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

{Cutscene}

Open on a line of beds. They are made of plastic, with no sheets, and are enclosed by glass walls. Children inside them are sleeping. Pan to a boy sitting on one of the beds. His head is shaved and he wears a grey uniform that reads "John". He looks up at his viewer, his eyes showing fear and want of sympathy.

Halsey's memory of a young John.

Fade in to a closeup of Halsey's eyes. She seems tired and grave.

• Interrogator: "Tell me about the children."

The interrogator, who is framed in shadow, sits at the other end of their table.

• Interrogator: "Dr. Halsey?"

Halsey looks at her speaker defiantly.

• Doctor Catherine Halsey: "You already know everything."

• Interrogator: "You kidnapped them."

Cut to John-117, now wearing a breath mask, lying down on the bed as machines prepare to operate on him.

• Halsey (voiceover): "Children's minds are more easily accepting of indoctrination, their bodies more adaptable to augmentation. The result was the ultimate soldier."

Cut to a SPARTAN-II, now fully armored and being inspected by technicians. He towers over all of them.

The SPARTAN-II fully armored.

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

Cut to a CAS-class assault carrier hovering over a human city. Dozens of aircraft fly out of its launch bay.

Cut back to the interrogation.

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

Banshees bomb the city as civilians runs for their lives.

• Halsey (voiceover): "When one human world after another fell..."

An Sangheili drives his energy sword through a fleeing civilian.

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

From up in the sky, a dozen Spartans drop from Pelicans, using their thruster packs to slow their descent.

• Halsey (voiceover): "Nobody was concerned over why they were originally built."

The Spartans land. A Elite snarls aggressively at them. The Spartans take cover and shoot down some of the Sangheili who return fire, flaring the shields on the Spartans' armor, while the lead Elite calmly steps forward and fires back. Cut to the Spartans advancing forward, still firing.

The Spartans fighting the Covenant.

• Interrogator (voiceover): "So you feel in the end that your choices were justified."

Cut to Halsey, who sits forward calmly, clasping her hands.

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

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

Halsey looks at him worriedly, as the interrogator, now standing, backs away from the table.

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

Cut to a Spartan sitting alone in a hangar. His head is drooped and he is speaking to no one. Marines walk past him.

The Spartan alone.

• Interrogator (voiceover): "Records show Spartans routinely exhibited mildly sociopathic tendencies, difficulty with socialization, furthermore..."

Cut to a Spartan fighting a Jiralhanae Chieftain. He leaps agilely, dodging its every blow. Dead Sangheili cover the ground.

• Halsey (voiceover): "The records show efficient behavior operating in hazardous situations. I supplied the tools to maintain that efficiency."

Cut to Master Chief, seeing Halsey hold up a data crystal chip projecting Cortana.

Cut back to the interrogation.

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

• Halsey: "What does John have to do with this? ...you want to replace him."

• Interrogator: "The Master Chief is dead."

• Halsey: "His file reads 'Missing in Action'."

• Interrogator: "Catherine? Spartans never die?"

Cut to a Spartan's foot stepping down on a puddle. The Spartan leads a crowd of military personnel and civilians. The fighting has stopped but the city is in rubble.

• Halsey: "Your mistake is seeing Spartans as military hardware. My Spartans are humanity's next step..."

Halsey stands up from her chair in determination.

• Halsey: "Our destiny as a species. Do not underestimate them. But most of all, do not underestimate... him."

Cut to black.

Discrepancies

Main article: List of inconsistencies in the Halo series

Allegorical representations

Several elements in the cutscene are different from how they canonically occurred. The SPARTAN-II augmentation procedures are depicted differently than in previous media. In the commercial Scanned and in the comic book Halo: Fall of Reach, 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 the previous media 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. The surgery and procedure also look different, as it is shown being 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 wore a standard MJOLNIR Mark V armor and met Cortana after she was inserted into his neural interface for the first time. However, Cortana's scene does match the one in the comic book adaptation Halo: Fall of Reach, in which Halsey shows Cortana's hologram when introducing her to John. Overall, most questionable aspects of the cutscene could be due to Halsey's embellishment.

Explanations

The Sangheili seen in the cutscene wear the same armor as those from the Covenant remnant, and the Jiralhanae a SPARTAN-II is shown fighting also wears an unseen armor combination, with the body armor of a Chieftain but the helmet of a Captain. It indicates that multiple styles of armor were in use during the Human-Covenant War, but some were less common than others. Furthermore, later in the level Dawn, Cortana does not consider the Covenant armors as standard military outfits, which explains why some armors were in use during the war, but rarely seen.

The Spartan-IIs' armor is a variant of the MJOLNIR Mark IV armor and is introduced for the first time in this cutscene. In Halo 4, John-117 wears a Mark VI armor which has been upgraded by Cortana via nanomachines; his newly upgraded suit is heavily based on this Mark IV variant. Halo 4: The Essential Visual Guide furthermore confirms this. Designs of new armors are sometimes based on older ones; for example, the original Mark VI is visually similar to the Mark IV featured in The Package and Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn.

The suits display elements usually not expected to be part of the original Mark IV, such as built-in boosters or energy shields. As every MJOLNIR variants have their own key features, the boosters may be a specificity of this variant, explaining why subsequent regular Mark V or Mark VI armors did not include them, despite their seemingly usefulness. As for the Mark IV being compatible with energy shielding, prototypes had entered field testing by 2531, hinting that had this battle happened, it would have been around or after this date.

Trivia

Mistakes

• When the Interrogator is talking about the initial purpose of the SPARTAN-II Program, "to your own favor" appear in the subtitles while "for" is actually said instead of "to".
• Many Elites drop dead from being shot, but their shields only flicker and never break.

Sources

Preceded by Halo 3 credits

Halo 4 Campaign Missions Prologue

Succeeded by Dawn