The completion of this arc essentially means we're officially in the final act of the story, we've hit a major milestone narrative wise. The quest is seemingly completed, but various bad stuff has happened to force us to a low point. Trust me, it won't be the last time for that. For now though, let's just talk about what happened here.
Can We Break It?: That's essentially what the heroes are trying to do for these chapters. They're essentially trying to force the Engineering Deck's system to screw up so its forced to activate the failsafe protocol. You might be wondering why it's so difficult. Well, since this whole plan of the Forerunners was to escape the Halo Energy Wave that kills everything, they needed to be extra super sure no one was going to prematurely force them out of Subspace. Especially someone down below who gets cold feet or freaks out or might decide they've changed their minds and they all deserve to die! The less ways someone can force your lifeboat to crash against the rocks the better.
I didn't want to bog us down in techno jargon and other details, that would've been annoying as hell. So I went for a general overview of what needed to be done more than anything. I will admit though I took some inspiration from another video game. I had recently played the remake of System Shock you see and my basis for a lot of these steps came from there. You may notice a few similar critical elements for the procedure line up with things from System Shock itself. I figure, if you don't KNOW made up technology intricately, the least you can do is BORROW from similar works concerning the repair of made up technology. Although I guess a hyper advanced space station is a little different from a planet that's been turned into a spaceship.
If I did borrow anything greater than that from System Shock it was problem built upon problems element. The Pirate Ambush, the Covies trying to break in, the delays, the extra issues that needed to be resolved, all there to just keep the tension up while momentarily slipping into technobabble. Like I said, it's better than just reciting a manual to a made up gizmo. And of course I threw in a little more of Taq and Zek sniping at each other to keep it interesting.
I do sometimes worry I've made Taq really overly mean to Zek. Not to say he doesn't deserve it given what he's done, but I sometimes wonder if readers feel Taq is being harder on Zek than is warranted. I think the point is though that this is how broken this relationship is. That no matter how much Zek DOES love Taq and will do anything to at least get her to like him again, Taq just can't reconcile how used and abandoned she was by him. Partially because she needs to see something from Zek that, at this moment in time, he's incapable of showing or doing. Taq doesn't think Zek can change and Zek doesn't really know how to change, what to change, why he should change, and probably doesn't even want to change.
For anyone still rooting for them, I have no idea why you would but I've seen worse relationships get shipped for even dumber reasons, maybe Taq will actually have a legitimate moment with Zek that isn't just her taking a shot at him soon. I'm not saying they will get together again, but as I've said before, it's not too late for Zek.
Predanator Determinator 3D - The Final Chapter: Lurz just became a full blown slasher villain at this point in the story. He's always had elements of that, but his extended fight with Zek and then the Spartans just goes to show that he's not your average Jackal. I honestly think Lurz got off on the pain really. He could feel it, he's not one of those sorts of villains because not being able to feel pain isn't the superpower you think it is. No, Lurz can feel pain, he just likes it. He likes inflicting it and receiving it. So he doesn't mind being burned by plasma, electrocuted, shot, ignited by a flamethrower, punched and stabbed. He's fine with it. Just gives him ideas of how to do the same to the people who caused it. It's a give and take situation... or take and give really.
But I did like how, even through all of this, Zek managed to cut through the bullshit like he usually does. Lurz's philosophy is indeed a load of crap. He's just a violent horrible sicko who found someone willing to indulge his psychotic urges. He is, indeed, a parasite in that regard that has fed off of Snarlbeak's anger and in turn made Zhoc a worse person by proxy. Which I guess now that I think about it makes Lurz a counter to Retz in many ways. Chief among them, that Retz genuinely cares about Zek and wants to see his friend achieve his full potential and be a better person. Lurz meanwhile doesn't really care and even sorta wishes Zhoc became just like him and stopped holding back, because if he did it would be "beautiful" in his mind.
The Spartans showing up to save Zek was a fun piece to write. Partially because it felt like my "Thor Arrives in Wakanda" moment (which I sorta referenced) and mostly because I just wanted to show a big scene with most of the Spartans working together to fight a substantial foes. They likely would've killed Lurz on their own had he stuck around. But Lurz, for all his bloodlust, is no idiot and knows when to run when he's outmatched. I especially loved Kat setting him on fire. There's few times using a flamethrower is a heroic move in action films. I think if any sapient being deserved getting set ablaze it was Lurz. Part of my mind sees this fight as one very long uninterrupted cut, so I tried to capture that feel best as I could and utilized the Spartans and their skills efficiently here.
However, in the end, despite his survival instincts, the bloodlust in Lurz won out in the end. Zek had seen a few action movies as recently as prior to the Plunder Nest Raid after all. So he might have borrowed some of his little speech from Commando, much like I did. I at least didn't repeat it verbatim. But I realized that this was the way to go. Goad Lurz into giving up his advantage by using his twisted mind against him. But of course, Zek had no intention of fighting fair because screw that, he's a pirate and Lurz doesn't deserve it anyway.
How to kill Lurz became the big question. Exploding him? Melting him? Stabbing? Decapitation? Kicking him into the vacuum of space? I went through a couple ideas. I settled in the end on crushing him as the simplest method and set it up beforehand when Shepard's team arrived in the hangar. Luckily, having Zek pick up a beam rifle as he was escaping was easy enough to justify since I had pirates with those all over the place in the chapter already. It also gave Lurz the chance to speak a bit as his organs were slowly crushed. Thankfully not many words, because Lurz was never supposed to be much of a talker.
For those who want to know what he sounded like, picture a sort of southern drawl that's deformed into a scraggily creepy growl. Now filter it through how Jackals usually sound like. I've also always imagined his theme music as a distorted banjo, think Deliverance if you will, with just a bit of the Hills Have Eyes. It starts playing whenever he's close or shows up. If you remember the Point Lookout DLC Trailer for Fallout 3, that's the best and closest similarity in my mind to Lurz's Theme, if he had one.
Back to his death, I probably telegraphed this would be the last time we'd ever see Lurz fairly hard. Going into his headspace was the biggest indicator. I prefer to foreshadow things more than shock readers, and I didn't feel like hiding it to begin with. Lurz was always the sort of dragon that would have to die first in order for the real villain, Snarlbeak, to finally be forced to act. As Lurz warned Zek before he passed, Zhoc will now have the chance to be what's inside of him.
And just to be sure everyone knows Lurz was dead for good, I have Zek shoot him a few extra times and then had the planetoid explode as a result of that Mass Effect-Powered Slipspace Rupture! Yep, this is definitely the final chapter for Lurz. No tricks here, he's REALLY F-ing dead. Dead as dead can possibly be. There's no way in hell he's coming back from that.
No I'm not joking, he's dead. I know that's hard to read through text, but I'm not being sarcastic or foreshadowing anything here. He's dead! No sequel. It was dumb how they brought Michael Myers back to life and there's no way in hell I'm doing a bait and switch. Lurz is dead! Completely, utterly. I just need to make this very clear so no one tries to theorize on this point. Zek killed Lurz, Zhoc is angry about it, end of story. Let's move on.
The Ambush: Getting the pirates inside the Engineering Deck was simple enough. You can make any excuse you want as a writer. Exhaust ports and ventilation shafts aren't just for the heroes to sneak into after all. Once it was set up they were going to get inside it was just a matter of creating the tension. Would the heroes find out? Would some of them get killed to prevent them from spilling the beans? How long would the pirates lay in wait?
I decided to show most of the ambush through the eyes of the Spartans, if only to give them all more page time given what I had planned. I knew I had to make it more interesting though. I couldn't just have the average Jackal fight scene. Since they're constantly made out to be expert assassins I wanted to show more of that. So I came up with the blade gauntlets and had them try to jump on a few of the Spartans now and then. Mostly to showcase how dangerous the Jackals can and should be really. I know in game they're barely above the grunts in terms of threat level, but they are a primary foot soldier in the Covenant. They exist to fill out the ranks and have more specialized roles with better training. They have to be at least a little bit of a problem to deal with.
And some of these ones are Ibie'shans, the more bestial looking Jackals who look like they could take a beating more than their bird-like cousins. So I could afford to make them deadlier. Chief's mini-hallway fight with some was a blast to write. I feel I'm improving on melee fights a lot honestly, I look forward to writing them now.
Junk Security: Kasumi turning back on the security was a slight homage to Jurassic Park, but only slightly. Hey, I did an extended Jaws sequence for the last arc, it was only fair. What's really important is the activation of the Forerunner Turrets and Sentinels, this time both made out of junk.
As noted when Shepard arrived in the hangar, a lot of the Forerunner ships there had been stripped for parts. Some of those went into creating the turrets and sentinels. These elements of the security weren't as well constructed as most of the Forerunners' designs had focused on just make the insane project they had concocted work. With very few Design Seeds allocated towards this plan, I imagine the Forerunners were forced to go back to basics when crafting the Sentinels for this project and just made them out of whatever junk they could put together. Any and all ship weapons either went into crafting turrets or arming sentinels.
As a result, they're not as good as one that would be constructed by other means. Probably why they take longer to kill the Covenant than they probably should. But in this case they don't need to, they just need to give the Drop Troopers the opening to finish them off and get the hell out of dodge. I guess I ultimately wanted to do something different. I've had sentinels show up quite a bit by now, so having some that are at least not shiny, new and chrome, but rusty, busted and cobbled-together was a change of pace.
Mass Rupture: I've been teasing this moment for a long while. I need the payoff to matter. So here it is, Mass Effect Technology combined with a Slipspace Drive. Creating a powerful jump through slipspace that is faster than either two technologies on their own. I had to hold the big moment off for a good long while for it to be truly impactful.
Maybe I went a little overboard with the rupture's closure shockwave being powerful enough to wreck a small planet, but slipspace ruptures are plenty dangerous on their own. This one is being performed inside Subspace, it's using tech that it's not meant to hybridize with, it's overloading itself so a far bigger ship can fit inside it and it's still relatively close to said planet. I think a little creative license is warranted to sell the momentous occasion.
Rest assured, now that they know how to even make the thing work, Tali and the crew will be readjusting the system so it's not such a huge drain on their power resources or as potentially destructive. But the implications are still readily apparent. Mass Effect Travel can now be used in tandem with Slipspace Jumps. Therefore enabling mass to be propelled at insane speeds through Slipspace Ruptures. While not as fast as a Mass Effect relay, this would cut travel time to neighboring systems or even clusters down considerably. And for the UNSC, it means space travel close to or on par with Covenant Ships.
I mean, the reason the Normandy ended up being so fast was because it was using a Covenant slipspace. I imagine the UNSC's own slipspace drives are just going to benefit from a similar speed boost factor. So they won't be outpacing the Covenant, but this decreases the threshold between them considerably. Not sure how fast they can put that into action... but it's still significant and we'll be certainly seeing its use by the Normandy more often as a result.
Hey, I can't have them hitching rides with other ships forever.
Death Should Matter: This is my primary writing belief. One I'm not sure many people understand even if they agree with. Death, to me, in a narrative structure must serve a point. And that point must serve the story. If it does not serve the story then it has no point. It is there for a lesser reason or just plain bad one.
A lot of people these days seem to gravitate to this mistaken belief about effective use of death in media. Too many adopt the Game of Thrones belief that "we should have stories where anyone can die!" But that's a lie. The "Anyone Can Die" concept is essentially a smoke and mirrors trick. Not anyone can die, the story has just fooled you into thinking that. But the plot armor remained. Ned Stark was just a false protagonist, as was Rob. They existed to throw you off by having protagonist tropes associated with them so when they died you believed it meant anyone could be next.
In contrast, it was very obvious that Jon Snow was one of the main protagonists of the show and therefore couldn't die so even when he did die they brought him back and kept trying to keep him alive. They had no real plan for him though except to kill his Aunt/Girlfriend at the end when she turned Dark Phoenix. But the belief that "anyone could die" was a bold faced lie that far too many people bought. Yes, certain characters were potentially on the chopping block, but the plot armor was visible for the most obvious. Tyrion was never gonna die because Peter Dinklage was just too damn popular, for example. All of it was in service of the illusion, that this was like real life and not a fictional world.
"Anyone Can Die" in real life, but fictional stories require characters to not just drop dead at the whim of an uncaring universe because they must serve a purpose. They must accomplish something more often than not in order to achieve a goal. Maybe not for themselves or even another character, but for the plot to move forward in some manner. And the plot can't move forward if the main character just up and dies. It can't. If they don't then the story feels like it has eternal false starts before anyone of important takes the central spotlight. So it's not true, no matter what anyone says, that "Anyone Can Die" is a legitimate thing in stories. It is a magic trick that requires you to LIE to your readers about who your important characters actually are.
But some people have adopted this into their stories all the same by having massive body counts and just killing people at random, from a red shirt with no lines to a regular mainstay just to fill a quota. Comic book companies seem to love killing off characters at random. Sometimes they come back and other times they don't, usually the ones that don't are background heroes or the like they don't care enough about to use anymore and read them as disposable. This is done for two reasons, to shock readers at the sudden death of a popular character... or to prove to everyone shit just got real without actually doing anything of consequence. In both cases, it is a shock death, with no other substance than stirring controversy or acting like something matters when it doesn't, because it didn't matter enough to the writer.
I hate this in writing. I despise it outright. Treating characters as disposable chess pieces is a recipe for disaster and basically tells your audience that you should not care or get invested in anything ever. Because if you don't care as a creator, why should they? And it hurts things even worse when the character isn't disposable because then its an even cheaper ass method of trying to retain the audience and engage in controversy because you think that will sell better.
Nothing angered me last year in terms of who I was as a writer than seeing Marvel kill off Kamala Khan in a story that wasn't hers, in a book that wasn't hers, for a reason that was so obvious and awful and dumb and damaging to the character. She wasn't being killed because it mattered to the story, she was being killed as a shock moment to convince people to pick up an awful comic so they'd pick up another awful comic masquerading as a tribute and set up an equally garbage comic book to bring her back as a mutant for corporate brand synergy. That was such fucking bullshit and the company's insistence that it was "tradition" to have heroes get killed and come back was such blatantly soulless posturing that it made me want to puke. That is not how death should be treated in a story and not how treat a fucking beloved character!
Death. Must. Matter. And it cannot be done at the drop of a hat to fill a quota or because you want to shock readers or match up with the movies or sell a book or whatever. Death must matter to the story! It must be done because it is the RIGHT choice, the BEST choice for a story to progress. Not because its easy or expected or desired by an investor or chart or focus group or whatever. Death in a story should matter to YOU if you're writing it, not because there's some arbitrary rule in place one way or the other.
What does this have to do with this chapter? Well, it's just I get the feeling sometimes that one of my core critiques of my writing is I don't show enough people dying in a war story. And the thing is, they do die. I just don't focus long on it. A lot of ODSTs died at the end of Guilty Sparks, there were plenty of casualties over the course of that story. I made it clear years ago when Remnants started that the UNSC's numbers were down to the hundreds as opposed to the thousands after escaping Halo. People have died, I just don't linger on it for shock value. I linger on death... when it matters.
So here we have this chapter, where I make it very clear people died. Not just named characters like Lurz or even Anton, but the nameless ODSTs and even a few of the named ones. Sergeant Lendon, the asshole Ex-mutineer who hated being forced to work with aliens? He's dead. Gone. His whole squad wiped. And he's not the only one gone. I made it very clear that Lurz butchered those ODSTs he encountered. Why? Not to show how serious the situation was, not to shock you although that was a passive element to doing it at all, but because this was Lurz! He wouldn't leave the ODSTs alive. Lurz literally murdered his own pilot at the start of this arc for refusing to land in an unsafe area. Not even abort the mission, he just wanted to find a better spot to land. Lurz killed him with his own helmet! I knew ODSTs would have to die if Lurz came across them before he fought Zek. And the only way to isolate Zek would be for ODSTs to die and Zek to go looking for them when they don't respond.
So those ODSTs among others died and I made it painfully clear that there were deaths for a very specific reason. Not to prove the situation serious, but to steal total victory from our heroes. I needed this to be a win for Zek but a loss for the UNSC. That's why Anton dies as well, not just because he dies in the book at this point. But because it would hit the hardest for the characters.
Anton was the first Spartan on Reach to be found alive. That would hit Chief hard, as well as everyone else in the UNSC. That would be a death they couldn't ignore. The first Spartan we found on Reach, who we though was dead, is now dead for real. He fought trying to fix a problem caused by Zek's dumb treasure hunt. All of those Troopers did. And that NEEDED to happen. It needed to happen for reasons that will be clear next chapter, but it needed to happen at this juncture for these characters because it made the most sense.
I could've picked ANY ODST who wasn't Buck or a member of his team, to die in Lendon's place. I had others. But Lendon had become the most regular, most present, most belligerent, most recognizable, and the most loud among the ODSTs who had also been mutineers. He had a relatable reason for hating Jackals. He was an asshole but he did his job. He died here because he was doing that job... and it was to help Zek get away with his shiny new rock. This is to confirm, in the minds of others among the UNSC, that maybe Lendon had a point. And it would serve Lendon's point a lot better if he DIED rather than him complaining more about it after the fact.
So Lendon didn't die to shock people. He didn't die to fill an arbitrary rule that war stories have to have regular consistent deaths. He died to serve a purpose within the story, to characters within it. Even his death matters, as much as the deaths of the ODSTs who didn't have names and Anton who was a major character I decided to try expanding upon as best as I could with the extra missions and dialogue I presented him.
Try not to see this as my defense for how I choose to write. I am no more right in my writing choices than anyone else. We all make our own stories and we must decide how they play out in a manner that makes the most sense to us. But this is me explaining my position on this specific topic in regards to this genre and in general. Death must serve a point. It mustn't be done just because you feel it has to happen, it must be done because it not happening feels wrong to you. If not killing a character is not true to the story you've created, then you have to make the decision to kill that character.
Therefore Death Must Matter and when someone dies it should have consequence. Not because it's controversial, or shock, or tradition, or whatever. Death in stories should have a point, even if it is only to reinforce how pointless that death may feel or how sudden and shocking it could be. But that should always be in service to the main point that it is neccessary for the story in and of itself.
I take this seriously. I think others should too. It's sad to see so many who do this professionally do not.
And that's it for now. Thank you for bothering to hear me out on this. More Behind the Scenes stuff to follow with new chapters! They're coming soon, I promise, we're practically almost done. Single digits left of chapters to write. Multiple coming soon if I can help it. No promises, but I'm gonna try. See you then.
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