Opinion: Destroying the Dreadnought at the end of Halo 2 Could Have Saved Earth Much Sooner

For those of you who follow my blog, today is going to be a VERY different kind of story. Today I will be writing about what I consider a pretty big flaw in the plot of one of my favorite video game stories, Halo.

For those of you looking for some of my more traditional content, I will be putting out another update on Iris and Kholvaria soon.

At the end of Halo 2, the massive spaceship known as the Forerunner Dreadnought, once used to power the Covenant holy city High Charity, comes out of slipspace near Earth. The Master Chief and the Prophet of Truth are both aboard this ship. As it nears Earth’s orbital defense grid, UNSC soldiers scramble to take it out.

“We’ve got a new contact. Unknown classification,” says one of the UNSC soldiers over the radio.

“It isn’t one of ours. Take it out,” responds Lord Hood. This statement would imply that the UNSC has the means to destroy the Dreadnought. Otherwise, why would he have made that order? Yet, only moments later, the Master Chief alerts Lord Hood that he is aboard the ship, thus prompting them not to fire upon it.

For those looking for context, the entire scene can be found HERE.

But if you really think about it… destroying that ship may not have been a bad idea after all.

The Master Chief attempts to assassinate the Prophet of Truth while aboard the ship, but fails and is forced to flee. He crashes in the jungles of Africa and is later found by Sergeant Johnson and the Arbiter.

Here is the first issue. By not destroying the ship in orbit, the Prophet of Truth is now still alive and able to lead the Covenant.

But that’s not all. Meanwhile, the Covenant excavate the ancient Forerunner Ark Portal and Truth lands the ship there to power and activate it. Seeing this as a threat, the Gravemind sends Flood ships to Earth in order to stop them from activating the portal.

Here is the second issue. By not destroying the ship in orbit, the Flood arrive on Earth. This is bad news mainly because the Flood spreads across Africa, prompting Shipmaster Rtas ‘Vadum, also known as “Half-Jaw”, to glass a large portion of the continent.

THEN the Prophet of Truth and his fleet travel through the portal and arrive at the Ark. A huge battle ensues. There are many casualties including Sergeant Johnson and Commander Keyes. During this battle, all the Halo arrays are nearly activated, but stopped at the last second.

This battle was a LOT of unnecessary work and led to unneeded casualties. It could have been avoided altogether if the Ark Portal was never even activated.

There is only ONE good thing that came out of this battle and it’s that the Gravemind was destroyed along with the remaining Flood. To the story’s credit, that’s a pretty big deal. But now think of what ELSE came out of this battle.

Cortana lives!

In the context of Halo 3, that’s not really a big deal. In fact, it’s a good thing. But this does pose an issue later in the series. In Halo 4, she survives to defeat the Didact by splitting herself up and putting herself in the Forerunner computer system. Following her assumed death, she becomes corrupted  and grows almost God-like in her powers.

Evil Cortana summons the ancient peacekeeping giant robots called the Guardians to basically be her puppets and keep the universe in line. So that’s not good. And again, NONE OF THIS SERIES OF EVENTS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF THEY HAD JUST SHOT DOWN THE DREADNOUGHT.

In a nutshell, the Ark battle wouldn’t have happened (along with the threat of universe-spanning doom), the Prophet of Truth would have been killed right away, which would mean the end of the Covenant, the Flood wouldn’t have come to Earth, and Cortana would have been destroyed whenever the UNSC eventually got around to destroying High Charity, the last bastion of Flood presence.

Of course if they HAD destroyed the ship, that would have made for a pretty anti-climactic ending to Halo 2. I get that. But still, it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you think about it.