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Part 1 – https://www.reddit.com/Isekai/comments/1cga32j/list_i_have_distributed_all_the_isekais_i_have/
Part 2 – https://www.reddit.com/Isekai/comments/1cga4z3/list_i_have_distributed_all_the_isekais_i_have/
Part 3 – https://www.reddit.com/Isekai/comments/1cga7ta/list_i_have_distributed_all_the_isekais_i_have/

28.1 – Open Store: MC open his own business.
Examples: [1] – Kami Tachi; [2] – Drug Store In Another World; [3] - My Quiet Blacksmith Life in Another World; [3] - Isekai De Uwamae Hanete Ikiteiku ~Saisei Mahotsukai No Yuru Fuwa Jinzai Haken Seikatsu~; [4] - Shounin Yuusha wa Isekai wo Gyuujiru!
28.2 – Lazy worker: MC have an easy job and dont have to fight;
Examples: [1] – Ascendance Of A Bookworm; [12] - The Girl Monster I Saved; [3] - I Got Reincarnated As A Son Of Innkeepers!; [4] - Kochira Isekai de yoroshikatta deshou ka?; [5] - Moto Home Center Tenin no Isekai Seikatsu ~Shougou "DIY Master" "Green Master" "Pet Master" wo Kushishite Isekai wo Kimamani Ikimasu~; [6] - Heroine? Saint? No, I'm An All-Works Maid; [7] - Sweets, Elf, And A High School Girl (reverse);
28.3 – Lazy Merchant: MC farm or uses his system to get itens and then sell to make easy Money.
Examples: [1] - I Shall Survive Using Potions!; [13] - Slow Life In Another World (I Wish!); [3] - The Fake Alchemist; [4] - Souzai Saishuka no Isekai Ryokouki; [5] - Arafoo Otoko no Isekai Tsuhan Seikatsu; [6] - Isekai Nonbiri Sozai Saishu Seikatsu; [7] - Cheat na Tablet wo Motte Kaiteki Isekai Seikatsu; [8] - Teihen Ossan, Cheat Kokusei de Isekai Rakuraku Life;
28.4 – Lazy Noble/Elf: Just a normal noble/elf living a easy life.
[1] - Tensei Shite Inaka de Slowlife wo Okuritai; [2] - Tensei Shita Kedo Cheat Nouryoku wo Tsukawanai De Ikite Miru; [3] - Tenseisha wa Cheat o Nozomanai; [4] - Tensei Ouji wa Daraketai; [5] - Tensei Shite High Elf ni Narimashitaga, Slow Life wa 120-nen de Akimashita; [6] - Reincarnated as the Daughter of the Legendary Hero and the Queen of Spirits;
28.5 – Lazy Farmer: farmer life. Best Job/class. MC is usually OP and almost always end up with a harem;
Examples: [8] - Nonbiri Nouka; [9] – Yuru Fuwa Noka No Moji Bake Skill; [11] - Kamigami no Kago de Seisan Kakumei; [14] - Living a Laid-Back Second Life on the Island of the Strongest Species; [5] - Isekai de Tochi o Katte Noujou wo Tsukurou; [6] - Isekai ni Otosareta… Jouka wa Kihon!; [7] - Seirei-tachi no Rakuen to Risou no Isekai Seikatsu; [8] - Isekai ni Teni Shitara Yama no Naka datta. Handou de Tsuyo Sayori mo Kaitekisa o Erabi Mashita;[9] - Tanbo de Hirotta Onna Kishi, Inaka de Ore no Yome da to Omowareteiru (reverse); [10] - Tensei Shachiku no Cheat Saien - Ban'nou Skill to Benri na Tsukaima Yousei wo Kushishitetara, Kidzukeba Tairiku Ichi no Seisan Kyoten ga Dekiteita; [11] - Shokubutsu Mahou Chito de Nonbiri Ryoshu Seikatsu Hajimemasu Zense no Chishiki o Kushi Shite Nogyo Shitara, Gyakuten Jinsei Hajimatta Kudan; [12] - Isekai desu ga Mamono Saibai shiteimasu.; [13] - Tenohira Kaitaku Mura de Isekai Kenkokuki: Fueteku Yome-tachi to Nonbiri Mujintou Life; [14] - Orenchi ni Kita Onna Kishi to Inakagurashi Surukotoninatta Ken (reverse); [15] - Isekai Yururi Camp; [16] - Shoushaman no Isekai Survival ~ Zettai Hito to wa Tsurumanee ~;
28.6 – Frail boy/girl: cute/emotional stories about kids;
Examples: [1] - Fluffy Paradise; [2] - Zensei de Tsurai Omoi o Shita no de, Kamisama ga Shazai ni Kimashita; [3] - Making Magic: The Sweet Life of a Witch Who Knows an Infinite MP Loophole; [4] - The Steam Dragon Express; [5] - A Ruined Princess and a Different World's Hero Make a Great Country!; [6] - Sekai Tensei Slum Machi kara no Nariagari; [7] - Tensei Youjo wa Akiramenai; [8] - Kamitachi ni Hirowareta Otoko; [9] - Saijaku Tamer wa Gomi Hiroi no Tabi o Hajimemashita;
28.7 – Lover Boy/girl: Living each day with his/her waifu/husbando and making friends.
Examples: [10] - Yuusha Shoukan ni Makikomareta kedo, Isekai wa Heiwa deshita; [1] - Lv2 kara Cheat datta Motoyuusha Kouho no Mattari Isekai Life; [3] - I Guess I Became the Mother of the Great Demon King's 10 Children in Another World; [4] - Monster no Konkatsuya-san; [5] - Isekai ni Kita Mitai Dakedo Dousureba Yoi no Darou; [6] - Depressed Hero; [6] - I'm in Love with the Villainess; [7] - There Was A Cute Girl In The Hero’S Party, So I Tried Confessing To Her;
28.8 – Camping Isekai: rare stories about a MC who likes to camping.
[1] - Ossan no Remake Bouken Nikki: Autocamp kara Hajimaru Isekai Mankitsu Life; [2] - Isekai Shachuuhaku Monogatari: Outrunner PHEV;

[1] – The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent; [2] – Parallel World Pharmacy; [3] – Handyman Saitou in Another World; [4] - I Used High-Level Medicine To Counter Magic; [5] - A Single Aristocrat Enjoys A Different World: The Graceful Life Of A Man Who Never Gets Married; [6] – Salaryman ga Isekai ni Ittara Shitennou ni Natta Hanashi; [7] - The Story of the Invincible Merchant's Rise in Another World ~Since I have the skill to order modern products at will, I have an easy victory in another world~; [8] - I Reincarnated As A Legendary Surgeon; [9] - How A Realist Hero Rebuilt The Kingdom Focuses On A Civil Servant Saving a country; [10] - The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady; [11] - The Greatest Estate Developer; [12] - The Holy Power of Modern Medicine; [13] - Yuusha Ikkou ni Senzokui; [14] - Isekai no Meitantei; [15] - Madougushi Dahliya wa Utsumukanai ~Dahliya Wilts No More~; [16] - Inaka no Home Center Otoko no Jiyuu na Isekai Seikatsu; [17] - Cheat Kusushi no Slow Life: Isekai ni Tsukurou Drugstore; [18] - Fushi no Kami: Rebuilding Civilization Starts with a Village; [19] – Exterminator; [20] – Isekai no Binbou Nouka ni Tensei Shita Node, Renga wo Tsukutte Shiro wo Tateru Koto ni Shimashita; [20] - Welcome to Sylvia's Garden; [21] - Can I, a Doctor, Save 10 Billion Lives in Another World?; [22] - Isekai Courtroom -Rebuttal Barrister-; [23] - Doctor’s Rebirth; [24] - The Crown Prince That Sells Medicine; [25] - Isekai Ten'i Shite Kyoushi ni Natta ga, Majo to Osorerareteiru Ken ~Aoi-sensei no Gakuen Funtou Nisshi~; [26] - BLACK CORPORATION: JOSEON;

30.1 – Eroge game / Otome game / MMO / RPG / VRPG etc.
Examples: [1] – Live Dungeon; [2] – Log Horizon; [3] - Tsuihou Sareta Tensei Juu Kishi wa Game Chishiki de Musou Suru; [4] – Quality Assurance in Another World; [5] - The Unrivaled Reincarnated Sage of Another World ~The Strongest in Another World Through Game Knowledge~; [6] – Maou-sama, Retry!; [7] - Sword Art Online; [8] - Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear; [9] - .Hack//Sign; [10] - Tyrant Of The Tower Defense Game; [11] - Surviving The Game As A Barbarian; [12] - Pick Me Up: Infinite Gacha; [13] - Dungeon Reset; [14] - The Nebula's Civilization; [15] - Rta Sousha Wa Game Sekai Kara Kaerenai; [22] - Manuke na FPS Player ga Isekai e Ochita Baai; [16] - Moto-Sekai Ichii Sub-chara Ikusei Nikki ~Hi-Player, Isekai wo Kouryaku-chu!~; [17] - The Player Hides His Past; [18] - Surviving With an SSS-Rank Inventory; [19] - Saiaku no Avalon; [20] - Ore no Shibou Flag ga Todomaru Tokoro wo Shiranai; [21] - Isekai Cheat Magic Swordsman; [22] - Shoukan sareta Kenja wa Isekai wo Yuku ~Saikyou nano wa Fuyou Zaiko no Item deshita~; [23] – Ernak; [24] - Hakoniwa Oukoku no Craft Master; [25] - Magical★Explorer - Eroge no Yuujin Kyara ni Tensei Shitakedo, Game Chishiki Tsukatte Jiyuu ni Ikiru; [26] - 100% Cleared Harem Route; [27] - Little Tyrant Doesn't Want to Meet with a Bad End; [28] - Yasei no Last Boss ga Arawareta!; [29] - I Have Max Level Luck; [30] - The Genius Medicinal Mage; [31] - Teenage Swordsman; [32] - Chounin A wa Akuyaku Reijou wo Doushitemo Sukuitai; [33] - Starting Out With Max Favorability; [34] - Monogatari no Kuromaku ni Tensei Shite; [35] - Mushoku no Saikyou Kenja ~Job ga Erarezu Tsuihou Saretaga, Game no Chishiki de Isekai Saikyou~; [36] - Try Me Again If You Dare!; [37] - I Reincarnated as a Villain of an RPG, But I Want to Survive; [38] - A Certain Middle-Aged Man's VRMMO Activity Log; [39] - Ester de Valonia; [40] - The King of Bugs; [41] - Ecstas Online; [42] - Solo Bug Player; [43] - The Count’s Youngest Son Is a Player; [44] - Indestructible Body of Vajra of the Village Leader; [45] - Reincarnation to the World of “Eroge”: The Story About Lazy Aristocrat Who Struggle for Resist His Destiny; [46] - The Holy Emperor's Grandson Is a Necromancer; [47] - Skeleton Evolution: Starting From Being Summoned By the Sorceress; [48] - Arafoo Kenja no Isekai Seikatsu Nikki; The Diary of a Middle-Aged Teacher's Carefree Life in Another World; [49] - The Extra’s Academy Survival Guide; [50] - Botsuraku Yotei Nanode, Kajishokunin wo Mezasu; [51] - Was Manager Seo Disposed of as an Industrial Accident?; [52] - I Became a Dark Fantasy Villain; [53] - Regenerate Top Players; [54] - Akuyaku Reijou Level 99: Watashi wa UraBoss desu ga Maou de wa Arimasen; [55] - Unparalleled ??? Rank Hidden Equipment; [56] - Legend of Mir: Gold Armored Dragon; [57] - Shinka Tokusei de Saikyou Necromancer; [58] - Only I Know That This World Is a Game; [58] - I Exploit Bugs; [59] - The Gamer: Fantasia; [60] - Game no Naka ni Iru!; [61] - Your Ancestor Is Online; [62] - Onmir The oddity; [63] - Lime Odyssey - The Chronicles of ORTA; [64] - Dungeon Defense; [65] - Saitei Chara ni Tensei shita Ore wa Ikinokoritai; [66] - My Way Of Killing Gods In Another World; [67] - Twisting the Arm of Fate with Cheat Magic; [68] - Brave Hero; [69] - A World-Class Walkthrough; [70] - I Am the Rising Villain; [71] - Master of Villains; [72] - I Rely on My Invincibility to Deal Tons of Damage Passively!; [73] - The Strongest Cheat Player; [74] - The Tutorial Is Too Tough!; [75] - RPG WORLD - Roleplay World; [76] - Twisting the Arm of Fate with Cheat Magic; [77] - Isekai Tensei ni Kansha o; [78] - Akuyaku Reijou no Shitsuji-sama: Hametsu Flag wa Ore ga Tsubusasete Itadakimasu (game); [79] - I Became the Crazy Emperor; [80] - Genius Corpse-Collecting Warrior; [81] - I Killed the Player of the Academy; [82] – MEMORIZE (time travel isekai); [83] - Silver Gravekeeper; [84] - Cleric of Decay; [85] - Grimoire x Reverse - Tensei Kishin Roumantan; [86] - Ending Maker; [87] - Honobono Isekai Tensei Days ~Level Counterstop, Item Mochikoshi! Watashi wa Saikyou Youjo Desu~; [88] - Souzoushu nano de Motto Yasashikute Kudasai!; [89] - My Not-So-Fair Lady Is Doomed! (but Not If I Can Help It); [90] - Chibikko Kenja, Lv. 1 Kara Isekaide Ganbarimasu!; [91] - Kyoukai Meikyuu to Ikai no Majutsushi; [92] - Akugyaku Hadou no Brave Soul; [93] - Maou to Yuusha no Tatakai no Ura de; [94] - In the Land of Leadale; [95] - Next Life; [96] - Nichiasa Suki no Otaku ga Akuyaku Seito ni Tenseishita Kekka, Hametsu Flag ga Houkaishiteiku Ken ni Tsuite; [97] - Gokufuri Kyohi Shite Tesaguri Start! Tokka Shinai Healer, Nakama to Wakarete Tabi ni Deru; [98] - I'm Really Not Targeting the Mages; [99] - Hell Mode: Yarikomi Suki no Gamer wa Hai Settei no Isekai de Musou Suru; [100] - Reincarnated as the Villain in a Cultivation Game; [101] - Overlord; [102] - The Princess Has a Rosy Dream; [103] - My Inventory is Abnormal; [104] - Gal Maid & Villainess: Only Milady's Happy End Will Win!; [105] - The Wolf Is Fierce And Cautious;
30.2 – Novel / Book / Manga / Comig etc.
Examples: [1] - The Novel's Extra; [2] - City of Sanctuary; [3] - Youngest Son of the Renowned Magic Clan; [4] - The Novel’s Extra; [5] - The Extra Is Too Powerful; [6] - Akuyaku Kizoku to shite Hitsuyou na Sore; [7] - The Genius Assassin Who Takes it All; [8] - A Comic Artist’s Survival Guide; [9] - The Transmigrated Mage Life in Another World, Becoming the Strongest in the World with the Knowledge of the Original Story; [10] - I Am Reborn as the Sword God; [11] - [12] - I Became the Youngest Prince in the Novel; [13] - Tensei Akujo no Kuro Rekishi; [14] - Lasboss x Hero; [15] - Genius Martial Arts Trainer; [16] - Death Game Manga no Kuromaku Satsujinki no Imouto ni Tensei shite Shippai shita;

31.1 - Effort is all Isekai: MC has not much talento so should train/grind/learn a lot to become stronger;
Examples: [1] - Tsuihousareru Tabi ni Skill wo Te ni Ireta Ore ga, 100 no Isekai de 2-shuume Musou; [2] - Reincarnation of the Veteran Soldier; [3] - The Strongest Sage with the Weakest Crest; [4] - Player (Oh Hyeon-Jun); [5] - The Black Pig Prince Recalls His Previous Life and Becomes the Strongest; [6] - My Job is Appraiser, but What is The [God Eye]? Living Freely with The World's Greatest Elementary Level Job; [7] - Sekai de Yuuitsu no Tenshokushi: Job Hopper na Ore wa, Isekai de Subete no Job o Kiwameru Koto ni Shita; [8] - 1RM’s Gigant Rider; [9] - Bijo to Kenja to Majin no Ken; [10] - Wizard of Arsenia; [11] - TRPG Player ga Isekai de Saikyou Build wo Mezasu; [12] - The Spearmaster and the Black Cat; [13] - Academy's Undercover Professor; [14] - Magic Maker: How to Create Magic in Another World; [15] - Tanaka the Wizard; [16] - Ane ni Iwareru ga Mama ni Tokkun wo Shiteitara, Tondemonai Tsuyosa ni Natteita Otouto; [17] - Tanaka no Atelier ~Nenrei Equal Kanojo Inaireki no Mahoutsukai~; [18] - Isekai no Senshi toshite Kuni ni Manekareta kedo, Kotowatte Heishi kara Hajimeru Koto ni Shita; [19] - Id - The Greatest Fusion Fantasy; [20] - The Great Cleric; [21] - I Was Raised by the Boss; [22] - Machigai Shoukan! Oidasareta kedo Joui Gokan Skill de Rakuraku Seikatsu; [23] - Kekkaishi e no Tensei; [24] - Ken to Mahou to Gakureki Shakai;
31.2 - Weak but Strong: despised/shunned/banned for being weak but actually pretty Strong.
Examples: [1] - Jitsu wa Ore, Saikyou Deshita?; [2] - Lv2 kara Cheat datta Moto Yuusha Kouho no Mattari Isekai Life; [3] - Level 1 no Saikyou Kenja - Noroi de Saikakyuu Mahou Shika Tsukaenai kedo, Kami no Kanchigai no Mugen no Maryoku o Te ni Ire Saikyou ni; [4] - People Looked Down on Me for Having a Crummy Job but It Really Isn't All That Bad?; [5] - Welcome to the "Outcasts' Guild"; [6] - Ikitsuku Saki wa Yuusha ka Maou ka; [7] - Homeland Dropout: The Time I Was Reincarnated as the Fourth Enchanter in the Entire World; [8] - Reincarnated as a Son of an Aristocrat; [9] - Rettoujin no Maken Tsukai: Skill Board wo Kushi Shite Saikyou ni Itaru; [10] - Overpowered Healer; [11] - Bocchi Tenseiki (Misanthrope); [12] - My Wife is a Demon Queen; [13] - Full Clearing Another World under a Goddess with Zero Believers; [14] - Maseki Gurume: Mamono no Chikara wo Tabeta Ore wa Saikyou!; [15] - Sono Munou, Jitsu wa Sekai Saikyou no Mahoutsukai ~Munou to Sagesumare, Kizokuka kara Oidasareta ga, Gift "Tenseisha" ga Kakusei shite Zense no Nouryoku ga Yomigaetta~; [16] - Versatile Mage; [17] - Soul Land; [18] - Hazure Skill de SSS-Rank Makyo Ikinui wo Tara, Sekai Saikyou no Renkinjutsushi ni Natteita ~ Kaiteki Kyoten wo Tsukutte Nakama to Tanoshi Isekai Life; [19] - Genkaigoe no Skill wa, Tenseisha ni Shika Atsukaenai - Over Limit Skill Holder; [20] - Izure Saikyou ni Itaru Tensei Mahoutsukai; [21] - Moto Saikyou no Kenshi wa, Isekai Mahou ni Akogareru; [22] - Saikyou Juzoku Tensei ~Cheat Majutsushi no Slow Life~; [23] - Level 1 Dakedo Unique Skill de Saikyou desu;
31.3 - No Effort: MC is already stronger or got the best cheat or even all the blessings from ch1 without effort;
Examples: [1] - My Civil Servant Life Reborn in the Strange World; [2] - Isekai Tensei de Kenja ni Natte Boukensha Seikatsu ~[Mahou Kairyou] de Isekai Saikyou~; [3] - Botsuraku Yotei no Kizoku dakedo, Hima datta kara Mahou wo Kiwamete Mita; [4] - Saikyou no Ossan Hunter Isekai e ~ Kondokoso Yukkuri Shizuka ni Kurashitai ~; [5] - Novelist Can Fight Too; [6] - Kaminari Tei no Kiseki ~ Ore Dake Tsukaeru “Kaminari Majutsu” de Isekai Saikyou ni! ~; [7] - Tensei Shitara Sainou ga Atta Ken ~Isekai Itte mo Doryoku Suru~; [8] - Samurai in Another World; [9] - I Get Stronger the More I Eat; [9] - Zettai ni Damage o Ukenai Skill o Moratta node, Boukensha to shite Musou shite miru; [10] - Jimi na Kensei wa Sore Demo Saikyou Desu; [11] - Eiyuu Majutsushi wa Nonbiri Kurashitai; [12] - Ookami wa Nemuranai; [13] - Aiming For the Deepest Part of the Labyrinth Thanks to "The Vessel of Talent" -What Was Supposed to be a Normal Progression of Skills Turned Out to be an All-Purpose Cheat!; [14] - Global Power: I Can Control All The Elements; [15] - Fujimi Tensei: Kuzu Dakedo Saisei Cheat de Musou Shimasu; [16] - Climax Necromance; [17] - Chouetsu-sha To Natta Ossan wa My Pace ni Isekai wo Sansaku Suru; [18] - Sasensareta Munou Ouji wa Jitsuryoku wo Kakushitai; [19] - Sekai ni Hitori, Zenzokusei Mahou no Tsukaite; [20] - Ore to Kawazu-san no Isekai Hourouki; [21] - Karada wa Jidou, Nakami wa Ossan no Nariagari Boukenki; [22] - Tensei Shichattayo (Iya, Gomen); [23] - World Teacher – Other World Style Education & Agent; [24] - From Overshadowed to Overpowered: Second Reincarnation of a Talentless Sage (isekai with reincarnation); [25] - Saikyou Onmyouji no Isekai Tensei-ki ~Geboku no Youkai-domo ni Kurabete Monster ga Yowasugiru n da ga~; [26] - Tensei Kizoku no Isekai Boukenroku ~Jichou wo Shiranai Kamigami no Shito~; [27] - Shachiku, Dungeon Darake no Sekai de Koyuu Skill "Gouyoku" wo Te ni Irete Saikyou no Balance Breaker ni Naru; [28] - Ore no Ie ga Maryoku Spot datta Ken ~Sundeiru dake de Sekai Saikyou~; [29] - I Received Blessings Meant For 2 People From God; [30] - Saikyou no Shuzoku ga Ningen Datta Ken; [31] - Tensei Shitara Dainana-ouji Dattanode, Kimama ni Majutsu wo Kiwamemasu; [32] - Karate Baka In Different World; [33] - Kuro no Shoukanshi; [34] - A Normally Dowdy Man Is in Essence the Mightiest War-God; [35] - Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute; [36] - Hachinan tte, Sore wa Nai Deshou!; [37] - Emperor's Mark to Rule the Monsters: Reborn Sage to Strongest Adventurer; [38] - Legend (Takano Masaharu); [39] - Isekai ni Tobasareta Ossan wa Doko e Iku?; [40] - SSS-Rank Paladin Who Transcends Common Sense;
31.4 - Weird skill/job: MC got the weirdest skill in a Isekai genre;
Examples: [1] - Isekai Walking (walk); [2] - Mezase Gouka Kyakusen!! ~Sen Shokan Skill De Isekai Rich Life Wo Te Ni Irero (create ships); [3] - Dungeon Athlete (regenerate musches); [4] - Tenshoku no Shinden o Hirakimashita (job changer); [5] - Tensei Kusushi wa Isekai wo Meguru (Apothecary); [6] - Shingan no Yuusha (god eye); [7] - Isekai Meikyuu no Saishinbu o Mezasou (???); 8 - Isekai ni Kita Boku wa Kiyoubinbode Subayasa Tayorina Tabi wo Suru (Jack of all trades); 9 - Sokushi Cheat ga Saikyou Sugite, Isekai no Yatsura ga Marude Aite ni Naranai n desu ga (instant death); [10] - Tenkuu no Shiro o Moratta no de Isekai de Tanoshiku Asobitai (control a floating castle); [11] - Jiriki de Isekai e! (garbled text); [12] - Life of Hit-Tamer in Another World (tamer with one punch); [13] - Gakuen Kishi no Level up! (trial and error); [14] - Save & Load no Dekiru Yadoya-san (save and load); [15] - Saikyou no Shokugyou wa Yuusha Demo Kenja Demo Naku Kanteishi (Kari) Rashii Desu yo? (inspector); [16] - Wicked Trapper: Hunter of Heroes (trap master);

[1] - Pastoral Battle Hymn: Pioneer in the Fantasy Realm; [2] – Bokutachi Wa Isekai Geinin Desu; [3] - Aweon Mall Isekai Ten, Honjitsu Grand Open!; [4] - Zero Skill No Ryouriban; [5] - According to the Hero Who Returned From Another World; [6] - Isekai Nation Archimaira: The Weakest King and his Unparalleled Army; [7] - Isekai Demo Bunan ni Ikitai Shoukougun; [8] - Yuusha Shoukan ni Makikomareta kedo, Isekai wa Heiwa deshita; [9] – KonoSuba; [10] - Re: Zero - Starting Life In Another World; [11] - How A Realist Hero Rebuilt The Kingdom; [12] - Now And Then, Here And There; [13] - Handyman Saitou In Another World; [14] - Grimgar: Ashes And Illusions; [15] - Ascendance Of A Bookworm; [16] - Meikyuu Black Company; [17] - Shinde kudasai! Yuusha desho?; [18] – Isekai Manless; [19] – Parallel Paradise; [20] – Alcafus; [21] - Karma na Skill de Musou suru Isekai Harem Kaitoudan; [22] - Kurogane no Mahoutsukai; [23] - Kaminaki Sekai no Kamisama Katsudou; [24] - Mezase Gouka Kyakusen!! ~Sen Shokan Skill De Isekai Rich Life Wo Te Ni Irero; [25] - Isekai Saikouhou no Guild Leader ~Guild Saijaku no Boku da Kedo, Guild Members Zen'in no ai ga Omokute Guild o Yameraremasen~; [26] - The Girl, the Shovel, and the Evil Eye; [27] - Yankee wa Isekai de Seirei ni Aisaremasu.; [28] - Isekai Demo Bunan ni Ikitai Shoukougun; [29] - Hero with Another Opinion; [30] - Amarimono Isekaijin no Jiyuu Seikatsu: Yuusha ja Nai node Katteni Yarasete Moraimasu; [31] - Neko no Te demo Yoroshikereba; [32] - Shoushaman no Isekai Survival ~ Zettai Hito to wa Tsurumanee ~; [33] - Zero no Tsukaima; [34] - Isekai Teni, Jirai Tsuki; [35] - Kami Neko Mii-chan to Neko Youhin Shoukanshi no Isekai Funtouki;

[1] - Mezametara Saikyou Soubi to Uchuusenmochi Datta node, Ikkodate Mezashite Youhei toshite Jiyuu ni Ikitai; [2] - Sousei no Taiga; [3] - It All Starts With A Group Of Primitive People; [4] - Animal Land; [5] - Arata Primal; [6] - Trinity Wonder (Reverse); [7] - Unparalleled Path ~ Reincarnated as the AI for a Space Battleship; [8] - Ore ga Heroine o Tasukesugite Sekai ga Little Mokushiroku!?; [9] - I'm The Evil Lord Of An Intergalactic Empire!; [10] - Blue Gender's; [11] - Now And Then, Here And There; [12] - The Legendary Mechanic; [13] - It's Not Easy to Be a Man After Traveling to the Future; [14] - The Novel's Extra; [15] - Strongest Caveman; [16] - Gunjou Senki; [17] - Heterogenia Linguistico;

[1] – Overmortal; [2] - Martial Streamer; [3] - Delivery Man From Murim; [4] - Omniscient Immortal Cultivator; [5] - Embodiment of the Assassin in the Murim World; [6] - Million Times Attack Speed; [7] - I Became a Big-Shot on the Heavenly Leaderboard; [8] - Master: This Villainous Disciple Is Not The Holy Child; [9] - Live Broadcast, I Roam Freely In The Other World; [10] - Karate Baka Isekai; [11] - Karate Survivor in Another World; [12] - Villain Warrior; [13] - Starting with the Guhuo Bird; [14] - I’m A Godfather In Another World; [15] - I Pretended To Be An Npc In Cultivation World; [16] - Sword Intent; [17] - I Took Over the Demonic Sect Master; [18] - Keyboard Immortal; [19] - I, the Demon Lord, Am Being Targeted by My Female Disciples!; [20] - Rebirth of the Immortal Arrogant Son-in-Law (reverse); [21] - Heavenly Demon Instructor (reverse); [22] - Devil’s Advent; [23] - Martial Wild West; [24] - I Just Want to Be Killed; [25] - Androids Have No Blood; [26] - The No.1 Chef in Martial Art World; [27] - Leveling Beyond the Max (reverse); [28] - The Heavenly Demon Can't Live a Normal Life; [29] - The Heavenly Path Is Not Stupid; [30] - Baki Gaiden - Retsu Kaioh Doesn't Mind If He is Reincarnated in Another World; [31] - Top Tier Providence; [32] - I Picked up an Attribute; [33] - Demon Lord 2099; [34] – Murim Login; [35] - Rebirth of the Urban Mad Immortal; [36] - Strongest Fighter; [37] - After Ten Years of Chopping Wood, Immortals Begged To Become My Disciples; [38] - Global Martial Artist; [39] - X - Epoch of the Dragon; [40] - Ultimate Scheming System; [41] - Reverend Insanity; [42] - Yomei Nikagetsu no Isekai Kenkouhou; [43] - Phalaenopsis Dreamland; [44] - The Reborn Ranker Chronicles; [45] - Save The World, Uncle!; [46] - A Modern Man Who Transmigrated Into the Murim World; [47] - My Disciples Are All Big Villains; [48] - Off to an Invincible Start; [49] - I'm an Evil God;

[1] - Sword Intent; [2] - Isekai Yuusha G-SHINE; Yuusha Shoutai Kamoku Yuusha Wa Nagasarenai; [3] - Class Saiyasune de Urareta Ore wa, Jitsu wa Saikyou Parameter; [4] - Knights & Magic; [5] - The World of Otome Games Kindergarten is Tough for Mobs; [6] - suisei no gargantia; [7] - Vision of Escaflowne; [8] - Sentai Red Isekai de Boukensha ni Naru; [9] - Magic Knight Rayearth; [10] - Tenchi Muyo! War on Geminar; [11] - Aura Battler Dunbine;

[1] - Isekai Shoukan Oji-san no Juumusou Life - Sabage Suki Salaryman wa Kaisha Owari ni Isekai e Chokki suru; [2] - Gun-Ota ga Mahou Sekai ni Tensei shitara, Gendai Heiki de Guntai Harem wo Tsukucchaimashita!?; [3] - Hokkaidou no Geneki Hunter ga Isekai ni Hourikoma Rete Mita ~Elf Yome to Meguru Isekai Shuryou Life~; [4] - Villainess: Reloaded! Blowing Away Bad Ends with Modern Weapons; [5] - Chounin A wa Akuyaku Reijou wo Doushitemo Sukuitai; [6] - Manuke na FPS Player ga Isekai e Ochita Baai; [7] - Immortal science and technology; [8] - Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou; [9] - "Souzou Mahou" wo Oboete, Bannou de Saikyou ni Narimashita. Class Kara Tsuihou Shita Yatsura wa, Sokora Hen no Kusa Demo Kuttero!; [10] - Ihoujin, Dungeon ni Moguru; [11] - Magan to Dangan o Tsukatte Isekai o Buchinuku!; [12] - Bocchi Jieikan no Isekai Funsenki; [13] - Magical shooting : sniper of steel; [14] - Kouchuugun Shikan Boukensha ni Naru

[1] - Tsuihousareru Tabi ni Skill wo Te ni Ireta Ore ga, 100 no Isekai de 2-shuume Musou; [2] - Moto Isekai Tenisha datta Kachou no Ojisan, Jinsei Nidome no Isekai wo Kake Meguru; [3] - Class-goto Shuudan Teni Shimashita ga, ichiban Tsuyoi Ore wa Saijaku no Shounin ni Gisouchuu; [4] - Yondome wa Iya na Shizokusei Majutsushi;

[1] - The Saga of Tanya the Evil; [2] – Overlord; [3] - Sekai Saikyou no Assassin, Isekai Kizoku ni Tensei Suru; [4] - Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute; [5] - Meikyuu Black Company; [6] - Meccha Shoukan Sareta Ken; [7] - FFF-Class Trashero; [8] - Isekai Mokushiroku Mynoghra: Hametsu no Bunmei de Hajimeru Sekai Seifuku; [9] - Joou Heika no Isekai Strategy; [10] - Virus Tensei kara Hajimaru Isekai Kansen Monogatari; [11] - Nidome no Yuusha; [12] - Maou-sama, Retry!; [13] - Re:Monster; [14] - I Get Stronger the More I Eat; [15] - the main character is the villain (+18); [16] – The world that i rule (+18); [17] - I Am the Fated Villain; [18] - Master: This Villainous Disciple Is Not The Holy Child; [19] - Reverend Insanity; [20] - The Reborn Ranker Chronicles; [21] - How to Live as a Villain; [22] - Is This Hero for Real?; [23] - Regressor Instruction Manual; [24] - Reincarnation of the Veteran Soldier; [25] - Reverse Villain;

• I'm happy to work with people, especially outside of grailed, and always open to trades!
  
• Additional 10% off if using PayPal invoice instead of Grailed.
  

Great news! Co-op agreed not to source coconut milk from Thailand after learning about PETA Asia’s undercover investigation into the use of monkeys in the country’s coconut industry....
PETA Asia’s third investigation implicates coconut pickers, brokers, farms, and monkey-training operations in nine provinces, including top-producing ones.
One trainer was caught on camera dangling a screaming monkey by the neck and striking him with a tether. A monkey used for breeding was kept chained alone in the sun, without access to water, and other young monkeys languished in cramped cages.

• Cha’s Organics (ORGANIC)
• Chef’s Choice
• CocoGoods Co. (ORGANIC)
• Coco Lopez
• Delta Coco
• Good & Gather (ORGANIC)
• Goya
• Jiva Organics (ORGANIC)
• Let’s Do Organic® (ORGANIC)
• Natural Value (ORGANIC)
• Nature’s Charm
• Raley’s
• Trader Joe’s
• Vita Coco
• Wild Harvest (ORGANIC)

• The Fighter
  • This title refers to Red's battling ability, therefore there's no inherent theme to his team.
  • So, just for fun, I came up with the vague notion of "changing Red's starter to the red one" and giving him another Grass type (Vileplume was my choice) to fill that slot.
  • Brought back the Nidorino from the very first scene.
• The Trainer
  • Another one more related to the Trainers themselves than the type of Pokémon they seek. This title refers to Blue's militaristic training regime to level his Pokémon, including challenging himself by raising Pokémon from scratch to the point they can defeat the greatest trainers.
  • So, I extrapolated that Blue would find ways to challenge himself and his team in ways such as the Fighting Dojo (which would also reflect his childhood training with Chuck) and receiving a new Hitmonlee (Tyrogue is from Johto, and Blue spent time in Johto).
  • He's also introduced by trying to catch a Mew with his Charmander, which would be difficult even with a Charizard. Mew can learn Teleport, so it stands to reason that Blue would be patient enough to catch an Abra with Teleport, or a Growlithe with Roar. He also already owns an Alakazam and Arcanine, which made that decision easier.
• The Evolver - V1, V2
  • Her knowledge of Evolution stones. This one can actually be related to her team.
    • Admittedly, I think I just completely forgot her title and gave her a team that would fit her con artistry LMAO. I'll make a second version that's more consistent with stone evolutions.
  • Unironically forgot her Nidoqueen entirely, which would not only fit her title, but also the cutesy theme. And, Nidoqueen's simply a good Pokémon in general.
  • I let her keep her Seadra (and forgot Kingdra was Gen 2 lol) that she trades with Silver.
  • Hypno's pendulum, Gengar's invisibility, Electrode as a smoke bomb.
• The Healer
  • Literally her healing superpower. So again, related to the Trainer.
  • My idea was to give her a team that fulfills the same roles her current team does, but more cutesy and forest themed than her present team.
  • Replaced Raticate with Ninetales.
    • Imagine Red helping her catch a Vulpix instead of a Rattata.
    • A cute mon that becomes a fierce, mystical protector similar to Yellow.
  • Replaced Omastar with Slowbro.
    • Slowpoke fits her passive lifestyle.
    • Slowpoke could use her healing since it frequently loses its tail to predators and poachers.
    • Similarly to how Yellow tries to be friends rather than foes with villains, Slowbro is in a symbiotic relationship with the Shellder biting its tail.
  • Replaced Dodrio with Rhydon.
    • Rhyhorn can fill Raticate and Dodrio's roles better than them.
    • Raticate gnaws on tough materials when Yellow's in a pinch, but Rhyhorn can topple skyscrapers.
    • As established in XY, Rhyhorn is rideable.
  • Replaced Golem with Chansey.
    • The healer with the medical Pokémon just seems fitting.
• The Hatcher
  • His protective instinct manifesting as successfully hatching Pokémon. So more mechanical than team-themed.
    • A possibility could be using Baby Pokémon, like his Togepi and Pichu.
  • Replaced the Pichu egg with an Elekid egg, and gave Silver a Magby, so that along with Kris' Smoochum you have a trifecta of Baby Pokémon.
    • This also eliminates having 3 Pikachus across the Dex Holders.
  • Replaced Sunflora with Jumpluff because Sunkern is garbage it makes more sense for the niche role Sunkern fulfilled.
    • Bouncing around and Sunny Day.
• The Exchanger
  • Matching Green's learned skill of stone evolutions, this is based on trade evolutions. Otherwise, it's any Pokémon obtained through trade, which is non-specific.
  • I gave him a Magby for multiple reasons.
    • Matching Gold's new Elekid and Kris' old Smoochum, this completes a trifecta of babies.
    • It WILL become a trade evolution in Gen 4, which is conveniently when HGSS occurs.
• The Capturer
  • Her ability to catch great swaths of Pokémon. Because there are moves which assist greatly in increasing the catch rate, such as Mean Look or False Swipe, that will be the focus of this team.
  • Brought back her Smoochum, since with the team I gave her leaves space for her.
  • Replaced Arcanine with Houndoom, because it's a new Pokémon that learns Mean Look. And there could be a good narrative about its pack mentality or aggressive behavior, similar to her Arcanine.
  • Smeargle can quite literally do the job of four Pokémon since it can Sketch any move. It also has a lot of sassy and mischievous personality that could be fun.
  • The Wooper line is cute, only has one weakness, can Surf, and has the Damp ability to prevent explosive Pokémon from ruining her capture attempts.
• The Charmer
  • Surprisingly this title is related more to his charming personality than his Contest ability.
  • He loves relating Pokémon to Contest categories, so I picked a team that could fulfill each role.
    • Gardevoir is Clever, Absol is Cool, Delcatty and Altaria are Cute, Milotic is Beautiful, and Blaziken is Tough.
  • I actually did research on ideal Pokémon for each Contest, and learned that it's based on the move combos they use. So generally any Fighting type works in Tough contests because they have those move combos.
  • Tried making his Pokémon look fashionable and furry. Absol, Altaria, and Blaziken have obvious fur or feathers that look fancy.
• The Conqueror
  • Also personality-based, this is just her boldness in her 80-day Gym challenge.
  • King of the jungle aesthetic.
    • So "kingly" choices like Manectric (pharaoh), Wailord (lord), Slaking (king).
    • And largely Pokémon that would thrive while deeply entrenched in harsh environments like jungles or deserts, similar to Sapphire herself.
• The Calmer - V1, V2
  • His history gave him a propensity to know a Pokémon's birthplace. Using the soil of their birthplace, he can calm down rampaging Pokémon.
  • But his team was given by Kris.
  • I tried including aggressive Pokémon like Metagross or Sharpedo.
• The Empathizer
  • His observation skills and ability to tell a Pokémon's emotions. Otherwise, being an emotionally driven character.
  • He shares the traits of apathy, eating, and laziness with his team.
  • Probopass.
    • Dia not using a Probopass, when it's a heavy Pokémon that's inherently funny looking.
• The Determiner
  • His bossy, committal nature. Also being able to predict moves after being surrounded by strong Pokémon as a child.
  • I picked fast and aggressive Pokémon that would match his personality as the comedic straight man.
• The Understander
  • Being knowledgeable.
• The Dreamer (Black)
  • His determination to become Champion.
• The Dreamer (White)
  • "She is extremely talented in organizing and planning along with recruiting people to join the BW Agency. For her skills, she is given the title of Dreamer"
    • ???
    • Yeah, no. They describe her talents in marketing and talent managing, and then claim she's "The Dreamer" for no reason?
  • There's the vague connection to Gen 5's Dream World, but that includes any Pokémon.
  • So, I decided to make her skill "The Manager," and focus on the Pokéstar Studios game feature, or a team with "star power".
  • For example, she could get inspired by Elesa's Zebstrika, and find a wild Blitzle to become a star.
  • Or, if she wanted to sell makeup, she could market the goth appeal of Gothitelle.
  • Likewise, I stuck with a classic movie vibe. So, keeping her Gigi the Tepig as a Babe reference without sacrificing her for a fully evolved Serperior like the manga.
• The Arrester - V1, V2
  • His infiltration, acting, and charming skills as an undercover cop.
  • My first idea was to give him a police-oriented team based off this title.
    • The Magnemite line in Mystery Dungeon are the sheriffs.
    • Lucario reading intent and having a Steadfast ability.
    • Police trainers often use dogs like the Growlithe or Lillipup lines.
  • However, it's been pointed out to me that his team is named after weapons, so that would be my second iteration of the team.
• The Liberator
  • Following N's philosophy of Pokémon liberation.
  • I really dislike her "team" if you can even call it that. It seems like they started giving her common Pokémon used by Team Plasma. Or they were cutesy like her Foongus. But either way, she didn't have a full team the whole chapter, and only received a starter in XY.
  • She could keep Foongus, or have a Trubbish.
  • Gave her Zorua as a starter over the Delphox she gets in XY.
    • Whitley not having a proper starter, when BW2's games offer Zorua as a sort of pseudo starter directly related to the N's side of former Plasma Grunts.
  • Gave her a Marill.
  • Gave her a Woobat.
  • Gave her a Larvesta.
  • Gave her a Golett.
• The Loner
  • Being...a loner all his life. Even though he gets over that trait? How is that a positive skill?
  • I've seen people describe him as "The Mega Evolver," so I'll go with that.
• The Flyer - V1, V2
  • Sky Battling.
    • The second version of her team is entirely Pokémon eligible for Sky Battles, except Chesnaught of course.
    • While it's fun that non-Flying types are eligible for Sky Battles, there's not quite enough variance to make a balanced team for her with this stipulation.
  • The first version of her team is a straightforward XY team that you may have used yourself. Composed of Pokémon that she has in the manga, and adding others that could balance out her team somewhat.
• The Saver
  • Saving up money.
  • His team in the manga's pretty solid, and I love the currency motif, as well as the slight Totem Pokémon commonality.
  • Replaced Crabominable with Kommo-o.
    • Crabominable might be the lamest Gen 7 mon.
    • " In the past, its scales were processed and used to make weapons and other commodities." (Kommo-o)
    • "The scales it sheds can be molded and processed to make pots and pans. They conduct heat well, so they're a popular item. " (Hakamo-o)
    • On top of these Dex entries, Kommo-o is a Totem Pokémon much like Mimikyu and Wishiwashi.
  • Replaced Stakataka with a Minior.
    • For fun, I did some digging on the prices of meteors.
    • "At the high end of the pricing scale are unusual types such as the diogenite Tatahouine (fell June 27, 1931, Foum Tatahouine, Tunisia). A prime specimen will easily fetch $50/gram while rare examples of lunar and Martian meteorites may sell for $1,000/gram or more — almost forty times the current price of gold!" (Source: geology.com)
    • Minior with its shell is 40kg, but without is 0.3kg. 0.3kg is 300 grams, so by this estimate, a Minior would be worth $1,500 usually, or an insane $300,000.
    • Frankly, if Minior was worth $1, Sun would try to catch and sell it, so I think it's a good fit that can lead to a cool stargazing arc.
• The Mixer
  • She's a pharmacist.
  • chemically interesting
• Henry (The Toolmaster?)
  • mendable tools
• Casey
  • G-Max
• Scarlet
  • treasure hunting (ie she might accidentally pick up a Gimmighoul from a coin, or the fire bird on Skeledirge could light her way)
• Violet
  • Drift king
  • Pompous

1. Stuck with the “theme” of each Dex Holder, usually related to their title.
   1. The most difficult Dex Holder was Emerald, since it’s difficult to pin down his theme. Like, there’s the Battle Frontier, using gadgets, AND largely reusing Pokémon that previous Dex Holders had in their parties as the gist of his existing team. But that essentially doesn’t narrow anything down, since the best Pokémon for the Battle Frontier would be legendaries, and reusing previously used parties with the premise that I’m changing these parties makes creating a perfect team for him virtually impossible.
   2. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Henry Sword, who has a very specific theme of Pokémon that use tools, external of their biology, which could be damaged (so that he can fix them). In fact, that theme’s too specific, as there’s not that many Pokémon with tools that are known for getting damaged in the entire catalogue, let alone the Gen 8 Dex. As such, the Conkeldurr in his last slot wouldn’t even be optimal (since he has Sirfetch’d as a pure Fighting type) but almost a necessary inclusion.
2. This is not the “most viable” version of their teams, but in general a way to make them “more viable” by differentiating the types of Pokémon they use, while still being realistic to what Pokémon I think would match their personalities.
   1. For the most part have them at their final evolutions, not because I necessarily think they should be evolved, but because it’s easier than speculating which Pokémon each individual Dex Holder would or would not evolve.
3. Only used what’s available from their respective generation’s Dex, including stages of evolution. Of course, in later parts they would likely evolve.
4. Attempted to have all Dex Holders have Pokémon that can learn Fly and Surf, and if not, tried to give them a Pokémon that could conceivably achieve those feats.
5. Tried to avoid putting the same Pokémon in multiple teams, with very few exceptions like Pika and Chuchu being too adorable to pass up.
6. Kept most of the original partner Pokémon most of the Dex Holders have had before their traditional starters, since usually the backstories behind them justify their place on the team.
   1. Exceptions: Yellow, Ruby (partially), Dia (partially), Em, White, Blake, Whitley, Moon (partially)
      1. Only removed Mightyena from Ruby’s team without removing Kirlia or Delcatty, because there are other Pokémon that would do much better in Cool Contests.
      2. Removed Dia’s Lax since Red’s already got a Snorlax, but replaced it with his existing Lickilicky since it could conceivably fulfill the slapstick role in Lax’s stead.
      3. My second version of Moon’s team removes Grubbin, only because there’s a lot of available Pokémon in Sun and Moon that would be more pharmaceutically interesting to her.
7. Red, Blue, Silver, Black, and X all have teams in the manga that are completely fine in my book. I only changed them for fun.
8. Some of the more baffling party choices in the manga, imo
   1. Dia not using a Probopass, when it's a heavy Pokémon that's inherently funny looking.
   2. Whitley not having a proper starter, when BW2's games offer Zorua as a sort of pseudo starter directly related to the N's side of former Plasma Grunts.
   3. Moon is a pharmacist, in a region with maybe the greatest quantity of Pokémon that are noted in their Dex entries to have medicinal properties, or even interesting chemical properties. Ribombee, Comfey, Pyukumuku, Blissey, Komala, Alomomola, etc. To some extent, the Poison theming of her team is understandable, but even that isn’t consistent with Vikavolt and Decidueye.

• You’re an undercover cop who’s seeking to find a missing shipment of cars stolen from the Palm Harbor docks a few weeks ago.
• You go undercover to infiltrate a network of street racing gangs and networks. Climbing up the ranks to gather evidence on who’s stealing the car shipments and why
• We find out that Chase Linh had orchestrated this entire operation for her own means: using us to get herself close to an important device (a commenter said that this was probably a substitute for drugs to for the teen rating, but the story kinda fails at portraying it that way)
• She kills Wu and tries to frame us for his murder, but we chase her and take her down. The game ends with the police chief confiscating the device that Wu was attempting to smuggle out of the country (through STOLEN car shipments???, why??? Wouldn’t it have been easier to smuggle this little Nokia thing in literally any other way???)

Singleplayer

Map

• A complete reimagining of the Tri City Bay
• Separated into 5 regions, unlocking as the story progresses
• AI racers randomly roaming around the open world
  • Will accept 1v1 challenges on a randomly generated route
  • Challenges can be any one of these:
  • Sprint
  • Outrun
  • Highway Battle
  • Canyon Battle
• Day/night cycle
• Weather system:
  • Sunny (50%)
  • Slightly cloudy (25%)
  • Overcast (12%)
  • Rain (10%) - Thunderstorm (30%)
  • Foggy (3%)

The Tri City Bay (Regions & some POIs)

• (in order of story progression)
• Click links for a concept map

Port Crescent (Cargo Port & Industrial Area)

• Dry dock
• Can drive onto the deck of a container ship under construction
• Can also drive straight through the hull of an American Warship under repairs
• Stacks and stacks of cargo containers

• Fertilizer plant
• Fuel Storage facility (large silos)
• Oil refinery

• Large antenna is a pursuit breaker

Gold Coast Mountains (Mountainous region)

• Canyon events introduced here as well as the dirt-tier cars

• Hiking trails (that you can drive on lmao)
• Hunter’s Peak (highest point in the game)

State Park (new region)

• A large orange grove

• Fishing town
  • Cemetery

Sunset Hills (Suburban city)

Palm Harbor (Downtown)

• Similar to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel in Virginia

• Large statue (pursuit breaker)

• Wealthy area with many large mansions and posh shops (like the Venetian Islands)
• Seaside resort
• Marina

Cars

Handling

• Heavyweight handling model based off of The Run, with some tweaks made to better handle slower speeds, and urban racing

Handling types

• 7 handling types (from least to most difficult)
  • Tight (very easy to control, agile cars, ex: Abarth 500, Lotus Exige)
  • Normal (your standard handling car, ex: Toyota Supra (A80), BMW M3 (E92))
  • Dirt (dirt cars, ex: Ford F-150 Raptor, Jeep Wrangler (JL))
  • Difficult (performance cars, ex: Nissan GT-R, Audi R8)
  • Heavy (heavier cars, muscle cars, luxury sedans, ex: Porsche Panamera Turbo S, Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat, Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing)
  • Very Difficult (intermediate between Difficult and Expert, ex: Jaguar XKR-S (2012), Chevrolet Corvette Z06 (C8))
  • Expert (race cars, ex: Ford GT (2006), Saleen S7 Twin Turbo, RUF CTR3)

Car tiers:

• There are 6 car tiers in the game.
  • Street (<170 mph) (109 cars)
  • Unlocked in Port Crescent
  • Pro (>170 mph) (56 cars)
  • Unlocked in the Gold Coast Mountains
  • Racer (>188 mph) (35 cars)
  • Unlocked in the State Park
  • Super (>200 mph) (28 cars)
  • Unlocked in Sunset Hills
  • Ultimate (>215 mph) (22 cars)
  • Unlocked in Palm Harbor
  • Dirt (20 cars)
  • Unlocked in the Gold Coast Mountains
  • New vehicle tier for the series
  • Allows you to traverse off road and on dirt roads

Tier system

• If you wish to participate in events/story missions. You will have to buy a package for that car.
  • Street cars = Street Package
  • Pro cars = Pro Package
  • Dirt cars = Dirt Package
  • And so on
  • *Note: in some special cases, like the Subaru WRX STI or the Chevrolet Avalanche, a car will have the option to select between either a dirt package or its standard package.
• Buying a package will then allow you to install performance parts, customize your car, and participate in events with said car
• Each event/story mission will require a certain car type, in order to participate.
  • For example, a “street tier” sprint race would require you to own a car with the “Street Package” installed, to participate in the event.
• All performance parts come in 3 levels
  • You will slowly unlock the higher levels as you progress through the story
  • Level 1 parts unlocked at the start of the game
  • Level 2 parts unlocked at the start of State Park
  • Level 3 parts unlocked at the start of Palm Harbor
• Performance parts are as follows:
  • Engine
  • Forced Induction
  • ECU
  • Transmission
  • Differential
  • Brakes
  • Suspension
  • Tires
  • Nitrous
• You will also be able to tune your cars at no expense for the following attributes via a slider
  • Tires - Grip/Loose
  • Gear Ratio - Acceleration/Top Speed
  • Forced Induction - Low RPM/High RPM
  • Suspension - Stiff/Soft
  • Differential - Not a slider like the others (Welded/Open/Limited Slip/Locked)
  • Brakes - Front/Rear
  • Nitrous - Strength/Duration

Customization

• Each car has fully fledged and detailed customization, with various options
• Each car has their own unique tachometer, like how they were done in TDU
• Visual parts are as follows:
  
  • Color
  • Metallic
  • Matte
  • Pearlescent
  • Candy
  • Chrome
  • Satin
  • Carbon Fiber
• Liveries & Vinyls - Premade or custom made
  
  • Front Bumper
  • Rear Bumper
  • Front Fenders
  • Rear Fenders
  • Diffusers
  • Hood
  • Trunk
  • Spoiler
  • Headlights
  • Taillights
  • Roof - For convertibles/targa tops, the ability to swap to a hard top is given for free.
  • Mirrors
  • Camber Alignment
  • Rims
  • Exhaust tips - Option to remove the muffler, changing the sound of the car
  • Custom gauges - On PC, you can import your own gauges (.nfsg file) into the Documents folder

Gameplay

• Easy
• Normal
• Hard
• Extreme

• Record your gameplay and create your own films!

Event types:

• Higher cash and XP bonus for better medals
• Domination - +20%
• Gold - +12%
• Silver - +7%
• Bronze - +4%
• No medal - no bonus
• Sprint
  • Your classic sprint event: get from A to B in first
  • It won’t always happen, but sometimes, the police will join the race and start pursuing.
  • Their AI will prioritize the racer in first.
  • 5%-25% chance of police showing up during a race
  • Medals based on time
• Circuit
  • Your classic circuit event: Complete a certain number of laps around route and finish first
  • It won’t always happen, but sometimes, the police will join the race and start pursuing.
  • Their AI will prioritize the racer in first.
  • 5%-20% chance of police showing up during a race
  • Medals based on time
• Checkpoint
  • Players will race against the clock, reaching checkpoints (Toll Booths if it’s a highway-checkpoint run) before the clock runs out. Earning a time extension at each
  • Medals are based on the amount of spare time left on the clock at the finish line
• Outrun
  • Battle against one other opponent in an open world event
  • Players will need to stay ahead of the other opponent, ranging from 30-90 seconds straight to win
  • Medals based on time
• Highway Battle
  • A battle against one other opponent on the game world’s highways
  • Players will need a lead ahead of the opponent by 300 meters in order to win
  • Traffic density is vastly increased for these events
  • Medals based on time
• Canyon Battle
  • A battle against one other opponent on any twisty/curvy roads on the map
  • Players will need a lead by 100 meters or reach the finish line first to win
  • No traffic
  • Medals based on time
• Drag
  • Either 1v1 or 1v4
  • Players will have to perfectly shift in order to pull ahead of their opponent(s) and win
  • Medals based on shifting accuracy
• Escape/Ambush
  • Players need to escape from the police in any way possible
  • Each event has a set time limit in which the player must escape in
  • Medals based on how quickly the player escapes
• Cost to State
  • Players need to cause a set minimum amount of damage to the state and escape within the time frame
  • Wrecking police units and using pursuit breakers is the best way of achieving this
  • Like the ambush events, each event has a set time limit in which the player must escape in
  • Medals based on how quickly the player finishes the task and escapes

Story-specific types

• *Note: Story missions can be any of the event types listed above, but the following event types below these 2 examples are limited only to story missions.
  • Example #1): Job #1: New Faces
  • Prove yourself to be a capable wheelman
  • Win the race to get the attention of Darryl’s crew
  • Standard sprint race
  • Example #2): Job #35: Last Chance
  • Deliver the package in time to regain Anthony’s trust
  • Standard checkpoint run
• Hot Car
  • Deliver a car you do not own to a specific location
  • Mission conditions:
  • Deliver the car within the time limit
  • Deliver the car without too much damage
  • Lose the cops and deliver the car
  • Conditions can be any combination of these
  • Example: Job #46: Water Boy
  • Protagonist steals a McLaren F1 from a famous race car driver for Herman’s crew
• Takedown
  • Take down the target(s)
  • Must be done within a certain time limit
  • Example: Job #17: Beatdown
  • Take down Kayla before she blows your cover, and reveals your true identity to Hugo’s crew
• Rival/Dual
  • A 1v1 race between any important character that progresses the game’s story
  • Example: Job #29: Redline
  • Beat Anthony to earn his respect and acceptance into his crew
• Rough estimate of the total amount of story missions there will be for every car tier in the game
  • Street - 27%
  • Pro - 19%
  • Racer - 16%
  • Super - 16%
  • Ultimate - 15%
  • Dirt - 7%

Comprehensive and immersive pursuit system

Police behavior in the open world

• Police will begin to patrol in areas around passed toll booths and triggered speed cameras
• Sometimes highway patrol will be clocking traffic’s speed
  • Such as being parked up behind billboards, underneath bridges (etc.)
• Realistic police scanner
  • Police sound more natural- less scripted and robotic sounding
  • Police will be out and about responding to regular calls
• Your heat level naturally rises as you do dangerous driving
  • Destruction of property
  • Hit and run
  • Triggering speed cameras
  • Smashing toll booths
  • Blowing through red lights
• Your heat level will slowly rise upon minor disturbances. The dispatcher will receive calls of a disturbance from your location, and send units your way.
  • Revving your engine near residential areas
  • Doing donuts in parking lots/intersections
  • Blocking NPC traffic
• Cars have their own heat levels that diminish with time or by changing its appearance
  
  • Every car starts at 0 heat, regardless if it’s an Altima or a Bugatti
  • However, higher tier cars naturally have a faster heat-gain rate
• The current car’s heat level is reset upon being busted
  
  • Brutal busted cutscenes
• Driving a less conspicuous vehicle can actually help you!
  
  • Driving something like an economy sedan will attract less attention from the police, and actually has a slower heat-gain rate (can be up to -25%).
  • The opposite applies to flashy/more exotic/rare cars (heat-gain rate up to +25%).
  • The dispatcher will give more generic or more specific descriptions based on the car you are driving.
  • Examples:
  • (When driving a Lincoln MKS with little visual upgrades) Dispatch - “Caller described the suspect as driving a luxury sedan, black in color. Uh, hang on- trying to get you more details, standby.”
  • (When driving a Pagani Huayra) Dispatch - “Suspect is driving a red Pagani.”
• Cars with more visual attachments or damage will attract more attention (up to +10%)
  
  • Example: (Driving a damaged Toyota Camry (XV40) with a lot of visual upgrades) Dispatch - “Caller said the suspect was driving a heavily modified sedan. Described it as being pretty scratched up, said you can’t miss it.”
• Flashier colors also attract more attention (up to +20%)
  
  • Only for very certain colors such as bright pink, purple, or gold etc.
  • Example: (When driving a bright pink Honda Civic) Dispatch - “Attention all units in Port Crescent, we’re getting multiple calls of a reckless driver in the area. I’m gonna need you to be on the lookout for a bright pink hatchback.”
• Over 150 pursuit breakers across the map
  
  • Pursuit breaker cutscenes: ON/OFF
• 100 different cool down locations across the map
  
• Longer, more destructive, and higher heat level pursuits bring in larger amounts of wheelman rep
  

Heat Levels:

• Heat level 1 - Civic Units: Ford Taurus Police Interceptor
  • Will likely ignore you when you blast past them (20% chance of pursuit)
  • Will always chase upon a hit and run (whether against civilians or themselves)
  • These cruisers are pretty slow and the officers operating them have civic training, so either driving quickly or doing some quick maneuvers will shake them pretty easily
  • 30 sec cooldown
  • When busted you will pay a traffic ticket, 0 strikes will be given
• Heat level 2 - Highway Patrol: Dodge Charger / Ford F-150 Raptor (Offroad units)
  • Less inclined to ignore you driving illegally (40% chance of pursuit)
  • Offroad units will be called in if you leave the road to try and shake pursuiters.
  • Roadblocks introduced
  • Some units will recognize your car based on priors (10% chance)
  • Example: “Uh, dispatch I got a 10-37 matching the description of that reckless driver. I’m gonna light him up and see what he does.”
  • If you comply and pull over, you will pay a fine and receive no strike.
  • If you flee, the pursuit will begin.
  • These Chargers are fast, but heavy and have a poor turning circle.
  • You can lose them if you flee to the twisting, curvy roads of the mountains
  • 60 sec cooldown
  • 1 strike if busted
• Heat level 3 - State Patrol: Cadillac ATS-V / Ford F-150 Raptor (Offroad units)
  • State Troopers will always chase upon seeing dangerous driving.
  • If you drive normally, you can drive past patrol cars undetected
  • While driving normally, some units will become suspicious and begin following you due to previous reports of your car. They will observe you looking for dangerous behavior, and may begin a pursuit or lose interest.
  • K9 Units (Cadillac Escalade) are introduced as roadblock units
  • These do not give chase at this level
  • Cadillacs (*ATS-V) are fast, but less capable at cornering.
  • State Troopers will attempt to swarm you to slow you down, and then box you in
  • 90 sec cooldown
  • 1 strike if busted
• Heat level 4 - Federal Units: Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 (C7) / Ford F-150 Raptor (Offroad units) / Cadillac Escalade (K9 units)
  • A warrant for your vehicle has been issued and police will always chase you on sight
  • Advanced police tactics are introduced such as spike strips
  • Spike strips introduced in road blocks
  • K9 Units will now give chase
  • Corvette’s are agile and quick, but easy to spin out.
  • K9 units are heavy, but slow.
  • They have a lot of mass, which in turns means they also have a lot of inertia meaning two things:
  • Their main weakness is their high center of mass, and they can be flipped easily if hit in the right places.
  • 120 sec cooldown
  • 1 strike if busted
• Heat level 5 - VRT: Porsche 911 GT2 RS (991) / Ford F-150 Raptor (Offroad units) / Cadillac Escalade (K9 units)
  • Will immediately chase on sight
  • Most advanced police AI
  • Aerial support is introduced
  • Will run out of fuel after 7 minutes and leave the pursuit
  • 5 minute grace period before another helicopter joins the pursuit
  • GT2 units are fast, agile, but fragile.
  • 180 sec cooldown
  • 2 strikes if busted

Return of the impound system

• 3 strikes
  • No strikes are given on Heat Level 1, just pay your traffic ticket
  • 2 strikes given when busted at Heat Level 5
• If you cannot afford to pay the fine:
  • Heat level 1: 1 strike is given
  • Heat level 2: 2 strikes are given
  • Heat level 3: 2 strikes are given
  • Heat level 4: Car impounded
  • Heat level 5: Car impounded
• On Extreme Difficulty, being busted will automatically impound your car at every heat level (yes even level 1).
  • Complying when you have the option to, will only net you a strike.
• Game over if every vehicle you own is impounded, and you lack the money to afford the cheapest vehicle in the game.

Police codes

• 10-04 - acknowledged
• 10-20 - location, can be shortened to “your 20”
• 10-21 - brake check
• 10-23 - fleeing suspect/subject of interest
• 10-26 - engaging in a pursuit
• 10-33 - pit maneuver
• 10-37 - potential suspect spotted/suspicious person of interest
• 10-51/52 - unit down
• 10-57 - hit and run
• 10-68 - requesting additional units
• 10-81 - requesting aerial unit
• 10-88 - road block
• 10-98 - rolling road block
• 11-42 - K9 units en route
• 16-22 - spike strips
• S-P - box in the suspect

Wheelman rep

• 100 levels
• Gain reputation in order to unlock story missions through free-driving stunts, pursuits, or events
  • You will need to have a certain amount of wheelman rep in a region, in order to progress the next one.
• 1 rep point is gained after each level, and can be invested into a number of perks that the player can decide

Wheelman Perks

• Dealership discounts (up to -50%) (10 points total)
• Visual parts discount (up to -20%) (5 points total)
• Performance parts discount (up to -30%) (10 points total)
• XP boost from stunts and pursuits (up to 60%) (5 points total)
• Cash and XP bonus from events (up to 25%) (5 points total)
• Performance improvements on car components (up to 25%) selected by the player. 1 Rep point each. These will automatically apply to every vehicle, regardless if they are upgraded or not. (50 points total/5 points per bonus)
  • Transmission bonus
  • Suspension bonus
  • Forced induction bonus
  • Braking bonus
  • Nitrous bonus
  • Engine bonus
  • ECU bonus
  • Differential bonus
  • Tire bonus
  • Grip bonus
• Reduce heat-gain rate (up to -60%), and increased cooldown rate during pursuits (up to 30%) (5 points total)
• Income perk (unlocked at wheelman level 35) (10 points total)
  • Players will receive a (real world) daily income of $5,000 (can go up to $75,000/day).
  • $5,000
  • $7,500
  • $10,000
  • $15,000
  • $20,000
  • $30,000
  • $40,000
  • $50,000
  • $60,000
  • $75,000
• Upon completing the main story and reaching level 100, players will unlock the ability to reach level 150, in which they can turbocharge perks (excluding pursuit perks)
  • Dealership discounts (up to -70%) (10 turbocharged points)
  • Visual parts discount (up to -45%) (5 turbocharged points)
  • Performance parts discount (up to -60%) (10 turbocharged points)
  • XP boost from stunts and pursuits (up to 100%) (5 turbocharged points)
  • Cash and XP bonus from events (up to 75%) (5 turbocharged points)
  • Performance improvements on all car components (up to 50%) (5 turbocharged points)
  • Income perk (up to $300,000/day) (10 turbocharged points)

Built-in Modding tool

• Can be directly accessed from the game’s directory on PC, no fuss
• Singleplayer only
• Mod your own maps, cars, missions, etc.
• Light version of the dev tools used to create the game
• Separate Singleplayer and multiplayer clients on PC to avoid mod conflicts with multiplayer, and lessen the ease of cheating

Multiplayer

• Earn money from events to purchase and upgrade your cars
• No perk system
• No cars locked behind challenges
• 25 wheelman levels in multiplayer
  • Several cars of every tier are unlocked each level
• Choose either to enter either public lobbies or host your own private lobby
• Choice to manually select your regional server or automatically connect to the best server

Online starter cars

• Nissan 240SX (S13) - Street
• Lexus GS 350 F Sport (2014) - Pro
• Cadillac ATS-V - Racer
• Maserati Ghibli 334 Ultima (M157) - Super
• Lamborghini Aventador S LP 740-4 - Ultimate
• Ram 1500 - Dirt

Online Game Modes:

• Open world free roam (32 players/lobby)
  • Roaming police
  • Join other players’ pursuits in progress
  • *Note: Police spike strips are not present in MP
  • 1v1 other players around the map
• Race (8 players)
  • Sprint races
  • Circuit races
• Outrun (1v1)
• Highway battle (1v1)
• Canyon battle (1v1)
• Drag (1v1) or (4 players)
• Turf War (8 players)
  • A group of pursuers have to take down the boss, which the escapees must protect to win.
  • Pursuer health total: 500 HP (125 HP/each)
  • Boss health: 200 HP (*Note: bosses are not allowed to select dirt vehicles)
  • Teammate health: 100 HP
  • Teammates can teleport back to the boss
  • Pursuers need to wreck the boss in order to win.
  • If all the pursuers are wrecked, the boss escapes, or if the boss survives for over 10 minutes, the escapees win.
• Community game modes will be added over time
  • Selected by community managers who look to social media pages and groups related to the game such as needforspeed
  • Contact and connect with mod creators to see their interest in adding their creations to the official multiplayer. (like how Halo did with community game modes such as Grifball)
  • What are some of your ideas for multiplayer game modes 💡?

Car List

Brands

• You’re an undercover cop who’s seeking to find a missing shipment of cars stolen from the Palm City Harbor
• You go undercover to infiltrate a network of street racing gangs, and climb up the ranks to gather evidence on who could be stealing the cars
• We find out that Chase Linh had orchestrated this entire operation to frame us: using us to get herself close to an important device (story never WHAT the device even is btw???)
• We take her down and the game ends with the police chief confiscating the device, Chau Wu attempted to smuggle out of the country (through STOLEN car shipments???, why??? Couldn’t he just smuggle this little Nokia in literally any other way)

Singleplayer

Map

• A complete reimagining of the Tri City Bay
  • Entirely new map
• Separated into 5 regions, unlocking as the story progresses
• AI racers randomly roaming around the open world
  • Will accept 1v1 challenges on a randomly generated route
    • Race
    • Outrun
    • Highway Battle
    • Canyon Battle

The Tri City Bay (Regions & some POIs)

• (in order of story progression)

Port Crescent (Palm City Harbor)

• Dry dock
• Can drive onto the deck of a container ship under construction
• Can also drive straight through the hull of an American Warship under repairs
• Stacks and stacks of cargo containers

• Fertilizer plant
• Fuel Storage facility (large silos)
• Oil refinery

• Large antenna is a pursuit breaker

Sunset Hills (Suburban city)

Gold Coast Mountains (Mountainous region)

• Canyon events introduced here

• Hiking trail (that you’ll drive on lmao)
• Hunter’s Peak (highest point in the game)

State Park (new region)

• A large orange grove

• Fishing town
  • Cemetery

Palm Harbor (Downtown)

• Similar to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel

• Wealthy area with many large mansions and posh shops (like the Venetian Islands)
• Seaside resort
• Marina

Gameplay

Event types:

• Checkpoint
• Race
• Escape/Ambush
• Cost to State
• Outrun
• Highway Battle
• Canyon Battle
• Drag

Story-specific types

• Hot Car
• Takedown
• Collection
• Rival

• Tougher AI
• More expensive vehicles/parts
  • Easy
  • Normal
  • Hard
  • Extreme

Wheelman rep

• 100 levels
• Gain reputation in order to unlock story missions through free driving stunts, pursuits, or events
  • Each story mission requires a specific tier vehicle for that mission, (make sure you have one of each car tier!).
• 1 rep point is gained after each level, and can be invested into a number of perks that the player can decide
• Medals for events - (clean driving, less crashes, faster times)
  • No medal
  • Bronze
  • Silver
  • Gold
  • Domination
• Unlock new car dealers, and vehicle tiers as you progress through the story game.

Wheelman Perks

• Dealership discounts (up to -50%) (10 points total)
• Visual parts discount (up to -20%) (5 points total)
• Performance parts discount (up to -30%) (10 points total)
• XP boost from freedrive stunts and pursuits (up to 60%) (5 points total)
• XP boost from events (up to 25%) (5 points total)
• Performance improvements on car components (up to 25%) selected by the player. 1 Rep point each. These will automatically apply to every vehicle, regardless if they are upgraded or not. (50 points total/5 points per bonus)
  • Transmission bonus
  • Suspension bonus
  • Forced induction boost
  • Braking bonus
  • Nitrous bonus
  • Engine boost
  • ECU bonus
  • Differential bonus
  • Tire bonus
  • Grip bonus
• Reduce heat-gain rate for every car (up to -60%), and increased cooldown rate during pursuits (up to 30%) (5 points total)
• Income perk (unlocked at wheelman level 15) (10 points total)
  • Players will receive a (real world) daily income of $5,000 (can go up to $75,000/day).
    • $5,000
    • $7,500
    • $10,000
    • $15,000
    • $20,000
    • $30,000
    • $40,000
    • $50,000
    • $60,000
    • $75,000
• Upon completing the main story and reaching level 100, players will unlock the ability to reach level 150, in which they can turbocharge perks (excluding pursuit perks)
  • Dealership discounts (up to -70%) (10 turbocharged points)
  • Visual parts discount (up to -45%) (5 turbocharged points)
  • Performance parts discount (up to -60%) (10 turbocharged points)
  • XP boost from stunts and pursuits (up to 100%) (5 turbocharged points)
  • XP boost from events (up to 75%) (5 turbocharged points)
  • Performance improvements on all car components (up to 50%) (5 turbocharged points)
  • Income perk (up to $300,000/day) (10 turbocharged points)

Comprehensive pursuit system

• Longer, more destructive, and higher heat pursuits bring in larger amounts of wheelman rep
• Police will begin to patrol around passed toll booths and triggered speed cameras
• Realistic police scanner and behavior in free roam
  • Police will be out and about responding to regular calls
  • Police codes
    • 10-04 - acknowledged
    • 10-20 - location
    • 10-21 - brake check
    • 10-23 - fleeing suspect/subject of interest
    • 10-26 - engaging in a pursuit
    • 10-33 - pit maneuver
    • 10-37 - potential suspect spotted/suspicious person of interest
    • 10-51/52 - unit down
    • 10-57 - hit and run
    • 10-68 - requesting additional units
    • 10-81 - requesting aerial unit
    • 10-88 - road block
    • 10-98 - rolling road block
    • 16-22 - spike strips
    • S-P - box in the suspect
• Cars have their own heat levels that diminish with time or by changing its appearance
  • Heat level 3: police will chase upon seeing dangerous driving, some police will become suspicious and begin following you and looking for dangerous behavior, and may attempt to make you pull over
    • If you drive normally, you can drive past patrol cars undetected (not always)
    • If you comply and pull over, you will pay a fine and receive no strike
  • Heat level 4 and above: a warrant for your vehicle has been issued and police will chase on sight
• Over 200 pursuit breakers across the map
  • Pursuit breaker cutscenes: ON/OFF
• Return of the impound system
  • 3 strikes
  • No strikes are given on Heat Level 1, just pay your traffic ticket
  • 2 strikes given when busted at Heat Level 5
  • If you cannot afford to pay the fine:
    • Heat level 1: 1 strike is given
    • Heat level 2: 2 strikes are given
    • Heat level >3: Car impounded
  • Brutal busted cutscenes
  • The car’s heat level is reset upon being busted
• Game over if every vehicle you own is impounded, and you lack the money to afford the cheapest vehicle in the game

Cars

Car types:

• Street (<170 mph)
  • Introduced in Port Crescent
• Pro (>170 mph)
  • Introduced in Sunset Hills
• Racer (>188 mph)
  • Introduced in the Gold Coast Mountains
• Super (>200 mph)
  • Introduced in the State Park
• Ultimate (>215 mph)
  • Introduced in Palm Harbor
• Dirt
  • Introduced in the Gold Coast Mountains
  • New vehicle type
  • Allows you to traverse off road and on dirt roads
  • Dirt races
  • Certain story missions will require Dirt vehicles to complete certain objectives

Handling

• Heavyweight handling model based off of The Run, with some tweaks made to better handle slower speeds, and urban racing

Handling types

• 7 handling types (from least to most difficult)
  • Tight (very easy to control, agile cars, ex: Abarth 500, Lotus Exige)
  • Normal (your standard handling car, ex: Toyota Supra (A80), BMW M3 (E92))
  • Offroad (dirt cars, ex: Ford F-150 Raptor, Jeep Wrangler (JL))
  • Difficult (performance cars, ex: Nissan GT-R, Audi R8)
  • Heavy (heavier cars, muscle cars, luxury sedans, ex: Porsche Panamera Turbo S, Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat, Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing)
  • Very Difficult (intermediate between Difficult and Expert, ex: Jaguar XKR-S (2012), Chevrolet Corvette Z06 (C8))
  • Expert (race cars, ex: Ford GT (2006), McLaren F1, RUF CTR3)
• Amount of story missions for each car tier
  • Street - 25%
  • Pro - 25%
  • Dirt - 15%
  • Racer - 20%
  • Ultimate - 15%
• Each car has fully fledged customization and parts
• Custom gauges for every car

OST

• Original Soundtrack composed by Paul Haslinger
• Enable/Disable Licensed Music
• Multiple radio stations
  • Radio hosts and fake advertisements
  • Pop/R&B
  • Hip-Hop
  • Rock
  • Alternative/Indie
  • Classics
  • Electronic
  • Ambient
  • Custom user radio
  • Add your own MP3 files to your documents folder (PC)

Built-in Modding tool

• Can be directly accessed from the game’s directory on PC, no fuss
• Singleplayer only
• Create your own towns, cars, missions, etc.
• Light version of the dev tools used to create the game
• Separate Singleplayer and multiplayer clients on PC to avoid conflict with mods and multiplayer and ease of cheating

Multiplayer

• Earn money from events to purchase and upgrade your cars
• No perk system
• No cars locked behind challenges
• 25 levels in multiplayers
  • Cars unlocked each level

Online Game Modes:

• Open world free roam (32 players/lobby)
  • Roaming police
• Race (8 players)
  • Street races
  • Circuit races
• Outrun (1v1)
• Highway battle (1v1)
• Canyon battle (1v1)
• Drag (1v1) or (4 players)
• Turf War (8 players)
  • Pursuer health total: 500 HP (125 HP/each)
  • Boss health: 200 HP (*Note: bosses are not allowed to select dirt vehicles)
    • Teammate health: 100 HP
    • Teammates can teleport back to the boss
• Community game modes will be added over time
  • Selected by community managers who look to social media pages and groups related to the game such as
  • Contact and connect with mod creators to see interest in adding their creations to the official multiplayer. (like how Halo did with community game modes)

Online starter cars

• Nissan 240SX (S13) - Street
• BMW Z4 (E89) - Pro
• Porsche 911 Targa 4S (992) - Racer
• Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing - Super
• Lamborghini Aventador S LP 740-4 - Ultimate
• Toyota FJ Cruiser - Dirt

Car Brand List

Review list

• Sanctuary/Sword
• Visegrád
• Reach
• Aleria
• Onyx
• Thermopylae
• Halo

Transcripts

Memorable quotes

• “I know this isn't what we trained for, try to stay focused on the mission.”
• “I got you, Marine, I got you.”
• “The Covenant was already there…on Sanctuary before they glassed it…doesn't make sense, does it? If your plan is to glass a planet, why invade it first?”

• “I don't really know what people say to each other…I think there…might be something wrong with me…like…there's a part of me that's missing…or sometimes, there's a sound like…like something in my head that…doesn't belong, and I think maybe it's…a part of you…that got embedded…somehow in me.”
• “You don't have to do [talking]. … You can’t [be another Cortana for me].”

• “You’ll think about [your loss] every day; their faces pop up when you least expect. Doesn't get better…just gets further away.”

-201 Sanctuary

Recap

• The populace of a green world is offloaded to the arid Branta system world Sanctuary, one example of many Outer Colonists displaced to grimier worlds, being told that they were "saved."

• Louis experiences the bliss of the SPARTAN-II augmentations' benefits, in part thanks to Danilo
• Unfortunately, two days in, the occipital capillary reversal backfires, but he hides the effects out of fear of being shut down as an active Spartan serviceman and spends the days he has left appreciating his abilities
• The last day before permanent blindness takes effect, he takes in the memory of looking at his fellow Spartans, seeing their pride and physical prowess. His subsequent service is as a trainer

• The Master Chief undergoes revival surgery, and has Cortana transferred out of him in the process
• Silver Team, following the Master Chief's recorded instability and NDE, is reassigned to backburner missions such as two civilian evacuations, on the pretense of ensuring their leader's safety
• John suffers phantom pain from having Cortana taken away right after growing to trust her after all his vitriol on her. To cope, he occasionally pays visits to an e-brothel in Reach City, conversing with the female virtual companion there - the closest thing to Cortana by appearance
• ONI performs a thorough investigation of Catherine Halsey's crimes and illegal acts, including Cortana's creation. As a scapegoat for these actions, Margaret Parangosky resigns her CINCONI post. However, she lingers around Reach City for intel updates
• Article 72 on Halsey is revoked, turning into a legendary bounty. Sightings have been reported thrice, with no empirical evidence, all coming form Rubble refugee applicants. In reality, Halsey has been taken to custody by COL James Ackerson
• Jacob Keyes promoted to Admiral
• Soren hoards Kwan Ha's deuterium money for himself, owing his own work to it. He rises to the top of the criminal chain as a pirate leader
• Three weeks before Operation: SHEPHERD - six months after the Raas Kkhotskha engagement:
  • Vannak removes his hormonal pellet. He indulges in watching wildlife programs as time off
  • Ackerson is assigned as new director of the Spartan program

Present day - 2x01 Sanctuary

• UNSC begins evacuation of Sanctuary as part of Operation: SHEPHERD. UNSC 709 Section 4 Subsection A provides the case for a temporary evac while FLEETCOM EWS unit Highroller oversees it
  • Concurrently, Madrigal and Estuary are glassed by the Covenant. FLEETCOM's threat projections place Fumirole on the kill list
• Silver Team takes overwatch on a porch over the village. GYSGT Boone (Shepherd 7) requests their support, and the Master Chief and Riz take point after some debate with Vannak, who complains about their missions
• CPT Nix is made to contend with townspeople refusing to evacuate. Meeting CPLs Sims and Fisk, he learns the Mother, leader of the Believers, is the one responsible. Fisk attempts to subdue the Mother, leading to a brief brawl
  • Kai and Vannak meanwhile discuss the latter's new interests and pellet removal. They also detect flickers right near the comms relay
  • Contact with Marine comms unit Bravo Team - led by CPL Talia Perez - lost at the relay
• Nix tries to no avail to convince the villagers to evac, the Mother airing grievances about colonial mistreatment. Just then, the Master Chief and Riz arrive and are upped on the situation
• The Master Chief approaches the Mother during one of her "immaterial soul" sermons; she answers the Believers' faith doesn't condone leaving their doomed homeworld, amounting it to abandoning a person near death
• The Mother approaches the Spartan directly, musing about his lacking relations and faith. Just then, Highroller warns of a Sinaris-pattern heavy destroyer inbound in 11 minutes, leading its fleet to glass the world in the following eight
• Evacuation is hastened; John volunteers to save Bravo Team despite Nix's reservations. He orders Riz to prepare the Condors for evac
• The Master Chief finds a cliff face to scale by grappleshot to reach Bravo. Vannak shares animal trivia banter while monitoring his progress. Unfortunately, interference ruins radio connection; five minutes have elapsed by then, so he gets Vannak and Kai to help the evac
• John spots Bravo Team's ditched Warthogs, then is involved in a friendly fire incident with Bravo; they report suffering the jamming problem. PVT Rand was repeatedly shut down by LCPL Bowman for his magnetic anomaly theory
• Rand stalls the group's withdrawal. Not long afterwards, Sangheili pick off the entire group one by one except for the leader and the Spartan despite their efforts
• Through a running battle of gun and melee, both (mostly the Spartan) fend off about a total seven Sangheili, though Talia is knocked out and partly trapped under rock
• However, they are both surrounded by ten more Sangheili, led by the Arbiter. They mysteriously spare the Spartan, immediately after which a somehow-revived Makee comes in. She declares to John he should've stayed with him, followed by glassing beams raining down on the world
• The Sanctuary village is devastated and one Condor is shot down
• The Master Chief covers the wounded Talia with his own body, and later carries her all the way to the evac site
• Despite Vannak's worries, Kai heads off alone to get John back, and succeeds. The latter comes across the Mother - staying with five others to burn with the world - cryptically warning John to "find his faith" as his death is fast approaching.
• Silver Team extracts, John struggling to comprehend both the woman's words and coping with the battle stress. Only 11% of the near-35,000 population has fled

FLEETCOM/Silver

• Gold Team on an engagement or transit deployment
• Jade Team is on refit
• Green Team's Anton-044 is engaged
• Sigma and Gray Teams are on deployment
• Omega and Black Teams are engaged
• John is haunted by Makee's words during his off-duty periods, and is debriefed with his team by Jacob Keyes on folding with the Sanctuary situation
  • Presently, 38% of Fumirole's 620.5-million population has evacuated
• John brings up the Covenant's early infiltration as an odd event as the planet was getting glassed anyway. The data is redirected to ONI, just as James Ackerson makes a haphazard self-introduction to the Spartans, with added some backtalk about Halsey while asserting his commitment to the program
• Despite Vannak's first insistence being battle reinstatement, Ackerson states maintaining peripheral engagement is mission enough, and Keyes schedules a ten-hour medical leave for Silver
• Ackerson has individual debriefs with each of the above team; Vannak notably is fed up of the Colonel's manners
• The following day, John later visits Ackerson in his office about his Sanctuary encounter. He sees Talia undergoing a battle review and tapping her fingers as a sign of trauma; he has flashbacks of Sanctuary and Bravo Team's decimation
• John and Ackerson have a much deeper intro to each other; although John is at first convinced by the latter's field mettle, the Colonel steers the convo for himself by bringing up his past troubles, confronting him about his reliability

• Talia is awarded the Colonial Cross - first comms specialist to be so - by Admiral Keyes. Ceremony held at FLEETCOM tower, growing by the hour. UNSC news reports considerable losses suffered by Covenant. Ackerson is among the attendants, and produces propaganda over the day's course
• Cobalt Team is ordered by Ackerson to repair a broken comms relay in a far-off system. Having also watched the news, they vent their complaints to Silver while also half-jokingly criticizing their hormonal pellet removal
• Hearing more of Ackerson on the news on top of Cobalt's new mission, John is reminded to visit him again about his findings, this time with a more urgent tone. The Colonel is at first reluctant, but gladly discusses it while picking out odd events like the many dozen Elites just happening to disappear
• Ackerson brings up Halsey's methods again and what effects they could've had on the Spartans, which John futilely tries to dodge. Afterwards, at the minimum, he pleads for Ackerson to warn Cobalt of potential threats, to which Ackerson appears to agree
• John later wanders Reach City; he's hooded for anonymity. He comes across Parangosky, who explains where'd she been before inquiring about Sanctuary and deducing his odd finding there.
• The two discuss the UNSC's heeldragging elements (such as Ackerson) who are in denial about the war turning against their species, and the ex-CINCONI orders the Master Chief to prove the Covenant's scouting activities, handing him a tracker and assuring her trust in him

• John visits the e-brothel at the same time as a woman named Sarah - the latter on a session presumably involving a pain fetish
• He vents to the companion about his lacking social skills and sense of loss. He tries to get the companion to stop acting like Cortana, but suffers another flashback as well, extending to Makee's words when the companion muses on what he's missing (including physical features)
• John leaves and returns to his barracks

• A few days later, Kai, after chatting with Riz, sees John observing the Spartan assignment board. They discuss the latter's issues as brought up by Ackerson, Kai pondering about missing Halsey. Background radio chatter about a status change is heard
• John wonders if Kai trusts him unlike the Colonel, and brings up seeing Makee on Sanctuary despite Kai killing her herself. At the same time, ENS Bishara switches Cobalt Team's status to standby
• An alarmed Master Chief - and later Kai - questions Bishara on the unannounced change despite Cobalt only recently being sent off-planet
• Vannak joins in the scrutiny, and the Ensign answers he's confused himself, only knowing he was ordered to. John questions who made the change happen, then walks away telling Bishara to put it back

• John visits Ackerson again about Cobalt's whereabouts, evading his casual attitude and drink/food offerings. The Colonel reminds him of his new standing, then retorts his Sanctuary account turned out dubious due to Talia's - the other witness - unreliable testimony when he spoke to her
• Towards John's protests, Ackerson maintains while the losses were tragic, Talia could not remember what happened, and that John's behavior doesn't warrant serious consideration either
• The Colonel tells John to mentally swap roles with him, then flippantly reminds him as much as the Master Chief is needed, he's just a man in armor
• John, pressured by Ackerson's head-in-the-sand stance, suits up with Silver and makes them run an all-nighter training in a valley
• Riz in particular is made to do a ring-the-bell obstacle course while the rest of her team tails her. She fails it when John fires a shot while she's climbing. To her annoyance, Vannak quips about never losing
• The second time has her fire on John and Kai while they climb - both of them having different silent perspectives on the training
• Riz unfortunately fails the course twice, notably suffering a dangerous fall just as she almost touches her target. The Master Chief, despite all that, tells her to keep going, causing Kai to chide her leader for pushing Riz too hard
• John insists the Sanctuary enemies are reason enough, as well as intending to commit himself to finding Cobalt no matter what. He orders his squad to keep training

• John, one night, pays a visit to the Perez family apartment. Talia is at first reluctant because she was having a reunion, but her abuela Manuela convinces her to let him in. She comments on the Spartan's size
• John joins the family's dinner. During prayer session, he has a flashback to Bravo Team's demise upon noticing Talia's finger-tapping. While eating, Talia's cousins constantly tease Talia and John on their stories and the latter's interests, consistently told off by Talia's Aunt Lucia and Abuela Manuela
• Antonio and Mateo are notably amused at the Spartan's controlled reservation, the former wanting to call Beto. Talia calls him out, then walks away when after Aunt Lucia's toast, Antonio insensitively references her award ceremony
• John visits Talia alone and hears her full Sanctuary account, the Corporal sobbing and admitting survivor's guilt, it and her trauma being the cause of her inability to answer. She has no inkling of her Colonial Cross' purpose nor the noise she heard
• John stands up and tells Talia what she faced will happen again, along with the memories of her losses and trauma: "Doesn't get better…just gets further away." He leaves Talia to her devices
• Concurrently, Ackerson invites Kai for a pep talk of helping him help John. Commenting on their history with each other, he questions her about potentially endangering behavior - smirking when she denies any, as if he knew of the training and she was lying to cover John's back
• Kai comments on how heavy the weight of John's experiences could be, and that she's counting on him letting the past be. She claims despite hesitance that John is mentally amicable
• The meeting ends well, Ackerson expressing hope that her loyalty is not in question and saying he's always open for a chat

Rubble

• Minnie leads the Rubble's refugee vetting process, receiving Lot 436 - a refugee couple, multi-convict Baz, and Harvest refugee/botanical fibers merchant's mate Felix. Asylum and two years indentured servitude await those let in
• The couple prove too shy to explain themselves, Baz is bushwhacked as mockery for his crimes but is allowed inside by jury vote, and Felix tries to justify himself by way of knowing Catherine Halsey's location, stating it's a hard place to find. He is still turned away by Soren

• Soren and Carina discuss their inexperienced new crew. The former returns home with his wife; Kessler had oddly been nowhere to be found the whole day
  • In truth, he had been hearing from Kwan Ha tales about an eldritch monster "older than your god" and wants to devour everything, now having set up residence in the Rubble and carving out inscriptions about the threat
  • Potentially the Flood, which she learned from the Madrigal well before it all went down
• Laera drifts off about a Madrigal refugee boy resembling Kessler. The couple gets into an argument about being concerned or not about the present galaxy, Laera calling him out for being obsessed with Halsey and branding her "ridiculous" for perceived over-concern for the wider world, as well as being so hands-off with his crew and reputation. She confides wanting to run from the life instead of keeping it up
• Kessler and Soren talk the latter's work and rep, but also the former's fears about Kwan's monster tale; Soren dismisses the tale as childish, but Kessler maintains it was. Soren leaves to visit Felix, now in his ship

• Soren interrogates Felix about Halsey, then Soren's ship arrives at the wreck. During this time, Soren is told to be careful and discusses the SPARTAN-II program's details when Felix brings them up
• They reach Halsey's designated cryopod; Soren scrutinizes Felix's details, and then a storm of events occurs; his friends walk away from him and he is restrained by six officers, Felix revealing himself to be an undercover cop
• Soren's ship returns to the Rubble, informing Soren's family of the bad news; Kessler, in response, runs away back to Kwan's cave; Kwan, on the boy's loss, rhetorically asks: "You believe me now, don't you?"

• Kwan, now indentured to the Spiffs, heads out to steal food. She tries to remove her tracking tag, but is caught by one Oswyn, leading to a prolonged chase through the urban area where she uses the environment against her pursuers
• Kwan flees to a service duct, spacing Clive and being caught in a knife struggle where she stabs Oswyn in the head with her tracking tag, which she's removed

• Laera heads down to take Soren’s ship to find her husband, but is told by Antares the stream manifold cracked due to unexpectedly abundant debris; the repairs will take a couple of days minimum
• During their explanations, despite being told to rest up, Laera insists Soren wouldn't have left them behind and that he's still alive, reprimanding them harshly for what they did before leaving

• Kessler returns to Kwan's cavern, bringing food. The latter tells Kessler she has to leave, due to - as Kessler deduces from "knowing grown-up things" - the heat she's attracted
• Kessler says his father will protect them when he gets back, to which Kwan says that he isn’t. In apparent shock, Kessler flips his helmet down and leaves

Halsey/Ack Man (E2-only)

• Attendant Julia brings Halsey her lunch and discusses the pomegranate tree in the room, also bringing in a box of Go. She takes the white pieces
• Halsey proceeds to inquire about what happens and what's outside of the room; Julia is stunned, but answers anyway even as they play, giving descriptions that match typical prison rows
• Julia is unable to give details on what's behind the hallway doors and the "very nice" gift man who told her not to look. She suffers a nosebleed and cannot identify the man before collapsing

• Julia is inexplicably replaced, Halsey winning the Go game. The Doctor immediately inquires on the identity of the gift-giver, but despite her increased efforts fails again. She shouts about the point of the song and dance

• Ackerson speaks to Halsey within the prison simulation. The Doctor remarks on the flash-clones' contradictory description of Ackerson to his true nature, then chronicles her experience with the tree
• After getting down to business, Halsey questions the Colonel on Cortana and the Master Chief's whereabouts; Cortana is secure, and Ackerson keeps up the facade; the new Julia's first act is pointing to the tree set aflame
• Ackerson then speaks to Cortana about data for a specific problem she's solving; the complex simulation, coupled with her best efforts without external systems (that would've given more accuracy), returns consistently the same result at a 97% chance regardless of action
• Presumably resigned to fate, Ackerson suspends further simulations, maintaining a casual air of "visiting again" despite knowing with Cortana the results mean he won't again (presumably a Reach invasion simulation)

Heal-Riz-ing (E2-only)

• Kai comes across Riz preparing for physical training, and advises against it and directs to Ackerson so she could heal better
• Riz denies the strain she's in, citing the ongoing war and her prevalent coolheadedness. Kai quips about putting back the hormonal pellet, but Riz states she'd get shot first before then

• Riz is training with the hammer, neglecting tiredness until Louis stops her. He chastises the Spartans for getting sloppy, both at war and self-care after so long, and states there's no shame in taking it easy, so as to avoid being put out of combat
• Louis has Riz stretch her left hand in a test. Despite her fiery protest to having pressure put, she controls herself enough, quipping "Spartans never die"
• Louis states there's more to life than being a Spartan, but Riz refuses to listen, stating the Spartan way is her only value. She takes it back after realizing she's talking to a washout, and they chat about Louis' old ambitions as a Spartan

• Following the wilderness training, Riz is struggling to regain her energy, and loathes having to visit Danilo - at the same time Talia is visiting
• Riz doesn't trust Danilo as the only person helping her heal, but Louis then recounts his experiences straight out of augmentation
• Talia leaves after finishing her session, and Louis introduces Danilo to Riz - a friend. Later during her session with him, Riz notices flickering lights in the background and a soft audible wince
• Danilo, apparently oblivious, tells Riz to let go of her pain and take back her life. She sheds one tear

Climax (E2-only)

• Spartan Operation 7HYF-8H6G-K87H is conducted in the Meridian relay on standard crew rotation
• John queries a computer for Spartan flight plans to learn Cobalt Team's whereabouts. Cobalt does not show up, so he goes through Omega, Black, and Sigma Teams, then crosschecks comms relays
• John finds Operation N3JJ-841K-OK03 - shown previously on the board as Cobalt's transit deployment op - is really located in the Epsilon Eridani system, specifically Reach's Visegrád Relay (which shut down a few days ago)
• The operation stands out without a callsign, indicating to John that Cobalt is on a secret mission. He and Silver armor up, convincing them they are on a Longhorn Valley training sortie
• The Master Chief flies Condor HV 3-2 and then disengages its autopilot. Vannak, who expected a "chump bait" curb-stomp, is disappointed and, like the rest, is surprised; John briefs the squad on the situation and states the Covenant are on Reach
• The aliens infiltrate SWORD Base. Nine Marines take defensive positions at a darkened corridor part of the base, and send in their first squad forward to root the intruder out
• The squad detects a Sangheili contact, but is quickly slaughtered, along with the rest later due to the power going out
• The Sangheili grabs the last Marine - Kessler (not to be confused with Soren's son) - in the throat, and snaps it. He muses about the lack of honor in the fight, then allows Makee inside the room containing the Eridanus II keystone. Heading inside, she starts to touch it

Review

• First of all, Jimmy Halo's more subdued outbursts, this time directed at the safety of not just humanity's most vital stronghold, but his fellow kin. He even smiles more and is a bit more intriguing, and neat touches that he's not into kill counts or drunkenness
• The side plot through certain blur cinematography highlighting the increased tension between them as well as the effects of war on its populace
• Cortana's instant removal having a lasting effect on Jimmy Halo, though he doesn't go overly wild, wet, and dirty about it it
• Halsey's machinations and the Master Chief's #NotMyChief S1 moments leaving a helluva mark on them by way of distrustful scrutiny and bread-and-butter ops
• Silver Team's increased in-between-time quips and hangouts and having fun with other Spartan teams
• Parangosky's punishment as a meta-continuity nod on the Kilo-Five book trilogy's running (but unresolved) thread of the lady herself self-punishing for the Spartan program. A notable quote:

“I don’t delude myself that there are moral ambiguities in my job, the things we did weren’t ambiguous, not at all. I know I’ve done them and how bad they were, and if there’s a hell, I’ll probably burn in it before too long, but that’s the kind of thing you can face when you’re 92. I’m prepared to do the very worst, and because I am, more people survive than get killed, but I’ll take what’s coming to me - and I’ll make no excuses.”
(Admiral Margaret O. Parangosky, CINCONI, drafting her evidence to the UEG Select Defense Committee)
-Glasslands

• Keyes getting a rank boost past his canon self. Knowing UNSC Admirals, he's hopefully not behind a desk like Ack Man again
• By the Precursors, everything about Ackerson (call him Ack Man) - his apparent mock reverence of Halsey, his two-faced view of the SPARTAN-IIs ("Master Chief's just a guy in a suit" vs. "I believe in this program/The Master Chief...it's an honor"), his more pragmatic (opening them to pep talks hosted by him, setting them on safe-play ops) approach compared to outright war-effort sabotage (killing the MC and trying to shut down Halsey's work)
  • You can see the subtext within him - dropping the smirk at stating the war would be turned around, then this quote here: "Just because you don't see a response doesn't mean it's not happening."
  • It's even made manifest in Sword with that apparent Fall of Reach simulation conundrum; his fatalism is a driving force of why he's the way he is with running things
• The wordless window-reflection-based visual cue of the Master Chief looming over Talia in E1, and then her blatant discomfort with that Colonial Cross - all to set up her character building next ep
• The juxtaposition between Cobalt's tech suits and pellets vs. Silver's casual wear, rep, and persona, as well as the use of the scene to explore how other Spartans feel about Silver (such as criticism of the pellet take-off; we saw how Kai fared in 105 Reckoning). At least John Rings was the most controlled and rational of the lot ("Just treat it like it's real.")
• The Kai/Chief ship tease in Sword: " I know you, John…we're more than [interrupted] just-" (On top of Ackerson's comment) Doesn't restrict them from having conflict either, as Sword proved; what else I like there is how only Riz's face is shown out of all her team
• Louis' philosophy of Spartans chilling the fuck down and his brief long-lost power fantasy, especially with the pellets gone; we know Fhajad is working astrophysics and Osman's...Ozzy-ness
• Exploration and acceptance of UNSC propaganda's necessity - a kind of departure from the UNSC-bashing of last season - along with exploring how average Joes see the MC, even kind of implementing the Halo games in by way of that Spartan Attack
• Kwan's Forerunner connections apparently teasing the Flood. I'll change my rating as this goes on, based on the outcome

• All about the weird cult except the sincere part about their plight. We didn't need another Desert Mystics, lol, but at least it's a throwaway setting the stage for the lead's evolution
• The E-brothel part - not for the unfortunate implications as explained below, but for the provoked reactions. Guess they should've stuck with Danilo as Sword showed - he's the Spartans' designated shrink and I'm sure companions aren't in short supply, woulda been more unifying and less provcative/awkward
• "Somehow, Makee returned." Yea, that's all there is to it. Where Arby v Da Chief and where's the other fan-favorite teased here. Might excuse it with the lesser keystones she mentioned in 106 Solace, but again, very questionable

• The E-brothel part
  • (Personal thoughts) I get the unfortunate implications, but y'all making it sound like Jimmy Rings is now fucking other women, even being supposedly unfaithful to Kai (for the on-deck shippers), but they did promise to show themes of loss and war trauma, this is just one example of dealing with them without getting steamy - a far cry evolution from his heaven-forsaken woman-humping last season, as I articulated above

Conclusion

Review list

• Sanctuary/Sword
• Visegrád
• Reach
• Aleria
• Onyx
• Thermopylae
• Halo

Transcripts

Memorable quotes

• “I know this isn't what we trained for, try to stay focused on the mission.”
• “I got you, Marine, I got you.”
• “The Covenant was already there…on Sanctuary before they glassed it…doesn't make sense, does it? If your plan is to glass a planet, why invade it first?”

• “I don't really know what people say to each other…I think there…might be something wrong with me…like…there's a part of me that's missing…or sometimes, there's a sound like…like something in my head that…doesn't belong, and I think maybe it's…a part of you…that got embedded…somehow in me.”
• “You don't have to do [talking]. … You can’t [be another Cortana for me].”

• “You’ll think about [your loss] every day; their faces pop up when you least expect. Doesn't get better…just gets further away.”

-201 Sanctuary

Recap

• The populace of a green world is offloaded to the arid Branta system world Sanctuary, one example of many Outer Colonists displaced to grimier worlds, being told that they were "saved."

• Louis experiences the bliss of the SPARTAN-II augmentations' benefits, in part thanks to Danilo
• Unfortunately, two days in, the occipital capillary reversal backfires, but he hides the effects out of fear of being shut down as an active Spartan serviceman and spends the days he has left appreciating his abilities
• The last day before permanent blindness takes effect, he takes in the memory of looking at his fellow Spartans, seeing their pride and physical prowess. His subsequent service is as a trainer

• The Master Chief undergoes revival surgery, and has Cortana transferred out of him in the process
• Silver Team, following the Master Chief's recorded instability and NDE, is reassigned to backburner missions such as two civilian evacuations, on the pretense of ensuring their leader's safety
• John suffers phantom pain from having Cortana taken away right after growing to trust her after all his vitriol on her. To cope, he occasionally pays visits to an e-brothel in Reach City, conversing with the female virtual companion there - the closest thing to Cortana by appearance
• ONI performs a thorough investigation of Catherine Halsey's crimes and illegal acts, including Cortana's creation. As a scapegoat for these actions, Margaret Parangosky resigns her CINCONI post. However, she lingers around Reach City for intel updates
• Article 72 on Halsey is revoked, turning into a legendary bounty. Sightings have been reported thrice, with no empirical evidence, all coming form Rubble refugee applicants. In reality, Halsey has been taken to custody by COL James Ackerson
• Jacob Keyes promoted to Admiral
• Soren hoards Kwan Ha's deuterium money for himself, owing his own work to it. He rises to the top of the criminal chain as a pirate leader
• Three weeks before Operation: SHEPHERD - six months after the Raas Kkhotskha engagement:
  • Vannak removes his hormonal pellet. He indulges in watching wildlife programs as time off
  • Ackerson is assigned as new director of the Spartan program

Present day - 2x01 Sanctuary

• UNSC begins evacuation of Sanctuary as part of Operation: SHEPHERD. UNSC 709 Section 4 Subsection A provides the case for a temporary evac while FLEETCOM EWS unit Highroller oversees it
  • Concurrently, Madrigal and Estuary are glassed by the Covenant. FLEETCOM's threat projections place Fumirole on the kill list
• Silver Team takes overwatch on a porch over the village. GYSGT Boone (Shepherd 7) requests their support, and the Master Chief and Riz take point after some debate with Vannak, who complains about their missions
• CPT Nix is made to contend with townspeople refusing to evacuate. Meeting CPLs Sims and Fisk, he learns the Mother, leader of the Believers, is the one responsible. Fisk attempts to subdue the Mother, leading to a brief brawl
  • Kai and Vannak meanwhile discuss the latter's new interests and pellet removal. They also detect flickers right near the comms relay
  • Contact with Marine comms unit Bravo Team - led by CPL Talia Perez - lost at the relay
• Nix tries to no avail to convince the villagers to evac, the Mother airing grievances about colonial mistreatment. Just then, the Master Chief and Riz arrive and are upped on the situation
• The Master Chief approaches the Mother during one of her "immaterial soul" sermons; she answers the Believers' faith doesn't condone leaving their doomed homeworld, amounting it to abandoning a person near death
• The Mother approaches the Spartan directly, musing about his lacking relations and faith. Just then, Highroller warns of a Sinaris-pattern heavy destroyer inbound in 11 minutes, leading its fleet to glass the world in the following eight
• Evacuation is hastened; John volunteers to save Bravo Team despite Nix's reservations. He orders Riz to prepare the Condors for evac
• The Master Chief finds a cliff face to scale by grappleshot to reach Bravo. Vannak shares animal trivia banter while monitoring his progress. Unfortunately, interference ruins radio connection; five minutes have elapsed by then, so he gets Vannak and Kai to help the evac
• John spots Bravo Team's ditched Warthogs, then is involved in a friendly fire incident with Bravo; they report suffering the jamming problem. PVT Rand was repeatedly shut down by LCPL Bowman for his magnetic anomaly theory
• Rand stalls the group's withdrawal. Not long afterwards, Sangheili pick off the entire group one by one except for the leader and the Spartan despite their efforts
• Through a running battle of gun and melee, both (mostly the Spartan) fend off about a total seven Sangheili, though Talia is knocked out and partly trapped under rock
• However, they are both surrounded by ten more Sangheili, led by the Arbiter. They mysteriously spare the Spartan, immediately after which a somehow-revived Makee comes in. She declares to John he should've stayed with him, followed by glassing beams raining down on the world
• The Sanctuary village is devastated and one Condor is shot down
• The Master Chief covers the wounded Talia with his own body, and later carries her all the way to the evac site
• Despite Vannak's worries, Kai heads off alone to get John back, and succeeds. The latter comes across the Mother - staying with five others to burn with the world - cryptically warning John to "find his faith" as his death is fast approaching.
• Silver Team extracts, John struggling to comprehend both the woman's words and coping with the battle stress. Only 11% of the near-35,000 population has fled

FLEETCOM/Silver

• Gold Team on an engagement or transit deployment
• Jade Team is on refit
• Green Team's Anton-044 is engaged
• Sigma and Gray Teams are on deployment
• Omega and Black Teams are engaged
• John is haunted by Makee's words during his off-duty periods, and is debriefed with his team by Jacob Keyes on folding with the Sanctuary situation
  • Presently, 38% of Fumirole's 620.5-million population has evacuated
• John brings up the Covenant's early infiltration as an odd event as the planet was getting glassed anyway. The data is redirected to ONI, just as James Ackerson makes a haphazard self-introduction to the Spartans, with added some backtalk about Halsey while asserting his commitment to the program
• Despite Vannak's first insistence being battle reinstatement, Ackerson states maintaining peripheral engagement is mission enough, and Keyes schedules a ten-hour medical leave for Silver
• Ackerson has individual debriefs with each of the above team; Vannak notably is fed up of the Colonel's manners
• The following day, John later visits Ackerson in his office about his Sanctuary encounter. He sees Talia undergoing a battle review and tapping her fingers as a sign of trauma; he has flashbacks of Sanctuary and Bravo Team's decimation
• John and Ackerson have a much deeper intro to each other; although John is at first convinced by the latter's field mettle, the Colonel steers the convo for himself by bringing up his past troubles, confronting him about his reliability

• Talia is awarded the Colonial Cross - first comms specialist to be so - by Admiral Keyes. Ceremony held at FLEETCOM tower, growing by the hour. UNSC news reports considerable losses suffered by Covenant. Ackerson is among the attendants, and produces propaganda over the day's course
• Cobalt Team is ordered by Ackerson to repair a broken comms relay in a far-off system. Having also watched the news, they vent their complaints to Silver while also half-jokingly criticizing their hormonal pellet removal
• Hearing more of Ackerson on the news on top of Cobalt's new mission, John is reminded to visit him again about his findings, this time with a more urgent tone. The Colonel is at first reluctant, but gladly discusses it while picking out odd events like the many dozen Elites just happening to disappear
• Ackerson brings up Halsey's methods again and what effects they could've had on the Spartans, which John futilely tries to dodge. Afterwards, at the minimum, he pleads for Ackerson to warn Cobalt of potential threats, to which Ackerson appears to agree
• John later wanders Reach City; he's hooded for anonymity. He comes across Parangosky, who explains where'd she been before inquiring about Sanctuary and deducing his odd finding there.
• The two discuss the UNSC's heeldragging elements (such as Ackerson) who are in denial about the war turning against their species, and the ex-CINCONI orders the Master Chief to prove the Covenant's scouting activities, handing him a tracker and assuring her trust in him

• John visits the e-brothel at the same time as a woman named Sarah - the latter on a session presumably involving a pain fetish
• He vents to the companion about his lacking social skills and sense of loss. He tries to get the companion to stop acting like Cortana, but suffers another flashback as well, extending to Makee's words when the companion muses on what he's missing (including physical features)
• John leaves and returns to his barracks

• A few days later, Kai, after chatting with Riz, sees John observing the Spartan assignment board. They discuss the latter's issues as brought up by Ackerson, Kai pondering about missing Halsey. Background radio chatter about a status change is heard
• John wonders if Kai trusts him unlike the Colonel, and brings up seeing Makee on Sanctuary despite Kai killing her herself. At the same time, ENS Bishara switches Cobalt Team's status to standby
• An alarmed Master Chief - and later Kai - questions Bishara on the unannounced change despite Cobalt only recently being sent off-planet
• Vannak joins in the scrutiny, and the Ensign answers he's confused himself, only knowing he was ordered to. John questions who made the change happen, then walks away telling Bishara to put it back

• John visits Ackerson again about Cobalt's whereabouts, evading his casual attitude and drink/food offerings. The Colonel reminds him of his new standing, then retorts his Sanctuary account turned out dubious due to Talia's - the other witness - unreliable testimony when he spoke to her
• Towards John's protests, Ackerson maintains while the losses were tragic, Talia could not remember what happened, and that John's behavior doesn't warrant serious consideration either
• The Colonel tells John to mentally swap roles with him, then flippantly reminds him as much as the Master Chief is needed, he's just a man in armor
• John, pressured by Ackerson's head-in-the-sand stance, suits up with Silver and makes them run an all-nighter training in a valley
• Riz in particular is made to do a ring-the-bell obstacle course while the rest of her team tails her. She fails it when John fires a shot while she's climbing. To her annoyance, Vannak quips about never losing
• The second time has her fire on John and Kai while they climb - both of them having different silent perspectives on the training
• Riz unfortunately fails the course twice, notably suffering a dangerous fall just as she almost touches her target. The Master Chief, despite all that, tells her to keep going, causing Kai to chide her leader for pushing Riz too hard
• John insists the Sanctuary enemies are reason enough, as well as intending to commit himself to finding Cobalt no matter what. He orders his squad to keep training

• John, one night, pays a visit to the Perez family apartment. Talia is at first reluctant because she was having a reunion, but her abuela Manuela convinces her to let him in. She comments on the Spartan's size
• John joins the family's dinner. During prayer session, he has a flashback to Bravo Team's demise upon noticing Talia's finger-tapping. While eating, Talia's cousins constantly tease Talia and John on their stories and the latter's interests, consistently told off by Talia's Aunt Lucia and Abuela Manuela
• Antonio and Mateo are notably amused at the Spartan's controlled reservation, the former wanting to call Beto. Talia calls him out, then walks away when after Aunt Lucia's toast, Antonio insensitively references her award ceremony
• John visits Talia alone and hears her full Sanctuary account, the Corporal sobbing and admitting survivor's guilt, it and her trauma being the cause of her inability to answer. She has no inkling of her Colonial Cross' purpose nor the noise she heard
• John stands up and tells Talia what she faced will happen again, along with the memories of her losses and trauma: "Doesn't get better…just gets further away." He leaves Talia to her devices
• Concurrently, Ackerson invites Kai for a pep talk of helping him help John. Commenting on their history with each other, he questions her about potentially endangering behavior - smirking when she denies any, as if he knew of the training and she was lying to cover John's back
• Kai comments on how heavy the weight of John's experiences could be, and that she's counting on him letting the past be. She claims despite hesitance that John is mentally amicable
• The meeting ends well, Ackerson expressing hope that her loyalty is not in question and saying he's always open for a chat

Rubble

• Minnie leads the Rubble's refugee vetting process, receiving Lot 436 - a refugee couple, multi-convict Baz, and Harvest refugee/botanical fibers merchant's mate Felix. Asylum and two years indentured servitude await those let in
• The couple prove too shy to explain themselves, Baz is bushwhacked as mockery for his crimes but is allowed inside by jury vote, and Felix tries to justify himself by way of knowing Catherine Halsey's location, stating it's a hard place to find. He is still turned away by Soren

• Soren and Carina discuss their inexperienced new crew. The former returns home with his wife; Kessler had oddly been nowhere to be found the whole day
  • In truth, he had been hearing from Kwan Ha tales about an eldritch monster "older than your god" and wants to devour everything, now having set up residence in the Rubble and carving out inscriptions about the threat
  • Potentially the Flood, which she learned from the Madrigal well before it all went down
• Laera drifts off about a Madrigal refugee boy resembling Kessler. The couple gets into an argument about being concerned or not about the present galaxy, Laera calling him out for being obsessed with Halsey and branding her "ridiculous" for perceived over-concern for the wider world, as well as being so hands-off with his crew and reputation. She confides wanting to run from the life instead of keeping it up
• Kessler and Soren talk the latter's work and rep, but also the former's fears about Kwan's monster tale; Soren dismisses the tale as childish, but Kessler maintains it was. Soren leaves to visit Felix, now in his ship

• Soren interrogates Felix about Halsey, then Soren's ship arrives at the wreck. During this time, Soren is told to be careful and discusses the SPARTAN-II program's details when Felix brings them up
• They reach Halsey's designated cryopod; Soren scrutinizes Felix's details, and then a storm of events occurs; his friends walk away from him and he is restrained by six officers, Felix revealing himself to be an undercover cop
• Soren's ship returns to the Rubble, informing Soren's family of the bad news; Kessler, in response, runs away back to Kwan's cave; Kwan, on the boy's loss, rhetorically asks: "You believe me now, don't you?"

• Kwan, now indentured to the Spiffs, heads out to steal food. She tries to remove her tracking tag, but is caught by one Oswyn, leading to a prolonged chase through the urban area where she uses the environment against her pursuers
• Kwan flees to a service duct, spacing Clive and being caught in a knife struggle where she stabs Oswyn in the head with her tracking tag, which she's removed

• Laera heads down to take Soren’s ship to find her husband, but is told by Antares the stream manifold cracked due to unexpectedly abundant debris; the repairs will take a couple of days minimum
• During their explanations, despite being told to rest up, Laera insists Soren wouldn't have left them behind and that he's still alive, reprimanding them harshly for what they did before leaving

• Kessler returns to Kwan's cavern, bringing food. The latter tells Kessler she has to leave, due to - as Kessler deduces from "knowing grown-up things" - the heat she's attracted
• Kessler says his father will protect them when he gets back, to which Kwan says that he isn’t. In apparent shock, Kessler flips his helmet down and leaves

Halsey/Ack Man (E2-only)

• Attendant Julia brings Halsey her lunch and discusses the pomegranate tree in the room, also bringing in a box of Go. She takes the white pieces
• Halsey proceeds to inquire about what happens and what's outside of the room; Julia is stunned, but answers anyway even as they play, giving descriptions that match typical prison rows
• Julia is unable to give details on what's behind the hallway doors and the "very nice" gift man who told her not to look. She suffers a nosebleed and cannot identify the man before collapsing

• Julia is inexplicably replaced, Halsey winning the Go game. The Doctor immediately inquires on the identity of the gift-giver, but despite her increased efforts fails again. She shouts about the point of the song and dance

• Ackerson speaks to Halsey within the prison simulation. The Doctor remarks on the flash-clones' contradictory description of Ackerson to his true nature, then chronicles her experience with the tree
• After getting down to business, Halsey questions the Colonel on Cortana and the Master Chief's whereabouts; Cortana is secure, and Ackerson keeps up the facade; the new Julia's first act is pointing to the tree set aflame
• Ackerson then speaks to Cortana about data for a specific problem she's solving; the complex simulation, coupled with her best efforts without external systems (that would've given more accuracy), returns consistently the same result at a 97% chance regardless of action
• Presumably resigned to fate, Ackerson suspends further simulations, maintaining a casual air of "visiting again" despite knowing with Cortana the results mean he won't again (presumably a Reach invasion simulation)

Heal-Riz-ing (E2-only)

• Kai comes across Riz preparing for physical training, and advises against it and directs to Ackerson so she could heal better
• Riz denies the strain she's in, citing the ongoing war and her prevalent coolheadedness. Kai quips about putting back the hormonal pellet, but Riz states she'd get shot first before then

• Riz is training with the hammer, neglecting tiredness until Louis stops her. He chastises the Spartans for getting sloppy, both at war and self-care after so long, and states there's no shame in taking it easy, so as to avoid being put out of combat
• Louis has Riz stretch her left hand in a test. Despite her fiery protest to having pressure put, she controls herself enough, quipping "Spartans never die"
• Louis states there's more to life than being a Spartan, but Riz refuses to listen, stating the Spartan way is her only value. She takes it back after realizing she's talking to a washout, and they chat about Louis' old ambitions as a Spartan

• Following the wilderness training, Riz is struggling to regain her energy, and loathes having to visit Danilo - at the same time Talia is visiting
• Riz doesn't trust Danilo as the only person helping her heal, but Louis then recounts his experiences straight out of augmentation
• Talia leaves after finishing her session, and Louis introduces Danilo to Riz - a friend. Later during her session with him, Riz notices flickering lights in the background and a soft audible wince
• Danilo, apparently oblivious, tells Riz to let go of her pain and take back her life. She sheds one tear

Climax (E2-only)

• Spartan Operation 7HYF-8H6G-K87H is conducted in the Meridian relay on standard crew rotation
• John queries a computer for Spartan flight plans to learn Cobalt Team's whereabouts. Cobalt does not show up, so he goes through Omega, Black, and Sigma Teams, then crosschecks comms relays
• John finds Operation N3JJ-841K-OK03 - shown previously on the board as Cobalt's transit deployment op - is really located in the Epsilon Eridani system, specifically Reach's Visegrád Relay (which shut down a few days ago)
• The operation stands out without a callsign, indicating to John that Cobalt is on a secret mission. He and Silver armor up, convincing them they are on a Longhorn Valley training sortie
• The Master Chief flies Condor HV 3-2 and then disengages its autopilot. Vannak, who expected a "chump bait" curb-stomp, is disappointed and, like the rest, is surprised; John briefs the squad on the situation and states the Covenant are on Reach
• The aliens infiltrate SWORD Base. Nine Marines take defensive positions at a darkened corridor part of the base, and send in their first squad forward to root the intruder out
• The squad detects a Sangheili contact, but is quickly slaughtered, along with the rest later due to the power going out
• The Sangheili grabs the last Marine - Kessler (not to be confused with Soren's son) - in the throat, and snaps it. He muses about the lack of honor in the fight, then allows Makee inside the room containing the Eridanus II keystone. Heading inside, she starts to touch it

Review

• First of all, Jimmy Halo's more subdued outbursts, this time directed at the safety of not just humanity's most vital stronghold, but his fellow kin. He even smiles more and is a bit more intriguing, and neat touches that he's not into kill counts or drunkenness
• The side plot through certain blur cinematography highlighting the increased tension between them as well as the effects of war on its populace
• Cortana's instant removal having a lasting effect on Jimmy Halo, though he doesn't go overly wild, wet, and dirty about it it
• Halsey's machinations and the Master Chief's #NotMyChief S1 moments leaving a helluva mark on them by way of distrustful scrutiny and bread-and-butter ops
• Silver Team's increased in-between-time quips and hangouts and having fun with other Spartan teams
• Parangosky's punishment as a meta-continuity nod on the Kilo-Five book trilogy's running (but unresolved) thread of the lady herself self-punishing for the Spartan program. A notable quote:

“I don’t delude myself that there are moral ambiguities in my job, the things we did weren’t ambiguous, not at all. I know I’ve done them and how bad they were, and if there’s a hell, I’ll probably burn in it before too long, but that’s the kind of thing you can face when you’re 92. I’m prepared to do the very worst, and because I am, more people survive than get killed, but I’ll take what’s coming to me - and I’ll make no excuses.”
(Admiral Margaret O. Parangosky, CINCONI, drafting her evidence to the UEG Select Defense Committee)
-Glasslands

• Keyes getting a rank boost past his canon self. Knowing UNSC Admirals, he's hopefully not behind a desk like Ack Man again
• By the Precursors, everything about Ackerson (call him Ack Man) - his apparent mock reverence of Halsey, his two-faced view of the SPARTAN-IIs ("Master Chief's just a guy in a suit" vs. "I believe in this program/The Master Chief...it's an honor"), his more pragmatic (opening them to pep talks hosted by him, setting them on safe-play ops) approach compared to outright war-effort sabotage (killing the MC and trying to shut down Halsey's work)
  • You can see the subtext within him - dropping the smirk at stating the war would be turned around, then this quote here: "Just because you don't see a response doesn't mean it's not happening."
  • It's even made manifest in Sword with that apparent Fall of Reach simulation conundrum; his fatalism is a driving force of why he's the way he is with running things
• The wordless window-reflection-based visual cue of the Master Chief looming over Talia in E1, and then her blatant discomfort with that Colonial Cross - all to set up her character building next ep
• The juxtaposition between Cobalt's tech suits and pellets vs. Silver's casual wear, rep, and persona, as well as the use of the scene to explore how other Spartans feel about Silver (such as criticism of the pellet take-off; we saw how Kai fared in 105 Reckoning). At least John Rings was the most controlled and rational of the lot ("Just treat it like it's real.")
• The Kai/Chief ship tease in Sword: " I know you, John…we're more than [interrupted] just-" (On top of Ackerson's comment) Doesn't restrict them from having conflict either, as Sword proved; what else I like there is how only Riz's face is shown out of all her team
• Louis' philosophy of Spartans chilling the fuck down and his brief long-lost power fantasy, especially with the pellets gone; we know Fhajad is working astrophysics and Osman's...Ozzy-ness
• Exploration and acceptance of UNSC propaganda's necessity - a kind of departure from the UNSC-bashing of last season - along with exploring how average Joes see the MC, even kind of implementing the Halo games in by way of that Spartan Attack
• Kwan's Forerunner connections apparently teasing the Flood. I'll change my rating as this goes on, based on the outcome

• All about the weird cult except the sincere part about their plight. We didn't need another Desert Mystics, lol, but at least it's a throwaway setting the stage for the lead's evolution
• The E-brothel part - not for the unfortunate implications as explained below, but for the provoked reactions. Guess they should've stuck with Danilo as Sword showed - he's the Spartans' designated shrink and I'm sure companions aren't in short supply, woulda been more unifying and less provcative/awkward
• "Somehow, Makee returned." Yea, that's all there is to it. Where Arby v Da Chief and where's the other fan-favorite teased here. Might excuse it with the lesser keystones she mentioned in 106 Solace, but again, very questionable

• The E-brothel part
  • (Personal thoughts) I get the unfortunate implications, but y'all making it sound like Jimmy Rings is now fucking other women, even being supposedly unfaithful to Kai (for the on-deck shippers), but they did promise to show themes of loss and war trauma, this is just one example of dealing with them without getting steamy - a far cry evolution from his heaven-forsaken woman-humping last season, as I articulated above

Conclusion

Memorable quotes

• “I know this isn't what we trained for, try to stay focused on the mission.”
• “I got you, Marine, I got you.”
• “The Covenant was already there…on Sanctuary before they glassed it…doesn't make sense, does it? If your plan is to glass a planet, why invade it first?”

• “I don't really know what people say to each other…I think there…might be something wrong with me…like…there's a part of me that's missing…or sometimes, there's a sound like…like something in my head that…doesn't belong, and I think maybe it's…a part of you…that got embedded…somehow in me.”
• “You don't have to do [talking]. … You can’t [be another Cortana for me].”

• “You’ll think about [your loss] every day; their faces pop up when you least expect. Doesn't get better…just gets further away.”

-201 Sanctuary

Recap

• The populace of a green world is offloaded to the arid Branta system world Sanctuary, one example of many Outer Colonists displaced to grimier worlds, being told that they were "saved."

• Louis experiences the bliss of the SPARTAN-II augmentations' benefits, in part thanks to Danilo
• Unfortunately, two days in, the occipital capillary reversal backfires, but he hides the effects out of fear of being shut down as an active Spartan serviceman and spends the days he has left appreciating his abilities
• The last day before permanent blindness takes effect, he takes in the memory of looking at his fellow Spartans, seeing their pride and physical prowess. His subsequent service is as a trainer

• The Master Chief undergoes revival surgery, and has Cortana transferred out of him in the process
• Silver Team, following the Master Chief's recorded instability and NDE, is reassigned to backburner missions such as two civilian evacuations, on the pretense of ensuring their leader's safety
• John suffers phantom pain from having Cortana taken away right after growing to trust her after all his vitriol on her. To cope, he occasionally pays visits to an e-brothel in Reach City, conversing with the female virtual companion there - the closest thing to Cortana by appearance
• ONI performs a thorough investigation of Catherine Halsey's crimes and illegal acts, including Cortana's creation. As a scapegoat for these actions, Margaret Parangosky resigns her CINCONI post. However, she lingers around Reach City for intel updates
• Article 72 on Halsey is revoked, turning into a legendary bounty. Sightings have been reported thrice, with no empirical evidence, all coming form Rubble refugee applicants. In reality, Halsey has been taken to custody by COL James Ackerson
• Jacob Keyes promoted to Admiral
• Soren hoards Kwan Ha's deuterium money for himself, owing his own work to it. He rises to the top of the criminal chain as a pirate leader
• Three weeks before Operation: SHEPHERD - six months after the Raas Kkhotskha engagement:
  • Vannak removes his hormonal pellet. He indulges in watching wildlife programs as time off
  • Ackerson is assigned as new director of the Spartan program

Present day - 2x01 Sanctuary

• UNSC begins evacuation of Sanctuary as part of Operation: SHEPHERD. UNSC 709 Section 4 Subsection A provides the case for a temporary evac while FLEETCOM EWS unit Highroller oversees it
  • Concurrently, Madrigal and Estuary are glassed by the Covenant. FLEETCOM's threat projections place Fumirole on the kill list
• Silver Team takes overwatch on a porch over the village. GYSGT Boone (Shepherd 7) requests their support, and the Master Chief and Riz take point after some debate with Vannak, who complains about their missions
• CPT Nix is made to contend with townspeople refusing to evacuate. Meeting CPLs Sims and Fisk, he learns the Mother, leader of the Believers, is the one responsible. Fisk attempts to subdue the Mother, leading to a brief brawl
  • Kai and Vannak meanwhile discuss the latter's new interests and pellet removal. They also detect flickers right near the comms relay
  • Contact with Marine comms unit Bravo Team - led by CPL Talia Perez - lost at the relay
• Nix tries to no avail to convince the villagers to evac, the Mother airing grievances about colonial mistreatment. Just then, the Master Chief and Riz arrive and are upped on the situation
• The Master Chief approaches the Mother during one of her "immaterial soul" sermons; she answers the Believers' faith doesn't condone leaving their doomed homeworld, amounting it to abandoning a person near death
• The Mother approaches the Spartan directly, musing about his lacking relations and faith. Just then, Highroller warns of a Sinaris-pattern heavy destroyer inbound in 11 minutes, leading its fleet to glass the world in the following eight
• Evacuation is hastened; John volunteers to save Bravo Team despite Nix's reservations. He orders Riz to prepare the Condors for evac
• The Master Chief finds a cliff face to scale by grappleshot to reach Bravo. Vannak shares animal trivia banter while monitoring his progress. Unfortunately, interference ruins radio connection; five minutes have elapsed by then, so he gets Vannak and Kai to help the evac
• John spots Bravo Team's ditched Warthogs, then is involved in a friendly fire incident with Bravo; they report suffering the jamming problem. PVT Rand was repeatedly shut down by LCPL Bowman for his magnetic anomaly theory
• Rand stalls the group's withdrawal. Not long afterwards, Sangheili pick off the entire group one by one except for the leader and the Spartan despite their efforts
• Through a running battle of gun and melee, both (mostly the Spartan) fend off about a total seven Sangheili, though Talia is knocked out and partly trapped under rock
• However, they are both surrounded by ten more Sangheili, led by the Arbiter. They mysteriously spare the Spartan, immediately after which a somehow-revived Makee comes in. She declares to John he should've stayed with him, followed by glassing beams raining down on the world
• The Sanctuary village is devastated and one Condor is shot down
• The Master Chief covers the wounded Talia with his own body, and later carries her all the way to the evac site
• Despite Vannak's worries, Kai heads off alone to get John back, and succeeds. The latter comes across the Mother - staying with five others to burn with the world - cryptically warning John to "find his faith" as his death is fast approaching.
• Silver Team extracts, John struggling to comprehend both the woman's words and coping with the battle stress. Only 11% of the near-35,000 population has fled

FLEETCOM/Silver

• Gold Team on an engagement or transit deployment
• Jade Team is on refit
• Green Team's Anton-044 is engaged
• Sigma and Gray Teams are on deployment
• Omega and Black Teams are engaged
• John is haunted by Makee's words during his off-duty periods, and is debriefed with his team by Jacob Keyes on folding with the Sanctuary situation
  • Presently, 38% of Fumirole's 620.5-million population has evacuated
• John brings up the Covenant's early infiltration as an odd event as the planet was getting glassed anyway. The data is redirected to ONI, just as James Ackerson makes a haphazard self-introduction to the Spartans, with added some backtalk about Halsey while asserting his commitment to the program
• Despite Vannak's first insistence being battle reinstatement, Ackerson states maintaining peripheral engagement is mission enough, and Keyes schedules a ten-hour medical leave for Silver
• Ackerson has individual debriefs with each of the above team; Vannak notably is fed up of the Colonel's manners
• The following day, John later visits Ackerson in his office about his Sanctuary encounter. He sees Talia undergoing a battle review and tapping her fingers as a sign of trauma; he has flashbacks of Sanctuary and Bravo Team's decimation
• John and Ackerson have a much deeper intro to each other; although John is at first convinced by the latter's field mettle, the Colonel steers the convo for himself by bringing up his past troubles, confronting him about his reliability

• Talia is awarded the Colonial Cross - first comms specialist to be so - by Admiral Keyes. Ceremony held at FLEETCOM tower, growing by the hour. UNSC news reports considerable losses suffered by Covenant. Ackerson is among the attendants, and produces propaganda over the day's course
• Cobalt Team is ordered by Ackerson to repair a broken comms relay in a far-off system. Having also watched the news, they vent their complaints to Silver while also half-jokingly criticizing their hormonal pellet removal
• Hearing more of Ackerson on the news on top of Cobalt's new mission, John is reminded to visit him again about his findings, this time with a more urgent tone. The Colonel is at first reluctant, but gladly discusses it while picking out odd events like the many dozen Elites just happening to disappear
• Ackerson brings up Halsey's methods again and what effects they could've had on the Spartans, which John futilely tries to dodge. Afterwards, at the minimum, he pleads for Ackerson to warn Cobalt of potential threats, to which Ackerson appears to agree
• John later wanders Reach City; he's hooded for anonymity. He comes across Parangosky, who explains where'd she been before inquiring about Sanctuary and deducing his odd finding there.
• The two discuss the UNSC's heeldragging elements (such as Ackerson) who are in denial about the war turning against their species, and the ex-CINCONI orders the Master Chief to prove the Covenant's scouting activities, handing him a tracker and assuring her trust in him

• John visits the e-brothel at the same time as a woman named Sarah - the latter on a session presumably involving a pain fetish
• He vents to the companion about his lacking social skills and sense of loss. He tries to get the companion to stop acting like Cortana, but suffers another flashback as well, extending to Makee's words when the companion muses on what he's missing (including physical features)
• John leaves and returns to his barracks

• A few days later, Kai, after chatting with Riz, sees John observing the Spartan assignment board. They discuss the latter's issues as brought up by Ackerson, Kai pondering about missing Halsey. Background radio chatter about a status change is heard
• John wonders if Kai trusts him unlike the Colonel, and brings up seeing Makee on Sanctuary despite Kai killing her herself. At the same time, ENS Bishara switches Cobalt Team's status to standby
• An alarmed Master Chief - and later Kai - questions Bishara on the unannounced change despite Cobalt only recently being sent off-planet
• Vannak joins in the scrutiny, and the Ensign answers he's confused himself, only knowing he was ordered to. John questions who made the change happen, then walks away telling Bishara to put it back

• John visits Ackerson again about Cobalt's whereabouts, evading his casual attitude and drink/food offerings. The Colonel reminds him of his new standing, then retorts his Sanctuary account turned out dubious due to Talia's - the other witness - unreliable testimony when he spoke to her
• Towards John's protests, Ackerson maintains while the losses were tragic, Talia could not remember what happened, and that John's behavior doesn't warrant serious consideration either
• The Colonel tells John to mentally swap roles with him, then flippantly reminds him as much as the Master Chief is needed, he's just a man in armor
• John, pressured by Ackerson's head-in-the-sand stance, suits up with Silver and makes them run an all-nighter training in a valley
• Riz in particular is made to do a ring-the-bell obstacle course while the rest of her team tails her. She fails it when John fires a shot while she's climbing. To her annoyance, Vannak quips about never losing
• The second time has her fire on John and Kai while they climb - both of them having different silent perspectives on the training
• Riz unfortunately fails the course twice, notably suffering a dangerous fall just as she almost touches her target. The Master Chief, despite all that, tells her to keep going, causing Kai to chide her leader for pushing Riz too hard
• John insists the Sanctuary enemies are reason enough, as well as intending to commit himself to finding Cobalt no matter what. He orders his squad to keep training

• John, one night, pays a visit to the Perez family apartment. Talia is at first reluctant because she was having a reunion, but her abuela Manuela convinces her to let him in. She comments on the Spartan's size
• John joins the family's dinner. During prayer session, he has a flashback to Bravo Team's demise upon noticing Talia's finger-tapping. While eating, Talia's cousins constantly tease Talia and John on their stories and the latter's interests, consistently told off by Talia's Aunt Lucia and Abuela Manuela
• Antonio and Mateo are notably amused at the Spartan's controlled reservation, the former wanting to call Beto. Talia calls him out, then walks away when after Aunt Lucia's toast, Antonio insensitively references her award ceremony
• John visits Talia alone and hears her full Sanctuary account, the Corporal sobbing and admitting survivor's guilt, it and her trauma being the cause of her inability to answer. She has no inkling of her Colonial Cross' purpose nor the noise she heard
• John stands up and tells Talia what she faced will happen again, along with the memories of her losses and trauma: "Doesn't get better…just gets further away." He leaves Talia to her devices
• Concurrently, Ackerson invites Kai for a pep talk of helping him help John. Commenting on their history with each other, he questions her about potentially endangering behavior - smirking when she denies any, as if he knew of the training and she was lying to cover John's back
• Kai comments on how heavy the weight of John's experiences could be, and that she's counting on him letting the past be. She claims despite hesitance that John is mentally amicable
• The meeting ends well, Ackerson expressing hope that her loyalty is not in question and saying he's always open for a chat

Rubble

• Minnie leads the Rubble's refugee vetting process, receiving Lot 436 - a refugee couple, multi-convict Baz, and Harvest refugee/botanical fibers merchant's mate Felix. Asylum and two years indentured servitude await those let in
• The couple prove too shy to explain themselves, Baz is bushwhacked as mockery for his crimes but is allowed inside by jury vote, and Felix tries to justify himself by way of knowing Catherine Halsey's location, stating it's a hard place to find. He is still turned away by Soren

• Soren and Carina discuss their inexperienced new crew. The former returns home with his wife; Kessler had oddly been nowhere to be found the whole day
  • In truth, he had been hearing from Kwan Ha tales about an eldritch monster "older than your god" and wants to devour everything, now having set up residence in the Rubble and carving out inscriptions about the threat
  • Potentially the Flood, which she learned from the Madrigal well before it all went down
• Laera drifts off about a Madrigal refugee boy resembling Kessler. The couple gets into an argument about being concerned or not about the present galaxy, Laera calling him out for being obsessed with Halsey and branding her "ridiculous" for perceived over-concern for the wider world, as well as being so hands-off with his crew and reputation. She confides wanting to run from the life instead of keeping it up
• Kessler and Soren talk the latter's work and rep, but also the former's fears about Kwan's monster tale; Soren dismisses the tale as childish, but Kessler maintains it was. Soren leaves to visit Felix, now in his ship

• Soren interrogates Felix about Halsey, then Soren's ship arrives at the wreck. During this time, Soren is told to be careful and discusses the SPARTAN-II program's details when Felix brings them up
• They reach Halsey's designated cryopod; Soren scrutinizes Felix's details, and then a storm of events occurs; his friends walk away from him and he is restrained by six officers, Felix revealing himself to be an undercover cop
• Soren's ship returns to the Rubble, informing Soren's family of the bad news; Kessler, in response, runs away back to Kwan's cave; Kwan, on the boy's loss, rhetorically asks: "You believe me now, don't you?"

• Kwan, now indentured to the Spiffs, heads out to steal food. She tries to remove her tracking tag, but is caught by one Oswyn, leading to a prolonged chase through the urban area where she uses the environment against her pursuers
• Kwan flees to a service duct, spacing Clive and being caught in a knife struggle where she stabs Oswyn in the head with her tracking tag, which she's removed

• Laera heads down to take Soren’s ship to find her husband, but is told by Antares the stream manifold cracked due to unexpectedly abundant debris; the repairs will take a couple of days minimum
• During their explanations, despite being told to rest up, Laera insists Soren wouldn't have left them behind and that he's still alive, reprimanding them harshly for what they did before leaving

• Kessler returns to Kwan's cavern, bringing food. The latter tells Kessler she has to leave, due to - as Kessler deduces from "knowing grown-up things" - the heat she's attracted
• Kessler says his father will protect them when he gets back, to which Kwan says that he isn’t. In apparent shock, Kessler flips his helmet down and leaves

Halsey/Ack Man (E2-only)

• Attendant Julia brings Halsey her lunch and discusses the pomegranate tree in the room, also bringing in a box of Go. She takes the white pieces
• Halsey proceeds to inquire about what happens and what's outside of the room; Julia is stunned, but answers anyway even as they play, giving descriptions that match typical prison rows
• Julia is unable to give details on what's behind the hallway doors and the "very nice" gift man who told her not to look. She suffers a nosebleed and cannot identify the man before collapsing

• Julia is inexplicably replaced, Halsey winning the Go game. The Doctor immediately inquires on the identity of the gift-giver, but despite her increased efforts fails again. She shouts about the point of the song and dance

• Ackerson speaks to Halsey within the prison simulation. The Doctor remarks on the flash-clones' contradictory description of Ackerson to his true nature, then chronicles her experience with the tree
• After getting down to business, Halsey questions the Colonel on Cortana and the Master Chief's whereabouts; Cortana is secure, and Ackerson keeps up the facade; the new Julia's first act is pointing to the tree set aflame
• Ackerson then speaks to Cortana about data for a specific problem she's solving; the complex simulation, coupled with her best efforts without external systems (that would've given more accuracy), returns consistently the same result at a 97% chance regardless of action
• Presumably resigned to fate, Ackerson suspends further simulations, maintaining a casual air of "visiting again" despite knowing with Cortana the results mean he won't again (presumably a Reach invasion simulation)

Heal-Riz-ing (E2-only)

• Kai comes across Riz preparing for physical training, and advises against it and directs to Ackerson so she could heal better
• Riz denies the strain she's in, citing the ongoing war and her prevalent coolheadedness. Kai quips about putting back the hormonal pellet, but Riz states she'd get shot first before then

• Riz is training with the hammer, neglecting tiredness until Louis stops her. He chastises the Spartans for getting sloppy, both at war and self-care after so long, and states there's no shame in taking it easy, so as to avoid being put out of combat
• Louis has Riz stretch her left hand in a test. Despite her fiery protest to having pressure put, she controls herself enough, quipping "Spartans never die"
• Louis states there's more to life than being a Spartan, but Riz refuses to listen, stating the Spartan way is her only value. She takes it back after realizing she's talking to a washout, and they chat about Louis' old ambitions as a Spartan

• Following the wilderness training, Riz is struggling to regain her energy, and loathes having to visit Danilo - at the same time Talia is visiting
• Riz doesn't trust Danilo as the only person helping her heal, but Louis then recounts his experiences straight out of augmentation
• Talia leaves after finishing her session, and Louis introduces Danilo to Riz - a friend. Later during her session with him, Riz notices flickering lights in the background and a soft audible wince
• Danilo, apparently oblivious, tells Riz to let go of her pain and take back her life. She sheds one tear

Climax (E2-only)

• Spartan Operation 7HYF-8H6G-K87H is conducted in the Meridian relay on standard crew rotation
• John queries a computer for Spartan flight plans to learn Cobalt Team's whereabouts. Cobalt does not show up, so he goes through Omega, Black, and Sigma Teams, then crosschecks comms relays
• John finds Operation N3JJ-841K-OK03 - shown previously on the board as Cobalt's transit deployment op - is really located in the Epsilon Eridani system, specifically Reach's Visegrád Relay (which shut down a few days ago)
• The operation stands out without a callsign, indicating to John that Cobalt is on a secret mission. He and Silver armor up, convincing them they are on a Longhorn Valley training sortie
• The Master Chief flies Condor HV 3-2 and then disengages its autopilot. Vannak, who expected a "chump bait" curb-stomp, is disappointed and, like the rest, is surprised; John briefs the squad on the situation and states the Covenant are on Reach
• The aliens infiltrate SWORD Base. Nine Marines take defensive positions at a darkened corridor part of the base, and send in their first squad forward to root the intruder out
• The squad detects a Sangheili contact, but is quickly slaughtered, along with the rest later due to the power going out
• The Sangheili grabs the last Marine - Kessler (not to be confused with Soren's son) - in the throat, and snaps it. He muses about the lack of honor in the fight, then allows Makee inside the room containing the Eridanus II keystone. Heading inside, she starts to touch it

Review

• First of all, Jimmy Halo's more subdued outbursts, this time directed at the safety of not just humanity's most vital stronghold, but his fellow kin. He even smiles more and is a bit more intriguing, and neat touches that he's not into kill counts or drunkenness
• The side plot through certain blur cinematography highlighting the increased tension between them as well as the effects of war on its populace
• Cortana's instant removal having a lasting effect on Jimmy Halo, though he doesn't go overly wild, wet, and dirty about it it
• Halsey's machinations and the Master Chief's #NotMyChief S1 moments leaving a helluva mark on them by way of distrustful scrutiny and bread-and-butter ops
• Silver Team's increased in-between-time quips and hangouts and having fun with other Spartan teams
• Parangosky's punishment as a meta-continuity nod on the Kilo-Five book trilogy's running (but unresolved) thread of the lady herself self-punishing for the Spartan program. A notable quote:

“I don’t delude myself that there are moral ambiguities in my job, the things we did weren’t ambiguous, not at all. I know I’ve done them and how bad they were, and if there’s a hell, I’ll probably burn in it before too long, but that’s the kind of thing you can face when you’re 92. I’m prepared to do the very worst, and because I am, more people survive than get killed, but I’ll take what’s coming to me - and I’ll make no excuses.”
(Admiral Margaret O. Parangosky, CINCONI, drafting her evidence to the UEG Select Defense Committee)
-Glasslands

• Keyes getting a rank boost past his canon self. Knowing UNSC Admirals, he's hopefully not behind a desk like Ack Man again
• By the Precursors, everything about Ackerson (call him Ack Man) - his apparent mock reverence of Halsey, his two-faced view of the SPARTAN-IIs ("Master Chief's just a guy in a suit" vs. "I believe in this program/The Master Chief...it's an honor"), his more pragmatic (opening them to pep talks hosted by him, setting them on safe-play ops) approach compared to outright war-effort sabotage (killing the MC and trying to shut down Halsey's work)
  • You can see the subtext within him - dropping the smirk at stating the war would be turned around, then this quote here: "Just because you don't see a response doesn't mean it's not happening."
  • It's even made manifest in Sword with that apparent Fall of Reach simulation conundrum; his fatalism is a driving force of why he's the way he is with running things
• The wordless window-reflection-based visual cue of the Master Chief looming over Talia in E1, and then her blatant discomfort with that Colonial Cross - all to set up her character building next ep
• The juxtaposition between Cobalt's tech suits and pellets vs. Silver's casual wear, rep, and persona, as well as the use of the scene to explore how other Spartans feel about Silver (such as criticism of the pellet take-off; we saw how Kai fared in 105 Reckoning). At least John Rings was the most controlled and rational of the lot ("Just treat it like it's real.")
• The Kai/Chief ship tease in Sword: " I know you, John…we're more than [interrupted] just-" (On top of Ackerson's comment) Doesn't restrict them from having conflict either, as Sword proved; what else I like there is how only Riz's face is shown out of all her team
• Louis' philosophy of Spartans chilling the fuck down and his brief long-lost power fantasy, especially with the pellets gone; we know Fhajad is working astrophysics and Osman's...Ozzy-ness
• Exploration and acceptance of UNSC propaganda's necessity - a kind of departure from the UNSC-bashing of last season - along with exploring how average Joes see the MC, even kind of implementing the Halo games in by way of that Spartan Attack
• Kwan's Forerunner connections apparently teasing the Flood. I'll change my rating as this goes on, based on the outcome

• All about the weird cult except the sincere part about their plight. We didn't need another Desert Mystics, lol, but at least it's a throwaway setting the stage for the lead's evolution
• The E-brothel part - not for the unfortunate implications as explained below, but for the provoked reactions. Guess they should've stuck with Danilo as Sword showed - he's the Spartans' designated shrink and I'm sure companions aren't in short supply, woulda been more unifying and less provcative/awkward
• "Somehow, Makee returned." Yea, that's all there is to it. Where Arby v Da Chief and where's the other fan-favorite teased here. Might excuse it with the lesser keystones she mentioned in 106 Solace, but again, very questionable

• The E-brothel part
  • (Personal thoughts) I get the unfortunate implications, but y'all making it sound like Jimmy Rings is now fucking other women, even being supposedly unfaithful to Kai (for the on-deck shippers), but they did promise to show themes of loss and war trauma, this is just one example of dealing with them without getting steamy - a far cry evolution from his heaven-forsaken woman-humping last season, as I articulated above

Conclusion

Review list

• Sanctuary/Sword
• Visegrád
• Reach
• Aleria
• Onyx
• Thermopylae
• Halo

Transcripts

Memorable quotes

• “I know this isn't what we trained for, try to stay focused on the mission.”
• “I got you, Marine, I got you.”
• “The Covenant was already there…on Sanctuary before they glassed it…doesn't make sense, does it? If your plan is to glass a planet, why invade it first?”

• “I don't really know what people say to each other…I think there…might be something wrong with me…like…there's a part of me that's missing…or sometimes, there's a sound like…like something in my head that…doesn't belong, and I think maybe it's…a part of you…that got embedded…somehow in me.”
• “You don't have to do [talking]. … You can’t [be another Cortana for me].”

• “You’ll think about [your loss] every day; their faces pop up when you least expect. Doesn't get better…just gets further away.”

-201 Sanctuary

Recap

• The populace of a green world is offloaded to the arid Branta system world Sanctuary, one example of many Outer Colonists displaced to grimier worlds, being told that they were "saved."

• Louis experiences the bliss of the SPARTAN-II augmentations' benefits, in part thanks to Danilo
• Unfortunately, two days in, the occipital capillary reversal backfires, but he hides the effects out of fear of being shut down as an active Spartan serviceman and spends the days he has left appreciating his abilities
• The last day before permanent blindness takes effect, he takes in the memory of looking at his fellow Spartans, seeing their pride and physical prowess. His subsequent service is as a trainer

• The Master Chief undergoes revival surgery, and has Cortana transferred out of him in the process
• Silver Team, following the Master Chief's recorded instability and NDE, is reassigned to backburner missions such as two civilian evacuations, on the pretense of ensuring their leader's safety
• John suffers phantom pain from having Cortana taken away right after growing to trust her after all his vitriol on her. To cope, he occasionally pays visits to an e-brothel in Reach City, conversing with the female virtual companion there - the closest thing to Cortana by appearance
• ONI performs a thorough investigation of Catherine Halsey's crimes and illegal acts, including Cortana's creation. As a scapegoat for these actions, Margaret Parangosky resigns her CINCONI post. However, she lingers around Reach City for intel updates
• Article 72 on Halsey is revoked, turning into a legendary bounty. Sightings have been reported thrice, with no empirical evidence, all coming form Rubble refugee applicants. In reality, Halsey has been taken to custody by COL James Ackerson
• Jacob Keyes promoted to Admiral
• Soren hoards Kwan Ha's deuterium money for himself, owing his own work to it. He rises to the top of the criminal chain as a pirate leader
• Three weeks before Operation: SHEPHERD - six months after the Raas Kkhotskha engagement:
  • Vannak removes his hormonal pellet. He indulges in watching wildlife programs as time off
  • Ackerson is assigned as new director of the Spartan program

Present day - 2x01 Sanctuary

• UNSC begins evacuation of Sanctuary as part of Operation: SHEPHERD. UNSC 709 Section 4 Subsection A provides the case for a temporary evac while FLEETCOM EWS unit Highroller oversees it
  • Concurrently, Madrigal and Estuary are glassed by the Covenant. FLEETCOM's threat projections place Fumirole on the kill list
• Silver Team takes overwatch on a porch over the village. GYSGT Boone (Shepherd 7) requests their support, and the Master Chief and Riz take point after some debate with Vannak, who complains about their missions
• CPT Nix is made to contend with townspeople refusing to evacuate. Meeting CPLs Sims and Fisk, he learns the Mother, leader of the Believers, is the one responsible. Fisk attempts to subdue the Mother, leading to a brief brawl
  • Kai and Vannak meanwhile discuss the latter's new interests and pellet removal. They also detect flickers right near the comms relay
  • Contact with Marine comms unit Bravo Team - led by CPL Talia Perez - lost at the relay
• Nix tries to no avail to convince the villagers to evac, the Mother airing grievances about colonial mistreatment. Just then, the Master Chief and Riz arrive and are upped on the situation
• The Master Chief approaches the Mother during one of her "immaterial soul" sermons; she answers the Believers' faith doesn't condone leaving their doomed homeworld, amounting it to abandoning a person near death
• The Mother approaches the Spartan directly, musing about his lacking relations and faith. Just then, Highroller warns of a Sinaris-pattern heavy destroyer inbound in 11 minutes, leading its fleet to glass the world in the following eight
• Evacuation is hastened; John volunteers to save Bravo Team despite Nix's reservations. He orders Riz to prepare the Condors for evac
• The Master Chief finds a cliff face to scale by grappleshot to reach Bravo. Vannak shares animal trivia banter while monitoring his progress. Unfortunately, interference ruins radio connection; five minutes have elapsed by then, so he gets Vannak and Kai to help the evac
• John spots Bravo Team's ditched Warthogs, then is involved in a friendly fire incident with Bravo; they report suffering the jamming problem. PVT Rand was repeatedly shut down by LCPL Bowman for his magnetic anomaly theory
• Rand stalls the group's withdrawal. Not long afterwards, Sangheili pick off the entire group one by one except for the leader and the Spartan despite their efforts
• Through a running battle of gun and melee, both (mostly the Spartan) fend off about a total seven Sangheili, though Talia is knocked out and partly trapped under rock
• However, they are both surrounded by ten more Sangheili, led by the Arbiter. They mysteriously spare the Spartan, immediately after which a somehow-revived Makee comes in. She declares to John he should've stayed with him, followed by glassing beams raining down on the world
• The Sanctuary village is devastated and one Condor is shot down
• The Master Chief covers the wounded Talia with his own body, and later carries her all the way to the evac site
• Despite Vannak's worries, Kai heads off alone to get John back, and succeeds. The latter comes across the Mother - staying with five others to burn with the world - cryptically warning John to "find his faith" as his death is fast approaching.
• Silver Team extracts, John struggling to comprehend both the woman's words and coping with the battle stress. Only 11% of the near-35,000 population has fled

FLEETCOM/Silver

• Gold Team on an engagement or transit deployment
• Jade Team is on refit
• Green Team's Anton-044 is engaged
• Sigma and Gray Teams are on deployment
• Omega and Black Teams are engaged
• John is haunted by Makee's words during his off-duty periods, and is debriefed with his team by Jacob Keyes on folding with the Sanctuary situation
  • Presently, 38% of Fumirole's 620.5-million population has evacuated
• John brings up the Covenant's early infiltration as an odd event as the planet was getting glassed anyway. The data is redirected to ONI, just as James Ackerson makes a haphazard self-introduction to the Spartans, with added some backtalk about Halsey while asserting his commitment to the program
• Despite Vannak's first insistence being battle reinstatement, Ackerson states maintaining peripheral engagement is mission enough, and Keyes schedules a ten-hour medical leave for Silver
• Ackerson has individual debriefs with each of the above team; Vannak notably is fed up of the Colonel's manners
• The following day, John later visits Ackerson in his office about his Sanctuary encounter. He sees Talia undergoing a battle review and tapping her fingers as a sign of trauma; he has flashbacks of Sanctuary and Bravo Team's decimation
• John and Ackerson have a much deeper intro to each other; although John is at first convinced by the latter's field mettle, the Colonel steers the convo for himself by bringing up his past troubles, confronting him about his reliability

• Talia is awarded the Colonial Cross - first comms specialist to be so - by Admiral Keyes. Ceremony held at FLEETCOM tower, growing by the hour. UNSC news reports considerable losses suffered by Covenant. Ackerson is among the attendants, and produces propaganda over the day's course
• Cobalt Team is ordered by Ackerson to repair a broken comms relay in a far-off system. Having also watched the news, they vent their complaints to Silver while also half-jokingly criticizing their hormonal pellet removal
• Hearing more of Ackerson on the news on top of Cobalt's new mission, John is reminded to visit him again about his findings, this time with a more urgent tone. The Colonel is at first reluctant, but gladly discusses it while picking out odd events like the many dozen Elites just happening to disappear
• Ackerson brings up Halsey's methods again and what effects they could've had on the Spartans, which John futilely tries to dodge. Afterwards, at the minimum, he pleads for Ackerson to warn Cobalt of potential threats, to which Ackerson appears to agree
• John later wanders Reach City; he's hooded for anonymity. He comes across Parangosky, who explains where'd she been before inquiring about Sanctuary and deducing his odd finding there.
• The two discuss the UNSC's heeldragging elements (such as Ackerson) who are in denial about the war turning against their species, and the ex-CINCONI orders the Master Chief to prove the Covenant's scouting activities, handing him a tracker and assuring her trust in him

• John visits the e-brothel at the same time as a woman named Sarah - the latter on a session presumably involving a pain fetish
• He vents to the companion about his lacking social skills and sense of loss. He tries to get the companion to stop acting like Cortana, but suffers another flashback as well, extending to Makee's words when the companion muses on what he's missing (including physical features)
• John leaves and returns to his barracks

• A few days later, Kai, after chatting with Riz, sees John observing the Spartan assignment board. They discuss the latter's issues as brought up by Ackerson, Kai pondering about missing Halsey. Background radio chatter about a status change is heard
• John wonders if Kai trusts him unlike the Colonel, and brings up seeing Makee on Sanctuary despite Kai killing her herself. At the same time, ENS Bishara switches Cobalt Team's status to standby
• An alarmed Master Chief - and later Kai - questions Bishara on the unannounced change despite Cobalt only recently being sent off-planet
• Vannak joins in the scrutiny, and the Ensign answers he's confused himself, only knowing he was ordered to. John questions who made the change happen, then walks away telling Bishara to put it back

• John visits Ackerson again about Cobalt's whereabouts, evading his casual attitude and drink/food offerings. The Colonel reminds him of his new standing, then retorts his Sanctuary account turned out dubious due to Talia's - the other witness - unreliable testimony when he spoke to her
• Towards John's protests, Ackerson maintains while the losses were tragic, Talia could not remember what happened, and that John's behavior doesn't warrant serious consideration either
• The Colonel tells John to mentally swap roles with him, then flippantly reminds him as much as the Master Chief is needed, he's just a man in armor
• John, pressured by Ackerson's head-in-the-sand stance, suits up with Silver and makes them run an all-nighter training in a valley
• Riz in particular is made to do a ring-the-bell obstacle course while the rest of her team tails her. She fails it when John fires a shot while she's climbing. To her annoyance, Vannak quips about never losing
• The second time has her fire on John and Kai while they climb - both of them having different silent perspectives on the training
• Riz unfortunately fails the course twice, notably suffering a dangerous fall just as she almost touches her target. The Master Chief, despite all that, tells her to keep going, causing Kai to chide her leader for pushing Riz too hard
• John insists the Sanctuary enemies are reason enough, as well as intending to commit himself to finding Cobalt no matter what. He orders his squad to keep training

• John, one night, pays a visit to the Perez family apartment. Talia is at first reluctant because she was having a reunion, but her abuela Manuela convinces her to let him in. She comments on the Spartan's size
• John joins the family's dinner. During prayer session, he has a flashback to Bravo Team's demise upon noticing Talia's finger-tapping. While eating, Talia's cousins constantly tease Talia and John on their stories and the latter's interests, consistently told off by Talia's Aunt Lucia and Abuela Manuela
• Antonio and Mateo are notably amused at the Spartan's controlled reservation, the former wanting to call Beto. Talia calls him out, then walks away when after Aunt Lucia's toast, Antonio insensitively references her award ceremony
• John visits Talia alone and hears her full Sanctuary account, the Corporal sobbing and admitting survivor's guilt, it and her trauma being the cause of her inability to answer. She has no inkling of her Colonial Cross' purpose nor the noise she heard
• John stands up and tells Talia what she faced will happen again, along with the memories of her losses and trauma: "Doesn't get better…just gets further away." He leaves Talia to her devices
• Concurrently, Ackerson invites Kai for a pep talk of helping him help John. Commenting on their history with each other, he questions her about potentially endangering behavior - smirking when she denies any, as if he knew of the training and she was lying to cover John's back
• Kai comments on how heavy the weight of John's experiences could be, and that she's counting on him letting the past be. She claims despite hesitance that John is mentally amicable
• The meeting ends well, Ackerson expressing hope that her loyalty is not in question and saying he's always open for a chat

Rubble

• Minnie leads the Rubble's refugee vetting process, receiving Lot 436 - a refugee couple, multi-convict Baz, and Harvest refugee/botanical fibers merchant's mate Felix. Asylum and two years indentured servitude await those let in
• The couple prove too shy to explain themselves, Baz is bushwhacked as mockery for his crimes but is allowed inside by jury vote, and Felix tries to justify himself by way of knowing Catherine Halsey's location, stating it's a hard place to find. He is still turned away by Soren

• Soren and Carina discuss their inexperienced new crew. The former returns home with his wife; Kessler had oddly been nowhere to be found the whole day
  • In truth, he had been hearing from Kwan Ha tales about an eldritch monster "older than your god" and wants to devour everything, now having set up residence in the Rubble and carving out inscriptions about the threat
  • Potentially the Flood, which she learned from the Madrigal well before it all went down
• Laera drifts off about a Madrigal refugee boy resembling Kessler. The couple gets into an argument about being concerned or not about the present galaxy, Laera calling him out for being obsessed with Halsey and branding her "ridiculous" for perceived over-concern for the wider world, as well as being so hands-off with his crew and reputation. She confides wanting to run from the life instead of keeping it up
• Kessler and Soren talk the latter's work and rep, but also the former's fears about Kwan's monster tale; Soren dismisses the tale as childish, but Kessler maintains it was. Soren leaves to visit Felix, now in his ship

• Soren interrogates Felix about Halsey, then Soren's ship arrives at the wreck. During this time, Soren is told to be careful and discusses the SPARTAN-II program's details when Felix brings them up
• They reach Halsey's designated cryopod; Soren scrutinizes Felix's details, and then a storm of events occurs; his friends walk away from him and he is restrained by six officers, Felix revealing himself to be an undercover cop
• Soren's ship returns to the Rubble, informing Soren's family of the bad news; Kessler, in response, runs away back to Kwan's cave; Kwan, on the boy's loss, rhetorically asks: "You believe me now, don't you?"

• Kwan, now indentured to the Spiffs, heads out to steal food. She tries to remove her tracking tag, but is caught by one Oswyn, leading to a prolonged chase through the urban area where she uses the environment against her pursuers
• Kwan flees to a service duct, spacing Clive and being caught in a knife struggle where she stabs Oswyn in the head with her tracking tag, which she's removed

• Laera heads down to take Soren’s ship to find her husband, but is told by Antares the stream manifold cracked due to unexpectedly abundant debris; the repairs will take a couple of days minimum
• During their explanations, despite being told to rest up, Laera insists Soren wouldn't have left them behind and that he's still alive, reprimanding them harshly for what they did before leaving

• Kessler returns to Kwan's cavern, bringing food. The latter tells Kessler she has to leave, due to - as Kessler deduces from "knowing grown-up things" - the heat she's attracted
• Kessler says his father will protect them when he gets back, to which Kwan says that he isn’t. In apparent shock, Kessler flips his helmet down and leaves

Halsey/Ack Man (E2-only)

• Attendant Julia brings Halsey her lunch and discusses the pomegranate tree in the room, also bringing in a box of Go. She takes the white pieces
• Halsey proceeds to inquire about what happens and what's outside of the room; Julia is stunned, but answers anyway even as they play, giving descriptions that match typical prison rows
• Julia is unable to give details on what's behind the hallway doors and the "very nice" gift man who told her not to look. She suffers a nosebleed and cannot identify the man before collapsing

• Julia is inexplicably replaced, Halsey winning the Go game. The Doctor immediately inquires on the identity of the gift-giver, but despite her increased efforts fails again. She shouts about the point of the song and dance

• Ackerson speaks to Halsey within the prison simulation. The Doctor remarks on the flash-clones' contradictory description of Ackerson to his true nature, then chronicles her experience with the tree
• After getting down to business, Halsey questions the Colonel on Cortana and the Master Chief's whereabouts; Cortana is secure, and Ackerson keeps up the facade; the new Julia's first act is pointing to the tree set aflame
• Ackerson then speaks to Cortana about data for a specific problem she's solving; the complex simulation, coupled with her best efforts without external systems (that would've given more accuracy), returns consistently the same result at a 97% chance regardless of action
• Presumably resigned to fate, Ackerson suspends further simulations, maintaining a casual air of "visiting again" despite knowing with Cortana the results mean he won't again (presumably a Reach invasion simulation)

Heal-Riz-ing (E2-only)

• Kai comes across Riz preparing for physical training, and advises against it and directs to Ackerson so she could heal better
• Riz denies the strain she's in, citing the ongoing war and her prevalent coolheadedness. Kai quips about putting back the hormonal pellet, but Riz states she'd get shot first before then

• Riz is training with the hammer, neglecting tiredness until Louis stops her. He chastises the Spartans for getting sloppy, both at war and self-care after so long, and states there's no shame in taking it easy, so as to avoid being put out of combat
• Louis has Riz stretch her left hand in a test. Despite her fiery protest to having pressure put, she controls herself enough, quipping "Spartans never die"
• Louis states there's more to life than being a Spartan, but Riz refuses to listen, stating the Spartan way is her only value. She takes it back after realizing she's talking to a washout, and they chat about Louis' old ambitions as a Spartan

• Following the wilderness training, Riz is struggling to regain her energy, and loathes having to visit Danilo - at the same time Talia is visiting
• Riz doesn't trust Danilo as the only person helping her heal, but Louis then recounts his experiences straight out of augmentation
• Talia leaves after finishing her session, and Louis introduces Danilo to Riz - a friend. Later during her session with him, Riz notices flickering lights in the background and a soft audible wince
• Danilo, apparently oblivious, tells Riz to let go of her pain and take back her life. She sheds one tear

Climax (E2-only)

• Spartan Operation 7HYF-8H6G-K87H is conducted in the Meridian relay on standard crew rotation
• John queries a computer for Spartan flight plans to learn Cobalt Team's whereabouts. Cobalt does not show up, so he goes through Omega, Black, and Sigma Teams, then crosschecks comms relays
• John finds Operation N3JJ-841K-OK03 - shown previously on the board as Cobalt's transit deployment op - is really located in the Epsilon Eridani system, specifically Reach's Visegrád Relay (which shut down a few days ago)
• The operation stands out without a callsign, indicating to John that Cobalt is on a secret mission. He and Silver armor up, convincing them they are on a Longhorn Valley training sortie
• The Master Chief flies Condor HV 3-2 and then disengages its autopilot. Vannak, who expected a "chump bait" curb-stomp, is disappointed and, like the rest, is surprised; John briefs the squad on the situation and states the Covenant are on Reach
• The aliens infiltrate SWORD Base. Nine Marines take defensive positions at a darkened corridor part of the base, and send in their first squad forward to root the intruder out
• The squad detects a Sangheili contact, but is quickly slaughtered, along with the rest later due to the power going out
• The Sangheili grabs the last Marine - Kessler (not to be confused with Soren's son) - in the throat, and snaps it. He muses about the lack of honor in the fight, then allows Makee inside the room containing the Eridanus II keystone. Heading inside, she starts to touch it

Review

• First of all, Jimmy Halo's more subdued outbursts, this time directed at the safety of not just humanity's most vital stronghold, but his fellow kin. He even smiles more and is a bit more intriguing, and neat touches that he's not into kill counts or drunkenness
• The side plot through certain blur cinematography highlighting the increased tension between them as well as the effects of war on its populace
• Cortana's instant removal having a lasting effect on Jimmy Halo, though he doesn't go overly wild, wet, and dirty about it it
• Halsey's machinations and the Master Chief's #NotMyChief S1 moments leaving a helluva mark on them by way of distrustful scrutiny and bread-and-butter ops
• Silver Team's increased in-between-time quips and hangouts and having fun with other Spartan teams
• Parangosky's punishment as a meta-continuity nod on the Kilo-Five book trilogy's running (but unresolved) thread of the lady herself self-punishing for the Spartan program. A notable quote:

“I don’t delude myself that there are moral ambiguities in my job, the things we did weren’t ambiguous, not at all. I know I’ve done them and how bad they were, and if there’s a hell, I’ll probably burn in it before too long, but that’s the kind of thing you can face when you’re 92. I’m prepared to do the very worst, and because I am, more people survive than get killed, but I’ll take what’s coming to me - and I’ll make no excuses.”
(Admiral Margaret O. Parangosky, CINCONI, drafting her evidence to the UEG Select Defense Committee)
-Glasslands

• Keyes getting a rank boost past his canon self. Knowing UNSC Admirals, he's hopefully not behind a desk like Ack Man again
• By the Precursors, everything about Ackerson (call him Ack Man) - his apparent mock reverence of Halsey, his two-faced view of the SPARTAN-IIs ("Master Chief's just a guy in a suit" vs. "I believe in this program/The Master Chief...it's an honor"), his more pragmatic (opening them to pep talks hosted by him, setting them on safe-play ops) approach compared to outright war-effort sabotage (killing the MC and trying to shut down Halsey's work)
  • You can see the subtext within him - dropping the smirk at stating the war would be turned around, then this quote here: "Just because you don't see a response doesn't mean it's not happening."
  • It's even made manifest in Sword with that apparent Fall of Reach simulation conundrum; his fatalism is a driving force of why he's the way he is with running things
• The wordless window-reflection-based visual cue of the Master Chief looming over Talia in E1, and then her blatant discomfort with that Colonial Cross - all to set up her character building next ep
• The juxtaposition between Cobalt's tech suits and pellets vs. Silver's casual wear, rep, and persona, as well as the use of the scene to explore how other Spartans feel about Silver (such as criticism of the pellet take-off; we saw how Kai fared in 105 Reckoning). At least John Rings was the most controlled and rational of the lot ("Just treat it like it's real.")
• The Kai/Chief ship tease in Sword: " I know you, John…we're more than [interrupted] just-" (On top of Ackerson's comment) Doesn't restrict them from having conflict either, as Sword proved; what else I like there is how only Riz's face is shown out of all her team
• Louis' philosophy of Spartans chilling the fuck down and his brief long-lost power fantasy, especially with the pellets gone; we know Fhajad is working astrophysics and Osman's...Ozzy-ness
• Exploration and acceptance of UNSC propaganda's necessity - a kind of departure from the UNSC-bashing of last season - along with exploring how average Joes see the MC, even kind of implementing the Halo games in by way of that Spartan Attack
• Kwan's Forerunner connections apparently teasing the Flood. I'll change my rating as this goes on, based on the outcome

• All about the weird cult except the sincere part about their plight. We didn't need another Desert Mystics, lol, but at least it's a throwaway setting the stage for the lead's evolution
• The E-brothel part - not for the unfortunate implications as explained below, but for the provoked reactions. Guess they should've stuck with Danilo as Sword showed - he's the Spartans' designated shrink and I'm sure companions aren't in short supply, woulda been more unifying and less provcative/awkward
• "Somehow, Makee returned." Yea, that's all there is to it. Where Arby v Da Chief and where's the other fan-favorite teased here. Might excuse it with the lesser keystones she mentioned in 106 Solace, but again, very questionable

• The E-brothel part
  • (Personal thoughts) I get the unfortunate implications, but y'all making it sound like Jimmy Rings is now fucking other women, even being supposedly unfaithful to Kai (for the on-deck shippers), but they did promise to show themes of loss and war trauma, this is just one example of dealing with them without getting steamy - a far cry evolution from his heaven-forsaken woman-humping last season, as I articulated above

Conclusion

• $100 Balenciaga Striker Derby • Size 41 Worn 3 times with box
  
• $105 SHIPPED Louis Vuitton Trainers Black/White. • Size 41 ( Bought from Jelly for $120 Fits like a Size 9/8 US only worn twice)