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Promethean Watcher

From Halopedia, the Halo wiki

Promethean Watcher
H5G guide - Watcher.png
Overview

Role:

Combat support, reconnaissance

Weight:

144.2 kilograms (318 lb)[1]

Height:

127 centimeters (4 ft 2 in)[1]

Armament:

Boltshot[2]

 

The Promethean Watcher is a Forerunner Sentinel variant.[3][4] Watchers are part of the mechanical Promethean forces created by the Ur-Didact near the end of the Forerunner-Flood war as a desperate attempt to combat the Flood.[5][6] Watchers acted as the primary defensive drones of the Promethean shield world Requiem, where they were first encountered by the UNSC in summer 2557.[1]

Overview[edit]

In the battlefield, Watchers act in a supporting role, assisting Promethean ground units with aerial combat screening and often forcing opponents to engage the Sentinel first. Each Promethean Knight unit carries a single Watcher in the back of their armored carapace, from which the Watcher can be deployed at will. Watchers are essentially low-level ancillas based on the Promethean Knight from which they originate. The watcher's AI is housed in its upper carapace above the "head".[1]

The Watcher is capable of healing and augmenting damaged allies, providing them with hard light shields, and can catch and return enemy ordnance, such as grenades, with a gravity-displacement field.[4] They are armed with a built-in Boltshot.[2] Watchers can resurrect destroyed Knights from the small orb of light they leave behind upon death; however, this can only be performed once for each individual Knight.[7] They are also capable of summoning Promethean Crawlers to the battlefield by conjuring the Crawlers' forms from raw material in the ground.[8] Watchers are also capable of building focus turrets.[9]

Appearance[edit]

Unlike the angular appearance of most Sentinels, Watchers have curving carapaces, a defining characteristic of Promethean war machines. They have a number of appendages, including what appear to be legs hanging below the midsection which serve as stabilizers and two large disks on both sides which provide agile lift systems and a coiled energy expenditure from within them. Most of these segments lack physical joints and are held together by energy fields. Above the midsection there appears to be a head with stylized facial features and also two fins which act as motion curators to control movement.[1] Like the other Promethean constructs, Watchers under the Ur-Didact's control possess orange lighting, in contrast to the blue-lit appearance typical of other Forerunner constructs.

Trivia[edit]

  • The Watcher, along with the Promethean Crawler, was first seen in a leaked image from McFarlane Toys.[10] However, it was first mentioned as the "Watcher Sentinel" several months earlier in Halo: The Essential Visual Guide.[3]
  • The Watcher was called Bishop during the development of Halo 4. The Watcher's model filename is still called "storm_bishop". The Knights are all that survive of the formerly chess-piece-named Prometheans.
  • An outline of the Reclaimer symbol, in reality the Marathon logo, appears on the Watcher's midsection despite Bungie owning the rights to the Marathon franchise.
  • Shooting the tiny face on the Watcher counts as a headshot and destroys the whole body. However, the face is so small and the Watcher is protected by weak shields, that aiming for it is not very practical.
  • Promethean Knights are capable of deploying multiple Watchers from their body, not just one. This may be due to bugs.
  • Watchers can be assassinated in Halo 4, but not in Halo 5: Guardians.
  • Watchers are capable of catching player thrown grenades and throwing them back. They can also, as of Halo 5: Guardians, catch and throw back the projectiles shot by Hydra Launchers.

Gallery[edit]

List of appearances[edit]

Sources[edit]