief is a traitor and needs to answer for what he’s done. Neither view is particularly wrong, and when taking the origin of the Spartan-II project into account and the things they did before the Covenant war, it’s easy to fall on Locke’s side. On the other hand, we’ve played as Chief through four games now, and he’s like an almost mute big brother at this point. It’s hard to imagine him doing anything wrong because it’d be like us admitting that we’re the bad guy. Talk about a dilemma.
This dynamic between Buck and Locke, combined with whatever perspectives Tanaka and Vale have on the Chief, could make for more of an interesting story than Chief’s adventures with Blue Team. Given the relationship the other Spartan-IIs have with the Chief, there’s little chance that the story will do anything to make them lose faith in their leader. But Locke and Osiris can be the doubtful audience surrogate, they can be the guys who aren’t sure if Chief’s still in his right mind after everything that happened in Halo 4.
In a way, it’s fitting that Locke and Osiris are showing up in Halo 5, the first game in the series on a new generation of Xbox. When the Xbox One was first unveiled, Microsoft wasn’t entirely confident in what it was, and that showed in its products. The Master Chief Collection was the best representation of the Xbone up until recently, a great idea bogged down by bad execution. But in 2015, the One is walking with a lot more confidence than it did in the past. With Halo 4, 343 received many complaints from fans and critics that the campaign wasn’t changed much, if at all. The addition of new Spartans and making players essentially hunt themselves down throughout the campaign is certainly a change of pace. Another way to really shake things up would be if they just killed off the Chief completely and had Osiris take the reigns as the lead for future games. Crazy, most certainly, and definitely ballsy as hell. But even the greatest Spartan will fall sooner or later. It wouldn’t even be a first for the series, since Arbiter has practically joined the Chief as a co-protagonist by now.
Whatever plans 343 has for the future after Halo 5, there’s little doubt Locke and the others will be a part of it; these characters all have parts to play in the overall universe, and Locke is standing right alongside Chief as one of the many faces of the Xbox One. 343 has said that if Chief is Halo’s Superman, then Osiris is “the Avengers”. And if they’re making that comparison, that means they’re definitely going to be stepping up during this Reclaimer Saga.
Do you think Fireteam Osiris will lead future games after Halo 5? Let us know in the comments below.
About the author
