Well, if you haven't already read any of my previous blog entries then you should likely not care about this one either, but just in case you were interested you can read parts 01, 02, 03 and 04 at your leisure. That being said I will continue with part 05. The focus of this final installment will be possible plot connections to the Halo storyline.

Marathon, er.. Halo Connections:

Taking into account all of the possible unknowns regarding the Halo storyline I feel that the only true suitable scenario for a mod such as this would regard the time directly after the Covenant discover (or vice-versa possibly) humans along the outlying colonies. In this manner there would be less reliance upon Spartans and upper echelon Covenant soldiers.

So far my favorite scenario would entail a small interplanetary group of civil and military humans exploring a few of the outer worlds in search of more habitable environments. In their searching they come across a small moon (one of se7en?) orbiting above a gaseous planet. As they set out to explore the moon they uncover the remains of a civilization. Without the proper means to decipher or interpret what happened to the now abandoned settlement the group decides to gather what information and artifacts they can and take them back to their colony after completing their survey mission(s).

Back upon their ship, one of the crew accidently(?) activiates one of the artifacts, which begins to transmit a subspace signal to an unknown source. As the crew frantically attempts to shut down or at least determine what the signal is transmitting, they decide it would be best to return the artifact to the planet and report directly back to their colony. With little to no mishap the crew reports back to their colony and decides to continue with their survey mission after a short hiatus.

Continuing on Parts 01, 02 and 03, Part 04 will discuss the workings of the Covenant class structure and how it relates to the Human/Spartan Combat Model.

Covenant Class Structures:

Although creating a formal class structure would be nice, it is only possible to create classes within the guidelines provided by Halo's storyline and within the balance limits of a multiplayer match. What this means is that specific sub-races of the Covenant, such as Grunts may not be well suited for multiplayer matches (at least not within their current format). The result is that the number of classes used will be quite limited overall; mainly to the Jackal, Elite and Hunter.

The Jackal may be the most interesting multiplayer class in general provided that they meet a few key restrictions. First, they can never drop their shield; and second, they can only equip one-handed weapons (maybe even only the plasma pistol). The key strength of this class would be their shields. The Jackal shield is very resilient and is quite possibly more useful than the Spartan's energy shield due to the fact that it can resist all types of human ballistic weapons.

Another key feature to the Jackal would be the block feature. Whenever the Jackal uses the crouch funtion they hold up their shield allowing them to become defensive in nature. While in this position they can still overcharge their pistols but cannot fire them until they stand upright. As always, an overcharged plasma pistol shot will render their shield ineffective for a time so this would be a major weakness to this class.

The Elite would likely be the most similar class to the Spartan. Ideally this class would be broken down into three smaller classes: Elites, Gold Elites and Cloaked Elites. If possible it would be nice to seperate each Elite subclass as its own class provided that they have enough differences.