Photo by Maria Dhilla
In the next installment of the hit game Halo comes Halo 2, now with more characters! We all know who Master Chief is, but do you know Thel Vadam? Once leader of the Covenant Fleet, and now forsaken by his people, playing as Thel will allow you to redeem yourself through surviving suicidal quests. Will Master Chief prevail in saving Earth? Will Thel fight the Chief? That is unclear for now, but what is clear is that you are forced to immediately choose a side, idealising your own group through demonizing the other. What Faction will you choose?
A quick rundown that we’re sure everybody already knows: The Covenant is a ruthless faction of alien species that collected together in order to form a holy order that is quested to find the promised land in a movement they call the “Great Journey.” This collective of aliens was created after the Covenant committed genocide on different species until they were subjugated and joined under duress.
Talk about brutal, right?
This faction is led by a theocratic prophet species, who manipulate the teachings of their own doctrine for personal gain and commit blackmail in order to get ahead in politics. The servant species are also locked in a hierarchy with some species being lesser and others being superior! This allows for members of the Covenant to persecute lower races with acts like forced sterilization and mass execution. Do I hear someone saying, “War crimes?”
The Covenant also executes anyone who defies orders, considering them heretics and sentencing them to execution. Are you ready to become a lowly underling in the Covenant Empire ready to be killed on the frontlines of a never-ending war that is started on multiple different fronts at the same time?
If not, then try the only other option!
Maybe the Covenant isn’t your cup of tea. Never fear! You can join up with the UNSC, who are humanity’s last defense against the Covenant horde! Built upon a fascist government that rules from Earth over many solar systems, the UNSC is the strongest human military in the universe. And let’s salute to that!
Well-funded after 31 bloody, bloody years of being tasked with murdering farmers asking for independence, they are ready to stop playing around nuking the surfaces of independent planets, and are eager and ready to fight the Covenant! You can scream in horror as your friend’s arm proceeds to burn in a green fire after only being grazed by a lob of superheated plasma. Even if you are tough enough to join the ranks of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, you’ll probably land your pod in a swamp and drown after your door fails to open! Well, at least it’s better than being gunned down immediately as you charge out of your oneway casket. That almost never happens anymore!
While the odds are always against you in the UNSC, you can take peace in knowing that the armored champions of your army, Spartans, are actually mentally unstable super-soldiers who were kidnapped at the age of six, taught to kill, and then experimented on until they were forcibly augmented into seven- oot-tall killing machines! And the best things about Spartans is that they can never die! Everybody knows they just go missing in action — biding their time until they can return to help you normal soldiers out. This totally isn’t a ploy used by the higher ups who fear the plummeting morale if you see a Spartan blown to bits in front of you.
Oh, and there is also a shadow organization that puppeteers the entire military and commits more war crimes and experiments on its own personnel. Oops.
And so now you know what we’re bringing to the table, the only question we need to ask is rearing to be answered! Which faction will you join?
Andrew Sitko was recently arrested by the comedy police and charged for Possession of Killer Jokes. This is their second offense following a Grand Larceny charge from January 27th, 2003.
