Talk:Jul 'Mdama's Covenant

Jumping the gun?

Isn't it a bit early to claim the new Storm Grunts and Jackals are 'subspecies'? Artistic license should come into consideration here regardless of changes to how the enemies actually look. The Godzilla suit of today looks different than the ones in prior films, it's still the same character though. Manwiththegun 15:35, 13 August 2012 (EDT)

The Halo Bulletin 5.9.12 explicitly states that the new Grunts are canonically different from those in previous titles. These differences are not just real-world aesthetic changes; they actually represent another in-universe variation of the Unggoy. Indeed, the majority of the Bulletin is devoted to discussing and theorizing why the new Grunts look different from those who've come before: "As for how the Grunts of past Halo games and Halo 4 compare: Are they different species, a result of natural mutation, selective breeding, or genetic mutation within a single species? We’re not ready to show our cards here just yet. We can say that there are certain species on Earth which exhibit extraordinary differences within their kind (Great Dane vs. Pomeranian) and that there are vastly numerous species similar enough to categorically lump them together (look up Plover)." The Bulletin says that a more concrete explanation for these physical differences will be given in due time.

The morphological variation among the Kig-Yar has been explained both here and in the revised Encyclopedia as the result of divergent evolution on different moons, planetoids, and asteroids in the Y'Deio system. For example, the Skirmishers come from a satellite with higher gravity than Eayn, causing them to evolve much heavier muscles than their kin. Considering that the straight-beaked Jackals of Halo 2, the slope-beaked Jackals of Halo 3 through Anniversary, and the dromaeosaur-like Skirmishers all belong to the same species, it isn't much of a stretch to assume that the Jackals in Halo 4 represent yet another phenotype; the real-world Galapagos finches have a similar, (though less extreme), degree of morphological diversity.

Consider society on Earth prior to the Halo Array's activation. Several distinct species and subspecies of the homo genus were all lumped together as humanity, like the aforementioned plover. It is entirely possible that the Unggoy and the Kig-Yar societies are structured in a similar manner, with different species of the same genus all categorized as the same race. Overall, think of all these aesthetic changes in a Watsonian manner rather than a Doylist one. --Courage never dies. 17:34, 13 August 2012 (EDT)

I'm interested in the idea that the variations in Jackal/Grunt morphology don't conform to Earthly taxonomic conventions - after all, these are alien species, and their evolutionary history might be very weird indeed. It would add a whole new interesting layer to the fiction behind these things - and plus, anything's a better explanation than just saying "Well, we got tired of the old Grunts and Jackals so we made ourselves some brand-new ones." SPARTAN-347 22:47, 13 August 2012 (EDT)

The Storm.

They aren't "Covenant Storm", they are just "The Storm".ArchedThunder 22:07, 13 August 2012 (EDT)