Looking for love in all the wrong places?

Halo fans might recognise this Huragok is looking for love in the wrong place! This comic was created by Idleduck.http://idleduck.com/?p=109

are there Engineers in Halo: Reach?

Some one asked Bungie, are there Engineers in Halo: Reach?

Bungie graciously answered, Yes. But don’t worry, we’re not going to make you feel like a monster for taking them down this time out and they’re somewhat less of a pain in the ass, all things considered. Even if you don’t have a plasma spewing weapon in hand, you’ll still be able to pop them down from their lofty perches when you notice that your enemies are being overshielded by an engineer floating overhead.

Keen readers will know this was revealed a while back but this is the first decent picture reveal - which was from the Corvette Map. 

Will we see this chap in Reach?

It's doubtful we'll meet these guys in Halo: Reach as their first encounter was in Combat Evolved. Still, if you want to see more of these awesome clay caricatures - check out the Antithesis collection!

And just because he's too cute, an Engineer!

Will the Engineers be in Reach?

In a word, yes. Bungie leave nothing to chance so when you see a picture of an engineer in a Halo Reach Vidoc, you can take it to the bank that an Engineer will appear in some shape or form in Halo Reach. You want the proof? Here's a still image from the vidoc that clearly shows a Huragok.

It's also so proof that dude needs a hair cut and at at least some conditioner! I jest, just the conditioner! If you want to see the Engineers in action, check out ODST and also the short anime film Midnight in the Heart of the Midlothian which is available on Halo Waypoint on your Xbox right now.

Also spied briefly in the vidoc was proof that Brutes might turn up in the campaign trail somewhere.

I borrowed this brute picture and the engineer image from Grunts R Us. Those boys possibly love Halo more than me....

Eagle eyes may have also spotted that Jonesy the cat is still missing.... keep an eye out for him please troopers!

Halo 3: OSDT plot summary

I know this is a blog about Halo: Reach but lets face it, I love all Halo. So there's no reason why I can't focus on other things within the Halo universe eh? Anyway, I noticed people have been looking for 'ODST plot' on my other blog and seeing as I write about Halo here, I bring you, dear googler, a Halo 3: OSDT plot summary.

Halo 3: ODST begins with ODST soldiers Dutch, Romeo, Mickey and the Rookie discussing plans for assaulting the Covenant Prophet of Regret's ship above New Mombasa. Buck arrives and introduces Dare in what appears to be a strained pairing. It is clear from tone of the introduction she is now in charge. These characters form the heart of the storyline.

 

The team enter their HEVs and drop (hence the ‘prepare to drop’ slogan for ODST soldiers) through the atmosphere toward the ship; at the last minute, Dare changes their trajectory to deliberately miss the carrier. The Covenant ship enters slipspace, sending a shockwave toward the ODSTs; the Rookie's HEV pod collides with another and crashes to the ground, knocking him unconscious. He eventually awakens some 6 hours later and through exploring the streets of New Mombassa he proceeds to find clues as to what happened to his squadmates.

Buck awakens after the drop and fights through Covenant troops to find Dare. After an encounter with an Engineer, he finds Romeo instead, and the two resolve to get out of the city.

Dutch drops near a nature preserve and helps Marines while he goes to the city. Mickey commandeers a tank and fights his way along a Mombasa boulevard.

 Meeting up with Dutch, the Buck and Romeo defend an ONI base from the Covenant, blowing up a bridge in an attempt to slow the advancing enemy. However, they are quickly overrun and forced to destroy the facility to keep it from being captured. After a tense encounter they are evacuated by a Pelican from the top of the ONI building and they make contact with Buck, arranging a rendezvous at the police headquarters. However, when Buck and Romeo arrive, they see the Pelican get shot down and crash. They rescue Dutch and Mickey, but Romeo is seriously wounded in the fight as the result of a very angry Brute attacking.

The squad then hijacks a Phantom transport ship, but instead of leaving the city, Buck, literally in a change of heart, decides to turn back and find Dare.

Back in the city, the Rookie is assisted by the Superintendent (the city’s AI, a type of Cortana aid), which leads him to Dare's position. She and the Rookie team up to reach the Superintendent's data core, which possesses information on something underneath the city the Covenant is looking for.

Inside the core they find a Covenant Engineer. Dare explains that the Engineers are an alien race that have been enslaved by the Covenant, and this one decided to defect to the humans. The alien downloads the Superintendent's data into itself and Dare's mission changes from destroying the AI to escorting the alien to safety.

The Rookie, Dare, and the Engineer reunite with Buck and fight their way out of the city. As they fly away in the transport they captured earlier, the ODST squad watches as the Covenant glassess the city of New Mombasa.

In the game's epilogue, about one month has passed, and the ODST squad is still keeping guard over the Engineer. One of Halo’s greatest servants, Sergeant Johnson abrubtly arrives, informing the Engineer that he intends to ask it everything it knows about the Covenant and whatever it is they're looking for. To show it understands, the Engineer replies by lighting Johnson’s cigar.

If the player completes at the game on Legendary difficulty setting a scene after shows the Prophet of Truth overseeing some Engineers uncovering a Forerunner artifact buried beneath the Superintendent's data core. This is presumbably some kind of passage way to the Ark that was central to the plot in the events of Halo 3 (remember ODST is set at the same time as the events of Halo 2, and obviously before the events of Halo 3).

Extra for Halo Experts:

• Buck will probably appear in some form in Halo: Reach 
• Check out the ODST Firefight Guide. Cos you just know Firefight will be in Reach.....

The Engineers of Halo 3: ODST and maybe Reach?

Halo 3: ODST's Engineers were a surprise for me. I'd never heard of these creatures before - plenty of fans had though and Bungie made no secret of their existence:

"First seen in still images prior to the retail launch of Halo: Combat Evolved (and then again by industrious players who coaxed character models out of unplayable portions of the disc), our official unveiling of the Engineer didn’t go down until eight years after the Master Chief first went toe-to-toe with the Covenant. But since you’ve now seen these curious, armor-clad characters floating and sputtering around the city of New Mombasa, we figure the time is right to declassify their artistic origins."

So now that Halo 3: ODST is done and dusted, Bungie took the time to explain a bit more about the design and origin of the Engineers. A chat with the lead designer Shi Kai Wang sheds a lot of light - for instance they were inspired by sea creatures like jelly fish!

"I definitely looked at a lot of sea creatures for inspiration - the way they move, the way they emit light, the fluidity of their bodies - and tried to translate that into a creature out of water. Under water sea slugs and glowing jellyfish were the main source of inspiration." - Shi Kai Wang.

Note the giant ball sack, top right. hehehe.

Engineers are formally known as Huragok and are effectively a class of Covenant.

Within the Halo universe,  their origins are that they were created by the Forerunners prior to the first activation of the Halo Array. Being mechanical structures rather than true life forms, they survived the activation and were later found by the Prophets.  The Prophets subsequently made the Huragok their slaves to do work regarding understanding and using Forerunner technology.

While Engineers possess no true tissues or organs, their nano-mechanical surrogates so closely mimic their biological analogs that they seem almost indistinguishable to later observers. Gas-bladders serve as their method of locomotion, allowing them to float through the air even after their deaths. The bladders also serve as part of their respiratory system; if their gas bladders deflate, they will asphyxiate and die (source).

The Engineers as a concept and as a design have been around since Halo: Combat Evolved was being put together by Bungie. As noted above, they were even spied in some pictures before Combat Evolved was released.

Due to time constraint issues, the Engineers were "left on the cutting room floor" while Halo CE was being finalised. They were cut so late in the piece, however, that they remained in the game's code. Xbox modders and hackers located the Engineer files within the code on the game disc and manged to spawn Engineers in various configurations within the game. These are the images that may be found on the internet:

    Hey! I don't belong here!

    What's purple and doesn't look like Cortana?

Will the Engineers be in Halo: Reach? There's a real possibilty they might be as they are actually referenced in The Fall of Reach novel. The Master Chief watched an Engineer dismantle a vehicle's engine, assemble it into various other working configurations, and then return it to its original state (page 183 of the book).

There is real potential for at least some kind of reference in the xbox game now that they are official in the 'released game cannon' and not just in the Halo novels. Time will tell...

Extra for Experts: Maybe Microsoft should have used the Engineers to fix all the Red Rings of Death that seem to occur all over the world....