Prologue

Prologue is the first level of Halo 4's campaign. It does not contain actual gameplay, instead only a cutscene depicting Dr. Catherine Halsey and her thoughts on the SPARTAN-II Program.

Transcript

Panoramic view of large room filled with individual chambers with beds in it. The beds are all filled with children, most of them sleeping. However, one chamber is lit, with the child inside sitting up. Fade away to another view of a row of the chambers as the camera slides down. The lit chamber is on the left side. The camera switches to a first-person view of a person walking up the row. The camera arrives at the lit chamber. The shirt the child is wearing has a visible name: John. The camera cuts to a zoomed in view of John's face as it stares at the camera. The camera then switches to a close-up shot of two bright-blue eyes and gray hair.

• Interrogator: "Tell me about the children."

The camera then cuts to a side-view of the person, clearly a female. A shadowy figure straightens in the background.

• Interrogator: "Doctor Halsey?"

Doctor Halsey raises her head and looks at the interrogator.

• Catherine Halsey: "You already know everything."

The interrogator gesticulates for a moment.

• Interrogator: "You kidnapped them."

A teenager, bare-chested and wearing an oxygen mask, lies down on an operating table. A medical tech stands nearby as scans begin running on the body of the teenager.

• Catherine Halsey: "Children's minds are more easily accepting of indoctrination. Their bodies are more adaptive to augmentation."

The camera moves to a panoramic view of the teenager. As more scan lines move up and down his body, the machines on the operating table automatically move into position to begin the operation. The camera moves behind one of the machines. When it comes out, the boy is replaced with a large figure in MJOLNIR armor. The camera zooms out to show four med techs surrounding the SPARTAN, making examinations.

• Catherine Halsey: "The result was the ultimate soldier."

Camera cuts to the underside of a Covenant ship as it flies over a city.

• Catherine Halsey: "And because of our success, when the Covenant invaded, we were ready."

The Covenant ship moves over the city as tiny transports begin flying and spreading out over the city. Camera cuts to a side view of the Covenant ship's bow as more transports flood out. The scene shifts back to the interrogation.

• Interrogator: "Doctor Halsey, you're bending history to your own favor and you know it. You developed the Spartans to crush human rebellion, not to fight the Covenant."

The interrogator sits back and stands up.

Scene shifts to the Covenant attacking a human city. Civilians run away as Banshees strafe and fire at them.

• Catherine Halsey: "When one human world after another fell..."

Close-up shot of a civilian as he runs away. He doesn't get far however when an Elite stabs him from the behind with an Energy Sword, killing him instantly.

• Catherine Halsey: "When my Spartans were all that stood between humanity and extinction..."

Several Spartans are shown skydiving to the surface. The leader draws out his assault rifle as he activates his jetpack to slow his fall. The Spartans drop to the ground in the midst of the chaos. They face toward a group of Sangheili warriors.

• Catherine Halsey: "Nobody was concerned about why they were originally built."

The leader roars and the groups join in combat. As plasma rifle fire hits one of the Spartans, flaring up his shield, two other Spartans emerge from cover with their assault rifles and fire back. As Elites fall from the fire, the leader of the pack stands strong with his energy sword and plasma rifle, firing back at the Spartans.

• Interrogator: "So you feel that, in the end, your actions were justified."

The Spartans move in, jumping over rubble and firing at the Elites. The scene shifts back to the interrogation. Doctor Halsey leans in on the table, looking up at the interrogator.

• Catherine Halsey: "My work saved the human race."

• Interrogator: "Do you think the Spartans' lack of basic humanity helped?"

Halsey looks at him in curiosity.

• Catherine Halsey: "What are you after? The others before you were Naval Intelligence, but you... You're something else."

As Halsey talks, the interrogator walks around in thought. The scene shifts to a UNSC ship hanger with a Pelican in the background. Three marines are carrying equipment. One of them looks at a lone Spartan, sitting on a group of crates, head down, obviously not willing to socialize.

• Interrogator: "Records show Spartans routinely exhibited mildly sociopathic tendencies: difficulty with socialization-"

Scene shifts to the Spartan engaging in close-quarters combat with a Brute Chieftain armed with a Gravity Hammer as Doctor Halsey cuts the interrogator off.

• Catherine Halsey: "The records show efficient behavior operating in hazardous situations."

The Spartan dodges a blow from the hammer and charges the Chieftain, running up his body and kicking it's face as he back flips off, stunning the Chieftain. The scene shifts back to the hanger as the Spartan stands up and looks at a bright blue light.

• Catherine Halsey: "I supplied the tools to maintain that efficiency."

The view cuts to show Doctor Halsey handing the Spartan an AI. The scene shifts back to the interrogation.

• Interrogator (aggressively): "Do you believe that the Master Chief succeeded because he was, at his core, broken?"

• Catherine Halsey (unflinching): "What does John have to do with this?"

The interrogator turns away.

• Catherine Halsey (sudden realization): "You want to replace him."

• Interrogator: "The Master Chief is dead."

• Catherine Halsey (in denial): "His file reads missing in action."

• Interrogator: "Catherine? Spartans never die?"

Scene shifts to a pair of boots splashing into oily looking water.

• Catherine Halsey: "Your mistake is seeing Spartans as military hardware."

Camera cuts to a large group of humans in the middle of a quiet and smoking battle zone. In the front is a Spartan that leads the group of victorious marines across the zone. Camera cuts to zoom in on him."

• Catherine Halsey: "My Spartans are humanity's next step. Our destiny as a species."

Halsey stands up with determination.

• Catherine Halsey: "Do not underestimate them. But most of all... Do not underestimate him.

Fade to black.

Anachronisms

Main article: List of inconsistencies in the Halo series

Several elements in the cutscene are different from how they canonically occurred. The most prominent is that the Spartans are all shown wearing MJOLNIR Mark VI, specifically the heavily modified version Cortana devised for John. Halsey could not have known this variant existed, and she has shown distaste for alterations to "her" armor. Several elements of John's upgraded suit were also not applied to the mainline MJOLNIR models except as attachments, such as the built-in thruster pack the cutscene's Spartans use to slow their descent, which would have been useful to Red Team during their orbital drop at the Fall of Reach. The Sangheili seen in the cutscene have the same physiology and wear the same armor as those from the Covenant remnant, though these may represent an outright retcon rather than artistic license.

The SPARTAN-II augmentation procedures are depicted differently than in the Scanned trailer. In the commercial, the Spartans are built like heavily muscled young adults, whereas in Halsey's memory John looks like a preteen, if not younger. The physiques depicted in Scanned may be more accurate, based on the description of John as having the body of an "eighteen-year-old Olympic athlete" just prior to the augmentations in Halo: The Fall of Reach. Halsey envisioning John with a lighter build could be representative of her guilt, with her imagining the candidates as more vulnerable than they appeared. The surgery and procedure also look different, as the trainees are shown in enclosed chambers while the procedure is done by machine, rather than in an open surgical theater.

Some of the events can be assumed as representative rather than exact. When and where the battle in the city occurred is unclear, but it is likely not meant to be a specific battle; rather, it could be considered a summation of the entire war. Likewise, the scene in which Halsey presents Cortana to John did not occur as such, as evidenced by John's armor and him meeting Cortana by hologram; canonically, as seen in Halo: The Fall of Reach, John met Cortana after she was inserted into his neural interface for the first time. Overall, most questionable aspects of the cutscene could be due to Halsey's embellishment; elements that Halsey could not have known, such as John's unique armor, should be considered mere artistic license.