Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn
From Halopedia, the Halo wiki
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90 minutes |
- "The Story of Halo 4 Begins at Dawn."
- — Official tagline
Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn is a live-action film and miniseries set in the Halo universe. Although shot as a feature-length film, Forward Unto Dawn was originally released as a webseries consisting of five roughly 15-minute episodes, the first of which was released on October 5, 2012,[1] with the rest following on a weekly basis. The series' plot is set 31 years before Halo 4, occurring in the early days of the Human-Covenant War circa 2526,[4] and revolves around Thomas Lasky, a young cadet at Corbulo Academy of Military Science, and how John-117 inspired him to eventually become a leader. Lasky is also a prominent character in Halo 4 as a commander on the UNSC Infinity.[5] The name of the series, aside from being a reference to the UNSC frigate Forward Unto Dawn, is given new significance in the series as part a running motif based around a poem. The series was known as Sleeper during pre-production.[6]
Forward Unto Dawn is hosted on Halo Waypoint and Machinima.com.[7] The Forward Unto Dawn Special Edition, which contains the complete, film-length cut of Forward Unto Dawn as well as additional material, is included with the Halo 4 Limited Edition and is available via Halo Waypoint.[8] The Special Edition was also released for download on Xbox LIVE on November 5, 2012, for 2,800 Microsoft points.[9] The film cut was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on December 4, 2012.[2] Originally released on the MachinimaPrime YouTube channel, episodes 3-5 of the series were taken offline on YouTube some time following the release of the Special Edition, but are back online in certain regions as of September 2013.[10]
The series also incorporated interactive features with the Halo Channel application for Xbox One. Viewers could complete challenges related to the series to unlock features that can be used in Halo games. Each episode has several challenges and "Second Story" videos that expand on events that were not shown in the series. Additionally, viewers could access the Halo Channel's "Halo Encyclopedia" to gain information on characters, locations, weapons, and vehicles that are featured in Forward Unto Dawn.[11]
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- Main article: Webseries transcripts
The series begins with Thomas Lasky, executive officer of the UNSC Infinity, picking up Cortana's distress signal from the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn, which has been adrift in space for four years. Learning that SPARTAN-117 is aboard the ship, Lasky has a flashback to the events that led to him meeting the Spartan for the first time and how he inspired him to become a leader. The "present-day" segments, which feature clips of Cortana's inner monologues during her solitude aboard the Dawn, serve as a framing device for the main narrative, which focuses on Thomas Lasky as a young freshman cadet in Corbulo Academy of Military Science on Circinius IV amidst the Insurrection circa 2526. Organized into Hastati Squad, a freshman unit in the class of 2529, Lasky expresses sympathy for the Insurrectionists and shows a constant disregard for the orders of his superiors, resulting in Hastati receiving low combat scores and Lasky himself being shunned by the rest of the squad. Worse, his health declines rapidly during the school's mandatory acclimation to cryosleep, suffering blisters and a persistent cough.
In his spare time, Lasky replays video messages by his now-deceased brother Cadmon, with whom he used to have regular video correspondence. Most of Lasky's classmates, particularly Walter Vickers, are unrelenting in their provocation of Thomas, affirming their distaste for the freshman who fails to live up to the example set by his brother and his mother, a UNSCDF colonel and former superior of CAMS professor, Colonel Mehaffey. One of the few cadets sympathetic to him is Chyler Silva, who attempts to encourage Thomas to be a better leader, and Michael Sullivan, who cares little about his performance and focuses on hacking classified UNSC mission recordings, eventually uncovering footage recorded by a Spartan's helmet camera. Another Hastati Squad member, Junjie Chen, struggles to live up to the expectations of his father and is concerned about Lasky's poor performance decreasing his combat scores. Frustrated by the verbal and minor physical harassment he receives from Vickers, Lasky eventually assaults his squadmate in the school's mess hall. Lasky