An exchange in the HBO forum led me to try and follow the instructions to bring the Spec Ops Commander, lovingly called Half-Jaw for his mutilated mandibles, to the Control Room of Delta Halo at the end of the Halo 2 level The Great Journey. Dude, Where's My Spectre? The first problem I encountered was what to do with the Spectre. According to the instructions, you should use it after Half-Jaw says he's taking the cruiser back. If prompted, he'll get in, and you can drive it inside the first structure in Great Journey, after the beach cliff battle against the Wraiths. That part proved easy enough. However, after running through the entire level, I found the Spectre was gone. After using it to bring Half-Jaw inside and forcing him into the next corridor, moving the Spectre back outside near the Wraith debris seemed to help. It almost seems as if Halo 2 has zones from which garbage is collected at different rates. I think Bungie wanted the wrecked Wraiths to still be there near the doors when you emerge at the top of the Scarab platform before heading to the control room; so if you put the Spectre there, it'll still be there when you come back. There is an even quicker way to get Half-Jaw and a Spectre down onto the beach in front of the Control Room, though: just use the first Wraith at the start of the level. When you board it, Half-Jaw will man the Spectre's gun. Use the Wraith boost and push the Spectre off the cliff. The other crew will die and the Spectre may be slightly damaged, but Half-Jaw will survive. Problem is, he may or not be there when you reach the beach with this method; plus, you don't have a chance to watch him fight alongside you through the level's interiors. Oh So Lonely In several attempts at getting Half-Jaw to accompany the Arbiter through the level, I noticed a couple of things about his behavior and that of the other Covenant units. The hardest thing to do seemed to be to convince a single unit to follow you. If Half-Jaw was all alone, his default behavior seemed to be just standing still. If you pushed him into view of enemies, he would fire from a fixed position and perhaps crouch, but that is all. A sole Hunter from the first pair could be coaxed past the dark room and to the midpoint of the jackal bridge, but I had no luck bringing him to the prison; at the midpoint of the bridge, no matter how far he was pushed, he would return and circle around. Half-Jaw did the same in several corridors, seeming to prefer to remain in a loading zone rather than move on. However, adding other units to the mix had a dramatic effect. With two Elites with him, Half-Jaw and his companions would run ahead to the next ecounter with hardly any encouragement at all, often engaging enemies before I did. A group of three Elites tromped right through the level, even crouch-walking to sneak up on the Brutes in the prison. The only time they stopped was when a room was empty, and even then, usually if I started to leave the room, they would follow. I was never able to get all four Hunters together, though. I'd have liked to see that. Emergent Behavior, or, Thinking About The Box After one prison battle, I noticed that Half-Jaw was exceedingly reluctant to go down the corridor that leads to the Scarab platform. He always returned to the same exact spot, slightly behind a crate that had been blown into the hallway during the battle. Thinking that perhaps it was being perceived by the AI as an obstruction, I pushed it down the hallway. Half-Jaw took a few steps, positioning himself again about the same distance and direction from the crate. I pushed the crate again. Half-Jaw moved again. I pushed the crate all the way out onto the Scarab platform, with Half-Jaw following the entire way. Even after completing the platform battle and viewing the cutscene, Half-Jaw would not do anything except follow that crate like a sad puppy. I pushed it off the platform, thinking he might follow it, but instead, he merely stood there. Sort of sad, really. An Elite And His Crate. I can only guess that the crate was tagged as potential cover (even in its overturned state) and that is what led to Half-Jaw preferring to stand near it, even when it offered no cover whatsoever. For My Next Trick... A Disappearing Elite Once I got Half-Jaw to the Scarab platform, I figured I was home free. I knew that a Spectre could easily be driven on top of the control room. It proved a bit tricky to use a Banshee to get him off the platform. I discovered that if left alone for even a short time, he would disappear. I couldn't leave the platform, get the Spectre, and then come back; he'd be gone. I had instead to push him off the platform and then push him over to the Spectre so he'd get in. Playing on normal difficulty, the next battles are fairly easy. I only ever had to kill a single Wraith, which I did by leaving the Spectre behind a rock a short distance away and boarding it. Johnson in the Scarab took out the other two. After that, if you just wait for the Scarab to reach the beach before proceeding, you shouldn't have to fight anything at all, so there's nothing to risk damaging your precious Spectre. When I reached the beach cliff again, I used the Spectre to push a Banshee over to the edge, then nudged the Spectre with Half-Jaw aboard over, got in the Banshee, and flew down to the beach, always keeping Half-Jaw in view. Still, one more time, the disappearing Elite trick nabbed me. I left the Spectre and Half-Jaw around a corner while I attacked the two Wraiths beneath the Scarab. Killing one gave me a checkpoint that caused the Spectre and Half-Jaw to disappear. It turned out to be better just to avoid the battle completely and proceed directly to the control room, by driving up the hillsides to the right, all the way behind the structure, then following the edges on the top right (top left if viewed from the beach) and around to the door. I couldn't get the Spectre through the corridor and into the next room, and Half-Jaw seemed especially reluctant to turn the corner, instead preferring to return and face the platform. However, there is a piece of furniture there in the hallway that you can use to push him, and if you destroy the Spectre right where it fails to pass through, it forms a barrier you can use to prevent him from fleeing too far. Once I could see the door, he stopped trying to turn around. As others posted, he was little help in the next room. Perhaps if I could have brought another Elite as well, he'd have been more active, but here he just crouched and fired. This Is It After that battle, I pushed him into the corridor until I got the cutscene, then ran back into the hallway from the platform leading to the control room itself. Half-Jaw was still there, but listless as ever. I had to push him all the way to the edge, next to Johnson, and even once there, he was not active. If you give him a sniper, he'll take potshots at Tartarus, but not the three-round bursts like Johnson takes, so they were of little consequence. Give him a medium-range weapon, like a plasma rifle, and he'll switch to lobbing grenades. Give him a sword, and he'll leap onto the platform and attack Tartarus himself, which is amusing to watch, since Tartarus can't kill him. Unfortunately, while playing this battle out, I had the Sputnik skull enabled. So while Tartarus couldn't kill Half-Jaw, he was quickly able to throw him off the platform with the impact from his hammer. When Half-Jaw hits the instakill barrier beneath the platform, he goes through the same cycle of animations that he does when you melee him; he winces in pain, screams, and his shields spark and flash. He did that all the way down the gentle slope of the control room floor before finally falling through the shaft at the center and disappearing. UPDATE A few other things of note. If you've got Half-Jaw in the control room area while 343 Guilty Spark delivers his dialogue, the Half-Jaw model will lip-sync Guilty Spark's lines for him. There's probably some kind of "featured NPC" flag set someplace for areas that have characters that deliver more than just random combat dialogue. When Half-Jaw is in an area, it's probably him. When 343 is in an area, it's probably him. With both of them in the room, we end up with Sparky's voice and Half-Jaws lips flapping. The result is pretty funny, and achievable without any modifications to your Xbox. With Sputnik or or off, though, I really wasn't able to get a respectable battle out of this scenario. With it on, Tartarus would knock Half-Jaw off the platform in one or two hits. With it off, it took perhaps a dozen or so. Half-Jaw seemed to fight back only half-heartedly, though, spending most of his time behind cover, and not bothering to move around at all when Tartarus forces him towards the edge.