Prologue

Prologue is the first level of Halo 4's campaign. Rather than featuring gameplay it is 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 gray uniform that reads "John". He looks up at his viewer, his eyes fearful.

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 John, now fully armored and being inspected by technicians. He towers over all of them.

John 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 strafe and 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 thruster packs to slow their descent.

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

The Spartans land. A Elite snarls 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, 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 John sitting alone in a hangar. His head is drooped and he is speaking to no one. Marines walk past him.

John sitting 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 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 John as Halsey hold up a data crystal chip projecting Cortana's avatar.

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 John's foot stepping down on a puddle. He leads a crowd of military personnel and civilians. The fighting has stopped but the city is in ruins.

• 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

Several elements in the cutscene are portrayed differently from how they canonically occurred, especially the SPARTAN-II augmentation procedures. 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 are likely 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.

The Elites in the cutscene wear the same armor as those from the post-war Covenant. Similarly the Brute John is shown fighting also wears an unseen armor combination, with the body armor of a Chieftain but the helmet of a Captain. These latter examples involving the Covenant may represent a retcon of both armors, though it may indicate that multiple styles of armor were in use during the war.

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 and John was wearing his Mark V armor. Overall, the ambiguous aspects of the cutscene may be due to Halsey's embellishment.

The Spartans' armor

The most prominent inconsistency that the Spartans are all shown wearing the heavily modified version of the MJOLNIR Mark VI that Cortana devised for John-117. Dr. Halsey could not have known this variant existed, as it was created months or even years after her last meeting with the Master Chief. She has also shown distaste for alterations to "her" armor as she designed MJOLNIR to be modular specifically to avoid the use of in-the-field modifications. However, Halo 4: The Essential Visual Guide retcons these suits as the Mark IV variant upon which John's revised armor was based, much like the original Mark VI was canonically based on John's Mark IV variant from The Package and Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn.

The suits display elements not typical of the Mark IV, such as energy shields and built-in thrusters. The thrusters the cutscene's Spartans use to slow their descent would have been useful to Red Team during their freefall drop at the Fall of Reach, and later to John during his drop from the Forerunner Dreadnought, yet their respective MJOLNIR Mark V and Mark VI suits lacked them. Strangely, the thrusters are positioned at the base of the suits' microfusion reactors. Though the suits' energy shields may seem anachronistic, Mark IV energy shielding prototypes had entered field testing by 2531.

Trivia

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".

Sources

Preceded by Halo 3 credits

Halo 4 Campaign Missions Prologue

Succeeded by Dawn