The Didact HAS RETURNED + A TON MORE (HUGE NEW HALO LORE)

hey guys welcome back Halo epap has officially released and with it the dact has finally returned and we have a lot to talk about to put it lightly spoilers ahead as expected now this book is absolutely nothing like what I expected it to be at all all my expectations and my thoughts going into it were either well at most partially right and at the least absolutely Flatout Incorrect and I mean that in both very good and sometimes disappointing way the writing quality is excellent Kelly gay is an incredible author we've had some amazing books from her so far and Halo is just another one of those the character writing in particular Sublime absolutely excellent there are some sections in this book that have given me chills like no other Halo book since the Foreigner Trilogy and that should allude to a few things that we're going to dive into very soon there are some character interactions in this book that I never thought for a million years we'd ever get or hear about again that are very present in this book which is really really exciting however I'm not the biggest fan of the overall direction that the story went in if I had to describe this book in like one way I'd say that the trees were incredible but the forest wasn't quite what I was hoping for the way that I see it this book could have gone down to overall narrative paths one that would have been absolutely just like dream come true incredible and another that I didn't really think about until the book went in this direction I was like ah it makes sense but a little bit disappointing so we'll we'll touch on this in grave detail as we go through the book there's a lot to talk about I'm being purposely vague because I don't want to give away too much at the start I want to go through the book with you that said though I will say whether you watch this video or not you have to read the book for yourself not just read it you have to listen to the book yourself the reason for that is the narrator for the audio book is Keith sharaka The Voice voice actor for the da so I'm not kidding this entire audio book felt like one long cut scene that we never got it legit feels like a video game cut scene the audio book in particular you have to listen to it seriously so with all that said I want to give a massive thank you to all of the artists whose amazing art I'll be using in this video their links are in the description and the name should also be on the screen as well without any further Ado let's break down the story of Halo epap the return of the deda so the book opens literally right as the Dau gets composed which was his send off in escalation that frankly nobody likes he finds himself in an infinite desert with a cloak and extreme Amnesia he doesn't know why he's here and he keeps losing his thoughts as soon as they come into his mind they disappear 10 times faster but then off in the distance he sees the Epitaph Tower which yes is the tower from epap and Citadel in Halo 3 it's described as almost like a glowing blue Oasis in the endless wastes of the desert and he begins heading towards it using it as something of a North star on his way there when he stops to sleep or take a rest he dreams of fire and extreme heat of arriving burning pain and Embers from the composition as he gets closer he finds the corpses of War spiners buried in the desert almost like a graveyard but they later vanish which starts to blur the line between dream vision and reality he's never quite sure whether what he's experiencing is actually real over time he starts to experience hyper realistic visions of Past Times that help to erode his Amnesia Past Times like the foreign human war of his rate of warrior Servants of his armor but also of his children dying to humans on forn hore the way this is presented and it extends throughout the book almost feels like PTSD it feels like him facing the many many events that he's been a part of over his life and kind of coming to terms with the damage that they've done to him these vision continue at one point the Dune that he's walking over give way and he falls into what appears to be a cryptum which is where he sees more visions of the foreign a human war of chum hak the human capital where the final battle took place of human PS and foreno the Lord of Admirals the leader of the humans and then of the reality of that war that the humans had also been fighting the flood which at the time the foreigners had no idea about and then once again he Witnesses the Lord of admiral and the rest of the humans composition he then sees the primordial again in his time lock on Chum hak before it was freed then Faber in the council chamber on mayran debating the flood with him and the great Halo versus Shield World debate that caused the foreign eiman to turn against the dact and strip him of rank and title and send him into Exile in the very cryptum that he finds himself in now he then sees Promethean soldiers moving through the fog one of which he destroys with his hand only to reveal his or skull reminding him of his promethian nights and plunging him back into his memories this set of memories begin during the story of Krypton with born stellar chakas and riser their time onum haakor their freeing of the primordial the extinction of for hak the prophet's rebellion and the subsequent Halo firing that put that Rebellion down on their home planet of janak kuam his capture by Faber and his Exile into the burn and finally of his mental torture by the grave mind and the long-term of effect that torture has had on him now I'm going to warn you beforehand a lot of the early parts of this book are essentially retellings of events from the Foreigner Trilogy basically to me at least it seemed like a way of catching people up on that story who maybe haven't read that trilogy in a long time or haven't read it at all honestly I don't think you even need to read the foreign Trilogy to understand this book because the first I don't know four or five chapters are essentially just a like blowby blow retelling of all three of those books and on the on that note he begins to recall the scale of the flood outbreak in the final days of the war the sheer number of planets and systems infected of the primordials freeing when he was in Exile and of the primordials infection of mendicant bias with the logic plague on Gaia 11 the Halo that would later become Zeta Halo then his thoughts jump to fa's trial and Mican bias's assault on the capital of May trillion during that trial and ultimately the Halo's firing and the subsequent receding of the Galaxy of his composer and the creation of his Prometheans and of the Librarians incapacitation and sealing away of him in the cryptum on requim which she had hoped would heal him of his grave mind Affliction with a long meditation in the domain then memories of Chief Awakening him thanks to the gay as that the librarian had laid and his composition of New Phoenix which he had hoped would start the Foreigner Reclamation then of his fight with blue team at the composer's forge and finally he remembers his full name t title Rank and then his need to eliminate Humanity in pursuit of the mantle so that's the recap basically over that's the first four chapters very heavily recap based he then comes to the realization that he assumes he's in the domain but he wonders why the domain or rather how the domain is even active again given that the Halos have been fired of course we know that that was because of born stellar and all the other surviving foreigners that went back to maillian to turn it back on after the war which he later realizes hey it's uh hidden been up for almost 24 hours editing this video xeria here reporting from the domain I'm really trying to hit 600,000 Subs soon so if you guys are enjoying this video I'd greatly appreciate a sub thank you very much back to the video he finally reaches the epid tower which is typically according to him a monument or a tomb but can also contain archives and prisons archives we knew but prisons that's a new one this Tower is in fact a copy within the domain of the actual Tower which the side act finally officially confirms marks the burial site of mendicant bias so we thought that before we now know it for absolute certainty Halo 3 zepa the tower is the burial sight of mendicant bias but also the D also reveals that there's a prison beneath as well when he enters the base of the tower it's a dark blue lit room overtaken by a great golden winged hologram offensive bias he takes a lift to the apex of the Tower which is the actual map epit in Halo 3 and meets another Foreigner harus one of the foreigners who oversaw the domain and its religious rituals this hoseus the last of his rate confirms that the domain has not been fully repaired yet and on the horizon they see a Dark Void so the two leave the spire and head into the dunes again and head towards this enigmatic void which it turns out is in fact a gateway to the actual domain so these endless ways these Sands that the dial finds himself in that's not actually the domain yet that's domain Purgatory however by going to that void in the distance that Gateway into the domain he aims to seize the mantle and use it to defeat Humanity when the D reaches the void he keeps trying to go into it but it keeps getting pushed out he even goes as far as trying to drag the harbus in with him to see if that will get him through and it doesn't all it does is reveal the warden Eternal who in fact the deda had never even heard of as The Keeper of the domain the warden rejects the DA's entry and throws him quite literally kilometers out of the Gateway and back into the desert cast out from the domain the daac starts seeing gray wisps almost like ghosts or Souls which in fact end up being other foreigners thousands of ghostly incorporeal foreigners in fact these are the souls the Essences of the foreigners who compos themselves during the Foreigner food War to try and Escape infection by the flood but who haven't been able to get into the domain because it was either damaged or protected by something more on that in a second and it's here where the DCT runs into a rather familiar phase if you read the forign trilogy you're going to know who this guy is the confirmer now the confirmer was basically an old grizzled Warrior servant that the DCT runs into near the start of cryptum who basically ends up betraying him and giving him over to Faber so he can be sent into the burn again a burn is a region of space that is completely infected by the flood that's where the grave mine basically gave him the logic plague but given that the D doesn't have anyone else to talk to he begins speaking to the confirmer and the rest of the ghost as well he reveals to them all that 100,000 years have passed and that the Foreigner eiman is gone which they had no idea about because they've just been trapped in this Purgatory since the Foreigner flood War he also reveals that he knows the fate of born Stellar the isodidact his duplicate essentially he knows that he went to go off and live in another galaxy with his family to live a quiet life away from the spotlight of the Galaxy and he kind of looks down on that he doesn't really like it then the confirmer tells him about the warden that he and the ghosts had tried to get past the warden in the past and they'd always failed they were never able to get into the domain to reach peace but then a new Rift opens in the desert floor which has human Souls within it realizing how many Souls there are in this infinite Purgatory the diac begins searching for his wife's ghost The librarian's Ghost and in that Pursuit staring at the distant void of the Gateway he sees the warden finally step through but he's friend in because Cortana comes with him after some time when the warden and Cortana head back into the gateway the dact and harus teleport to the void and sneak in right as it closes they then find themselves in the domain an infinite span of Halles and caverns and they find themselves in an area that's significantly damaged by the Halos an infinite black void where damage has been inflicted the dact immediately wants a status report on the domain and the Damage inflicted to it but before he and herbus can do that the Warden grabs them both and pulls them into this esoteric white light where at first they experience nothing as the D says the absence of everything before a new world is painted into existence we then jump back through time to what is called a synchron one of the Dil synchrons now a synchron in foreign elingo is basically a significant moment in time so although we're going back in time to various parts of the Di's history barely any of these have any fleshing out at all so this this is all new stuff don't worry for the most part this is not a retracing of steps that we went on in the forign trilogy this is new and I got to say very cool stuff and boy do we start out with a bang the first synchron we get to is of the D when he was very young when he was still a child watching the grand edict so yes the character from Halo infinite legendary ending that issued offensive bias to oversee the endless executing the Dax parents with a suppressor the reason he's doing this is because the Dax parents played play a crucial role in what are called the credal wars which were basically a series of significant foreign or Civil Wars between the warrior servant rate and the Builder rate and his parents were on the warrior servant side the builders won the wars and so his parents were basically executed and forced to be forgotten in time for their well treason in the eyes of the Builder rate so in the Foreigner Trilogy the builders were basically kind of like the pseudo bad guys of the foreigners they were the ones that built the halo rings which the DCT was in staunch opposition to Faber one of the main Foreigner or the main Foreigner villain of that trilogy as well was the master builder his entire rate is basically set up to be this semi almost a bit like Oni but for the foreigners and we actually get a lot more fleshing out of the builders right here it turns out that the builders essentially consumed many other rates to increase their status by using their own power wealth corruption and fake information campaigns so yeah in a way they kind of are like Thor and Oni after the DCT once again has to witness the grand Ed ICT execute his parents the synchron fads and they're back in the bleakness of the domain but then another fracture opens up and takes him back to n Drago his home world where he was trained to become the warrior servant that we know him as a foreigner named silence takes him and basically puts him in this stasis chamber to emotionally repair him and make him forget his memory of seeing his parents being killed and then his Warrior servant training formally begins he then meets a foreigner by the name of bitterness who it turns out was in fact the leader of the warrior servants in the credal wars that his parents fought in and it's this Warrior servant who gives the DAC the name of shadow of suned star the DCT was then trained in bitter's mansion by silence spurred on by the will to become so powerful that the builders the ones who killed his parents would need him we see some of this training but then he's pulled once again back into reality in the domain and he Ponders why Cortana even needs the domain to heal but the power of the domain was to be his and his alone no compromises especially for a human AI ejected from the domain the dact once again treats back to the tower back to its apex until the Gateway is once again opened but the dact can't run there in time he needs the herbus to teach him how to teleport within this domain the man just doesn't have the stamina that he used to poor guy we then learned something new about the domain so as we know when the Halos were fired all the foreigners who died had their essences is trapped outside the domain because it was damaged and it turns out that the warden Eternal is basically how the domain responded to the damage it was created to protect it and it was created as an amalgamation of the entire harus rate so the rate of herbus was basically razor foreigners who first discovered and first explored the domain and the water Eternal is an amalgamation of the entire rate but as the domain started to repair itself the warden was locked outside of it to guard the gateways and the reason that he formed an alliance with Cortana was because she offered him re access to the domain now this bit is really cool So eventually the dact and herbus make it back inside the domain and the entire thing is full of Cortana fragments that are reciting lines from the Halo 3 grave mine Cortana moments except this time those lines are kind of skewed to fit the domain the D calls out to her and she reaches him and eventually snaps her fingers and sends him once again flying out of the domain back into the wastes on his way once again back to the tower he visits the rift with human Essences in it turns out that the Essences here are the humans that he composed at New Phoenix in Halo 4 on Omega Halo at the end of the four and a f war and also hundreds of thousands of Essences from Chum hak at the end of the human Foreigner war and they all gang up on him starting to hit and stab him he like passes out or something and then after a while he awaits and the ghosts are still there but they're not attacking him anymore however one ghost in particular makes his way through the crowd and presents himself the ghost of foren show the human Lord of Admirals after some talk foreno shows the dact a vision of a guardian rising from beneath a human city which kills 63 million people supposedly this is the work of Cortana he then takes him into a guardian's local network which is almost like a digitized reality where the Guardians controlling AI resides and of course this AI is again caught this Guardian is one of the ones on Genesis in Halo 5 and this takes place as Cortana gives her speech at the end of Halo 5 where she calls all species in the galaxy to unite under her or be burnt out of reality in this Vision that the Lord of Admirals had given him the D starts to search for information pertaining to cortana's next move but then exuberant witness slips into the guardian system right as she freees Chief and blue team from the cryptum at the end of Halo 5 and the D Witnesses Cortana go into her fit of rage right after after before being pulled out back into the domain right before Cortana who asks if the deda helped them of course he had no hand in freeing Chief and blue team who was simply an observer to the event but regardless she then sends him back back to one of the most torturous events in the daa's history back to the burn he finds himself on the Exile ship right before it was self-destructed and he's forced to replay his memories of his capture and torture by the grave mind now quite a few of the visions that happen in this section are retellings of parts of the foreign trilogy but they flesh them out quite a lot more the way that this is presented kind of reminds me of what the flood is the Halo C so it's the same story but it just fleshes the existing story out a ton more that's basically what this section does to mostly centium it takes elements of centium story and really starts to flesh it out a lot more than that book does so after one section with the grive mind the D then finds himself in another vision on a different ship which in fact is something brand new that's very cool a flood decontamination facility and a life worker known as verdant Horizon approaches him with food it turns out he was rescued and I say rescued with the greatest of air quotes rescued by Faber the master builder whose Builder security Force had taken over the facility and were using it to decontaminate flood infected ships to sell back to the echim now if you don't know this was essentially fe's dark Hustle so to speak during the Foreigner foood War what they do is basically send out un witting Foreigner ships into very heavily food infected parts of the Galaxy let them and their crew be infected and then go and retrieve the ships decontaminate them and sell them back to the aimin the guy was a hustler before Hustlers even existed and the DC now finds himself on one of the ships that was used to further that hustle he equips his Warrior servant armor once more and meets Faber on the bridge the master builder Returns the daak to the capital which is meilan where he was forced to recite his time in the burn to the Jal but his mind once again goes back to his torture by the grave mind the grave mind torments the DCT about the pain the flood are going to inflict on the foreigners for the pain that they inflicted on the precursors and it reiterates that the precursors will issue a final test for the mantle to humanity one day when they grow fat and ripe it then demands the location of the Ark whilst reciting lines from Halo 2 and Halo 3 We Exist together now and even caus the Halos monuments to all the Foreigner sins in a desperate bid to find the location of the Ark the grave man begins to weaponize the daa's most precious memories of the librarian to prize the answer out of him but he still doesn't yield the librarian then actually appears or so the D thinks and pulls him once again out of this tortured memory back to the Suns he then starts to rethink if his decision to keep the true identity of the primordial a secret secret from the council was ever actually a good idea that identity of course being that the primordial was the last precursor and the first grave mind that would bring Vengeance to the foreigners he then starts to worry that this decision had in fact cost him his victory against the builders all those years ago and had in turn led to the creation of the Halos that he so opposed he then experiences a slight Revelation the DED act may have inadvertently led the flood to the greater Ark in the final days of the war by going to the greater Ark after his interrogation and logic plague infection at the hands of the Grave mind but at the end of the day he didn't even care anymore because doing so spited fa he then gets a vision of how the grave mind also tortured fa using the Dead Infected bodies and the cries and whales of fa's wives and children to coerce him there's a lot of talk here about the significant damage that the grave mind did to the primordial during that interrogation and logic plag infection at one point he even says that he doesn't even know where the DCT ends and the grave mind begins within him if he didn't know the reason for his Insanity in Halo 4 in particular was because of this logic plague the DCT essentially has the logic plague in Halo 4 it then turns out that the librarian left the dact a galactic cartographer so that once he awoke from his cryptum supposedly healed he could help the humans find the foreigners relics and help them claim the mantle defeat the precursor's final test and Rule Galaxy with peace but of course because the Halos were fired the domain was burned and so the daax never healed in his Krypton that said though reliving all of his past memories and Trauma does seem to be at least physically healing the dact he goes back to the epap to once again meet with herbus who informs him that Cortana has seized the mantle and that he now realizes that the mantle itself leads to a constant imbalance of living time thanks to the wars that species engage in to pursue it harus in the Dax once again Venture back into the domain and see Cortana bringing human AIS in which to the foreigners is absolute sacr as the domain is where all memories of foreigners including the daax family reside and those human AIS pose a direct threat to the existence of those memories in a roundabout way it said that the domain was actually crying out to the daac to save it from these Intruders and by saving it he could finally seek Redemption so to seek this Redemption the dict once again Ventures back into the domain the hallways of this section of the domain are described almost like different colored versions of those Library walls on Epitaph which is some really cool imagery there really good writing almost makes the domain seem like the Foreigner back rooms kind of Lial in a way moving through these hallways are human Ai and as the dact moves through them he starts killing them by punching into their chest and pulling out their cores crushing them in his hands or while reliving memories of his creation of mendicant bias all these interaction with these AIS is giving him constant memories of his should we say greatest contribution to the space of artificial intelligence eventually he reaches two rivers that are not too dissimilar from the rivers at the base of his mansion on N Drago his home world but these rivers are rivers of infinite data and energy a physical amalgamation of living time but once again the warden finds him intruding and launches him away while still in the domain the warden says that Cortana now has total control of it and also total control of a Halo Zeta Halo and the dact is very quickly pulled out of the domain into the Suns before the warden can execute him and he and herbus head once again back to the tower I promise you in the actual book The locations don't seem this kind of erratic and flip-floppy they flow so much nicer in the book the flow of the book is really good the way the reason it seems like that right now is just because I'm trying to summarize everything but unlike before the two can't just return straight to the tower because now it's surrounded by wardens searching for the dact and so they have to start sneaking through the Sands they teleport as much as they can but it starts to make them both feel really weak and eventually they make it back to the human Rift to recover as they head down into the rift to Shelter From the wardens the humans find them but this time they aren't hostile in fact they beckon the two of them in it seems now the humans aren't as hostile and so the D tells foreno what Cortana actually is a human Ai and so foreno realizes that Humanity have indeed survived Beyond themselves thanks to the librarian's receding efforts however he also tells her that Cortana has a Halo and thus Humanity are once again threatened by Foreigner technology and so they need to get that Halo out of her hands as expected the humans backs go up and they accuse the dact of wanting to seize control all of the halo for himself but he genuinely doesn't for the first time in years he feels himself finally free of the Grave mind's influence and he doesn't want to go against what the librarian his wife gave her life to ensure Humanity survival in composing the humans that he was now stood before the deda had committed a great sin in denying them their own afterlife locking them in this domain Purgatory but even still an unlikely Alliance is formed an alliance between the daa and foren show this is such a cool section I absolutely adore this Alliance the leader of the foreigners and the leader of the ancient humans forming an alliance to combat a shared evil such a cool plot thread I absolutely love this so with the daa now allied with the Lord of Admirals and all of his ancient humans a plan is devised feno's plan is to have his 60,000 human goes distract the warden while harus bis teleports the DAC to The Domain void to try and sneak in within the domain is a hub of sorts for each of the halo rings that essentially allows a user within the domain to control a Halo ring remotely and herbus tells the dact where zetah Halo's Hub is and they teleport in the plan works and the dact enters the domain but the warden still pursues so he and the herbus flee into a black space of Highly compressed data which in my imagination kind of seemed like the domain data version of like a really dense forest or a really dense corn field if that makes any sense in doing so they eventually lose the warden and reach an arched vault door which is emanating scripts of Foreigner prayers herbus recites these prayers and the vault door opens to reveal an infinite span of space which is in fact a late precursor archive now quick forewarning the sections from here on out get really really esoteric kind of like a lot of what's described in primordium if you read that in being that esoteric they are quite hard to describe again I've said this loads of times but you've got to just read the book to try and form a true picture of these areas in your mind so it turns out that because the precursors of course wanted the humans to truly inherit the mantle over the foreigners Human Experience was always meant to fill the domain as well as the foreigners but Cortana is trying to stop that from happening for the domain to heal itself it needs new experiences but because the warden had denied anybody new for example like the foreigners that were trapped in the Sands of purgatory into the domain it prevented it from healing had the warden not done that and had the domain been allowed to heal with the presence of all of these new Essences well it would have been much better fit to combat cortana's intrusion So the plan then morphs into opening the Gateway in the void to allow all of the Essences in the sand to enter and heal the domain but first they've got to get rid of Cortana so the daa once again goes to the bridge of a guardian this time one of the Guardians over insulation 07 and this is where the events start to shift to be mostly parallel with Halo infinite or the events that slightly preced the campaign now it turns out the guardian that the D was on above insallation 07 was actually going to be one of the ones that was going to get sent to doac which as we know destroyed the Bru's home world so he uses its network channels to jump to Zeta hilo's community ation terminal and project a physical representation of his Essence into the silent Auditorium he then JS to the conservatory to speak to despondent P but Cortana appears and he grabs her by the throat but it doesn't affect her at all the two go back and forth about the mantle and how it isn't able to bend to one's needs and also about how both of them and also mendicant bias had been at the grave mind's Mercy at some point in their history but when he escaped jumped back to the silent Auditorium it turns out that his Guardian had already gone departed for doac so he was trapped but don't worry herbus once again saves the day he appears and teleports the dact away back to the Wasteland in fact he teleports him into a tomb beneath a Spire stood next to an oblong block this block is the tomb of mendicant bias of course the DCT had failed to lurk ortana away from Zeto however the herbus had discovered that the warden is built from the asmuses of his rate which we already knew but also that abdon the precursor AI that hosted the domain created a ritual to help early haruspices which were exploring the domain back in the day to find their fellow explorers should they be lost and he believes that that ritual can be used against the warden to trap him outside of the domain however that ritual wasn't all that harus had found he also discovered the hilt of a sword which he G gives to the DCT now this Hilt generates a Quantum blade which can be used to kill things in the domain the actual name of this sword is called the rift bleed and so Rift bleed in hand looking at the tomb of mendicant bias the deduct says that he's ready for one final battle one that should help him seek atonement the harus spus draws an El symbol a mantle symbol into the sand on the floor and ancient human ghosts around it alongside Foreigner ghosts as well including the confirmer his betrayer all there to offer Aid if need be after all this time the dax's former enemies and betrayer are now United behind him Stood Beside the Seal of the mantle on the floor the harus begins reciting the ritual and the wardens are all baited in and trapped on top of the seal the dact then enters the seal to fight what is class is almost like the ultimate Warden the one Warden that you have to defeat to defeat all of them not only equipped with the Riff blade lead but now fully armored in his Warrior servant armor once more the dact and the warden then engage in what can only be described as one of the coolest sounding sword jewels in the history of Halo like full stop this is one of those sections that you absolutely need to read for yourself because no matter what I do I can assure you I will not do it just this after a long and uous fight the dact eventually plunges the rift bed into the warden's chest and severs the ward W's head in two before he can escape this means that the warden Eternal is now officially for good dead but also puts an end to the herbus rate for good whilst closing all the gateways from the domain to the physical world preventing anything else from accessing it the herbus that recited the ritual is now the last living harus in existence and after a long period of grieving he and the dact then go to the human Rift and prepare the human souls for admission into the domain at long last they can finally find peace now in beginning to sever the domain's connection to all of the gateways in the Physical Realm its link to Zeta Hilo was destroyed so it seems as though they aren't going to be able to stop Cortana however the harus space has a way around that something known as neural transmission which involves Crossing alternate realities to achieve a near instantaneous rate of travel so using this neural transmission the dact once again returns to the conservatory where he hears Cortana and despondent Pyers worse than the flood conversation which he mulls over for some time when Cortana sends despondent py away she immediately addresses the DCT knowing that he's there lurking in the room so that means that directly after this cut scene in Halo infinite Cortana addresses the dact right after it very cool the DC tells Cortana that he's changed in letting the humans he's wouldn't sworn enemies into the domain something he once would never do and then tells her that she could in fact Cortana could in fact be the worst villain the galaxy has seen since the flood and that like he and mendicant bias she had released unrelenting damage on the Galaxy thanks to the Grave mind's infliction after a lecture atriox begins to appear and so the DAC leaves but not before seeing one very iconic line you are what you dare leaving Z he once again returns to the domain which is rapidly healing becoming significantly less Bleak and dark than it was before composed foreigners and humans now share the domain no longer enemies and the dac's new mission is to shut down every Gateway in existence sealing the domain off from the physical world so it can sink back into the Shadows once again falling into myth and leaving knowledge all together this kind of seems like the way of writing the domain out of present law at least which honestly is something that I'm really happy about more than that in a second though within the domain the dact and foreno his once sworn rival go off to hunt the remaining Rogue human AI within but later he detects a small blip of energy from The Zeta Halo Hub within the domain this energy being a message from Cortana saying I am what I dare which she likely sent after sacrificing herself to save Chief and that marks the final time that the dact would ever cast his concerns out to the Physical Realm ever again in the end he returns to a domain amalgamation of his mansion on N Drago and finally reunites with his wife the librarian but that's not all the book ends with um one hell of a stinger shall we say it ends with a passage of dialogue from offensive bias speaking about or to mendicant bias and so I watch I wait a keeper of kin of foe and family sibling rival Contender I have celebrated both your containment and your Contrition and to Beyond I remain Vigilant to safeguard both our paast behind and our path ahead this almost sounds like a eulogy that offensive bias gives to Mican bias when it was ordered to safeguard his tomb beneath the epap tower but you know maybe it's the conspiracy theorist of me I'm not sure but this eulogy makes it sound like Mican bias's story ain't quite over yet our path ahead makes it sound like the role that offensive bias plays with the endless may just include mendicant bias too and bro my fingers are crossed so hard they're snapping right now that that ends up being the case seriously name a more iconic Duo than these guys you literally can't and so that is an overview of the story of Halo epap I'm going to say it again before I get to my very brief review you need to read/ listen to this book yourself I cannot do it just this in one video this is just a a teaser a slight taste of what this book truly offers you have to read I recommend listen to it yourself so very quick review I have four positives and four negatives that I want to quickly touch on positives first right the character writing and the interactions and the motives and everything absolute s+ tier I would honestly go as far as saying that the character writing in this book is the best that we've had since Greg Bear's for a Trilogy maybe on par with Silent Storm because that book had excellent character writing at the very least on par with it if not better some of the best that Halo books have ever had I absolutely loved all the callbacks of the forer trilogy and kind of the way that this story slots in with the existing foreign Trilogy it feels like it fits on perfectly on top this one might be a little bit contentious but I'm actually really happy that this book seems to have kind of written the domain out I was getting really tired of the domain constantly being used as like like a corner cutting McGuffin and I'm really happy that this book seems to have kind of moved it to the side and resolved it in a way that means that it doesn't really need to make a presence in any story again and I also love how this book gave the dact an implicit presence in the stories of like Halo 5 and Halo infinite yes I absolutely think that he should have been the main villain for 343's Trilogy at least obviously that was the intention is way back in Halo 4 that never ended up happening but because that didn't happen this is definitely the next best thing I do think that it kind of rounds out his story in a very good way however on that note going to the negatives I really don't like that it seems to have actually rounded out his story it definitely did it in a good way but I don't want that to be the end of the DCT the dact has been the most mistreated character I would say in the entirety of Halo law even since Halo 4 I hot take I don't think Halo 4 did the diect the justice that he deserves he was barely even in the game he was in like three cut scenes like I I really wish that he'd been bigger presence in in the overall story and I don't like that this seems to have kind of wiped that idea off the board for good I also feel like early on in the book especially chapters like 1 through five the book relied a bit too heavily on just like retelling bits of the foreign Trilogy I get that the idea of that was to catch people up who haven't read the books but I wish they hadn't focused on that too much going back to what I said right at the start of the video about not being the biggest fan of the overall direction of the story I'm a little bit disappointed that they tied the DA's final story in with the created and not with like mendicant bias and offensive bias more I wish they' gone in the kind of direction of mendicant bias's atonement and the endless and offensive bias more so than focusing on Cortana and the warden and using the dial final story to kind of like fill in the gaps in the story that those elements had and I also am not a fan of how little presence mendicant bias had in this I was really hoping especially given the location right the epap tower I was honestly thinking that we'd hear more about Mican biases a tement about what he'd been doing since Halo 3 and he was barely in the book I was really hoping for more of that and honestly I can't imagine how well Kelly gay would have written him as well because she wrote like the Dax so well in this so well I can't imagine how well she would have written Mican bias but it she was barely in the book at all I mean he had basically no presence in the book besides a few mentions overall I'd say that this book kind of feels like centium 1.5 and I mean that in the best way possible that said though it definitely felt tied down by like the Litany of story mistakes that Halo has made with his main games over the past like 12 years it felt like the book was kind of just used to fix a lot of those mistakes that have been me with a main story over the years which is perfectly fine I'm I'm more than good with that I just wish that the book they chose to do that didn't happen to be the book that is also the da final story I would have loved to have have like a DA and Mican bias interaction and an offensive interaction which we didn't end up getting which it is what it is but overall I really enjoyed the story like I said some of the absolute best character writing that I would again honestly say that Halo has ever had in its books you need to read I would recommend listen to this Keith sh back's narration is incredible seriously you got to listen to it Go and listen to it audible Spotify whatever you use listen to it with that said I'm going to round this video out very quickly CU it's so long and I need to get it edited so thank you all very much for watching I really appreciate it uh thank you all to my patrons for the continued support over there as for usual and I'll catch you all in the next one yeah

Channel: HiddenXperia

Views: 221,777

Keywords: halo, halo infinite, halo epitaph, halo book, new halo book, halo didact, halo return of the didact, halo flood, halo flood lore, halo precursors, halo precursor lore, halo flood explained, halo lore, halo lore explained, hiddenxperia, 343 industries, bungie, xbox, gaming, gameplay, trailer, halo 3, halo reach, halo mcc, halo infinite flood, halo infinite easter eggs, halo secrets, next halo game, halo infinite story, what if a spartan was infected by the flood, halo season 2

Id: s0zosXsuUPs

Length: 41min 28sec (2488 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2024