Shutdown

This article is about the Halo 4 level. For the Halo 4 achievement, see Shutdown (achievement).

Shutdown is the sixth campaign level of Halo 4. Completing the level on any difficulty unlocks the Shutdown achievement. The Explore the Floor achievement is awarded exclusively in this level for tricking or forcing a Hunter to fall to its death.

Transcript

{Cutscene}

Open on Cortana looking out Infinity's window, watching Requiem's sun.

• Cortana: "I can give you over forty thousand reasons why that sun isn't real. I know it because the emitter's Rayleigh effect is disproportionate to its suggested size. I know it because its stellar cycle is more symmetrical than that of an actual star. But for all that, I'll never actually know if it looks real... if it feels real."

Cortana hears the sound of a rifle being cocked. She turns to see John-117 adjusting it.

• Cortana: "Before this is all over, promise me you'll figure out which one of us is the machine."

John looks at her. Thomas Lasky walks on deck.

• Lasky: "So what's your plan?"

• John-117: Infinity's tracked the Didact's vessel to a docking structure southeast of here. We'll jump ship as Infinity exits the roof."

• Lasky: "You know, I was sent down here with orders to prevent you from leaving. ...In case you had already gone, I took the precaution of ordering a Pelican, outfitted for full combat pursuit."

John turns to hear the Pelican rising up on a platform behind him.

• Lasky: "I hope to God you're wrong about that Forerunner, or whatever he is, Chief. But in the event you're not..."

Lasky nods toward the Pelican, then begins to walk away.

• Lasky: "And Chief? Good luck. ...Both of you."

Cortana watches him walk away and smiles at John.

• Cortana: "C'mon, Chief. Take a girl for a ride."

John lowers his rifle and retrieves her from the Terminal.

{Gameplay}

Aboard the Infinity's hangar, John's HUD tints slightly purple and flickers while Cortana speaks. Her voice is mildly distorted.

• Cortana: "The Didact used this Composer to create the Prometheans from ancient humans. If he wants to finish the job, he'll have to find it first. Our best bet to stop him is to keep him firmly on Requiem. Let's hope Lasky didn't skimp on that Pelican."

John heads toward the Pelican and armors up.

• System: "Attention! All hands. Final call. Secure all hulls and prepare for immediate departure. Final call."

John climbs into the Pelican.

• Cortana: "Initiating pre-flight diagnostics. Forward Autocannon. Check."

The platform carrying the Pelican begins to lower into a dark tunnel.

• Cortana: "Lateral Rail Turrets. Check. Main Thrusters. Check. Auxiliary Boosters. Check. All right, keying engines... now."

Once More Into The Breach

• Cortana: "It may be a while before we find another ride home. You know that, right?"

• John-117: "It'll be OK."

The tunnel lights up and the Pelican boosts forward. It shoots out of the Infinity into the open air. Infinity flies away and disappears into clouds. Ahead is the Forerunner launching dock, which is made of huge floating towers. The Didact's Cryptum can be seen in the center, surrounded by an orange field.

• Cortana: "Contact. Didact. Dead ahead."

• John-117: "How do we get inside those shields?"

• Cortana: "Marking two of the larger facilities on your HUD. They're acting as traffic control for resources moving to and from the satellite. If we disrupt their communications, I can forge an override code and convince it to lower those defenses."

If John flies to the right tower, his Pelican fights a group of Phantoms. John shoots them down and lands.

• Cortana: "Slight complication. There are millions of transmissions passing through this structure, not simply ones controlling movement through the structure's shield."

• John-117: "Can you isolate the satellite communications?"

• Cortana: "Not quickly, and shutting them all down's not an option, but destroying the system's attenuators should flood the network."

John's HUD begins to strongly flicker as Cortana's tone turns angrier.

• Cortana: "Of course, if Infinity wasn't on their way back to Earth, they could overload the attenuators remotely."

• John-117: "We'll handle it."

• Cortana: "That's hardly the point. (John's HUD returns to normal.) The attenuators are housed in Faraday enclosures. I bet there's a release around here somewhere."

John fights off several Watchers and reaches a platform with a central terminal, which he activates.

• Cortana: "Okay, the structure contains three central attenuators. Sever those connections and we should be good."

John fights off Crawlers to reach the first attenuator, which is a glowing orb.

• Cortana: "Knight!"

John defeats the Knight and punches the orb. A shutting down drone is heard.

• Cortana: "Second attenuator... up ahead."

john reaches and punches out the second attenuator.

• Cortana: "Great, the increased signal traffic is almost entirely blocking out the satellite communications. Only one more target left."

John heads to the last orb.

• Cortana: "More Knights!"

John defeats the Knights guarding the last orb and destroys it.

• Cortana: "That's it. Transmission buffers are overflowing. Get us to the second tower."

• Didact: "The others scatter like embers over sand. And yet the Librarian's champion is unmoved."

• John-117: "Cortana, where's this coming from?"

• Cortana: "Where's what coming from?

• Didact: "The mantle of responsibility for the galaxy shelters all, human. But only the Forerunners are its masters."

• John-117: "The Didact's voice."

• Cortana: "I'm not picking up anything, Chief."

• John-117: "He's there. Keep trying."

John battles enemies through the hallway leading out of the tower.

• Cortana: "Covenant air traffic's increasing. If we don't disable the other tower quickly, reaching the Didact could become exponentially more difficult."

John reaches his Pelican and takes off. CCS-class battlecruiser can be seen by the towers. He flies to the other tower, where more Phantoms defend its entrance.

John lands, arms up, and heads inside.

• Cortana: "This node's different than the previous tower. The source of the tower communications is a carrier wave generator located somewhere inside. It looks like the carrier wave generator is located on the far end of this chamber. Find us a way across."

John heads across a light bridge to a anti-gravity gondola.

• Cortana: "This gondola should do the trick. Look for its activation switch."

The switch is at the top of the gondola. John presses it, and a beam forms from the other side of the room, pulling the gondola toward it.

• Cortana: "To take a page out of our old playbook, I'm going to tune your shields to emit an EMP at the same frequency as the communication network. All you'll need to do to trigger it is to make physical contact with the carrier wave generator."

As the gondola heads forward, Kig-Yar Snipers and other Covenant start firing at John from the sides of the room. A light bridge also appears to hold the gondola in place.

• Cortana: "Covenant! The Didact's given them control of the system overrides. You're going to have to wrestle for it. The controls are up there."

John's HUD flickers and blurs.

• John-117: "Where?"

• Cortana: "Right, sorry. Waypoint!"

Cortana marks the spot. John fights through Grunts and Jackals, Elites appearing on the top of the structure. He presses the button then runs down to land back on the gondola.

• Cortana: "We're in business. Back to the gondola."

Prometheans are now all over the gondola. John fights them off.

• Cortana: "Okay, start us back up."

John presses the button to reactivate the gondola. It begins moving forward again. Enemies continue to attack.

• Cortana: "They're not going to make this easy, are they?"

The gondola passes a second structure. Prometheans aboard it fire at John

• Cortana: "Look out!"

John defends against the Prometheans, whose structure activates another light bridge to hold their gondola in place.

• Cortana: "They're trying to lockout the gondola controls again."

• Didact: "Your actions tread between honor and foolishness."

• John-117: "Cortana, are you hearing him?"

• Cortana: "No. Didact?"

John heads aboard the other structure and fights through the horde of Prometheans there. At the top he deactivates the light bridge. The gondola only has a little to go until it reaches the generator.

• Cortana: "The carrier wave generator's on the top of the platform. You only have to enter the field to trigger the EMP."

John walks into the orange beam in the structure. His shields drain to create the EMP."

• Cortana: "Give it a second..."

The beam vanishes. John heads back to the gondola.

• Cortana: "Look out!"

Many Watchers ambush John. John fights them off and reactivates the gondola to return to the entrance.

• Cortana: "We're clear. All communications between the towers and satellite have ceased."

• Didact: "You are a fool. Even now, your kind tinkers with the Composer in the shadow of the third ring. Children and fire, who disregard the welfare of the galaxy."

The gondola arrives back at the entrance. John heads outside and returns to his Pelican.

• Didact: "Do you truly believe that your theatrics can prevent my departure? Embrace your sad fate and retain your nobility. I am already beyond you."

• Cortana: "He knows what we're trying to do. If we try to get too close to that ship, we're dead. I... I have an idea. Head for that waypoint."

John flies to another floating tower, whose side opens up to reveal an entrance inside.

• Cortana: "Those defense spires we keep running into are being controlled from this tower. Get me to the control room and we might be able to reposition them to block the Didact from leaving.

John walks inside and rides up the interior gravity lift.

• Didact: "You will relent, Human, or you will perish. All in life is choice. And your day to choose has come."

John lands inside, but the platforms in the room begin to crumble.

• Cortana: "He's altering the tower!"

John runs to reach the entrance before the floor beneath him falls. He reaches several platforms connected by light bridges, where Covenant attack him.

• Cortana: "I'm seeing a control facility at the top of the tower. We need to be there yesterday!"

John rides up another gravity lift, arriving at more platforms carrying Covenant. Banshees also attack, but John enters a nearby one to fight them from the air. After defeating the enemies, the highest door opens. John passes down its hallway into the control room. The Didact's Cryptum can be seen outside its window.

• Cortana: "Quick, let me at the spire controls."

John plugs her into the terminal. Cortana appears, somewhat flickering.

• Cortana: "Tapping into the spires' control net.

The spires move to surround the Cryptum, physically blocking it from launching.

• Cortana: "They're mine. Now to imprison them?!?"

The towers begins to fall.

• John-117: "What are you doing?"

• Cortana: "Like he imprisoned his Prometheans?! Like Dr. Halsey imprisoned me?!"

The towers crash to the ground. Liches fly toward the Cryptum. Cortana holds her face in her hands.

• Cortana: "Chief..."

• John-117: "His ship's online! They're leaving!"

• Cortana: "...I'm sorry, I don't know what-"

Cortana fades into a red sphere. John plugs her back into his helmet.

• John-117: "Track those Liches. We can go across them to get to the Didact's ship."

John's HUD flickers as Cortana speaks.

• Cortana: "Wait, across them?!"

• John-117: "Yes."

• Cortana: "Um... there... there are several Liches moving in formation towards the Didact's ship. We're only going to have one shot at this. ...Okay, go!"

John runs off the edge of the platform.

{Cutscene}

John spreads out his arms, then tucks himself streamlined to fall as fast as he can. Once he sees a Lich below, he spins himself upright and uses his thrusters to slow and land. But he slides off the top and uses his combat knife to stab into the side and hang on. With some effort, he climbs back on.

John-117: "Cortana, what's happening?"

• Cortana: "I don't know. Hang on!"

Above them, the Cryptum falls down to the ground. Below a hole in the ground opens up for it to fall through. The Cryptum lands inside, and the grounds rises up to reveal an enormous Forerunner flagship. It and the Liches fly out off its entrance portal, heading out into space.

John, still aboard a Lich, sees the flapship open a slipspace portal.

• Cortana: "They're jumping into slipspace! Get below deck!"

• John-117: "No time."

John activates his thrusters and leaps to the top of the Lich. It, the other Liches, and the Mantle's Approach shield themselves as they enter the portal. After they all pass through, the portal closes.

Level ends.

Trivia

• When Cortana says, "You only have to enter the field to trigger the EMP", the subtitles forget to include the "the" before "field".
• The mission can be beaten in under 5 minutes by not going to the 2 towers at the start and by going straight to the last tower, which could prove useful for completing on legendary or speed runs.
• One can find dialog about War Games from the multiplayer announcer at the start the level.
• The previously mentioned audio recordings mentions "War Games Red versus Blue Carnage". The audio log is a direct reference to the web series, Red vs Blue series. Coincidentally, from Season 8 to 10, it is mentioned on numerous occasions that most of the events in the series take place during combat simulations. It was also mentioned previously that Bungie and 343 Industries had interests in making the events of Red vs Blue a part of the actual Halo universe. This easter egg is in a way a subtle nod to the idea.
• At the beginning of the level, a crocodile-shaped smiley, "Greentooth", symbol of the videogames artists community Polycount, can be found on a box.
• A pair of Marine deckhands at the start of the level are voiced by Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter.
• If the player betrays the marines at the beginning of the level additional troops will enter the area to kill the player. This makes it the first level since the Pillar of Autumn where more soldiers enter the area to kill the player.